No one smiled. “It was a wonderful chain,”
Mollie said, remembering her view from the Look-out,
“I wish I could make something that would reach
from here to my brother Dick. I wish we had wireless.
I wonder if ‘willing’ would be any good.
Have you ever played willing? We join hands and
will with all our might that Dick would come here.”
“It sounds easy,” said Hugh, always ready
for a new experiment, “much easier than making
a telephone; we might as well try.”
So they joined hands and wished. As they loosened
hands again a shrill cry above their heads made them
all look up—it was a parrot flying low
across the garden, its brilliant plumage shining in
the evening sunlight like jewels. “It’s
my parrot!” Mollie exclaimed, “it met
me by the gate yesterday.”
Mollie sat up. The rain was still splashing on
the window-panes, but Aunt Mary was drawing the curtains,
and a cheerful little fire had been lighted.
There was a pleasant tinkle of china as tea-cups were
settled on the tray.
“Have I been asleep?” she asked incredulously.
(It surely was not all a dream!)
“A beautiful sleep,” Aunt Mary answered;
“and now tea, and after tea—you shall
see what you shall see.”
The Fortune-makers or The Cherry-garden
Mollie was rather silent at tea-time. She could
not help thinking of those other children in that
long-ago far-away garden. Were they real?
Or had it all been a dream? It must have
been a dream, she thought—such things do
not happen in real life—it was impossible
that it should have been true. And yet, never
before had she dreamt anything so clearly, so “going-on”
as she expressed it to herself. She longed to
tell Aunt Mary all about it, but the memory of her
vow restrained her. If nothing further happened,
in course of time she would feel free to tell of her
wonderful experience, but in the meantime she must
have patience. She racked her brains to think
of some roundabout way of introducing the subject
of Australia and the year 1878, but could not get
past her vow—it seemed to block the way
in every direction.
So she ate her little triangles of toast—made
in a particularly fascinating way peculiar to Grannie’s
housekeeping—without enjoying the scrunch,
scrunch between her teeth so much as usual. Even
the early strawberries and cream found her somewhat
absent-minded.
But after tea was cleared away and the room tidied
up, Aunt Mary disappeared for a short time and returned
with her hands behind her back. She stood before
Mollie, and in a solemn voice chanted the following
words:
“Neevie neevie nick nack,
Which hand will ye tak?
Tak the right or tak the wrong,
I’ll beguile ye if I can.”
This was too interesting to be ignored. Mollie
sat up and became her ordinary self again. She
looked critically at Aunt Mary’s arms, shoulders,
and eyes, but got no information from any of these.
Then she laughed:
