CHAPTER XIIAPPLE PIES
Sunny Boy continued to look at the ducks till David could stand it no longer.
“What happened to you?” he asked, jogging Sunny’s elbow to make him look at him. “How’d you get down here?”
“Fell down,” said Sunny calmly. “Could I have a duck to play with, Jimmie?”
“How’d you fall down?” persisted David, who usually got what he started after.
Sunny Boy was exceedingly bored by these numerous questions, and he wanted to be allowed to watch the ducks in peace. So he decided the easiest way to get rid ofDavid and the others would be to tell them what they wanted to know.
“I’ll show you,” he said. “Come on.”
He led them out of the dairy into a little cobwebby room, and pointed up to a square opening.
“I slid through that—see?” he demanded.
“Did it hurt?”
“Course not—I fell on the hay.”
The floor was thickly covered with old, dusty hay.
“It’s the room where we used to throw down hay to feed the cows,” explained Jimmie. “They covered it over with loose boards when they put in the hay three or four years ago. But I suppose you youngsters when romping around kicked the boards to one side and the hay with it. Sunny, coasting down the side of the cave, just coasted right on through the hole and landed down here. Lucky there was hay enough on the floor to save him a bump.”
“But why didn’t you come and tell us?” asked David. “Here we’ve been looking all over for you. Why didn’t you sing out?”
“I was going to,” admitted Sunny Boy apologetically. “But when I was hunting for the way into the barn, I found the ducks. Let’s go and tell Grandma we saw ’em.”
It was noon by this time, so the Hatch children went home and Sunny Boy and Jimmie walked together to the house. It had stopped raining, and the sun felt warm and delightful.
“Of course you may have a duck,” said Grandma, when Sunny Boy told her of his find. “That foolish old mother duck marched off with her children one morning and I couldn’t for the life of me discover where she had gone. And Grandpa must board over that hole if you are going to play in the haymow. Another time you might hurt yourself, falling like that.”
“Where’s Mother?” asked Sunny Boy, eager to tell her about the morning’s fun.
“I believe she is up in the attic,” returned Grandma. “She’s been up there for an hour or so. I wish, lambie, you’d run and find her and say dinner will be on the table in half an hour.”
Sunny climbed the crooked, steep stairs that led to Grandma’s attic, and found Mother bending over an old trunk dragged out to the middle of the floor.
“Mother,” he began as soon as he saw her, “we’ve been sliding on the hay, and I found a duck mother, an’ Grandma gave me a duck for my own. What are you doing, Mother?”
Mrs. Horton was sitting on the floor, her lap filled with a bundle of old letters.
“I’ve been having a delightful morning, too,” she said. “Grandma started to go over these old trunks with me, and then some one called her on the telephone and shehad to go down. See, precious, here is a picture of Daddy when he was a little boy.”
Sunny looked over her shoulder and saw a photograph of a stiff little boy in stiff velvet skirt and jacket, standing by a table, one small hand resting solemnly on a book.
“He doesn’t look comfy,” objected Sunny. “Is it really Daddy? And did little boys wear petticoats then, Mother?”
“That isn’t a petticoat, it is a kilt,” explained Mother. “You know what kilts are, dear—you’ve seen the Scotch soldiers wear them. Well, when Daddy was a little boy they wore kilts, and trousers underneath. And Grandma was telling me this morning that as soon as Daddy was out of her sight he would take off his kilt and go about in his blouse and trousers. So probably he considered the kilt a petticoat just as you do.”
Sunny wandered over to another trunkthat stood open and poked an inquiring hand down into its depths.
“What’s this, Mother?” he asked, holding up a queer, square little cap.
“Be careful, precious, that is Grandpa’s Civil War trunk,” warned Mother, coming over to him. “Grandmother meant to put the things out to air to-day and then it rained. See, dear, this is the cap he wore, and the old blue coat, and this is his knapsack. Some day you must ask Grandpa to come up here with you and tell you war stories.”
“Where’s his sword?” asked Sunny, fingering the cap with interest. “Where was Daddy then? Was Grandpa shot?”
“Grandpa didn’t have a sword, because he wasn’t an officer,” explained Mother. “He was only a boy when he enlisted, and it was long before there was any Daddy, dear. And Grandpa was wounded—I’m sure I’ve told you that before—don’t you remember?That’s how he met Grandma. She was a little girl and met him in the hospital where her father, who was a physician, was attending Grandpa.”
