The boy turned sharply, and they saw that it was Joe Brown. A shabbier Joe Brown than he had been on the train, and with a pinched hungry look on his face that went to Mrs. Horton's heart.
"Did you find your aunt, Joe?" she asked kindly. "And do you like New York?"
Joe snatched off his cap awkwardly when Mrs. Horton spoke to him, and he tried to stuff it into his pocket now as he shuffled his feet and mumbled that he liked New York pretty well. Plainly he was not comfortable.
"Aunt Annabell moved away," he explained. "I went to the house, but Italians were living in it and they didn't know where she'd moved to. But I guess I can find her. Folks don't drop out of sight in New York."
"But where are you staying?" said Mrs. Horton. "What do you do? Can't I or Mr. Horton help you, Joe? A boy alone in a great city like this might need a friend, you know."
Joe Brown scuffled his feet uneasily.
"I'm all right," he insisted.
"Well, at least come and have some lunch with Sunny and me," invited Mrs. Horton. "Perhaps you can tell us some place to go? And then come up to the hotel with us this afternoon and we'll see if Mr. Horton can't find out something about your aunt."
Joe knew of a place where lunch could be had, and he and Mrs. Horton and Sunny Boy were soon seated at a white-topped little table eating sandwiches and milk. Joe ate as though he were half-starved, and Mrs. Horton pretended to be hungrier than she was so that he would not be afraid to eat all the sandwiches he wanted.
"Has Sunny seen the carrousel?" Joe demanded, when the ice-cream had been brought and Sunny was deep in the blissful employment of scooping spoonfuls out of the white mound before him.