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?”