"Ha, ha! Not a bad idea--perhaps it does have something to do with it.
No, this is where the store keeps its furs during the summer months.
Moths can"t stand the cold, you know. Come on, we"ll go on down now."
The elevator car was nearly full of people from the roof garden. Betty started to step in, hesitated, then turned back. Uncle Jack motioned her and Bob in, stepped in after them, and carefully turned so that he faced the elevator door.
"That was a risky thing you did just then," he whispered to Betty.
"Three quarters of all the elevator accidents are due to stepping in or out in the wrong way. Never do the thing halfway, you know. Always wait till the elevator man stops the car at the floor level and throws the door wide open."
Next to them in the elevator stood two boys--cash boys in the store--who were fooling and scuffling so close to the door that the elevator man cautioned them twice as the car dropped swiftly downward. Finally one of them brought his heel down on the other"s foot so hard that the other jumped backward, forgetting everything else for the pain. Forward went his head--bang went his face against the iron grating of the door they were just pa.s.sing.
The elevator stopped with a jerk. They carried the boy out and sent for the store doctor. Bob and Betty never had to be reminded, in all the years to come, to look sharp when riding in elevators. The memory of that bruised and battered face was warning enough.
"It"s a dangerous machine," said Uncle Jack as they left the store. "A fellow who will scuffle in an elevator is foolish enough for almost anything. Here"s our next stop," and he showed them into a shop with a big sign over the double door:
UNIFORMS--READY MADE OR TO ORDER
"Uncle Jack must be going to have a new uniform," whispered Betty to her twin as the tailor came up with his tape over his shoulders. But it was not around their uncle that the tape measure went, it was around Bob!
"Yes, the regulation khaki," Uncle Jack was saying. "Cut and finish it just like this one," and he handed the tailor a photograph of Sure Pop.
"Your turn next, Betty," said Uncle Jack, and to Betty"s great delight and the tailor"s surprise, _she_ was measured for a special Safety Scout uniform too!
Uncle Jack did not stop there. He bought the twins Safety Scout hats of fine, light felt, made for hard service, and he was on the point of buying them leather puttees or leggings, but Bob stopped him.
"Canvas leggings are plenty good enough," he said. "The fellows couldn"t afford leather, most of them, and we want them all to match."
"Canvas it is, then," nodded his uncle, and went on making up the outfits. Betty sighed happily as they followed him into another store.
It all seemed too good to be true! The first thing she knew, they were sitting at a gla.s.s-topped table.
Uncle Jack mopped his steaming forehead again. "That tailor shop beats the jungle all hollow for heat!" he exclaimed. "What kind of ice cream do you want, Scouts?"
Betty thought it was time to object. "Oh, Uncle Jack, we"ve had enough!
You"ve done too much for us already!" All the same, she enjoyed the ice cream just as much as the others did, and when Uncle Jack tucked a box of chocolates under her arm, her cup of joy was full.
"What are you thinking about, Betty?" asked Uncle Jack as the big red automobile bore them merrily homeward; for Betty had not said a word for blocks and blocks.
She patted Uncle Jack"s arm--the well one--with a grateful smile. "I was thinking what a perfectly, perfectly _lovely_ day we"ve had! And wishing," she murmured, wistfully, "that Mother had been along too."
"Now that part"s all taken care of," said Uncle Jack. "Your mother"s going out for a spin with me tonight after Baby"s asleep; she couldn"t leave today, she said. She and I will have a good long ride down the river front in the moonlight. Be sure you get a good sleep tonight, now, you two; I want you to be in good trim for a little exploring party I"m planning for tomorrow."
"We"ll be up bright and early, ready for anything," Bob told him. "Whew!
but this has been a whirlwind of a day! Glad you"re going to take Mother out--that"s the only way she"d get a cool breeze tonight, all right!"
