O
h, look! There's a bus! Let's ride on top," cried Sunny Boy, pointing out toward the street as one of the Fifth Avenue busses lumbered into sight.
"But our taxi is here," reasoned Mr. Horton, helping in Sunny Boy's mother as he spoke. "And I couldn't go up on top with these heavy bags. Come, Son, and you shall have your ride to-morrow."
Sunny Boy climbed into the taxi cab, Mr. Horton followed, and they were on the way to their hotel.
It was a brief ride, but in those few moments Sunny Boy was sure he had seen more automobiles than he had ever seen in his life. He probably had, for it was the time of daywhen the city traffic is heaviest, and never-ending streams of motor-cars and trucks and wagons were being driven on the cross streets, as well as on the avenues.
"I feel as if I wasn't here," said Sunny Boy slowly, watching the crowds from the open window.
Mr. Horton glanced down at him and smiled.
"You do look rather small in all this," he admitted; "but I should say you were very much here. And here's our hotel, and I think you are ready for supper."
The taxi cab stopped before the McAlpin Hotel, and Sunny Boy, holding fast to Daddy's hand, went into a beautiful high-ceilinged room ablaze with light. He and his mother sat down in one of the big chairs while Mr. Horton registered and arranged for their room. Then a severe-faced boy took the suitcases and led them into an elevator.
"I wonder if he's cross," thought Sunny Boy to himself, studying the face of the boy as he stood stiffly, his eyes fixed grimly on the wire grating of the elevator.
He was staring at him so hard that when the boy turned and caught him Sunny Boy blushed. The boy stuck out his tongue and immediately resumed his stern expression.
"He wears such a lot of buttons," thought Sunny Boy, who in all his life had never been in a hotel to stay over night. "I wonder did he really stick out his tongue—"
The elevator stopped while Sunny Boy was trying to decide, and the Hortons followed the boy along a silent corridor till he stopped before a door and, unlocking it, ushered them into a large, pleasant room.
"Well, dear, hungry?" asked Mrs. Horton.
"He did it again," said Sunny Boy.
"Who did what?" laughed Mrs. Horton."Sunny, don't let New York addle you like this. I asked if you were hungry."
"That boy did stick out his tongue," explained Sunny Boy. "I don't guess he is cross at all. When he closed the door he winked at me. And I am hungry, Mother."
Supper, as Sunny Boy insisted on calling it, or dinner, was rather a vague affair to him, for he was not only hungry but very sleepy after the long train ride. He liked riding down in the elevator and up again, but he was glad enough to go to bed.
"It's just like the three bears," he said to Mother as she helped him to undress. "Big Bear, Middle-sized Bear, and Little Bear," he added, pointing to the three beds in the room. "Did they know I was coming and put a little bed in for me?"
"Daddy asked them to," said Mother. "Now a little wash, precious, and you'll be in Dreamland in two seconds."
There was a pretty white bathroom opening into the room, and Sunny Boy enjoyed a splash, and then tumbled into bed.
In the morning he had a hard time to get dressed, because he found it so interesting to stare out of the window down at the busy streets.
"Such lots of people and trolley cars and automobiles—and everything!" he reported to his mother, who insisted that he really must finish dressing. "Do you suppose they know I'm looking at 'em?"
"I doubt it," said Mother, brushing his hair smooth. "Now don't put your nose on the screen again, Sunny. We're going downstairs in just a minute. Daddy is almost through shaving."
"You look dressed up, Mother," announced Sunny Boy critically. "And aren't we going to eat breakfast first?"
"First?" repeated Mrs. Horton, puzzled. "Oh, you mean I have my hat and veil on.Well, dear, I believe you and I are going out right after breakfast, and I won't have to come upstairs again. Ready, Daddy?"
Soon they were in the dining room.
"Where are we going?" asked Sunny Boy, at the table and trying not to feel queer when the waiter brought him his cantaloupe with the same flourish with which he served Daddy sitting opposite.
"Why, I'm going to be very busy this morning," explained Mr. Horton, "and I thought you and Mother might enjoy a little shopping trip. I'll meet you here for lunch. Anything you specially want to buy, Sunny?"
"Some post cards," replied Sunny Boy promptly. "Ruth Nelson wants one for her collection. And I could get Aunt Bessie a present."
"I'd wait till we're almost ready to go home for Aunt Bessie's present," said Mr. Horton kindly. "You'll know better whatyou want then. But get the post cards by all means this morning."
He gave Sunny Boy a bright new fifty-cent piece.
"I think we'll walk," decided Mrs. Horton, serving the golden brown omelet carefully. "Put your money in your new purse, dear. Harry, have you heard from Mr. Vernon yet?"
Left to himself while his parents talked business matters, Sunny Boy looked about the dining room. He saw several children, little girls and boys here and there, and a little girl across the room nodded and smiled at him. Sunny Boy wondered where the boy who had carried up their suitcases was.
"I didn't bring my hat," he mourned when breakfast was over. "Can I go and get it, Mother?"
"I brought it down, dear," was the answer."We're going right away. Daddy has some telephoning to do, and we'll go on."
In the hotel lobby Sunny Boy saw the suitcase boy, as he had named him, again. He didn't seem quite so severe as he had at night, and when Sunny smiled at him he actually returned it with a grin that showed a set of very white teeth.
"What a funny carriage," said Sunny Boy, calling Mother's attention to a queer looking vehicle on two wheels and drawn by a bob-tailed horse, which was the first thing he saw when they got out on the street. "Look where the coachman is."
The driver was perched up on a little seat behind and held the reins over the roof of the coach.
"That's a hansom cab," explained Mrs. Horton. "They were very popular and stylish before the automobile came."
Privately Sunny Boy thought it wasn'tvery handsome, and the poor old horse was no longer stylish if he had ever been, but there was little time to think about hansom cabs, for just then Mother remarked:
"Here's the big store where they have such a wonderful toy department."
It was a big store, much larger than any Sunny Boy had ever seen in Centronia, and it seemed filled with people to him.
"Oh, Mother!" he stopped so short that several people nearly fell over him, "what's that?"
"That" was a long shining moving thing on which people were being wafted gently upward. It reminded Sunny Boy of the fairy tale he had seen in the motion picture where the Wishing Girl who wanted to fly was suddenly granted her wish.
"Where do they go?" Sunny Boy asked so loudly that a floor-man heard and answered him.
"That's an escalator," he announced, much as one might say: "That's a strawberry."
"It's a moving stairway, precious," added his mother. "I suppose you want to ride on it. Well, first I must get Daddy some handkerchiefs, for we never packed him a one. And we'll find out on which floor the toys are, too."
Sunny Boy waited patiently while the handkerchiefs were bought, and then while Mother chose a new veil, a pretty white one with black dots.
"Here are the post-cards, Sunny," she said, turning into another aisle. "See which ones you want for Ruth and Nelson."
"What do they say, Mother?" asked Sunny Boy, wishing he could read. "May I send all the boys some?"
Mrs. Horton said he could, and she helped him select a dozen views of New York,promising that he should print his name on each one and that she would write whatever messages he wanted sent.
"You can look them over this afternoon," she suggested, "and see what places you want to see first. That will be nice, won't it?"
"Yes, Mother," agreed Sunny Boy. "And now can we ride on the alligator?"
"The escalator?" corrected Mother, laughing heartily. "Why yes, I think we are about ready to do that. The girl at the handkerchief counter told me the toys were on the sixth floor. Do you think you want to ride that far on such a queer thing?"
"He had not supposed that a moving stairs went further than one story""He had not supposed that a moving stairs went further than one story"
Sunny Boy was enraptured. He had not supposed that a moving stairway went further than one story, and the thought of riding to the sixth floor was bliss. He felt decidedly odd when he put his foot on the moving platform at first, but ahead of him and behind him people were serenely movingup, so he knew everything must be all right. When he reached the top he slid off with such an unexpected bump that he gave a startled cry and the girl who was there to see that no one was hurt laughed at him.
"You said we could go to the sixth floor!" exclaimed Sunny Boy, turning aggrievedly to Mother who had followed him.
"And so we can, dear, but not without stopping," explained Mrs. Horton. "See, we turn here and there is another escalator. At every floor we get off one and then on another."
Sunny Boy thought this was absolutely the most delightful way of going upstairs he had ever tried. He wondered why the stores at home didn't have moving stairways, and he resolved to come down the whole six flights the same way. He was astonished when the time came to go home and he found that the escalators didn't carry people down, but only up.
"I see a horse!" he shouted, when they were half way up the last stairway.
They stepped off onto a floorful of toys that reminded Sunny Boy of Christmas and birthdays and Santa Claus all rolled into one. A tank of water in which boats were sailing caught his eye.
"I wish I'd brought my boat," he remarked, standing on tiptoe to see over the edge. "See the motor-boat, Mother? It's just like Captain Franklin's."
Captain Franklin was the man who had found Sunny Boy when he was drifting out to sea in a rowboat that summer, as related in the book called "Sunny Boy at the Seashore."
"If you want to see them race," said the young man in charge of the boats, "I'll wind another up for you."
O
f course Sunny Boy wanted to see the boats race, and he hung breathlessly over the edge of the tank while the good-natured clerk wound up the motor-boats and sent them racing across several times.
