This was where the little fellow belonged, and how to return him to his home.
Street and number he knew naught about. What was his name? "Bonny Laddie." His father's name? "Oh, John." What kind of work did his father do? "Oh, nothing; father is sick." He had no clear ideas associated with any calling except with Nickie's, as they found by questioning.
That Nickie peddled papers, and that Bonny would when he was bigger, he was very positive about.
"Well, then," suggested the host, "we'll try the newsboys. We'll just have Laddie standing by the door when they go past, and maybe he can pick out this brother of his from the lot."
The company sat for a long time round the tables. Bonny kept still, listening and wondering, though he understood little of the speeches and the toasts. Once all eyes were again turned toward Bonny.
A gentleman rose and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to propose the health of the first guest of the Metropolis Hotel, who, though uninvited, has given the patriarch of this palace the privilege of entertaining an angel unawares."
But Bonny answered nothing to the looks bent upon him. With one hand full of nuts and bonbons, the other in his heavy pocket, and a face of perfect peace, the little guest of the Metropolis Hotel lay fast asleep in his chair.
He was rosily awake again by the time the newsboys were crying their evening papers.
"Come and watch for Nickie," coaxed the host; and with Bonny's small, warm hand in his own he stepped out on the broad granite slab in front of the hotel.
"That isn't Nickie--nor that--nor that," Bonny kept saying at first. "Oh, Nickie!" he shouted, suddenly; and plunging forth into the street, tumbled against a small boy in big trousers and an overgrown cap, whose bundle of papers looked much fatter than he did.
Astonished Nickie, who had not been home since morning, could scarcely believe his senses at first, as he stared at his little brother through the dusk, the fog, and the rain-drops that now began to fall. However, he could answer all the questions that Laddie had been unable to satisfy, and in a very short interval a carriage had been summoned, the host had stowed away in it a capacious basket hastily filled with choice remnants from the feast, and Bonny Laddie was rolling toward his home in charge of the gentle stranger lady and her husband.