"No? Well, that is sad, but I have heard people say the same before you."
"Oh, please, please," cried Pierot and Pierotte, falling on their knees before the window, "please, dear, kind fairy, forgive us. We don't like to be grown-up at all. We want to be little and young again. Please, dear fairy, turn us into children as we were before."
"What would be the use?" said the old woman. "You'd begin wanting to be somebody else at once if you were turned back to what you were before."
"We won't, indeed we won't," pleaded the children, very humbly.
The fairy leaned out and gathered a rose.
"Very well," she said. "Here's another wish for you. See that it is a wise one this time, for if you fail, it will be of no use to come to me."
With these words, she shut the blinds suddenly, and lo! in one second, house, garden, and all had vanished, and Pierot and Pierotte were in the forest again.
There was no deliberation this time as to what the wish should be.
"I wish I was a little boy," shouted Pierot, holding the rose over his head with a sort of ecstasy.
"And I wish I was a little girl, the same little girl exactly that I used to be," chorused Pierotte.