
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *

This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please
check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be
under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada,
check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER
COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD
OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

Title: Half Magic
Author: Eager, Edward [Edward McMaken] (1911-1964)
Date of first publication: 1954
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich
   [Undated: certainly a reprint, but the pagination
   is the same as in the 1954 first edition, suggesting
   that the plates from the first edition were used.]
Date first posted: 14 June 2015
Date last updated: 14 June 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1254

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by
N. M. Bodecker (1922-1988) have been omitted from this etext.

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  HALF MAGIC


  Edward Eager






CONTENTS

1. HOW IT BEGAN

2. WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR MOTHER

3. WHAT HAPPENED TO MARK

4. WHAT HAPPENED TO KATHARINE

5. WHAT HAPPENED TO MARTHA

6. WHAT HAPPENED TO JANE

7. HOW IT ENDED

8. HOW IT BEGAN AGAIN




Half Magic



1.  How It Began

It began one day in summer about thirty years ago, and it happened to
four children.

Jane was the oldest and Mark was the only boy, and between them they
ran everything.

Katharine was the middle girl, of docile disposition and a comfort to
her mother.  She knew she was a comfort, and docile, because she'd
heard her mother say so.  And the others knew she was, too, by now,
because ever since that day Katharine _would_ keep boasting about what
a comfort she was, and how docile, until Jane declared she would utter
a piercing shriek and fall over dead if she heard another word about
it.  This will give you some idea of what Jane and Katharine were like.

Martha was the youngest, and very difficult.

The children never went to the country or a lake in the summer, the way
their friends did, because their father was dead and their mother
worked very hard on the other newspaper, the one almost nobody on the
block took.  A woman named Miss Bick came in every day to care for the
children, but she couldn't seem to care for them very much, nor they
for her.  And she wouldn't take them to the country or a lake; she said
it was too much to expect and the sound of waves affected her heart.

"Clear Lake isn't the ocean; you can hardly hear it," Jane told her.

"It would attract lightning," Miss Bick said, which Jane thought
cowardly, besides being unfair arguing.  If you're going to argue, and
Jane usually was, you want people to line up all their objections at a
time; then you can knock them all down at once.  But Miss Bick was
always sly.

Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing,
particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into
it.  There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each
other to play with, and the books from the library.

In the summer you could take out ten books at a time, instead of three,
and keep them a month, instead of two weeks.  Of course you could take
only four of the fiction books, which were the best, but Jane liked
plays and they were non-fiction, and Katharine liked poetry and that
was non-fiction, and Martha was still the age for picture-books, and
they didn't count as fiction but were often nearly as good.

Mark hadn't found out yet what kind of non-fiction he liked, but he was
still trying.  Each month he would carry home his ten books and read
the four good fiction ones in the first four days, and then read one
page each from the other six, and then give up.  Next month he would
take them back and try again.  The non-fiction books he tried were
mostly called things like "When I was a Boy in Greece," or "Happy Days
on the Prairie"--things that made them sound like stories, only they
weren't.  They made Mark furious.

"It's being made to learn things not on purpose.  It's unfair," he
said.  "It's sly."  Unfairness and slyness the four children hated
above all.

The library was two miles away, and walking there with a lot of heavy,
already-read books was dull, but coming home was splendid--walking
slowly, stopping from time to time on different strange front steps,
dipping into the different books.  One day Katharine, the poetry-lover,
tried to read _Evangeline_ out loud on the way home, and Martha sat
right down on the sidewalk after seven blocks of it, and refused to go
a step farther if she had to hear another word of it.  That will tell
you about Martha.

After that Jane and Mark made a rule that nobody could read bits out
loud and bother the others.  But this summer the rule was changed.
This summer the children had found some books by a writer named E.
Nesbit, surely the most wonderful books in the world.  They read every
one that the library had, right away, except a book called _The
Enchanted Castle_, which had been out.

And now yesterday _The Enchanted Castle_ had come in, and they took it
out, and Jane, because she could read fastest and loudest, read it out
loud all the way home, and when they got home she went on reading, and
when their mother came home they hardly said a word to her, and when
dinner was served they didn't notice a thing they ate.  Bedtime came at
the moment when the magic ring in the book changed from a ring of
invisibility to a wishing ring.  It was a terrible place to stop, but
their mother had one of her strict moments; so stop they did.

And so naturally they all woke up even earlier than usual this morning,
and Jane started right in reading out loud and didn't stop till she got
to the end of the last page.

There was a contented silence when she closed the book, and then, after
a little, it began to get discontented.

Martha broke it, saying what they were all thinking.

"Why don't things like that ever happen to _us_?"

"Magic never happens, not really," said Mark, who was old enough to be
sure about this.

"How do you know?" asked Katharine, who was nearly as old as Mark, but
not nearly so sure about anything.

"Only in fairy stories."

"It _wasn't_ a fairy story.  There weren't any dragons or witches or
poor woodcutters, just real children like us!"

They were all talking at once now.

"They _aren't_ like us.  We're never in the country for the summer, and
walk down strange roads and find castles!"

"We never go to the seashore and meet mermaids and sand-fairies!"

"Or go to our uncle's, and there's a magic garden!"

"If the Nesbit children do stay in the city it's London; and _that's_
interesting, and then they find phoenixes and magic carpets!  Nothing
like that ever happens here!"

"There's Mrs. Hudson's house," Jane said.  "That's a _little_ like a
castle."

"There's the Miss Kings' garden."

"We could _pretend_..."

It was Martha who said this, and the others turned on her.

"Beast!"

"Spoilsport!"

Because of course the only way pretending is any good is if you never
say right out that that's what you're doing.  Martha knew this
perfectly well, but in her youth she sometimes forgot.  So now Mark
threw a pillow at her, and so did Jane and Katharine, and in the
excitement that followed their mother woke up, and Miss Bick arrived
and started giving orders, and "all was flotsam and jetsam," in the
poetic words of Katharine.

Two hours later, with breakfast eaten, Mother gone to work and the
dishes done, the four children escaped at last, and came out into the
sun.  It was fine weather, warm and blue-skied and full of
possibilities, and the day began well, with a glint of something metal
in a crack in the sidewalk.

"Dibs on the nickel," Jane said, and scooped it into her pocket with
the rest of her allowance, still jingling there unspent.  She would get
round to thinking about spending it after the adventures of the morning.

The adventures of the morning began with promise.  Mrs. Hudson's house
looked _quite_ like an Enchanted Castle, with its stone wall around and
iron dog on the lawn.  But when Mark crawled into the peony bed and
Jane stood on his shoulders and held Martha up to the kitchen window,
all Martha saw was Mrs. Hudson mixing something in a bowl.

"Eye of newt and toe of frog, probably," Katharine thought, but Martha
said it looked more like simple one-egg cake.

And then when one of the black ants that live in all peony beds bit
Mark, and he dropped Jane and Martha with a crash, nothing happened
except Mrs. Hudson's coming out and chasing them with a broom the way
she always did, and saying she'd tell their mother.  This didn't worry
them much, because their mother always said it was Mrs. Hudson's own
fault, that people who had trouble with children brought it on
themselves, but it was boring.

So then the children went farther down the street and looked at the
Miss Kings' garden.  Bees were humming pleasantly round the columbines,
and there were Canterbury bells and purple foxgloves looking
satisfactorily old-fashioned, and for a moment it seemed as though
anything might happen.

But then Miss Mamie King came out and told them that a dear little
fairy lived in the biggest purple foxglove, and this wasn't the kind of
talk the children wanted to hear at all.  They stayed only long enough
to be polite, before trooping dispiritedly back to sit on their own
front steps.

They sat there and couldn't think of anything exciting to do, and
nothing went on happening, and it was then that Jane was so disgusted
that she said right out loud she wished there'd be a fire!

The other three looked shocked at hearing such wickedness, and then
they looked more shocked at what they heard next.

What they heard next was a fire-siren!

Fire trucks started tearing past--the engine, puffing out smoke the way
it used to do in those days, the Chief's car, the hook-and-ladder, the
Chemicals!

Mark and Katharine and Martha looked at Jane, and Jane looked back at
them with wild wonder in her eyes.  Then they started running.

The fire was eight blocks away, and it took them a long time to get
there, because Martha wasn't allowed to cross streets by herself, and
couldn't run fast yet, like the others; so they had to keep waiting for
her to catch up, at all the corners.

And when they finally reached the house where the trucks had stopped,
it wasn't the house that was on fire.  It was a playhouse in the back
yard, the fanciest playhouse the children had ever seen, two stories
high and with dormer windows.

You all know what watching a fire is like, the glory of the flames
streaming out through the windows, and the wonderful moment when the
roof falls in, or even better if there's a tower and it falls through
the roof.  This playhouse _did_ have a tower, and it fell through the
roof most beautifully, with a crash and a shower of sparks.

And the fact that it _was_ a playhouse, and small like the children,
made it seem even more like a special fire that was planned just for
them.  And the little girl the playhouse belonged to turned out to be
an unmistakably spoiled and unpleasant type named Genevieve, with long
golden curls that had probably never been cut; so _that_ was all right.
And furthermore, the children overheard her father say he'd buy her a
new playhouse with the insurance money.

So altogether there was no reason for any but feelings of the deepest
satisfaction in the breasts of the four children, as they stood
breathing heavily and watching the firemen deal with the flames, which
they did with that heroic calm typical of fire departments the world
over.

And it wasn't until the last flame was drowned, and the playhouse stood
there a wet and smoking mess of ashes and charred boards that guilt
rose up in Jane and turned her joy to ashes, too.

"Oh, what you did," Martha whispered at her.

"I don't want to talk about it," Jane said.  But she went over to a
woman who seemed to be the nurse of the golden-haired Genevieve, and
asked her how it started.

"All of a piece it went up, like the Fourth of July as ever was," said
the nurse.  "And it's my opinion," she added, looking at Jane very
suspiciously, "that it was _set_!  What are _you_ doing here, little
girl?"

Jane turned right around and walked out of the yard, holding herself as
straight as possible and trying to keep from running.  The other three
went after her.

"Is Jane magic?" Martha whispered to Katharine.

"I don't know.  I think so," Katharine whispered back.

Jane glared at them.  They went for two blocks in silence.

"Are we magic, too?"

"I don't know.  I'm scared to find out."

Jane glared.  Once more silence fell.

But this time Martha couldn't hold herself in for more than half a
block.

"Will we be burnt as _witches_?"

Jane whirled on them furiously.

"I wish," she started to say.

"_Don't!_" Katharine almost screamed, and Jane turned white, shut her
lips tight, and started walking faster.

Mark made the others run to catch up.

"This won't do any good.  We've got to talk it over," he told Jane.

"Yes, talk it over," said Martha, looking less worried.  She had great
respect for Mark, who was a boy and knew everything.

"The thing is," Mark went on, "was it just an accident, or did we want
so much to be magic we _got_ that way, somehow?  The thing is, each of
us ought to make a wish.  That'll prove it one way or the other."

But Martha balked at this.  You could never tell with Martha.
Sometimes she would act just as grown-up as the others, and then
suddenly she would be a baby.  Now she was a baby.  Her lip trembled,
and she said she didn't want to make a wish and she _wouldn't_ make a
wish and she wished they'd never started to play this game in the first
place.

