"That's just what I want you to do," agreed Daddy. "We'll take plenty home to Mother and she can experiment with indoor gardens to her heart's content. See, Son, here's my knife. You must cut the moss very carefully in square pieces, and try not to break it. I'll be digging up some of these healthy little ground vines."

Sunny Boy was proud to be allowed to handle Daddy's big jack knife, and he was glad Daddy hadn't told him not to cut himself. Daddy, somehow, always trusted Sunny not to be heedless.

"Mother'll like it, won't she?" he called to Daddy, who was digging up a pretty, creeping green vine that grew in the gra.s.s near him. "Won't she be s'prised, Daddy?"

They worked busily, and soon Sunny had a neat little pile of green moss ready to take home to Mother. After that he waded about in the brook, splashing the water with his bare feet.

"There--you've been in long enough," called Mr. Horton presently. "The water is too cold to play in it long. Come, Son, and put on your shoes and stockings."

Sunny Boy dabbled his feet in a little hole made by a stone he had pushed away.

"Sunny Boy!" called Mr. Horton once again.

Still Sunny Boy continued to play in the water. To tell the truth every one had been so anxious to make him happy at Brookside that he was the least little bit in the world spoiled. The more you have your own way, you know, the harder it is to do other people's way, and if you can do as you please day after day, by and by you want to do as you please all the time. Sunny Boy felt like that now.

"Sunny!" said Daddy a third time, very quietly.

Sunny Boy looked at him--and came marching out of the water. He was not very pleasant while Daddy helped him dry his feet and get into the despised shoes and stockings, but, when they were ready to start for home and Daddy tilted up his chin to look at him squarely, Sunny Boy's own smile came out.

"All right!" announced Daddy cheerfully. "Let's go home a different way and perhaps we'll find wild strawberries."

They did, too, a patch of them down at one end of the apple orchard, and Mr. Horton showed Sunny Boy how he used to string them on gra.s.s stems to take home to his mother when he was a little boy.

He certainly was a dear Daddy, and when he went back to the city Mother and Sunny had to be nicer to each other than ever because they missed him so very much.

"It's raining!" Sunny Boy stood at the window after breakfast, the morning after Mr. Horton had gone back to the city. "Does it rain in the summer?"

Grandma laughed, and told him that indeed it did rain in the summer.

"We haven't had a drop of rain since you've been here, and you must have brought fair weather with you," she said. "Now that the hay is all in the barn, we're glad to see it rain, for the garden needs it badly. Think how thirsty the flowers and vegetables must be."

"Harriet said to play in the barn on rainy days," said Sunny Boy sadly, "but I think I'm lonesome."

"Well, you go out to the barn and you won't be lonesome," Araminta, who was clearing the breakfast table, laughed at his long face. "I'll bet all the children are there, even the baby. He can go, can't he, Mrs.

Horton?"

Grandma said yes, of course he could, and Mother brought his rubbers and raincoat downstairs when she came, for he met her on the stairs and there she had them all ready.

"Run along and have a good time," she told him, kissing him. "I was going to suggest that you play in the barn this morning. Help Jimmie if he's working, won't you, and don't hinder him?"

Paddling out to the barn in the pouring rain was fun. But the barn was the most fun of all. Grandpa and Jimmie were on the first floor mending harness, and the doors were open so that they could see right out into the orchard and yet not get a bit wet. Just as Araminta had said, all the Hatch children were there, even the baby, who lay asleep on the hay in a nice, quiet corner.

"Hurrah!" cried Juddy Hatch. "We're going to play robbers, and you can be in my cave."

"Be in my cave," urged David, his brother. "Our side has the best slide."

"I'll come up there and settle you youngsters if you're going to quarrel," threatened Jimmie, switching a buggy whip and looking very fierce. "You'd better start playing and stop arguing."

The children knew Jimmie had small patience with little bickerings, though he had never been known to do anything more severe than scold. So they took him at his word and began to play.

"You be on Juddy's side, then," agreed David. "See, we each have a cave here in the hay--that's mine in this corner. The way we do is to all go into our caves and take turns creeping up. When you hear us on the roof of your cave, you have to get out and run over to ours, climb up to the top and slide down the other side. If you're caught you have to b'long to our robber tribe."

The hay was very smooth and slippery, and the children had many a tumble as the two robber tribes chased each other across the haymow. Such shrieks of laughter, such howls as the robbers in their excitement sometimes forgot and pulled a braid of Sarah's or Dorabelle's! The baby continued to sleep placidly through all the noise, and Jimmie told Grandpa that he thought perhaps "the poor little kid was deaf!" Jimmie was only fooling, of course, for the Hatch baby was not deaf at all.

It was Sunny Boy's turn to be chased, and as he heard David's robber tribe beginning to climb up on the roof of his cave he dashed out and ran for the other cave at the end of the haymow. Up the side he went, and down. Dorabelle was captured in that raid and had to go over to David's side.

"Now I've got four in my tribe," crowed the robber chief. "Get your men together, Jud, and we'll do it again."

"Where's Sunny Boy?" demanded Juddy, counting his tribe. "He was here--I saw him climb up the top of the cave. Sunny Boy! Sun-ny!"

No Sunny Boy answered.

"Jimmie, is Sunny Boy down there with you?" Juddy peered over the edge of the haymow where Jimmie sat mending the harness. Grandpa had gone to the house, declaring that there was a little too much noise in the barn for his rheumatism.

"Haven't seen him," answered Jimmie. "Isn't he up there with you?"

Juddy's lip began to quiver. He was only eight years old.

"Then he's lost," he said. "He isn't here at all, Jimmie."

Jimmie dropped his harness and ran up the little ladder that led to the haymow.

"Nonsense!" he declared sharply. "A boy can't get lost with a roof over him. Likely enough he's hiding for fun. Sunny! Sunny Boy, where are you?"

But no Sunny Boy answered. And though Jimmie and the Hatch children turned over the hay and looked in every corner of the haymow, they could not find him.

"Shall I go and tell Mr. Horton?" suggested David, who was the oldest of the Hatch boys.

"Not till we have something to tell," was Jimmie's answer. "Where was he when you saw him last?"

"Right over in that corner," said Juddy, pointing. "I saw him going over the top of the cave, an' then I ducked under, and when David got Dorabelle he just wasn't here."

"He must be here--somewhere," retorted Jimmie impatiently. "I'm going to look once more--and if he's just hiding, won't I shake him!"

Jimmie climbed over the top of the "robber's cave," as Sunny Boy had done, and down on the other side. The children heard him scuffling about, kicking the hay with his feet, and then suddenly he gave a shout.

"You stay where you are till I come back," he called. "You David, and Juddy, keep the others where they are. I'll bet I've found him."

The Hatch children were fairly dancing to follow Jimmie, but they knew he meant what he said. They sat down in the hay to wait.

One--two--three--four--five minutes pa.s.sed. Then Jimmie stepped out on the barn floor and grinned cheerfully up at the anxious group perched on the edge of the haymow.

"It's all right," he said. "I've found him. He's out in the old dairy.

Now don't all come down at once--Jud, let the girls come first. Easy there!"

The Hatch children came tumbling down, eager to see Sunny Boy. Sarah stopped to pick up the baby, who had slept through all the excitement and now merely opened two dark eyes, smiled, and went to sleep again. The Hatch baby was used to being taken about and had the steady habits of an old traveler.

They found Sunny absorbed in watching a mother duck and her ten little ducklings who were swimming daintily about in a trough in the dairy.