“Well, why couldn’t they hang on to it when they had it?” said Wendell in deep disappointment. Then he went up to his room to do his home work,—that sad double lot of fractions.
CHAPTER II
THE PIXIE STARTS IT
“Bedtime, my son. Have you finished your lessons?” asked his mother.
“No! Bothersome lot! Can’t make anything of this example—have to give me another half-hour,” muttered Wendell, not really wishing to deceive his dear mother, but a little bit ashamed to tell her how he had neglected his duty.
“I’m sorry, dear, but you’ll have to do it in the morning. You mustn’t lose sleep. And your brain will be clearer then. I’ll tell Jane to call you half an hour early.”
“Many are called, but few get up,” as the proverb hath it. Wendell, next morning, was not one of the few. Jane’s call fell on sleepy ears. He turned over for one more snooze, woke an hour later to find himself ‘way behind time, hustled through his dressing and his breakfast, and was off to school with lessons unprepared,—a sad thing that happened only too often in his easy-going life.
He managed to slide through most of his recitations, badly but not disgracefully, until he came to the arithmetic class. I might tell you in detail of his tragic floundering through problems that he was supposed to have prepared, of his guilty acknowledgment that he had not made up the delinquencies of yesterday and the day before, and of the stern wrath that was visited upon him by the arithmetic teacher, a strict and disciplinary spinster, whose patience he had often tried in the past. But this is not a school story. I have to record only such a part of his troublous career as led directly to the wonderful adventure of the Wishing Stone. So, briefly, he was “kept in,” with three days’ problems to finish before he could go home.
His teacher, who bore the singularly happy name of Miss Ounce, left him alone in the deserted school-room. She had a lesson to give in another part of the building. Wendell pulled his book in front of him, flipped the pages open to the proper place, ran his fingers through his hair, and remained in that attitude, which may have denoted either deep concentration or utter dejection. He read the first problem through twice, and it had no more meaning for him than Dante’s Inferno in the original tongue.
“Jee-rusalem!” he said aloud after a long pause.