“I can skate a little,” said Nelson.  “But my mother won’t let me go to the Park alone.  Lots of the boys go, but she never lets me.  I wish we had a little private pond.  Maybe we could make one in the yard, Sunny.”

“Maybe,” assented Sunny Boy, but he was thinking about going to the Park with Grandpa Horton and trying his new skates, and not about making a “private” skating pond in the back yard.  “There!  I heard the front door shut.  I hope Daddy’s come.”

Sunny Boy and Nelson ran downstairs to find Daddy and Mother Horton in the hall, taking off their coats.

“Nelson, your mother wants you to come home,” said Mr. Horton.  “We saw her in the window as we passed your house.  She’s waiting for you.  Your Aunt Caroline has come.”

“Take a popcorn ball, Nelson,” said Sunny Boy’s mother, as Nelson began to put on his coat and hat.  “And here is one for Ruth.”  Ruth was Nelson’s little sister.

Nelson said good-bye to Sunny Boy and ran down the steps of the Horton house and up his own.  It was never any trouble for Nelson or Sunny Boy to go calling on each other.

“Now we can go skating, can’t we, Grandpa?” asked Sunny Boy eagerly.  “I thought Nelson stayed ever so long.”

“Why, Sunny Boy, how impolite you are!” cried his mother.  “That isn’t a nice thing to say.  Suppose you should go to see Nelson and he should spend the time wishing you would go home—­how would you feel?”

Sunny Boy looked uncomfortable.

“Well, he can come back after I go skating,” he suggested.  “Grandpa promised we could go this afternoon, Mother.”

“So I did; and we’ll start this minute,” declared Grandpa Horton, coming out into the hall and smiling at his small grandson.  “Who ever heard of a little boy with a brand-new pair of skates and ice on the pond, not going skating, Olive?  Sunny Boy is just as polite as he ever was, Olive, but we have to go skating, whether we have company or not.”

“Oh, Father, how you do spoil Sunny Boy!” cried Mrs. Horton, half-laughing.  But she kissed them both and waved to them as they went off, the new skates dangling over Sunny Boy’s arm and buckled together with a leather strap just as the big boys tie their skates.

“Can you skate, Grandpa?” the little boy asked, as they trudged along, Grandpa’s rosy face and white mustache showing above a gray and white muffler and Sunny Boy’s pink cheeks and dancing eyes set off by a muffler of scarlet wool.  “Will you go skating with me?”

“Why, I haven’t been skating for thirty years!” exclaimed Grandpa Horton.  “I don’t know whether I have forgotten or not, Sunny Boy.  But I have no skates, you see, and I shall not get any because I don’t expect to go skating often this winter.  I’ll get you started, and then this winter, when we go home, Grandma and I will be able to think of you having fine times on the ice.”

Wilkins Park was several blocks from the Horton’s house, but Sunny Boy and his grandfather liked to walk, and though it was a cold day they tucked their hands in their coat pockets and walked fast and were very comfortable.  The best skating pond in Centronia—­indeed about the only good pond—­was in the center of the Park, and long before Sunny Boy and his grandfather came in sight of the Park they saw boys and girls with skates over their arms, hurrying to the pond.