The Wishing-Stone Stories

by Thornton W. Burgess

Then into Tommy’s head crept a guilty remembrance of those traps. A little flush crept into Tommy’s face. “Anyway, I’m not going to hurt him now,” he added.

By this time he had reached the great gray stone on the edge of the Green Meadows, the wishing-stone. Just as a matter of course he sat down on the edge of it. He never could get by without sitting down on it.

It was a very beautiful scene that stretched out before Tommy, but, though he seemed to be gazing out at it, he didn’t see it at all. He was looking through unseeing eyes. The fact is, he was too busy thinking, and his thoughts were all of Billy Mink. It must be great fun to be able to go and come any hour of the day or night, and to be so nimble and smart.

“I wish I were a mink,” said Tommy, slowly and very earnestly.

Of course you know what happened then. The same thing happened that had happened before on the old wishing-stone. Tommy was the very thing he had wished to be. He was a mink. Yes, sir, Tommy was a tiny furry little fellow, with brothers and sisters and the nicest little home, in a hollow log hidden among bulrushes, close by the Laughing Brook and with a big pile of brush near it. Indeed, one end of the old log was under the brush-pile.

That made the very safest kind of a play-ground for the little minks. It was there that Mother Mink gave them their first lessons in a game called “Now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t.” They thought they were just playing, but all the time they were learning something that would be most important and useful to them when they were older.

Tommy was very quick to learn and just as quick in his movements, so that it wasn’t long before he could out-run, out-dodge, and out-hide any of his companions, and Mother Mink began to pay special attention to his education. She was proud of him, and because she was proud of him she intended to teach him all the mink lore which she knew.

So Tommy was the first of the family to be taken fishing. Ever since he and his brothers and sisters had been big enough to eat solid food, they had had fish as a part of their bill of fare, and there was nothing that Tommy liked better. Where they came from, he had never bothered to ask. All he cared about was the eating of them. But now he was actually going to catch some, and he felt very important as he glided along behind his mother.

Presently they came to a dark, deep pool in the Laughing Brook. Mrs. Mink peered into its depths. There was the glint of something silvery down there in the brown water. In a flash Mrs. Mink had disappeared in the pool, entering the water so smoothly as to hardly make a splash. For a moment Tommy saw her dark form moving swiftly, then he lost it. His little eyes blazed with eagerness and excitement as he watched.

Ha! What was that? There was something moving under water on the other side of the pool. Then [out popped the brown head of Mrs. Mink and in her teeth was a fat trout]. Tommy’s mouth watered at the sight. What a feast he would have!