“Letters!” he cried a minute later as a shrill whistle sounded. “I’ll get ’em for you, Mother,” and downstairs again he tumbled. Only he left the drum safely on Mother’s bed.
“Two—three—ever so many,” he announced proudly when he came back. “Are there any for me, Mother?”
Like some other little folk, Sunny Boy was always expecting letters, though he almost never wrote any. But he meant to write a great many as soon as he learned to write with ink, and he was even now learning to print nicely.
“None for you,” answered Mrs. Horton, glancing at the envelopes. “However, here is one with something in it for you, I suspect. Grandpa Horton has written to us.”
As Mother opened this letter, a little note fell out. That was from Grandpa Horton to Sunny Boy. He liked to put a little letter inside his large one, just for his grandson. Sunny waited quietly while Mother read her letter. When she had read it through, she folded it and put it back in the envelope.
“Sunny Boy,” she said, and her voice made him think of the “laughing piece” she sometimes played for him on the piano. He looked at her and her eyes were dancing. “Sunny Boy,” she said again, “what do you think? We’re going to visit Grandpa Horton on his farm—going to make him a nice long visit and see the real country.”
“Oh, goody!” cried Sunny Boy. “Is Daddy going?”
“He’ll come to see us,” promised Mother. “Let me read you what Grandpa has written you, dear.”
Grandpa Horton’s note to Sunny told him he was depending on him to help him with the early haying.
“Wasn’t it lucky Harriet rubbed the numbers on the front door this morning?” chuckled Sunny Boy. “S’posing we didn’t get this letter? Where’s Brookside, Mother?”