The dog dropped flat and rolled over motionless. He didn’t even blink an eye.
“Live dog!” said the boy, and up he jumped and frisked and wagged and was very much alive.
“Is that all he can do?” asked the boy.
“No, he can do any trick,” said Wendell. “I don’t know ’em all myself. He knew ’em when I got him.”
“Where’d you get him?” asked the boy suspiciously.
“Given to me,” said Wendell. “Let’s have the aeroplane.”
The boy hesitated. Perhaps he was afraid that the dog had been stolen or found by Wendell, and might soon be claimed by the police. But the dog himself settled the question. He jumped up on the freckle-faced boy and “woof”-ed engagingly; and when the freckle-faced boy stooped to pat him, he licked the boy’s freckles so warmly and wetly and scratchily and lovingly that the boy hastily handed the aeroplane to Wendell and gathered the dog right up in his arms; and the bargain was complete.
Wendell had a few pangs himself. The dog had found a warm place in his heart too. But he consoled himself with the reminder that he could wish for another just like him any time. And he had the aeroplane.
He took it over to the parade ground on the other side of the Common, and tried it out. It flew beautifully. On its own merits, apart from Wendell’s need to satisfy the Pixie’s demand, it was a very desirable possession.
It struck Wendell as strange that, whatever adventures the Wishing Stone had thus far brought him, seemed to increase the number of things he had to wish for. He had never yearned for an aeroplane before, but now it seemed to him that he couldn’t bear to part with this one to the Pixie. Of course, he had often thought he would like a dog; but now that the Wishing Stone had brought to life this wagging, barking, loving morsel of a pup, Wendell was almost unhappy without him. He wondered if it would be that way all the time,—if every granted wish would produce more ungranted ones. If that were so, it would really be happier not to begin the endless chain, not to have the first wish granted. That was the way it turned out in a good many of the fairy stories,—the black pudding, for instance, on the end of the old woman’s nose.