"Nelson, your mother wants you to come home," said Mr. Horton. "We saw her in the window as we passed your house. She's waiting for you. Your Aunt Caroline has come."
"Take a popcorn ball, Nelson," said Sunny Boy's mother, as Nelson began to put on his coat and hat. "And here is one for Ruth." Ruth was Nelson's little sister.
Nelson said good-bye to Sunny Boy and ran down the steps of the Horton house and up his own. It was never any trouble for Nelson or Sunny Boy to go calling on each other.
"Now we can go skating, can't we, Grandpa?" asked Sunny Boy eagerly. "I thought Nelson stayed ever so long."
"Why, Sunny Boy, how impolite you are!" cried his mother. "That isn't a nice thing to say. Suppose you should go to see Nelson and he should spend the time wishing you would go home—how would you feel?"
Sunny Boy looked uncomfortable.
"Well, he can come back after I go skating," he suggested. "Grandpa promised we could go this afternoon, Mother."
"So I did; and we'll start this minute," declared Grandpa Horton, coming out into the hall and smiling at his small grandson. "Who ever heard of a little boy with a brand-new pair of skates and ice on the pond, not going skating, Olive? Sunny Boy is just as polite as he ever was, Olive, but we have to go skating, whether we have company or not."
"Oh, Father, how you do spoil Sunny Boy!" cried Mrs. Horton, half-laughing. But she kissed them both and waved to them as they went off, the new skates dangling over Sunny Boy's arm and buckled together with a leather strap just as the big boys tie their skates.
"Can you skate, Grandpa?" the little boy asked, as they trudged along, Grandpa's rosy face and white mustache showing above a gray and white muffler and Sunny Boy's pink cheeks and dancing eyes set off by a muffler of scarlet wool. "Will you go skating with me?"