“Olive! Sunny! Dinner’s ready!” It was Grandma standing at the foot of the stairs and calling them.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Sunny hastily. “Dinner will be on the table in half an hour, Grandma said.”
Mrs. Horton smiled.
“I think the half hour has gone by,” she declared, closing the lid of Grandpa’s trunk. “Come, dear, we must go right down and not keep them waiting.”
“Are you going to eat your duck?” asked Grandpa, when they were seated at the dinner table.
“My, no!” answered Sunny Boy, shocked.
He never believed that the chickens and ducks they had for Sunday dinners were the same pretty feathered creatures he saw walkingabout the farm. Chickens and ducks one ate, thought Sunny Boy, were always the kind he remembered hanging up in the markets at home—without any feathers or heads. He was sure they grew that way, somewhere.
“He doesn’t have to eat his duck,” comforted Grandma. “I’m going to make something he likes this afternoon. If you and Olive are going to drive over to town, Sunny and I will be busy in the kitchen.”
“Saucer pies!” cried Sunny Boy. “I can help, can’t I, Grandma?”
If there was one thing Sunny Boy loved to do, it was to be allowed to watch his grandma bake pies. He could ask a hundred questions and always be sure of an answer, he could taste the contents of every one of the row of little brown spice boxes, and, best of all, there was a special little pie baked for him in a saucer that he could eat the minute it was baked and cool. No wonder Sunny Boy kissed Mother contentedlyand watched her drive away with Grandpa for a little shopping in town. He, Sunny Boy, was going to help Grandma bake apple pies.
“Here’s your chair, and here’s a pound Sweeting for you,” Araminta greeted him as he trotted into the kitchen.
Sunny Boy scrambled into his place opposite Grandma at the white table.
“Now this won’t be a very good pie,” said Grandma, as she began to mix the pie crust.
Dear Grandma always said that about her pies, even the one that won the prize at the big fair.
“These apples are too sweet. But your grandfather can never wait. He has to have an apple pie the minute the first apple ripens.”
“So do I,” announced Sunny Boy. “What’s in this little can, Grandma?”
“Cinnamon, lambie,” answered Grandma. “Don’t sniff it like that—you’ll sneeze.”
Sunny Boy munched his apple and watched her as she rolled out the crust.
“How many, Grandma?” he asked.
Araminta, peeling apples over by the window, laughed.
“He’s just like his grandfather,” she said. “Mr. Horton always says, ‘How many pies are you going to make, Mother?’ doesn’t he?”
“Why does Grandpa call you Mother?” inquired Sunny Boy of Grandma. “You’re not his mamma.”
“No. But you see I suppose when your daddy was a little chap around the house, and calling me and calling me ‘Mother’ sixty times a day, as you do your mamma, Grandpa got in the habit of saying ‘Mother,’ too. And habits, you know, Sunny Boy, are the funny little things that stay with us.”
“Yes, I know—we had ’em in Sunday school,” agreed Sunny absently. “Is that my pie?”
“That’s your pie, lambie,” declared Grandma, smiling. “One, two, three large ones, and a saucer pie for my own laddie. How much sugar shall I put in for you, Sunny Boy?”
“A bushel,” replied Sunny Boy confidently. “Let me shake the brown powder, Grandma.”
So Sunny Boy sprinkled in the cinnamon, and Grandma added dots of butter and put on the crust. Then she cut little slits in it “so the apples can breathe” and then that pie was ready for the oven.
“Now I’m going up to change my dress while they’re baking,” said Grandma, taking off her apron. “If you want to stay here with Araminta, all right, Sunny. I’ll be back in time to take the pies out.”
Araminta bustled about, washing the table top and putting away the salt and sugar and spice box and all the things Grandma had used for her baking. Sunny Boy atehis apple quietly and waited for Grandma to come back.
“My land of Goshen!” Araminta stopped to peer out of the window over the sink. “Here’s company driving in. If it isn’t Mrs. Lawyer Allen, and she always stays till supper time! And your Grandma’s pies not out of the oven!”
Grandma, too, had seen the gray horse and buggy, and she hurried down in her pretty black and white dress.
“Hook my collar, please, Araminta,” she whispered. “And I am sure the pies are done. You can take them out very carefully and set them where they’ll cool. You’ll be good, won’t you, lambie? There goes the door-bell.”