After consultation, Mark and Katharine decided this could count as
Martha's wish, but it didn't seem to have come true, because if it had
they wouldn't remember any of the morning, and yet they remembered it
all too clearly.  But just as a test Mark turned to Jane.

"What have we been doing?" he asked.

"Watching a fire," Jane said bitterly, and at that moment the fire
trucks went by on their way home to the station, to prove it.

So then Mark rather depressedly wished his shoes were seven-league
boots, but when he tried to jump seven leagues it turned out they
weren't.

Katharine wished Shakespeare would come up and talk to her.  She forgot
to say exactly when she wanted this to happen, but after they waited a
minute and he didn't appear, they decided he probably wasn't coming.

So it seemed that if there was any magic among them, Jane had it all.

But try as they might, they couldn't persuade Jane to make another
wish, even a little safe one.  She just kept shaking her head at all
their arguments, and when argument descended to insult she didn't say a
word, which was most unlike Jane.

When they got home she said she had a headache, and went out on the
sleeping porch, and shut the door.  She wouldn't even come downstairs
for lunch, but stayed out there alone all the afternoon, moodily eating
a whole box of Social Tea biscuits and talking to Carrie, the cat.
Miss Bick despaired of her.

When their mother came home she knew something was wrong.  But being an
understanding parent she didn't ask questions.

At dinner she announced that she was going out for the evening.  Jane
didn't look up from her brooding silence, but the others were
interested.  The children always hoped their mother was going on
exciting adventures, though she seldom was.  Tonight she was going to
see Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin.

"Why?" Mark wanted to know.

"They were very kind to me after your father died.  They have been very
kind to _you_."

"Useful presents!" Mark was scornful.

"Will Aunt Grace say 'Just a little chocolate cake, best you ever
tasted, I made it myself'?" Katharine wanted to know.

"You shouldn't laugh at your Aunt Grace.  I don't know what your father
would say."

"Father laughed at her, too."

"It isn't the same thing."

"Why?"

This kind of conversation was always very interesting to the children,
and could have gone on forever so far as they were concerned, but
somehow no grown ups ever seemed to feel that way about conversations.
Their mother put a stop to this one by leaving for Aunt Grace's.

When she had gone things got strange again.  Jane kept hovering in and
out of the room where the others were playing a half-hearted game of
Flinch, until everyone was driven wild.

Finally Mark burst out.

"Why don't you tell us?"

Jane shook her head.

"I can't.  You wouldn't understand."

Naturally this made everyone furious.

"Just because she's magic she thinks she's smarter!" Martha said.

"_I_ don't think she's magic at all!"  This was Katharine.  "Only she's
afraid to make a wish and find out!"

"I'm not!  I _am_!" Jane cried, not very clearly.  "Only I don't know
why, or how much!  It's like having one foot almost asleep, but not
quite--you can't use it and you can't enjoy it!  I'm afraid to even
_think_ a wish!  I'm afraid to think at _all_!"

If you have ever had magic powers descend on you suddenly out of the
blue, you'll know how Jane felt.

When you have magic powers and know it, it can be a fine feeling, like
a pleasant tingling inside.  But in order to enjoy that tingling, you
have to know just how much magic you have and what the rules are for
using it.  And Jane didn't have any idea how much she had or how to use
it, and this made her unhappy and the others couldn't see why, and said
so, and Jane answered back, and by the time they went to bed no one was
speaking to anyone else.

What bothered Jane most was a feeling that she'd forgotten something,
and that if she could remember it she'd know the reason for everything
that had happened.  It was as if the reason were there in her mind
somewhere, if only she could reach it.  She leaned into her mind,
reaching, reaching...

The next thing she knew, she was sitting straight up in bed and the
clock was striking eleven, and she had remembered.  It was as though
she'd gone on thinking in her sleep.  Sometimes this happens.

She got up and felt her way to the dresser where she'd put her money,
without looking at it, when she came home from the fire.  First she
felt the top of the dresser.  Then she lit the lamp and looked.

The nickel she'd found in the crack in the sidewalk was gone.

And then Jane began thinking really hard.




2.  What Happened to Their Mother

At Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin's the air was hot and stuffy and the
furniture was hot and stuffy and Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin were stuffy.

"Poor things, they're so kind, really," the children's mother thought
to herself.

But she had to remind herself of this very hard when Aunt Grace got out
the snapshot albums.

"Now I know you'll be interested in these pictures of our trip to
Yellowstone Park, Alison."  Aunt Grace settled herself among the
cushions of the davenport as though she expected to stay there a long
time.

"I think you showed them to me last time, Aunt Grace."

"No, no, dear, that was _Glacier_ Park.  Edwin, move the floor lamp so
Alison can see.  This is the Old Faithful geyser.  It comes up
faithfully every hour, you see.  That woman standing there isn't anyone
we know.  It's some woman from Ohio who kept trying to get in the
picture.  Edwin had to speak to her.  Turn over the page."

The next page of the snapshot album showed Old Faithful from a
different angle.  The woman from Ohio had got only half way into the
picture; otherwise it looked just the same as the first one.

The children's mother patted back a yawn.

"I really must be going, Aunt Grace."

"Nonsense, dear.  You must stay for cake and coffee.  Just a little
chocolate cake, best you ever tasted, I made it myself."

The children's mother suppressed a smile.  Katharine had said Aunt
Grace would say that--she always did.

The clock struck eleven.

"Oh, dear," their mother said to herself.  "And that long bus ride
home, too!  I wish I were home right now!"

Next moment all the lights in the room seemed to have gone out, only
there seemed to be a moon and some stars shining in through the roof.

Their mother looked for Aunt Grace's stuffy, kind face, but Aunt Grace
wasn't there.  Instead, a clump of rather gangling milkweeds stared
back at her.  The hot, stuffy chair seemed suddenly to have grown cold
and prickly.  She looked down and around.

She was sitting on a weedy hummock by the side of a road.  There were
no houses in sight, nor any light but the far-off moon and stars.

What had happened?  Had she suddenly gone mad?  Or could she have said
good-by to Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin, started to walk home instead of
taking the bus, and then fainted?

But why couldn't she remember saying good-by?  Such a thing had never
happened to her before in her life!

She thought she recognized the stretch of road before her.  Aunt Grace
and Uncle Edwin lived in a suburb, with half a mile of open country
between them and the town.  Half a mile with only one bus stop, the
children's mother remembered.  She must be somewhere in that half-mile,
but would the bus stop be ahead or behind her?

The sky ahead showed a glow from the lights of town, and she started
walking toward it.

The moon was a thin new one and didn't shed much light, and the woodsy
thickets on either side of the road were dark and spooky.  Things moved
in the branches of trees.  The children's mother didn't like it at all.

What was she, a successful newspaperwoman and the mother of four
children, doing, wandering the roads by night like this?

When she was set upon and murdered by highwaymen and her body was found
next morning, what would the children think?  What would anyone think?
It must be a bad dream.  Soon she would wake up.  Now she would keep
walking.

She kept walking.

Behind her an engine throbbed and lights shone.  She turned, holding up
her hand, hoping it was the bus.

It wasn't the bus, just someone's car.  But the car stopped by her, and
rather a small gentleman looked out.

"Would you like a ride?"

"Well, no, not really," the children's mother said, which was not true
at all; she would like one very much.  But she had always told the
children particularly not to go riding with strangers.

"Did your car break down?"

"Well, no, not exactly."

"Just taking a walk?"

"Well, no."

The rather small gentleman had opened the door of the car now.

"Get in," he said.

To her surprise, the children's mother got in.  They rode along for a
bit in silence.  The children's mother tried to study the gentleman's
face out of the corner of her eye, and was displeased to see that he
wore a beard.  Beards always seemed to her rather sinister.  Why would
anyone wear one, unless he had something to hide?

But this beard was only a small, pointed one, and the rest of the
gentleman's face, or as much of it as she could see in the dark car,
seemed pleasant.  She found herself wanting to tell him of her strange
adventure.  Of course she couldn't.  It would sound too silly.

The gentleman broke the silence.

"Lonely out this way after dark," he said.  "Rather dangerous for
walking, I should say."

"I should say so, too," said the children's mother.  "I can't think
what can have happened.  There I was, talking to Aunt Grace, and
suddenly _there_ I was, by the side of the road!"

And, in spite of having decided not to, she began telling the small
gentleman all about it.

"There's only one explanation," she said, at the end of it.  "I must
have lost my memory, just for a minute."

"Oh, there's never only _one_ explanation," said the rather small
gentleman.  "It depends on which one you want to believe!  _I_ believe
in believing six impossible things before breakfast, myself.  Not that
I usually get the chance.  The trouble with life is that not enough
impossible things happen for us to believe in, don't you agree?  Where
did you say you live?"

"I didn't," said the children's mother.  Really, this night was growing
odder and odder.  She wasn't used to meeting people who talked exactly
like the White Queen, or to giving her address to perfect strangers,
either--still, if she wanted to get home there didn't seem to be
anything else to do.

She gave him her address, and a moment later they were driving up
before the house.

She thanked the small gentleman for his trouble.  He bowed, hesitated
as though he meant to say something further, then seemed to think
better of it, and drove away.

It wasn't until he was gone that the children's mother realized that
she didn't even know his name, nor he hers.  Still, they would probably
never see each other again.

She turned and started up the walk, then stopped in horror.

All the lights in the living room were ablaze!

Thinking of every terrible thing that could possibly have happened, she
ran up the walk, turned her key in the lock, and hurried inside.

Huddled on a corner of the sofa sat Jane, wrapped in a blanket and
looking small and white and forlorn.

Her mother was by her side and had her arms round her in a second.  All
thoughts of her own strange evening, and of the rather small gentleman,
vanished from her head.

"What is it, tummy-ache or bad dreams?" she cried.  "You should have
telephoned me!"

"It isn't either one," Jane said.  "Mother, did you borrow a nickel
that was on my dresser?"

"_What?_" cried her mother.  "Did you wait up all this time to ask me
_that_?"

And immediately she began to scold, as is the habit of parents when
they've been worried about their children and find that they needn't
have been.

"Really, Jane, you must _not_ be so money-grubbing!" she said.  "Yes, I
borrowed a nickel for carfare.  I only had one nickel and a five-dollar
bill, and they're always so mean about making change ..."

"Did you _spend_ it?" Jane interrupted, her voice horrified.

"I spent a nickel, going.  What does it matter?  I'll pay you back
tomorrow."

"Did you spend the other nickel, coming home?"

Her mother looked confused, for a moment.

"Well, no, as a matter of fact I didn't.  Someone gave me a lift."

"Do you know which one you spent, the one you had or the one you
borrowed?"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!  No, I don't!"

"Could I have the one you didn't spend?  Now, please?"

"Jane, what _is_ all this?  Anyone would think you were a starving
Little Match Girl, or something!"  Then her mother relented.  "Oh well,
if it'll make you happy!"

She dug in her purse.

"Here.  Now go to bed."

Jane took one quick look at the thing her mother had given her, then
folded her hand tightly around it.  She had guessed right.  It wasn't a
nickel.

She lingered in the doorway.

"Mother."

"What is it now?"

"Well, did you ... did anything ... anything sort of _unusual_ happen
tonight?"

"What do you mean?  Of course not!  Why?"

"Oh, nothing!"

Jane searched in her mind for an excuse.  She couldn't tell her mother
the truth; she'd never believe it.  It would only upset her.

