"Oh, Bigboy—he knows! Let me say good-by again," cried Jerry, jumping out and, to everyone's amusement, embracing the dog.
"You must be a good dog and take very good care of my Sweetheart and Little-Dad," she whispered. Then, standing, she looked around.
"Where's Pepperpot?" she asked anxiously. The little dog had disappeared.
"He'll think that I love Bigboy more than I do him," she explained, as she climbed back in.
The car started down the rough road. Jerry turned to wave; as long as she could see her mother and father she kept her little white handkerchief fluttering. Then she faced resolutely forward.
"You know," she explained to John Westley, with shining eyes, "when you've been wishing and wishing for something, you must enjoy it as hard as you can."
Even the familiar buildings of the Notch seemed different now to Jerry, as she flew past them, and she kept finding new things all along the way. Then, as they turned from the rough country road into her "shining" road, which was, of course, the macadam highway, she looked back and up toward Kettle to see if she could catch a glimpse of Sunnyside or the Witches' Glade and the Wishing-rock. They were lost in a blaze of green and purple and brown.
"Isn't it funny? If I was up there watching I'd see you moving like a speck! And in a moment you'd disappear around the corner. And now I'm the speck and—I don't know when we reach the corner. But I'm—going, anyway!"
Then upon her happy meditations came a sudden, startling interruption in the shape of a small dog that leaped out from the dense undergrowth at the side of the road and hailed the automobile with a sharp bark.
"Pepperpot!" cried Jerry, springing to her feet.