“Ralph!” gasped Sunny Boy. “Look! My boat’s untied!”

(See Page [190])

SUNNY BOY
AT THE SEASHORE

BY
RAMY ALLISON WHITE
Author of
“Sunny Boy in the Country,” “Sunny
Boy at the Seashore,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES L. WRENN

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1920
By
Barse & Co.

Sunny Boy at the Seashore
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

SUNNY BOY AT THE
SEASHORE

CHAPTER I
AN UNEXPECTED RIDE

“Oh, Ruth! Oh, Nelson! O-hoo!” Sunny Boy puckered up his mouth and tried his best to whistle, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

“Ru-th! Nelson!” he shouted again. “Come on over! I want to tell you something!”

Then up the steps from the laundry in the basement of their house, where they had been hunting string for a kite, came Nelson and Ruth Baker, who lived next door.

Sunny Boy stood in the gateway his father had cut in the fence between the two yards and danced up and down impatiently.

“Hurry up!” he urged them. “Listen! We’re going to the seashore day after to-morrow! Mother said so.”

Nelson sat down comfortably on the grass. He was rather a fat boy.

“We’re going to the mountains to visit my grandmother, next week,” he said. “But you just got back from being away.”

And indeed Sunny Boy and his mother had returned the night before from a long visit with Sunny’s Grandpa Horton who lived on a beautiful farm.

Little Ruth Baker, who was only four years old, beamed cheerfully at Sunny Boy.

“We went to the seashore while you were gone,” she informed him. “The water was very wet. I went paddling, but Nelson wore a bathing suit.”

“I’ve a bathing suit, too,” announced Sunny Boy. “The brook at Grandpa’s was too cold, so I didn’t wear it. But I’m going to learn to swim down at Nestle Cove. Daddy’s going to teach me.”

Nelson looked up from straightening out the tangle of string.

“Did you sleep on the train going to your grandpa’s?” he asked. “We have to stay two nights, an’ eat and sleep an’ everything on the train before we get to my grandma’s.”

Sunny Boy, stretched full length in his express wagon, kicked his heels excitedly.

“We ate on the train,” he said eagerly. “But—what you think?—we’re going to Nestle Cove in Daddy’s new automobile!”

“I saw it out in front yesterday,” Nelson volunteered. “It’s a nice big one. I’ll bet I could most run one!”

“P’haps,” admitted Sunny Boy doubtfully. “Anyway, you have to be grown-up before they let you—Daddy said so. Mother’s going, an’ Harriet, an’ Aunt Bessie and Miss Mart’son.” Sunny Boy meant Miss Martinson, a school teacher and Aunt Bessie’s best friend, but his tongue had a trick of skipping letters when he pronounced long words. “And Aunt Bessie has a house with a big porch, and she says I can sleep in a hammock like a sailor if I want to. An’ I’m going to make a fish pond in the sand.”

“Look out you don’t get scared by a crab,” Nelson advised him. “Ruth did. She screamed and screamed. I went fishing with my daddy on a great long pier, but we didn’t catch anything.”

“I saved all the pebbles,” Ruth began hopefully.

“I went fishing in the brook.” Sunny Boy was forgetting that it isn’t polite to interrupt another.

“I got so sunburned it all peeled off, and then—” Nelson was eager to tell his experiences, too.

“My goodness, children, how you do chatter!” Mrs. Baker opened the gate in the fence and beckoned smilingly to her youngsters. “Hello, Sunny dear. Glad to be home again? Ruth, Mother needs you now to try on the new frock, and, Nelson, you’ll have to go to the store for me. Come right away, dears—you’ll see Sunny again before he goes away.”

Nelson gathered up his string obediently and trotted through the gate. Ruth slipped her hand into her mother’s and followed him. Left alone, Sunny Boy wiggled to a more comfortable position in his wagon and gave himself up to pleasant thoughts of the coming trip.

“Look here, Sunny Boy, your brains will be absolutely baked!” Aunt Bessie descended on him from the back porch. “My dear child, this yard is the warmest place in the city in the morning. Your mother asked me to see what you were doing. Why don’t you go out in front and play where it is shady?”

“With you?” asked Sunny Boy happily.

Aunt Bessie sat down on one end of the wagon which tipped perilously, and hugged him.

“No, lambie, not with me,” she answered. “I must run home and help Harriet pack another box, and then I am to meet Betty Martinson and buy a porch swing. After that, let’s see—after that I have to give a little girl a music lesson. But when we get to the seashore I’ll play with you.”

“All right,” agreed Sunny Boy sensibly. “But couldn’t you stay a minute, Auntie?”

“Not half a minute, honey.” Aunt Bessie rose and smoothed out her pretty blue linen frock. “You run along now and don’t go far away, because it will be lunch time before you know it.”

A big black ant crawled across the cement walk at Sunny’s feet.

“I wonder what Jimmie is doing now?” said Sunny Boy aloud, remembering how careful Jimmie always was not to step on the tiniest ant.

Jimmie was the nineteen year old boy who helped Grandpa Horton farm in summer and who went to an agricultural college in winter. Sunny Boy and he had grown to be great friends during the month Sunny and his mother had spent at Brookside, which was the name of the farm where Grandpa and Grandma Horton lived.

