“How?” asked Sunny curiously.
“He’s afraid of thunder,” explained Grandma. “Years ago when he was a young dog he was out hunting rabbits or squirrels one summer night and a big thunderstorm came up. We always think he must have seen a tree struck, or been stunned by a flash, for he came home dripping and shivering. And ever since—though that was a long time ago—he begins to shake and wants to hide whenever he hears thunder.”
The woods did not seem dark and still, now that Sunny had company with him, and he took Grandpa over to the place where he and Daddy had gone fishing. They decided not to try to catch any fish that day, but Sunny took off his shoes and stockings and went wading.
When he came out, and had his shoes and stockings on again, Mrs. Horton spread a white cloth on a flat rock and she and Grandma began to get the lunch ready.
“Sunny, which would you rather have,” Grandpa asked him, “white cake or black cake?”
“White, I guess,” said Sunny. “Or no—chocolate, I think.”
“Well, well, if that isn’t lucky!” cried Grandpa, pretending to be much relieved. “Grandma has put in both kinds!”
Indeed there were all kinds of goodies in those boxes—chicken and ham sandwiches, eggs, potato salad, white cake and black, a vacuum bottle of cold milk for Sunny and one of hot coffee for the others.
“There’s a spider!” shouted Sunny Boy as they sat down to eat. “Look, Grandpa, he going right into the cake.”
“Oh, spiders and ants and little creatures like that like to come to a picnic,” answered Grandpa, scooping up the spider on a bit of cardboard and putting him down carefully on a bush near by. “Mr. Spider’ll go home to-night and tell the folks all about the little boy he saw in the woods to-day with his mother and his grandmother and his grandfather having a picnic. And little Sallie Spider will say, ‘What were they eating, Daddy? Did you bring me any?’”