"But it can"t be as nice as the roof garden, even then!" cried his happy twin, as she lifted out her big box of candy and skipped up the front steps two at a time.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
ADVENTURE NUMBER SIXTEEN
WHERE SAFETY WAS A STRANGER
True to their word, Bob and Betty were up bright and early, ready for Uncle Jack"s exploring trip.
"We"re going to visit one of the big wood-working mills," he explained as they left the house after breakfast. "I"m curious to see the result of Colonel Sure Pop"s Safety patrolling, and it seems to me that will be about as interesting a shop as we can begin on. It will be fun to see what they"re doing to make it safer for the men--perhaps we can get some ideas for your outside patrols, Bob."
The twins looked around them sharply as they went into the mill by way of its lumber yard. "I don"t see anything here that looks dangerous,"
was Bob"s first remark. "Hold on, though--what about those piles of lumber? Don"t you think they"re piled too high to be safe?"
"I can tell you this much," said Uncle Jack, who had been reading up on the year"s long list of accidents. "The danger of being hit by falling or flying objects in mills and factories is the biggest risk in the whole country today."
He walked around to the laborers who were piling lumber and began talking with the foreman. The twins stepped nearer so that they could hear what he was saying.
"They"re getting that pile rather high," said Uncle Jack, as if he had only just noticed it. "It"s beginning to look a bit wobbly on its pins.
Isn"t there danger of its toppling over and hurting somebody?"
"Oh, I don"t know," was the foreman"s answer. "We do have a few men smashed up that way, off and on; it"s all in the day"s work, though."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth when a heavily loaded wagon in pa.s.sing beside the lumber piles swayed and came squarely up against the one the men were working on. With a crash and a clatter the whole thing went over. One man jumped clear of the wreck, another slid down with the lumber, bruised but not much hurt--and two disappeared under the huge ma.s.s of falling boards.
The three Safety Scouts stood watching the ambulance, fifteen minutes later, as it carried off the two men to the hospital, one with a broken arm and a gash over one eye, the other hurt inside so badly that he died that night. Both of them had boys and girls of their own--families whose living depended on their daily wages at the mill!
"Hard luck for their folks," said Uncle Jack, as the ambulance rumbled away. "The Colonel told me yesterday his men had done a lot of successful Safety scouting among the wood-working mills. I can"t understand it. By the way, Bob, that ambulance reminds me: what drill are you giving your Safety Scouts on how to call the fire department, and the police and the ambulance and so on?"
"We"ve got that well covered in our Sat.u.r.day reports, Uncle Jack. Once a week each Scout adds to his report the telephone number of the police and the fire department--it"s usually a number that"s easy to remember, like "Main 0" for fire and "Main 13" for police--as well as the street address of the nearest station."
"Bob, how did they happen to choose those numbers?" wondered Betty.
Her brother grinned. "I suppose because after a bad fire there"s nothing left, and because it"s unlucky to fall into the hands of the police!"
and he cleverly ducked the box Betty aimed at his ear.
Uncle Jack"s twinkle didn"t last long, though. He was too much puzzled over the carelessness he was noticing in this mill, carelessness where he had expected to find up-to-date Safety methods. He poked with his foot at a board with several ugly nails sticking up in it and jammed them carefully down into the ground.
"That"s the fourth bad case of upturned nails I"ve found here already,"
he said quietly. "There"s no end of broken bottles and such trash under foot, and just look at that overloaded truck, will you? One sharp curve in the track and that load will spill all over the place. Why, these chaps don"t realize the first thing about Safety, Bob."
They moved on into the engine room. One of the engineer"s helpers, a boy who looked hardly older than Bob, stood beside a swiftly moving belt, pouring something on it out of a tin can. His sleeve was dangling, and every time the belt lacing whirled past, it flipped the sleeve like a clutching finger trying to jerk his arm into the cruel wheel.
Uncle Jack walked over for a word with the engineer, a fat, jolly looking man who seemed well satisfied with life. "Do your helpers often put belt dressing on while the belt is running?" he asked.
The jolly engineer was plainly surprised. "Why, they never do it any other time!" he exclaimed. "Why do you ask?"