Grandma rustled away to meet her company, and Araminta opened the oven door importantly. She was seldom trusted to take the pies from the oven alone, and she felt very grown-up indeed to have SunnyBoy see her do it. She got the three pies out nicely, and the little saucer pie, too, and carried them into the pantry to cool. She set them on a shelf over the flour barrel.
“Grandma puts them on the table,” suggested Sunny Boy.
“Well, I put them on the shelf,” said Araminta shortly. “I don’t believe in leaving pies around where any one can get ’em.”
Now Araminta was in a hurry to go home, for it was three o’clock, and every afternoon from three to five she was allowed to spend as she pleased. So, though she made the kitchen nice and neat before she left, in her hurry she forgot to put the lid on the flour barrel, something Grandma always did.
“I’m going,” said Araminta, putting on her hat with a jerk. “Mind you don’t get into any mischief, and don’t go bothering your grandma. Mrs. Lawyer Allen is nervous, and she doesn’t like children.”
Araminta, you see, had so many brothersand sisters younger than herself that she gave advice to every child she met.
Sunny Boy was perfectly willing to be good, but he was equally determined to have his saucer pie. It was his own pie, made and intended for him, and Araminta had no business to put it on a shelf out of his reach. As soon as the kitchen door closed he got a chair and dragged it into the pantry.
“It’s mine,” he told himself, as he stood on the chair.
He pushed a white bowl out of the way, for he remembered the yellow custard he had knocked over on his first adventure in Grandma’s pantry. He put his hand on his pie and had it safe when Bruce began to bark suddenly outside the window. Sunny Boy leaned over to see out the window, the chair tipped, and with a crash a frightened little boy fell into the flour barrel which the careless Araminta had left uncovered directly under the shelf.
The noise of the falling chair brought Grandma and her visitor to the pantry.
“What in the world!” cried Mrs. Allen, as a small white-faced figure stared at her over the edge of the barrel. “What is it?”
“It’s me,” said Sunny Boy forlornly. “There’s flour all in me, Grandma!”
Grandma had to laugh.
“All over you,” she corrected. “My dear child, are you hurt? And what were you doing to get in the barrel?”
Grandma lifted Sunny Boy out and carried him to the back porch and told him to shake himself as Bruce did after swimming in the brook. Only, instead of water, clouds of flour came out of Sunny Boy’s clothes as he tried to shake like a dog.
“I was getting my saucer pie, Grandma,” he explained when she came back with a whisk-broom and began to brush him vigorously. “If I had some cinnamon I’d be a pie, wouldn’t I?”
With a crash a frightened little boy fell into the flour barrel.
With a crash a frightened little boy fell into the flour barrel.
CHAPTER XIIIMORE MISCHIEF
When Grandma finally had Sunny Boy all dusted free from flour, she asked him if he thought he could keep out of mischief till supper time.
He was sure he could, and ran off to find Jimmie while Grandma and Mrs. Allen went back to finish their interrupted visit.
“Hello, Sunny,” Jimmie greeted him. Jimmie was mending a piece of the orchard fence. “What are you eating—pie?”
For Grandma had seen to it that Sunny had his saucer pie—grandmas are like that, you know.
“Want a bite?” asked Sunny.
But Jimmie, it seemed, had been eatingapples all the afternoon and he did not care for apple pie.
“Let me help,” urged Sunny. “I can hold the fence up, Jimmie.”
“You can stay around and talk, if you want to,” conceded Jimmie. “It’s kind of lonesome working all alone. But, Sunny, honestly I can’t mend this fence if you are going to sit on it and wiggle.”
Sunny slid down hastily.
“I didn’t know I was wiggling,” he apologized. “Do you learn to mend fence at agri—agri—”
“Agricultural college?” supplied Jimmie. “No, I guess that comes natural. Will you hand me one of those long nails, please?”
Sunny handed the nail absently. He was thinking of other things.
“Are you a farmer like Grandpa, Jimmie?” he asked.
Jimmie finished pounding in his nail before he answered.
“Seems like I tinker up this section of fence every other week,” he confided. “Am I a farmer like your grandpa? Well, no, not yet, but I aim to be. You thinking of farming, too?”
Sunny considered this gravely.
“I might be a farmer,” he admitted. “Only I think I would rather be a postman. Could I, Jimmie?”
