The dwarfs trotted gaily about the stage and finally went off to their work of chopping wood in the forest, leaving Snow White singing happily and brushing up the hearth.
"Isn't she pretty?" whispered Sunny Boy to Mother, who nodded and handed him the opera glasses.
Sunny Boy couldn't make the glasses work very well, but he loved to try, and he never felt that he was really at the theater unless he spent some minutes trying to look through the end that brought the stage nearer to him. He pretended that he had seen Snow White by the aid of the dainty pearl-handled glasses that were a gift from Daddy to Mother, and gave them back.
"Oh, look!" he nudged Mother sharply.
A queer old beggar woman had thrust her face close to the window in the dwarf's house and was watching Snow White.
"Sh!" whispered Mother, as Sunny Boy bounced in his seat. "You must keep still, dear. Don't make a noise."
The play went on, and Snow White let the old beggar woman in. She was selling apples, and right away, if you had been in the audience, you would have known she wasn't a beggar woman at all, but the wicked stepmother, who was also a witch.
"What did she say?" whispered Sunny Boy, who couldn't hear every word that was said on the stage.
"She wants to sell Snow White an apple, and Snow White says she has no money," explained Mother, in a low voice so that the people sitting near them would not be disturbed. "Now listen, and you'll hear what they say next."
Snow White had picked up her broom again and was going to work.
"I'll give you this beautiful apple," smiled the crafty old beggar woman. "See, my dear, I have it for you as a gift. Isn't it beautiful?"
She put it on the table, and went limping out of the door, pretty little Snow White running after her to thank her. At the window she stopped once, waved her hand, and vanished.
Snow White picked up the apple, and admired it. It was very red, and large and shining.
This was too much for Sunny Boy. He had kept still when Snow White let the witch in the door--"after the dwarfs told her not to let any one in the house, too," he grumbled as he watched her do it--and he had kept still while the witch tried to persuade her to buy an apple; but it was altogether too much to expect him to sit quietly there and watch Snow White eat that apple. Not for nothing had Harriet read him his book of fairy tales!
Snow White shook back her curly black hair and raised the apple to her rosy mouth for a bite.
"Don't eat it!" shouted Sunny Boy "at the top of his lungs" Harriet would have said. "Don't bite it! Throw it away! The witch poisoned it!"
He stood up on the seat, waving his hands frantically, a conspicuous little figure in a blue and white sailor suit.
How the people about him laughed! The lady sitting next to him had to wipe her eyes because she laughed so hard the tears came. Mother pulled Sunny Boy down into the seat beside her, and Snow White went on eating her apple, because, of course, the play had to go on.
"It's only make-believe, dear," whispered Mother, smoothing Sunny Boy's tousled hair. "You know she won't really die."
Sunny Boy smiled, a faint little smile.
"I guess I forgot it wasn't real," he said sheepishly. "Anyway, the little girl from Georgia is crying. I guess she forgot, too."
The little girl from Georgia was crying, the big tears rolling slowly and silently down her cheeks. Many of the children all over the house were crying, or if not actually crying, sniffling a bit. Snow White had eaten her apple and fallen asleep and the poor little brown dwarfs came home to find her, as they supposed, dead.
But the third and last act had a happy ending. Snow White came to life again, and the big curtain came down and the lights flared up to show a houseful of happy, smiling children being buttoned into coats and gloves, and having their caps and hats and bonnets put on for them by mothers and grandmothers and aunts and big sisters.
Sunny Boy walked soberly up the aisle beside his mother, thinking about a great many things. He thought about the dwarfs, and how he would like to know some to play with. He thought about the big theater, and wondered if it was fun to be an actor. And then he thought what a lot of children had come to see the play, and whether they all lived in New York. He put this last thought into words.
"Do they all live here?" he asked Mother, who, of course, did not know what he had been thinking and had to have it explained to her.
"No, I don't suppose they all live here," she said thoughtfully, when Sunny Boy had told her. "I imagine a great many of these boys and girls are New Yorkers and live in the houses and apartments we have seen in the city. Some of them, I am sure, come from the suburban towns to the matinee, the way the children from Glendale come in to Centronia when we have a good play at our theaters, you know. And some of these children you saw this afternoon are like a little boy I know--they come from other cities on their first visit to New York.