Sunny Boy was named for his grandfather, “Arthur Bradford Horton,” as you may have read in my first book about him called, “Sunny Boy in the Country.” His father and mother called him “Sunny Boy” because he was usually such a cheerful laddie. Even when he got into scrapes—and in the month he spent at the farm he lost his grandfather’s Liberty Bonds and had a horse run away with him—the troubles were somehow straightened out for him and left him smiling again.

Now he and his mother had left Brookside and dear Grandpa and Grandma Horton, and with Daddy Horton had come back to their city home to get ready for a visit to the seashore. Aunt Bessie, who was Mrs. Horton’s sister, and her friend Miss Martinson had rented a bungalow at Nestle Cove, and they wanted Sunny Boy and his mother to come and stay with them.

The sun was blazing down into the back yard, and it really was very hot. Sunny Boy took his wagon down the laundry steps into the house, stopping for a moment to get a drink of water at the sink, on through the front basement hall and up the steps out into the street.

“Well, well, you back?” The postman, on the steps of the Bakers’ house, smiled at him. “Have a nice time?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sunny Boy, with satisfaction. “An’ day after to-morrow Daddy’s going to take us in the auto to Nestle Cove.”

“Well, you are having a fine summer,” replied the postman heartily. “Don’t get so tanned that, when you come back, I might take you for a little chocolate boy, will you?”

“Oh, no,” Sunny assured him. “I don’t mean to.”

Whistling pleasantly, the postman went on up the street, and Sunny Boy, pushing his wagon idly back and forth by the tongue, thought that when he grew up he would be a postman too.

“But I don’t know whether I’d like to be a postman in the city where I’d see a lot of people and know such a lot of children, or be one in the country, like the postman that comes to Brookside farm, and ride around all day in a buggy. That would be fun. I could know children in the country, too. There was an awful lot of Hatch children, seven of them.”

Sunny Boy was thinking of the children of the tenant who lived on Grandpa’s farm, and with whom he played while he was visiting at Brookside.

“’Lo!” called the girl across the street, sweeping the pavement.

“Hello!” responded Sunny politely.

She had red hair and that reminded him of Araminta, the little girl at Grandpa Horton’s house. He wished Araminta lived in the city where he could see her every day. Sunny Boy, you will perceive, had what his Aunt Bessie called a “wishing fit” this summer morning.

“Out of my way, kid!” A thin, freckle-faced boy with the lightest hair and eyebrows Sunny Boy had ever seen leaped from the laundry wagon that drew up to the curb. “Haven’t any time to fool this morning. This 266 Glenn Avenue? Yep? Well, hustle now and don’t keep me waiting for those shirts to be done up. Rush order, too, it is.”

Sunny Boy had a dim idea that this boy was poking fun at him, and he frowned a little. But Mrs. Horton had heard through the screen door, and she came, bringing the package of shirts.

“Are you sure they will be returned to-morrow?” she asked anxiously. “We leave early Thursday morning.”

“Oh, they’ll be ready in plenty of time,” said the boy reassuringly. “Don’t you worry—the Star Laundry never breaks its word; we can’t afford to.”

He ran down the walk, tossed the package into the back of the wagon, and hurried across the street to another house.

Mrs. Horton laughed.

“What a very important young man!” she said. “Well, Sunny Boy, are you having a good time? Where are Ruth and Nelson?”

“They had to go in,” answered Sunny Boy. “Mother, could I get an ice-cream cone?”

“Not before lunch, dear,” decided Mrs. Horton. “Now I have to finish the mending. Keep out of the sun, won’t you? It’s one of the warmest days we’ve had.”

She closed the screen door and Sunny returned to his express wagon.

“I could tie it on back,” he said aloud.

The laundry wagon was still standing where the freckle-faced boy had left it, and the horse was slowly but surely going to sleep, “right in his tracks,” as Harriet would have said had she been there to see. His head kept nodding lower and lower, and Sunny Boy privately decided that the only thing that kept it from hitting the asphalt was the big round collar the horse wore.

Sunny Boy got up from the step and walked down to the wagon, dragging his express cart behind him. He had often seen other boys tie their toy wagons on behind real wagons, and he knew exactly how it was done.

“I’ll just pretend,” he told himself, glancing up at the windows of the house uneasily. “I won’t really go for a ride.”

There was no one to see him knot the rope firmly and make the express cart fast to the laundry wagon. He climbed in and had a blissfully thrilling moment making believe that he was part of an express train.

“I’ll be the baggage car,” he thought. “Toot! Toot!”

Then from across the street came whirling the breezy laundry-wagon boy. This time he had no parcel, but leaped into his seat and took up the reins without going round to the back of his wagon.

“Gid-ap, Lazy-Bones!” he cried to the sleepy horse. “What do you think this is—a cab-stand? Gid-ap!”

And Sunny Boy and his wagon moved gently off down the street.

He could easily have tumbled out, but that would mean to lose his wagon. And the laundry boy was whistling so shrilly through his teeth that there was no hope of being able to make him hear, even if he called out. Besides, Sunny Boy thought that he might very likely be cross and scold about small boys hitching to his wagon.

“I—I—don’t believe Mother would like it,” said poor Sunny Boy forlornly, as the horse broke into a gentle trot.

CHAPTER II
ENDING A BUSY DAY

“I know my mother wouldn’t like it,” said Sunny Boy.