“Of course,” encouraged Jimmie. “Nothing to stop you. And if, when you grow up, you find you would rather be something else, why, there’s no harm done. I’ve heard that your father wanted to drive a hansom cab for a life job when he was your age. And now, instead, he drives his own automobile.”
“I think,” announced Sunny thoughtfully, “it’s a good plan to think about what you want to be when you grow up and then you won’t be s’prised when you find out what you are.”
Jimmie’s mouth was too full of nails for him to answer, but he nodded.
“You’ll swallow a nail,” worried Sunny. “Our dressmaker did, once. Only it was a pin. What is this for, Jimmie?”
“Wire clippers,” explained Jimmie briefly. “Cut wires with ’em, you know. Leave them right there, Sunny.”
Jimmie was wrestling with a bit of wire that was hard to stretch into place. Sunny picked up the wire clippers and studied them carefully.
“I wonder how they work?” he said to himself. “Like Mother’s scissors? If I only had a piece of wire I could see.”
Now the only wires, as Sunny very well knew, were those stretched between the posts. He did so wonder if the wire clippers really could cut that thick wire! Jimmie’s back was toward him. Sunny rested the clippers on the top wire. He wouldn’t really press them, just pretend to.
Snip! the heavy strand of wire parted as though it had been a string.
“Give me those clippers!” Jimmie bore down upon him crossly. “I told you to leave ’em alone. Now see what you’ve done! Look here, Sunny, can’t you keep out of trouble long enough for me to finish this fence?”
Sunny yielded the clippers reluctantly. He had not known they were so sharp. Jimmie need not have been so cross, he thought.
“I want to do something different,” Sunny complained.
Jimmie wisely decided to give him something to do.
“Couldn’t you drive that mother duck and her ducklings up to the chicken yard?” he asked, pointing to the same ducks Sunny had discovered in the dairy. “I know your grandmother wants to shut them up to-night and that mother duck is just working her waydown to the brook. I want to finish this fence before I call it a day, so if you want to be useful, here’s your chance.”
Of course Sunny Boy wanted to be useful, and he started after Mother Duck and her family. If you have ever tried to argue with a duck you will know that it does no good to tell her where she should go—ducks are like some people, they like to have their own way. This mother duck had made up her mind that she was going to take her family down to the brook, and Sunny Boy had to race up and down the orchard and “shoo” her from behind trees and be patient a long time before he could get her started in the direction of the chicken yard. Then, once out of the orchard, she caught a glimpse of Araminta, who had come back—for it was five o’clock—and was scattering cracked corn for the chickens. The duck mother was hungry, and she started to run toward the chicken yard. Sunny Boy couldscarcely keep up with her, and the poor little baby ducks were left away behind.
“Let ’em be—they’ll follow her!” cried Araminta, and she scattered a little corn in an empty coop.
The duck mother waddled right inside, and Araminta put up a bar that fastened her in.
“I think she has too many duck babies,” said Sunny Boy, watching as the ducklings came up to the coop and began to hunt for corn.
“Yes, she has,” agreed Araminta. “But she can keep them all warm, I guess.”
“I know what I can do,” suggested Sunny Boy, but Araminta was hurrying to the house after bread and milk to feed the duck babies and she did not ask him what he could do.
Mrs. Allen stayed to supper, and very soon after Mrs. Horton said that Sunny Boy looked sleepy and must go to bed. He seldom took a nap any more, and as he woke upearly in the mornings, his mother said it was certain that he must go to bed earlier to make up for it.
All the time Mother was helping him undress, Sunny Boy was very quiet, and after she had kissed him and tucked him in bed he did not ask her for a story as he usually did.
“You’ve been playing too hard, I think,” said Mrs. Horton. “Good night and pleasant dreams, dearest.”
Sunny Boy waited till she had closed the door. Then he hopped out of bed and pattered over to another door that led into Grandma’s room. When he came back he had two baby ducks in his hands.
“There now, you can sleep in my bed,” he told them, putting them down under the sheet.
But the baby ducks did not like the soft, clean bed. They made funny little peeping noises, and as soon as Sunny Boy climbed into bed, one of them fell out and ran acrossthe floor. Sunny Boy chased it under the bureau, and then he heard Mother calling.
“Sunny!”
He opened the door a crack.
“Yes, Mother?”
