CHAPTER XTHE MARSHMALLOW ROAST
“Tellme now,” urged Sunny Boy, sitting down on the floor to put on clean white socks. “Is Daddy coming?”
“I wish he were,” said Mrs. Horton quickly. “No, precious, we’ll have to wait till Saturday for that. This is Aunt Bessie’s plan, and we’ll let her explain it. There! slip on the tan sailor suit and I’ll tie your tie, and then we shall be ready.”
Sunny Boy, looking as shining and neat as a brand new pin, rushed ahead of Mother to find Aunt Bessie. She was in the porch swing, and just as he reached her, Harriet rang the gong for supper.
“Hurry up, Auntie,” implored Sunny. “Mother says we are going to have fun to-night.What is it? May I go? Is Harriet going?”
Aunt Bessie smiled.
“Of course you are going,” she assured him. “Didn’t you take a nap so you could go to this party? We’re going to build a fire down on the beach and toast marshmallows. What do you think of that?”
Sunny thought it sounded delightful.
“But Harriet’s toaster is broken,” he said doubtfully. “She can’t use it, can she, Mother? Did you buy a new one, Auntie?”
“You wait till you see how we’ll do it,” answered Aunt Bessie gaily. “We’ll find a way. Harriet is going to the movies in town to-night, and we’ll toast our own marshmallows over our own fire. My goodness, Olive, I never thought of the fire! Can we find enough dry wood?”
Mrs. Horton was sure there would be enough wood on the beach.
“Maybe Queen will come,” suggested Sunny Boy, who had grown very fond of the wise, friendly dog. “I should think she’d be lonesome at night.”
“We’ll ask her to the marshmallow roast,” said Aunt Bessie kindly.
Soon after supper they all went down to the beach, Aunt Bessie carrying a box of marshmallows, and Sunny the safety matches. Mrs. Horton and Miss Martinson brought a rug to spread on the sand.
“Let’s go up a way,” suggested Aunt Bessie, as they reached the sand. “There’s a fine smooth stretch around that bend, and we can sit and watch the water till it is darker.”
They found a place where the sand was dry but not too powdery, and Mrs. Horton spread out the rug. For a little while no one spoke, and Sunny Boy, his elbow in Mother’s lap, was content to count the waves coming in and running back again as they did forever and forever.
“Now look,” whispered Mother presently.
Away out to sea, apparently, a silver disc was rising. They could see it grow larger and larger.
“It’s the moon,” said Sunny Boy.
“And now we’ll build our fire,” announced Aunt Bessie, rising. “I’ve had my eye on that driftwood over there for the last half hour. Sunny Boy and I will get it.”
Sunny Boy and Aunt Bessie carried over the wood, which proved to be light, dry pieces and was once, Aunt Bessie said, probably orange crates on some fruit steamer.
“Now we fold the paper under so,” said Auntie, when the wood was ready. “You may light it, Sunny Boy. Stand back, dear. There! isn’t that a splendid blaze? Oh, no, we don’t toast the marshmallows yet! We have to wait for the fire to burn down to red-hot coals. You watch.”
Sunny Boy watched.
“I think,” he said politely, “the fire’s going out.”
Aunt Bessie looked and laughed.
“I think it is, too,” she admitted. “Maybe we didn’t use enough paper.”
“Let me try,” said Mrs. Horton.
She folded more paper, arranged the wood, and touched a match to the pile. The flames shot up, and in a moment or so they heard the crackling that told them the wood had caught and would burn.
“Mother can do it,” said Sunny Boy proudly. “Where’s the pan, Aunt Bessie?”
“Oh, lambie, we don’t want a pan,” protested Aunt Bessie. “See these nice, clean sticks I’ve saved? Well, we put a marshmallow on the end, so—and hold it out to the blaze, so—and then when it begins to brown we eat it—so!” and Aunt Bessie held out a delicious, creamy brown marshmallow to the interested Sunny Boy.
