"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."
CHAPTER III
OFF FOR NEW YORK
"Sunny Boy and I will go ahead and get the trunk checked," said Mr.
Horton, picking up the two suitcases that stood in the hall. "Where's your hat? You haven't lost it again, have you?"
Sunny Boy dashed under the table and picked up his new hat.
"It's all right," he assured his father anxiously. "It just fell off when I wasn't looking. Mother bought it yesterday. Does it do for New York, Daddy?"
"I don't see why not," replied Mr. Horton, smiling. "All through, Olive? Sure you and Harriet can lock up all right?"
Mrs. Horton came into the hall, pencil and pad in hand. It was the day for leaving--Sunny Boy had been afraid that it would never come--and they were almost on the way to New York. The train would leave Centronia Union Station in an hour.
"I'm finishing the list of things I want Harriet to remember,"
explained Mrs. Horton. "Sunny, dear, did you say good-bye to her? All right then, run along with Daddy. And I'll meet you at the south entrance not later than a quarter of ten."
Sunny Boy and Daddy took the street car, and Sunny was so blissfully happy to be beginning the journey at last that a white-haired gentleman next to him asked him if he was thinking about Christmas.
Sunny Boy shook his head. He hadn't begun to think of Christmas. That was months and months away.
"I'm going to New York," he informed the white-haired gentleman proudly. "Daddy and Mother and me. And I can ride on top of the busses, Daddy said so."
"Dear me," said the gentleman, "that is a long trip for a chap of your age. I have a little grandson who lives in New York. He's counting the days now till he can come to see me."
This was a new idea to Sunny Boy.
"Do you s'pose folks who live in New York like to come to see Centronia?" he asked doubtfully.
"Just as much as you count on going to New York," said the white-haired gentleman promptly. "It's new to them, you see. Here's my corner now. Good-bye. I hope you will have all the good times you are looking forward to."
"Isn't it funny, Daddy?" said Sunny Boy, watching the gentleman go out the door. "Most everybody has relations living in New York. Harold Wallace's cousin lives there. Have we any 'lations to go to see?"
"Not in New York," answered Mr. Horton, pressing the button to tell the motor-man to let them off. "You and Mother will have to amuse each other, because you may find it lonesome at first with no friends to talk to."
They were opposite the station now, and the car stopped. Sunny Boy hopped off blithely, but his thoughts were busy with what Daddy had said. How could one be lonely in New York?
"'Member the time the baggage man thought the alarm clock was a 'fernal machine?" asked Sunny Boy, as he followed his father into the station and over to the baggage room.
"Indeed I do," Mr. Horton laughed.
You see, when Sunny Boy and his mother had been going to see Grandpa Horton, Sunny, as his part in the packing, tucked in the family alarm clock so that he would be sure to get up early in the country. And he forgot the clock might be set, as it was. The station people had held the trunk and it took a great deal of explaining, and the Hortons nearly missed their train before they were allowed to check the trunk.
The baggage man remembered Sunny Boy.
"How's the alarm clock?" he grinned cheerfully. "Any more infernal machines in your baggage this time?"
Sunny Boy smiled shyly.
"We didn't have a finger in packing this trunk," Daddy answered for him. "All right, Son, we're fixed. Now we'll see if we can get some parlor car seats."
But, it seemed, the parlor car seats were all sold.
"All the way through. Convention going to-day on your train,"
announced the man behind the brass-barred window. "Sorry, but you'll have to go in the day coach."
"You and I don't mind, Sunny," said Mr. Horton, as they walked over to the south entrance to wait for Mrs. Horton. "It is rather hard on Mother, but perhaps she won't mind. It isn't so warm to-day."
"And we can put the window up," suggested Sunny Boy helpfully. "Oh, there's Mother!"
He ran to meet her and brought her over triumphantly to the seat saved for her.
"Am I in time?" she asked a little anxiously. "Ten minutes yet? That's fine. There was a block on the cars."
"Get your breath, and then I think we'd better go through the gate,"
counseled Mr. Horton. "Couldn't get parlor car seats, so the earlier we get on, the better chance we have of getting a good seat. I'll take the grips, Sunny, you take care of Mother."
Sunny Boy felt that he was an experienced traveler when he handed the tickets to the man at the gate, Daddy's hands being occupied with the suitcases. The long gray train shed was filled with shining dark cars and snorting, puffing engines, but Daddy seemed to know where to go, and he led the way.
"This is all right," he decided, coming to a stop before a coach.
He put down the heavy suitcases and took the tickets from Sunny.
"They'll be safer in my wallet," he explained. "But you may give them to the conductor if you wish. Up you go--there!"
Sunny Boy found himself on the platform beside Mother, who had gone first. He followed her into the nearly dark car, and they found two nice seats near the center and on what Daddy said would be the shady side as soon as they pulled out of the shed.