Book Description

“Oh, Ruth! Oh, Nelson! O-hoo!” Sunny Boy puckered up his mouth and tried his best to whistle, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “Ru-th! Nelson!” he shouted again. “Come on over! I want to tell you something!” Then up the steps from the laundry in the basement of their house, where they had been hunting string for a kite, came Nelson and Ruth Baker, who lived next door. Sunny Boy stood in the gateway his father had cut in the fence between the two yards and danced up and down impatiently. “Hurry up!” he urged them. “Listen! We’re going to the seashore day after to-morrow! Mother said so.” Nelson sat down comfortably on the grass. He was rather a fat boy. “We’re going to the mountains to visit my grandmother, next week,” he said. “But you just got back from being away.” And indeed Sunny Boy and his mother had returned the night before from a long visit with Sunny’s Grandpa Horton who lived on a beautiful farm. Little Ruth Baker, who was only four years old, beamed cheerfully at Sunny Boy. “We went to the seashore while you were gone,” she informed him. “The water was very wet. I went paddling, but Nelson wore a bathing suit.” “I’ve a bathing suit, too,” announced Sunny Boy. “The brook at Grandpa’s was too cold, so I didn’t wear it. But I’m going to learn to swim down at Nestle Cove. Daddy’s going to teach me.” Nelson looked up from straightening out the tangle of string. “Did you sleep on the train going to your grandpa’s?” he asked. “We have to stay two nights, an’ eat and sleep an’ everything on the train before we get to my grandma’s.” Sunny Boy, stretched full length in his express wagon, kicked his heels excitedly. “We ate on the train,” he said eagerly. “But—what you think?—we’re going to Nestle Cove in Daddy’s new automobile!” “I saw it out in front yesterday,” Nelson volunteered. “It’s a nice big one. I’ll bet I could most run one!” “P’haps,” admitted Sunny Boy doubtfully. “Anyway, you have to be grown-up before they let you—Daddy said so. Mother’s going, an’ Harriet, an’ Aunt Bessie and Miss Mart’son.” Sunny Boy meant Miss Martinson, a school teacher and Aunt Bessie’s best friend, but his tongue had a trick of skipping letters when he pronounced long words. “And Aunt Bessie has a house with a big porch, and she says I can sleep in a hammock like a sailor if I want to. An’ I’m going to make a fish pond in the sand.”