Sunny

“ When Sunny has grown up a woman, she will know what a year this year 1870 has been, and understand how, many a time, when her mamma was walking along with her, holding her little hand and talking about all the pretty things they saw, she was thinking of other mothers and other children, who, instead of running merrily over sunshiny hillsides, were weeping over dead fathers, or dying miserably in burnt villages, or starving, day by day, in besieged cities. ”

“ The spring, as the inhabitants informed us, was ununusually late, and indeed the cold was excessive; as we ascended the mountains, the same clouds which rained on us in the vallies poured forth large flakes of snow thick and fast. The sun occasionally shone through these showers, and illuminated the magnificent ravines of the mountains, whose gigantic pines were some laden with snow, some wreathed round by the lines of scattered and lingering vapor; others darting their dark spires into the sunny sky, brilliantly clear and azure. ”

“ Spring succeeded the fogs and frosts of winter, sunny skies and warmer airs came again, bringing comfort to those who could buy artificial heat, so making gladness in cities, and a wonder of loveliness in country places, where Nature reigns supreme. ”

“ I don’t believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as there is now. Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they’re drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds—and smart fashionable clothes. ”

“ Not the sort of spring they give us in these miserable times, under this shameless government—a mixture of east wind, blizzard, snow, rain, slush, fog, frost, hail, sleet and thunder-storms—but a sunny, blue-sky'd, joyous spring, such as we used to have regularly every year when I was a young man, and things were different. ”

“ She sat or stood at the carriage window and watched the view. It was quite different from anything she had been used to. Sunny lives in a very pretty but rather level country, full of woods and lanes, and hedges and fields; but she had never seen a hill or a river, or indeed (except the Thames) any sort of water bigger than a horse-pond. Mamma had sometimes shown her pictures of mountains and lakes, but doubted if the child had taken it in, and was therefore quite surprised when she called out, all of a sudden, “There’s a mountain!” ”

“ The snows shall come before their sweet eyes open; but open they will at the very first touch of spring. We will gather a few, and let them wake up in saucers of clean water in our sunny south windows. ”

“ Sunny went to bed rather weary and forlorn, but she woke up, next morning, and ran in to papa and mamma, still in her nightgown, with her little bare feet pattering along the floor, looking as [76] bright as the sunshine itself. Which was very bright that day,—a great comfort, as there was a ten hours’ sea-voyage before the little woman, who had never been on board a steamboat, and never travelled so long at a time in all her life. She made a good breakfast to start with, sitting at table with a lot of grown-up people whose faces were as blithe as her own, and behaving very well, considering. ”

“ Sunny is going in a puff-puff to Scotland. And papa will take her in a boat, and she will catch a big salmon. Would you like to see Sunny catch a big salmon?” For it is the little girl’s firm conviction that to see Sunny doing anything must be the greatest possible pleasure to those about her,—as perhaps it is.
Well, the important day arrived. Her mamma was very busy, Little Sunshine helping her,—to “help mamma” being always her grand idea. ”

“ Sunny actually sat up to supper, which she had never done in all her life before,—supper by candle-light: a mouthful of fowl, and a good many mouthfuls of delicious cream, poured, with a tiny bit of jam in the middle of it, into her saucer. And she made a large piece of dry toast into “fishes,” and swam them in her mamma’s tea, and then fished them out with a teaspoon, and ate them up. ”

“ The wind blew, and the sea roared, as even mamma, who knew the place well, had seldom heard. Instead of tiny wavelets running after Sunny’s little feet, as had been promised her, there were huge “white horses” rising and falling in the middle of the river; while along the shore the waves kept pouring in, and dashing themselves in and out of the rocks, with force enough to knock any poor little girl down. Sunny could not go near them, and the wind was so high that her hat had to be tied on ”

“ If she grows up with her present capacity for enjoying herself, little Sunny will be a blessing wherever she goes, since happy-minded people always make others happy. Still, Nelly was welcome company, especially of afternoons.
[66] The days passed on very much alike. Before breakfast, Sunny always went a walk with her mamma, holding hands, and talking like two grown-up persons,—about the baa-lambs, and calves, and cows, which they met on their way along the hillside. It was a beautiful hillside, and everything looked so peaceful in the early morning. ”

