CHAPTER VIIIMAKING NEW FRIENDS
“Seehow wet I am, Mother?” Sunny Boy danced up and down before the big umbrella.
“You certainly are!” Mrs. Horton agreed with him. “And it seems to me you’d better run along and get dressed. There comes Aunt Betty—she’s looking for us. Wave your hand, Sunny Boy. And now we’ll all go up to the house; it must be getting near lunch-time.”
Sunny and Daddy were both dressed and “starving to death” they told each other, fifteen minutes before Harriet rang the gong.
“Wasn’t the water fine this morning?” asked Miss Martinson, at the lunch table.“I was hoping for a chance to duck Sunny Boy, but he never came within reach.”
“Daddy was there, Aunt Betty. I don’t p’sume he’d let you duck me,” replied Sunny Boy.
“Didn’t Daddy duck you?” asked Aunt Betty.
“I don’t know. Did you, Daddy?”
“No, not exactly. Instead of putting you under the water—ducking you—we let the water cover us, heads and all. You see, it would not be very bad to be ducked.”
“What do you say to a drive this afternoon?” said Mr. Horton. “I have to go on the first train in the morning, you know, and until Olive learns to drive the car you’re going to be dependent on the jitneys and trolleys. All in favor of driving down the shore road after lunch, say ‘Aye.’”
“Aye!” cried all the grown-ups to Sunny’s astonishment.
“What do you say, Laddie?” his father smiled at him.
“I say ‘me,’” declared Sunny Boy firmly.
And then those grown-ups had to laugh.
“That settles it,” announced Mr. Horton. “We’ll keep as close to the beach as we can; and we’ll take the field glasses, and perhaps we can sight a coast steamer.”
As soon as they were through lunch Mr. Horton brought the car around, and Mrs. Horton, Aunt Bessie and Aunt Betty and Sunny Boy got in, only this time Sunny rode in the back. Mrs. Horton wanted to learn to drive herself, and she meant to watch her husband and see what he did.
Sunny Boy was secretly hoping for another glimpse of the merry-go-round, but they drove in the opposite direction and did not go through the town at all.
“Now you take the wheel,” said Mr. Horton, stopping the car on a smooth straight stretch of road.
So Mrs. Horton exchanged seats with him and drove, very slowly and carefully.
“Just as well as Daddy,” Sunny Boy encouraged her. And indeed, before the month was half gone, his mother was able to drive the automobile as well as his father.
She soon tired of the excitement this afternoon, though, and was glad to give it up and come back into the tonneau with Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson. Sunny Boy then slipped into the front seat.
“I see a ship!” he shouted a moment later.
Sure enough, there against the sky they saw the outline of a ship with three funnels, or smokestacks, as Sunny called them.
“The meadow glasses, Mother!” he cried. “Daddy’s meadow glasses to see the ship through!”
“Field glasses,” laughed Aunt Betty.
“Sunny Boy is thinking of the meadows he played in at Brookside farm,” explained Mr. Horton.
Sunny Boy, screwing his eyes to look through the glasses, nodded. Daddy always understood what he meant to say.
“I see men on it,” he announced.
Then every one looked and saw the sailors walking about the decks of the vessel.
Sunny Boy was much interested, and as Daddy drove on he asked a great many questions about the sea and ships. He rather thought he should like to be a sailor when he grew up. Either that, or an aviator.
Hm’m, hm’m—buz-zz. A great droning sounded back of them.
“Mother, Mother, Mother!” Sunny Boy shouted at the top of his lungs. “It’s an airplane!”
It was, too; a beautiful, graceful, swift airplane that came out of the sky and sped over them and was gone almost before they knew it.
“You’ll see ever so many of them this summer,” Mr. Horton said, when his familywere sitting down properly in their places again. You know how every one stands up and tilts his head backward to watch an airplane.
That was the end of adventures for that afternoon, though they drove several miles further along the road that followed the line of the beach closely. They got back to the bungalow just in time to freshen up a little before Harriet announced that dinner was ready.
“What are we going to do to-night?” Sunny Boy asked pleasantly, playing that a piece of bread was a fish and his spoon a net.
Daddy laughed.