"It's just that I ... I had this _dream_ about you, and I got worried.
I dreamed you _wished_ for something!"

"You did?  That's strange."  Her mother looked interested suddenly.
She went on, almost to herself, as though she were remembering.  "As a
matter of fact, I _did_ wish something.  I wished I were at home.  And
it was just then that..."

"That _what_?"  Jane was excited.

Her mother put on her "drop the subject" expression.

"Nothing.  I came home.  Someone gave me a ride.  A ... a friend of
Uncle Edwin's."

She didn't look at Jane.  It was awful to be lying like this, to her
own child.  But she couldn't tell Jane the truth; she'd never believe
it.  It would only upset her.

"I see."  But Jane didn't leave.  She stood tracing a pattern in the
hall carpet with one foot.  She went on carefully, not looking at her
mother.

"In my dream, when you wished you were home, I'm not sure what came
next.  I don't think you _were_ home, exactly..."

"Ha!  I certainly wasn't!"

"But you were _somewhere_!"

"Somewhere in a weed patch, half way out Bancroft Street, most likely!"

Now Jane looked up, and straight at her.

"We're just talking about my dream, aren't we?  It didn't really
happen?"

"Of course not."

It was her mother who was looking away now.  But now Jane knew.

Clutching the thing in her hand tighter, she ran up the stairs and into
her room.

Her mother stood thinking.  How strange that Jane should have guessed!
No stranger, though, than everything else about this strange evening.
Probably none of it had really happened at all.  Probably she was ill
and imagining things--coming down with flu or something.  She had
better get some rest.  She turned out the living room lights and went
upstairs.


Jane stood in her own room, looking at the thing in her hand.  It was
the size of a nickel and the shape of a nickel and the color of a
nickel, but it wasn't a nickel.

It was worn thin--probably by centuries of time, Jane told herself.
And instead of a buffalo or a Liberty head, it bore strange signs.
Jane held it closer to the light to study the signs.

There was a rap at the door.

"Lights out!" called her mother's voice.

Jane put out the light.

But she knew that she held in her hand the talisman that was going to
turn this summer into a time of wild adventure and delight for all of
them.

She must hide it in a safe place till morning.

Feeling her way across the room in the dark, she opened the closet
door.  There was a shoebag on the inside of the door, one of those
flowered cotton affairs with many compartments for shoes, though Jane
seldom remembered to put hers away in it.

She dropped the magic thing into one of the compartments in the
shoebag.  No one would disturb it there.

Then she got into bed.

Her last thought was that she must wake up early in the morning, by
dawn at _least_, and call the others.

They must hold a Conference, and decide just how they were going to use
this wonderful gift that had descended upon them out of the blue.

It was going to be an Enchanted Summer!

And Jane fell asleep.




3.  What Happened to Mark

Of course it didn't work out that way at all.

In the morning Jane was so tired from her midnight vigil that she slept
right through breakfast.  Their mother (who was tired, too) thought
Jane needed the rest, and told Miss Bick not to call her.

Miss Bick looked disapproving as usual, but did as she was told.  The
children's mother went off to work, and Katharine and Martha (under
protest) washed and dried the breakfast dishes without the usual
charming companionship of their elder sister.  Katharine was the washer
and Martha the drier.

"I'd like to know what's going on around here," Katharine complained,
over the cereal bowls.  "Lights on at all hours and Mother and Jane
holding secret midnight conspiracies in the living room.  I heard them!
And now Mother letting Jane stay in bed half the morning--I don't know
what this house is coming to!"

"It's that magic.  It's mysterious.  I don't like it," Martha said.

Katharine had reached the awful pans that needed scouring now, and
Martha went away and left her with them, as is the traitorous habit of
all dish-driers.

She went into Jane's room.  Drawn shades and a huddled form in the bed
greeted her.

"Wake up," she said to the form, in a half-hearted way.

"Go away," said Jane, from under a sheet and blanket.

Martha felt depressed.

Carrie the cat had followed her into the room.  Carrie's full name was
Carrie Chapman Cat.  Katharine had named her after a famous lady whose
name she had seen in the newspaper.  Carrie was a fat, not very
interesting cat, kept mainly for mousing purposes, and the children
ordinarily paid very little attention to her, or she to them.

But this morning everything was so gloomy and strange that Martha felt
the need of comfort.  She sat down on the floor, leaned her head back
against the open door of Jane's closet, took Carrie in her lap, and
stroked her.

There was a silence, except for the heavy breathing of Jane.

Martha felt a wish for companionship.

"Oh dear, if you could only talk," she said to Carrie.

"Purrxx," said Carrie the cat.  "Wah oo merglitz.  Fitzahhh!"

"What?" said Martha, startled.

"Wah oo merglitz," said Carrie.  "Widl.  Wifi uzz."

"Oh!" said Martha.  "Oh!"

She got up, dropping Carrie rather heavily to the floor, and backed
away, white with horror.

"Foo!" said Carrie resentfully.  "Idgwit!  At urt!"

Mark appeared in the doorway.

"Are my roller skates in here?" he demanded.  "Jane borrowed them last
week when her strap broke."

Martha ran to him and clutched him.

"It's that magic!  _I_'ve got it now!" she cried.  "I wished Carrie
could talk, and now listen to her!"

Carrie chose this moment to put on an offended silence.

"Bushwah," Mark said gruffly.  He had found his roller skates in Jane's
shoebag and was putting them on.  "That old cat.  She always was crazy,
anyway!"

"Azy ooselfitz!" said Carrie suddenly.

Mark looked surprised.  Then he shook his head in disbelief.

"That's not talking," he said.  "Probably just having a fit or
something."

"But I wished she could talk, and then it began.  Like Jane yesterday!"

"Just a quincidence," said Mark.  "Yesterday, too.  I don't believe in
that old magic.  Just Jane being smart.  Just a lot of crazy girls."

He banged away through the house and out the front door, on his skates.
Miss Bick could be heard, following in his wake and lamenting the fate
of the floor polish.

Martha gave up.  There was no sense in appealing to Mark in this mood.
Sometimes he got tired of being the only boy in a family of girls, and
when that happened there was no comfort in him.  But she refused to be
left here alone with the sleeping Jane and the gibbering Carrie.

Or could Mark have been right?  Was it just a quincidence?  She looked
at Carrie doubtfully.

"Did you say something?" she inquired politely.

"Idlwidl baxbix!" said Carrie.  "Wah.  Oom.  Powitzer grompaw."

Martha fled the room, calling for Katharine.

Katharine met her in the hall.

"Don't talk to _me_!" she said.  "Pan-shirker!"

"Oh, Kathie, don't be cross!" Martha entreated.  "Something terrible's
happened!  _I_'ve got it now, only it comes all wrong!"

And she told Katharine of the behavior of Carrie.

The two sisters, clutched in each other's arms, cautiously approached
the door of Jane's room and looked in.

Carrie was still there, pacing the floor, lashing her tail and
muttering a horrid monologue.

"Idlwidl bixbax," she was saying.  "Grompaw.  Fooz!  Idjwitz!  Oo
fitzwanna talkwitz inna fitzplace annahoo?"

She seemed to be trying desperately to express herself.  It was agony
to watch and still worse to hear.

"This can't go on," said Katharine.

She strode courageously into the room, making a wide circle around the
still muttering Carrie, approached the huddled figure in the bed, and
shook it.

"Fitzachoo!" said Jane.

"Now _she_'s doing it!" Martha wailed, from the doorway.

Katharine looked shaken.

"I _think_ it's just sleep-talk," she said.  "The time has come for
desperate measures."

"Let _me_," said Martha, glad to get away from the doorway even for a
second.

She ran to the bathroom and fetched a wet sponge.  Avoiding the
sputtering Carrie, she ran back to the bed and trickled the sponge upon
Jane.

Jane sat up in bed and struck her sister full in the face.

In the tears and apologies and mopping-up that followed, Jane awoke
sufficiently to be engaged in sensible conversation and to notice the
gurglings and spittings of Carrie.

"What did somebody do--wish she could talk?" she asked.

"Yes, _I_ did.  How did you know?"  Martha stared in amazement.

"How did you happen to find the charm?  Who told you you could go
through my things?"

"I didn't!  I don't know what you mean!"

"Wait a minute.  Where were you standing when you wished it?"

"I wasn't.  I was sitting down."  And Martha showed her where.

"You must have leaned back and touched it."

"Touched _what_?" said Martha.

"_What_ charm?" said Katharine.

"The charm in the shoebag," said Jane.  "Wait till I tell you."

She told them.

"I don't see how you're so sure," said Martha, when she had finished.
"About Mother last night, I mean."

"She just as good as said so," said Jane, "and I Sherlock Holmsed the
rest.  Don't you see?  She wished she were home and ended up _halfway_
home!  I wished there'd be a fire and got a _little_ fire!  A
_child's-size_ fire!  Martha wished Carrie could talk and she can
_half_ talk!"

"Wah.  Oom.  Fitzbattleaxe," remarked Carrie.

"Exactly," said Jane.  "It's that nickel I found, only it isn't a
nickel!  It's a magic charm and it does things by halves!  So far we've
each got _half_ of what we wished for--all we have to do from now on is
ask it for twice as much as we really want!  You see?"

"I haven't had fractions yet," said Martha.

Jane explained further.  Martha became weary of the explanation.

"What would twice as much as never having to learn fractions be?" she
wanted to know, at last.

"Don't be silly--you don't want to ask it things like _that_!"
Katharine cried in scorn.

"Nobody's going to ask for anything till we talk it over and decide,"
Jane announced firmly.  "We don't want to waste any more wishes--we
can't tell how soon we might wear it out!  We'll make plans, and then
take turns.  My turn yesterday doesn't count, 'cause I didn't know.  I
get to go first, 'cause I'm the oldest."

"What would twice as much as not being the youngest any more be?" was
the bitter question of Martha, who was tired of always coming last.

But the others paid her no heed.

"_I_ mean to ask for all kinds of really wonderful, exciting, important
things!" Katharine was saying.  "Only I'm not sure just what yet."

"Idjwitz!  Selfitz!  Fitz_me_fitz!" said Carrie, suddenly.

They looked at her in remorse.  Now that they knew the reason for them,
her outcries weren't so alarming any more--they'd even almost forgotten
about her.  But, in spite of the fact that she seemed to be learning to
express herself a little more clearly, she was plainly so enraged by
her half-talking state that something had to be done.

"Poor Carrie, I'll fix you up first of all," Jane promised.  "The
charm's right in here."

She put her hand into the shoebag.  But it wasn't.

She put her hand into another compartment.  The charm wasn't there,
either!

She began wildly searching through all the different sections, taking
out pairs of shoes and shaking them.  The magic thing wasn't in any of
them.  Jane began to get in one of her rages.

"Really, what a house!" she cried.  "Nothing ever stays where you put
it!  Has Miss Bick been cleaning my room again?"

"No, she said it needed it but it was beyond her!"

"Mark!" was the next thought of Jane.  "I _wondered_ where he was!  Has
anyone seen him?"

"I did," reported Martha.  "He came in here and got his roller skates,
just a few minutes ago."

"_Roller skates!_"  Jane's voice was a wail.  "They were in the
shoebag!  He must have found the charm and taken it!  A person might as
well be living in a den of thieves around here!"

