"Let me explain," said Aladdin. "I remember when I was a little boy in Peking there came a spring when I wanted a kite. Oh, how I longed for a kite! And my mother said, 'Never mind, Aladdin. When your uncle comes back from Arabia, where he has gone with the camel train, perhaps he will bring you a kite!' And I was very happy all the spring and summer, thinking I should have a kite when my uncle came back from the camel train. And it was not until the next year, when I no longer cared very much about having a kite, that I learned how my uncle had died in the desert, quite early in the spring the year before."
"And then," asked Everychild, "were you not unhappy?"
"No. You see, by that time I had begun to wish for something else. This time it was a pair of little doves which a merchant had brought from far away in the Himalaya mountains. And I dreamed by day and night of the time when I should own the little doves. No coin was too small to be saved. The little coins would become as much as a yen in time. And at last I was the proud possessor of a yen!"
"And then you got the little doves?"
"No. By that time I cared more for the yen than for the little doves—and besides, the doves had died."
"But with the—the yen, you could buy something else you wanted," suggested Everychild.
"Not so. By that time I coveted some ivory chessmen, worth many yen. And I was very happy, planning how some day I should become rich enough to buy the ivory chessmen."
"But if you only kept on wishing for things," murmured Everychild, "and never got them, you'd of course become very unhappy some day!"
But Aladdin slowly shook his head. "I cannot tell how it may be," he said. "But my poor mother was always happy, and she never really got what she wished for, unless it was the last thing of all."
"And that?" inquired Everychild.