“ And she let her clamber about as much as was practicable, up and down rocks, and over stone dikes, and in and out of burns, since, within certain limitations, little girls should be as active as little boys. And by degrees, Sunny, a strong, healthy, energetic child, began to follow the boys about everywhere. ”

“ Our street is next, Sunny. You pay the man and tell him to stop.”
Ellen and Ralph and Stephen, lined up in a little row, waited for Sunny at his top doorstep. They wanted him to come down and go in wading, they said.
“Your mother said it would be all right, ’cause my mother is on the beach. She has her knitting,” said Ellen. “Let’s hurry ’fore it gets any hotter.”
[Pg 142]
CHAPTER XI
SUNNY BOY TO THE RESCUE The sun was very hot on the beach, so hot that Mrs. Gray declared that she was fairly baked under her umbrella and that she did not see how the children stood the direct rays. ”

“ If she suspects every little innocent chorus girl of the town, what is she going to say to Sunny when that kid goes up before her in tights?"
It is extraordinary how we think of people we have not seen in years as they were when first we saw them. In the heat of argument, no one troubled to point out to Jinx that the Sunny who had come upon the tight rope that first night must have long since graduated from that reprehensible type of dress or rather undress. ”

“ Its bright, hard eye is blank and cold. Even the goldfish, swimming to the top of the honourable bowl, and picking the crumb so cunningly from her finger, lost their charm for her. Miss Spring Morning had long since been vanished with severe Japanese reproaches for his inhuman treatment of Sunny's first friends, the honourable mice, several of whose little bodies Sunny had confided to a grave she herself had dug, with tears that aroused the janitor gentleman's sympathy, so that he permitted the interment in the back yard. ”

“ There was besides Itchy, Count and Countess Taguchi, overfed canaries, who taught Sunny a new kind of whistle; Mr. and Mrs. Satsuma, goldfish who occupied an ornate glass and silver dish, fern and rock lined donated by Jinx, and Miss Spring Morning, a large Persian cat, whom Sunny named after her old friend of the teahouse of a Thousand Joys, but whose name should have been Mr. Spring Morning. ”

“ Never again would she hear that gentle voice, admonishing and teaching her; never again would she rest her tired head on her mother's knee and find rest and comfort from the sore trials of the day; for the training of the apprentice-geisha is harsh and spartan like. As Sunny lifted out her mother's sparkling robe, almost she seemed to see the delicate head above it. A sob broke from the heart of the girl, and throwing herself on the floor by the chest, she wept with her face in the silken folds. A moth fluttered out of one of the sleeves, and hung tremulously above the girl's head. ”

“ But I are promise to Jinx. I are promise that I will consider marry him some day if I do not marry some other man I wan' ask me also."
"Another man. Who——?"
Sunny's glance directed full upon him left nothing to the imagination. Jerry's heart began to thump in a manner that alarmed him.
"Jerry," said Sunny, "I going to wear Jinx's ring until that man also asking me. I wan him do so, bi-cause I are lig' him mos' bes' of all my frien'. I think——" She had both of her hands on his knees now, and was leaning up looking so wistfully into his face that he tried to avert his own gaze. ”

“ If trouble comes to her own life, to so exercise self-control that no trace of her inner distress must be reflected in her looks or conduct. She must, in fact, make a science of her profession. To laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who find a balm in tears—that is the work of the geisha.
Sunny, a product of the geisha house, and herself apprentice to the joy women of Japan, was of another race by blood, yet always there was to cling to her that intangible charm, that like a strange perfume bespeaks the geisha of Japan. ”

“ We ain't got far to walk. Steady now. We don't want no cop to say we're full, because we ain't."
Katy led the trembling Sunny along the dirty, dingy avenue to one of those melancholy side streets of the upper east side. They came to a house whose sad exterior proclaimed what was within. Here Katy applied her latch key, and in the dark and odorous halls they found their way up four flights of stairs. Katy's room was at the far end of a long bare hall, and its dimensions were little more than the shining kitchenette of the studio apartment. ”

