e bookcase with the marble in his hand. "I _knew_ it rolled
under the bookcase. You can roll it this time, Nelson."

"All right," said Nelson, taking the marble. "And I guess I won't go
for my lead soldiers. My mother might say I'd been over here an hour."

Nelson's mother, you see, had told him he might stay an hour at Sunny
Boy's house, and something told Nelson he had already played so long
with his little friend that if he went home now he would not get back.

"Get down like the Indians," urged Sunny Boy, as Nelson took the
marble. "Shut one eye, Nelson."

Nelson put his head down to the floor and closed one eye. He meant to
aim straight at the row of beautiful new lead soldiers, but, as he
afterward explained, the marble slipped before he was ready. It shot
across the floor and went crash into the glass door of the bookcase.

"What was that, Sunny Boy? Did you break anything?" asked Grandpa
Horton, coming in from the dining-room, where he had been reading the
newspaper. He carried the paper in his hand and his glasses were
pushed up on his forehead and he looked worried.

"My marble hit the bookcase door, but I don't believe I broke it," said
Nelson. "'Tisn't even cracked, is it, Mr. Horton?"

Grandpa Horton looked carefully at the glass door and said no, the
marble had not been able to crack the heavy plate glass.

"But I'd play another game if I were you, boys," he said kindly. "Have
you shown Nelson all your Christmas presents yet, Sunny Boy?"

"We got only as far as the lead soldiers," answered Sunny Boy. "Nelson
wanted to play with them. But come on up in the playroom, Nelson, and
I'll show you my things."

It was only two days after Christmas, and the presents Santa Claus had
brought Sunny Boy and the gifts his mother and daddy and grandparents
had given him, were all spread out on the window seat in his playroom.
The two presents that Sunny Boy liked most were a little pocket
searchlight and his ice-skates. The skates were double-runner ones,
for Sunny Boy did not yet know how to skate.

"I'm going to learn this winter," he told Nelson. "Grandpa is going to
take me to Wilkins Park this afternoon as soon as Daddy and Mother come
home from taking a walk."

"I can skate a little," said Nelson. "But my mother won't let me go to
the Park alone. Lots of the boys go, but she never lets me. I wish we
had a little private pond. Maybe we could make one in the yard, Sunny."

"Maybe," as