Sunny Boy in the Big City Part 7

"But, precious, what would Daddy say? He'll want to see you. And there will be many other times for you to come over and visit the toys.

Besides, think, Sunny--suppose he wanted to take you riding on the Fifth Avenue bus?"

That settled it. Sunny Boy was ready to go immediately. Anyway, he realized that he had a queer feeling he couldn't just name, but he suspected that maybe he was hungry.

They found Mr. Horton waiting for them in their room, and Mrs. Horton had so much to tell him that Sunny Boy had to wait his chance to ask a most important question.

"Daddy," he began when his father finished telling the waiter what to bring, and after they were in the dining room and seated at the table, "Daddy, do you think p'haps we could go riding on the bus?"

Mr. Horton smiled.

"Well, I'll tell you," he said, glancing at his watch. "Mother wants to lie down and rest a bit this afternoon and I have to meet some men within an hour. But if you are a good boy, I'll take you when I come back. That will be about three o'clock. How'll that do?"

Sunny Boy thought that would be very nice, and he ate his luncheon contentedly. Afterward he and Mother went upstairs, and Daddy had to go and keep his appointment.

"Now you see how much company we are for each other," said Mother, as she changed her dress and put on a pretty blue dressing gown. "With such a busy Daddy, wouldn't we be lonesome here in New York all alone?"

Sunny Boy nodded solemnly.

"Could I paint pictures?" he asked hopefully.

"Of course. You'll find your paint box and a pad of paper in that grey box in the trunk tray. Mother's going to lie down just a second. Pull the little table over to the light, dear, and you'll have a nice, quiet time," directed Mrs. Horton.

Sunny Boy dragged the table over nearer to the window, found his water color paints and the paper and set to work to paint a picture. He talked a steady stream to Mother at first but, as he grew interested in his work, he forgot to talk.

"There now!" he said softly, when he had finished three pictures. "I think they're good. I'll show 'em to Mother."

But Mother was fast asleep. Sunny Boy tiptoed carefully around the bed, but she did not wake up.

"I don't want to paint any more," decided Sunny Boy. "What'll I do?"

He remembered the bell-boy they had seen first the night before. He would go and visit him.

Sunny Boy opened the door into the corridor carefully, so as not to disturb Mother, and closed it carefully behind him. The halls were lighted, though it was daytime, and the thick carpet was so soft that Sunny couldn't hear the noise of his own feet.

"Where 'bouts," he speculated aloud, "do they have the stairs in this house?"

He hunted for several minutes, but no stairs could he find. Then he decided to go back to Mother, and he couldn't find the room! He had made so many turnings in the halls that he was hopelessly lost.

"Oh, dear!" sighed poor Sunny Boy. "New York is such a big place!"

A light down the corridor attracted his attention now. The elevator, of course! Why hadn't he thought of that? He would find the bell-boy downstairs. He remembered that was where he had seen him at breakfast time.

The elevator boy took him downstairs without asking any questions and let him off at the first floor.

"This looks somehow different," puzzled Sunny Boy, standing where the elevator left him.

He didn't know it, but it was another elevator, in a different part of the building from the one his father and mother took down to the dining room. Sunny Boy had never been downstairs alone, and he felt decidedly shy.

"h.e.l.lo, kid, what you lost?" asked one of the bell boys, swinging past him.

"Nothing," murmured Sunny Boy.

"Are you lost, dear?" asked a lady, stopping on her way to the elevator. She was old and lame and walked with a cane. A maid, with a curly black dog under her arm, walked beside her.

Sunny shook his head. How could he be lost with a mother in the same building with him? Of course he wasn't lost!

He sat down in a leather chair to consider. He didn't know the name of the bell boy he wanted to see, and at any minute his father might come back and want to take him for a ride on the bus. Sunny Boy made up his mind that he would try to find his room and look for the bell boy another time. He waited till a friendly-looking man came hurrying by where he sat.

"Please," he stuttered nervously, "how do you find--"

"Ask the clerk at the desk!" snapped the man, who wasn't cross, but only in a hurry to make a train.

Sunny Boy looked about for the desk.

"Go 'round there," directed the elevator boy when he ventured to ask him. Then he clashed his door shut with a bang and went sailing up in his little car.

Sunny obediently wandered around a turn in the corridor. He saw only a counter, but he guessed that to be the desk. He remembered it was where his father had gone to arrange for their rooms the night before.

"Please," he began, standing on tiptoes and grasping the edge of the counter with both hands. "Please, where is our room?"

"Eh, what?" demanded the startled clerk, bending down to see the small person speaking to him. "Your room? Have you lost your key?"

"Haven't any key," explained Sunny Boy gravely. "I came out, and when I went to go back I couldn't find our door."

"All right, we'll fix you up," promised the clerk. "Jack, lift this young man up so I won't have to strain my voice."

A bell-boy lifted Sunny to the counter, and he sat there comfortably, sure that the clerk would solve his troubles for him.

"What floor are you on?" asked the clerk capably.

"I don't know," confessed Sunny Boy.

"Well, then, give us your name."

"Sunny Boy," announced Sunny cheerfully.

The clerk laughed, and the bell-boys standing about snickered.

"No Sunny Boy registered," announced the clerk, running his finger down the register, where hotel guests write their names. "Haven't you any other name you use when you're traveling around?"

"Oh, no," insisted Sunny Boy. "Daddy and Mother always call me that--just Sunny Boy."

"But you have to have a regular name," protested the clerk. "When you go to school--Oh, you don't go to school! Well, what is Daddy's name?

Your last name must be the same as his."

Then Sunny Boy understood.

"Daddy's name is Harry Horton, and I am named for Grandpa, Arthur Bradford Horton," he announced rapidly. "An' we live in Centronia."