CHAPTER VIIIA LETTER FROM DADDY
“My land of Goshen!”
Sunny Boy sat on the fence post waiting for the postman. He was great friends now with the postman who came to the farm, almost as great friends as with the cheerful, gray-uniformed letter-carrier in the city, the one who brought letters to the house with the shining numbers that Harriet faithfully polished.
This postman in the country did not wear a uniform, and he came in a little red automobile that one could hear chug-chugging half a mile away. He did not whistle either, as the city postman did, but he put the letters and parcels into a tin box nailedto a post; then he turned up a little tin flag to say that he had been there, and the farm folk came down to the end of the lane and got the mail. The country postman came only once a day, instead of the three times Sunny Boy was used to seeing the city postman, but that really made it more exciting.
“My land of Goshen!” said Sunny Boy again. He was rather proud of that expression, and used it as often as he could.
“I don’t think you ought to say that,” Araminta had reproved him the first time she heard him.
“But you say it,” argued Sunny Boy.
“Well, that’s no reason why you should,” retorted Araminta, who, like many grown-ups, did not always practice what she preached. “Anyway, I’m going to stop saying it when I’m fifteen.”
“Maybe I will, too,” promised Sunny Boy blithely. And that was the best Araminta could hope from him.
“My land—” began Sunny for the third time, but the red automobile of the postman came to a sliding stop beside the box, and fortunately interrupted him.
“Hello Blue Jeans!” called the postman, who found a new name for Sunny Boy every day. “How do you like farming now? Am I to give the mail to you, or put it in the box?”
This was an every day question. The postman pretended to be very much surprised when Sunny Boy said he would take the mail, and he always handed it out a piece at a time, so that Sunny never knew how much was coming.
“There’s two for your grandfather,” counted the postman, handing them to his small friend standing on the running board. “And that’s for your grandmother. Here’s the Cloverways’ weekly paper for the whole family. My, my, one—two—three—five seven letters, all for your mother. And abox, too. Is that all? Yep, guess that’s all to-day.”
Sunny Boy got down from the running board and the postman started his car slowly.
“Oh, Mr. Corntassel!” the postman called suddenly. “Here’s another. I declare, I must be getting old, or need glasses, or something. If there isn’t a letter addressed to you and I came within one of taking it back to the post-office with me!”
He gave Sunny Boy another letter, and this time drove off without stopping.
“My land of Goshen!” said Sunny Boy, who was using Araminta’s pet expression far more often than she did. “Such a heap of letters. Maybe mine’s from Daddy.”
He found Mrs. Horton in the porch swing, sewing. She had to kiss the seven new freckles on his nose before she could read her mail, and then Sunny Boy had to trudge about and find Grandpa andGrandma and deliver their letters to them. He felt quite like a postman himself, though it is doubtful if real postmen have sugar cookies and peppermints paid to them for each letter they bring. So by the time Sunny Boy got around to having his own letter read to him, Mother had finished hers and had opened her box.
“See what Daddy sent us,” she said, holding up the package for him to see. In the box were two balls of pink wool and four of dark blue.
“Now I can make you a sweater,” explained Mrs. Horton. “The pink is for a scarf I am finishing for Aunt Bessie. By the way, I had a letter from her, dear, and she sends her love, and so does Harriet.”
“All right,” agreed Sunny Boy briefly. “Could you read this now, Mother?”
“Why, it’s from Daddy!” cried Mother, taking the crumpled envelope Sunny Boy drew from his pocket. “Did you wait tillyou gave every one else his mail, precious? Well, listen—”
“Dear Sunny Boy,” said Daddy’s letter. “So you fell into the brook! Don’t tell Jimmie, but I did the same when I was just about as tall as you are. Grandma fished me out—only she wasn’t Grandma then.“Don’t go fishing till I come up, for you might catch them all and leave none for me. One week from the day you’re reading this I’ll be at Brookside. Hope you and Jimmie and Peter and Paul will come to meet me. Mother, too, if she likes, and Grandpa and Grandma and Araminta and Bruce, if they’re going to be real glad to see me. You seem to have a lot of friends. Brookside always was a mighty fine place for small boys—like you and me.“Can’t write more now because a man wants to talk to me—at least he is ringing my telephone bell and won’t stop. Love to you and Mother from—Daddy.”
“Dear Sunny Boy,” said Daddy’s letter. “So you fell into the brook! Don’t tell Jimmie, but I did the same when I was just about as tall as you are. Grandma fished me out—only she wasn’t Grandma then.
“Don’t go fishing till I come up, for you might catch them all and leave none for me. One week from the day you’re reading this I’ll be at Brookside. Hope you and Jimmie and Peter and Paul will come to meet me. Mother, too, if she likes, and Grandpa and Grandma and Araminta and Bruce, if they’re going to be real glad to see me. You seem to have a lot of friends. Brookside always was a mighty fine place for small boys—like you and me.
