The Whistling Swans

For several evenings early in October the North Street boys had been gathering at Benson’s to try and organize a club, but the difficulty seemed to be to decide upon what kind of a club would be most interesting.  The ball season would soon be over, the long winter would soon be on them, and things wore a pretty flat outlook, unless they could arrange some interesting diversion for that string of dull days, only broken by Christmas holidays.  The West Ward fellows had a Checker Club, the Third Form fellows had a Puzzle Club, the Collegiates had a Canadian Literature Club; even the Mill boys down on the Flats had a Captain Kidd Club, proving themselves at times bandits quite worthy the club’s name.  Only the North Street boys seemed “out of it,” but from the way they talked and shouted and wrangled at these preliminary meetings it looked as if they certainly intended to “come in” out of their isolation.  But there had been five meetings without any decision having been arrived at.  Every boy of the ten present seemed to want a different sort of club.  The things that were suggested would have amazed the members of the various other clubs could they have heard them.

Then, one night when the din and confusion were at fever heat, the door suddenly opened and in walked Benson’s father.

“Why, what’s all this babel?” he exclaimed, as silence fell on the crowd and the boys got to their feet meekly to greet him with polite “good-evenings.”  “I never heard such a parrot-and-monkey, Kilkenny-cat outfit in all my life!  What’s up, fellows?”

Benson’s father was generally acknowledged to be a “comedian.”  No one ever saw him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word.  He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—­from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—­loved and respected.  How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something that had gone wrong in the class-room, only to have that droll face of his father’s and some equally droll remark upset all his dignity and indignation into laughter and consequent good nature.

“One at a time, boys, just one at a time, or I shall have bustificated eardrums!  What is it all about?”

Then they told him, but, it must be confessed, not one at a time.

“A club, eh?” he questioned, straddling a chair and leaning his arms on the back.  “What kind of a club, pleasure club, improvement club, sporting club, what?”

“That’s the trouble; we can’t hit on it!” they chorused.

For a moment he sat silent, his round, childish eyes surveying the world that hung on his very first words.