et's go away up front, Daddy, right up near the gate, so's I can see everything," suggested Sunny Boy eagerly, as he and Mother and Daddy entered the Twenty-third Street ferry house.

"All right. But let me get the tickets," said Mr. Horton, feeling in his pocket for change.

Sunny Boy was so short that he walked under the turnstile instead of through it, and the ticket man laughed when he saw him do it.

"Look out one of the sea gulls doesn't take you for a bite of breakfast," he called jokingly after him.

"Huh," Sunny Boy said resentfully to Mother, "I'm not so little. I know lots of children littler than I am. Wonder what he'd say if he saw Lottie Saunders going through his gate."

Lottie Saunders was a little friend of Sunny Boy's at home. She was not quite three years old.

There was a crowd of people waiting to get on the ferryboat and for a few minutes the Hortons had to stand at the closed door while the people on the boat walked off. There were a great many automobiles and horses and wagons and trucks coming off, too, and the drivers did a deal of shouting.

"Everybody's in a hurry," observed Sunny Boy, when the door was at last slid back and the crowd started to jostle its way on board.

Crowds are always in a hurry, if you have noticed it. They run and push and scramble to get somewhere, and then, when they are there, they sit down and rest or stand about contentedly, quite as though they did not know what hurrying meant.

"What do they do with the ropes?" asked Sunny Boy, as they went down the inclined plank and stepped on the ferryboat deck.

"They're what hold the boat in the slip," explained Mr. Horton. "If we stay on this back deck till the boat moves, you'll see the men take out those great hooks and wind the ropes on those wheels. Do you want to see them do it?"

Sunny Boy did, of course, and he waited till the gates were closed and the ropes loosened. Then two men, one on either side of the wharf, or slip, as they call the docks built for this kind of boat, gave a large spiked wheel one long, powerful turn, and it spun round rapidly, coiling up the ropes.

"Now we'll go up to the front," announced Mr. Horton, "and see what ails that noisy little tugboat we hear."

But Sunny Boy had made a discovery.

"Oh, Daddy!" he shouted. "There's a top! Let's go up!"

Mrs. Horton laughed.

"I'm sure Sunny will be an aviator when he grows up," she declared, smiling at her little boy. "He always wants to get as near to the sky as he can."

Sunny Boy was eager to climb the stairs to the second deck of the ferryboat, and he promised to help Mother up the stairs. So they went into the wide, pleasant cabin and up the broad staircase and came out on the sunny deck. There was a roof over it, and a cabin where people who did not like so much fresh air might sit, but Sunny Boy, of course, wanted to stand by the railing, and since it was a pleasant day, so did almost every one else.

"See the birds!" exclaimed Mrs. Horton, to whom a ferry trip was new too. "What do you suppose they find to eat?"

The gulls were flying gracefully above the water, sometimes coming close to the boat and now and then one would make a sudden dash down to the water, just dip his head in it and skim it with his wings, then soar up into the air again.

"I suppose they find bits of fruit and other refuse they can eat," replied Mr. Horton.

"That boat is going to run into the little flat one," said Sunny Boy positively, pointing an excited little forefinger at a fussy little tugboat making straight for a lazily floating barge loaded with coal.

"You watch," counseled Mr. Horton. "You can not see the rope because it is in the water, but that other tug up ahead is towing the barge. She'll have it out of the way before the other boat gets there."

And the towing tug did just that, apparently without hurrying, and before the noisy tugboat reached the coal barge it drifted safely out of the way.

"Now you can see where we are going in," said Mr. Horton, pointing out a dark opening just ahead of them.

The slips were made like stalls, with piling driven down on either side, and beams nailed across them. As the ferryboat turned into her slip she bumped smartly against the sides of the slip two or three times. It swayed, and Sunny Boy thought that there had been an accident.

"Oh, that often happens," his father assured them, as they stood a little to one side watching the people streaming off. "Sometimes, when it is very foggy, the boats have great difficulty in getting in, and sometimes an unusually high tide makes it hard for them, too."

The Hortons did not get off the ferryboat, and it was not long before more people were crowding on the decks again.

"Are they the same ones?" asked Sunny, puzzled.

"My no," answered Daddy quickly. "There are large cities on this side of the river, and people go back and forth between New York and New Jersey all day long. But I thought we were taking this trip because you wanted to see the horses enjoying a boat ride. Don't you want to go downstairs and look around?"

Sunny Boy said he did, and they went down.

"He looks like one of Grandpa's horses," said Sunny Boy, indicating a bay horse attached to a light delivery wagon. "Do you suppose he likes to go on a boat, Mother?"

"Sure he does," replied the driver, who had overheard. "He likes to go anywhere he doesn't have to use his own feet. That's what makes him so fat."

Sunny Boy laughed, and a colored man driving a team of horses harnessed to a wagon-load of empty barrels, rolled his eyes in delight.

"You've said it," he cackled joyously. "Dat horse sure look like he wished he was a automobile."

As the ferryboat drew near the New York side, Sunny Boy saw the wonderful "sky line" which is famous all over the world—the outline made by the tall buildings against the sky. Even a little boy could appreciate the picture the tall skyscrapers made, some buildings white, some gray, with here and there a gleaming gold dome against the fleecy September clouds.