“Can’t write more now because a man wants to talk to me—at least he is ringing my telephone bell and won’t stop. Love to you and Mother from—Daddy.”
Whenever Sunny Boy was pleased he made a little song to sing. He did so now,skipping out to the garden where Grandpa was generally to be found.
“Daddy’s coming! Daddy’s coming! Next week! Pretty soon,” sang Sunny Boy to a tune of his own. “Jimmie, where’s Grandpa? Daddy’s coming next week, pretty soon!”
“Well don’t walk all over the cabbage plants if he is,” said Jimmie, who was busy and did not like to be interrupted. “I think your grandfather is down with Mr. Sites looking at the mowing machine. They’re down in the south meadow.”
Sunny Boy knew his way about the farm as well as Jimmie by this time. He knew the pretty brown cow, Mrs. Butterball and her long legged calf, Butterette; and he was fast friends with Peter and Paul and the dogs. Sunny had named his puppy Brownie. He knew most of the chickens and ducks by names of his own, and he hadheld a little squirmy lamb in his arms for a minute, with Jimmie helping. He was going fishing, when Daddy came; and he was going up into the woods the first time some one had a moment to take him. Then he would have been all over the farm.
Still singing to himself, he trotted down to the south meadow and found Grandpa and a strange man talking earnestly together.
“Look out! Stay where you are!” called the strange man suddenly. “Back, Bruce, back!”
Sunny Boy stopped instantly. So did Bruce, who had followed him. Neither the little boy nor the dog could see why they should be shouted at, but they obeyed without question. And in a minute they saw a very good reason why. The stranger talking to Grandpa bent down and lifted a handle on a queer looking machine, and rightout of the grass—where no one could have seen it—rose a long ugly thing that looked like a big saw.
“All right, Sunny Boy!” called Grandpa.
“What is it?” asked Sunny, eyeing the long saw curiously.
“It’s the mowing machine. We’re going to cut hay with it presently,” answered Grandpa. “Sites, this is Harry’s son.”
Mr. Sites shook hands with Sunny Boy, smiling down at him cheerfully.
“You don’t say!” he drawled. “Well, youngster, your father and I went to school together. When’s he coming up? I’d like to see him again.”
“Daddy’s coming next week, pretty soon,” sang Sunny Boy, capering about the mowing machine joyously. “He wrote me a letter. May I sit on it, Grandpa?”
Sunny meant the seat of the mowing machine, and Grandpa lifted him in and held him while Mr. Sites harnessed up a pair offat white horses and Mr. Hatch appeared from somewhere. Sunny Boy was acquainted with Mr. Hatch. He was Araminta’s father and did most of the farming for Grandpa. The Hatches lived in a yellow house down the road, and Araminta had six little brothers and sisters with whom Sunny sometimes played. So you see he was not lonely.
“Now we’ll go over to the fence,” said Grandpa, lifting him down, “and watch how the grass is cut. That saw-thing is the knife, and you must never go near a mowing machine unless you can see the knife sticking up. Little boys and dogs, and even men, can be very easily hurt if they are careless and don’t watch the knife.”
So Grandpa and Mr. Sites and Sunny Boy sat on the fence and Bruce lay down at their feet, while Mr. Hatch rode on the mowing machine round and round the field. The fat white horses did not hurry in the least,but a wide light green path marked where the grass was being cut. Grandpa explained that when the sun had dried this grass it was called hay, and that Peter and Paul liked it to eat and to make their beds of in the winter. He promised Sunny Boy that he should help rake the hay the next afternoon.
Whr-rr! purred the mowing machine as Mr. Hatch turned and the fat white horses came toward them.
“Whoa!” the horses stopped suddenly.
Up came the long saw-knife, and Mr. Hatch jumped down from his seat and bent over, looking at something on the ground.
“He’s found something,” said Mr. Sites to Grandpa. “Wonder if it is—”
“Hey, Sunny! Sunny Boy! Oh, Sunny Boy!” Mr. Hatch waved his big straw hat wildly. “Come and see what I’ve got. Make Bruce stay there.”
“I’ll hold Bruce,” said Mr. Sites. “Youtwo go on over. I’ll bet a cookie I know what he’s found.”
Sunny Boy raced over the meadow, dragging Grandpa by the hand. Mr. Hatch had looked very near, but it was a very wide meadow if you tried to run across it.
“Hurry,” sputtered Sunny Boy, red in the face with the excitement and heat.
“Am hurrying,” grunted Grandpa. “You seem to forget about the bone in my leg!”
But Sunny Boy was too eager to see what Mr. Hatch had found to be sorry even for a grandfather with a bone in his leg.
CHAPTER IXSUNNY BOY FORGETS
When they reached the horses and the machine, the Something was around on the other side.
“Here, Sunny Boy, here’s a sight for you,” said Mr. Hatch mysteriously. “What do you think of this?”
