The Wishing-Stone Stories

by Thornton W. Burgess

“He’s headed this way, and, if I keep still, perhaps he’ll come close,” thought Tommy.

So he sat as still as if he were part of the old wishing-stone itself. Reddy Fox came straight on. At the edge of the Old Pasture he stopped for a minute and looked across to the Green Forest, as if to make sure that it was perfectly safe to cross the Green Meadows. Evidently he thought it was, for he resumed his steady trot. If he kept on the way he was headed he would pass very near to the wishing-stone and to Tommy.

Just as he was half-way across the meadows, Chanticleer, Tommy’s prize Plymouth Rock rooster, crowed over in the farmyard. Instantly Reddy stopped with one black paw uplifted and turned his head in the direction of the sound. Tommy could imagine the hungry look in that sharp, crafty face. But Reddy was far too wise to think of going up to the farmyard in broad daylight, and in a moment resumed his journey.

Nearer and nearer he came, until he was passing not thirty feet away. How handsome he was! His beautiful red coat looked as if the coldest wind never could get through it. His great plume of a tail, black toward the end and just tipped with white, was held high to keep it out of the snow. His black stockings, white vest, and black-tipped ears gave him a wonderfully fine appearance. Quite a dandy is Reddy Fox, and he looked it.

He was almost past when Tommy squeaked like a mouse. Like a flash Reddy turned, his sharp ears cocked forward, his yellow eyes agleam with hunger. There he stood, as motionless as Tommy himself, eagerness written in every line of his face. It was very clear that, no matter how important his business in the Green Forest was, he didn’t intend knowingly to pass anything so delicious as a meadow-mouse. Again Tommy squeaked. Instantly Reddy took several steps toward him, looking and listening intently. A look of doubt crept into his eager face. That old gray stone didn’t look just as he remembered it. For a long minute he stared straight at Tommy. Then a puff of wind fluttered the bottom of Tommy’s coat, and perhaps at the same time it carried to Reddy that dreaded man smell.

Reddy almost turned a back-somersault in his hurry to get away. [Then he ran. How he did run!] In almost no time at all he had reached the Green Forest and vanished from Tommy’s sight. Quite without knowing it Tommy sighed. “My, how handsome he is!” You know Tommy is freckle-faced and rather homely. “And gee, how he can run!” he added admiringly. “It must be fun to be able to run like that. It might be fun to be a fox anyhow. I wonder what it feels like. I wish I were a fox.”

[THEN HE RAN. HOW HE DID RUN!]

If he had remembered where he was, perhaps Tommy would have thought twice before wishing. But he had forgotten. Forgetting was one of Tommy’s besetting sins. Hardly had the words left his mouth when Tommy found that he was a fox, red-coated, black-stockinged—the very image of Reddy himself.

And with that change in himself everything else had changed. It was summer. The Green Meadows and the Green Forest were very beautiful. Even the Old Pasture was beautiful. But Tommy had no eyes for beauty. All that beauty meant nothing to him save that now there was plenty to eat and no great trouble to get it. Everywhere the birds were singing, but if Tommy heeded at all, it was only to wish that some of the sweet songsters would come down on the ground where he could catch them.