The laundry wagon horse was galloping now, urged on by the freckle-faced boy who was singing loudly as the light wagon swayed from side to side. Sunny Boy looked very little and frightened trailing on in his wagon behind.

A big brown dog bounced out at him and barked madly.

“Go ’way!” cried Sunny, for the dog reminded him of the fairy-tale wolf with very white teeth and such a red mouth. “Go ’way, old dog!”

Slish! the laundry wagon swerved to avoid another wagon, and Sunny Boy nearly tumbled out. An old gentleman stood on the sidewalk and brandished his cane at him.

“Hi, you!” he called, “don’t you know you’re likely to be killed? Why don’t the policemen—”

Sunny Boy couldn’t hear the rest of what he said, but, looking back, he saw the old gentleman still standing on the walk shaking his cane angrily.

Sunny Boy was more than willing to let go, but he didn’t see how he could. They were nearing the end of the street now, and the houses were fewer with more ground between.

“Look behind!” an ice-man delivering ice called to the laundry boy, at the same time pointing to the back of the wagon.

The laundry boy may have looked, but of course he couldn’t see Sunny’s wagon from where he sat, and he apparently had no intention of stopping his horse to see if any one was stealing a “hitch.” Instead he brought the whip down smartly, and the horse leaped forward with a sudden jerk that made Sunny’s neck snap.

“My land!” poor Sunny gasped.

It was an expression he had learned from the red-haired Araminta.

Goodness knows what might have happened if they had had to turn a corner, or if the rope hadn’t broken. But break it did, and Sunny Boy and the laundry wagon parted company just as they came opposite to a vacant lot. Sunny’s wagon shot off to one side and, as there was no pavement and no curbing, the wagon kept going until it brought up in a clump of elderberry bushes.

“Hurt you, kid?” and a man who had seen him came running across the street. “That’s a mighty dangerous way to play, and the littler you are the worse it is. I suppose you’ve seen the big boys do it. Take my advice and leave wagons alone after this.”

As he talked, he lifted Sunny and the express wagon out of the bushes, brushed Sunny Boy off neatly. He now stood smiling down at him so good-naturedly that it was impossible to keep from smiling back.

“I thought you was scolding,” said Sunny Boy, in whose experience people never smiled when they scolded.

Sunny Boy suddenly remembered that Aunt Bessie always made big round eyes and a round mouth and held up her hands whenever he said “you was,” and that his mother always looked at him and shook her head just the very least possible bit. But never mind; it was too late to go back and say it differently now, and besides he must hurry on and explain to this nice man who was smiling down at him.

“It didn’t hurt me, but one wheel’s bent,” he said.

“That’s where it skidded across the street,” explained the man, bending down to examine the wagon. “Not worth mentioning, though. I’m thankful it wasn’t your leg that was bent. Now don’t you think you’d better call it a day and go home?”

Sunny was willing enough to go home, though he didn’t know what the man meant by calling it a day.

“I mean that one such adventure’s enough for a morning,” smiled the new friend, as he saw that Sunny Boy looked puzzled.

Sunny agreed to this, and they shook hands gravely and the man went on down the street and Sunny and his express wagon headed for home.

He found his mother getting lunch, and she was very glad to see him because, as she said, she was lonesome.

“We’ll have to hurry,” she greeted him when he had put the express wagon in the back yard and found her in the kitchen. “Daddy is coming home at half-past one to help get us ready to go. Have you washed your hands, dear? Well, then you and I will have our bread and milk right here on the kitchen table.”

Sunny Boy enjoyed this. Mrs. Horton spread a little white cloth at one end of the table and they had bread and milk and cold boiled eggs and four chocolate cookies—two apiece—just like a picnic. The kitchen was the only room in the house that seemed natural to Sunny, anyway. The house had been shut all the time they were staying at Grandpa Horton’s, and as they were only going to be home two days before going to the seashore Mrs. Horton said it was not worth while to unwrap or unpack anything.

“Now we’ll wash the dishes,” declared Mother, when they had finished their lunch. “Then I’ll go upstairs and darn socks while you watch at the window for Daddy. Poor Daddy! No one mended his socks for him while we were gone.”

Sunny Boy helped Mother carry the milk and the butter back to the ice-box, and dried the dishes as she washed them. Then he ran down into the yard and hung up the scalded tea towels for her.

“Daddy says little boys can help most as much as little girls,” said Sunny seriously, watching Mother put the glass pitcher on the high shelf that he hadn’t been able to reach. “When Harriet isn’t here, do I help, Mother?”

“Precious,” Mother assured him, giving him a bear hug, “you help me every minute of the day, whether Harriet is here or not. And when you’re a man I won’t be any more proud of you than I am right now.”

They went upstairs, Mrs. Horton to darn the neglected socks, and Sunny to watch for Daddy and the new car.

“Here he is! I’ll open the door! O-hoo, Daddy!” Sunny Boy saw the dark blue car draw up before the house and stop, and he banged noisily on the window screen to attract his father’s attention. Then he dashed downstairs.

“Well, well, who’s this young cyclone?” inquired Mr. Horton, catching Sunny Boy in his arms and lifting him to his shoulder. “Saw me drive up, didn’t you? Where’s Mother?”

“Upstairs. Daddy, let’s go out in the automobile! Where you going to keep it? Can I drive?” Sunny bounced about excitedly as he put his questions one after another.

“Easy, easy,” protested Mr. Horton. “The automobile will be an old story fast enough. Let me have a word with Mother and then perhaps you and I will have an errand to do down town.”

Mrs. Horton smiled when she saw Sunny’s flushed face.

“Some one is excited,” she teased. “Well, Daddy dear, what did Bessie say about the suitcase?”

“I called her up, but she wasn’t in,” answered Mr. Horton. “Miss Martinson seemed to think, though, that they’d better have it. I’ll go up and drag it out now and Sunny and I can run it over to her in the car.”

“Oh, yes, let’s,” coaxed Sunny Boy, without a very clear idea of what the talk was about, but sure that a ride in the automobile was in some way connected with it.

“Think you can come up to the store-room with me and give me a hand?” asked his father. “I have to get a suitcase for Aunt Bessie, and I suppose it is under three trunks with the empty goldfish globe on top.”

“Why, Daddy Horton, what a way to talk!” Mrs. Horton pretended to be very indignant. “The suitcase is the first thing you’ll see when you open the door. I thought we might need it before the summer was over, so I left it where it would be easy to get.”

Sure enough, Sunny and Daddy found the suitcase without any trouble, and they brought it downstairs and Mother dusted it off, and then they carried it down to the automobile and put it in the back.

Sunny Boy climbed into the car and sat very still with his eyes straight ahead. He hoped Nelson and Ruth Baker were watching him. Mr. Horton walked around the car to the other side, got in, and closed the door. He waved to Mother in the window, put both hands on the wheel, and away they went.

“Can I help drive, going to Nestle Cove, Daddy?” Sunny asked, watching carefully, so that he might remember all the things he saw Daddy do. “I drove Peter and Paul for Grandpa.”

Peter and Paul were the farm horses.

“Well, you see, Sunny Boy,” Daddy explained, skillfully steering the car around a heavy coal truck, “automobiles are different from horses. You can’t talk to them and tell them what to do. You have to be older, and stronger, and taller, to manage a machine. See how constantly I have to use my feet? You are not tall enough to reach the brakes. And, anyway, the law says little boys can’t drive cars, even to help their daddies. They must be at least eighteen years old.”

“Yes, I ’member, you told me,” said Sunny sorrowfully.

Daddy never turned aside his questions with an “Oh, you wouldn’t understand, wait till you’re older” kind of answer, and Sunny really was used to reasoning things out.

“I’ll carry the suitcase,” he offered, when they came to Aunt Bessie’s house. “Let me ring, Daddy.”

Aunt Bessie lived in an apartment house and the colored boy who answered the bell knew Sunny very well indeed.

“Miss Andrew ain’t home,” he said. “But Miss Martinson am. I’ll take you-all up.”

Aunt Bessie was Miss Andrew, and of course the colored boy couldn’t have known much English grammar to say “ain’t.” Or, perhaps, he forgot what his mother told him about always saying “is not.” We’ll hope you never do. Anyway, this boy had the most delightful, rich, soft voice, and no matter what he said it always sounded pleasant.

“How lovely of you!” Miss Martinson, Aunt Bessie’s friend who lived with her and helped keep house in the apartment, flung open the door almost as soon as they lifted the heavy old-fashioned knocker. “Come right in. We have a bundle of things that simply won’t go in the trunk and Bessie has every suitcase packed so full now we’re in despair.”

Miss Martinson was little and dark and pretty. She taught girls in a large public school how to baste and hem and tuck and, after a while, make dresses. She was a sewing teacher.

Sunny and Mr. Horton couldn’t stay very long because they knew that Mother at home would be needing them. But before they went, Sunny ran out to the kitchen to find his dear Harriet.

“Here’s my own boy, bless his dear heart!” and Harriet, whose eyes were as blue as Sunny Boy’s, and who wore a blue dress that just matched them and her usual big, white apron—Harriet’s aprons were always whiter than other people’s—swooped down upon Sunny Boy and gave him a tremendous hug. “Did you have a lovely time on the farm, darlin’? And did you miss Harriet? Never mind, we’re going to have a fine time down at the sea. Think of it—you’ll be sailing boats and going swimming and all!”

“Sunny, coming?” called Mr. Horton.

“Here, give this to your mother,” and Harriet hastily put a square box into his hands. “’Tis a cake I baked for the lunch on the way down. I made two of ’em, one for her and one for Miss Bessie.”

“Daddy,” Sunny Boy spoke for the first time on the way home, holding the cake box carefully on his lap, “how long does it take to get to Nestle Cove?”

“Oh, about six or eight hours with fair traveling,” answered Mr. Horton. “Why, Son?”

“I was just thinking,” said Sunny. “Harriet made a cake for us to eat on the way.”

“And I suspect Mother will be busy all day to-morrow putting up a picnic lunch for us,” responded his father. “You see, we’ll find a nice shady spot about noon when the sun is too hot to make driving comfortable, and we’ll sit down and rest on the grass and eat all those good things up.”

“That will be fun,” agreed Sunny enthusiastically. “There’s Mother waving to us now. Does she want something, Daddy?”

“Don’t get out,” called Mrs. Horton, hurrying to them. “The laundryman telephoned Mrs. Baker that their wagon has been in an accident and the clothes are hopelessly scattered. They want you to go down and see if any of yours are missing.”

