‘What did you ask me for, then?’ cried Stefano angrily. ‘Now you’ve made me lose my wish while you’ve kept yours.’
‘Well, I won’t keep it,’ said Ileana generously; ‘I’ll tell you what it was. I wished that the baby could walk, so I shouldn’t have to carry him all the time.’
‘Stupid!’ cried Stefano scornfully. ‘How could you wish such a silly thing as that, and all for yourself, too, when you might have wished for a bag of gold and we could have bought everything in the world!’
‘I was in such a hurry,’ said Ileana contritely. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head. But let’s wish over again,’ she added brightly.
Eagerly they turned to the circle, but while they had been disputing the spotty cow had trampled it into the earth.
‘Now see what you’ve done!’ cried Stefano grimly. ‘And we might have had such a lucky day!’
‘But I didn’t do it,’ said Ileana indignantly. ‘The cow did it.’ She was really very hot and tired, and everything seemed to be going wrong.
‘Well, come on,’ said Stefano, beginning to feel ashamed of himself. ‘Perhaps we shall find another.’ He picked up his basket and whacking the cow on the flank, moved on. With a sigh Ileana gathered up the baby and followed. His little curls and bright eyes bobbed over her shoulder as she walked. Ileana was devoted to the baby. Every morning before she went to school she washed and dressed and fed him and then laid him in his swinging cradle, which hung from the ceiling just over the end of his mother’s bed. On holidays he was seldom out of her arms, though her slender, growing body often ached with the weight of him.
Following the footpath through the trees, Stefano and Ileana soon came upon Branko sitting among the mullen stalks making melancholy music with the boojum. The boojum was a great wooden horn, so long that Branko had to sit and rest one end of it on the ground. Its notes were sad and heavy, a little like the bellow of a cow. Branko loved it and blew out his cheeks until they were crimson. Whenever he came to a brook or a spring he poured water through the boojum, to make it louder and sweeter. ‘Hello!’ he cried, as the children came in sight. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To pick plums, if you will take care of Gemma.’