Dear, dear, there was a great deal of excitement, you may be sure, when
Sunny Boy and Grandpa told what had happened at the pond. Harriet
brought hot water bottles and dry shoes and stockings and hot lemonade
and her best box of peppermint drops. Grandma Horton insisted on
wrapping Sunny Boy from chin to feet in a hot blanket and she made
Grandpa take little white pills. Mother Horton rubbed their hands and
lighted the electric heater, although the room was very warm and
comfortable, and put on all the wood in the fire-basket till the
fireplace was ablaze with flames.
And all this loving care and attention agreed with both Sunny Boy and
Grandpa Horton, for neither one of them took the tiniest bit of cold
and they were all right again the next day. Sunny Boy said he knew it
was the peppermint drops, and Harriet thought so, too.
CHAPTER III
WHO WAS THE BIG BOY?
Although Sunny Boy and Grandpa were quite well the next morning, Daddy
Horton said he thought they had better stay in the house till after
lunch.
"It is much colder to-day. The thermometer dropped several degrees
last night," Daddy explained. "I think if you wait a few hours you'll
find it pleasanter out."
So Sunny Boy and Grandpa took this good advice and stayed in by the
living-room fire. They again told Grandma and Mother Horton about the
ice cracking, and Harriet, who was cleaning the dining-room, could not
get along very fast with her dusting because she was always coming to
the door to listen.
"That must have been Judge Layton, Father," said Mrs. Horton, when
Grandpa described the old gentleman whom Sunny Boy insisted on calling
"the other grandpa."
"I believe I did hear some one in the crowd call him 'judge,'" answered
Grandpa Horton.
"He has a granddaughter, Adele, I know," said Mrs. Horton. "And he is
so proud of her he goes everywhere with her. I hope he found her and
that she was not hurt."
"Oh, no one was hurt," replied Grandpa Horton. "There was a great deal
of shouting and screaming, but a pair of wet feet was the most any one
suffered, I feel sure. What is it, laddie?"
Sunny Boy had been standing quietly beside his grandfather's chair,
waiting for a chance to say something very important.
"I wish, Grandpa--" he began excitedly, "I wish the big boy who pulled
me off the ice had waited to see you. He was afraid of the policeman,
or maybe he might have stayed."
"I wish I had seen him," said Grandpa Horton seriously. "He must have
had his wits about him to get you out of that crowd so easily. That
was what was worrying me all the time--I was afraid that a little chap
like you would be knocked down by that struggling crowd."
"I wish I could see the boy," said Mrs. Horton wistfully. "I would
like so much to thank him, and Daddy would, too. Don't you even know
his name, Sunny?"
Sunny Boy shook his head.
"I forgot to ask him," he admitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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