Though not all of them stand up and shout at the stage people, I'm glad to say."
Sunny Boy snickered.
"Well, next time I won't," he promised. "Won't Daddy laugh when I tell him? Guess he'll think I never went to the theater."
Daddy did laugh when they told him that night, after they had had dinner and were up in their room together. Sunny Boy had had his bath and, all cool and clean, was curled up in his pink pajamas in a blanket on Mother's bed trying to keep awake and listen to Mother and Daddy talk.
"Right out loud in the theater!" repeated Mr. Horton, pretending to be shocked. "Why, Sunny Boy, you must be more careful. I don't suppose you stopped to think that if Snow White had taken your advice and thrown away the apple, the rest of the play couldn't have happened."
"Yes, and suppose they had come down to you and had said you would have to write them a new fairy story before they could finish the play," teased Mrs. Horton. "What would you have done then, Sunny?"
"I'd have just said I couldn't," giggled Sunny Boy, trying to turn a summersault on the bed.
"Some one called you up about five o'clock this afternoon," said Mr.
Horton, speaking to his wife. "It was a short time before you came in.
She said she would call again after dinner."
"I didn't know I knew any one in New York, at least any one who knew we were here," Mrs. Horton began, puzzled, when the telephone on the table rang.
She went to answer it, and Sunny Boy and Daddy had a pillow fight, which was all the more exciting because they had to keep quiet and not bother Mother at the telephone. Sunny Boy grew red in the face, not daring to laugh aloud, and Daddy tickled him unmercifully.
"There, now, do be still," said Mrs. Horton, hanging up the receiver and coming over to the bed where Sunny Boy and his father were rolling around, each apparently trying to stuff a pillow down the other's neck. "Harry! Sunny! Neither of you will go to sleep to-night. Sunny Boy and I are invited to pay a call to-morrow afternoon."
"All right, let's." A flushed and triumphant Sunny Boy sat up and smiled blissfully at his mother. He had had "last whack" at Daddy, who was now busy brushing lint off his trousers.
Mrs. Horton laughed.
"Sunny, you're getting to be keen for going," she declared. "You don't seem to care where you go as long as it is somewhere. I'm anxious to see you in school and having a little less excitement. And look at my bed!"
"That's all right," Mr. Horton assured her hastily. "We scoop Sunny Boy off so." He swung Sunny high in the air and landed him safely in his own little bed. "Then we pat up the pillows, so, and smooth the covers like this--and there you are!"
"Thank you," smiled Mrs. Horton. "Who do you suppose called me up?"
Mr. Horton couldn't guess, and Sunny Boy couldn't guess.
"Adele Parker," announced Mrs. Horton. "We went to school together, but I haven't seen her since she was married. Bessie and her younger sister are great chums, and Bessie wrote the sister we were in New York. She gave our address and Adele has hunted us up. She wants me to come up to-morrow afternoon. They are just back from the country, and the house is all torn up, so we won't stay long. But I do want to see her."
Sunny Boy dropped asleep while they were talking, and in the morning he and Mother went shopping again, because Daddy was to have an all-day conference with business men and they must amuse themselves.
"I think we ought to choose a few little gifts to take to the friends at home," suggested Mrs. Horton, as she and Sunny Boy stepped from the car and went into one of the beautiful big shops. "Daddy says we won't be here much longer, perhaps not more than another week. Wouldn't you like to take something home to Nelson and Ruth?"
Sunny Boy thought this would be very nice, but what should he take them?
"Well, suppose you think about it, while I buy some things for Aunt Bessie and Aunt Betty Martinson and Harriet," said Mrs. Horton.
Sunny Boy puzzled and puzzled, but Mother was all through her shopping before he could think of a single thing that Ruth and Nelson might like.
"Could we buy 'em a spress wagon?" he asked doubtfully. "Nelson's always borrowing mine. Or roller skates?"