The old woman looked after him greatly surprised. “Silly little boy!” she thought. “He little knows! I just wish no sheep would give him anything!”
Then before long Silly Will met a man. The man was sitting beside the road with his face in his hands.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Silly Will.
The man looked up. “Oh, our horse has died!” he sighed dolefully, “and I don’t know how we can get along without him to plow for us now that it’s seeding time. And there’s not much use getting in the seeds anyway without a horse to carry the grain to market when it’s ripe. We depended so on our horse!”
“Depended on a horse!” cried Silly Will. “Whoever heard of such a thing! First I meet a little girl who says she depended on a cow for food: then I meet an old woman who says she depended on a sheep for clothes. And here is a man who says he depends on a horse to work and to carry for him! As for me, I depend on no animal, not I! It wouldn’t matter to me if there were no animals in the world. They needn’t give me anything! I wish they wouldn’t!”
The man looked at him greatly amazed. “Silly little boy!” he said. “I hope your silly wish will come true. How little you understand! I just wish tonight all the animal kingdom would leave you and then perhaps you would understand a little!” But Silly Will walked home feeling very smart, for he didn’t understand. Silly people never do understand!
Now that night a strange thing happened to Silly Will. I can’t explain how or why it happened. But in the middle of the night, all the animals did leave Silly Will. Not only the cow and the sheep and the horse but all the animal kingdom! He was sound asleep in his flannel nightgown snuggled under warm wool blankets. Suddenly he felt a jerk. What was happening? He sat up in bed just in time to see his blankets whisk off him and disappear. He looked down. His night shirt was gone! He heard a faint sound almost like the bleating of the old woman’s sheep. “Ba-ba-a-a I take back my wool!”
Then he was aware that something queer had happened to his mattress. It was just an empty bag of ticking. He heard a faint sound almost like the neighing of the man’s horse who had died. “Whey-ey-ey, I take back my hair!”
He reached for his pillow. It too was an empty sack.
“Hh-ss-s-hh” hissed a faint sound almost like a goose. “I take back my feathers!”