“ And somehow there is lots going on, when Sunny Boy is around. Perhaps he helps push! In the first book of this new series he has the finest time ever, with his Grandpa out in the country. He learns a lot and he helps a lot, in his small way. Then he has a glorious visit to the seashore, but this is in the next story. And there are still more adventures in other books. You will like Sunny Boy.
GOOD STORIES FOR CHILDREN (From four to nine years old) THE KNEETIME ANIMAL STORIES By RICHARD BARNUM
In all nursery literature animals have played a conspicuous part ”

“ At least, I've been told so. Your father, Sunny, has been doggone nice about it—a real friend. You know there was a bunch of city hicks that thought it fun to laugh at the idea of a fat man holding down any public job, but I guess the fat fellow can put it over some of the other bunch."
"Ho! I should say that so."
"Look at President Taft," put in Katy warmly. "He weighs more'n you do, I'll bet."
"Give a fellow a chance," said Jinx bashfully. [pg 305] "If I keep on, I'll soon catch up with him."
"Sunny," said Katy in her ear, "I feel like Itchy. ”

“ Often they played poker till the small hours of the morning. Sunny would not fit into the atmosphere of smoke and disorder, though she was welcome to come, if she could stand the "gaff." Bobs' people lived in Virginia. His several sisters, Bobs was amusedly assured, would hardly put the girl from Japan at her ease.
Jinx, on whom Jerry now pinned a hopeful eye, blustered shamelessly, as he tried to explain his uncomfortable position in the world. When not at his club in New York, he lived with a sister, Mrs. Vanderlump, and her growing family in the Crawford mansion at Newport. ”

“ I pity any girl that has to go through life with that fathead."
"Ho! I are always lig' thad fat grow on Jinx. It look very good on him. I are told him so."
"Matter of taste of course," snarled Jerry, fascinated by the twinkling of that ring in spite of himself, and feeling at that moment an emotion that was dangerously like hatred for the girl he had done so much for.
"Monty and Bobs are also ask me marry wiz them." Sunny dimpled quite wickedly at this, but Jerry failed to see any humour in the matter. ”

“ And in summer and winter, from north, south, east, or west, the wind brings us news from the sea: the savor of salt, gray billows of cloud and fog, clear stark bright days following one another through a season. The southwest gales of summer beat down ripe grasses in the field and feather willow and poplar with silver; the great autumn gales go trumpeting through the land; the nor’easter sends surf thundering on the outer shore; and there are the soft moist winds that relax the high-wrought tension of humans, and melt the rigors of winter. ”

“ But any day the wind might come down from the north, keen and thick and white about the summits, and leave the flowers and the cony slide covered deep beneath a drift.
Spring, summer, and autumn are all one season, all crowded together—a kind of peak piercing for a few short weeks the long, bleak, unbroken land of winter here on the roof of the world. ”

“ In summer, the season in which we were there, the sky is clear, with but little rain: if fogs and mists are at any time driven in by the south wind, they are instantaneously dissipated, and at once it becomes serene and bright again. The sea is calm, not boisterous, and its waves are gentle. ”

“ Spring is lovely at home, with strips of melting snow on all the hills round the deep blue fjords, the last runs on ski when the snow is melting and the brooks are rushing down the mountain-side; when the sky is green and clear at night with large, bright golden stars, and the ski scrape and sing on the icy crust of the snow. ”

“ The snow is wet like your eyes at parting, cold as the promise of a winter dawn wet again as city-streets I must tread to make a living, the flask of wine pressed to my lips. On the winter landscape all I see is the ghost white of sheets, our sheets wrapped to keep breath warm the log cannisters of our bed a heady raft upon which to travel to burn up an ocean of delight. ”

“ The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds, then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.
In the morning there was a bright, warm sunrise, a breath of sweet, soft air, and unimaginable brightness and buoyancy, birds singing, squirrels barking, and all the dismal pangs banished. ”