“I hear you running around up there. You don’t want Mother to have to come up and punish you, do you? Go back to bed and go to sleep like a good boy.”
“Yes’m,” said Sunny.
He might have explained that he was good, but the ducks were certainly as bad as they could be. It was still light enough in the room for him to see the furniture, but try as he might he could not get that foolish, obstinate frightened little duck to come out from behind the bureau. Finally he gave it up and went to bed to take care of the other one, and that fell or jumped out on the other side of the bed and poor Sunny had to get up again and try to find it. The foolishthing let him chase it under the bed, and he was half way under and half way out when Grandpa opened the bedroom door.
“Look here, Sunny, what are you up to now?” began Grandpa. “Your mother is tired and she sent me up to settle you. My soul, boy! what are you doing under the bed?”
Sunny Boy wriggled out and turned a flushed face to Grandpa.
“Nothing,” he said, beginning to climb into bed.
Grandpa was helping him smooth the tangled covers when one of the ducks began to peep.
“What’s that?” said he sharply. “Sunny, what have you got in here? What’s that noise?”
“It’s a duck,” confessed Sunny Boy reluctantly.
Grandpa sat down on the bed.
“A duck? Up here?” he gasped.“Why, how on earth did a duck get in the house?”
“I did it,” admitted Sunny. “The duck mother had too many children, and I was going to take care of some of ’em for her. But they wouldn’t stay in bed. I could sail ’em in the bath-tub in the mornings.”
Grandpa began to laugh, and then he could not stop. He laughed till the tears came, and Mrs. Horton heard him and came up to scold them both. Grandma followed, and there they all sat on the bed, Grandpa and Mother and Grandma, all laughing as hard as they could.
Sunny Boy did not think it was funny a bit, and when he found that Grandpa was going to take his ducks back to their own mother that night he began to cry.
“By and by they would like it here,” he sobbed. “I haven’t my woolly dog, and I need a duck. Can’t I have one, Grandpa?”
Sunny Boy was far from being a cry-baby,but he was sleepy and that made him feel unhappy, though he thought it was the ducks. That’s a trick of the sandman’s—making you cry easily when you’re sleepy. However this time Grandpa was firm, and he managed to get the duck under the bed and the one back of the bureau and carry them down to their mother. And very glad they were to get there, we may believe. Sunny Boy went to sleep in five minutes, and long before morning had forgotten he ever wanted baby ducks to spend the night with him.
One morning, a week or more later, he was playing on the shady side porch when he heard Grandpa saying something to Mother about bonds. Ever since Sunny Boy had lost his kite and Grandpa’s bonds with it, he always noticed when any one used that word. No one ever spoke to him about the lost money, and he often forgot about it, with so many wonderful things to doevery day. And then, a word or two would make him remember again.
“I lie awake at night worrying over those bonds, Father,” Mrs. Horton was saying. “Harry may be able to make it up to you some day, but he’s having a hard time this summer. I’ve been out and looked and looked—some one must have picked them up.”
“Yes, I suppose they have,” said Grandpa. “I advertised, and the Bonds were numbered. Still, as you say, some one must have found them. Don’t let it spoil your Summer, Olive, I’ve only myself to blame. At my age carelessness is nothing short of a crime.”
“But at your age a thousand dollars is a great deal to lose,” protested Mrs. Horton. “And I know you meant to take a trip South this Winter, and Harry tells me you’ve given that up.”
Sunny Boy could hear tears in Mother’ssoft voice, and he was sure she had tears in her lovely brown eyes. He made up his mind what to do.
He trotted through the wide hall, into the sitting-room. There sat Grandpa figuring at his desk and close beside him was Mother with her knitting. There were bright drops on the dark blue wool. She had been crying, though she smiled at Sunny as he stood in the doorway.
“Grandpa, listen!” Sunny Boy cried. “You can have all the money in my bank at home. I’ve been saving it for, oh, ever so long. There’s a thousand dollars, I guess. An’ you can have it all—every bit. Daddy will send it to you if I ask him. An’ then you won’t care ’bout the Lib’ty Bonds!”
Sunny Boy was surprised at the way his offer was received. He had thought Grandpa would be pleased and his mother, too. And here sat Grandpa blowing his nose, and as for his mother—Sunny Boylooked at her and her eyes were quite brimming over.