"Come, dear," Mrs. Horton urged at last. "You haven't seen the trains yet, nor the rocking-horses. And Daddy will be waiting for us at one, you know."
So Sunny Boy, very reluctantly, thanked the man in charge of the boats and walked down the aisle to see the mechanical trains.
Goodness! the trains were more fascinating than the boats. There were miles and miles of track, and little colored signal lights, and stations and tunnels and freightand coal and passenger trains, with freight and coal and passengers to go in them.
"All running!" marveled Sunny Boy. "Just like Christmas!"
Mrs. Horton was trying to pull him past this absorbing counter, for they really had a great deal more to see and the time was getting short, when Sunny gave a shout.
"Mother, look! There's a runaway engine! Whee, a wreck!"
Sure enough, an engine with no cars attached was coming rapidly down grade toward a passenger train stopped at one of the stations. Sunny Boy's voice had drawn a number of the shoppers, and a small crowd gathered to see what would happen. The clerk had left the counter and gone out to an aisle table to have a floor-man sign his book, and there was no one about to prevent the wreck.
Smash! with a truly thrilling noise the engine crashed into the train and the passengersmust have, as the newspapers say, "received a severe shaking up."
"Oh, gee!" breathed Sunny Boy, and his sigh was echoed by the grown-ups.
People looked at one another and smiled.
"Nobody hurt!" announced the clerk, who had hurried back when he heard the noise of the collision. "I said that switch needed overhauling yesterday. Guess I'll shut off the current and get a repair man to come up."
As there would be no more moving trains for the present, Sunny Boy was willing to go to see the rocking-horses. He had a fine time, too, for the clerk lifted him up on the largest one, and very high from the ground Sunny felt.
But it was the tin automobile that captured his heart.
"Oh, Mother!" he said when he found it, "it's just like our car, two lamps and all."
"It is pretty nice," admitted Mrs. Horton."We'll have to see what Daddy says about one when we go home. You are getting too old for the kiddie car, aren't you? How does this one run, dear?"
Sunny Boy showed her, and explained how the brakes worked, and they had an interesting half-hour comparing the different kinds of cars and learning how much they cost. Then Mother discovered that it was time to go back to the hotel if they were to meet Daddy promptly.
"I could stay here," suggested Sunny Boy, his arm about a stuffed camel that was almost large enough for him to ride. His jaw went up and down if you poked it right, and he had two most realistic humps. "You could go and see Daddy and then come back and get me."
"But, precious, what would Daddy say? He'll want to see you. And there will be many other times for you to come over and visit the toys. Besides, think, Sunny—supposehe wanted to take you riding on the Fifth Avenue bus?"
That settled it. Sunny Boy was ready to go immediately. Anyway, he realized that he had a queer feeling he couldn't just name, but he suspected that maybe he was hungry.
They found Mr. Horton waiting for them in their room, and Mrs. Horton had so much to tell him that Sunny Boy had to wait his chance to ask a most important question.
"Daddy," he began when his father finished telling the waiter what to bring, and after they were in the dining room and seated at the table, "Daddy, do you think p'haps we could go riding on the bus?"
Mr. Horton smiled.
"Well, I'll tell you," he said, glancing at his watch. "Mother wants to lie down and rest a bit this afternoon and I have to meet some men within an hour. But if you are a good boy, I'll take you when I comeback. That will be about three o'clock. How'll that do?"
Sunny Boy thought that would be very nice, and he ate his luncheon contentedly. Afterward he and Mother went upstairs, and Daddy had to go and keep his appointment.
"Now you see how much company we are for each other," said Mother, as she changed her dress and put on a pretty blue dressing gown. "With such a busy Daddy, wouldn't we be lonesome here in New York all alone?"
Sunny Boy nodded solemnly.
"Could I paint pictures?" he asked hopefully.
"Of course. You'll find your paint box and a pad of paper in that grey box in the trunk tray. Mother's going to lie down just a second. Pull the little table over to the light, dear, and you'll have a nice, quiet time," directed Mrs. Horton.
Sunny Boy dragged the table over nearer to the window, found his water color paints and the paper and set to work to paint a picture. He talked a steady stream to Mother at first but, as he grew interested in his work, he forgot to talk.
"There now!" he said softly, when he had finished three pictures. "I think they're good. I'll show 'em to Mother."
But Mother was fast asleep. Sunny Boy tiptoed carefully around the bed, but she did not wake up.
"I don't want to paint any more," decided Sunny Boy. "What'll I do?"
He remembered the bell-boy they had seen first the night before. He would go and visit him.
Sunny Boy opened the door into the corridor carefully, so as not to disturb Mother, and closed it carefully behind him. The halls were lighted, though it was daytime, and the thick carpet was so soft that Sunnycouldn't hear the noise of his own feet.