"I don't think he did," Martha said.  "He said the whole thing was just
a quincidence."

"He probably never noticed the magic charm at all," Katharine pointed
out reasonably.  "He probably just put the skates on with it _in_ one
of them, where you probably put it in the dark last night, without
realizing.  It probably got stuck down there in the tightening part.
It's probably still there, only he probably doesn't know.  He'll
probably make a wish pretty soon, and then suddenly..."

"_Stop!_"  Jane could bear no more.  "We've got to find him!  Before he
wishes for some awful thing and gets half of it!  Where do you suppose
he could have gone?"

Jane was rushing into her clothes now.

"Wah!  _Me_fitz!  _Me_fitz!" said Carrie, crossly.

"All right.  We'll take you along."  Martha, who was beginning to
understand Carrie's half-language, hoisted her up under one arm.

They met Miss Bick in the hall.

"Where are you taking that cat?" she wanted to know.

"Idjwit!  Foo!  Fitzouta thewayfitz!" said Carrie savagely.

Miss Bick backed away, turning pale.

"That cat is _ill_!" she cried.

"I know.  We're taking her to the vet's," Katharine called back over
her shoulder.

Like everything else lately, the lie was only _half_ an untruth.  They
_were_ taking Carrie to be cured, if the charm could cure her.

The children emerged from the house, and stood looking around.
Fortunately they lived on a corner lot, and could look down streets
running in all four directions.

But no welcome sound of whirring skate wheels, no welcome sight of an
eleven-year-old boy rewarded them.  Finally they started hurrying south
on Maplewood Avenue, not because south looked any more promising than
east or north or west, but because they had to start somewhere.  Martha
tried to muffle the sounds Carrie kept making by holding her close to
her, but the few passers-by they met kept turning to stare after them.

"Wah!  Oom!  Fitzpatrix!" Carrie screamed at the passers-by.  She
almost seemed to be enjoying herself.

"Hush.  Hush," Martha told her.  She was having hard work running fast
enough to keep up with her sisters.  "It won't be long now.  At least,
oh, I hope it won't!"


Meanwhile Mark had been skating around the neighborhood for some time.
It was a dark, gloomy day and he wished the sun would come out.  A
minute later it did sort of half peep through the clouds.

Now that he was older, roller skating didn't seem quite the thing of
whirlwind speed that it used to be, back in the days when it was new to
him.  He wished the skates would go faster.  Pretty soon it seemed as
though they did, a little.

But just skating around by himself wasn't very much fun.  He wished all
the guys were back from their vacations.  He wished that when he came
to the vacant lot up ahead, he'd see them there, playing baseball as
usual.

And for a second, as he whizzed past the vacant lot, he did seem to
sort of half-see a ghostly game in progress.

He rounded the corner and came down his own block on Maplewood.  As he
passed Mrs. Hudson's house he wished, as he'd often wished before, that
just for once the iron dog in the yard would be alive, instead of only
iron.

Then he looked back.  For a minute he thought he heard a faint muffled
bark, and it seemed as though the iron tail had tried to wag.  Mark
guessed he must have a pretty vivid imagination, all right, the way
Miss Amrhein, his last year's teacher, had always said.

Thinking of Miss Amrhein reminded him of school.  Maybe somebody'd be
hanging around the playground, somebody else who hadn't gone away for
vacation.  He turned at the corner, and skated down Monroe Street
toward the school building.


It was just after Mark turned the corner that Jane and Katharine and
Martha came out of the house and started hurrying down the street.

As they passed Mrs. Hudson's yard, Carrie the cat struggled out of
Martha's arms and ran up to the iron dog.

"Yah!" she cried, hissing and spitting at him.  "Fitzbully!  Fitzmutt!
Curfitz!"

A strangled growl came from within the iron dog, and he strained
forward, trembling, as though trying to lunge at Carrie.

Jane gave a cry of triumph.

"Look!" she cried.  "It's half-alive!  Mark must have been here!  He
must have wished!  Hurry up--we're on the right track!"

Martha dragged Carrie away from the iron dog and rushed on after the
others.  At the corner they hesitated, then turned and ran down Monroe
Street, toward the school.


Mark stood looking around the playground.  It was deserted, as he might
have known it would be.  Disappointed, he hauled himself up on the
trapeze bar, hung by his knees, and swung head downward.  He
almost--but not quite--wished it were time for school to begin again;
so all the kids would be back.  A person might as well be on a desert
island as in this empty town!

The thought of desert islands reminded him that he hadn't reread
_Robinson Crusoe_ yet this year.  He was still thinking about _Robinson
Crusoe_ when his sisters came running into the playground.

"Thank goodness we found you in time to warn you!" Jane cried.  "What
have you been doing?"

Mark, still hanging head downwards, looked up at her.

"I was just wishing we were all on a desert island," he said.


Next moment the trapeze seemed to give way and he fell heavily to the
ground.  But instead of landing on the scratchy gravel of the
playground, he fell on hot sand.

He rolled over and looked around him.  His sisters sat nearby, looking
only a trifle less surprised than he felt.  Above, a flaming-hot sun
blazed in a cloudless sky.  Otherwise there didn't seem to be anything
anywhere but sand.

"What happened?  Where are we?" he cried dazedly.

Jane sighed grimly.

"You just got half a wish," she told him.  "Desert, yes.  Island, no."

Mark looked around again.  It was all too true.  Desert there certainly
was, but no welcome sight of distant waves graced the horizon--only
more sand, mile on monotonous mile of it.

"It's all right," Jane went on, a bit wearily.  "I just _do_ wish
everybody wouldn't keep wasting wishes, though!  Take off your skates
and I'll get us home again."

To make Mark understand even a part of the situation was the work of
several moments.  They told him about the half-fire, about Mother,
about Carrie.  At last he began to believe.

He took off one of the skates and shook it.  Nothing happened.  He took
off the other skate and shook it.

Something metal shot through the air in a bright arc, glittering in the
pitiless light of the desert sun, then fell into the sand.

Each of the children would have sworn that he knew just where the magic
thing had fallen, and four pairs of hands set to work with a will,
burrowing in the sandy hotness.  One pair of paws set to work also,
Carrie the cat having decided to be helpful for once.  There was a good
bit of getting in each other's way and arguing.

Five minutes later the magic charm had still not been found.  The sand
was beginning to feel hotter.  Fingers were getting sorer and tempers
shorter.

"Don't crawl where I'm digging," said Katharine to Martha.

"Don't dig where I'm crawling," said Martha to Katharine.

"The way that charm keeps not staying put," said Jane, "you'd think it
_wanted_ everything to work out wrong!"

Ten more minutes passed.

"I for one," said Martha, sitting back exhausted, "will never play in a
sandbox again."

"All the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten this old sand," agreed
the poetical Katharine, also sitting back.

"But we have to find it!" Jane cried, still digging desperately.
"Otherwise we'll never get home!  We'll die of thirst and some Arab
will find our bleached bones months later and never know who we were!"

"I'm thirsty now," said Martha.  "I'm hungry, too," she added.

"How do we know this really _is_ Arabia?" asked Mark.  "Maybe it's just
Death Valley."

"Either way," said Jane, "is small comfort.  Keep digging.  Though it
_is_ like looking for a camel in a needle's eye," she admitted.

It was then that the caravan appeared.

It was a rather shopworn-looking caravan, only three mangy camels with
one ragged Arab driving them, and some very meager, empty-looking packs
on the camels' backs, but it served to make plain to the four children
that they were, in fact, in that fabled wasteland they had read of so
much in fact and fiction.

"Lost in the Sahara!" cried Katharine dramatically.

Mark was more practical.

"Caravan ahoy!" he shouted.  "SOS!  Help!  Lend a hand!"

The three mangy camels and the ragged Arab altered their course and
came toward them.

As they drew nearer, the four children began to wish they wouldn't.
The ragged Arab's expression was crafty, and definitely unattractive.
As he came to a stop before them he smiled, which made him look more
unpleasant than ever.

"Bismillah!" he said.

"How!" said Martha.

"What do you think he is, an Indian?" hissed Mark, under his breath.
He addressed the Arab.  "Allee samee show humble servant nearest oasis
chop-chop?"

"He won't understand that either--that's Chinese!" said Jane.

But the Arab seemed to comprehend.

"Western children follow Achmed," he said.

Jane refused to go.

"We can't leave the charm!" she cried.  "It's our only chance to get
home!"

"We might get to a place where there's Western Union.  We could cable
Mother collect.  She might send for us," said Katharine doubtfully.

"It would cost untold millions and take _ages_!" cried Jane.  "I won't
budge from this spot!  We'll find the magic thing if we keep looking!"

But the Arab, Achmed, seized her by the arm and propelled her, none too
gently, toward the nearest camel.

"Do what he says," Mark whispered to Jane.  "We have to get some water,
anyway.  We can always find this spot again if we leave the roller
skates to mark it."

He didn't add that his fear was that the wind might bury the skates in
sand before they could return.  He didn't mention some other fears that
were bothering him, either.

Jane allowed the Arab to help her up onto the nearest camel.  Mark
helped Katharine climb onto the second one, and the Arab lifted Martha
onto the third.  With Mark and the Arab on foot, they started away over
the desert.

After a bit, Jane began to enjoy the new sensation of riding
camel-back, and forgot the charm for the moment.  Katharine too seemed
almost happy, but the up-and-down motion made Martha seasick and she
begged to be taken down.

Mark helped her off the camel and she walked along with him.  But her
short legs soon tired, and her feet grew sore from the hot sand burning
through the thin soles of her shoes.  Mark had to half-carry her and
the going was slow.  They lagged a bit behind the others.

What worried Mark was that he didn't trust Achmed the Arab.  Achmed had
been all too eager to take the children with him, and Mark didn't like
his smile.

Presently Mark's fears were confirmed.  Carrie the cat seemed to be
making friends with the third camel, the one Martha had been riding.
She frisked along by the camel's side.  The camel leaned his head down
to hers.  It almost looked as though they were conversing together, the
way animals undoubtedly do.

A moment later Carrie ran back to Mark and Martha, Her fur was standing
on end with anger and excitement.

"Foo!  Idjwitz!" she hissed at Mark.  "Fitzachmed fitzwicked!
Fitzkidnap!  Ransomowitz!"

"I was afraid of that," said Mark.  "Who told you?"

"Fitzcamel!"

Martha began to cry.

"Don't worry," Mark told her.  "We'll escape somehow."

But he wished he knew how.  Fortunately just then the oasis came into
sight, which distracted Martha's attention.

It wasn't a very big oasis--no Western Union--but there were two or
three date palms and a spring of water.  Everyone stopped for a welcome
drink.  The dates were delicious.  Martha took off her shoes to cool
her feet with water from the spring.  There was a good deal of sand in
her shoes, and as she shook it out it was Mark who first saw the round,
shining, silvery thing that fell out with it.

Though he'd never had a real look at it before, he didn't need to be
told what it was.  His hand shot out and he caught the charm in mid-air
before it could be lost again.

Katharine had seen it a second after Mark.

"I _told_ you not to crawl where I was digging!" she told Martha.

Jane had seen it a second after Katharine.

"It's the charm!" she cried.  "Wish us home!  Here, let me!"

But the Arab, Achmed, was standing nearby, and had seen the shining
thing, too.  He strode forward, seized Mark by the wrist, and brought
the silver charm close to his eyes, close enough to see the mystic
marks on it.

