The Safety First Club
9781465676672
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Sam Parker stepped out upon the side porch of his father’s house, closing the door behind him with a slam. There was a frown on his face, which by no means became it; and the corners of his mouth drooped sulkily. He was, as a matter of fact, in a fit of temper, which did not lessen as he surveyed the dull, gray sky, and saw its promise of a dismal day. “’Nother spoiled Saturday!” he grumbled. “Nowhere to go and nothing to do—oh, thunderation!” Now, to tell the truth, it may be that the weather had much to do with Sam’s pessimism, just as it often influences persons a great deal older and wiser than this boy of sixteen. Sam, commonly, was good-natured enough.This day, though, things had seemed to go wrong from the very start. He had overslept; one of his shoes had contrived to hide itself under the bureau; his necktie stubbornly had declined to slip into a smooth and even knot; he was late at breakfast, and the oatmeal was cold, and the eggs were as hard as the Fate which he was beginning to suspect was pursuing him. He had attempted criticism, and his father had checked him rather sharply with the reminder that the breakfast hour was 7:30 and not 7:50. His mother had not hastened to his defense; and even Maggie, the cook, frequently his ally and dispenser of consoling doughnuts and cookies, had failed him when he sought sympathy in the kitchen. “You got up wrong foot foremost,” she told him. “Get along with you now! This is bakin’ day, and I can’t be bothered.” Sam, thus repulsed, had clumped out of the kitchen; stormed into the hall; snatched up his cap and reefer; stamped across the dining-room, and flung himself out of the house, without visible improvement in his spirits or his condition. If it was dark within, it was gloomy without. He looked up the street and down; nobody was in sight. He buttoned his coat to the neck, and thrust his hands into his pockets: the world, he perceived, was chilly as well as lonely. Then, of a sudden, he grinned, fleetingly and reluctantly, at vagrant memory of the old story of the child that threatened to go out and eat two smooth worms and three fuzzy fellows because nobody loved it. The baby’s troubles were ridiculously like his own, and for a trying second he realized the resemblance. Then he was frowning harder than ever, with mouth drooping still more sulkily. In sunnier moods Sam Parker was a good-looking boy. Nobody would have called him pretty; he wasn’t of the “pretty” type, being, indeed, rather wholesome and hearty, with plenty of color in his cheeks—and not a few freckles. For a youth who was rapidly adding to his inches, in the process known as getting his growth, he carried himself well; though, as everybody knows, this period in a boy’s life is not that at which grace of figure or movement is most marked. In other words, there were times when Sam did not know what to do with his hands or his feet, and impressed the painful fact upon all beholders, especially because of a certain impulsiveness, which led him now and then into embarrassing ventures.