"Where 'bouts," he speculated aloud, "do they have the stairs in this house?"
He hunted for several minutes, but no stairs could he find. Then he decided to go back to Mother, and he couldn't find the room! He had made so many turnings in the halls that he was hopelessly lost.
"Oh, dear!" sighed poor Sunny Boy. "New York is such a big place!"
A light down the corridor attracted his attention now. The elevator, of course! Why hadn't he thought of that? He would find the bell-boy downstairs. He remembered that was where he had seen him at breakfast time.
The elevator boy took him downstairs without asking any questions and let him off at the first floor.
"This looks somehow different," puzzled Sunny Boy, standing where the elevator left him.
He didn't know it, but it was another elevator, in a different part of the building from the one his father and mother took down to the dining room. Sunny Boy had never been downstairs alone, and he felt decidedly shy.
"Hello, kid, what you lost?" asked one of the bell boys, swinging past him.
"Nothing," murmured Sunny Boy.
"Are you lost, dear?" asked a lady, stopping on her way to the elevator. She was old and lame and walked with a cane. A maid, with a curly black dog under her arm, walked beside her.
Sunny shook his head. How could he be lost with a mother in the same building with him? Of course he wasn't lost!
He sat down in a leather chair to consider. He didn't know the name of the bell boy he wanted to see, and at any minute his father might come back and want to take him for a ride on the bus. Sunny Boy made up hismind that he would try to find his room and look for the bell boy another time. He waited till a friendly-looking man came hurrying by where he sat.
"Please," he stuttered nervously, "how do you find—"
"Ask the clerk at the desk!" snapped the man, who wasn't cross, but only in a hurry to make a train.
Sunny Boy looked about for the desk.
"Go 'round there," directed the elevator boy when he ventured to ask him. Then he clashed his door shut with a bang and went sailing up in his little car.
Sunny obediently wandered around a turn in the corridor. He saw only a counter, but he guessed that to be the desk. He remembered it was where his father had gone to arrange for their rooms the night before.
"Please," he began, standing on tiptoes and grasping the edge of the counter with both hands. "Please, where is our room?"
"Eh, what?" demanded the startled clerk, bending down to see the small person speaking to him. "Your room? Have you lost your key?"
"Haven't any key," explained Sunny Boy gravely. "I came out, and when I went to go back I couldn't find our door."
"All right, we'll fix you up," promised the clerk. "Jack, lift this young man up so I won't have to strain my voice."
A bell-boy lifted Sunny to the counter, and he sat there comfortably, sure that the clerk would solve his troubles for him.
"What floor are you on?" asked the clerk capably.
"I don't know," confessed Sunny Boy.
"Well, then, give us your name."
"Sunny Boy," announced Sunny cheerfully.
The clerk laughed, and the bell-boys standing about snickered.
"No Sunny Boy registered," announcedthe clerk, running his finger down the register, where hotel guests write their names. "Haven't you any other name you use when you're traveling around?"
"Oh, no," insisted Sunny Boy. "Daddy and Mother always call me that—just Sunny Boy."
"But you have to have a regular name," protested the clerk. "When you go to school—Oh, you don't go to school! Well, what is Daddy's name? Your last name must be the same as his."
Then Sunny Boy understood.
"Daddy's name is Harry Horton, and I am named for Grandpa, Arthur Bradford Horton," he announced rapidly. "An' we live in Centronia."
"Now you're talking," said the clerk approvingly. "Here you are." He read from the big register: "'Mr. and Mrs. Harry Horton and son'. You're son. And your room is 1038. Jack, you takehim up, will you? Is any one there, or have they gone out and left you alone?"
Sunny Boy explained that his mother was lying down, and Jack lifted him from the counter and went over with him to the elevator.
"He lost his room," he told the elevator boy as they shot up. "Didn't you bring him down?"
"Must have come down in one of the other cars," said the elevator boy. "I don't remember him. Here's your floor."
Jack showed Sunny Boy which was the door to his room, and, still grinning at the idea of losing one's way in a hotel, he went back.
"Why, Sunny dear, where have you been?" Mrs. Horton was sitting up in bed as Sunny Boy came in. "I woke up a minute ago and thought you were still painting. Then I spoke to you and found you weren't in the room. Where did you go?"
"I got lost," said Sunny Boy placidly.
He told his mother what had happened and she laughed.
"Here's Daddy," she announced, as some one rapped on the door. "Come in, Harry. Sunny Boy's adventures in New York have already begun."
So Mr. Horton heard the story.
"Well, well, we'll have to go out for our ride, or there's no knowing what will happen next," he said jokingly. "Want to come, Olive?"
