“Why did Mrs. Raymond cry when she found Curly?” he asked, as Mrs. Horton turned to leave the room. “Did her little boy die in the war?”
“No, dear,” answered Mrs. Horton. “He came home from France and brought his mother the dog you call Curly and she calls Bon-Bon. But her son—he was a Captain—lived only a few months after he landed in this country; he was invalided home. So, you see, poor little Bon-Bon means a great deal to Mrs. Raymond because her boy thought to bring him all the way from France to his mother.”
After Mother had gone—Sunny Boy heard the noise of the car as it started for the station, though his room was on the wrong side of the house to see the garage—he thought a great deal about the little lost dog and the brave soldier who had brought it home to his mother. The more he thought, the gladder Sunny Boy was to know that Mrs. Raymond had her dog again.
Two or three days later he was sitting on the front porch waiting for Aunt Bessie to go swimming with him (Sunny Boy could really swim very nicely now) when the parcel-post wagon drew up before the house. The driver grinned as Sunny Boy came flying down the path.
“Package for Arthur Bradford Horton,” he announced cheerfully. “Is that the little boy who lives next door?”
“Course not!” Sunny Boy was startled at the idea that his package might go to the boy next door. “That’s my name. Is there something for me?”
“Looks like it,” admitted the man. “Here you, don’t get under the horse’s feet, I’m handing it to you as fast as I can. There you are. Like Christmas, isn’t it?”
Sunny Boy took his package and said “thank you.” It was a large package, and he wondered what could be in it and who had sent it to him.
“Maybe it’s from Grandpa,” he told his mother, as she and Aunt Bessie came out on the porch.