Thus ended the first day of Little Sunshine’s Holiday.
CHAPTER II.
Next morning Little Sunshine was awake very early, sitting upright in bed, and trying to poke open her mamma’s eyes; then she looked about her in the new room with the greatest curiosity.
“There’s my tub! There’s Sunny’s tub! I want to go into my tub again!” she suddenly cried, with a shout of delight, and insisted on pattering over to it on her bare feet, and swimming all sorts of things in it,—a comb, a brush, biscuits, the soap-dish and soap, and a large penny, which she had found. These kept her amused till she was ready to be dressed, after which she went independently down-stairs, where her mamma found her, as before, sitting on the white rug, and conversing cheerfully with the old gentleman and lady, and the rest of the family.
After breakfast she was taken into the garden. It was a very nice garden, with lots of apple-trees in it, and many apples had fallen to the ground. Sunshine picked them up and brought them in her pinafore, to ask mamma if she might eat them,—for she never eats anything without saying, “May I?” and when it is given to her she always says, “Thank you.”
Then she went back into the garden again, and saw no end of curious things. Everybody was so kind to her, and petted her as if there had never been a child in the house before, which certainly there had not for a great many years. She and her mamma would willingly have stayed ever so much longer in the dear little cottage, but there was another house in Scotland, where were waiting Sunshine’s two aunties; not real aunties, for she has none, nor uncles neither; but she is a child so well loved, that she has heaps of adopted aunts and uncles, too. These,—Auntie Weirie and Auntie Maggie,—with other kind friends, expected her without fail that very night.
So Sunny was obliged to say good-bye, and start again, which she did on her own two little feet, for the fly forgot to come; and her mamma, and her Lizzie, and two more kind people, had to make a rush of more than a mile, or they would have missed the train. If papa, or anybody at home, had seen them,—half walking, and half running, and carrying the little girl by turns, or making her run between them, till she said, mournfully, “Sunny can’t run, Sunny is so tired!”—how sorry they would have been!
And when at the station she lost her mamma, who was busy about luggage, poor Sunny’s troubles seemed great indeed. She screamed until mamma heard her ever so far off, and when she caught sight of her again, she clung around her neck in the most frantic way. “I thought you was lost; I thought you was lost.”
(Sunny’s grammar is not perfect yet. She cannot understand tenses; she says “brang” instead of “brought,” and once being told that this was not right, she altered it to “I brung,” which, indeed, had some sense, for do we not say “I rang,” and “I rung?” Perhaps Little Sunshine will yet write a book on grammar—who knows?)
Well, she parted from her friends, quite cheerfully of course,—she never cries after anybody but her mamma and papa,—and soon made acquaintance with her fellow travellers, who this time were chiefly ladies. It being nearly one o’clock, two of them took a beautiful basket of lunch: sandwiches, and cakes, and grapes. Little Sunshine watched it with grave composure until she saw the grapes, which were very fine. Then she could not help whispering to her mamma, very softly, “Sunny likes grapes.”