Mrs. Horton answered that she didn't want to dress hurriedly and that she would rather wait for them and write a letter or two, perhaps.
"I'll help you write your post cards in the morning," she promised Sunny Boy. "Harriet will be expecting a card from you every day till it comes."
Sunny Boy and his father went out of the hotel and walked over toward Fifth Avenue.The trolley cars and automobiles and crowds of people seemed to Sunny Boy to be hopelessly mixed. He held tightly to Daddy's hand when they crossed the street, and he was very grateful to the tall policeman that made the traffic stop while the people surged safely across.
"Up top, you know, Daddy," he urged, trotting along, trying to keep step with his father's long stride.
"All right, up top we'll go," said Mr. Horton, smiling. "I thought we'd walk around to the Pennsylvania station and get a bus there. We may want to go home from there instead of the way we came."
T
he Pennsylvania Station is a beautiful building, but Sunny Boy hardly saw it, so eager was he to climb up the winding stairs on one of the busses.
"Are we going up, or down?" he chattered to Daddy, as they stood on the curb.
"Over first," explained Mr. Horton, "and then up. I thought we might go as far as Grant's Tomb; then you can see the river, and to-morrow, if Mother likes to, we will go down and through the Arch at Washington Square."
A bus came up and stopped presently, and Sunny Boy was afraid there would be no room left for him, so many people seemedto want to ride outside and enjoy the fine September afternoon.
"Careful, now," cautioned Mr. Horton, as he guided Sunny Boy up the narrow, steep stairs. "They will start before you get to the top."
Sure enough, the bus did start, but Sunny Boy had a firm grip on the iron railing. He thought it great fun to be going upstairs on a moving automobile, and when he reached the top, the very first seat, away up front, was vacant!
"P'haps I'd better take my hat off," he suggested, as he snuggled into the seat next the railing and Daddy sat down beside him. "The colored boy took my first one, you know, and if I lost this one Mother might not like it."
"Indeed she might not," agreed Mr. Horton. "Neither should I, because new hats cost money. You'll be more comfortable holding it, anyway."
Sunny Boy took it off then, and held it in his lap. When the conductor came for their fares, he held out a funny-looking thing and said they were to put the money in that.
"Let me," begged Sunny Boy.
Daddy gave him two ten-cent pieces, and he put them in the little slit and heard the bell ring twice.
Sunny Boy had never been so happy. He liked to look down from the high top of the bus and watch the motors and the people in the street. At nearly every cross street they had to stop while traffic went the other way, and often there would be four or five automobiles abreast. Once Sunny, looking down, saw a little boy in a beautiful car looking up at him. Sunny Boy waved, and the little boy smiled delightedly and waved back. Then the whistle blew and the car shot far ahead of the slow-running bus.
"Where are we going now?" demanded Sunny, as their bus turned.
"Wait and see," smiled Mr. Horton.
And in a minute Sunny Boy saw on one side of him a row of handsome houses, on the other a strip of cement walk and a green park, and beyond that water that sparkled in the sun.
"This is Riverside Drive," said Mr. Horton. "See, Son, those are battleships anchored out there."
Sunny Boy stood up to see better, while Daddy steadied him. He had never seen a battleship before except in pictures.
"What funny wire cages," he puzzled. "And see the little boat going out to them, Daddy."
"Those wire 'cages' as you call them, are masts," explained his father. "And the little boat is probably carrying some officers or sailors out to their ship. That is as nearas the battleships can come to the land, you see."
Sunny Boy wanted to know why, and Mr. Horton told him that the water wasn't deep enough close in shore.
"If you want to see a battleship better, perhaps go aboard one, we must visit the Navy Yard before we go home," he remarked.
Sunny Boy was sure he would like that.
The battleships were left far behind now, and a man and woman riding horseback attracted Sunny's attention. He thought it must be fun to have a horse and go riding along such a beautiful drive.
"I could roller skate and Harriet could knit like that," he suggested, pointing to a boy skating merrily up and down while a white-capped nurse sat on a bench and knitted comfortably.
"Yes, you could," said his father. "But since Harriet isn't here, you'll have to writeher about what you've seen instead. We get off at the next corner, Sunny; press the little black button there by your hand."
Sunny Boy pressed the button which rang the bell to tell the bus driver to stop, and he and Mr. Horton walked to the stairs. Sunny was very glad to have his father go first, because he discovered that coming downstairs was more ticklish than going up. He had a feeling that he was going to pitch forward on his yellow head.
However, they both reached the ground safely, and, his hand in Daddy's, Sunny Boy crossed over and stood at the flight of broad steps that led to Grant's Tomb.
"Do you know who General Grant was, dear?" asked Daddy.
Sunny Boy nodded his head.
