HELPING HERE AND THERE
Daddy and Sunny Boy found Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson very glad to
see them. Aunt Bessie was packing, Miss Martinson washing some cut
glass to be put away, and Harriet in the kitchen, as usual, was making
something good to eat.
“Don’t you want to stay with me, lambie?” Aunt Bessie asked Sunny. “You
may play the piano-player all day, if you like. And sleep to-night
on the funny couch that opens when you press a button, and Daddy and
Mother and the car will come and get us in the morning. Will you?”
Sunny Boy looked at Daddy.
“I guess we’d better hurry back,” he said politely. He caught hold of
his father’s hand and pulled him toward the door. “We have to do a lot
of things while we’re waiting for to-morrow,” he explained.
Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson laughed.
“Tell Mother, then, Busy Bee,” said Aunt Bessie blowing him a kiss,
“not to make egg sandwiches, because Harriet has two dozen of them. And
we’ll see you bright and early in the morning.”
Next, Ruth and Nelson Baker were left at their father’s office down
town in a big gray building, and then Daddy and Sunny Boy drove home
and went in to see what they could do for Mother.
“Why do you wrap ’em in a cloth, Mother?” asked Sunny, leaning against
the kitchen table and watching Mrs. Horton put a dozen sandwiches in a
damp cloth.
“So they’ll keep fresh, dear,” she answered. “I’ll put them in the ice
box this way and to-morrow morning they’ll be just as nice as they are
now. Want to taste this?”
Sunny tasted the spoon she held out to him.
“It isn’t egg, is it?” he asked anxiously. “Aunt Bessie says not to
make egg ones, ’cause Harriet did.”
Mrs. Horton laughed.
“It isn’t egg,” she assured him. “That was minced ham you tasted.
I hope all sandwiches don’t taste alike to you, Sunny. Now let me
see—it’s only half past ten. I think I’ll go up and put the bedrooms in
order. Sunny Boy, if you’ll stay here and let the expressman in when
he comes for the trunks, I’d like it very much. I want Daddy to tie up
some packages for me.”
Sunny Boy, left alone in the kitchen, inspected the three boxes open
on the table. Sandwiches filled one, another was evidently for fruit,
since oranges were already in it, and the third was for cake. Harriet’s
cake, wrapped in waxed paper, filled half of it.
“Mother said I could do that. I s’pose I wasn’t here,” thought Sunny
Boy. “I want to help fix the lunch.”
He sat down to think on the chair that obligingly turned into a
step-ladder if you knew how to twist it. Presently he carried the chair
over to the kitchen closet and stood up on it to look over the shelves.
Very likely his mother, with so much to do, might forget the most
necessary thing. He poked around among the boxes, opened several and
smelled the contents. Finally one seemed to please him very much, and
he scrambled down and went back to the lunch boxes.
“There!” He tucked his find in neatly under the sandwiches. “P’rhaps
they’ll be s’prised. They can—”
“Sunny! Sunny Boy, please bring me the ball of cord in the wall
pocket,” called Mother.
No sooner had he run upstairs with the cord than the doorbell rang
and down he came to let the expressman in. So it was no wonder that he
forgot what he had tucked into the box and never thought of it again.
After the trunks had been carried out, Mrs. Horton said it was time
to get lunch, and both Daddy and Sunny helped her and with the dishes
afterward. Then Daddy had to go down town, and though Sunny begged to
be allowed to go with him in the car, it was decided that he had better
stay with Mother.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and see your toys?” Mrs. Horton suggested.
“I don’t believe you’ve paid them any attention since you came home.
Daddy opened all the windows on the third floor this morning, so it
must be nice and cool.”
“Will you come up too?” asked Sunny Boy. “It’s so—so still, Mother.”
The house was still, as houses often seem when they have not been lived
in for weeks.
[Illustration: Upstairs Sunny Boy found his toys exactly as he had left
them
_Page 55_
]
“I’ll come up and start the clock on the playroom shelf,” said Mrs.
Horton briskly. “And you might get out your kiddie car. I saw Nelson
with his this morning.”
Upstairs Sunny Boy found his toys exactly as he had left them. The
Teddy Bear sat on the kiddie car, his forepaws resting patiently on the
steering bar. The drum was hanging on its nail, and the train of cars
was still jumbled together from the last glorious wreck.
“See, here’s where you mended the drum,” said Sunny Boy, showing Mother
the neatly pasted tear. “I’d like to see if it is all right. Would you
mind if I drummed ve-ry softly, Mother?”
Mrs. Horton was willing.
“Rub-a-dub, dub!” went the drum-sticks merrily. “Rub-a-dub, dub!” the
drummer stopped suddenly.
“Nelson has a new game, Mother,” announced Sunny Boy. “He stands up
paper soldiers—no, I guess they’re pasteboard soldiers——and has a
little gun that shoots marbles at them. The drum made me think of the
soldiers.”