Sunny Boy bent down to look. There, in a hole in the ground, half-hidden by the tall grass all about it, were four little furry baby rabbits!
“Bunnies!” and Sunny plunged his two hands down into the middle of that furry bunch.
They snuggled closer, and their soft eyes looked frightened, but they did not try to run away.
He lifted one of the baby rabbits and placed it in Sunny’s hands.
He lifted one of the baby rabbits and placed it in Sunny’s hands.
“Where’s their mamma?” demanded Sunny Boy.
“The mower scared her off,” said Mr. Hatch. “Pick one up—you won’t hurt it—see, like this.”
He lifted one of the baby rabbits and placed it in Sunny’s hands. It wriggled uneasily, and he let it fall back into the nest. Mr. Hatch and Grandpa laughed.
“We’ll leave them right here,” declared Mr. Hatch kindly. “I’ll mow around the nest, but not very near, and I guess the mother rabbit will come back to-night. Funny creatures, aren’t they? Every year they have a nest in a grass field, and every year I come within an ace of cutting off their noses.”
Sunny Boy and Bruce wandered back to the house alone. Grandpa was busy overhauling more machinery with Mr. Sites, and Jimmie was still busy with cabbages. Sunny was used to so much attention that hefelt rather put out when Araminta, sweeping the front porch, told him that Mother and Grandma had taken Peter and the buggy and had driven to Cloverways.
“They said I could go next time,” grumbled Sunny Boy, not a bit sunnily. “Mother said so. ’Tain’t fair.”
“Don’t say ’tain’t,” corrected Araminta, who was very careful of Sunny’s grammar. “Say it isn’t fair. Only it is—how could you go when you were down in the field with your grandpa?”
Sunny Boy felt that if Araminta had deserted him, there was no friend left. He went on into the house and wept a little, curled up in the big leather chair in the sitting room. He felt very sorry for himself.
But even a little boy whose mother and grandmother have gone away and left him can not feel sorry very long when a June breeze is ruffling the white curtains at thewindow and there is a whole farm ready and waiting for him to come out and play. After a few big raindrop tears and a sniff or two, Sunny Boy wiped his eyes on his “hanky,” and decided that he would be brave and cheerful and then perhaps his family would be sorry to think how they had treated him.
He decided to make a kite and go out and fly it, the wind at the window making him think of kite-flying and the sight of a mass of papers on Grandpa’s desk in one corner of the room suggesting what to make the kite of. He went over to the desk and climbed upon the chair standing before it.
Ordinarily Sunny Boy had a good memory. He could remember things for Mother and he seldom forgot where he had left his toys, but this morning a strange thing happened—his memory did not work at all. He forgot completely that Mother had told him not to touch other people’s things without permission and that booksand papers were not to be opened or even unfolded unless one first asked.
Sunny Boy thrust a hand down among the papers on Grandpa’s desk and pulled out two nice smooth brown pieces of paper that seemed strong and just exactly right for a kite. For good measure he took a letter or two, and then scurried out to the kitchen for string.
He had never made a kite, but he had often watched the boys in the park at home flying them, and he had a very good idea of how they were made. He had his own bottle of paste Mother had brought for him and he found the kind of sticks he wanted out in the yard. In half an hour he had the papers pasted smoothly over the sticks, a wiggly tail of crumpled papers from the waste-basket tied on, and yards and yards of string wound on a piece of wood. Sunny Boy was ready to sail his kite.
Araminta gave him a cookie and advised him to go down by the brook.
“There’s more breeze there,” she said. “But for mercy’s sake don’t fall in again. And come in when you hear me ring the bell.”
Sunny Boy trudged down to the brook and started running with his kite as he had seen the boys do, to give it a good start. Up, up, it went, sailing high over his head, the crumpled paper tail wiggling in the wind.
“Jus’ as good,” said Sunny Boy to himself, “jus’ as good.”
He meant to say “Just as good as Archie Johnson’s,” Archie being one of the older boys who played in the park and who sailed elaborate kites. But Sunny had not tied the knots in his string tightly enough, and a strong puff of wind coming by, the cord parted and away sailed the kite, over the brook and into the woods!
“Ding-ling! Ding-ling! Ding-a-ling!” rang Araminta’s bell.
It is often a good thing to be too busy to cry. Sunny Boy might have felt bad over the loss of his kite—indeed he watched it out of sight—but if he meant to cry the sound of the bell changed his mind. Instead, he ran up to the house as fast as he could go, and found Mother and Grandma waiting for him.
“Did you miss us?” asked his mother. “We knew you were having a good time, dear. Grandma has brought you a lolly-pop. What have you been doing to get so sun-burned?”
“Flying kites,” stated Sunny Boy. “Thank you, Grandma. We found bunnies down in the field.”