"Grandpa told me," he said confidently. "He was in the Civil War."
"Yes, he was a general in the Civil War,and later president of the United States," assented Mr. Horton. "And this beautiful building was given by the people who loved and admired him, as a memorial."
They went up the wide steps and entered the rotunda. The light was subdued, and at first Sunny Boy could see nothing. Then he saw several people, the men with their hats in their hands, looking down what he thought was a deep well.
Daddy lifted him up so that he might look over, and there, down on the marble floor, he saw two American flags draped over two oblong stone slabs and a wreath on each.
"Mrs. Grant is buried here, too," said Mr. Horton.
The old, battle-stained flags and war mementos in the two little alcoves off the rotunda would have interested Sunny's Grandpa Horton, who had seen some of those same flags carried on the battle fields,but one couldn't expect Sunny Boy to care much about them. When they came out and stood once more on the steps in the sunshine, he saw something that interested him more.
"Daddy!" he raised his voice in excitement. "What are those funny boats'? Over there—see? There's two of 'em!"
A young man standing near heard and turned with a grin.
"Where did you hail from, kid?" he asked curiously. "Haven't you ever seen a ferryboat before?"
Sunny Boy hated to be laughed at, so he said nothing.
"We're inland folks," explained Mr. Horton, who didn't seem to mind the young man's smile. "Out where we live no rivers connect our cities. My little boy has seen his first ferryboat to-day."
"I've seenboats," said Sunny Boy with dignity. "I saw them down at the seashore.But not like those. What do they use 'em for?"
The young man laughed again.
"Excuse me," he apologized. "But I've crossed the river every morning for ten years on the ferry, and it strikes me as funny to find some one who doesn't know what a ferryboat is. They carry people and horses and automobiles, kid."
"Horses?" repeated Sunny Boy incredulously. "Come on, Daddy, let's go ride on one."
"That's the Fort Lee Ferry. Nothing much to see," advised the young man, who was good-natured if he did laugh at folks. "Better go down town and take the Twenty-third Street, if you want a nice sail."
"Thank you, we will, when we do go," replied Mr. Horton. "But, Sunny, you and I must be getting back to Mother. She will be wondering what has become of us. See if you can signal a bus."
"Sunny Boy was just the least little bit afraid when they went under the elevator tracks""Sunny Boy was just the least little bit afraid when they went under the elevator tracks"
Sunny Boy stopped a bus very nicely, and again they found a seat on the top. Sunny Boy was just the least little bit afraid when they went under the elevated tracks—they didn't have elevated trains in Centronia—and he hoped nothing would drop on him.
"What a lot of things there are to ride on in New York," he confided to Daddy. "Busses, an' trains up high, and ferryboats, and automobiles and trolley cars like at home."
"And another kind of train you don't know about yet," said Mr. Horton. "What is it? Oh, I'm going to let you find out for yourself. You seem to be developing a liking for riding about on all kinds of transportation."
"Well, I would like to go on a ferryboat," admitted Sunny Boy, "an' maybe on the elevated. An' the other kind of train that I don't know about. And that's all."
They found Mrs. Horton dressed for dinnerand awaiting them, and while she helped Sunny to put on a clean suit and brush his hair, he told her about their trip and what they had seen on Riverside Drive.
"And Daddy says if you want to, we can ride on the bus to-morrow," he finished. "We can go and see an arch."
Mr. Horton, who had been reading some letters that had come for him while he and Sunny were out, looked up from the little book in which he wrote the things he wanted to remember.
"I'm sorry, but you and Mother will have to amuse each other to-morrow," he announced. "I shall be busy all day. But I think you can manage to have a pleasant time, and perhaps the next day I can go about with you."
"Of course we'll have a happy day," promised Mrs. Horton. "Don't worry about us, Daddy Horton. We know youare on a business trip. I think Sunny Boy and I will plan to spend the day in Central Park."
"Yes, let's," agreed Sunny Boy enthusiastically.
He had not the smallest idea what Central Park was like, but he was very sure that he would like it. He liked everything that he had seen in New York so far.
As the Hortons came out of the dining room, and Mr. Horton stopped to buy a paper, Sunny Boy saw the bell-boy he had tried to visit that afternoon.
"Hello," he remarked conversationally. "I was looking for you this afternoon."
"Were you the kid that got lost?" chuckled the bell-boy. "Jack said to me: 'Frank, there was a boy couldn't find his own room this afternoon, can you believe it?' And what have you been doing with yourself all day?"
Sunny Boy recounted his adventures, and announced that the next day he and Mother were going to Central Park.
"Be sure you go in the Monkey House," counseled Frank. "I tell you those monkeys are the cutest things you ever saw. Almost human, I'll say. Like monkeys?"
