Since the noon hour he had been in a bad humor. Now he was not only tired, but cold and down-hearted, and as his foot slipped, and he just managed to save the fragile parcel he was carrying, he cried out with a spiteful voice, "I just wish there wasn't any New-Years."
Somehow Sam's ill-humor had made him very uncomfortable all the afternoon. He had had a scuffle near the office with Dick Rainey, and all about nothing, for Dick, noticing his peculiar gait, simply asked him what made his legs so heavy. He had quarrelled with the old apple woman in the little shop round the corner because she wouldn't give him two apples for three cents, when the price was two cents apiece; he had thrown a lump of ice at a poor cat shivering behind a barrel on the Third Avenue, and kicked at a wretched little dog that had sniffed up to him with his tail between his legs. Altogether Sam was in a very bad way. He didn't care for anybody or anything. Down town the gay shop windows had failed to catch his eye; the bright lights in the houses on the avenue were nothing to him. He was out with himself, and so he was out with everybody else.
I am sorry to say that when Sam had delivered his parcel he snapped up the servant for having kept him waiting so long for his ticket, although the poor girl had nothing to do with that, and that he kicked the sidewalk very hard when he again put his foot upon it. And yet he had now only to report himself at the office, and then go home.
Sam lived on one of the side streets, where the great tenement-houses loom up in long rows. It was past ten o'clock when he entered the dark hallway, and began his climb to the fourth floor. On the third floor he passed the room in which Jenny Wilson, the little lame girl, lived, and just then some one opened the door for a moment, and he heard Jenny say,
"Oh, I wonder if I will ever be well!" and "I am so tired!"
Then Sam, still cross, said to himself, "Why don't you go to sleep, then?" but in a moment he was ashamed of himself for having said it.
Bang! went the door behind him as he entered his mother's room. Without saying a word, he pitched his heavy coat into a corner, and shied his cap across the room.
"What's the matter, Sam?" asked his mother, with a kindly voice.
"Matter enough," answered Sam. "I'm tired to death. It's nothing but run, run, run all day and all night. I just wish there wasn't any New-Year's. Nobody cares for a boy. It's Sam here, and Sam there, and Sam all the time. That's because I'm a boy. I wish I was a girl—yes, I do."
His mother soothed him while he ate his supper; but the frown did not lift from his face, for there was no sunshine in his heart.