“Why, I think you’re going to bed,” he answered, gazing intently at the bowl before Sunny Boy and the spoon which threatened to spatter milk presently. “I may take Mother down to the beach to see the moon a little later, but we are all going to bed early.I have to go back to the city early, you know.”
“I wish—” said Sunny Boy earnestly. “I wish you would stay and play with me all the time, Daddy—Oh, my!”
For the spoon had slipped and a great splash of milk went on Harriet’s spandy tablecloth.
“That’s a two-cent spot, isn’t it, Mother?” asked Sunny Boy sadly.
But Mother shook her head.
“We’ll not begin to count till to-morrow,” she said kindly. “Only, do remember what I’ve told you about playing with your food, Sunny Boy.”
You see, Mother and Sunny Boy had decided that when a boy was five years old and came to the table just like other folks, he shouldn’t make any more crumbs about his chair, or spill any food on the tablecloth. If he went a whole week without getting a spot on the cloth, Mother put ten cents inhis Christmas bank; and for every spot he had to pay a little fine. That is, he had to give up a part of the ten cents he would otherwise have earned.
“Great big splashy spots are two cents,” Sunny Boy explained to Aunt Betty, who had not heard of the plan. “Little spicky spots are only half a cent. And things that you can’t help spilling—like huckleberries and blackberries and cranberry sauce—don’t count at all.”
After supper Sunny Boy was so tired and sleepy that, although he said he wanted to go down on the beach and see the moon, he knew in his own mind he’d go to sleep walking there; and he stumbled down the hall and into his pretty bedroom and went to sleep on the bed without even taking off his shoes.
Daddy undressed him, only waking him as he kissed him good-night.
“I may be gone before you’re awake, Laddie,”he whispered. “But you know I’m coming down next Saturday, and we’ll have great times. You’re the man of the house while I’m away, remember.”
“All right,” sighed Sunny Boy drowsily.
In the morning he remembered and jumped out of bed to find Daddy and love him a little more before he should hurry away to catch his train.
“He’s gone, precious,” was Mrs. Horton’s greeting when he pushed back the curtain that hung between the two rooms. “Come and get into bed with me a minute. Daddy was off at five o’clock this morning. Breakfast? Yes, I made him nice hot coffee and toast. And now I smell Harriet’s bacon. You and I had better hurry.”
While they were eating breakfast, a small nose was flattened against the dining-room screen door.
“Is Sunny Boy there?” asked a voice. “Can he come out and play? My cousinfrom Fenner is visiting us an’ we want to build a fort.”
“It’s Ellen,” said Sunny Boy. “Could I be ’scused, Mother? I ate all my oatmeal an’ everything.”
“Where are you going to be?” asked Mrs. Horton, smiling at Ellen. “When we come down on the beach a little later we want to be able to find you. And Sunny Boy mustn’t go in the water unless an older person is around.”
“No’m,” agreed Ellen obediently. “We can’t go in either, not till to-morrow. Not even wading. We’ll play down at the edge of the old pier. My mother is coming, too, by and by and she doesn’t like to hunt for us, so we promised to stay right there.”
“All right then,” said Mrs. Horton. “Run along, Son. I’m sorry you haven’t a shovel, but a clam shell answers very well. The first time I go into town I’ll get you a pail and shovel.”
Sunny Boy found Ellen and Ralph and the cousin from Fenner awaiting him on the sidewalk. The cousin was another boy, a freckle-faced youngster with merry blue eyes and red hair.
“I’m going to help build it,” Ellen said, as the four walked down toward the beach. “Always an’ always I just have to carry things and sit on things to keep ’em from blowing away, and this time I want to build.”
“All right, you may,” promised her brother. “First we have to find Sunny a clam shell to dig with.”
The others were carrying pails and shovels, and Ellen had also a set of sand dishes with which she could, as she explained to Sunny Boy, make wonderful cakes and pies.
“Wet sand is the best,” she informed him, “but we’ll have to get along with dry till your mother comes down. Then you andStephen can go wading and get us some water.”
Stephen was the cousin’s name.
As they climbed over the sand dunes and came out on the shining sandy beach, a big black and white spotted dog came running up to them.
“Hello, Queen!” said Ellen, putting her arms around the dog’s neck. “Have you had any breakfast, dear?”