"Yes in pictures," said Sunny Boy. "And those the organ grinders have. Here comes Daddy."
Before he went to sleep that night Sunny Boy thought of something he wanted to ask Frank.
"I will the next time I see him," he muttered drowsily.
He was wondering why he never put his cap on straight, but always wore it a little over one ear.
T
he next morning Sunny Boy and Mother started early for Central Park. Much to Sunny's delight they took a bus, and though they did not have very far to go, Mother climbed up to the top with him. When they got off at the Park gate they found carriages waiting for those who wanted to drive around the park.
"I think we should like that, don't you?" asked Mrs. Horton. "I'm sure we can not hope to walk all over this great place in one day. Shall we drive, dear?"
"Let's," nodded Sunny Boy. "I like that fat, black horse, Mother."
So they got into the carriage pulled by the fat, black horse and driven by a young manso tall that he couldn't sit up straight in the seat or his head would have hit the roof of the carriage.
"Is Central Park bigger than Brookside?" Sunny Boy asked, as they drove over a well-kept road past the greenest of green lawns and bright flower beds. Brookside was the name of Grandpa Horton's farm.
"How big is Brookside?" asked the driver, slapping the reins to make his horse go faster.
"Oh, ever so big," Sunny Boy assured him. "Seventy-nine acres, Daddy said."
"Well, you could put Brookside right down in Central Park and never see it," announced the driver complacently. "This park has eight hundred and seventy-nine acres."
"Gee!" murmured Sunny Boy.
He was silent for a few moments, trying to imagine how large the park must be.
"What a funny way to hay," he remarked,as they came up to a horse tramping steadily over the grass pulling a machine that looked something like a mower. "Grandpa didn't do it that way."
"They're cutting the grass," explained the driver of the carriage. "Guess you haven't seen one of those machines. If they had only a lawn mower like the one your father uses on your lawn at home, you know, the grass would never get cut in one summer."
"Can't we get out?" Mrs. Horton asked next. "I'd like to go up and see the reservoirs."
"Sure you can," was the quick response. "I'll wait right here for you. Suppose you'll want to go in the snake house, too, and see the menagerie and the monkeys."
"Frank said to see the monkeys, didn't he, Mother?" said Sunny Boy. "But he didn't say anything about snakes."
They were out of the carriage now and walking toward the reservoirs.
"No, and I don't believe we want to see the snakes," returned Mrs. Horton. "I don't like them very much, and if you don't care I'd much rather see the monkeys. They can do so many funny tricks."
Sunny Boy didn't care about snakes, and he forgot them right away when he saw the gallons of water, spread out like a smooth lake.
"Is it all to drink?" he wanted to know. "Can't they go swimming in it, Mother? Where does it come from?"
"I'm afraid I don't know where the water comes from," admitted Mrs. Horton, "but we know it must be piped from miles and miles away. Think of all the thirsty people in New York who are glad to get a cool, clean drink this warm day."
"Wouldn't they like to swim in it?" insisted Sunny Boy.
"My, no, precious! No one must swim in water that is to be drunk, you must knowthat. Now we'll go back to our carriage, or the driver will be tired of waiting."
When they came to the menagerie and the monkey house, Mrs. Horton decided not to keep the carriage standing. She did not know how long they would be, and she knew that they could easily get back to the street and car lines again. She paid the driver and he drove off, whistling merrily.
"Let's see the bears, first," suggested Sunny Boy.
And they did. Sunny Boy pressed so close to the cages of the animals that his mother pulled him back repeatedly. They saw lions and tigers and bears and elephants and more queer and curious animals than Sunny Boy dreamed existed.
"I like the bears best," he told Mother, as they came away. "The polar bear looked just like our fur rug at home. And he had cakes of ice to sleep on."
"That is because he is used to coldweather," explained Mrs. Horton. "The polar bear isn't well or happy unless his den is nice and cold."
In the monkey house Sunny Boy was fascinated by one little black-faced monkey that kept running up to the top of his cage, swinging across, and then hanging by his tail at the other end before he dropped with a bang that would shake any one else's teeth loose.
"Doesn't he get a headache?" asked Sunny Boy aloud.
A boy who had been standing with his nose pressed against the cage bars, a rather shabby-looking boy with big holes in his tan stockings, answered without turning around.
"He's been doing that for the last hour," said the boy. "I think some one was mean to him early this morning and he is just mad."
Sunny moved closer to the other boy.
"YouareJoe Brown, aren't you?" he asked, puzzled.
The boy turned sharply, and they saw that it was Joe Brown. A shabbier Joe Brown than he had been on the train, and with a pinched hungry look on his face that went to Mrs. Horton's heart.
"Did you find your aunt, Joe?" she asked kindly. "And do you like New York?"