CHAPTER III
GETTING READY

“Take me with you, Daddy?” Sunny Boy begged. “I could see the accident.”

“There’ll be nothing to see,” answered Mr. Horton, smiling. “I’m only going to the laundry office, and that wouldn’t interest you. I think you’d better stay with Mother and help her.”

“All right,” agreed Sunny Boy cheerfully, climbing out of the car and holding the cake box carefully right side up.

He and Mother went into the kitchen, while Mr. Horton turned the car and went off down the street.

“Gee!” exclaimed Sunny, watching Mother fill the tea kettle. “Gee! I guess that laundry-wagon boy wishes he’d called it a day.”

“Called it a day?” repeated Mrs. Horton, puzzled. “What do you mean, dear? And is it absolutely necessary that you use ‘gee’ twice in one sentence?”

Sunny Boy admitted that it wasn’t. Then, while they waited for the kettle to boil, he told Mother about his morning adventure and the man who had picked him out of the bushes and advised him to call it a day.

“Why, you might have been hurt!” said Mrs. Horton seriously. “Don’t do that again, Son. Probably the boy is a reckless driver, or he wouldn’t have had this accident, but no driver can watch out for little folks who hitch on behind wagons. Now we’ll set the table in the dining-room to-night, and go out and wait for Daddy on the front steps.”

Sunny Boy helped Mother so well that the table was set and everything in readiness for supper and they had been out on the front steps for nearly ten minutes before they saw Mr. Horton coming around the corner.

Sunny Boy ran to meet him.

“Did you walk?” he asked disappointedly. “Where’s the automobile? Did you scold the laundry-wagon boy?”

“I put the automobile to bed,” answered Daddy, waving to Mother. “This fall, perhaps, we can build a garage out back of the house. I’ll see. But just now a man named Mr. Taggart has to keep the car at night for us. Did you help Mother?”

“Indeed he did!” Mrs. Horton held open the screen door for them to go in. “I haven’t missed Harriet at all.”

At the supper table Sunny remembered the accident again.

“What did the laundry-wagon boy say?” he asked his father.

“The poor chap’s in the hospital,” replied Mr. Horton soberly. “Nothing more serious than bad bruises, they say. I imagine, from the way the superintendent talked, that he’s been in pickles before this for careless driving. There were half a dozen of us there, reclaiming stuff. How many shirts was I supposed to have in that bundle, Olive?”

“Seven, and eleven collars,” said Mrs. Horton promptly.

“Well, only six had my mark on ’em,” declared Mr. Horton. “A number of bundles were entirely missing, stolen during the excitement of the crash they think, or hopelessly torn and mangled. He drove right into a big touring car, the police say.”

“I have to go over to Mrs. Baker’s,” announced Mrs. Horton when supper was finished. “You’ll go up with Sunny Boy, won’t you, Harry? He must have a hot bath.”

“It’s day yet,” protested Sunny Boy. “I don’t have to go to bed till night.”

“Well, if you’re going to get up early in the morning and help me pack stuff in the car, I think you’d better have a nice, hot bath and go to sleep as fast as you can. Of course, if you are not going to get up in the morning, and would rather stay down and wash the dishes, why that’s another matter entirely.”

Sunny Boy giggled.

“I’ll bath me,” he decided. “You sit on the hamper and watch, Daddy.”

Daddy did sit on the hamper and watch. He also helped with the drying. Then he pulled up the awnings all across the front of the house so that the rooms would be cool during the night. Then he found the woolly dog, that hadn’t gone to the farm but that was Sunny’s bedfellow when he was at home, and put him in bed with Sunny Boy.

“Good night, laddie,” Daddy bent down and kissed Sunny Boy. “If you wake up first, come in and call me.”

When Sunny Boy opened his eyes it was to find the sun streaming in the windows and to hear the locusts singing away for dear life. He got softly out of bed, tucked the woolly dog under his arm, and paddled into Daddy and Mother’s room. It was empty.

“Well, well, here he is!” There stood Daddy in the doorway behind him. “Breakfast’s almost ready, and we need a certain young man to help us with the sliced peaches and cream, to say nothing of the brown toast Mother’s made for us. Come on, and see if you can find the blue sailor suit on the little rocking chair under the window nearest the closet door.”

The lonesome feeling Sunny had had for a moment when he found his father and mother had gone downstairs ahead of him, went away, and he hurried to help Daddy find the sailor suit. They knocked over so many things in their search, and laughed so much and made such a great deal of noise that Mother came up and pretended to scold, though really she came to find the suit, tie the tie for Sunny, and brush his yellow hair.

“Now if you don’t come down to breakfast this minute,” she told them when Sunny Boy was as neat as neat could be—“well, you can’t have any toast, that’s all!”

So they all three hurried down and found plenty of toast; and very good it was, too.

“Each one must carry his plate out to the kitchen,” ordered Mr. Horton, when they had finished. “And then Sunny Boy and I will go round and get the car. Whatever you can pack to-day, Olive, will save us time in the morning. I’d like to make an early start, because I’m afraid we’re in for a hot spell, and the earlier we get off, the more comfortable we’ll be.”

“The trunks are going this morning,” said Mrs. Horton. “Bessie promised to get theirs off, too. All I have to do—My dear child, what are you going to do with that?” she broke off.

Sunny Boy stood in the doorway, Harriet’s cake on the best china cake-plate in his hands. It was a cake with white icing and it looked delicious.

