OLIVER'S LESSON
"You going to New York?" Harold Wallace asked curiously. "When? My
cousin lives there. He's coming to see me next summer."
Sunny Boy bounced around excitedly on the seat. That is, he bounced as
much as he could in the rather crowded space.
"Yes, we're going to New York," he announced. "To-morrow--no, the next
day--when is it, Daddy?"
"Soon," said Mr. Horton.
"Send me a post-card for my album," begged Ruth.
"Me, too," chimed in Nelson.
All the boys, it seemed, wanted post-cards from New York.
"Well, maybe, if Mother will write 'em," agreed Sunny Boy dubiously.
"I can print A's and B's, but not a real letter writing. Are you going
to get out, Daddy?"
The car had circled a large green that made attractive the center of
the city, and Mr. Horton had parked before a busy grocery store.
"I'm going in here to do an errand for Mother," he said. "Now,
youngsters, I won't be long, and every one of you stay in the car till
I come back. I don't want to have to hunt up missing boys when it's
time to go home."
Ruth Baker turned so she faced the back of the car.
"You never stay at home, Sunny Horton!" she declared accusingly. "I
think it's mean. You were going to play Indian braves and sleep out in
the tent, and pretty soon it will be so cold Mother won't let us."
"You have been away a lot, haven't you?" suggested David.
Sunny Boy considered.
"I had to go to see my Grandpa Horton," he urged. "And then I had to
go to see my Aunt Bessie. And Daddy would be lonesome in New York
without Mother and me. He said so."
You see, Sunny Boy had had a busy summer. First he and his mother had
gone into the country to visit his grandfather who lived on a farm.
Sunny Boy was named for this grandfather, "Arthur Bradford Horton,"
though Daddy and Mother called him Sunny Boy, and many people thought
he had no other name. Grandfather Horton's farm was known as
"Brookside," and Sunny Boy learned to love the place dearly in the
month he spent there. You may have read what he did there and the
friends he made in the first book about him, called "Sunny Boy in the
Country."
After Sunny Boy and his mother came home from "Brookside," they went
almost immediately to visit Mrs. Horton's sister, Sunny's Aunt
Bessie, in her bungalow at Nestle Cove. Mr. Horton took them down to
the seashore in the automobile, and Sunny Boy had a delightful time
playing in the sand and learning to swim. He found a little lost dog,
too, as you may remember if you have read the book about him called
"Sunny Boy at the Seashore."
Now he was at home again in Centronia, the city where he and his daddy
and mother lived, and they were getting ready to make a trip to the
great city of New York.
"Where 'bouts does your cousin live?" Sunny Boy asked Harold Wallace,
hoping his friends understood that all this traveling he was
experiencing was truly necessary. "P'haps Mother and I'll see him."
"I don't know exactly where he lives," answered Harold cautiously.
"But I know it is in a brick row. Aunt Lucy wrote my mother when they
moved."
"I'll tell Daddy," promised Sunny Boy confidently. "He'll know what
street. Don't get out, Oliver."
Oliver Dunlap, red-haired and blue-eyed, grinned provokingly.
"Wait till you see me," he retorted. "Can't I put just one foot out of
the car?"
Of course, having one foot out, Oliver in another moment had both feet
on the running board and from there jumped to the sidewalk.
"Daddy said to stay in the car," insisted Sunny Boy.
"He only meant not to go away," said Oliver. "Oh, look at the crowd
coming!"
The children stood up in the car and stared in the direction Oliver
was pointing. On the next block they could see a man running swiftly,
followed by a crowd of people, and back of them two policemen.
"Come back, Oliver!" screamed Ruth, jumping up and down with
excitement. "Make him come back, Sunny."
But before Oliver could run over to the car, if he had wanted to, the
man, the crowd close upon his heels, had reached the spot where Oliver
stood. He caught hold of him, whirled him about, and dropped something
into his hands, all without stopping his headlong flight. The crowd
immediately closed in around Oliver just as Mr. Horton, attracted by
the noise and the shouting, came out of the store. One of the
policemen continued to run after the man.
"Oh, Daddy, get Oliver," Sunny Boy almost sobbed, as his father came
over to the car.
"Why, where is he?" asked Mr. Horton, surprised. "Aren't you all
here?"
"Oliver isn't. He's in there." Sunny Boy pointed to the crowd which
was growing larger every minute as more and more people pressed in,
eager to know what the excitement was about. "Oh, gee!"
Sunny Boy's eyes grew wide with wonder and terror. The other boys in
the car looked frightened. Ruth began to cry.
