As the girls drew near the top end, and the gate leading to the chalk quarry came in sight, they fell silent, each trying to put into shape the wish she was going to write in a few minutes.
The well was much as Martha had described, though even more hidden and overgrown with trails of creeper from a high bank of shrubs above it than they had expected to find. Pamela was obliged to draw the trails aside before they could see the dark, still water.
"Can you see the moon reflected in the water? We must make sure of that," reminded Beryl.
Long white clouds were drifting slowly across the face of the moon, but as they passed, and the moon emerged again, her reflection could be seen in the well.
"Yes," said Pamela. "So—now—quick—let's write our wishes and wrap a stone inside the papers so that they'll sink—and drop them in the water while the moon's out." She looked up overhead. "It'll be clear for a few minutes now, but there are more clouds coming slowly—a long way off—and if they reach her we shall have to wait some minutes for them to pass."
A hurried search for convenient-sized stones was made; and then, silence, while they wrote down their wishes, using the top bar of the white gate as a writing-desk.
Pamela was the first to finish. At first Pamela had thought of wishing something for Michael; then she had thought of wishing that she could paint as well as Elizabeth Bagg; but "Michael and I are young," she had told herself, "and we've plenty of years to work in—but Elizabeth Bagg is getting old, and she's losing heart—I'll wish something for her.... I'll wish that somebody with influence, who can appreciate Elizabeth Bagg's artistic talent, may see some of her pictures, and that she may soon obtain the recognition which she well deserves." This was the gist of Pamela's wish. Wrapping a stone inside her paper, she threw it into the well—the moon's reflection scattering into a hundred shimmers and ripples as the stone splashed into the dark water and sank.
Isobel was the next ready. "I wish that I may do nothing to forfeit my fifty pounds," she had written, and her 'wish' followed quickly in the track of Pamela's.
For a wonder Caroline was finished third; but she knew when she started out exactly what she was going to wish. It concerned a little matter that had been fidgeting her careful soul for the last two days. "I wish I may find my silver thimble." Such was Caroline's wish, and it journeyed down after the other two just as Beryl finished writing hers.
Beryl had taken longer because she had had some difficulty in framing her wish, although when finished it seemed quite straightforward enough. "I wish I may never have to go back and live with Aunt Laura again," Beryl had written.