“Where do you think you’re going so fast?” cried Jerry, stepping out from behind a barrel where he had been hiding.

“Hello!” said Sunny Boy, surprised to see him.  “I’m going home.  The party is all done.  You missed it—­we had two kinds of ice cream.”

“I hope you’re happy, spoiling my afternoon and making everybody laugh at me,” scolded Jerry Mullet.  “You’re a nice kind of boy.  Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

“No, I don’t,” said Sunny Boy, trying to walk past him.  “Let me be.  I told my mother I’d come home and not stop to play on the way.”

“This isn’t playing,” growled Jerry disagreeably.  “You can’t go till I say you can.  Are you sorry you made everybody laugh at me?”

“I told you I was sorry I pinned the tail on you,” answered Sunny Boy.  “I can’t help it if they did laugh.  And you did look funny.”

“Well, you think so now, but you won’t long,” Jerry said.  “I’m going to wash your face in that snow and then you’ll look funny yourself.”

He pointed to some dirty snow that was banked in the gutter.

“You let me alone,” cried Sunny Boy, trying to run past Jerry.  “I won’t let you wash my face.  Go away, Jerry Mullet!”

Jerry reached out his hand to snatch Sunny Boy’s coat, but, before he could touch him, down came a shower of snow that struck Jerry on the back of his neck and made him shut his eyes.

“Hey, you!” called a deep, hoarse voice.  “Why don’t you pick on boys your own size!  That kid isn’t half as big as you are!”

Jerry and Sunny Boy looked up.  The voice came from the roof of a piazza that overhung the sidewalk.  A big man in blue overalls and a red flannel undershirt, and wearing no overcoat, was shoveling the snow off the roof.  He had heard Jerry scolding Sunny Boy and had seen him trying to grab him.

“The likes of you, thinking to pick a fight with a little feller like that!” said the man, scooping up another shovelful of snow as he talked.  “Why, if you were my boy, bread and water for a week would be too good for you.  Take that, you little bully!” And down came another shower of snow on the surprised Jerry.

“Run, kid, run!” shouted the man to Sunny Boy.  “Let’s see how well you can run.  I’ll look after this tormenting one.”

Sunny Boy took one look at Jerry sputtering in the snow, and then turned and ran.  He ran as fast as he could, and he never stopped till he landed on his own doorstep and rang the bell.  When Harriet came to the door he was so out of breath that, for several minutes, he couldn’t tell her what had happened.  And then, of course, before he could make her understand about Jerry, he had to tell all about the party.

Daddy and Mother Horton had to hear about the party, too.  And they said that they would rather have a little boy for their son who behaved as Sunny Boy had than a boy who acted the way Jerry Mullet did.