“It’s to eat on the way,” explained Sunny Boy. “Harriet said so. I was going to put it in the automobile under the seat where it wouldn’t get mussed.”

“But I’m going to put up a nice lunch for us,” said Mother. “Harriet’s cake really ought to be wrapped in wax paper, you know, and go in a box. You shall fix it for me this morning. Now run along with Daddy, and bring our shiny new car around for the bundles.”

Sunny met Mr. Taggart that morning. He was a short, round man with little twinkling blue eyes and he wore overalls that were very black and greasy from the oil and grease on the cars he took care of.

“I’ve got a little boy ’bout your age,” he told Sunny. “You’re about five, aren’t you? I thought so. Ted’s five and a half. In you go! Ted’s a little heavier than you are. He’s down in the country now, visiting his grandma.”

Daddy started the car, and Sunny leaned out to call back to Mr. Taggart.

“My grandma lives in the country, too, and we’re going to the seashore to-morrow.”

Mr. Taggart waved his hand to show that he heard and understood, and Daddy backed the car out into the street.

“Let’s get Mother and go now,” suggested Sunny. “Why is there always a lot to do before we do anything, Daddy?”

Mr. Horton smiled.

“Well, most things that are worth while or give us lasting pleasure, laddie, require work and effort,” he said. “You’ll find that out as you go along. You see, we might go this morning, but we’d have to come back in a day or two for more clothes, or the swing, or some of the other things Mother is busily thinking of and packing up this morning. And down at Nestle Cove, the man who owns the cottage Aunt Bessie has rented is opening it and cleaning it and putting it in good order for us, so we’ll be comfortable the rest of the summer. If he didn’t look at it till ten or fifteen minutes before we were due there, the roof might leak, or the rooms be damp and dirty, and then we’d have to spend the first week of our stay making things pleasant and comfortable. So we’ll wait till the time to go, and do everything there’s to be done while we’re waiting, shall we?”

“Let’s,” nodded Sunny Boy, who really understood. “Look, Daddy, there’s Ruth and Nelson Baker out in front of their house. Ruth’s waving to you.”

Mr. Horton stopped the car, and beckoned to the Baker children.

“Hop in,” he said pleasantly. “I have to go over to Aunt Bessie’s apartment and you might as well have the little ride. I’ll tell your mother where we’re going. Wait for me.”

He went on into the house, and Ruth and Nelson scrambled into the back of the automobile.

“Isn’t it hot?” said Nelson. “I’ll bet there’s a thunderstorm this afternoon. Don’t scratch the paint, Ruth.”

“I’m not!” retorted Ruth indignantly. “Let me ride up in front, Sunny?”

“Don’t you let her,” urged Nelson. “You always want to do whatever you see any one else do. Sit down, or I’ll tell Mother.”

Ruth, who had been trying to climb over the back of the seat, sat down, not so much to please her brother as because she saw Mr. Horton coming.

“Now we’re off,” he said, getting in. “I’m to take you two Bakers down to your father’s office after we’ve been to the apartment. I hear you’ve been wearing out your sandals at a shocking rate.”

“And Father’s going to get us new ones,” guessed Nelson.

“Right,” responded Mr. Horton. “He’s a pretty nice father to have.”

CHAPTER IV
HELPING HERE AND THERE

Daddy and Sunny Boy found Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson very glad to see them. Aunt Bessie was packing, Miss Martinson washing some cut glass to be put away, and Harriet in the kitchen, as usual, was making something good to eat.

“Don’t you want to stay with me, lambie?” Aunt Bessie asked Sunny. “You may play the piano-player all day, if you like. And sleep to-night on the funny couch that opens when you press a button, and Daddy and Mother and the car will come and get us in the morning. Will you?”

Sunny Boy looked at Daddy.

“I guess we’d better hurry back,” he said politely. He caught hold of his father’s hand and pulled him toward the door. “We have to do a lot of things while we’re waiting for to-morrow,” he explained.

Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson laughed.

“Tell Mother, then, Busy Bee,” said Aunt Bessie blowing him a kiss, “not to make egg sandwiches, because Harriet has two dozen of them. And we’ll see you bright and early in the morning.”

Next, Ruth and Nelson Baker were left at their father’s office down town in a big gray building, and then Daddy and Sunny Boy drove home and went in to see what they could do for Mother.

“Why do you wrap ’em in a cloth, Mother?” asked Sunny, leaning against the kitchen table and watching Mrs. Horton put a dozen sandwiches in a damp cloth.

“So they’ll keep fresh, dear,” she answered. “I’ll put them in the ice box this way and to-morrow morning they’ll be just as nice as they are now. Want to taste this?”

Sunny tasted the spoon she held out to him.

“It isn’t egg, is it?” he asked anxiously. “Aunt Bessie says not to make egg ones, ’cause Harriet did.”

Mrs. Horton laughed.

“It isn’t egg,” she assured him. “That was minced ham you tasted. I hope all sandwiches don’t taste alike to you, Sunny. Now let me see—it’s only half past ten. I think I’ll go up and put the bedrooms in order. Sunny Boy, if you’ll stay here and let the expressman in when he comes for the trunks, I’d like it very much. I want Daddy to tie up some packages for me.”