Joe snatched off his cap awkwardly when Mrs. Horton spoke to him, and he tried to stuff it into his pocket now as he shuffled his feet and mumbled that he liked New York pretty well. Plainly he was not comfortable.
"Aunt Annabell moved away," he explained. "I went to the house, but Italians were living in it and they didn't know where she'd moved to. But I guess I can find her. Folks don't drop out of sight in New York."
"But where are you staying?" said Mrs. Horton. "What do you do? Can't I orMr. Horton help you, Joe? A boy alone in a great city like this might need a friend, you know."
Joe Brown scuffled his feet uneasily.
"I'm all right," he insisted.
"Well, at least come and have some lunch with Sunny and me," invited Mrs. Horton. "Perhaps you can tell us some place to go? And then come up to the hotel with us this afternoon and we'll see if Mr. Horton can't find out something about your aunt."
Joe knew of a place where lunch could be had, and he and Mrs. Horton and Sunny Boy were soon seated at a white-topped little table eating sandwiches and milk. Joe ate as though he were half-starved, and Mrs. Horton pretended to be hungrier than she was so that he would not be afraid to eat all the sandwiches he wanted.
"Has Sunny seen the carrousel?" Joe demanded, when the ice-cream had been brought and Sunny was deep in the blissfulemployment of scooping spoonfuls out of the white mound before him.
"No, I haven't," answered Sunny quickly.
"Well you'll like it—it's like a big playground," explained Joe. "Swings, merry-go-rounds, all that kind of stuff, you know. And it's pretty around there, too. I'll take you if you want to see it."
After they had finished lunch he did take them, and he was very good and patient, too, about swinging Sunny Boy and giving him rides on all the contrivances that make small people happy.
"Let the old cat die," called Sunny Boy, as he was being swung for the third time.
Slower and slower went the swing, and finally it stopped. Sunny Boy sat still, expecting Joe to come and lift him out, but no Joe came. Mrs. Horton was quietly reading on one of the benches. Sunny Boy turned his head. Where was Joe?
"Looking for the boy that was swingingyou?" demanded a girl in the next swing. "He ran off. I saw him going across the park after he gave you that one good push. Was he your brother? Did he get mad at you?"
Sunny Boy shook his head. He got out of the swing with some difficulty and trotted over to his mother.
"Joe Brown's gone," he announced mournfully. "Maybe he was mad 'cause I didn't swing him."
Mrs. Horton closed her magazine.
"Joe gone?" she echoed. "Oh, I'm so sorry! No, precious, I don't think he was hurt because you didn't swing him. I'm afraid he didn't want to go up to the hotel with us and see Daddy. I hate to think of a boy his age all alone in New York."
However, Joe had gone, and they could not hope to find him. Sunny Boy and Mother walked a bit about the pretty rocky paths and peeped into one or two of thelittle rustic cabins they found perched in unexpected places, and then Mother glanced at her watch and said it was time to go home.
"Are you tired, dear?" she asked as they started to walk to the nearest entrance.
"I guess my feet are," confided Sunny Boy. "They trip."
They saw one other thing that interested them very much before they left the park.
"What's that mon'ment?" Sunny Boy asked suddenly, pointing to a tall shaft that ended in a point at the top.
"That's the Egyptian obelisk," returned Mrs. Horton. "Come and look at it, dear. It is called 'Cleopatra's Needle,' and was brought all the way from Egypt. It is very, very old."
"How old?" demanded Sunny Boy practically. "It looks all right, Mother."
"Well, I've read that it was erected in Cairo, Egypt, sixteen hundred years before the birth of Christ," said Mrs. Horton."So you see, dear, we are looking at a stone that is more than three thousand years old."
They took a surface car down to the hotel, and Sunny Boy, who did not like to say he was tired, was glad to curl up in a chair and look at a book till Daddy and Mother were ready to go to dinner.
Everyone went to bed early that night, for Mr. Horton had had a busy day, too, and was tired. He was not able to go about with them the next day, but on the following Monday he took them over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Sunny Boy actually went on board a battleship. The afternoon of the same day they crossed the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge and, getting out of the trolley car half way over, saw New York City from the middle of the river.
"See the ferryboats!" cried Sunny Boy, peering down into the water. "And there are, too, horses on 'em, just like the man said. Daddy, when can we go on a ferryboat?"
"That isn't so much to do," teased Mr. Horton. "I suppose we might go to-morrow. Olive, had you anything else planned?"
Mrs. Horton smiled and said that she had nothing in view more important than the ferryboat trip, so Sunny Boy went to bed that night to dream of riding a horse about the roof of a ferryboat while the Navy Yard band played and Joe Brown kept time like the band master.