"Are you hurt, Sunny Boy?" asked Harry. "I didn't mean to knock the snow man over, honestly I didn't."
"There's snow down my neck," said Sunny Boy, wriggling. "But nothing hurt me. Only the snow man is all gone."
There he lay, that beautiful snow man, in two pieces, several pieces in fact, for the balls had broken apart when they fell.
"Never mind," said Daddy Horton cheerfully. "You can easily build another snow man. And the boys will help you, perhaps tomorrow."
"To-morrow is New Year's," announced Oliver Dunlap. "I have to go to see my grandma. But I can help build a snow man the day after that."
The other boys promised to help build another snow man whenever Sunny Boy asked them to, and then, as they were going into the house, Mrs. Baker called to Daddy Horton.
"Wait a minute, Mr. Horton," she said, hurrying out with a scarf tied over her pretty hair. "My nephew just telephoned to know if he could take Nelson and Ruth bobsledding on the hill before dinner. They are at dancing school this afternoon; but I wonder if you wouldn't let Sunny Boy go. He hasn't had any fun at all to-day. This morning he came home with Ruth because she was cold and cried, and then this afternoon the snow man fell on him. My nephew is very careful, and he would be glad to take all these boys. May I tell him they will meet him at the Hill? He is on the 'phone now."
"Oh, Daddy, let me go!" cried Sunny Boy. "I never went on a bobsled. Please, Daddy."
Mr. Horton knew Blake Garrison, Mrs. Baker's nephew, and he knew he was careful and very fond of younger children. Blake was a senior in high school and had a splendid sled. It was just like him to think of his little cousins and to want to give them pleasure. So Sunny Boy was allowed to go, and the other boys went with him. They had all started to go coasting anyway, they explained to Mr. Horton, when they passed Sunny Boy's house and Oliver told them about the snow man. Their mothers would not worry, they said, if they came home by five o'clock.
"Hello, everybody!" said Blake Garrison, when the six small boys found him at the top of Court Hill. Most of them knew him by sight and he, it seemed, knew all their names. "I'm glad you didn't all go to dancing school. Do you feel like a little coast?"