The whole Harrity family stood at the top of the stairs and watched them go down.
"Good-bye!" cried the children, losing their shyness as Sunny Boy went further away. "Good-bye, Sunny Boy!"
Sunny Boy waved his hand. Tim was hurrying him down so fast that he was in danger of tripping if he turned. At the very foot of the stairs he stopped and looked up. Mrs. Harrity was leaning over the railing.
"A blessin' on ye, darlin'," she called. "Good-bye."
CHAPTER XIII
HELPING THE HARRITYS
"Now you hang on to me," commanded Tim, as he and Sunny Boy went down the subway steps into the warm, moist air of the station. "I don't aim to lose you changing, and we have to change, 'cause this ain't an express station."
Sunny Boy obediently "hung on to" Tim, keeping so close beside him that several times it was inconvenient, as when people tried to get past them at the door of the car. The train was crowded, and the two boys had to stand.
"We change here," warned Tim, when they reached the express station.
"Look sharp!"
Sunny Boy breathed a sigh of relief when they were safely on the express train; he didn't trust himself to change cars.
"You look kind of beat out," commented Tim, eyeing his charge critically when they were near their last stop. "I s'pose you've done more going to-day than you're used to. Never mind, we're most there now.
"I wonder," Tim said, when they reached the entrance of the McAlpin Hotel a few minutes later, "will I have to go in and let that bunch look me over? I didn't bring my dress suit, and I ain't exactly crazy about giving 'em something to stare at."
Sunny Boy's little heart understood. Tim was ashamed of his shabby clothes, and he knew that the bright lights would make his worn coat reveal every spot and hole.
"Mother won't care," Sunny assured him. "Come on, Tim, I'll show you."
So it was Sunny Boy who pulled Tim into the foyer, and even then Tim would have backed out if, almost the instant they entered the door, some one had not come running to them.
"Oh, my baby!" cried Sunny Boy's mother, gathering him up and hugging him.
Tim felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to find Sunny Boy's father smiling down at him.
"You look as if you might cut and run," said Mr. Horton cheerfully.
"And you and I must have a little talk first. Olive, here's the chap who found Sunny Boy."
Mrs. Horton, still holding Sunny Boy in her arms, smiled with wet dark eyes at Tim.
"She certainly was pretty," said Tim afterward to his mother. "Tall as Theresa, and young and dressed up nice and all. But she shook hands with me just as if I was a friend of hers. I guess all mothers are nice and friendly."
By this time a little crowd had gathered about the Hortons, for many of the guests at the hotel had heard that Sunny Boy was lost and they wanted to tell his father and mother how glad they were that he was safely found. Tim began to get decidedly restless.
"I got to go," he whispered to Mr. Horton. "Ma won't know what's keeping me. 'Sides I have to be up at five in the morning to cover my paper route."
"Olive," said Mr. Horton to his wife, "suppose you take the boy up. I want to have a little talk with Tim" (for Sunny of course had told them his name) "and we're going into the grill room where there won't be so many people. I guess we can have a bite to eat if we have had supper."
"And we had Welsh rabbit and coffee," Tim recounted to his admiring family later that night. "The grill room's just a restaurant. I'll bet that waiter didn't want me coming in there looking like a tramp, but Mr. Horton never let on I looked any different from the rest of 'em."
Sunny Boy and his mother went up in the elevator, and after they were in their room, while she undressed him, "for," she said, "I'm so glad to have my baby back I must undress him and put him to bed just as I used to when he was really a baby," he told her about the Harritys and how he had met Tim.
"We rode up and down in the subway, hunting for you," explained Mrs.
Horton. "Daddy asked every guard, and I even asked the ticket sellers if they had seen a little boy in a blue suit. Then we thought you might have remembered the name of the hotel, and we hurried back here in case you should manage to get here before we did."
"Did you cry?" asked Sunny Boy, patting her cheek, as he lay in her lap.
"Yes, I did," admitted Mother softly. "Poor Daddy had a hard time of it. But, darling, we won't talk of it any more--you're all right and Mother is very happy. I'll lie down beside you here on the bed till you go to sleep." And going to sleep did not take long.
"Where's Tim?" asked Sunny Boy when he woke up the next morning.
He had slept later than usual, after his exciting day, and Mother was up and dressed and sewing fresh ruffles in her coat over by the window. Daddy was not in the room.
"Good morning, precious," Mrs. Horton greeted him. "You've had a fine long sleep. Daddy has been gone an hour--he had a telephone call before breakfast."
"Did Tim stay all night? Is he here now?" asked Sunny Boy, slipping out of bed and beginning to hunt for his socks and shoes. "Do I have to take a bath, Mother?"
"Yes indeed you do," said Mother. "We are going down town, you and I, on a very important shopping trip, and I want you to be as clean and as fresh as a rose when we start. And if you hurry, I'll tell you about Tim while you are eating your breakfast."
Sunny Boy hurried, and in less than half an hour he was sitting at the table in the big dining room eating breakfast with Mother, who had waited for him.
"Tell me about Tim," begged Sunny Boy when the waiter had brought him his orange and asked him how he felt; the waiter knew he had been lost.
"Well, Daddy had a long talk with Tim last night," said Mrs. Horton.
"We wanted to reward him in some way for his kindness to you and his good sense in going about to find where you lived. But Tim wouldn't take any money. He said his mother wouldn't let him."
"Then can't Daddy 'ward him?" asked Sunny Boy disappointedly.
"Listen," said Mrs. Horton. "Daddy got Tim to tell about his family.
His mother is a widow with six children, and, dear, she takes in washing. She was washing last night when you were there, clothes for her own children, after having done two big washes at other houses that day. Theresa, who is sixteen, works in a department store, and Tim sells papers before and after school, and sometimes, I am afraid, when he plays hooky. He can't leave school till he is at least fourteen and he is only thirteen now. Of course the other children are too young to help."
"Theresa can cook," announced Sunny Boy. "She made stew."
"Theresa does most everything," returned his mother. "But what she wants to do is to be a dressmaker. And Daddy has prevailed on Tim to let him send her to a trade school where she can learn to sew. After she has graduated, if she wishes, she can pay him back the money.
Daddy had to arrange it that way because the Harritys are proud and independent."
"And Tim?" urged Sunny Boy, forgetting to eat his egg.
"Oh, Tim is to go to school, too," said Mrs. Horton. "Daddy knows a man who has a school for boys like Tim where they can work and pay for their education, and if Tim can have three or four years there he will be able to help his mother much more than if he got 'working papers'
at fourteen and left school."
"Why didn't he go there before?" demanded Sunny Boy. "If he can pay for it himself, he wouldn't be too poor, would he, Mother?"
"Well, you see, he didn't know about this school," said Mrs. Horton.
"And then you must remember that he has been helping his mother. Even the little he earned was sorely needed by Mrs. Harrity. So Daddy had to plan for her, too."