he tall
man, who said that it was nothing, nothing at all: he'd never rescued a
drum before, but he was glad to have the experience, and that things
always turned out well for small boys who stayed on the sidewalks and
didn't dash out into the streets to get run over. Then Sunny climbed up
the steps and held out his drum for Mother to see.

"The man said you could mend it," he said wistfully. "Can you, Mother?
'Cause when things break, I miss 'em."

Mrs. Horton managed to hug her son, drum and all, though there really
wasn't much space where they stood. She was under the awning man's
ladder, and he was shaking and moving the large awning about. Inside the
door stood Harriet and her brush and bucket.

"So, 'twas the drum!" smiled Harriet. "I couldn't see what it was went
rolling by me like lightning, and Sunny Boy tearing after it. All I heard
was a noise like thunder."

"We'll go up to my room and mend the drum," declared Mrs. Horton. "Tell
Mr. Bray I'll telephone him about the slip-covers, please, Harriet. I
left him in the parlor when I ran out to see what was happening to Sunny
Boy."

"What," demanded Sunny Boy, carrying his drum upstairs--and you may be
sure that he gripped it tightly this time--"What are slip-covers,
Mother?"

Mrs. Horton laughed.

"Why, slip-covers are--" She thought a minute. "They are covers for the
chairs and sofas to wear in summer," she explained. "Nice, cool, linen
covers, you know, for the furniture, just as you have summer suits."

Sunny Boy understood. He usually did when Mother answered his questions.
And he was very sure that she could mend his drum.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Horton, when she had looked at the hole, "I
think, Sunny Boy, we can mend this nicely with court-plaster?"

"Court-plaster?" echoed Sunny Boy.

"I have some in the medicine closet in the bathroom," went on Mrs.
Horton, drawing the edges of the hole together as she talked. "I'll get
it, dear."

"It's like mending fingers, isn't it, Mother?" Sunny Boy was so anxious
to watch how Mother mended the drum that he nearly put his own pink nose
in the hole. "When Daddy cut his finger he put court-plaster on it. He
said the skin would grow together, and it did--when he took it off, there
wasn't any cut there. Just nothing. Will my drum be like that?"

"No, precious," answered Mother, snipping around the edges of the
court-plaster with the fascinating sharp shears Sunny Boy was forbidden
to touch. "A drum, yo