Grandpa Horton thanked the old gentleman for taking care of Sunny Boy and then they shook hands again and Sunny Boy and his grandpa hurried toward the Park gates.

They walked as fast as they could all the way home, and sometimes they ran a little.  Grandma Horton, who had been taking a nap when they left for the Park, was downstairs in the living-room with Mrs. Horton, knitting, when she happened to look out of the window and see Grandpa and Sunny Boy coming.

“Has anything happened to you?” she cried, opening the door as they dashed up the steps.  “Are either of you hurt?”

Dear, dear, there was a great deal of excitement, you may be sure, when Sunny Boy and Grandpa told what had happened at the pond.  Harriet brought hot water bottles and dry shoes and stockings and hot lemonade and her best box of peppermint drops.  Grandma Horton insisted on wrapping Sunny Boy from chin to feet in a hot blanket and she made Grandpa take little white pills.  Mother Horton rubbed their hands and lighted the electric heater, although the room was very warm and comfortable, and put on all the wood in the fire-basket till the fireplace was ablaze with flames.

And all this loving care and attention agreed with both Sunny Boy and Grandpa Horton, for neither one of them took the tiniest bit of cold and they were all right again the next day.  Sunny Boy said he knew it was the peppermint drops, and Harriet thought so, too.

CHAPTER III

Who was the big boy?

Although Sunny Boy and Grandpa were quite well the next morning, Daddy Horton said he thought they had better stay in the house till after lunch.

“It is much colder to-day.  The thermometer dropped several degrees last night,” Daddy explained.  “I think if you wait a few hours you’ll find it pleasanter out.”

So Sunny Boy and Grandpa took this good advice and stayed in by the living-room fire.  They again told Grandma and Mother Horton about the ice cracking, and Harriet, who was cleaning the dining-room, could not get along very fast with her dusting because she was always coming to the door to listen.

“That must have been Judge Layton, Father,” said Mrs. Horton, when Grandpa described the old gentleman whom Sunny Boy insisted on calling “the other grandpa.”

“I believe I did hear some one in the crowd call him ‘judge,’” answered Grandpa Horton.

“He has a granddaughter, Adele, I know,” said Mrs. Horton.  “And he is so proud of her he goes everywhere with her.  I hope he found her and that she was not hurt.”

“Oh, no one was hurt,” replied Grandpa Horton.  “There was a great deal of shouting and screaming, but a pair of wet feet was the most any one suffered, I feel sure.  What is it, laddie?”

Sunny Boy had been standing quietly beside his grandfather’s chair, waiting for a chance to say something very important.