“For over two weeks a little boy has followed me around,” said the Sun.
“Whatever do you mean?” asked the Sun Rays.
“He has been ill. He has had a very, very bad cold. Oh, he has been so wretched and he has not felt like doing anything. A little boy is pretty ill when he doesn’t feel like doing anything and wants to stay quiet.”
“That’s true,” said the Sun Rays. For how often they had seen small boys scampering and playing, and sometimes they had danced, too, for joy.
“The doctor comes every day,” continued the Sun. “Sometimes he comes twice a day, and once he came three times. But every time he comes he tells the little boy always to sit in the sun! And he has been following me around. When I am shining into one window in the morning, there I see the little boy sitting by the window. In the afternoon when I choose an entirely different part of the house to shine in the windows, there is the little boy again. And for two weeks he has been doing this. Just following me around. I do feel so honored. And you, my good Sun Ray children, you should feel honored too.”
“We do,” said the Sun Rays.
“Listen now!” said the Sun. And they all stopped talking to listen.
There was the little boy sitting by the window, and by him stood his mother and a big man with a low voice. The man was carrying a little black satchel and he was talking.
“Well, how are you to-day, my boy?” he asked.
“Oh, much stronger and better,” said the boy. “I almost feel like getting out again.”
“You’ll be able to in a very few days now.”
“Oh, doctor,” said the mother, “you have saved my little boy’s life. He was so sick.” But the doctor shook his head.
“I did not save his life,” he said. “The Sun did that. The Sun fights germs better than medicines or doctors. We are needed to tell the people to take advantage of the Sun and use it, and we have to tell them what the trouble is. For the Sun can’t talk. If he could he would be one of the greatest doctors in the world. For he always carries his cure with him. Ah, now he helps me drive away the colds, the many horrid sicknesses that come when little boys have to stay in the house.”
“Dear father,” said the Sun Rays, “you are really Doctor Sun.”
“And you my little assistant nurses,” said the Sun.