SUNNY BOY’S SURPRISE
Daddy wasn’t dressed first because he stopped to help Sunny Boy, who
had lost one shoe and simply couldn’t find it! Finally Sunny discovered
it under the bed, and he had it on and laced and the other shoe done,
too, before Daddy was ready. Then they raced downstairs, and both tried
to kiss Mother at once.
“You crazy boys!” she said, laughing. “I suppose you’ll be too excited
to eat breakfast. Hurry! Sunny Boy! Why, how you do act! Come now, I’m
going to put the eggs on to boil. Sit down and eat your fruit, and stop
bothering me.”
Sunny could have skipped breakfast without a murmur. Indeed, he
suggested that they shouldn’t waste time doing the same old thing they
did every day; he wasn’t hungry, so why not start out right away?
“Well, if you don’t want to eat, I do,” said Daddy. “You wouldn’t want
me to faint away from hunger while I was driving the car, would you? I
thought not. And if you have your eye on those lunch boxes Mother has
for us, you’d better eat breakfast just the same. I might eat _all_ the
lunch up and then you’d be sorry you missed this buttered toast.”
So Sunny Boy did his best to eat, and he really managed pretty well.
After breakfast there was a great scurrying about. Mother washed the
dishes, Daddy dried them, and Sunny put them away. All the food that
was left in the house was put into a little basket and left with Mrs.
Baker for the washerwoman who came to wash for her every Wednesday.
She was a tall colored woman, and Sunny knew her. They often talked
over the fence.
“I have seven childern,” she used to say. “And I keeps thirteen hens
and one rooster. I kin use every scrap of food, yes’m. Don’t you ever
throw away nothing that can be et.”
So Mrs. Horton was always careful to set aside all the left-overs she
couldn’t use for Molly.
“Now while Daddy is fastening the windows and locking up, we’ll be
putting on our new linen dusters,” said Mrs. Horton. “Let me see, have
we forgotten anything? The trunks went yesterday, there are the two
suitcases—No, Son, don’t lift them, Daddy will carry them down—the
lunch boxes are on the hall table. Yes, Harry?”
Mr. Horton on the third floor was calling her.
“Olive, there’s a fly in this room—he’ll starve to death this summer.
Send Sunny Boy up with the fly-batter, quick.”
Mrs. Horton laughed.
“Daddy’s remembering something I did ever so long ago,” she told Sunny
Boy. “What was it? Oh, I haven’t time to tell you now. I will, after
we’ve started. Run along up with the fly-batter, precious, and tell
Daddy please to hurry.”
Mr. Horton killed the fly and carried down the suitcases and took them
and the lunch boxes out to the car at the curb. The boy who worked for
Mr. Taggart had brought the automobile around soon after breakfast.
Mother and Daddy had on long brown linen coats, and Sunny Boy had one,
too, made exactly like Daddy’s. He was very proud of that new coat.
Then it was time to lock the front door and really start.
“It does take so long to go,” sighed Sunny Boy, as he stood waiting
with Mother on the front steps while Daddy made sure that the door was
tightly fastened.
“But we want our house to be all here when we come back,” Mother
reminded him. “Never mind, we’re going this minute. There are Nelson
and Ruth to say good-by to you, dear.”
Nelson and Ruth came down to the car and watched till every one was
safely in.
“Good-by!” they called, as Mr. Horton started. “Good-by, Sunny! Have a
good time! Good-by!”
Sunny Boy waved to them as long as he could see them, and even after
all he could make out was the blur of pink that he knew was Ruth’s
dress. Then he was ready to talk.
“Where are we going first?” he demanded.
“Why, to get Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson and Harriet, of course,”
answered Mrs. Horton.
Mr. Horton turned.
“Look here, Sunny Boy,” he said. “I figure out that I’m going to feel
lonesome with four ladies in the car—you’ll have to come up here with
me, and then we’ll be two to four at least. Here we are. I see Joseph
out on the sidewalk with the bags. I’ll go up and help with whatever
else they have.”
The automobile stopped before the apartment house, and Joseph, the
colored elevator boy, grinned delightedly at Sunny Boy.
“You’s going, ain’t you?” he chuckled. “You-all shorely have a fine
day. Yes, Sir, Miss Andrew and Miss Ma’tinson is both ready. Guess
they’s looking out the window. Miss Andrew said to come right up when
you-all came.”
Mr. Horton went in to tell Aunt Bessie they were waiting for her, and
Sunny stayed in the car with Mother.
In a very few minutes Aunt Bessie came out, tying a long green veil
over her pretty gray hat.
“Hello, lambie, kiss your old auntie,” she said to Sunny Boy. Aunt
Bessie wasn’t old at all, though sometimes she pretended to be. “Olive,
I left the canary bird with Mrs. Richards. They’re going to be in town
all summer, and a birdcage and a live bird are not the easiest things
to carry in a car. Was that all right?”
