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 seash.o.r.e 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 Seash.o.r.e."
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," p.r.o.nounced 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 bra.s.s 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.