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.
"I wish," she chanted, "I wish to make the All-Lincoln basketball team—I wish that dreadfully. I wish that I can get through the college entrance exams.—I don't care how much. I wish to get through college without "busting." Then I wish that I'll have a perfectly spliffy position offered to me somewhere which I shall refuse because a tall man with curly yellow hair and soulful, speaking gray eyes has asked me to marry him. Then I'll marry him and have six children and I'll bring them to the mountains to live. Then"—she paused for breath—"if I'm not asking too much I wish that my hair'll get curly."
"Did I remember everything?" she asked anxiously, jumping down from the rock. "Who's next?"
Jerry politely waved Isobel to the top.