Was Jimmie?"

"You young imp!" Jimmie swooped down upon him and hugged him so hard
Sunny squirmed uneasily. "You bet I was scared! I thought every minute
you'd tumble off. And now do you want to ride up to the barn with me, or
have you had enough?"

"I'll ride with you," said Sunny firmly.

CHAPTER XV

SUNNY'S GOOD LUCK

"There!" Grandma, a pretty picture in her white dress that matched her
white hair, closed the side door. "Now we're really started."

She and Grandpa and Mother and Sunny Boy were going for their
long-talked-of picnic in the woods. Araminta had the day for a holiday
and had gone merrily off to town to buy herself a new frock. Sunny had
wanted Jimmie to come to the picnic, but Jimmie, too, was away. He had
gone down to the city to sell hay for Grandpa. So it happened that just
the four were to spend the day in the woods.

"What we'll do without you, Sunny," said Grandpa, as they walked ahead,
"I'm sure I don't know."

"But I'll send you some of the sand," urged Sunny cheerfully. "And a
seashell, Grandpa."

For this was Aunt Bessie's plan. She had written Mrs. Horton that she and
a friend, a teacher, had taken a cottage at the seashore for the month of
August, and they wanted Sunny Boy and his mother to come and spend that
month with them. The cottage was near enough to the city for Mr. Horton
to go down every night and stay with them.

"And two weeks from to-day," Mrs. Horton had told Sunny Boy as he brushed
his hair that morning, "you will be going down to the beach with a tin
pail and shovel, I expect, to play in the sand."

Grandpa, carrying two boxes of lunch and a little camp chair that folded
up--because Grandma had aches in her joints if she tried to sit on the
ground--smiled down at his grandson.

"Oh, well, we shall just have to have as much fun as we can while you're
here," he said firmly. "Let's have a perfectly fine picnic with all the
sandwiches we can eat to-day."

"Yes," agreed Sunny enthusiastically. "Let's."

"Sunny, what have you found there?" asked Grandpa after a while.

"It's a bird," said Sunny pitifully. "A poor, little dead bird, Grandpa.
See?"

He brought back the little feathered body he had found at the foot of a
tall oak tree, and showed them.

"It's a baby robin," said Grandma, touching the little thing gently. "It
must have fallen out of the nest. Don't grieve, lambie, nothing can hurt
the little bird now."

"I want to bury it," insisted Sunny