Sunny Boy and His Playmates

by Ramy Allison White

Sunny Boy knew he would not forget, and then he went out into the kitchen and told Harriet about the afternoon's excitement.

"And we never had the snowball fight at all," he said. "All the bullets were made, too. Perhaps we can have it to-morrow."

But the next morning was rainy, and though there was plenty of cold weather through February which followed, not once did it snow again. There was not even much good skating, though Sunny Boy did enjoy one afternoon with Bob Parkney, who declared that he would soon be a champion skater with his new skates to help him. After that, though, it thawed and froze and thawed and froze and the Centronia Park Commission refused to allow any one on the ice. The children were disappointed in the weather, but Miss May said she was glad to see it rain. She had had enough snow, she said, till another year.

Bob stopped in once a week after school at the Hortons, to get the egg container. He brought Mrs. Horton two dozen fresh eggs every Monday morning from his mother's poultry yard, and Friday afternoon he came for the box. Mrs. Parkney was so busy and happy now that she had almost forgotten she had ever been discouraged. Judge Layton had put the farmhouse in good order for her family, and he had stocked the poultry yard with fine chickens. He said that if Mrs. Parkney would feed the chickens and look after them till he came out in the summer, she might have the eggs to do with as she pleased. The Parkney children had all the fresh eggs to eat they wanted and there were several dozen to sell every week, and Mrs. Parkney said she felt rich with the egg money for her own.

Mr. Parkney's arm gradually grew stronger, and he was proving such a handy man on the little farm, so willing and so capable, that Judge Layton told Mrs. Horton that he was thinking of building a new house and asking Mr. Parkney to go on living in the farmhouse and to be his farm manager.

"He's going to paint the house and the barns for me this spring and whitewash all the fences," said the judge. "There isn't anything that man can't do."

"Spring is on the way," announced Daddy Horton, one evening early in March. "I see they are having freshets out in Yardley county."

"What is a freshet?" asked Sunny Boy.

"A freshet, Son, is when a stream rises suddenly and overflows its natural course," explained his daddy. "In spring, freshets are often caused by the ice and snow melting too rapidly and draining down into the brooks and rivers. Then the stream rises, and if the banks are narrow, it overflowers [Transcriber's note: overflows?] them and sometimes great damage is done. A big river may sweep away houses and cattle and send people scurrying about in boats and rafts. Centronia is not near a river, though, so it isn't likely that you'll see a freshet soon."

The news of the freshets was not the only sign of spring. At school, Miss Davis had a large blue jar filled with beautiful pussy willows on her desk, and the nature study lessons were all about the spring birds. When Bob Parkney brought Mrs. Horton her fresh eggs, he also brought her some budded twigs which he said would blossom if she put them in water.