"Adventures" in for of the "27 short adventure stories"
You're a bad lot, Bernard Brooks. I don't think I ever knew a wuss boy."
"Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Snowdon. Let me suggest, however, that wuss is hardly correct English."

The speaker was fifteen years of age, but as tall as most boys of seventeen. He had a bold, aggressive manner, which he only assumed with those he thought were hostile or unfriendly.

He could be a devoted friend, and a loyal subordinate to one who gained his good will. Mr. Snowdon he did not look upon as a friend, though he had been placed in his charge two months before by a cousin of his deceased father.

Ezekiel Snowdon, a man of perhaps sixty, tall and with stooping shoulders, colored with anger at the boy's sarcastic words.