“Not before lunch, dear,” decided Mrs. Horton. “Now I have to finish the mending. Keep out of the sun, won’t you? It’s one of the warmest days we’ve had.”
She closed the screen door and Sunny returned to his express wagon.
“I could tie it on back,” he said aloud.
The laundry wagon was still standing where the freckle-faced boy had left it, and the horse was slowly but surely going to sleep, “right in his tracks,” as Harriet would have said had she been there to see. His head kept nodding lower and lower, and Sunny Boy privately decided that the only thing that kept it from hitting the asphalt was the big round collar the horse wore.
Sunny Boy got up from the step and walked down to the wagon, dragging his express cart behind him. He had often seen other boys tie their toy wagons on behind real wagons, and he knew exactly how it was done.
“I’ll just pretend,” he told himself, glancing up at the windows of the house uneasily. “I won’t really go for a ride.”
There was no one to see him knot the rope firmly and make the express cart fast to the laundry wagon. He climbed in and had a blissfully thrilling moment making believe that he was part of an express train.
“I’ll be the baggage car,” he thought. “Toot! Toot!”
Then from across the street came whirling the breezy laundry-wagon boy. This time he had no parcel, but leaped into his seat and took up the reins without going round to the back of his wagon.
“Gid-ap, Lazy-Bones!” he cried to the sleepy horse. “What do you think this is—a cab-stand? Gid-ap!”