Sunny Boy in the Country | Page 6

"There's more out in the hall."
He put down his load and ran out to bring in the rest.
"But, precious," said Mrs. Horton, looking from the kiddie-car to her little son, "we can't take all these things with us. Why, Mother wouldn't have a place to put your socks and blouses, to say nothing of the cunning bathing-suit we bought yesterday." "You won't need them, you know," urged Aunt Bessie. "You'll be so busy playing with the new things you'll find up at Grand- pa Horton's that you'll probably never re- member the toys at home. Then when you come back they will seem like new ones." Sunny Boy was disappointed. His kid- die-car was the hardest to give up. The woolly dog, too, was very dear to him. Mrs. Horton understood, and she sat down in her low rocking chair and took her little boy on her lap.
"The kiddie-car wouldn't be any fun in the country," she said. "There are no stone pavements, you see, dear, and it wouldn't run on the grass. As for the woolly dog, why you will have a real dog to play with- a collie dog that will run after sticks and bring them to you and take walks with you. That will be fun, won't it?"
Sunny Boy slid to the floor and stood up. He was excited.
"I am simply crazy to have a real dog," he declared.
Mrs. Horton stared at him, but Aunt Bessie, bending over the trunk, sat down on the edge and laughed.
"Where in the world did you hear that, Sunny Boy?" asked Mother. "Who talks like that?"
Aunt Bessie swooped down upon her nephew.
"I do," she told her sister. "But I'll have to be more careful when little pitchers with big ears are about. Why don't you copy the nice things I say, Sunny?"
"Isn't that nice?" puzzled Sunny. "Shouldn't I say it? Why not, Mother?"
"It isn't wrong, dear," Mrs. Horton assured him. "Aunt Bessie only means that speaking that way is rather a bad habit to get into. We call it exaggeration. Let me see, how shall I make you understand? Well, if I say 'I'm starving to death,' when I mean that I am hungrier than usual for dinner, that's exaggeration. I couldn't be Starving, unless I had had nothing to eat for several days."
"And though some people think I'm crazy, I'm really not," concluded Aunt Bessie gayly. "You think I'm rather nice, don't you. Sunny? And now I wonder if there's a young man about who would be kind enough to take this skirt down to Harriet and ask her to please press the hem?"
"I will," offered Sunny Boy. "And then I'll come back and put my things away."
"While you are down in the kitchen, I wish you'd ask Harriet if the oven is ready for me to make some biscuits for lunch," said Mrs. Horton. "And tell her I said you might have a glass of milk and one of the sponge cakes without any pink icing."
Harriet pressed the skirt while Sunny Boy sat at one end of the ironing board and watched her and ate his sponge cake-which was almost as good as the kind with pink icing which were only for dessert-and drank his milk. Then Harriet gave him the skirt to carry back to Aunt Bessie and he remembered to ask about the oven. Harriet said to tell Mother that it was just right for baking biscuits.
"That means I must go down right away," said Mrs. Horton, when Sunny Boy told her. "We've about finished anyway, haven't we, Bessie? The man is to come at three this afternoon for the trunk."
"I've left a few chinks and corners, in case you want to tuck in some little trifles at the last minute," replied Aunt Bessie, "but otherwise it's ready to be strapped and locked."
"Let me lock it," said Sunny Boy eagerly. "I can stand on the top, too. I did for Cousin Lola when hers wouldn't shut."
Mrs. Horton was tying on a nice clean white apron.
"Thank you, dearest," she said. "Mother isn't quite ready to have the trunk locked. If we've packed it so full it won't close, why of course I'll call on you to stand on the top and make it shut."
Sunny Boy hoped the trunk wouldn't close, for he wanted to dance on the top. Then Mrs. Horton went down to Harriet's kitchen to make puffy white biscuit for lunch and Aunt Bessie went off to give a music lesson.
Sunny Boy, left to put away his toys, explained matters to the woolly dog as he carried him upstairs.
"There will be a real dog for me to play with at Grandpa's," he said. "And little calves and lambs-Harriet said so. Maybe you might get broken in the trunk, anyway. But I won't like the real