“You’d get along faster without your skates,” said the big boy, “but I won’t try to take ’em off for you.  We’d both be walked on while I was doing it.  Come on, we’ll see if these folks are in too big a hurry to let us get ashore with them.”

Sunny Boy was not exactly frightened, but he felt rather queer.  Grandpa Horton was gone, a strange boy had him by the hand, and many people kept shouting and making a loud noise.  And now, instead of clear, smooth ice under his skates, he seemed to be walking through slushy water.

“Don’t you get scared,” said the big boy kindly.  “We wouldn’t drown if we went right through the ice.  It isn’t very deep right here.  Look out—­here we go!”

Sunny Boy cried out in surprise and a girl ahead of him screamed.  The ice seemed to part and let them down gently into the coldest water Sunny Boy had ever felt.  He had not known that water could be so cold!

“You’re all right,” the big boy assured him, “Put your arms around my neck and I’ll carry you ashore.  The girls make a lot of noise, don’t they?  Well, in one way it’s a good sign—­as long as they can scream we know they are not drowned.”

The boy had a round, freckled face, and he grinned so cheerfully that Sunny Boy had to smile back.  The boy looked blue from the cold and his coat was thin and shabby, if Sunny Boy had only noticed it, but he talked every minute and didn’t complain once.  He showed Sunny Boy how he wanted him to put his arms, and then he lifted him up and carried him toward the bank.

“Good for you, Bob!” called some one, as the big boy reached the shore.

“There you are,” the boy said to Sunny, as he set him carefully down.  “Now you take my advice and trot along home and get on dry shoes and stockings.  You’ll be sneezing your head off to-morrow, if you don’t look out.”

“But I want my grandpa!” said Sunny Boy, beginning to cry.  “I lost my grandpa!  Maybe he is all drowned!”

No wonder Sunny Boy cried at this sad thought.  He loved his Grandpa Horton very dearly and he was named for him, “Arthur Bradford Horton.”  To be sure, no one ever called the little lad by that long name, for “Sunny Boy” seemed to suit him so exactly.  But, of course, when he grew up and was a farmer or a traffic policeman or the captain of a sailboat—­he didn’t know yet which he would rather be—­he would need his real name.  Perhaps you know all about Sunny Boy.  If so, we do not have to introduce you.  But if you have not read the other books about him you will want to know that he lived with his daddy and his mother and Harriet, who had helped his mother since Sunny Boy was a tiny baby, in the city of Centronia and that Grandpa and Grandma Horton lived on a beautiful farm, “Brookside,” where Sunny Boy and his mother had spent a month the summer before.  The first Sunny Boy book, called “Sunny Boy in the Country,” tells all about this visit and the friends Sunny Boy made there and about the kite he made which got him into trouble.  But that ended happily and Sunny Boy was so happy at Brookside that he might have decided to be a farmer if he and his daddy and mother had not gone to the seashore to visit his Aunt Bessie.