Grandpa came on the porch then, his glasses pushed up on his forehead.
“Mary, Olive, have either of you seen anything of those two five hundred dollarbonds I had on my desk?” he said anxiously. “They were there this morning, and when I came in from the mowing I couldn’t find them. Have either of you used my desk?”
“No, Father,” said Mrs. Horton.
“No, Arthur,” said Grandma. “I’m sure Araminta hasn’t been near the desk, either. Sunny, you weren’t in the sitting room this morning, were you?”
“Yes, I was,” chirped Sunny Boy.
“But you didn’t see anything of Grandpa’s bonds—his nice beautiful, Liberty Bonds, did you, dear?” asked Mrs. Horton.
“No, Mother.”
“Well,” Grandpa sighed, and turned to go in, “I’ll look more thoroughly, of course. But they’re gone—I’m sure of it. I had no business to be so careless. They should have been in the bank a week ago. They might have blown out of the window—I’ll see that a screen goes in that window to-night.”
Sunny Boy put down his lolly-pop and followed Grandpa into the house. He found him seated at the desk, the papers in great confusion all about him.
“Well, Sunny, did you come to help me hunt?” asked Grandpa. “Don’t bother your yellow head about it. When you grow up, try to be more careful than your grandfather.”
Sunny Boy slipped a warm little hand into Grandpa’s.
“I made a kite—with papers,” he confessed bravely. “Not Lib’ty Bonds, Grandpa, just papers on top of your desk. I was ’musing myself, and I had to have a kite.”
“I see,” said Grandpa slowly, and not a bit crossly. “What color paper, dear? White?”
“No, brown,” replied Sunny Boy eagerly, sure now that he had not taken the missing bonds. “Just brown, Grandpa, and two old letters.”
“Yes, I’ve copies of those—they don’t matter,” said Grandpa. “But we’d better get that kite, Namesake, because you’ve pasted my bonds on it, and a thousand dollars is a bit too expensive a kite even for my one and only grandson.”
“But it flew off!” Sunny Boy began to cry. “The string broke, an’ it went over the brook into the woods.”
Mrs. Horton, coming into the sitting room to remind Sunny Boy to wash his face and hands before dinner, found her little boy crying as though his heart would break in Grandpa’s arms.
“What in the world—” she began.
“There—there—it’s all right,” soothed Grandpa. “We’re in a peck of trouble, Olive, because we took some papers from Grandpa’s desk to make a kite with and now they turn out to be two Liberty Bonds. And the kite—like the pesky contrivance it is—got away and is hiding somewhere in thewoods. But we’re going out right after dinner and hunt for it, aren’t we, Sunny Boy?”
Sunny Boy felt Mother’s kind hand smoothing his hair.
“Oh, my dear little boy!” said Mother’s voice. “My dear little son! How could you? Didn’t you know how wrong it was to touch a single thing on Grandpa’s desk?”
“I forgot,” said Sunny Boy in a very little voice.
“Why I wouldn’t have believed that my Sunny Boy could forget,” grieved Mother. “And now Grandpa’s money is lost! And Daddy coming next week! What will he say?”
“We’re going to find it long before Daddy comes,” said Grandpa stoutly. “Right after dinner we’re going over to the woods. Sunny can remember about where he thinks the kite fell. Cheer up, Olive—we’re sorry we didn’t remember about ‘hands off’ whenother people’s property is about, but every one forgets once in a while. And I was careless—I’m as great a sinner as Sunny. And now forgive us both before we’re quite drowned in our tears.”
Mother and Sunny Boy had another little cry all to themselves upstairs and he told her that never,neverwould he touch anything that did not belong to him again without first asking. Then they both bathed their faces in clear cold water and felt better. No one mentioned bonds at dinner, and there was strawberry short-cake which Sunny Boy declared was as good as his favorite chocolate ice cream. And right after dinner he and Grandpa went out to hunt for the lost kite.
CHAPTER XGOING FISHING
But though Grandpa and Sunny Boy hunted and hunted and hunted, till it seemed as though they must have covered every inch of the big woods; though they searched the tangled thickets where the briery blackberry bushes grew along the edge of the brook; though they looked up at the trees till their necks ached, hoping perhaps to find the kite caught in the branches; still they had to come home without the precious Liberty Bonds.
“Never mind,” said Grandpa, as they made their way toward home over a little pathway of stones tumbled together in the brook to make a bridge, “Never mind, Sunny. If we can’t find them, we can’t,and there is no use in feeling bad about it any longer. You didn’t mean to lose the bonds, we all know that, so we’ll just stop crying over spilled milk and cheer up and be happy again.”
But it was a very unhappy little boy who went to bed early that night—for the long tramp had tired him—and for several days after the loss of the kite Sunny Boy kept rather closely to the house.
He liked to be in the kitchen with Araminta or on the side porch with Grandma and Mother. Jimmie and Bruce tried to coax him to go with them, but he said politely that he didn’t feel like it.
