“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.