THE FERRYBOAT RIDE
"Let's go away up front, Daddy, right up near the gate, so's I can see
everything," suggested Sunny Boy eagerly, as he and Mother and Daddy
entered the Twenty-third Street ferry house.
"All right. But let me get the tickets," said Mr. Horton, feeling in
his pocket for change.
Sunny Boy was so short that he walked under the turnstile instead of
through it, and the ticket man laughed when he saw him do it.
"Look out one of the sea gulls doesn't take you for a bite of
breakfast," he called jokingly after him.
"Huh," Sunny Boy said resentfully to Mother, "I'm not so little. I
know lots of children littler than I am. Wonder what he'd say if he
saw Lottie Saunders going through his gate."
Lottie Saunders was a little friend of Sunny Boy's at home. She was
not quite three years old.
There was a crowd of people waiting to get on the ferryboat and for a
few minutes the Hortons had to stand at the closed door while the
people on the boat walked off. There were a great many automobiles and
horses and wagons and trucks coming off, too, and the drivers did a
deal of shouting.
"Everybody's in a hurry," observed Sunny Boy, when the door was at
last slid back and the crowd started to jostle its way on board.
Crowds are always in a hurry, if you have noticed it. They run and
push and scramble to get somewhere, and then, when they are there,
they sit down and rest or stand about contentedly, quite as though
they did not know what hurrying meant.
"What do they do with the ropes?" asked Sunny Boy, as they went down
the inclined plank and stepped on the ferryboat deck.
"They're what hold the boat in the slip," explained Mr. Horton. "If we
stay on this back deck till the boat moves, you'll see the men take
out those great hooks and wind the ropes on those wheels. Do you want
to see them do it?"
Sunny Boy did, of course, and he waited till the gates were closed and
the ropes loosened. Then two men, one on either side of the wharf, or
slip, as they call the docks built for this kind of boat, gave a large
spiked wheel one long, powerful turn, and it spun round rapidly,
coiling up the ropes.
"Now we'll go up to the front," announced Mr. Horton, "and see what
ails that noisy little tugboat we hear."
But Sunny Boy had made a discovery.
"Oh, Daddy!" he shouted. "There's a top! Let's go up!"
Mrs. Horton laughed.
"I'm sure Sunny will be an aviator when he grows up," she declared,
smiling at her little boy. "He always wants to get as near to the sky
as he can."
Sunny Boy was eager to climb the stairs to the second deck of the
ferryboat, and he promised to help Mother up the stairs. So they went
into the wide, pleasant cabin and up the broad staircase and came out
on the sunny deck. There was a roof over it, and a cabin where people
who did not like so much fresh air might sit, but Sunny Boy, of
course, wanted to stand by the railing, and since it was a pleasant
day, so did almost every one else.
"See the birds!" exclaimed Mrs. Horton, to whom a ferry trip was new
too. "What do you suppose they find to eat?"
The gulls were flying gracefully above the water, sometimes coming
close to the boat and now and then one would make a sudden dash down
to the water, just dip his head in it and skim it with his wings, then
soar up into the air again.
"I suppose they find bits of fruit and other refuse they can eat,"
replied Mr. Horton.
"That boat is going to run into the little flat one," said Sunny Boy
positively, pointing an excited little forefinger at a fussy little
tugboat making straight for a lazily floating barge loaded with coal.
"You watch," counseled Mr. Horton. "You can not see the rope because
it is in the water, but that other tug up ahead is towing the barge.
She'll have it out of the way before the other boat gets there."
And the towing tug did just that, apparently without hurrying, and
before the noisy tugboat reached the coal barge it drifted safely out
of the way.
"Now you can see where we are going in," said Mr. Horton, pointing out
a dark opening just ahead of them.
The slips were made like stalls, with piling driven down on either
side, and beams nailed across them. As the ferryboat turned into her
slip she bumped smartly against the sides of the slip two or three
times. It swayed, and Sunny Boy thought that there had been an
accident.
"Oh, that often happens," his father assured them, as they stood a
little to one side watching the people streaming off. "Sometimes, when
it is very foggy, the boats have great difficulty in getting in, and
sometimes an unusually high tide makes it hard for them, too."
The Hortons did not get off the ferryboat, and it was not long before
more people were crowding on the decks again.
"Are they the same ones?" asked Sunny, puzzled.
"My no," answered Daddy quickly. "There are large cities on this side
of the river, and people go back and forth between New York and New
Jersey all day long. But I thought we were taking this trip because
you wanted to see the horses enjoying a boat ride. Don't you want to
go downstairs and look around?"
Sunny Boy said he did, and they went down.
"He looks like one of Grandpa's horses," said Sunny Boy, indicating a
bay horse attached to a light delivery wagon. "Do you suppose he likes
to go on a boat, Mother?"
"Sure he does," replied the driver, who had overheard. "He likes to go
anywhere he doesn't have to use his own feet. That's what makes him so
fat."
Sunny Boy laughed, and a colored man driving a team of horses
harnessed to a wagon-load of empty barrels, rolled his eyes in
delight.
"You've said it," he cackled joyously. "Dat horse sure look like he
wished he was a automobile."
As the ferryboat drew near the New York side, Sunny Boy saw the
wonderful "sky line" which is famous all over the world--the outline
made by the tall buildings against the sky. Even a little boy could
appreciate the picture the tall skyscrapers made, some buildings
white, some gray, with here and there a gleaming gold dome against the
fleecy September clouds.
"What makes the boat go?" Sunny Boy thought to ask, as the gates were
opened and they were moving off with the crowd.
"Engines and steam," answered Mr. Horton. "And turn around and you'll
see who steered us."
Sunny Boy turned and saw a white-bearded, blue-capped man in a small
round pilot house above the deck. There was a wheel beside him which
he turned as he wanted the boat to go.
"We've been sailing on the what is its name, Daddy?" asked Sunny,
noticing for the first time large gold lettering below the pilot house
which he guessed to be the name of the boat.
"The 'Lansdowne'," answered Mr. Horton. "And a nice old ferryboat she
is. I don't know how you feel, Sunny, but I've had enough traveling
for a few hours. Can't we have lunch down town, Olive?"
"And not go up to the hotel?" said Mrs. Horton. "Why, I'm willing. I
know where I want to take Sunny Boy this afternoon, if you are going
up to Yonkers to meet that buyer from Chicago."
"Where?" demanded Sunny Boy eagerly. "Where are we going, Mother?"
Mrs. Horton smiled mysteriously.
"Let it be a surprise," she suggested. "You're having so many good
times, Sunny, that I'm afraid you'll find it hard to settle down and
go to school when we are home again."
"School!" That made Sunny Boy jump. But just then Daddy hailed a
street car, which they got on, and Sunny forgot everything else.
They found a clean, comfortable restaurant after a short ride on the
street car, and Sunny Boy was quiet and good while Daddy looked over
some papers and Mother read a letter from Aunt Bessie she had been
carrying in her purse since breakfast time that morning.
"Bessie says," Mrs. Horton announced, "that some boy threw a ball
through the front window and she's had it fixed. And Ruth and Nelson
Baker send their love to you, Sunny. This is a very short letter
because Aunt Bessie wants us to try to match the sample of silk she
encloses and she hurried the letter to catch the next mail."
"I wonder if Nelson got the postal I sent him?" speculated Sunny Boy.
"It was a picture of Central Park."
"He probably received it, and you'll see it in Ruth's album when you
get home," said Mrs. Horton. "And now, Daddy, how about going uptown?"
Sunny Boy was excited, and wouldn't you be, if you were going
somewhere you didn't know about, to see something no one had told you
you would see? He wondered if they could be going to another
menagerie, or if they were going shopping again.
"Wait and see," was all Mrs. Horton would answer, when he teased her.
They took the surface car, and after a few blocks Mr. Horton left them
to get a train for Yonkers, which is a suburb of New York. Sunny Boy
and his mother continued some half dozen blocks further and then left
the car. They walked over a busy street, and suddenly Mrs. Horton
stopped in front of a building with many entrances, and people
crowding into them all.
"I know!" shouted Sunny Boy, as he saw a red and yellow poster. "It's
a theater!"
"Yes, it is," admitted Mrs. Horton smiling. "I read in the paper last
night that there was a children's matinee to-day, and Daddy 'phoned
downstairs after you were asleep and bought our tickets. Can you tell
what the play is, dear, from the pictures? See, here is a case of
photographs."
Sunny Boy plunged his hands deep into his pockets, spread his feet
sturdily apart, and studied the pictures seriously.
"There's a girl," he murmured aloud. "An' an old lady--she's a witch,
I guess. Do I know it, Mother?"
"I've read you the story," said Mrs. Horton. "Don't you remember Snow
White and the dwarfs?"
Sunny Boy remembered the story, and he would have liked to look at
the photographs again, but Mrs. Horton thought it was time to go in
and find their seats. An usher, a pretty girl, took them easily and
quickly to the right row, and Sunny Boy found himself seated next to
an elderly lady, with two children, a boy and a girl, evidently her
grandchildren, in two seats directly in front of her.
"Why don't they sit next to her?" Sunny Boy whispered, watching the
lady standing up to smooth out the little girl's hair-ribbon.
"They probably couldn't get three seats together," explained Mrs.
Horton. "Better let me hold your hat, precious; you might drop it and
some one would walk on it."
The orchestra was playing a gay bit of music, and Sunny's feet kept
time to it merrily. He had been to the theater once or twice at home,
generally at Christmas time, but this was decidedly different.
"I like New York," he confided to Mother.
The grandmotherly lady smiled.
"So you don't live here?" she asked pleasantly. "I have lived here so
many years that no other place would seem like home. But Louise and
David, my grandchildren, are, like you, visitors. They come from
Georgia."
Mrs. Horton leaned forward.
"We're from Centronia," she volunteered, for Sunny Boy was too shy to
do more than smile at the two children who had turned around when they
heard their names spoken, and now grinned at him politely over the
backs of their seats. "I don't believe Sunny Boy knows where Georgia
is--do you, dear?"
"It's down South," said the little girl. "We slept on the train. And
David was sick. I wasn't. Grandmother said he prob'ly ate too much
ice-cream for his supper."
"Sh!" cautioned their grandmother. "The curtain's going up in a
minute."
The lights went out, the music stopped, and Sunny Boy snuggled close
to Mother. Slowly, oh, very slowly, the big blue curtain began to roll
up, and the play began.
"Such a mean old stepmother," scolded Sunny Boy, at the end of the
first act. "Poor little Snow White! I hope they never find out where
she went when she ran away."
The orchestra played again, and then stopped as the lights were turned
off for the second act. Sunny Boy gave a nervous little squeak as the
curtain rose and he saw the dwarfs in their house.