“Did you play the game with Nelson, Sunny?”
“No’m, not yet. He said I might, though. But I’d like a soldier game of
my own. How can I shoot at my soldiers, Mother?”
“That’s easy,” said Daddy from the doorway. He had come in and no one
had heard him. “Stand your soldiers up in a row, Sunny Boy, and roll
marbles at them. Olive, will you come down and help me find that old
fishing tackle?”
Left alone, Sunny Boy got all his paper soldiers out and stood them up
in two long rows.
“Nelson gives the enemy the first shot,” he said to himself. “He thinks
that’s polite. So I’ll let the enemy roll first.”
A white marble rolled over the rug and knocked a corporal and two
privates flat. Quick as a flash the other side fired, and a black
marble bowled over three of the enemy.
Between firing, the drum, tied round the Teddy Bear’s neck for the sake
of convenience, was heard in a lively tattoo.
“That’s the signals,” announced Sunny Boy to the hobby horse that, as
Daddy often said, “looked as though he smelled gunpowder.” “Three beats
means to advance. That’s the way they did when Grandpa went to war.”
“Bang!” another enemy went down, carried away by a green glass marble.
“I wish Nelson was here,” said Sunny Boy earnestly. “Two sides could
fire at once then.”
Still, he managed to have a pretty good time without Nelson, and when
Daddy called him down to supper he put the soldiers back in their box
reluctantly.
“Which side won?” smiled Mrs. Horton at the table.
“Well, you see,” explained Sunny Boy carefully, “neither really won,
Mother.”
“I thought one side always won,” said Mother humbly.
“My, no!” Sunny assured her. “When Daddy called me there were ever so
many soldiers alive yet. The am—am—”
“Ammunition?”
“Yes’m, the amm’nition gave out.”
“But we used to use our marbles over and over,” said Mr. Horton. “A bag
of marbles ought to furnish enough shots for an army twice the size of
yours.”
Sunny Boy attempted to make it all clear.
“I did shoot ’em over and over,” he said patiently. “Only after a while
they were all under the bookcase.”
Mr. Horton laughed.
“I’ll get them out for you with a long pole to-morrow,” he promised.
After supper they sat out on the front steps for an hour or so and
talked to the Bakers, who were also sitting out on their steps. And
then it was bedtime for those who were going to take a trip the next
day.
“Are you coming every night, Daddy?” Sunny Boy asked, as they climbed
the stairs on their way to bed.
“Can’t make it every night,” was the answer. “But I’ll be down every
Saturday afternoon and spend Sunday with you. And if I can take a
Friday off now and then, I will.”
Sunny Boy, after he was in bed, was perfectly sure that he couldn’t go
to sleep.
“I keep thinking about the ocean,” he explained to Daddy, who was
hunting for something in the closet in his room. “What you looking for,
Daddy? Can we go fishing in the ocean?”
“We can’t if you don’t go to sleep, we can’t even start for the ocean,”
said Mr. Horton. “I’m looking for my old golf cap. You go to sleep and
I’ll find it.”
“I know where it is.” Sunny got out of bed and pattered across the
floor to his toy box. “I thought maybe you didn’t want it any more, and
I made believe it was a horse blanket for my gray horse.”
Sure enough, the gray horse had the golf cap neatly pinned about him.
“Well, he won’t take cold without it in summer,” said Mr. Horton
cheerfully. “And I thought I’d like to wear the cap while driving the
car to-morrow. Sunny, aren’t you going to sleep at all to-night?”
“I don’t feel sleepy,” complained Sunny, climbing into bed and settling
the covers again. “Oh, Daddy, I forgot the woolly dog.”
Mr. Horton brought him the woolly dog, kissed him good-night, and put
out the light.
“Daddy?”
The door into Daddy and Mother’s room opened a crack.
“Go to sleep,” said Mother severely.
“But, Mother, I just have to ask Daddy one question. Then I will go to
sleep—honest.”
So Daddy came in again and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Daddy—” Sunny sat up in bed so that he could see him better, for the
light from the street lamp shone across the room. “Daddy, does a crab
bite?”
“It does,” said Mr. Horton. “I’ll take you crabbing and you’ll see how
it does it. And now—”
“Now I’m going to sleep,” said Sunny hastily.
He just closed his eyes for a second and turned over in a more
comfortable position. And then—
“All aboard for Nestle Cove!” There stood Daddy in the middle of his
room, calling to him. The sun was shining, and, yes, it was morning!
“What do you know about that!” said the bewildered Sunny Boy. “I
wasn’t going to sleep that minute.”
“But you did. And in an hour we’re to start,” Mr. Horton told him.
“Mother has already gone downstairs. We’ll have to hustle, for we have
to go get Aunt Bessie and Miss Betty and Harriet, you know. Let’s see
who can get dressed first!”