read it," said Mrs. Horton laughingly.

Sunny Boy took the paper knife she gave him and cut the envelope as he
had seen his daddy do.

"It isn't a letter; it's a Christmas card," he said in disappointment.

"Oh, no, precious, no one would sent you a Christmas card in January,"
declared Mrs. Horton. "See, dear, it is an invitation to a party.
Oliver Dunlap is eight years old next week and he is going to have a
birthday party. Won't that be fun!"

Sunny Boy was glad Oliver had sent him an invitation to his party and
not a Christmas card. He spent the greater part of the afternoon
writing an answer to the letter. First he wrote it in pencil, and when
he had shown the pencil copy to Mother and Harriet and Aunt Bessie (who
came to lunch and to see if Sunny Boy was quite well after his snow
storm experience) and they had all said it was a very nice answer
indeed, he copied it in ink. He had to do this five times before it
satisfied him. Sunny Boy would not send a letter to Oliver with the
tiniest spot of ink on it, and he was willing to do a thing over and
over and over to get it right. Before he had finished putting the
stamp on the envelope--Harriet said Sunny Boy shook the house when he
put a stamp on a letter, and indeed he thumped it as though he were
pounding with a brick--Nelson and Ruth Baker came over to see him.

"Did you get lost yesterday?" asked Nelson. "When did you get home?
We only had one session in school."

Nelson went to the public school and he had to go to school in the
afternoon unless the principal decided to have only one session, as he
often did when it stormed.

"Are you going to Oliver's party?" said Ruth. "We are. What are you
going to take him?"

Sunny Boy could tell Nelson all about getting lost and when he came
home, and he could explain to Ruth that he was going to Oliver's party.
But he could not tell her what birthday gift he meant to take Oliver,
because he hadn't thought about it.

He asked Mother, after Nelson and Ruth had gone home, and she said they
would go down town some afternoon before the party and find something
nice.

The telephone man came to fix the wires that afternoon, and when Daddy
Horton came home to dinner he said that much of the snow had been
cleared away in the streets.

The next morning Sunny Boy started off to school and Daddy walked with
him up to the steps, as he had done the snowy morning. It was very
cold, but all the walks were clear and