The expression of his face changed.  No longer did he look like a
kidnapper who was planning and plotting wickedness.  He looked like a
righteous man who has caught a thief in his house, or even worse, in
the temple of his gods.  His voice was stern.

"Western child steal sacred charm," he cried.  "Sacred charm lost many
years.  Give back!"

His hand closed on the charm but Mark's hand had closed on it first.
Mark said the only thing that came into his mind.

"I wish you were half a mile away!"

And immediately, of course, Achmed the Arab was _half_ of half a mile,
or a _quarter_ of a mile, away.  The children could just see him, like
a tiny dot far off on the desert sands.  But the dot was coming nearer,
as Achmed ran toward them again.

"Quick!  Let me--I'll get us home!  You don't know how!" Jane cried to
Mark, but Mark waved her away.  He was thinking.

"After all, maybe the charm _did_ belong to his race," he said.

"It belongs to us now!" said Jane.

"Losers weepers finders keepers!" said Katharine.

"But maybe it _was_ stolen.  From a temple or somewhere," said Mark,
slowly.  "You know how people used to be unjust to natives in the olden
days.  It doesn't seem fair."

The others had to agree that it didn't.  All except Carrie, who was
seldom troubled by noble motives.

"Fitzachmed fitzwicked!" she reminded Mark.

"After all, he _was_ going to kidnap us!" agreed Martha.

"He _was_?" cried Jane and Katharine, in surprise and excitement.

"Yes, he was, but let's not go into that now," said Mark.  "I'll tell
you later.  After all, maybe he wouldn't have if he weren't poor and
downtrodden.  And we're supposed to be kind to our enemies, aren't we?"

Achmed the Arab was coming nearer now.  Mark waited till he was close
enough for them to see his face.  Then he spoke aloud a wish he had
thought out very carefully.

"I wish that Achmed the Arab may have twice as much as he deserves of
whatever it is that he would wish for with this charm!" Mark said.

And of course the charm, to which arithmetic was as nothing, cut the
wish neatly in half and in that moment the Arab Achmed received as much
as he deserved of happiness.

Suddenly there were five camels in the caravan instead of three.  The
camels were young and healthy instead of old and mangy.  The harnesses
were new and trim instead of old and worn through.  The meager,
empty-looking packs bulged with rich stuffs for trading.

A plump Arab lady appeared suddenly at Achmed's side, leading six plump
Arab children by the hand.  She smiled coyly at Achmed.

Achmed stopped short and looked at the caravan, at the lady, at the
Arab children.  He gave a great cry of happiness.  On his face a look
of peace replaced the old crafty shiftiness.  He turned toward the East
and fell on his face on the sand.  His voice lifted in what sounded
like a prayer of thanksgiving.

And it was then that Mark, still waving away the proffered help of
Jane, spoke aloud the second wish he had carefully thought out.

"I wish that the four of us, and Carrie the cat, may travel in the
direction of home, only twice as far."

Next thing they knew, they were all sitting on their own front steps.

The first thing they did was walk down the street to Mrs. Hudson's
house.  The iron dog still trembled in half-life on the lawn.

At that moment Mrs. Hudson came out of the house, her market basket on
her arm.  She took one look at the shaking dog.

"Earthquake!  Earthquake!" she cried, and ran back inside the house.

Mark, who was getting quite good at it, made a third wish.

"I wish that this dog," he said, "may be twice as alive or twice as
un-alive as it wishes to be."

Immediately the dog stopped trembling and stood still and cold as iron
(which it was again).

"Wouldn't you think it'd rather have been real?" said Katharine in
wonder.

"I guess iron things are happier _being_ iron," said Mark, who had
learned a lot in one day.

The four children now turned to the case of Carrie the cat.

"Wouldn't you like to go on talking, only plainer?" asked Martha, who
had grown to enjoy her conversations with her pet.

"Notonna fitztintype," said Carrie.  "Fitzsilence fitzgolden!"

The others then decided that Mark had had enough wishes for one day and
they would take on this problem.

"I wish that Carrie the cat couldn't talk any of the time!" said
Martha, not stopping to think it out.

"Well, you certainly messed that up," said Carrie the cat.  "Now of
course I can't talk half the time but the rest of the time I can talk
perfectly plainly, not that I want to, of course, but here I go, talk,
talk, talk, and here I _will_ go for the next thirty seconds, and then
thirty seconds of silence I suppose, and then talk, talk, talk again,
just as though I had anything to say, which I don't, being always one
for quiet meditation myself; still, duty calls; so speak the words
trippingly on the tongue, only three more seconds to go now, the rest
is silence, Shakespeare!"

She broke off suddenly, but only for thirty seconds.  Then she began
again.  The children held their ears till the next silent period.  Then
Katharine made a hurried suggestion.

"The thing is, we want her to just mew, the way she used to," she said.
"The thing is to think of a word that has 'mew' for half of it."

"_I_ know!" said Jane.  And she made a wish.  "I wish that Carrie the
cat may in future say nothing but the word 'music.'"

"Sick!" said Carrie the cat.  "Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick
sick sick sick sick sick."

She _looked_ sick.

"Better let me," said Mark.  "I've had practice."  He took the charm in
his hand.  "I wish that Carrie the cat may be exactly twice as silent
as she wishes to be."

"Mew," said Carrie the cat.  "Purr."

And without so much as a look of gratitude at Mark for restoring her to
normalcy, she hurried off after a passing robin.

Tired but happy, the children trooped homeward.  It had been a long,
full day, but everything had worked out beautifully in the end.

Miss Bick met them with reproaches for having stayed out all day and
missed their lunch.

"Just wait till I tell your mother!" she said.

And the children did.

Their mother looked very grave that night, when Miss Bick had told her.

"I don't want you children wandering away from the house like that
again," she said to them at dinner.  "As a matter of fact, you may as
well know--something rather frightening has been happening.  There
seems to be an epidemic of kidnapping, or at least lost children.  We
kept getting reports at the paper all day, from different lakes and
camps and places.  A lot of little boys have disappeared.  Mostly
friends of yours, Mark, I'm afraid.  Freddy Fox and Richey Gould and
Michael Robinson, only there's a report he turned up halfway home and
doesn't know how he got there...."

Mark choked suddenly on his milk, and turned bright red.

He signaled the others in a private way the four children had.  They
finished dinner as soon as they could, and gathered in Mark's room.

"It's awful!" Mark cried, as soon as the door was safely shut.  "I just
remembered!  This morning I wished all the guys were home.  Now there
they all are, half-way home and wandering the countryside!  I've got to
fix them up!"

He took the charm from his pocket, where he'd put it after the last
wish of the afternoon.

"I wish all the guys I wished home to be back twice as far as they were
before I wished!" he said.

The others agreed that that ought to do it.  But Mark was still worried.

"We have to be careful from now on," he said.  "We don't want any more
mistakes.  That could have been bad."

"We'll hide it in a safe place," said Jane, "until tomorrow."

"I know where," said Katharine.

She led the others to the room she shared with Martha.  There was a
loose board in the floor with a space under it that the children had
used to hide things in, back in the days when they were young.

The children hid the charm in this secret place.

"A mouse might find it and make a wish," Martha objected.

But the others felt that half the wish of a mouse could do little to
upset their plans.

They had many plans to make.

"We'll spend the night thinking up wishes," said Jane.  "It'll be
better from now on, because now we all _know_.  We'll make sensible
wishes from now on.  To-morrow the real fun will begin."

And, in a way, it did.




4.  What Happened to Katharine

Next morning there were no secret meetings before breakfast.

Jane stayed in her room and Mark stayed in his room, and in the room
they shared Katharine and Martha hardly conversed at all.

Each of the children was too busy making private plans and deciding on
favorite wishes.

Breakfast was eaten in silence, but not without the exchange of some
excited looks.  The children's mother was aware that something was in
the air, and wondered what new trial lay in store for her.

When their mother had gone to work and the dishes and other loathly
tasks were done, the four children gathered in Katharine and Martha's
room.  Katharine had already checked to see that the charm still lay in
its cubbyhole, unharmed by wish of mouse or termite.

Jane had drawn up some rules.

"The wishes are to go by turns," she said.  "Nobody's to make any main
wish that doesn't include all the rest of us.  If there have to be any
smaller wishes later on in the same adventure, the person who wished
the main wish gets to make them, except in case of emergency.  Like if
he loses the charm and one of the other ones finds it.  I get to go
first."

Katharine had something to say about that.

"I don't see why," she said.  "You always get dibs on first 'cause
you're the oldest, and grown ups always pick Martha 'cause she's the
baby, and Mark has a wonderful double life with all this and being a
boy, too!  Middle ones never get any privileges at all!  Besides, who
hasn't had a wish of her own yet?  Think back!"

It was true.  Jane had had the half-fire, and Martha had made Carrie
half-talk, and Mark had taken them to half of a desert island.

Jane had to agree that Katharine deserved a chance.  But she couldn't
keep from giving advice.

"We don't want any old visits with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," she
said.  "Make it something that's fun for everybody."

"I'm going to," said Katharine.  "But I can't decide between wishing we
could all fly like birds and wishing we had all the money in the world."

"Those aren't any good," said Jane.  "People always wish those in
stories, and it never works out at _all_!  They either fly too near the
sun and get burned, or end up crushed under all the money!"

"We could make it _paper_ money," suggested Katharine.

A discussion followed as to how many million dollars in large bills it
would take to crush a person to death.  By the time the four children
got back to the subject of the magic charm seventeen valuable minutes
had been wasted.

But now Mark had an idea.

"We've found out the charm can take us through space," he said.  "What
about time?"

"You mean travel around in the past?"  Jane's eyes were glowing.  "See
Captain Kidd and Nero?"

"I've always wanted to live back in the olden romantic days," said
Katharine, getting excited, too.  "In days of old when knights were
bold!"

The others were joining in by now.  For once the four children were all
in complete agreement.

"Put in about tournaments," said Mark.

"And quests," said Jane.

"Put in a good deed, too," said Martha.  "Just to be on the safe side."

"Don't forget to say two times everything," said all three.  They
clustered eagerly around Katharine as she took hold of the charm.

"I wish," said Katharine, "that we may go back twice as far as to the
days of King Arthur, and see two tournaments and go on two quests and
do two good deeds."

The next thing the four children knew, they were standing in the midst
of a crowded highway.  Four queens were just passing, riding under a
silken canopy.  The next moment seven merry milkmaids skipped past,
going a-Maying.  In the distance a gallant knight was chasing a grimly
giant with puissant valor, and in the other direction a grimly giant
was chasing a gallant knight for all he was worth.  Some pilgrims
stopped and asked the four children the way to Canterbury.  The four
children didn't know.

But by now they were tired of the crowded traffic conditions on the
King's Highway, and crossed into a field, where the grass seemed
greener and fresher than any they had ever seen in their own time.  A
tall figure lay on the ground nearby, under an apple tree.  It was a
knight in full armor, and he was sound asleep.

The four children knew he was asleep, because Martha lifted the visor
of his helmet and peeked inside.  A gentle snore issued forth.

The knight's sword lay on the ground beside him, and Mark reached to
pick it up.

Immediately the sleeping knight awoke, and sat up.

