LEARNING TO SKATE

“Santa Claus brought them,” said Sunny Boy.

He was lying flat on the floor, trying to reach under the bookcase where his marble had rolled.  The marble was a cannon ball and Sunny Boy had been showing Nelson Baker, the boy who lived next door, how to knock over lead soldiers.

Nelson Baker picked up the lead general and examined him carefully.

“They’re nicer soldiers than I had last year,” he said.  “Say, Sunny Boy, I could bring my soldiers over and we could have a real fight.”

“I’ve got it!” shouted Sunny Boy suddenly, pulling his arm out from under the 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.”