“Don’t you like me to?” he cried. “I was going to buy another drum, but Grandpa can have the money. It’s a pink pig, Grandpa, and you shake it an’ the pennies drop out. Harriet gave it to me.” Sunny Boy’s lip began to quiver.
“My dear little son!” Mother held out her arms and Sunny Boy ran to her. “My generous little man!” she whispered. “Your pennies wouldn’t be enough, precious. But I’m proud to have you offer them to Grandpa to try to make up his loss. That’s like your father.”
Sunny Boy sat up and stopped crying. To be like his father was the highest praise his mother could give him.
“Thank you very much, Sunny,” said Grandpa gravely. “I couldn’t take your bank. For one reason, we’re not sure yet the bonds are really lost. But I tell youwhat I will do—if I ever get out of cash, entirely out, mind you, and have to borrow from my friends, I’ll come to you. There are very few I’d bring myself to borrow from, but perhaps it’s different with a grandson. You save your pennies, and maybe some day I’ll ask you to lend me some. Shall we shake hands on it?”
And Sunny Boy and Grandpa shook hands solemnly, like two business men.
CHAPTER XIVANOTHER HUNT
“And now,” declared Grandpa, putting on his wide-brimmed hat and reaching for his cane, “it’s high time I was out looking after Mr. Hatch. Where are you going, Sunny Boy?”
Sunny Boy was darting off as though a new idea had seized him.
“Out,” he answered vaguely. His mind was intent on his plan.
“Well, Grandma and I have the picnic to plan,” cried Mrs. Horton gayly. “If we are going to have that long-promised picnic before we go home, I for one think it is high time we set a day.”
Sunny Boy, lingering in the doorway, heard Grandpa grumble a little as he alwaysdid if anything was said about their going home.
“No reason why you shouldn’t stay here all Summer,” he scolded. “Or if you want to be nearer Harry, Olive, leave the boy with us. You know we’d take good care of him.”
“I know you would; but I couldn’t leave my baby,” Mrs. Horton said quickly. “Bessie, my sister, you know, has a plan—”
But Araminta called Sunny just then and he ran off without hearing about Aunt Bessie’s plan.
Sunny Boy had a plan of his own, and he was determined to carry it through. This was nothing less than to go and hunt for Grandpa’s lost Liberty Bonds.
“For I know that kite fell down right by the old walnut tree,” said Sunny Boy to himself for the twentieth time. “I saw it go down—swish! I’ll bet Grandpa didn’t look under the right tree.”
Without much trouble he coaxed a big piece of gingerbread from Araminta—who was very curious to learn where he was going—which he crowded into his pocket. Expecting to be gone a long time, he took an apple from the basket on the dining-room table and two bananas. Bruce, lying on the back door mat, decided to go with him, but Bruce was beginning to get the least little bit fat and old, and when he had followed Sunny as far as the brook pasture and saw that he had no intention of stopping to rest under the trees, that wise collie dog turned and went back to the house.
“Hey, there! Where are you going this hot day?” Jimmie, setting out tomato plants in a side field, shouted to him.
Sunny Boy waved his hand and plodded on. He was a silent child when he had his mind fixed on a certain thing, and he was intent on finding those bonds this morning.
The sun was hot, and when he reached thepretty brook the water looked so clear and cool that Sunny was tempted to go wading. Only he had promised his mother not to go in the water unless some one was with him, and then, too, wading would delay the hunt for the bonds. He walked along the bank until he came to the uneven line of stones piled together to make a crossing.
“I spect it wabbles,” said Sunny Boy aloud, putting one foot on a stone, which certainly did “teeter.”
He started to cross slowly, and in the middle of the stream his right foot slipped—splash!—into the icy cold water.
“My land sakes!” gasped poor Sunny Boy, who was certainly acquiring a number of new words, much to his mother’s worry. “I guess that water’s as cold as—as our icebox at home.”
With one wet foot and one dry foot he finished his journey and landed safely on the other side of the brook. He was hungryby then, and so sat down to eat the gingerbread under a large tree whose roots had grown far out over the water.
“Tick-tack! Tick-tack! Tick—t-a-c-k!” scolded some one directly over his head.
“Don’t be cross, Mr. Squirrel!” said Sunny Boy politely. “Grandpa says when you make a noise like that you’re either frightened or want folks to go away and not bother you. I’m going in a minute.”
