excitement," said Mrs. Horton. "Well, then, how would you like to see the
surprise now?"

"The surprise?" repeated Sunny Boy. "Oh, Mother--is that the box?"

For answer Mrs. Horton opened the leather bag and took out the box neatly
wrapped in white paper that Sunny Boy had seen on the parlor table at
home. She put it in his lap and then took up the magazine she was
reading.

"Oh my!" said Sunny Boy, when he had pulled off string and paper and
lifted the lid.

Inside the box were six little packages, each wrapped in white paper and
tied with pink string. It was like Christmas. Sunny Boy unwrapped them
all, one after another, and underneath he found two long thin boxes, also
wrapped and tied.

In the first package he found a box of colored crayons; in another, a
little pad of drawing paper; another held an envelope stamped and
addressed and a sheet of writing paper. In another was a lead pencil; the
fifth was a cake of sweet chocolate, and the sixth package was a little
lump of modeling wax. The two long thin packages proved to be boxes of
animal crackers.

Sunny Boy was chiefly interested in the envelope, because he could not
read the writing on it.

"Who's it to, Mother?" he urged. "Your writing runs into letters so I
can't read it."

Mrs. Horton explained that the envelope was addressed to Daddy, and that
she thought she and Sunny Boy might write a little note to him and that
he would have it in the morning.

"Is there a mail-box on the train?" asked Sunny, in surprise.

"No, dear. But we will give it to the conductor and he will see that it
is mailed at the next station where we stop. You print on one side of the
sheet, and I will write a little message on the other."

So, taking great pains and holding the pencil very tightly because the
motion of the train made it wobble in his fingers, Sunny Boy printed
this:

DEER DADDY: I LOV YOU.
WE ARE HAVING A NICE TIME
ON THE TRANE. I AM TAKING
CARE OF MOTHER. YOUR
LOVING SUN, SUNNY BOY.

Then Mother wrote her note, and they folded it up and sealed the letter
and Sunny gave it to the conductor when he next came through.

After that he drew pictures and colored them with the crayons and nibbled
at his chocolate and modeled dogs and cats and horses with the wax. He
opened the cracker boxes, too, and played Noah's ark with them. The
children down the