“Oh!” said Sunny Boy again.
All during the rest of the dinner he was very busy, thinking. He had forgotten that Daddy had lived at Brookside, or, to be more exact, he had not understood that Grandpa’s farm was the same farm on which Daddy had been a little boy. Sunny Boy was only five years old, and he had already moved three times. One lived a long time on a farm it seemed.
Soon after dinner came bed for Sunny Boy, and he dreamed that he had fallen head-first into his drum and that it was very hot and dark inside. He was kicking madly to get out, when Mother came in and found him all wrapped up in the bed-clothes with his head buried in the pillows. When she drew down the covers he woke up, and after she had tucked him in smoothly again and brought him a drink of cool water, he went to sleep. And the next thing that happened was the morning.
After breakfast, Sunny Boy went out into the back yard to play. It wasn’t a very large back yard, but it was pretty. There were ferns along one side, and gay spring flowers on the other. At one end were Sunny Boy’s swing and sand-box, and the center was in thick, green grass. Mondays the grass belonged to Harriet, who used it to walk on when she hung out the clean clothes, but other days Sunny had the whole yard pretty much to himself.
There was a little gate cut in the fence on one side of the yard. Daddy Horton had made the gate for Sunny Boy and Nelson and Ruth. Nelson and Ruth were a little boy and girl who lived next door, at least Ruth was a little girl—she was only four years old—but Nelson was seven and went to school. Their last name was Baker, and they and Sunny Boy had very good times playing together.
As soon as Sunny Boy came out into his yard this morning, the little gate opened, and in came Ruth, dragging Paulina, her largest doll, by one arm.
“Don’t be cross,” begged Sunny Boy. “I want to tell you something.”
“I’m not cross,” said Ruth with dignity. “What made you think I was going to be?”
“’Cause you’re dragging Paulina and you always treat her like that when you’re cross,” answered Sunny more frankly than tactfully. “Listen, Ruth—we’re going to the country to see Grandpa Horton, and I’m going to drive horses and go fishing, an’ help hay, and oh, everything!”
Ruth was interested.