The firemen went away, their engines and apparatus making as much noise as when they had been coming to the fire, and by and by the curious crowd that had gathered in the street went away, too.  The tall policeman and his friend George helped Miss May and Miss Davis and Maria to put down the windows which had been left up by the firemen to let the smoke out, and then they went away.

“Sunny Boy, are you quite positive you feel all right?” asked Miss May anxiously.  “Do your eyes hurt you now?  Don’t you want me to walk home with you?”

Sunny Boy said no, thank you, he felt all right and he didn’t need her to walk home with him.

Daddy Horton was home when Sunny Boy came in, for he had left his office early.  So he and Mother heard all about the fire before dinner, and though Mother hugged him tightly and declared that he smelled of smoke, she said she was glad her little boy had not been afraid.

“But the fireman was right,” said Daddy Horton gravely.  “Coats and rubbers are not important enough, Sunny Boy, even if they were trimmed with gold fur, to risk one’s life for.  I hope there’ll be no more fires till you are grown up and able to judge for yourself.  But if there should be, remember what the fireman said.  That will keep you from dashing into a blaze after foolish trifles.”

Sunny Boy knew he would not forget, and then he went out into the kitchen and told Harriet about the afternoon’s excitement.

“And we never had the snowball fight at all,” he said.  “All the bullets were made, too.  Perhaps we can have it to-morrow.”

But the next morning was rainy, and though there was plenty of cold weather through February which followed, not once did it snow again.  There was not even much good skating, though Sunny Boy did enjoy one afternoon with Bob Parkney, who declared that he would soon be a champion skater with his new skates to help him.  After that, though, it thawed and froze and thawed and froze and the Centronia Park Commission refused to allow any one on the ice.  The children were disappointed in the weather, but Miss May said she was glad to see it rain.  She had had enough snow, she said, till another year.

Bob stopped in once a week after school at the Hortons, to get the egg container.  He brought Mrs. Horton two dozen fresh eggs every Monday morning from his mother’s poultry yard, and Friday afternoon he came for the box.  Mrs. Parkney was so busy and happy now that she had almost forgotten she had ever been discouraged.  Judge Layton had put the farmhouse in good order for her family, and he had stocked the poultry yard with fine chickens.  He said that if Mrs. Parkney would feed the chickens and look after them till he came out in the summer, she might have the eggs to do with as she pleased.  The Parkney children had all the fresh eggs to eat they wanted and there were several dozen to sell every week, and Mrs. Parkney said she felt rich with the egg money for her own.