Throwing the crumbs of the gingerbread into the brook for the little fish to enjoy, Sunny Boy marched straight for the woods. He had never been there alone, and somehow they seemed darker and deeper than he remembered them when Grandpa or Daddy had been with him.
“I’ll begin to look now,” said Sunny, talking to himself for company. And how small his voice sounded, and thin, under those tall, silent trees!
“Maybe I’ll see a Brownie,” Sunny continued.“I think Bruce might have come all the way. What was that?”
A twig snapped under his foot with a sharp noise. Noises are always creepy when one is alone in a strange place. Sunny sat down to rest a minute, on a half-buried tree-stump.
A black beetle came out, ran along a weed-stalk, climbed up to the top and sat there, regarding Sunny steadily.
“Do you like living here?” asked Sunny politely. “I wish you could talk, Mr. Beetle. Maybe you’ve seen the Lib’ty Bonds somewhere an’ you’d tell me just where to look.”
The beetle winked his beady eyes rapidly, but of course he didn’t say a word.
Presently a striped chipmunk appeared on a stump opposite the one where Sunny sat, and he, too, stared at Sunny intently.
“I’m going! I’m going right away!” Sunny assured the chipmunk hastily.“Daddy says you wood folks like to be alone. I wouldn’t hurt you, but I s’pose you don’t know that.”
He trotted along, eating the bananas as he went. There were so many things to look at and think about that sometimes he almost forgot the Liberty Bonds. Almost, but not quite.
“’Cause I just have to find ’em,” he told a blue jay that sat up in a tree and listened sympathetically. “I’m mose sure Grandpa didn’t look in the right place. An’ won’t he like it when I come home with them in my pocket!”
Sunny was so pleased with this idea that he gave a little shout and threw his cap up into the air, which so alarmed the blue jay that it quickly flew away.
Sunny Boy was marching steadily, hands in his pockets, when he saw something near a stone that made him stop to look. It was a turtle.
“Why didn’t you run?” Sunny demanded, picking up the turtle carefully, as he had seen Jimmie do. “Maybe you’re the one Grandpa carved his initials and the date on when he came here to live. Are you?”
The turtle kept his head obstinately in. Very likely he objected to being picked up and looked at so closely. Sunny brushed him off neatly with his clean handkerchief, and, sure enough, on the shell he found a date carved.
“I can’t read it,” mourned Sunny aloud. “But I guess you’re not Grandpa’s turtle, ’cause you haven’t any initials on you. I wish you’d put your head out, just once.”
But, though he put the turtle gently on the ground again and kept very still for at least five minutes, the queer, narrow little head stayed safely in its shell house. The turtle did not run away.
“Guess he thinks I’ll catch him if he runs,” thought Sunny. “I’d like to keephim if he was little. Jimmie says little turtles are nice to keep in the garden. Maybe I can find one on the way back, and build him a little house under Grandma’s rose bushes.”
Sunny went on, and soon he was sure that he was coming to the place where he had seen his kite fall. To be sure, the inside of the woods looked very different from the outside, and Sunny began to understand why he and Grandfather had not found the bonds as easily as they had hoped to. Still, he felt he was “getting warm” as they say in the games of seeking, and he began to look about him closely.
“It was right here—” His apple fell out of his blouse and he stooped to pick it up. He sprang up with a shriek and ran screaming toward an opening in the woods.
“It was a snake—a great, big, nasty, bitey snake!” he sobbed. “I put my hand right on it—all slippy and cold!”
He looked back—was it a snake after all? What was that curved black thing that lay there so quietly at the foot of a tree?
Then Sunny Boy did a very brave thing indeed. He was all alone, remember, and there was no one to laugh at him had he gone on home believing that he had touched a snake. But he liked to be very sure in his own mind, and he went back, cautiously and ready to run if a twig snapped, but back, nevertheless, to the place where he thought he had seen the snake. Any one, you know, may be frightened, but to face the fear and see if it is an afraid thought, or something really scary—that takes a truly brave person. And always afterward Sunny Boy was to be glad that he had had the courage to go back and see.
For his snake was only an old twisted tree root, after all!
“But I guess it’s dinner time, an’ I can come again an’ look for the bonds,” he told achipmunk. “Maybe Jimmie will come to-morrow and help hunt.”