“Now let me try,” said Sunny Boy.“And the first one shall be for Aunt Bessie, ’cause it’s her party.”
Sunny Boy put his marshmallow carefully on the pointed end of the stick, then held it out over the fire. But poor Sunny Boy held the candy too near the glowing coals, and it was burnt to a crisp.
“Oh!”
“Never mind, Sunny Boy,” said Mother. “The next one will be all right. We don’t often get anything just right the first time.”
And the next one was plump and brown, and Aunt Bessie said it tasted delicious.
“Where do you suppose Queen is?” asked Sunny Boy, toasting a particularly fat marshmallow for his mother. “Maybe the fire scares her.”
“No, I’ll tell you,” said Miss Martinson, pulling Sunny Boy back a little from the fire. “I think Queen must have gone home with some of the children to spend the night. She’s getting old, you know, and I dare saythe sand feels damp to her after the sun goes down.”
Whatever the reason, no Queen was seen by Sunny Boy that night. He saved two candies for the dog in case she did come, but at last he had to eat them himself.
They toasted marshmallows till all declared that not another one could they eat, and then they covered the fire with sand. Not for worlds would Sunny Boy have said a word about being sleepy, but he had yawned several times when he thought no one saw him, and he was secretly glad when Mother announced that they must go home.
“I like staying up,” he declared, trotting along beside her through the soft sand, while Aunt Bessie and Miss Martinson walked ahead. “If I took a nap every day could I always stay up?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be a good plan at all,” replied Mother seriously. “All the naps you might take wouldn’t make up for thesleep you lost. You’ll have years of nights to play and work in when you grow up, precious. Nights were made for little boys to sleep in so they’ll grow up big and strong.”
After they reached the bungalow, Mrs. Horton went in with Sunny and helped him get ready for bed. After she had gone again, he lay for a little while listening to the roar of the waves as they broke on the beach and watching the shadows the moonlight made in the room before he went to sleep.
“I have to go into town to do a bit of marketing,” Harriet informed him the next day when after breakfast he wandered out into her kitchen and proceeded to poke his yellow head into the pantry. “Sunny Boy, you know your mother doesn’t like to have you help yourself to food. What are you doing in there?”
“Just lookin’,” answered Sunny amiably.
“Well, stop it,” said Harriet, pouringcream into her coffee. Harriet was eating her breakfast. “As I said, I’m going to town, and if you want to go with me in the jitney—”
Sunny Boy bounced out of the pantry.
“Take me with you,” he begged.
“You go and ask your mother if she is willing,” replied Harriet. “I’m going right away without stopping to wash the dishes. And we have to hurry back because I want to wash windows this morning. Hurry, now.”
Sunny Boy hurried. Mother was willing, he reported in a few minutes, and he and Harriet started a quarter of an hour later. They caught a jitney without trouble, and ten minutes’ ride brought them to the town. Harriet brushed by all the interesting shops, and even the merry-go-round, and took Sunny to the butcher’s shop. He didn’t care about a butcher shop—he saw plenty of those at home.
“Let’s go on the merry-go-round,” he suggested, when Harriet had her package in the large bag she carried and was on the way to the grocer’s store. “And I haven’t had a soda for ever and ever so long, Harriet.”
“Well, Sunny Boy, I haven’t a minute,” explained Harriet kindly. “There’s all the work waiting for me at the house. But I suppose if you don’t get a ride on that contraption—If I take you for just one will you promise not to tease for another?”
Sunny Boy promised, and they had an all-too-short, thrilling, whirling ride, Sunny mounted on a camel and Harriet dizzily perched on a giraffe. Then they stopped in the grocer’s and bought some lettuce and had to hurry for a jitney, because they only ran every twenty minutes, and if you missed one it meant a long wait.
“What big clouds,” said Sunny Boy, kneeling on the seat to look out of the jitney window.
“They look like thunder clouds,” commented Harriet. “I shouldn’t be surprised if we had a storm this afternoon. 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.”