"Who steals my purse steals trash," he said, "but who steals my sword
steals honor itself, and him will I harry by wood and by water till I
cleave him from his brain-pan to his thigh-bone!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Mark.

"We didn't mean anything," said Jane.

"We're sorry," said Katharine.

The knight rubbed his eyes with his mailed fist.  Instead of the
miscreant thief he had expected to see, he saw Mark and Jane and
Katharine and Martha.

"Who be you?" he said.  "Hath some grimly foe murdered me in my sleep?
Am I in Heaven?  Be ye cherubim or seraphim?"

"We be neither," said Katharine.  "And this isn't Heaven.  We are four
children."

"Pish," said the knight.  "Ye be like no children these eyes have ever
beheld.  Your garb is outlandish."

"People who live in tin armor shouldn't make remarks," said Katharine.

At this moment there was an interruption.  A lady came riding up on a
milk-white palfrey.  She seemed considerably excited.

"Hist, gallant knight!" she cried.

The knight rose to his feet, and bowed politely.  The lady began
batting her eyes, and looking at him in a way that made the children
feel ashamed for her.

"Thank Heaven I found you," she went on.  "You alone of all the world
can help me, if your name be Sir Launcelot, as I am let to know it is!"

The children stared at the knight, open-mouthed with awe.

"Are you really Sir Launcelot?" Mark asked him.

"That is my name," said the knight.

The four children stared at him harder.

Now that he wasn't looking so sleepy they could see that it was true.
No other in all the world could wear so manly a bearing, so noble a
face.  They were in the presence of Sir Launcelot du Lake, the greatest
knight in all the Age of Chivalry!

"How is Elaine?" Katharine wanted to know right away, "and little
Galahad?"

"I know not the folk you mention," said Sir Launcelot.

"Oh, yes, you do, sooner or later," said Katharine.  "You probably just
haven't come to them yet."

"Be ye a prophetess?" cried Sir Launcelot, becoming interested.  "Can
ye read the future?  Tell me more!"

But the lady on the milk-white palfrey was growing impatient.

"Away, poppets!" she said, getting between the four children and Sir
Launcelot.  "Gallant knight, I crave your assistance.  In a dolorous
tower nearby a dread ogre is distressing some gentlewomen.  I am
Preceptress of the Distressed Gentlewoman Society.  We need your help."

"Naturally," said Sir Launcelot.  He whistled, and his trusty horse
appeared from behind the apple tree, where it had been cropping apples.
Sir Launcelot started to mount the horse.

The four children looked at each other.  They did not like what they
had seen of the lady at all, and they liked the way she had spoken to
them even less.

Katharine stepped forward.

"I wouldn't go if I were you," she said.  "It's probably a trap."

The lady gave her an evil look.

"Even so," said Sir Launcelot, "needs must when duty calls."  He
adjusted his reins.

Katharine drew herself up to her full four feet four.

"As you noticed before, I be a mighty prophetess!" she cried.  "And I
say unto you, go not where this lady bids.  She will bring you nothing
but disaster!"

"I shall go where I please," said Sir Launcelot.

"So there!" said the lady.

"You'll be sorry!" said Katharine.

"Enough of parley," said Sir Launcelot.  "Never yet did Launcelot turn
from a worthy quest.  I know who ye be now.  Ye be four false wizards
come to me in the guise of children to tempt me from my course.  'Tis
vain.  Out of the way.  Flee, churls.  Avaunt and quit my sight, thy
bones are marrowless.  Giddy-up."

Sir Launcelot chirruped to his horse, and the lady chirruped to hers,
and away they went, galloping down the King's Highway.  The four
children had to scatter to both sides to avoid the flying hooves.

Of course it was but the work of a moment and a simple problem in
fractions for Katharine to wish they all had horses and could follow.

Immediately they had, and they did.

Sir Launcelot turned, and saw the four children close at his heels,
mounted now on four dashing chargers.

"Away, fiends!" he said.

"Shan't!" said Katharine.

They went on.

The four children had never ridden horseback before, but they found
that it came to them quite easily, though Martha's horse was a bit big
for her, and she had trouble posting.

And it was particularly interesting when, every time the lady started
casting loving looks at Sir Launcelot, the children would ride up close
behind and make jeering noises, and Sir Launcelot would turn in his
saddle and shout, "Begone, demons!" at them.  This happened every few
minutes.  Sir Launcelot seemed to get a little bit angrier each time.

When they had ridden a goodly pace they came to a dark wood, stretching
along both sides of the highway.  Just at the edge of the wood, the
lady cried out that her horse had cast a shoe.  Sir Launcelot reined in
to go to her aid.  The four children stopped at a safe distance.

Then, just as Sir Launcelot was dismounting, three knights rode out of
the wood.  One was dressed all in red, one in green and one in black.
Before the children could cry out, the knights rushed at Sir Launcelot
from behind.

It was three against one and most unfair.  But even so, Sir Launcelot's
strength would have been as the strength of at least nine if he hadn't
been taken by surprise.  As it was, he had no time even to touch his
hand to his sword before the three knights had seized and disarmed him,
bound him hand and foot, flung him across the saddle of his own horse,
and galloped off into the wood with him, a hapless prisoner.

The lady turned on the four children.

"Ha ha!" she cried.  "Now they will take him to my castle, where he
will lie in a deep dungeon and be beaten every day with thorns!  And so
we shall serve all knights of the Round Table who happen this way!
Death to King Arthur!"

"Why, you false thing, you!" said Jane.

"I told him so!" said Katharine.

"Let's go home!" said Martha.

"No, we have to rescue him!" said Mark.

"Ho ho!" said the lady.  "Just you try it!  Your magic is a mere
nothing compared with mine, elf spawn!  Know that I am the great
enchantress, Morgan le Fay!"

"You _would_ be!" said Katharine, who didn't like being called
"elfspawn," as who would?  "I remember you in the books, always making
trouble.  I wish you'd go jump in the lake!"

Katharine wasn't thinking of the charm when she wished this, or she
might have worded it differently.  But that didn't stop the charm.

"Good old charm!" said Mark, as he watched what happened.

Morgan le Fay didn't go jump in the lake; she merely fell in a pool.
Luckily there was a pool handy.  She slid backwards off her horse and
landed in it in a sitting position.  And luckier still, the pool had a
muddy bottom, and Morgan le Fay stuck there long enough for Katharine
to make another, calmer wish, which was that she would _stay_ stuck,
and unable to use any of her magic, for twice as long as would be
necessary.

This done, the four children turned their horses into the wood, and set
about following the wicked knights.  Morgan le Fay hurled a few curses
after them from among the water weeds, but these soon died away in the
distance.

There was no path to follow through the wood.  The branches of trees
hung low and thick, and the earth beneath them was damp and dark and
dank, and no birds sang.

"This," said Katharine, "is what I would call a tulgey wood."

"Don't!" cried Martha.  "Suppose something came whiffling through it!"

The four children pressed on.  Suddenly they came to a clearing, and
there amidst a tangle of lambkill and henbane and deadly nightshade
they saw the witch's castle rising just ahead of them.  Poison ivy
mantled its walls.  There were snakes in the moat and bats in the
belfry.  The four children did not like the look of it at all.

"What do we do now?" said Jane.

"Wish him free, of course," said Mark.

"Just stand out here and wish?  That's too easy!" said Katharine.

"I'm not going inside that castle!" said Martha.

"Nay," said Katharine, who did not seem to be so docile today as she
used to be.  "Ye forget that I be a mighty prophetess.  Trust ye unto
my clever strategy!"

"Bushwah," said Mark.  "Less talk and more action."

Katharine put her hand on the charm.  "I wish that two doors of this
castle may stand open for us," she said.

So then the children had to look for the one door that did.  They found
it at last, a little back door with a small drawbridge of its own, over
the moat.  The drawbridge was down and the door was ajar.  The children
went over the drawbridge.

"Beware!" croaked the magic talking frogs in the moat.

They went in through the doorway.  A long dark passage lay beyond.

"Beware!" squeaked the magic talking mice in the walls.

The children went along the passage.  It wound and twisted a good deal.
The magic cobwebs hanging from the ceiling brushed at their faces and
caught at their clothing, trying to hold them back, but they broke away
and pushed on.

At last the passage ended at a heavy doorway.  From beyond it came the
sound of loud voices raised in something that was probably intended to
be music.  The children eased the door open a crack and peeked through,
into a large hall.

The red knight and the green knight and the black knight were enjoying
a hearty meal, and washing down each mouthful with a draught of
nut-brown ale.  They were singing at the table, which was rude of them,
and the words of their song were ruder still.

  "_Speak roughly to our Launcelot
    And beat him 'with a brier!
  And kick him in the pants a lot--
    Of this we never tire!
  We've put him in a dungeon cell
  And there we'll beat him very well!
    Clink, canikin, clink!_"


The four children looked at each other indignantly; then they peeked
through again.

Some varlets had appeared in the hall.  They cleared away the dishes,
left the dessert platter on the table, and departed.

The dessert was a number of round plum puddings, all aflame with
blazing blue brandy.  The black knight stood up to serve them.

At that moment Katharine remembered a story she had once read.  She
decided to have some fun with the three knights.

"I wish two of those puddings were stuck to the end of your nose!" she
cried, putting her hand on the charm and staring straight at the black
knight, through the crack of the doorway.  And immediately one of them
was.

But this pudding, unlike the one in the story, was still burning blue
with brandy-fire; so that not only was it humiliating to the black
knight, but hurt a good deal as well.  And furthermore, his long black
whiskers, of which he was inordinately proud, began to singe badly.  He
gave a wild howl, and his face turned nearly as black as his garments,
with rage.

"Ods blood, who hath played this scurvy trick upon me?" he cried,
beating at his nose and whiskers with his hands, and then yelling with
pain as the flames scorched his fingers.

"Tee hee hee," tittered the green knight.  "You look very funny!"

The black knight whirled on him.

"Be it _you_, then, who hath played this scurvy trick?" he cried.

"No, it be not I," said the green knight, "but you look very funny,
just the same!"

"Oh, I do, do I?" shouted the black knight, in a passion.  And he
whipped his sword out of its scabbard, and swapped off the green
knight's head.

The red knight jumped to his feet.

"I say, Albemarle, that was going a bit too far!" he cried.

"Oh, I don't know," said the black knight.  "He was exceedingly
provoking!  Come and help me get this great pudding thing off my nose!"

"Well," said the red knight, looking at him rather dubiously, "I don't
know if I can, but I'll _try_!"

And he whipped _his_ sword out of _its_ scabbard, and swapped off the
pudding from the black knight's nose.  Unfortunately (for him) he
swapped off a good bit of the nose, too.

The black knight gave a wild bellow and hurled himself at the red
knight, sword in hand.  The red knight parried his thrust.  A moment
later they were joined in deadly combat, leaping about the hall,
smashing furniture, and hacking off parts of each other with the
greatest abandon.

Behind the door, the four children shut their eyes, held their ears,
and cowered trembling in each other's arms.

The combat did not last long.  Two sword blades flashed in the air, and
a second later two heads fell on the floor, followed, more slowly, by
two bodies.

There was a silence.  Katharine hadn't meant her wish to end in such a
gory and final way.  But she reminded herself to be bloody, bold and
resolute, and crept through the door into the hall, followed by the
three others.  All four averted their eyes from what they would have
seen if they had looked at the floor.