Sunny Boy, left alone in the kitchen, inspected the three boxes open on the table. Sandwiches filled one, another was evidently for fruit, since oranges were already in it, and the third was for cake. Harriet’s cake, wrapped in waxed paper, filled half of it.

“Mother said I could do that. I s’pose I wasn’t here,” thought Sunny Boy. “I want to help fix the lunch.”

He sat down to think on the chair that obligingly turned into a step-ladder if you knew how to twist it. Presently he carried the chair over to the kitchen closet and stood up on it to look over the shelves. Very likely his mother, with so much to do, might forget the most necessary thing. He poked around among the boxes, opened several and smelled the contents. Finally one seemed to please him very much, and he scrambled down and went back to the lunch boxes.

“There!” He tucked his find in neatly under the sandwiches. “P’rhaps they’ll be s’prised. They can—”

“Sunny! Sunny Boy, please bring me the ball of cord in the wall pocket,” called Mother.

No sooner had he run upstairs with the cord than the doorbell rang and down he came to let the expressman in. So it was no wonder that he forgot what he had tucked into the box and never thought of it again.

After the trunks had been carried out, Mrs. Horton said it was time to get lunch, and both Daddy and Sunny helped her and with the dishes afterward. Then Daddy had to go down town, and though Sunny begged to be allowed to go with him in the car, it was decided that he had better stay with Mother.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and see your toys?” Mrs. Horton suggested. “I don’t believe you’ve paid them any attention since you came home. Daddy opened all the windows on the third floor this morning, so it must be nice and cool.”

“Will you come up too?” asked Sunny Boy. “It’s so—so still, Mother.”

The house was still, as houses often seem when they have not been lived in for weeks.

Upstairs Sunny Boy found his toys exactly as he had left them

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“I’ll come up and start the clock on the playroom shelf,” said Mrs. Horton briskly. “And you might get out your kiddie car. I saw Nelson with his this morning.”

Upstairs Sunny Boy found his toys exactly as he had left them. The Teddy Bear sat on the kiddie car, his forepaws resting patiently on the steering bar. The drum was hanging on its nail, and the train of cars was still jumbled together from the last glorious wreck.

“See, here’s where you mended the drum,” said Sunny Boy, showing Mother the neatly pasted tear. “I’d like to see if it is all right. Would you mind if I drummed ve-ry softly, Mother?”

Mrs. Horton was willing.

“Rub-a-dub, dub!” went the drum-sticks merrily. “Rub-a-dub, dub!” the drummer stopped suddenly.

“Nelson has a new game, Mother,” announced Sunny Boy. “He stands up paper soldiers—no, I guess they’re pasteboard soldiers——and has a little gun that shoots marbles at them. The drum made me think of the soldiers.”

“Did you play the game with Nelson, Sunny?”

“No’m, not yet. He said I might, though. But I’d like a soldier game of my own. How can I shoot at my soldiers, Mother?”

“That’s easy,” said Daddy from the doorway. He had come in and no one had heard him. “Stand your soldiers up in a row, Sunny Boy, and roll marbles at them. Olive, will you come down and help me find that old fishing tackle?”

Left alone, Sunny Boy got all his paper soldiers out and stood them up in two long rows.

“Nelson gives the enemy the first shot,” he said to himself. “He thinks that’s polite. So I’ll let the enemy roll first.”

A white marble rolled over the rug and knocked a corporal and two privates flat. Quick as a flash the other side fired, and a black marble bowled over three of the enemy.

Between firing, the drum, tied round the Teddy Bear’s neck for the sake of convenience, was heard in a lively tattoo.

“That’s the signals,” announced Sunny Boy to the hobby horse that, as Daddy often said, “looked as though he smelled gunpowder.” “Three beats means to advance. That’s the way they did when Grandpa went to war.”

“Bang!” another enemy went down, carried away by a green glass marble.

“I wish Nelson was here,” said Sunny Boy earnestly. “Two sides could fire at once then.”

Still, he managed to have a pretty good time without Nelson, and when Daddy called him down to supper he put the soldiers back in their box reluctantly.

“Which side won?” smiled Mrs. Horton at the table.

“Well, you see,” explained Sunny Boy carefully, “neither really won, Mother.”

“I thought one side always won,” said Mother humbly.

“My, no!” Sunny assured her. “When Daddy called me there were ever so many soldiers alive yet. The am—am—”

“Ammunition?”

“Yes’m, the amm’nition gave out.”

“But we used to use our marbles over and over,” said Mr. Horton. “A bag of marbles ought to furnish enough shots for an army twice the size of yours.”

Sunny Boy attempted to make it all clear.

“I did shoot ’em over and over,” he said patiently. “Only after a while they were all under the bookcase.”

Mr. Horton laughed.

“I’ll get them out for you with a long pole to-morrow,” he promised.

After supper they sat out on the front steps for an hour or so and talked to the Bakers, who were also sitting out on their steps. And then it was bedtime for those who were going to take a trip the next day.

“Are you coming every night, Daddy?” Sunny Boy asked, as they climbed the stairs on their way to bed.

“Can’t make it every night,” was the answer. “But I’ll be down every Saturday afternoon and spend Sunday with you. And if I can take a Friday off now and then, I will.”

Sunny Boy, after he was in bed, was perfectly sure that he couldn’t go to sleep.