However, as the time drew near for his father’s visit Sunny Boy cheered up, and by the morning that Daddy was expected he felt quite like his usually sunny self.
“Are you going to meet Daddy?” he asked Mother that morning, as he brushed his hair after she had parted it for him.
“I don’t believe I’ll go down,” answered Mrs. Horton. “If you and Grandpa go, that will be enough and I’ll be at the gate waiting for you.”
“Daddy’s coming!” Sunny Boy pounded his spoon against his bread and milk bowl.
“Sunny!” said Mother warningly.
“He’s most here now!” and Sunny’s feet hammered against the table so that the coffee pot danced a jig.
“Sunny Boy!” implored Grandma.
“I’m going to meet him!” This time Sunny Boy upset his glass of water with a wild sweep of his arm.
Grandpa pushed back his chair.
“I think we’d better start,” he observed, “before a certain young man goes out of the window. If you’re as glad as all this to think that Daddy’s coming, what are you going to do when you really see him?”
But Sunny Boy was already out of the room and down at the gate where Jimmiestood holding Peter and Paul already harnessed to the carryall.
“Let me feed ’em sugar,” teased Sunny Boy. “Hold me up, Jimmie, I’m not ’fraid of their teeth now.”
“You pile in,” said Jimmie good-naturedly. “If you’re going to meet that train, you want to start in a few minutes. Say, Sunny, what ails you this morning?” for Sunny Boy had gone around to the back of the carriage, scrambled up over the top of the second seat, and was now tumbling head first into the cushions of the front seat.
Grandpa came out in a more leisurely fashion and took the reins.
“All right, Jimmie, we’re off. In case anything happens to the team, Sunny has enough push in him this morning to pull the carriage there and back.”
Peter and Paul trotted briskly, and Sunny’s tongue kept pace with their heels. His shrill little voice was the first thing Mr.Horton heard, for the train had beaten them to the station after all, and as the carriage turned the corner of the street a familiar figure stood on the platform waving to them. Grandpa had to keep one hand on his grandson to prevent him from falling out over the wheels.
“Well, well, Son, isn’t this fine!” Daddy had him in his arms almost before the horses stopped. “How brown you are! and yes, you’ve grown, too. I’ll put the suitcase in—don’t try to lift it.”
Daddy put Sunny Boy down and turned and kissed Grandpa.
“You’re his little boy!” Sunny thought out loud. It was the first time he had thought about it at all.
“I’m his daddy,” said Grandpa proudly. “Pretty fine boy, all things considered, isn’t he?”
Sunny Boy laughed because this was probably a joke. Anyway, Grandpa laughedand so did Daddy. Then they all got into the carriage and Daddy drove Peter and Paul. How Mrs. Horton laughed when she saw them drive up to the gate, all three of them crowded together on the front seat.
“You three big boys!” she teased them. “I suppose you had so much to talk about that you had to be together.”
Daddy put one arm around Mother and the other about Grandma.
“Make the most of me,” he said gayly. “I can stay only three days.”
Then there was a great to-do. Mother and Grandma had counted on having him for three weeks. Three days, as Mother said, was “no vacation at all.”
“But better than nothing,” Mr. Horton pointed out. “We can do a great deal in three days. And if I can’t get up again, at least I’ll come up to get you and Sunny when you’re ready to go home.”
Well, being sensible people and not givento “crying over spilled milk” (which was Grandpa’s favorite proverb) they soon decided to enjoy every minute of Daddy’s stay and to begin right away.
“Sunny and I are going fishing,” announced Daddy firmly. “We’ll go to-day—if Araminta can give us a lunch—and Mother is coming with us, if she wants to. Then to-morrow she and I are going for a long drive, and the last day I’m going to be a farmer and help Father with the work. Come on, Sunny, upstairs with you and get on high shoes. We don’t go fishing in sandals and socks.”
Araminta made them sandwiches and packed a box of lunch, putting in a whole apple pie. Daddy had brought his fishing rod with him, and he promised to make Sunny one as soon as they found a place to fish. Mother thought she would not go, for she was already tired from a long walk the day before. So Sunny Boy and Daddy setoff alone for the brook in the woods where the speckled trout lived.
“Shall I catch one?” asked Sunny Boy, scuffling along. He did like to scuffle his feet and Daddy did not seem to care how much noise he made. “Shall I fish?”
“Sure you’ll fish,” Daddy assured him. “Likely, you’ll catch one, though you never can tell. A good sportsman doesn’t growl even if he spends a whole day and doesn’t catch one fish. We’ll be good sports, shan’t we?”
“Yes,” agreed Sunny Boy. “But I would rather catch a fish.”
Daddy laughed and began to whistle.