Aunt Bessie, you see, had been keeping the canary for Mother and Sunny
Boy while they were visiting Grandpa Horton.
“I’m glad you didn’t try to bring him,” said Mrs. Horton frankly. “He
would likely be frightened, and, anyway, I don’t believe in trying to
move pets. Sunny Boy left his collie puppy up on the farm. Here come
Betty and Harriet.”
While Mr. Horton helped them into the car, Sunny got out and scrambled
into the front seat.
“Why, Sunny Boy! I thought of course you’d stay with us,” cried Miss
Martinson.
“Daddy was lonesome with four ladies and only himself up here,”
explained Sunny seriously. “Now we’re two to four.”
Every one laughed, and then Daddy took his place and started the engine.
“Now we’re off,” sighed Aunt Bessie. “It did seem to me that if I had
to do one thing more I should scream.”
“You’re like Sunny,” answered Mrs. Horton. “When he is going anywhere
he is very impatient of preliminaries.”
“What’s that?” he asked Daddy.
“Preliminaries?” said Daddy. “Oh, things that come first—like eating
breakfast and locking the doors and packing boxes and so on.”
“An’ killing flies,” added Sunny Boy. He turned so that he could talk
to his mother more easily.
“You said you’d tell me,” he urged her. “Why did you laugh when Daddy
said the fly would starve?”
Mrs. Horton smiled.
“Oh, because he likes to tell about the first summer we were married,
and I wasn’t a very experienced housekeeper,” she explained. “We were
closing the apartment the day before we were to go to the country for
a month, and I found a little live mouse in a trap I had set. I opened
the trap and let him go and when your father asked me why I did that, I
answered that I couldn’t bear to think of the poor creature starving to
death.”
Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson laughed, but Sunny was puzzled.
“It would be mean to let him starve,” he declared. “Wouldn’t it, Daddy?”
“Well, yes,” admitted Mr. Horton. “But you see, Sunny Boy, we catch
mice to prevent them from eating up our good clean food. And Mother let
the mouse go, and he probably lived on our pantry shelves that summer.
What we should have done was to drown him.”
“Oh,” said Sunny Boy.
While he thought this over the car purred through the city streets into
the suburbs and finally out into the open country. The road was dry and
white, but not too dusty, for a recent rain had laid the dust.
“I’m getting hungry,” announced Mrs. Horton. “We had such an early
breakfast that an eleven o’clock lunch wouldn’t be out of the way at
all. Let’s keep on the look-out for a cool shady spot, and when we find
it, stop and have a picnic.”
They found the cool, shady spot sooner than they expected. A turn in
the road brought them to a white farmhouse with an apple orchard that
grew almost up to the front door.
“Ask if we can eat our lunch under the trees, Harry,” said Mrs. Horton.
“And if we can get some milk for Sunny, that will be fine.”
Mr. Horton went up to the door and knocked. A young woman opened it.
The folk in the car couldn’t hear what he said, but he came back in a
few moments, smiling.
“She says we may take down the bars and drive right in,” he reported.
“And she’ll bring us out a pitcher of cold milk and will be glad to
make a cup of hot tea if any one wants it.”
No one wanted hot tea, and when Lucy, that was her name she told
them, brought out the ice-cold milk, they assured her it was far more
delicious than any tea could be. Lucy couldn’t stay, for the dinner was
on the stove and she expected the farmer men home to dinner at twelve.
Mr. Horton paid her for the milk, and she said that the money would
go into her school fund. She was saving to have enough to go away to
school in the fall.
“I’m hungry, too,” declared Sunny Boy, watching Mother place the
goodies on a white cloth as Harriet opened the boxes and handed them
to her.
“I’m glad you have an appetite,” said Mother. “Things will taste good
to you then. Come, girls and boys, we’re ready for you.”
Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson passed their box of sandwiches and every
one took one. Those were the egg ones Sunny Boy had remembered to tell
his mother about. Then Mrs. Horton passed her box, and after all were
served and Harriet was putting down the box, meaning to take up the
fruit box, she saw something in it.
“What’s this?” she asked, putting in her hand and drawing out a round,
rather flat box. “Is it something you put in for the sandwiches, Mrs.
Horton? Pepper and salt, maybe? It was down under the paper, and I most
missed it.”
“That’s my s’prise!” cried Sunny Boy, who had forgotten about the box
he had taken from the closet shelf. “I put it in, Mother. I like to
pack boxes.”
“I knew it was nothing I had packed,” said Mrs. Horton wonderingly.
But Mr. Horton, who had been leaning over her shoulder to see the box,
now rolled over on his back in the grass, shouting with laughter.
“It’s the stove polish!” he half-choked. “What won’t that child do
next!”