"What makes the boat go?" Sunny Boy thought to ask, as the gates were opened and they were moving off with the crowd.

"Engines and steam," answered Mr. Horton. "And turn around and you'll see who steered us."

Sunny Boy turned and saw a white-bearded, blue-capped man in a small round pilot house above the deck. There was a wheel beside him which he turned as he wanted the boat to go.

"We've been sailing on the what is its name, Daddy?" asked Sunny, noticing for the first time large gold lettering below the pilot house which he guessed to be the name of the boat.

"The 'Lansdowne'," answered Mr. Horton. "And a nice old ferryboat she is. I don't know how you feel, Sunny, but I've had enough traveling for a few hours. Can't we have lunch down town, Olive?"

"And not go up to the hotel?" said Mrs. Horton. "Why, I'm willing. I know where I want to take Sunny Boy this afternoon, if you are going up to Yonkers to meet that buyer from Chicago."

"Where?" demanded Sunny Boy eagerly. "Where are we going, Mother?"

Mrs. Horton smiled mysteriously.

"Let it be a surprise," she suggested. "You're having so many good times, Sunny, that I'm afraid you'll find it hard to settle down and go to school when we are home again."

"School!" That made Sunny Boy jump. But just then Daddy hailed a street car, which they got on, and Sunny forgot everything else.

They found a clean, comfortable restaurant after a short ride on the street car, and Sunny Boy was quiet and good while Daddy looked over some papers and Mother read a letter from Aunt Bessie she had been carrying in her purse since breakfast time that morning.

"Bessie says," Mrs. Horton announced, "that some boy threw a ball through the front window and she's had it fixed. And Ruth and Nelson Baker send their love to you, Sunny. This is a very short letter because Aunt Bessie wants us to try to match the sample of silk she encloses and she hurried the letter to catch the next mail."

"I wonder if Nelson got the postal I sent him?" speculated Sunny Boy. "It was a picture of Central Park."

"He probably received it, and you'll see it in Ruth's album when you get home," said Mrs. Horton. "And now, Daddy, how about going uptown?"

Sunny Boy was excited, and wouldn't you be, if you were going somewhere you didn't know about, to see something no one had told you you would see? He wondered if they could be going to another menagerie, or if they were going shopping again.

"Wait and see," was all Mrs. Horton would answer, when he teased her.

They took the surface car, and after a few blocks Mr. Horton left them to get a train for Yonkers, which is a suburb of New York. Sunny Boy and his mother continued some half dozen blocks further and then left the car. They walked over a busy street, and suddenly Mrs. Horton stopped in front of a building with many entrances, and people crowding into them all.

"I know!" shouted Sunny Boy, as he saw a red and yellow poster. "It's a theater!"

"Yes, it is," admitted Mrs. Horton smiling. "I read in the paper last night that there was a children's matinee to-day, and Daddy 'phoned downstairs after you were asleep and bought our tickets. Can you tell what the play is, dear, from the pictures? See, here is a case of photographs."

Sunny Boy plunged his hands deep into his pockets, spread his feet sturdily apart, and studied the pictures seriously.

"There's a girl," he murmured aloud. "An' an old lady—she's a witch, I guess. Do I know it, Mother?"

"I've read you the story," said Mrs. Horton. "Don't you remember Snow White and the dwarfs?"

Sunny Boy remembered the story, and he would have liked to look at the photographs again, but Mrs. Horton thought it was time to go in and find their seats. An usher, a pretty girl, took them easily and quickly to the right row, and Sunny Boy found himself seated next to an elderly lady, with two children, a boy and a girl, evidently her grandchildren, in two seats directly in front of her.

"Why don't they sit next to her?" Sunny Boy whispered, watching the lady standing up to smooth out the little girl's hair-ribbon.

"They probably couldn't get three seats together," explained Mrs. Horton. "Better let me hold your hat, precious; you might drop it and some one would walk on it."

The orchestra was playing a gay bit of music, and Sunny's feet kept time to it merrily. He had been to the theater once or twice at home, generally at Christmas time, but this was decidedly different.

"I like New York," he confided to Mother.

The grandmotherly lady smiled.

"So you don't live here?" she asked pleasantly. "I have lived here so many years that no other place would seem like home. But Louise and David, my grandchildren, are, like you, visitors. They come from Georgia."

Mrs. Horton leaned forward.

"We're from Centronia," she volunteered, for Sunny Boy was too shy to do more than smile at the two children who had turned around when they heard their names spoken, and now grinned at him politely over the backs of their seats. "I don't believe Sunny Boy knows where Georgia is—do you, dear?"

"It's down South," said the little girl. "We slept on the train. And David was sick. I wasn't. Grandmother said he prob'ly ate too much ice-cream for his supper."

"Sh!" cautioned their grandmother. "The curtain's going up in a minute."

The lights went out, the music stopped, and Sunny Boy snuggled close to Mother. Slowly, oh, very slowly, the big blue curtain began to roll up, and the play began.

"Such a mean old stepmother," scolded Sunny Boy, at the end of the first act. "Poor little Snow White! I hope they never find out where she went when she ran away."

The orchestra played again, and then stopped as the lights were turned off for the second act. Sunny Boy gave a nervous little squeak as the curtain rose and he saw the dwarfs in their house.