"I do think you might have managed it neater," said Jane.  "How can we
get through to the dungeon with all these different pieces of knight
lying around underfoot?"

"The point is that I managed it at all," said Katharine, more
cheerfully than she felt.  "And we don't have to walk; we can wish
ourselves there."

She put her hand on the charm and wished that they were twice as far as
the dungeon door and that she had two keys to the dungeon in her hand.

After that, of course, it was but a matter of turning the key, and out
walked Sir Launcelot, followed by several dozen other knights who had
also been prisoners of the enchantress and her friends, and who looked
somewhat the worse for their daily beatings.

The other captive knights fell on their knees, kissing the children's
hands and hailing them as their deliverers.  Sir Launcelot also thanked
the children quite politely, but somehow he didn't seem so happy to be
free as the children had expected he would.

A moment later, when the other captive knights had left to resume their
interrupted quests, the children found out why.

"You saved me by magical means?" Sir Launcelot asked.

"That's right," said Katharine, proudly.  "I did it with my little
charm."

"That mislikes me much," said Sir Launcelot.  "I would it were
otherwise."

"Well, really!" said Katharine.  "I suppose you'd rather have stayed in
there being beaten?"

"Sooner that," said Sir Launcelot, "than bring shame to my honor by
taking unfair magical advantage of a foe, however deadly!"

"Well, if you're all that particular," said Katharine, annoyed, "I can
easily put them back together again."  And she led him into the great
hall, and showed him the different pieces of the three knights.

"Please do so," said Sir Launcelot.

"Shall I lock you up in the dungeon again?" asked Katharine,
sarcastically.  "Doesn't it hurt your conscience that I set you free?"

"That much advantage," said Sir Launcelot, "I think I can take.  Some
fair jailer's daughter would probably have let me out sooner or later,
anyway."

"Oh, is that so?" said Katharine.  "I'm sorry I troubled, I'm sure!  Is
there anything else?"

"Well, yes," said Sir Launcelot.  "You might just fetch me my sword and
armor, which these cowardly knaves have taken from me."

Thoroughly cross with him by now, Katharine wished the sword and armor
back on him; then, working out the fractions carefully, she spoke the
wish that was to bring the red knight, the green knight, and the black
knight back to life.

It was very interesting watching the different pieces of the
different-colored knights reassembling themselves on the hall floor,
and the four children were sorry when it was over.

But by then something even more interesting was going on.  Because by
then Sir Launcelot was fighting the three knights singlehanded, and
that was a sight worth coming back many centuries to see.

Sir Launcelot did not seem to appreciate the four children's interest,
however.

"Go away.  Thank you very much.  Good-by," he called, pinning the green
knight against the wall with a table, and holding the red and black
ones at bay with his sword.

"Can't we help?" Mark wanted to know.

"No.  Go away," said Sir Launcelot, cracking the red knight on the
pate, thwacking the black knight in the chest with his backhand swing,
and leaping over the table to take a whack at the green one.

"Can't we even _watch_?" Jane wailed.

"No.  It makes me nervous.  I want to be alone," said Sir Launcelot,
ducking under the table to send the red knight sprawling, then turning
to face the black and green ones again.

Katharine sighed, and made a wish.

Next moment the four children were on their horses once more, riding
along the King's Highway.

"We might at least have waited in the yard," complained Martha.  "Now
we'll never know how it ended!"

"He'll come out on top; trust _him_!" said Katharine.  "I _do_ get
tired of people who are always right, all the time!  Anyway, we'll be
seeing him again, I imagine.  At the tournament."

"Gee, yes, the tournament.  I was forgetting," said Mark.  "When do you
suppose it'll be?"

"Not for weeks, maybe, by the time here," said Katharine.  "But for us,
a mere wish on the charm..."

And she merely wished.


"I can't get used to this being rushed around," complained Martha a
second later, as she found herself somewhere else for the third time in
three minutes.  "Where are we now, and when is it?"

"Camelot, I should think," said Katharine, "in tournament time!  Look!"

Jane and Mark and Martha looked.  Camelot and the field of tournament
looked exactly as you all would expect them to look, from the
descriptions in _The Boy's King Arthur_ and the wonderful books of Mr.
T. H. White.  Trumpets were blowing clarion calls, and pennons
fluttered on the blue air, and armor flashed in the bright light, and
gallant knights and trusty squires and faithful pages and ladies fair
and lowly varlets were crowding into the stands in hundreds, to watch
the chivalrous sport.

The four children had front-row grandstand seats, for Katharine had
made that a part of her wish.  She had forgotten to say anything in her
wish about getting rid of the four horses, and at first these made some
trouble by wanting to sit in the grandstand, too, much to the annoyance
of the people sitting behind.  But Katharine wished them twice as far
as away, and they disappeared.

At this, the people behind got up and left in a hurry, looking back at
the four children and muttering about witchcraft and sorcery.

The children paid small heed.  They were too busy looking around them
and drinking in the sights.

King Arthur sat enthroned on a high platform at one end of the field.
The children could see him clearly, with his kind, simple,
understanding face, like the warm sun come to shine on merry England.
Queen Guinevere was seated at his right, and Merlin, the magician, thin
and wise and gray-bearded, at his left.

And now the trumpets blew an extra long fanfare, and the tournament
began.

Sir Launcelot was among the first to ride out on the field.  The
children recognized him by his armor.

"I told you he'd come out all right," said Katharine, a bit bitterly.

But when Sir Launcelot got going in that tournament, even Katharine had
to admire him.

He smote down five knights with his first spear, and four knights with
his second spear, and unhorsed three more with his sword, until all the
people sitting round on the benches began crying out, "Oh, Gramercy,
what marvelous deeds that knight doth do in that there field!"

Jane sighed a satisfied sigh.  "Kind of glorious, isn't it?" she
murmured.

"It's the most wonderful age in human history," said Mark, solemnly.
"If only it didn't have to end!"

"Why did it?" asked Martha, who hadn't read _The Boy's King Arthur_ yet.

"Partly 'cause some of the other knights got tired of being knocked
down all the time and having Launcelot always win," Mark told her.

"Yes," said Katharine, in rather a peculiar voice, "it would really be
a good deed, in a way, if somebody knocked _him_ down for a change,
wouldn't it?"

Mark gave her a sharp look, but just then Sir Launcelot started
knocking down more knights, and he had to watch the field.  When he
looked again, Katharine wasn't there.

Mark nudged Jane hard, as a horrible thought came into his mind.

Jane turned and saw the empty spot where Katharine had been, and Mark
could tell that she was having the same thought, too.

Just then there was an interruption in the tournament.  A strange
knight rode out on the field of combat, and straight up to King
Arthur's platform.

"I crave your Majesty's permission to challenge Sir Launcelot to single
combat!" cried the strange knight in a voice loud enough for the
children to hear clearly from where they sat.

The hearts of Jane and Mark sank.

Even Martha now guessed the horrid truth.  "How dare she?" she
whispered.

"I don't know," said Mark.  "She's been getting too full of herself
ever since we started this wish!"

"Wait till I get her home!" said Jane grimly.

"How call they you, strange sir?" King Arthur was saying, meanwhile,
"and whence do you hail?"

"They call me Sir Kath," said the strange knight, "and I hail from
Toledo, Ohio."

"I know not this Toledo," said King Arthur, "but fight if you will.
Let the combat begin."

The trumpets sounded another clarion call, the strange knight faced Sir
Launcelot, and there began the strangest combat, it is safe to say,
ever witnessed by the knights of the Round, or any other, Table.

The intrepid Katharine thought herself very clever at this moment.  She
had wished she were wearing two suits of armor and riding two horses,
and she had wished she were two and a half times as tall and strong as
Sir Launcelot, and she had wished that she would defeat him twice.  And
immediately here she was, wearing one suit of armor and riding one
horse, and she was one and a quarter times as tall and strong, and she
couldn't wait to defeat him once.

But in her cleverness she had forgotten one thing.  She had forgotten
to wish that she knew the rules of jousting.  And here she was, facing
the greatest knight in the world, and she didn't know how to start.
She knew she'd win in the end, because she'd wished it that way, but
what was she to do in the beginning and middle?

Before she could work out another wish to take care of this, Sir
Launcelot rode at her, struck her with his lance, and knocked her back
onto her horse's tail.  Then he rode at her from the opposite
direction, and knocked her forward onto her horse's neck.

The crowd roared with laughter.

The feelings of Jane, Mark and Martha may well be imagined.

As for the feelings of Katharine, they knew no bounds.  She still held
the magic charm clutched in one hot hand, and she wasn't bothering
about correct arithmetic now.

"I wish I could fight ten times as well as you, you bully!  Yah!" were
the words that the valiant Sir Kath spoke, upon the field.  It was a
cry of pure temper.

And immediately she could fight five times as well as Sir Launcelot,
and everyone knows how good _he_ was.

What followed would have to be seen to be believed.

Katharine came down like several wolves on the fold.  She seemed to
spring from all sides at once.  Her sword flashed like a living
thunderbolt.  Her lance whipped about, now here, now there, like a
snake gone mad.

"Zounds!" cried the people, and "Lackaday" and "Wurra wurra!"

Jane, Mark and Martha watched with clasped hands.

If Sir Launcelot had not been the greatest knight in the world he would
never have lived to tell the tale.  Even as it was, the end was swift.
In something less than a trice he was unseated from his horse, fell to
the ground with a crash, and did not rise again.

Katharine galloped round and round the field, bowing graciously to the
applause of the crowd.

But she soon noticed that the crowd wasn't applauding very loudly.  And
it was only the traitorous knights like Sir Mordred and Sir Agravaine,
the ones who were jealous of Launcelot, who were applauding at all.

The rest of the crowd was strangely silent.  For Launcelot, the flower
of knighthood, the darling of the people's hearts, the greatest
champion of the Round Table, had been defeated!

Queen Guinevere looked furious.  King Arthur looked sad.  The attendant
knights, except for the traitorous ones, looked absolutely wretched.
Merlin looked as if he didn't believe it.

Jane and Mark and Martha looked as though they believed it, but didn't
want to.

And it was then that the full knowledge of what she had done swept over
Katharine.

She had succeeded and she had failed.  She, a mere girl, had defeated
the greatest knight in history.  But she had pretended to herself that
she was doing it for a good deed and really it had been just because
she was annoyed with Launcelot for not appreciating her help enough,
back in Morgan le Fay's castle.

Her cheeks flamed and she felt miserable.  It was hot inside her helmet
suddenly, and she dragged it off.  Then she remembered too late that
she'd forgotten something else, when she made her wish.  She had wished
to be in armor, and to be on horseback, and to be tall and strong, and
to win.  But she had forgotten to say anything about not being
Katharine any longer.

Now, as the helmet came away, her long brown hair streamed down onto
her shoulders, and her nine-year-old, little-girl face blinked at the
astonished crowd.

Those sitting nearest the ringside saw.  Sir Mordred tittered.  Sir
Agravaine sneered.  The mean knights who were jealous of Sir Launcelot
began to laugh, and mingled with the laughter were the cruel words,
"Beaten by a girl!"

Some horrid little urchins took up the cry, and made a rude song of it:

  "_Launcelot's a chur-ul,
  Beaten by a gir-ul!_"


Sir Launcelot came to, and sat up.  He heard the laughter, and he heard
the song.  He looked at Katharine.  Katharine looked away, but not
before he had recognized her.  He got to his feet.  There was silence
all round the field; even the mean knights stopped laughing.