“I keep thinking about the ocean,” he explained to Daddy, who was hunting for something in the closet in his room. “What you looking for, Daddy? Can we go fishing in the ocean?”

“We can’t if you don’t go to sleep, we can’t even start for the ocean,” said Mr. Horton. “I’m looking for my old golf cap. You go to sleep and I’ll find it.”

“I know where it is.” Sunny got out of bed and pattered across the floor to his toy box. “I thought maybe you didn’t want it any more, and I made believe it was a horse blanket for my gray horse.”

Sure enough, the gray horse had the golf cap neatly pinned about him.

“Well, he won’t take cold without it in summer,” said Mr. Horton cheerfully. “And I thought I’d like to wear the cap while driving the car to-morrow. Sunny, aren’t you going to sleep at all to-night?”

“I don’t feel sleepy,” complained Sunny, climbing into bed and settling the covers again. “Oh, Daddy, I forgot the woolly dog.”

Mr. Horton brought him the woolly dog, kissed him good-night, and put out the light.

“Daddy?”

The door into Daddy and Mother’s room opened a crack.

“Go to sleep,” said Mother severely.

“But, Mother, I just have to ask Daddy one question. Then I will go to sleep—honest.”

So Daddy came in again and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Daddy—” Sunny sat up in bed so that he could see him better, for the light from the street lamp shone across the room. “Daddy, does a crab bite?”

“It does,” said Mr. Horton. “I’ll take you crabbing and you’ll see how it does it. And now—”

“Now I’m going to sleep,” said Sunny hastily.

He just closed his eyes for a second and turned over in a more comfortable position. And then—

“All aboard for Nestle Cove!” There stood Daddy in the middle of his room, calling to him. The sun was shining, and, yes, it was morning!

“What do you know about that!” said the bewildered Sunny Boy. “I wasn’t going to sleep that minute.”

“But you did. And in an hour we’re to start,” Mr. Horton told him. “Mother has already gone downstairs. We’ll have to hustle, for we have to go get Aunt Bessie and Miss Betty and Harriet, you know. Let’s see who can get dressed first!”

CHAPTER V
SUNNY BOY’S SURPRISE

Daddy wasn’t dressed first because he stopped to help Sunny Boy, who had lost one shoe and simply couldn’t find it! Finally Sunny discovered it under the bed, and he had it on and laced and the other shoe done, too, before Daddy was ready. Then they raced downstairs, and both tried to kiss Mother at once.

“You crazy boys!” she said, laughing. “I suppose you’ll be too excited to eat breakfast. Hurry! Sunny Boy! Why, how you do act! Come now, I’m going to put the eggs on to boil. Sit down and eat your fruit, and stop bothering me.”

Sunny could have skipped breakfast without a murmur. Indeed, he suggested that they shouldn’t waste time doing the same old thing they did every day; he wasn’t hungry, so why not start out right away?

“Well, if you don’t want to eat, I do,” said Daddy. “You wouldn’t want me to faint away from hunger while I was driving the car, would you? I thought not. And if you have your eye on those lunch boxes Mother has for us, you’d better eat breakfast just the same. I might eat all the lunch up and then you’d be sorry you missed this buttered toast.”

So Sunny Boy did his best to eat, and he really managed pretty well.

After breakfast there was a great scurrying about. Mother washed the dishes, Daddy dried them, and Sunny put them away. All the food that was left in the house was put into a little basket and left with Mrs. Baker for the washerwoman who came to wash for her every Wednesday. She was a tall colored woman, and Sunny knew her. They often talked over the fence.

“I have seven childern,” she used to say. “And I keeps thirteen hens and one rooster. I kin use every scrap of food, yes’m. Don’t you ever throw away nothing that can be et.”

So Mrs. Horton was always careful to set aside all the left-overs she couldn’t use for Molly.

“Now while Daddy is fastening the windows and locking up, we’ll be putting on our new linen dusters,” said Mrs. Horton. “Let me see, have we forgotten anything? The trunks went yesterday, there are the two suitcases—No, Son, don’t lift them, Daddy will carry them down—the lunch boxes are on the hall table. Yes, Harry?”

Mr. Horton on the third floor was calling her.

“Olive, there’s a fly in this room—he’ll starve to death this summer. Send Sunny Boy up with the fly-batter, quick.”

Mrs. Horton laughed.

“Daddy’s remembering something I did ever so long ago,” she told Sunny Boy. “What was it? Oh, I haven’t time to tell you now. I will, after we’ve started. Run along up with the fly-batter, precious, and tell Daddy please to hurry.”

Mr. Horton killed the fly and carried down the suitcases and took them and the lunch boxes out to the car at the curb. The boy who worked for Mr. Taggart had brought the automobile around soon after breakfast. Mother and Daddy had on long brown linen coats, and Sunny Boy had one, too, made exactly like Daddy’s. He was very proud of that new coat.

Then it was time to lock the front door and really start.

“It does take so long to go,” sighed Sunny Boy, as he stood waiting with Mother on the front steps while Daddy made sure that the door was tightly fastened.

“But we want our house to be all here when we come back,” Mother reminded him. “Never mind, we’re going this minute. There are Nelson and Ruth to say good-by to you, dear.”

Nelson and Ruth came down to the car and watched till every one was safely in.

“Good-by!” they called, as Mr. Horton started. “Good-by, Sunny! Have a good time! Good-by!”