“Do you know Jimmie?” said Sunny Boy, running to keep up with him. “Do you know Jimmie and Mr. Sites and Araminta and David and Raymond and Juddy and Fred and Sarah and Dorabelle? Do you, Daddy?”
“I went to school with a boy named JasparSites,” Daddy stopped whistling to answer. “Guess he’s the same. Araminta helps Grandma—I know her, and Jimmie I’ve met before. But I must say the others haven’t the pleasure of my acquaintance—who is Dorabelle, may I ask?”
“They’re Araminta’s brothers and sisters,” explained Sunny Boy. “They live down the road. Let’s fish now, Daddy.”
“We will,” agreed Mr. Horton. “You’ve picked out a good place. Now first I’ll start you in, and then I’ll try my luck.”
He found a nice long branch for Sunny, and tied a fish-line to it. At the end of the line he fastened a bent pin with a bit of cracker on the point.
“There you are,” he told him. “Now you sit out here on the dead roots of this tree that hangs over the bank, and you dangle the cracker in the water and keep very, very still. And perhaps a little fish on his wayto the grocery store for his mother will see the cracker and want a bite of lunch. Then you’ll catch him.”
Sunny Boy sat very still while Daddy baited a sharp thin hook with real bait and threw his line into the water, too. He sat down beside Sunny and together they waited.
“Daddy!” said Sunny Boy after a long while.
Mr. Horton raised a warning finger.
“But Daddy?” this after Sunny Boy had waited a longer time.
“You’ll scare the fish,” Mr. Horton whispered. “What is it?”
“My foot prickles!”
Mr. Horton took his line and whispered to him to get up and run about.
Sunny Boy’s foot felt too funny for words, and at first he was sure it had dropped off while he had been sitting on it. He could not feel it at all. After stamping up anddown a few minutes the funny feeling went away, and he came back to his father and took his line.
“Your foot was asleep,” said Mr. Horton in a low tone. “Don’t sit on it again. Feel a nibble?”
Sunny Boy drew his line up and looked at it. There was nothing at all on the pin.
“Percy Perch must have taken that cracker when you weren’t looking,” said Mr. Horton, putting another cracker on. “Now watch out that Tommy Trout doesn’t run off with this.”
Sunny Boy waited and waited. A yellow butterfly came and sat down on a blade of grass near him. Sunny looked at it more closely—it was a funny butterfly—a funny butter—
Splash went his rod and line, but he never heard it. Sunny Boy was fast asleep, and Tommy Trout must have run away with the pin and the cracker because they were neverheard of again. When Sunny Boy opened his eyes again, his father was folding up his fishing tackle.
“Hello! You’re a great fisherman!” Daddy greeted him. “See what we’re going to take home to Mother to surprise her.”
Sunny Boy rubbed his sleepy eyes. There on the grass lay four pretty little fish.
“Did you catch them?” he asked Daddy, who nodded.
“My land of Goshen!” said Sunny Boy.
“Where’d you pick that up?” demanded Daddy. “Do you think apple pie might help you to feel spryer?”
Sunny Boy was interested in pie, and he helped Daddy to spread the little white cloth on the ground. He had not known a picnic was part of the fun of fishing!
CHAPTER XITHE HAY SLIDE
“Daddy,” said Sunny Boy, as he munched a sandwich, lying on his stomach and looking down into the brook from the safe height of the bank, “how much is five hundred dollars?”
“A large sum of money,” answered Mr. Horton, surprised. “Why, Son? What do you know about such things? Little boys shouldn’t be bothering about money for years and years to come.”
So Sunny told him about Grandpa’s bonds and how he had lost them by pasting them on his kite. Mr. Horton was very sorry, but he said little.
“Only remember this, Sunny Boy,” he insisted gravely. “I would rather you told me yourself than to have heard it from anyone else—even from Mother. When you’ve done anything good or bad that you think I should know, you tell me yourself, always. And now how about going wading?”
That was great fun. Sunny Boy rolled his trousers up as far as they would go and took off his shoes and stockings. The water was not deep, but, my! wasn’t it cold? Little baby fish darted in and out, and ever so many times Sunny thought he had a handful of them. But when he unclosed his hands there was never anything in them but water, and not much of that.
“If I did catch a fish, could I keep him, Daddy?” Sunny asked. “I could carry home some brook for him to live in.”
Sunny meant some of the brook water. Daddy explained that the baby fish, minnows they are called, would not be happy living in a bowl as the goldfish Sunny once had were.
“And you wouldn’t want a fish to be unhappy, would you?” questioned Daddy. “Of course you wouldn’t. But I’ll tell you something better to do than trying to catch fish that only want to be left alone.”
“Something to do with my shoes and stockings off?” stipulated Sunny anxiously. “I haven’t been wading hardly a minute yet, Daddy.”
Daddy laughed a little. He was lying flat on his stomach as Sunny had done, peering over the bank down at the water. He seemed to be having a very good time, did Daddy.
