Sunny Boy in the Country | Page 3

nice long visit and see the real country."
"Oh, goody!" cried Sunny Boy. "Is Daddy going?"
"He'll come to see us," promised Mother. "Let me read you what Grandpa has written you, dear."
Grandpa Horton's note to Sunny told him he was depending on him to help him with the early haying.
"Wasn't it lucky Harriet rubbed the numbers on the front door this mornings" chuckled Sunny Boy. "S'posing we didn't get this letter? Where's Brookside, Mother?"
Brookside was the name of Grandpa's farm. Mrs. Horton explained that it was many miles away from the city, and that it would take them nearly a day on the train to get there.
"And if Daddy cannot go with us, you'll have to take care of me," she said seriously. "All right, I will," promised Sunny Boy. "I'll have to go and tell Harriet an' show her my letter. I'll tell the awning man, too. I was going to help him, but I don't feel helping, somehow. I feel wiggled up, you know, Mother."
"You're excited," said Mrs. Horton. "Well, we don't go for two weeks, dear, so you'll have plenty of time to talk about it. I must write to Grandpa as soon as Daddy comes home."
Dashing out of the room went Sunny Boy, crying the good news at the top of his lungs -"We're going to the country! We're going to my Grandpa's farm! Hurrah !"

CHAPTER II
SPREADING THE NEWS
"SO you're going off to the country?" said Daddy, as he came whistling down to the dining room, where Mother and Sunny Boy were waiting for him. "Well, I see that I'll have to come up and teach you how to catch a brook trout."
"Did Mother tell you?" asked Sunny Boy, as Daddy swung him into his chair and Harriet brought in the soup to Mrs. Horton. "When did you find out, Daddy? I was watching for you so's I could tell."
"I didn't see any little chap in the hall, so I went right upstairs and found Mother. She said you were going to Brookside, and that the awnings were up, and the screens in, and she hoped to go downtown to-morrow and buy your best shoes," and Daddy looked at Mother and laughed.
"Daddy is teasing me," smiled Mrs. Horton. "We have to tell him our news all in one breath because we see so little of him, don't we, Sunny Boy? I do hope, Harry, that you'll be able to come up this summer and spend a real vacation at your father's."
Mr. Horton was making a little well in the mashed potato on Sunny's plate, and flooding it with the rich brown gravy. That was the way his father had fixed his mashed potato for him when he was a little boy, and Sunny Boy liked his that way, too.
"Oh, I'll come up," promised Mr. Horton, passing the potato to Sunny Boy. "I'll have to come and show you both where I had my garden and teach Sunny how to fool the wise fish."
Sunny Boy put down his fork. He had to wait a minute because his mouth was full and Mother had her own opinion of a little boy who spoke without chewing his food properly and swallowing it. Having swallowed his potato, Sunny Boy was ready to speak.
"Oh, Daddy!" he began eagerly, "were you ever at Brookside? Where was your garden ? Could I drive horses ?"
Then Daddy and Mother said the same thing together, both at once, just as if they were thinking the same thing, as they probably were:
"Why, Sunny Boy!" said Daddy and Mother.
"You can't have forgotten," urged Mrs. Horton, then. "Brookside, you know, dear, is where Daddy lived when he was a little boy. When he was just as old as you are now he used to play there were Indians in the woods. I've told you ever so many times, and now you are going to see the place yourself where Daddy was a little lad like you."
"Oh!" said Sunny Boy again. All during the rest of the dinner he was very busy, thinking. He had forgotten that Daddy had lived at Brookside, or, to be more exact, he had not understood that Grandpa's farm was the same farm on which Daddy had been a little boy. Sunny Boy was only five years old, and he had already moved three times. One lived a long time on a farm it seemed.
Soon after dinner came bed for Sunny Boy, and he dreamed that he had fallen head-first into his drum and that it was very hot and dark inside. He was kicking madly to get out, when Mother came in and found him all wrapped up in the bed-clothes with his head buried in the pillows. When she drew down the covers he woke up, and after she had tucked him in