"The barn _is_ moving!" said Sunny Boy loud.
And it was. The force of the water and the ice, driving against the
poor worn out foundations, had loosened them, and the old barn was
actually sailing. The boys ran to the door. All around them was
water, water and ice. The barn began to rock and to lean to one side a
little.
"It will tip over!" cried Carleton. "We'll be drowned."
"If we shout, some one will hear us and come and get us," suggested
Sunny Boy. "We'll have to yell!"
And yell they did, shouting with all the strength and power of their
lungs. They had almost given up hope of making any one hear when
suddenly there came an answering shout and down in one corner of the
field they saw something moving.
"It's Bob and the horse and wagon!" cried Sunny Boy. "Now we'll be all
right."
"Well, you do manage to get yourselves into a pickle every time, don't
you?" was Bob's greeting when he drove up. "Father sent me down to
finish the fence alone and bring you up, and I couldn't imagine where
you could be. Hurry up, kids, because I don't like the looks of this
water. It will be coming in the wagon if it gets much higher."
Bob helped them all in and then drove slowly to the Parkney house. The
horse had hard work to keep his footing in the water and ice, and he
kept shaking his head as though he did not like it. But they reached
the house safely, and Mrs. Parkney gave the boys milk to drink and
clean dry stockings to wear as though she were used to any emergency,
as indeed she was.
"I guess you've had enough exploring for one day," said Bob, as he
drove the boys out to the head of the lane to get the half-past four
o'clock trolley car. "If it's dull out here this summer, I mean to
send for you, Sunny Boy, because excitement seems to follow you around."
The same merry conductor was on the four-thirty trolley car, and he was
much interested to hear about the day's experiences. So were the
mothers and fathers when the boys reached home.
The next morning Daddy Horton telephoned Mr. Parkney to ask him if the
brook had done any damage over night. Mr. Parkney said that the old
barn had been carried down past their farm and was completely wrecked.
"I'm glad we didn't stay in it," said Sunny Boy cheerfully. "It must
have been a freshet, Daddy. Don't you think it was?"
It was a freshet, of course, and Daddy Horton said so.
After that Saturday the weather grew warmer and warmer, and Sunny Boy
began to think of summer. What he did when school closed and what
happened to him, we'll have to tell you in another book, to be called
"SUNNY BOY AND HIS GAMES."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Sunny Boy and His Playmates, by Ramy Allison White
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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