“This is something you can do without your shoes and stockings,” he assured the small figure standing in the middle of the brook. “Indeed, I thought of it because you are all fixed for doing it. You know Mother was talking about her Christmas presents last night?”
Sunny nodded.
“She’s sewing a bag for Aunt Bessie,” he confided, “and Grandma is getting ready, too. But I think Christmas is about a year off, Daddy.”
“Not a year—about five months,” corrected Daddy. “That seems like a long time to you. But Mother likes to start early and make many of her presents. And a very good way it is, too. Well, Sunny Boy, I once heard Mother say that she would like to try making an indoor garden for some of her friends who live in apartments and have no gardens of their own. Only, Mother said, she must experiment first and find out what would grow best.”
“What’s an indoor garden?”
“Oh, there are different kinds,” answered Daddy. “But I think the kind Mother is anxious to try is very simple. Just damp moss and a vine or two put into a glass bowl. They will grow and keep green all Winter and be pretty to look at.”
“I could get her some moss,” said Sunny quickly. “See, those stones are all covered, Daddy.”
“That’s just what I want you to do,” agreed Daddy. “We’ll take plenty home to Mother and she can experiment with indoor gardens to her heart’s content. See, Son, here’s my knife. You must cut the moss very carefully in square pieces, and try not to break it. I’ll be digging up some of these healthy little ground vines.”
Sunny Boy was proud to be allowed to handle Daddy’s big jack knife, and he was glad Daddy hadn’t told him not to cut himself. Daddy, somehow, always trusted Sunny not to be heedless.
“Mother’ll like it, won’t she?” he called to Daddy, who was digging up a pretty, creeping green vine that grew in the grass near him. “Won’t she be s’prised, Daddy?”
They worked busily, and soon Sunny hada neat little pile of green moss ready to take home to Mother. After that he waded about in the brook, splashing the water with his bare feet.
“There—you’ve been in long enough,” called Mr. Horton presently. “The water is too cold to play in it long. Come, Son, and put on your shoes and stockings.”
Sunny Boy dabbled his feet in a little hole made by a stone he had pushed away.
“Sunny Boy!” called Mr. Horton once again.
Still Sunny Boy continued to play in the water. To tell the truth every one had been so anxious to make him happy at Brookside that he was the least little bit in the world spoiled. The more you have your own way, you know, the harder it is to do other people’s way, and if you can do as you please day after day, by and by you want to do as you please all the time. Sunny Boy felt like that now.
“Sunny!” said Daddy a third time, very quietly.
Sunny Boy looked at him—and came marching out of the water. He was not very pleasant while Daddy helped him dry his feet and get into the despised shoes and stockings, but, when they were ready to start for home and Daddy tilted up his chin to look at him squarely, Sunny Boy’s own smile came out.
“All right!” announced Daddy cheerfully. “Let’s go home a different way and perhaps we’ll find wild strawberries.”
They did, too, a patch of them down at one end of the apple orchard, and Mr. Horton showed Sunny Boy how he used to string them on grass stems to take home to his mother when he was a little boy.
He certainly was a dear Daddy, and when he went back to the city Mother and Sunny had to be nicer to each other than ever because they missed him so very much.
“It’s raining!” Sunny Boy stood at the window after breakfast, the morning after Mr. Horton had gone back to the city. “Does it rain in the summer?”
Grandma laughed, and told him that indeed it did rain in the summer.
“We haven’t had a drop of rain since you’ve been here, and you must have brought fair weather with you,” she said. “Now that the hay is all in the barn, we’re glad to see it rain, for the garden needs it badly. Think how thirsty the flowers and vegetables must be.”
“Harriet said to play in the barn on rainy days,” said Sunny Boy sadly, “but I think I’m lonesome.”
“Well, you go out to the barn and you won’t be lonesome,” Araminta, who was clearing the breakfast table, laughed at his long face. “I’ll bet all the children are there, even the baby. He can go, can’t he, Mrs. Horton?”
Grandma said yes, of course he could, and Mother brought his rubbers and raincoat downstairs when she came, for he met her on the stairs and there she had them all ready.
“Run along and have a good time,” she told him, kissing him. “I was going to suggest that you play in the barn this morning. Help Jimmie if he’s working, won’t you, and don’t hinder him?”
Paddling out to the barn in the pouring rain was fun. But the barn was the most fun of all. Grandpa and Jimmie were on the first floor mending harness, and the doors were open so that they could see right out into the orchard and yet not get a bit wet. Just as Araminta had said, all the Hatch children were there, even the baby, who lay asleep on the hay in a nice, quiet corner.
“Hurrah!” cried Juddy Hatch. “We’re going to play robbers, and you can be in my cave.”
“Be in my cave,” urged David, his brother. “Our side has the best slide.”
“I’ll come up there and settle you youngsters if you’re going to quarrel,” threatened Jimmie, switching a buggy whip and looking very fierce. “You’d better start playing and stop arguing.”
