The tables seemed so full of people that Bonny had to walk up the room to find a place. A queer hush fell on the clatter and the chatter. People dropped their forks. They watched this little figure with the sunny hair, the happy face, the shabby shoes, the tumbled check apron, that dragged after it the well-nigh forgotten red cape, and at last mounting into an empty chair, said, with a sigh of satisfaction, and in a very clear voice, "I want dinner, please."
Bonny glanced round him. He thought everybody looked pleased, and catching the eye of a lady who bent toward him, he smiled back a shy, friendly smile.
This lady was the first to speak to him. She crossed eagerly over and said, "May I sit beside you, dear? I knew a little boy once with yellow hair like yours."
Bonny never noticed that she had tears in her soft eyes now.
"I like your hair best," he answered, half timidly, half frankly. The lady's hair was very dark, and she wore in it a splendid yellow flower.
"But, please, I am so hungry! May I have dinner?"
Before the lady could answer, a stout gentleman came hurrying up.
"Well, well, let's see about this," he began, in a rollicking tone. "Shake hands, little stranger. So you came to my dinner, did you?"
Bonny dropped his head. He was rather afraid of the loud-voiced man; but the lady whom he was not afraid of said, re-assuringly, "This is the man who gives the dinner, little one; this is his house; he'll be very good to you, never fear."
So Bonny looked up then, and replied, simply, "I came; I was hungry, and I came."
The host cleared his throat, and said, heartily, while he patted Bonny's curls, "Well, I didn't expect you, that's a fact; but we'll give you just as good a dinner, for all that. A dinner?--I'll warrant you we will: and upon my word, ladies and gentlemen, I rather think the Metropolis Hotel is honored to have the chance."
Never, never had Bonny imagined such a dinner as he ate that day. The lady who sat by his side cut up the chicken, and helped him choose among the lavish dainties that the host kept insisting on having brought for him to taste.
Hungry? It seemed to Bonny that he never in this world could be hungry again.
His innocent heart ran over, and he told his new friend, the lady, all she asked him about his sick father, his tired mother, the little tenement that was like the kettle that all boiled away, and the big family that crammed it so full when gathered together. But one thing neither the lady, nor her husband, who filled Bonny's pocket with pennies, nor the host, could succeed in finding out from him.