Jimmie helped him and so did Perry and Carleton, and it took them all to get the blanket spread over the horse.  They got it on wrong and there was no way to fasten it, so they took turns holding it around the horse’s neck as he walked.  Sunny Boy held the blanket in place till his hands were cold, then Jimmie held it while Sunny warmed his hands.  When Jimmie’s hands were cold, Perry held the blanket, and then Carleton.  The horse looked surprised at such kindness, but he did not walk any faster.  He couldn’t.

[Illustration:  Sunny Boy held the blanket in place.]

“I guess we’ve walked a hundred miles,” said Sunny Boy wearily, when they had trudged through the wind and snow for a long, long time.

Then, as though he had heard, the horse stopped suddenly.  He pointed his ears straight ahead and then turned the wagon around so quickly that the girls inside cried out in fright.  They thought they were going to be tipped out in the snow.  But the horse was walking slowly up a driveway, and now he stopped again and Sunny Boy saw that he stood in front of a barn.

The barn doors were closed and the children heard a horse inside give a loud neigh.  Their own horse answered.

“I’ll bet he lives here,” said Jimmie Butterworth.

Sunny Boy waited a minute, and then, as no one opened the barn doors, he looked around for a house.  Yes, there was a house; at least there was a chimney showing through the driving snow.

“I’ll go tell the folks the horse is here,” he said.  “You wait for me.”  They all wanted to come, but Sunny Boy pointed out that the horse might go off again.  So Perry Phelps and Carleton agreed to hold him and keep the blanket on him, while Sunny Boy and Jimmie Butterworth went to tell the people in the house that their horse had come home.

The two little boys walked out of the drive way and started to go across the field to the house.  Sunny Boy was ahead, and suddenly he went into a snowdrift up to his neck!

“Do you suppose it is as deep as that all the way there?” he gasped, when Jimmie helped him out.  There was snow inside his rubber boots and down under his coat collar.  But Sunny Boy seldom fussed even when he was not quite comfortable.

Luckily, it was not as deep all the way to the house, and after they had walked and stumbled and even run a little, they reached the front door of the farmhouse.  Sunny Boy rapped on it, and a woman came in answer to his knock.  She held a small child in her arms.

“Why, Sunny Boy!” she cried.  “How did you ever get here in weather like this?  Where is your mother?  Come in quickly, out of the storm.”

It was Mrs. Parkney, and Sunny Boy was so surprised that before he could say a word he found himself in the warm kitchen with the seven Parkney children and Mr. and Mrs. Parkney all standing around him and Jimmie.

“Does a horse live here?” was Sunny Boy’s first question.  “He’s waiting outside your barn.  And the other children are there, too.”