It was through her, for instance, that they first heard of the Wishing Well.
One evening when Pamela was showing Martha a sketch she had made of an old barn and some pine trees, Martha said:
"Why, that's near the top of Long Lane, isn't it?—near where the Wishing Well is! And a very handsome picture it makes, to be sure."
"The Wishing Well!" said Pamela. "Where's that? It sounds exciting."
"Well, you know as you gets near the top of Long Lane," said Martha, busily stoning raisins into a basin that stood on the kitchen table, "on your right hand, as you're going up, you pass a white gate that leads into a field and an old disused chalk quarry—there's poppies and long grass growing all about in the summer—and there's a few trees at the top of the field, at the head of the scooped-out chalk-pit.... Well, a few yards inside the gate, on your left, and almost hidden by an overhanging hedge, is the well. You probably wouldn't notice it if you wasn't looking for it! But there it is, as sure as I'm sitting here, stoning these raisins—and Ellen will tell you the same as it's the truth I'm speaking."
"And why is it called a Wishing Well?" inquired Pamela.
"Oh, there's some old story that if you was to write a wish on a piece of paper and throw it into the well on a moonlight night, whatever you wished would come true," Martha chuckled. "But I don't know as I believes it—though I did have a wish that way once—in my young days, mind you——"
"And did it come true?" asked Pamela, eagerly.
"Well, no—I can't say it did," replied Martha, "but then, according to the story it was my fault. I ought to have kept it secret, and I went and spoke it out to some one, not thinking like—and so it didn't come true."
"Didn't you wish again ever?"