Sunny Boy in the Country Part 13

"Well, where were you?" Juddy pounced on Sunny Boy. "You gave us an awful scare."

"I've been right here all the time." Sunny was a bit aggrieved to find such a fuss made over him. First Jimmie and now Juddy. "I haven't been anywhere," he insisted.

"We thought you were lost!" David frowned at him severely.

"Well, I wasn't," retorted Sunny Boy briefly. "I was watching ducks.

Jimmie, do they sleep in water?"

"What, ducks?" said Jimmie. "Oh, no, they sleep under their mother just like chickens at night, some place where it is warm and dry. Your grandmother will be glad you found this duck--she's missed her for two days. Guess she never thought of looking in the dairy."

This part of the barn had been used for the cows, you see, years before, when Sunny's father was a little boy and a big herd of fine cows were kept at Brookside. Now Mrs. b.u.t.terball and b.u.t.terette were the only cows, and they lived in a box stall near Peter and Paul.

CHAPTER XII

APPLE PIES

Sunny Boy continued to look at the ducks till David could stand it no longer.

"What happened to you?" he asked, jogging Sunny's elbow to make him look at him. "How'd you get down here?"

"Fell down," said Sunny calmly. "Could I have a duck to play with, Jimmie?"

"How'd you fall down?" persisted David, who usually got what he started after.

Sunny Boy was exceedingly bored by these numerous questions, and he wanted to be allowed to watch the ducks in peace. So he decided the easiest way to get rid of David and the others would be to tell them what they wanted to know.

"I'll show you," he said. "Come on."

He led them out of the dairy into a little cobwebby room, and pointed up to a square opening.

"I slid through that--see?" he demanded.

"Did it hurt?"

"Course not--I fell on the hay."

The floor was thickly covered with old, dusty hay.

"It's the room where we used to throw down hay to feed the cows,"

explained Jimmie. "They covered it over with loose boards when they put in the hay three or four years ago. But I suppose you youngsters when romping around kicked the boards to one side and the hay with it. Sunny, coasting down the side of the cave, just coasted right on through the hole and landed down here. Lucky there was hay enough on the floor to save him a b.u.mp."

"But why didn't you come and tell us?" asked David. "Here we've been looking all over for you. Why didn't you sing out?"

"I was going to," admitted Sunny Boy apologetically. "But when I was hunting for the way into the barn, I found the ducks. Let's go and tell Grandma we saw 'em."

It was noon by this time, so the Hatch children went home and Sunny Boy and Jimmie walked together to the house. It had stopped raining, and the sun felt warm and delightful.

"Of course you may have a duck," said Grandma, when Sunny Boy told her of his find. "That foolish old mother duck marched off with her children one morning and I couldn't for the life of me discover where she had gone.

And Grandpa must board over that hole if you are going to play in the haymow. Another time you might hurt yourself, falling like that."

"Where's Mother?" asked Sunny Boy, eager to tell her about the morning's fun.

"I believe she is up in the attic," returned Grandma. "She's been up there for an hour or so. I wish, lambie, you'd run and find her and say dinner will be on the table in half an hour."

Sunny climbed the crooked, steep stairs that led to Grandma's attic, and found Mother bending over an old trunk dragged out to the middle of the floor.

"Mother," he began as soon as he saw her, "we've been sliding on the hay, and I found a duck mother, an' Grandma gave me a duck for my own. What are you doing, Mother?"

Mrs. Horton was sitting on the floor, her lap filled with a bundle of old letters.

"I've been having a delightful morning, too," she said. "Grandma started to go over these old trunks with me, and then some one called her on the telephone and she had to go down. See, precious, here is a picture of Daddy when he was a little boy."

Sunny looked over her shoulder and saw a photograph of a stiff little boy in stiff velvet skirt and jacket, standing by a table, one small hand resting solemnly on a book.

"He doesn't look comfy," objected Sunny. "Is it really Daddy? And did little boys wear petticoats then, Mother?"

"That isn't a petticoat, it is a kilt," explained Mother. "You know what kilts are, dear--you've seen the Scotch soldiers wear them. Well, when Daddy was a little boy they wore kilts, and trousers underneath. And Grandma was telling me this morning that as soon as Daddy was out of her sight he would take off his kilt and go about in his blouse and trousers.

So probably he considered the kilt a petticoat just as you do."

Sunny wandered over to another trunk that stood open and poked an inquiring hand down into its depths.

"What's this, Mother?" he asked, holding up a queer, square little cap.

"Be careful, precious, that is Grandpa's Civil War trunk," warned Mother, coming over to him. "Grandmother meant to put the things out to air to-day and then it rained. See, dear, this is the cap he wore, and the old blue coat, and this is his knapsack. Some day you must ask Grandpa to come up here with you and tell you war stories."

"Where's his sword?" asked Sunny, fingering the cap with interest. "Where was Daddy then? Was Grandpa shot?"

"Grandpa didn't have a sword, because he wasn't an officer," explained Mother. "He was only a boy when he enlisted, and it was long before there was any Daddy, dear. And Grandpa was wounded--I'm sure I've told you that before--don't you remember? That's how he met Grandma. She was a little girl and met him in the hospital where her father, who was a physician, was attending Grandpa."

"Olive! Sunny! Dinner's ready!" It was Grandma standing at the foot of the stairs and calling them.

"I forgot to tell you," said Sunny hastily. "Dinner will be on the table in half an hour, Grandma said."

Mrs. Horton smiled.

"I think the half hour has gone by," she declared, closing the lid of Grandpa's trunk. "Come, dear, we must go right down and not keep them waiting."

"Are you going to eat your duck?" asked Grandpa, when they were seated at the dinner table.

"My, no!" answered Sunny Boy, shocked.

He never believed that the chickens and ducks they had for Sunday dinners were the same pretty feathered creatures he saw walking about the farm.

Chickens and ducks one ate, thought Sunny Boy, were always the kind he remembered hanging up in the markets at home--without any feathers or heads. He was sure they grew that way, somewhere.