Sunny Boy in the Country | Page 2

drum for sure!" he shouted. "If this off horse, Billy, ever put his foot through it, good-by drum.'"
"And there you are!" The tall man gave Sunny Boy back his drum with a flourish. "Just as good as new, except for a little hole that I'm willing to bet a cookie your mother can mend for you. Isn't she waving for you to come in ? I thought so. You run along now, and see if she doesn't mend it."
Mother was on the front steps watching for him. Sunny thanked the tall man, who said that it was nothing, nothing at all: he'd never rescued a drum before, but he was glad to have the experience, and that things al- ways turned out well for small boys who stayed on the sidewalks and didn't dash out into the streets to get run over. Then Sunny climbed up the steps and held out his drum for Mother to see.
"The man said you could mend it," he said wistfully. "Can you, Mother? 'Cause when things break, I miss 'em."
Mrs. Horton managed to hug her son, drum and all, though there really wasn't much space where they stood. She was under the awning man's ladder, and he was shaking and moving the large awning about. Inside the door stood Harriet and her brush and bucket.
"So, 'twas the drum!" smiled Harriet. "I couldn't see what it was went rolling by me like lightning, and Sunny Boy tearing after it. All I heard was a noise like thunder."
"We'll go up to my room and mend the drum," declared Mrs. Horton. "Tell Mr. Bray I'll telephone him about the slip- covers, please, Harriet. I left him in the parlor when I ran out to see what was happening to Sunny Boy."
"What," demanded Sunny Boy, carrying his drum upstairs-and you may be sure that he gripped it tightly this time-"What are slip covers, Mother?"
Mrs. Horton laughed.
"Why, slip-covers are-" She thought a minute. "They are covers for the chairs and sofas to wear in summer," she explained. "Nice, cool, linen covers, you know, for the furniture, just as you have summer suits."
Sunny Boy understood. He usually did when Mother answered his questions. And he was very sure that she could mend his drum.
"Do you know," said Mrs. Horton, when she had looked at the hole, "I think, Sunny Boy, we can mend this nicely with court- plaster?"
"Court-plaster?" echoed Sunny Boy. "I have some in the medicine closet in the bathroom," went on Mrs. Horton, drawing the edges of the hole together as she talked. "I'll get it, dear."
"It's like mending fingers, isn't it, Mother?" Sunny Boy was so anxious to watch how Mother mended the drum that he nearly put his own pink nose in the hole. "When Daddy cut his finger he put court- plaster on it. He said the skin would grow together, and it did--when he took it off, there wasn't any cut there. Just nothing. Will my drum be like that?"
"No, precious," answered Mother, snip- ping around the edges of the court-plaster with the fascinating sharp shears Sunny Boy was forbidden to touch. "A drum, you know, isn't like a person's skin. It can't grow. But I think that if you remember to be careful the drum will last a long time. There you are. My goodness! it makes as much noise as ever, doesn't it?" and Mrs. Horton covered her ears and laughed as Sunny Boy beat merrily on his mended drum.
"Letters'" he cried a minute later as a shrill whistle sounded. "I'll get 'cm for you, Mother," and downstairs again he tumbled. Only he left the drum safely on Mother's bed.
"Two-three-ever so many," he announced proudly when he came back. "Are there any for me. Mother?"
Like some other little folk, Sunny Boy was always expecting letters, though he almost never wrote any. But he meant to write a great many as soon as he learned to write with ink, and he was even now learning to print nicely.
"None for you," answered Mrs. Horton,
glancing at the envelopes. "However, here is one with something in it for you, I suspect. Grandpa Horton has written to us."
As Mother opened this letter, a little note fell out. That was from Grandpa Horton to Sunny Boy. He liked to put a little letter inside his large one, just for his grand- son. Sunny waited quietly while Mother read her letter. When she had read it through, she folded it and put it back in the envelope.
"Sunny Boy," she said, and her voice made him think of the "laughing piece" she sometimes played for him on the piano. He looked at her and her eyes were dancing. "Sunny Boy," she said again, "what do you think? We're going to visit Grandpa Horton on his farm-going to make him a