"The rest of you get back," he commanded his family sternly. "Where's Ma? This kid's lost, and if you don't want him crying again, keep away till Ma's had a chance to tell him what's what."
Then from out another room stepped a large woman with a great kind red face. She was drying her hands on her apron, and she had evidently been washing, for her purple wrapper was splashed with soap-suds. But her voice went right to Sunny's heart.
"Lost, is it?" she said tenderly. "Saints above, what a baby to be out alone in this city! An' his poor mother, the saints pity her she'll be that wild. There, there, dearie, you're all right. A bit of supper's what you're needin'. And then 'tis Timmie himself who shall be taking ye home."
She gathered Sunny Boy into her capacious lap and crooned over him in the deep rich voice that her own six children knew and loved without realizing its charm.
"'Tis a cruel city to the babies," she sighed, smoothing Sunny Boy's hair with a touch as gentle as that of his own mother's. "But your poor mother—the saints help her. Timmie, ye must not be waiting a minute. Come, Theresa, give him a sup of stew. We must be taking him home before the heart of the mother is broke entirely."
Tim, who had been noisily washing at the sink, was frowning into the cracked mirror above it as he tried to part his hair exactly in the center.
"I want to telephone first," he explained. "He's after giving me such a crazy name—Sunny Boy, I've doped it out that he belongs at the McAlpin Hotel, but there's no reason why I should make a fool of myself by taking him 'way down there and then being told that no child is lost from there."
A pretty, dark-haired girl, Sunny Boy called her a young lady in his mind, was stirring something at the stove. She wore a pink blouse and was smiling.
"I'll bring him some stew over there, Ma," she suggested. "The children have mussed up the table pretty well, and they'd take his appetite away with their eyes. Can't you stand back a bit?" she demanded of the four children, three little boys and a girl, who stood in a ring about Sunny Boy and their mother, gazing fixedly at the stranger.
"I'll eat first, I guess," decided Timmie. "I didn't get me a crumb of lunch, and after I've told his folks he's safe they'll be wanting to see him the next minute. Just give me a taste of the stew on some bread, Theresa."