CHAPTER IX
DOWN!
“See me dance the polka!” went the old tune—and then again and again—and Peggy lay in bed listening to it and staring at the fire.
The children next door were having a party in their hall, and every time the front door opened the sound of the music came crashing out, and jumped in through Peggy’s open window. Of course, she ought to have been at the party too, but, for one thing, she had had a cold all day, and for another, Nurse didn’t think the children next door had properly got over measles, so she was afraid to let Peggy go.
Peggy hadn’t much minded until now. Nurse had petted her all day and given her little bits of buttered toast at tea with apricot jam on them, and then had let the housemaid come up and play dominoes with her until bedtime, and now she had tucked her up warmly in bed with a hot-water bottle and told her to go to sleep quickly, so that she should be quite well before Mother came home the next day.
But go to sleep was just what Peggy couldn’t do. For one thing, thinking of Mother coming back was enough to make her keep wanting to jump out of bed and dance all over the room. And then the music too had begun to make her rather long to run into the house next door and play musical chairs with all the other children.
It was then that she suddenly felt the Ring pressing on her thumb, and realised that she had quite forgotten to wish at all that day!
“Oh dear, suppose it hadn’t come, I might have forgotten altogether,” she thought in dismay. “And now I’m rather frightened of seeing the Giant, in case he’s angry about the Mayor. I wonder what I’d better wish?”
She lay in bed thinking about it for quite a long time, until suddenly hearing some carriages driving off and the music stopping, she realised she was too late to wish to join the children’s party next door anyway.
“Oh, I wish the Giant was here,” she said at last. “He can always think of lovely things to do.”