As soon as Beate reached home she found Anne, the nurse, and told her what she had seen.
Anne knew all about the floating island: it had been on the lake for many years, she said. But there were many strange things about it. One thing she would tell, and that was, that if anyone stood on the floating island and took a loon’s egg out of the nest and wished for something, that wish would come true, if the egg was put safely back into the nest again. If you wished to become a Princess of England, your wish would indeed be fulfilled, said old Anne. But there was one more thing to notice: you must not talk about it to a living soul.
“Not even to Father and Mother?” asked Beate.
“No,” said Anne, “not to a living soul.”
Beate could think of nothing but the island all that evening, and when she had closed her eyes she could dream of nothing else all night.
Just as soon as Beate got up in the morning she begged her father to row her and Marie and Louise out to the floating island, when they came to visit her in the afternoon, and that he promised.
But he also asked how she had happened to think of that, and what she wanted there. Beate thought first that she would tell him everything, but then she remembered Anne’s words, and said only that she wished to go out there because the little green island was so pretty.
“Yes, indeed, it is pretty, and you shall see a loon’s nest too,” said the father.
Then Beate’s face grew red, and the tears came to her eyes, for she knew well enough about the loon’s nest and about the eggs.
In the afternoon the father took the three little girls down to the lake. Beate’s friends thought this was the loveliest place they had ever seen, and they begged the father to stop and get some of the pretty water-lilies for them. But Beate was longing for the floating island.