A policeman had come out from the center of the crowd, and he had
Oliver by the arm. Oliver was crying, and looked very small and
miserable.
"Why, Oliver Dunlap!" Mr. Horton walked up to him, and put his arm
protectingly around the frightened child. "What is the matter,
Officer?"
"Do you know him?" asked the policeman politely. "Maybe that's
different then. That pickpocket stole a lady's purse, and here's the
empty bag he left in the kid's hands. We thought they were
together--using the boy to cover up his tracks, you see."
"I left him in my car ten minutes ago with these other children," said
Mr. Horton calmly. "He's Henry Dunlap's son. Your chief knows his
father."
"If you say it's all right, it is," pronounced the policeman. "Don't
cry, kid, you're all right now. Sorry to make you any trouble, sir."
He turned to push back the crowd, which was surging about the
automobile now, and Mr. Horton lifted in Oliver. Then slowly, so as
not to injure any one, he steered the car out of the mass of people
and turned it around.
"Guess you'll stay in the car the next time, Oliver," jeered Harold
Wallace.
"That'll do, Harold," said Mr. Horton sharply. "I'm going to take you
all around the park twice now and then we'll scoot home for lunch. It
is twelve o'clock. I don't want to take home such solemn faces. See if
you can't smile a bit."
By the time they had circled the park twice every one felt decidedly
more cheerful. Even Oliver had managed a smile, though it would be
some time before he could see a policeman and not want to run.
Sunny Boy had so much to tell Mother at lunch that he almost forgot to
inform her of the loss of his hat. Seeing her trying on a new hat
before the hall mirror after lunch reminded him.
"And how can I go to New York without a hat?" he finished sadly, when
he had described to her how the colored boy had run off with his
beautiful new, round, blue hat.
"You can't, of course," said Mother. "I'll have to take you down town
again to-morrow and buy you another. Harriet, here's Sunny Boy losing
his new hat before he's had it three days."
"Dear, dear! Do tell!" said Harriet, who was passing through the hall
on her way upstairs. She sat down to listen.
"I might take Sunny down through the River Section," she suggested to
Mrs. Horton. "We could go this afternoon. All the colored folks live
there, you know, and Sunny might see the boy. I'd make him give the
hat back, drat him!"
Mrs. Horton had little faith in their finding boy or hat, but she was
willing they should go, and so Harriet and Sunny Boy set out half an
hour later, bound for the River Section, which was over on the other
side of the city from where the Hortons lived.
They decided to walk there and then ride home if they were tired, and
Sunny Boy found much to interest him along the way. They passed a
horse that had lost his nosebag before he had eaten all his oats and
who was regarding it hungrily as it lay on the ground at his feet.
"Fix it, Harriet," implored Sunny. "He hasn't had all his dinner."
So Harriet stopped and picked up the nosebag and fixed it nicely on
the horse's nose. He went right to eating the moment she had it in
place, but Sunny Boy was sure his wise brown eyes thanked them
gratefully.
"Look, Harriet!" they were crossing another street when Sunny Boy's
quick eyes spied something else that interested him. "See, little
desks."
A man was carrying desks into a brown stone house, and a large number
of similar desks were propped up on the walk.
"'Miss May Ford's School for Boys and Girls.'" Harriet read the
shining brass plate on the side of the house as they walked slowly
past. "Why, Sunny, that must be the Miss May your mother talks about.
I guess that's where you'll be going to school this winter."
Sunny Boy stared at the building with interest. He was very eager to
learn what school was like, and he hoped that as soon as they came
back from New York he would go to school every day as Nelson Baker
did.
Two or three blocks further on Harriet turned suddenly down a side
street.
"Now begin to look, Sunny," she admonished him. "See if you see a boy
that looks like the one who took your hat this morning. How old would
you say he was?"
"'Bout 'leven," returned Sunny Boy wisely. "He acted 'bout that,
anyway. Isn't that a cunning baby, Harriet?"
Harriet wasn't interested in babies just then. She was determined to
find that missing hat.
"That looks like him," Sunny pointed an accusing finger at a colored
boy leaning against a rickety porch railing.
At the same moment the boy saw them and started to run.
"We can't chase him," said Harriet. "He'll run up some alley. You stay
here on the sidewalk, and I'll ask if he lives in this house."
A little girl answered Harriet's knock. "Yes'm," she said, she knew
the boy.
"He don't live here--don't live nowhere," she volunteered. "He just
hangs around. His name is Pete."
"Well, there's no use in looking any further," announced Harriet,
rejoining Sunny Boy on the pavement. "Pete, if that's his name, won't
show up around here for several days now. And before that you'll be on
your way to New York."