The children knew Jimmie had small patience with little bickerings, though he had never been known to do anything more severe than scold. So they took him at his word and began to play.
“You be on Juddy’s side, then,” agreed David. “See, we each have a cave here in the hay—that’s mine in this corner. The way we do is to all go into our caves and take turns creeping up. When you hear us on the roof of your cave, you have to get out and run over to ours, climb up to the top and slide down the other side. If you’re caught you have to b’long to our robber tribe.”
The hay was very smooth and slippery,and the children had many a tumble as the two robber tribes chased each other across the haymow. Such shrieks of laughter, such howls as the robbers in their excitement sometimes forgot and pulled a braid of Sarah’s or Dorabelle’s! The baby continued to sleep placidly through all the noise, and Jimmie told Grandpa that he thought perhaps “the poor little kid was deaf!” Jimmie was only fooling, of course, for the Hatch baby was not deaf at all.
It was Sunny Boy’s turn to be chased, and as he heard David’s robber tribe beginning to climb up on the roof of his cave he dashed out and ran for the other cave at the end of the haymow. Up the side he went, and down. Dorabelle was captured in that raid and had to go over to David’s side.
“Now I’ve got four in my tribe,” crowed the robber chief. “Get your men together, Jud, and we’ll do it again.”
“Where’s Sunny Boy?” demanded Juddy,counting his tribe. “He was here—I saw him climb up the top of the cave. Sunny Boy! Sun-ny!”
No Sunny Boy answered.
“Jimmie, is Sunny Boy down there with you?” Juddy peered over the edge of the haymow where Jimmie sat mending the harness. Grandpa had gone to the house, declaring that there was a little too much noise in the barn for his rheumatism.
“Haven’t seen him,” answered Jimmie. “Isn’t he up there with you?”
Juddy’s lip began to quiver. He was only eight years old.
“Then he’s lost,” he said. “He isn’t here at all, Jimmie.”
Jimmie dropped his harness and ran up the little ladder that led to the haymow.
“Nonsense!” he declared sharply. “A boy can’t get lost with a roof over him. Likely enough he’s hiding for fun. Sunny! Sunny Boy, where are you?”
But no Sunny Boy answered. And though Jimmie and the Hatch children turned over the hay and looked in every corner of the haymow, they could not find him.
“Shall I go and tell Mr. Horton?” suggested David, who was the oldest of the Hatch boys.
“Not till we have something to tell,” was Jimmie’s answer. “Where was he when you saw him last?”
“Right over in that corner,” said Juddy, pointing. “I saw him going over the top of the cave, an’ then I ducked under, and when David got Dorabelle he just wasn’t here.”
“He must be here—somewhere,” retorted Jimmie impatiently. “I’m going to look once more—and if he’s just hiding, won’t I shake him!”
Jimmie climbed over the top of the “robber’s cave,” as Sunny Boy had done, and down on the other side. The children heardhim scuffling about, kicking the hay with his feet, and then suddenly he gave a shout.
“You stay where you are till I come back,” he called. “You David, and Juddy, keep the others where they are. I’ll bet I’ve found him.”
The Hatch children were fairly dancing to follow Jimmie, but they knew he meant what he said. They sat down in the hay to wait.
One—two—three—four—five minutes passed. Then Jimmie stepped out on the barn floor and grinned cheerfully up at the anxious group perched on the edge of the haymow.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve found him. He’s out in the old dairy. Now don’t all come down at once—Jud, let the girls come first. Easy there!”
The Hatch children came tumbling down, eager to see Sunny Boy. Sarah stopped to pick up the baby, who had slept through all the excitement and now merely opened twodark eyes, smiled, and went to sleep again. The Hatch baby was used to being taken about and had the steady habits of an old traveler.
They found Sunny absorbed in watching a mother duck and her ten little ducklings who were swimming daintily about in a trough in the dairy.
“Well, where were you?” Juddy pounced on Sunny Boy. “You gave us an awful scare.”
“I’ve been right here all the time.” Sunny was a bit aggrieved to find such a fuss made over him. First Jimmie and now Juddy. “I haven’t been anywhere,” he insisted.
“We thought you were lost!” David frowned at him severely.
“Well, I wasn’t,” retorted Sunny Boy briefly. “I was watching ducks. Jimmie, do they sleep in water?”
“What, ducks?” said Jimmie. “Oh, no,they sleep under their mother just like chickens at night, some place where it is warm and dry. Your grandmother will be glad you found this duck—she’s missed her for two days. Guess she never thought of looking in the dairy.”
This part of the barn had been used for the cows, you see, years before, when Sunny’s father was a little boy and a big herd of fine cows were kept at Brookside. Now Mrs. Butterball and Butterette were the only cows, and they lived in a box stall near Peter and Paul.