"Exactly so. That big, thick fire wall goes straight through the building from top to bottom—cuts it in two. Suppose a fire breaks out here on the piecework side: the foreman just opens this fire door and shoos the boys and girls right through, like a lot of chickens. Then he shuts the fire door tight, and they are safe. That big fire we had here four years ago taught us something. So when the owner rebuilt it for us, he built it right."
The big room on the other side of the fire wall was crowded almost as full of workers as the first one. The main difference was that there were more boys and men, and that more sewing was being done by hand. Bob's khaki trousers were quickly found and tried on—a perfect fit.
"We'll give Bob a Patrol Leader's arm badge—two white bars of braid below his left shoulder," said Uncle Jack. "Betty will get one bar for the present, I understand. There are some badges yet to come, Colonel Sure Pop says."
Bob and Betty looked at each other, too pleased to talk.
The four were walking downstairs for a look at the other floors of the big tailor shop when the noon whistle blew. R-r-rip—slam—bang! A torrent of rattle-brained boys came tearing pell mell down the stairs like a waterfall over a dam. Most of them came pelting down three steps at a jump, but on one of the landings somebody stumbled, and the yelling boys piled up in a squirming, kicking heap.
"Hey! WAIT!" No one would ever have suspected the mild-mannered tailor of having such a foghorn of a voice! The rush from the upper floors slowed up at once, and Uncle Jack and Bob helped the fallen lads pick themselves up. But the boy at the bottom, a little fellow with a thin, pinched face that looked as if he had never had half enough to eat, nor even enough fresh air, lay there moaning softly.
Bob knew that queer, unnatural angle of the boy's right arm, which lay awkwardly stretched out beside him, as if it had never quite matched his left. The arm was broken.
"Here, here!" roared the tailor, gently picking the little fellow up and carrying him to the elevator. "Will you crazy fellows never learn? Only last week, somebody hollered 'Fire!' just to see the other fellows jump up and run, and broke that poor little Levinski's collar bone! And now look at this!"
"The old fellow's right on that score," was Uncle Jack's remark as the twins followed him to the street car, each hugging tight a big pasteboard box with a brand new Safety Scout uniform inside it. "Those lads meant no particular harm, but that certainly was about as far from a square deal as one fellow can give another. These 'practical jokers' who will yell 'Fire!' or run over a boy smaller than themselves—well, if a Boy Scout had no more sense than that, he'd be drummed out of the service!"
Once on the way home, when the car stopped at the corner, he pointed up to a fire escape on a big flat building. "There's your flower-pot risk over again, Betty. Even worse, for this time they're on the fire escape steps where folks would fall over head first in case of fire. And see that girl leaning against that rickety old porch railing on the third floor! Certainly there's plenty in sight for a Safety Scout to do!"