“No, dear. But we will give it to the conductor and he will see that it is mailed at the next station where we stop. You print on one side of the sheet, and I will write a little message on the other.”
So, taking great pains and holding the pencil very tightly because the motion of the train made it wobble in his fingers, Sunny Boy printed this:
| DEER DADDY: I LOV YOU. WE ARE HAVING A NICE TIME ON THE TRANE. I AM TAKING CARE OF MOTHER. YOUR LOVING SUN, SUNNY BOY. |
Then Mother wrote her note, and they folded it up and sealed the letter and Sunny gave it to the conductor when he next came through.
After that he drew pictures and colored them with the crayons and nibbled at his chocolate and modeled dogs and cats and horses with the wax. He opened the cracker boxes, too, and played Noah’s ark with them. The children down the aisle watched him and nudged each other. Their mother would not let them out into the aisle, or very likely they would have come closer to see what that boy was doing with so many nice things.
“I’d like, Mother,” announced Sunny Boy suddenly, “to pass my crackers to the little boy with the green tie—he looks like Nelson Baker. Would that be all right?”
“Why, of course,” agreed Mrs. Horton. “Ask their mother if she is willing for them to have some, and give some to each child, dear. And don’t stay too long, because I shall miss you.”
Sunny Boy went down the aisle to the seats where the children were. The lolly-pops had disappeared long ago, and so had the picnic sandwiches. They were all stickier than ever, were those children. The heavy baby was asleep in his mother’s lap, and she smiled when Sunny asked her if she were willing he should pass his crackers.
“Thank you, they’d like ’em first-rate,” she said, speaking low so as not to wake the baby. “Mamie, Ellen, Jamie, Fred, George—say thank you, and don’t grab.”
Sunny Boy stayed a little while, talking to them all, and they told him they were going to another state far away. They would be all night on the train. Sunny Boy was a bit disappointed that he must get off at Cloverways, the nearest station to Grandpa’s farm, for he had never stayed all night on a train in his life. He hurried back to Mother to tell her of the fortunate family who were to spend the night on the train.