“Why do you wrap ’em in a cloth, Mother?” asked Sunny, leaning against the kitchen table and watching Mrs. Horton put a dozen sandwiches in a damp cloth.
“So they’ll keep fresh, dear,” she answered. “I’ll put them in the ice box this way and to-morrow morning they’ll be just as nice as they are now. Want to taste this?”
Sunny tasted the spoon she held out to him.
“It isn’t egg, is it?” he asked anxiously. “Aunt Bessie says not to make egg ones, ’cause Harriet did.”
Mrs. Horton laughed.
“It isn’t egg,” she assured him. “That was minced ham you tasted. I hope all sandwiches don’t taste alike to you, Sunny. Now let me see—it’s only half past ten. I think I’ll go up and put the bedrooms in order. Sunny Boy, if you’ll stay here and let the expressman in when he comes for the trunks, I’d like it very much. I want Daddy to tie up some packages for me.”
Sunny Boy, left alone in the kitchen, inspected the three boxes open on the table. Sandwiches filled one, another was evidently for fruit, since oranges were already in it, and the third was for cake. Harriet’s cake, wrapped in waxed paper, filled half of it.
“Mother said I could do that. I s’pose I wasn’t here,” thought Sunny Boy. “I want to help fix the lunch.”
He sat down to think on the chair that obligingly turned into a step-ladder if you knew how to twist it. Presently he carried the chair over to the kitchen closet and stood up on it to look over the shelves. Very likely his mother, with so much to do, might forget the most necessary thing. He poked around among the boxes, opened several and smelled the contents. Finally one seemed to please him very much, and he scrambled down and went back to the lunch boxes.
“There!” He tucked his find in neatly under the sandwiches. “P’rhaps they’ll be s’prised. They can—”