"You can keep Silverheels for just fun and work in the automobile and
then we can go over to Cobble and to Wayside and----"
Little-Dad had not liked the thought at first. Somehow, to bring a
chugging, smelling, snorting automobile up to Sunnyside to stay seemed
an insult to the peace and beauty and simplicity of his little
tucked-away home. But when Jerry pleaded and even Mrs. Travis admitted
it would be nice and reminded him that Silverheels was growing old, he
yielded, and Uncle Johnny promised to order one immediately--he knew
just the kind that would climb Kettle and run as simply as a
sewing-machine.
But the best of all that had been "decided" since sunrise was that Jerry
should go back to Highacres----
"_Pinch_ me, Gypsy Editha Westley--pinch me _hard_!" she cried as she
sat between Gyp and Isobel. "I don't believe I'm me. And _really, truly_
going back to Highacres! I _can't_ be Jerauld Clay Travis who used to
sit on this rock and watch the little specks come along that silver
ribbon road down there and disappear around the mountain and hate them
because _they_ could go and _I_ couldn't. But it used to be fun
pretending I knew just what the world was like."
Isobel stared curiously at Jerry. "Hadn't you really ever been
anywhere?"
"Oh, yes, in books I'd been everywhere. But that isn't the same as being
places and seeing things yourself."
Gyp laid her fingers respectfully on the rough brown surface of the
great rock.
"Do you suppose it really _is_ a 'wishing-rock'?"
"Goodness, no. But when I was little I used to play here a lot and I
pretended there were fairies--fern fairies and grass fairies and tree
fairies. We'd play together. And when I grew older and began to wish for
things that weren't--here, I'd come and tell the fairies because I did
not want my mother to know, and, anyway, just telling about them made it
seem as nice as having them. So I got to calling this my wishing-rock.
Sometimes the wishes came true--when they were just little things."
"Well, it's funny if it wasn't _some_ sort of magic that made Uncle
Johnny get lost on Kettle and slip right down here in the glade when you
were wishing! And your wish came _true_. And if he hadn't--why, you'd
never have come to Highacres and we'd probably never have found that
secret stairway nor the Bible nor the letter and wouldn't have known
that you were _really_ Jerauld Winton. Oh, it _has_ magic!"
Neither Isobel nor Jerry answered, nor did they smile--after all, more
than one name has been given to that strange Power that directs the
little things which shape our living!
"So, I say, girls, let's wish now, each one of us! A great big wish!
It's so still you could 'most believe there _were_ fairies hiding
'round. I'll wish first."
Gyp sprang to her feet and stood in the exact centre of the flat top of
the rock. She stretched her arms outward and upward in ceremonial
fashion. She cleared her throat so as to pitch a suitably sepulchral
note.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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