“But no one likes to be laughed at, and we won’t be too hard on Jerry,” said Mother Horton, as she helped Sunny Boy get ready for bed.  “Shall I put your donkey prize up here on the mantel shelf for you, Sunny Boy?”

Sunny Boy remembered her putting his donkey on the shelf for him, but he did not remember seeing the donkey climb down again.  Yet the next time he looked at the shelf the donkey wasn’t there.  Then he saw it sitting on the foot of his bed, laughing.  The donkey laughed so hard and opened his mouth so very wide that Sunny Boy could see the gumdrops down inside him.

“Ha!  Ha!” laughed the donkey.  “Didn’t Jerry look funny?  Ha!  Ha!”

“Mother says we mustn’t laugh at him any more,” Sunny Boy told the donkey.  “You’ll hurt his feelings.”

But the donkey only laughed harder, and Sunny Boy began to laugh, too, and he woke up laughing to find that it was morning and that he had been dreaming about the donkey.

Sunny Boy saw Perry Phelps in Sunday school that afternoon, but Jerry had not come with him.

“Jerry is so cross!” declared Perry.  “He hardly speaks to me, and I’m glad he is going home to-morrow.”

And Monday, when Perry came to school, he announced that his cousin had gone home.  He lived in a city fifty miles from Centronia and did not visit Perry very often.

“My father said it might snow to-day,” said Oliver Dunlap, who seemed to feel very happy and gay after his party.  “And if it does, let’s have a snowball fight, shall we?”

Oliver had brought Miss Davis “some of the party” in a pretty paper napkin, and she said he was a very thoughtful boy and she was sure every one had had a good time Saturday afternoon.

All the boys were willing to have a snowball fight, and when a few flakes of snow began to fall at recess time, Oliver shouted that now there would be enough snow for the “bullets and things.”

“Let me be on your side, Oliver?” asked Helen Graham coaxingly.

“On my side?” repeated Oliver.  “There aren’t going to be any girls in this snowball fight.  This is just us boys.”

“I think you’re mean!” cried Helen.  “And I will, too, be on your side.  If you don’t let us girls in the snowball fight, I’ll go to Miss May and tell her we want the back lot to play in after school.  So there!”

And now it was Oliver’s turn to be provoked.

“I think girls are perfectly horrid,” he said crossly.

CHAPTER XIII

BRAVE LITTLE SUNNY BOY

Miss Davis, feeding the goldfish in the largest glass bowl, overheard what Oliver said to Helen.

“Why, Oliver!” she said in surprise.  “How impolite you are!  How can you say such a thing to Helen?  Besides, didn’t you have girls at your birthday party?”

“Oh, girls are all right at parties,” explained Oliver.  “They always go to parties.  But I don’t think girls should want to be in a snowball fight, Miss Davis.”