This time Sunny Boy crossed the stone crossing without getting either foot wet and he was half way up to the house when he saw Peter and Paul standing hitched to the fence. They had been hauling the tomato plants for Jimmie and Grandpa, who was always kind to the farm animals, had ordered them to be unharnessed and tied in the shade while the plants were being set out.
“No horse likes to be anchored to a wagon when ’tisn’t necessary,” said kind Grandpa.
“Jimmie’s always saying he will let me ride Peter,” grumbled Sunny Boy, looking very little as he stood by the fence, fumbling with the strap that tied Peter fast. “Pretty soon we’ll be going home, Mother says, and I won’t ever learn to ride.”
Sunny’s busy, mischievous fingers had untied the strap as he talked, and now Peter could have walked away to the barn and hisdinner, had he only known it. He didn’t though, and so he was very much surprised to feel little feet digging into him as Sunny Boy scrambled desperately to get on his back. Peter and Paul were fat and slow or they never would have stood the antics of Sunny as that small person, clinging to Peter’s mane, and using Paul as a kind of step-ladder, pushed and pulled and climbed till he found himself where he wished to be—on Peter’s broad back.
“Gee, you’re a tall horse!” he observed, gathering the halter strap in one hand as he had seen Jimmie take the reins. “Oh, there’s what you ought to have on—I didn’t see it.”
The bridles and reins lay on the ground where Jimmie had dropped them when he had unharnessed the horses from the wagon. But Sunny Boy was not minded to get down after such a trifle—he had had too much trouble to secure his present seat.
“Gid-ap!” he said loudly, and jerked the halter strap.
Over in the field, Jimmie straightened an aching young back and gazed in amazement.
“Say—hey, Sunny—Sunny Horton! Get off that horse—do you hear me?” he shouted.
Sunny Boy heard. He turned and grinned impishly. He delighted to plague Jimmie, and he was having fun guiding Peter.
Then Jimmie rather lost his head. Had he kept still, Peter would probably have ambled gently about the meadow, perhaps turned into the road that led to the house and barn, and Sunny’s adventure might have been a very mild one. But Jimmie was frightened, and in his fear he did the one thing that could have brought about what he feared. He leaped the fence and came running toward the horse.
“Gid-ap, Peter! Go ’long! Hurry!”Sunny slapped the strap smartly across old Peter’s neck.
That easy-going horse was not used to such treatment, and he broke into a trot. Jimmie began to shout and wave his arms. Then Peter broke into a gallop, taking great, long easy strides that seemed to cover miles of ground to Sunny’s excited eyes.
“You kind of bump!” he gasped, as the horse galloped on. “I wonder—will—I—fall off!”
Peter snorted. He had forgotten how it felt to be running free, and perhaps he was pretending he was a young colt again. He paid no more attention to the small boy on his back than if Sunny Boy had been a fly.
Around and around the field they tore. Jimmie’s shouts had brought Grandpa, and together the two watched in terrible anxiety.
“I’d get on Paul and chase ’em, but Peter can outrun him any day!” Jimmie almostsobbed. “Say! I know what will do it. You wait, sir.”
He ran up to the barn and came back with a peck measure of corn. Paul saw the long yellow ears and whinnied with pleasure.
“You don’t get any,” Jimmie informed him. “Lucky they hadn’t had their dinner,” he said to Grandpa. He stood out from the fence and rattled the measure invitingly, and whistled.
Now Peter was not a colt, however much he might enjoy pretending, and he was getting tired of his gallop. Also he was hungry, and he had heard Paul whinny. So when Jimmie whistled, the old, familiar whistle he always gave when he came in the barn at feeding time, Peter turned and stared. Yes, there he stood, down at the other end of the field, and yes, he had corn with him.
Peter slowed down to a gentle run, then to a half trot, and finally came walking athis usual gentle gait straight up to Jimmie and Grandpa.
“Sunny, Sunny, what will you do next?” groaned Grandpa, lifting him down. “I hope your mother didn’t see this—she would be frightened to death.”
“It didn’t hurt me,” urged Sunny Boy, beginning to wonder if he had done wrong. “I is bumped a little, but I wasn’t afraid, Grandpa. Was Jimmie?”
“You young imp!” Jimmie swooped down upon him and hugged him so hard Sunny squirmed uneasily. “You bet I was scared! I thought every minute you’d tumble off. And now do you want to ride up to the barn with me, or have you had enough?”
“I’ll ride with you,” said Sunny firmly.