Sir Launcelot came over to Katharine.  "Why have you done this to me?"
he said.

"I didn't mean to," said Katharine.  She began to cry.

With flushed cheeks but with head held high, Sir Launcelot strode to
King Arthur's platform and knelt in the dust before it.  In a low voice
he asked leave to go on a far quest, a year's journey away at least,
that he might hide his shame till by a hundred deeds of valor he would
win back his lost honor and expunge the dread words, "Beaten by a
girl," forever.

King Arthur did not trust himself to speak.  He nodded his consent.

Queen Guinevere did not even look at Sir Launcelot, as he walked away
from the field of tournament.

Katharine went on crying.

Merlin spoke a word in King Arthur's ear.  King Arthur nodded.  He
rose, offered an arm to Guinevere, and led her from the stand.  Merlin
spoke another word, this time to the attendant knights.  They began
clearing the people from the field.

Most of the people went quietly, but three children in the front row of
the grandstand put up quite a fuss, saying that they had to find their
sister Katharine, who'd done something terrible, but a sister was a
sister and they'd stick up for her, anyway.  The knights cleared them
away with the rest.

Presently, after what seemed like at least a year, Katharine found
herself alone before Merlin.  She was still crying.

Merlin looked at her sternly.

"Fie on your weeping," he said.  "I wot well that ye be a false
enchantress, come here in this guise to defeat our champion and
discredit our Table Round!"

"I'm not!  I didn't!" said Katharine.

"Ye be, too!" said Merlin, "and you certainly have!  After today our
name is mud in Camelot!"

"Oh, oh," wept Katharine.

"Silence, sorceress," said Merlin.  He waved his wand at her.  "I
command that you appear before me in your true form!"

Immediately Katharine wasn't tall, or strong, or in armor any more, but
just Katharine.

Merlin looked surprised.

"These fiends begin early!" he said.  "However, doubtless ye be but the
instrument of a greater power."  He waved his wand again.  "I command
that your allies, cohorts, aids, accomplices and companions be brought
hither to stand at your side!"

Jane and Mark and Martha appeared beside Katharine, looking nearly as
unhappy and uncomfortable as she.

Merlin looked really quite startled.  Then he shook his head sadly.

"So young," he said, "and yet so wicked!"

"We're not!" said Martha, making a rude face.

The behavior of the others was more seemly.

"You see, sir," began Mark.

"We didn't mean to," began Jane.

"Let me," said Katharine.  "I started it."

And in a rush of words and tears she told Merlin everything, beginning
with the charm, and her wish to travel back in time, and going on to
what she had hoped to do, and what she'd done and where she'd gone
wrong.

"I wanted to do a good deed," she said, "and I _did_ one, when I
rescued Launcelot from that old dungeon.  But then he wasn't properly
grateful at all, and made me undo it, so he could rescue himself, all
for the sake of his old honor!  And that made me cross!  And just now I
pretended I was defeating him so the other knights wouldn't be so
jealous of him, but really I was just trying to get back at him for
being so stuck-up!  And I always wanted to fight in a real tournament,
anyway!"

"Well, now you have," said Merlin, "and what good did you do by it?
Just made everybody thoroughly unhappy!"

"I know," said Katharine.

"That's what comes of meddling," said Merlin.  "There is a pattern to
history, and when you try to change that pattern, no good may follow."

Katharine hung her head.

"However," went on Merlin, and to the surprise of the four children he
was smiling now, "all is not lost.  I have a few magic tricks of my
own, you know.  Let me see, how shall I handle this?  I _could_ turn
time back, I suppose, and make it as though this day had never
happened, but it would take a lot out of me."

"Really?" said Katharine in surprise.  "It would be a mere nothing to
_us_!"

Merlin looked at her a bit grimly.

"Oh, it would, would it?" he said.

"Oh, yes," went on Katharine happily.  "I could wish Launcelot were
twice as near as here again, and then I could wish that he'd defeat me
twice, and then I could wish that the people would honor him twice as
much as they ever did, and then I could wish ..."

"Hold!" cried Merlin, in alarm.  "A truce to your wishes, before you
get us in worse trouble!  I think I had best see this wonderful charm
of yours."  He made a pass at Katharine with his wand.  "If there be
any magic among you, let it appear now or forever hold its peace."

Katharine's hot hand, which for so long had clutched the charm, opened
in spite of itself, and the charm lay in plain sight, on her palm.

Merlin looked at it.  His eyes widened.  He swept his tall hat from his
head, and bowed low before the charm, three times.  Then he turned to
the children.

"This is a very old and powerful magic," he said.  "Older and more
powerful than my own.  It is, in fact, too powerful and too dangerous
for four children, no matter how well they may intend, to have in their
keeping.  I am afraid I must ask you to surrender it."

He made another pass with his wand.  The charm leaped gracefully from
Katharine's hand to his own.

Mark spoke.

"But it came to us in our own time," he said, "and that's a part of
history, too, just as much as this is.  Maybe we were _meant_ to find
it.  Maybe there's some good thing we're supposed to do with it.  There
is a pattern to history, and when you try to change that pattern, no
good may follow."

Merlin looked at him.

"You are a wise child," he said.

"Just average," said Mark, modestly.

"Dear me," said Merlin.  "If that be so, if all children be as sensible
as you in this far future time you dwell in..."  He broke off.  "What
century did you say you come from?"

"We didn't," said Mark, "but it's the twentieth."

"The twentieth century," mused Merlin.  "What a happy age it must
be--truly the Golden Age that we are told is to come."

He stood thinking a moment.  Then he smiled.

"Very well.  Go back to your twentieth century," he said, "and take
your magic with you, and do your best with it.  But first, I have
something to say."

He held the charm at arm's length, rather as though he feared it might
bite him, and addressed it with great respect.

"I wish," he said, "that in six minutes it may be as though these
children had never appeared here.  Except that they--and I--will
remember.  And I further wish that our tournament may begin all over
again and proceed as originally planned by history.  Only twice as much
so," he added, to be on the safe side.

"Now may I have it back, please?" Katharine asked, when he had done.

"In a minute," said Merlin.  "By the way, have you been making a lot of
wishes lately?  It feels rather worn out to me.  It won't last forever,
you know."

"Oh dear, we were afraid of that," said Jane.  "How many more do we
get?"

"That would be telling," said Merlin.  "But you'd best not waste too
many.  It might be later than you think."

"Oh!" cried Martha.  "Maybe we'll never get home!"

"Don't worry," said Merlin, smiling at her.  "There are still a few
wishes left for you.  And one more for me."  Again he held the charm
out before him.

"And I thirdly wish," he said, "for the future protection of the world
from the terrible good intentions of these children, and for their
protection against their own folly, that this charm may, for twice the
length of time that it shall be in their hands, grant no further wishes
carrying said children out of their own century and country, but that
they may find whatsoever boon the magic may have in store for them in
their own time and place."  He put the charm into Katharine's hands.
"And now you'd best be going.  Because in less than a minute by my
wish, it will be as though you'd never appeared here.  And if you
aren't home when that happens, goodness knows where you _will_ be!"

"But what about the good deed I wished?" said Katharine.  "None of the
ones I tried worked out!"

"My child," said Merlin, and his smile was very kind now, "you have
done your good deed.  You have brought me word that for as far into
time as the twentieth century, the memory of Arthur, and of the Round
Table, which I helped him to create, will be living yet.  And that in
that far age people will still care for the ideal I began, enough to
come back through time and space to try to be of service to it.  You
have brought me that word, and now I can finish my work in peace, and
know that I have done well.  And if that's not a good deed, I should
like to know what is.  Now good-by.  Wish quickly.  You have exactly
seventeen seconds."

Katharine wished.

And because their mother and Miss Bick had been worried yesterday by
their being so long away, she put in that when they got home, they
should only have been gone two minutes, by real time.

This was really quite thoughtful of Katharine.  Perhaps she, too, like
Mark the day before, had learned something during her day of adventure.


The next thing the four children knew, they were sitting together in
Katharine and Martha's room, and it was still that morning, and they
had only been away from home a minute.  Yet that minute was packed with
memories.

"Did we dream it?" Katharine asked.

"I don't think so, or we wouldn't all remember it," said Mark.

"And we all do, don't we?" said Jane.

And they all did.

"What did that last mean, that Merlin wished on the charm?" Martha
wanted to know.

"It means we have to keep our wishes close to home from now on," Mark
told her.

"No more travels to foreign climes," said Jane, "and I was all set to
take us on a pirate ship next!"

"No more olden times," said Mark, "and I've always wanted to see the
Battle of Troy!"

"You might not have liked it, once you got there," said Katharine, from
the depths of her experience.  "Traveling in olden times is _hard_."

"I don't care," said Martha.  "I don't care if I never travel at all.
I'm glad to be home.  Aren't you?"

And they all were.




5.  What Happened to Martha

As a matter of fact, the four children were all so glad to be home that
they stayed around the house all the rest of that day.

And that one minute of the morning had been so crowded with adventure
that somehow they didn't feel as though they wanted any more excitement
for some time.

They put the charm away in its safe place under the flooring, and spent
the morning and afternoon playing the most ordinary games they knew,
even the tame childish ones that Martha liked and seldom got to play,
like Statuary and Old Witch.

At dinner that night, when their mother asked them what they'd been
doing all day, they said, "Oh, nothing," and seemed more interested in
talking about what _she_'d been doing, at the office.

After dinner there weren't any secret conferences.  Instead, the four
children prevailed on their mother to join them in a game of Parcheesi.

And when she tired of Parcheesi, as mothers soon will, and offered to
read them _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ until bedtime
instead, Katharine said quickly that she'd rather hear a good, solid,
down-to-normal, everyday book like _Five Little Peppers and How They
Grew_.

All this was most unlike the four children.

When they'd finally gone to bed, their mother stole into their various
rooms, and felt their foreheads and ears.  But none of them had a fever.

The trouble was that the adventure with Sir Launcelot had seemed to
point a moral.

And if you have ever had a moral pointed at you, you will know that it
is not a completely pleasant feeling.  You are grateful for being
improved, and you hope you will remember and do better next time, but
you do not want to think about it very much just now.

And, as Mark put it next morning, it was a moot question what to do
with the charm next.  Even wishing to do good deeds with it did not
seem to be proof against the occurrence of that hot water in which the
four children so often found themselves.

"Of course it has to be just nowadays and in our own country after
this," Mark said, "but still!  What if we messed up the President and
Congress next time, the way we did King Arthur?  We could cause a
national emergency!"

"I know!" said Jane.  "We must proceed with Utter Caution.  I've been
thinking about it all night, and I'm going to make my next wish really
serious.  I decided the two things I want most in the world are no more
wars and that I knew everything!"

Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

"That's _too_ serious," she said.  "That's kind of like interfering
with God.  That might be even worse than trying to change history."

"Is there anything that's serious and fun at the same time?" Martha
wondered.

It didn't seem very likely that there was.

And what with this problem, and the horrid thought that with each wish
the charm's power was waning away, and that any day the next wasted
wish might be its last, the four children decided to wait until
tomorrow before getting on with the serious wishing.

Maybe by tomorrow Jane would have an inspiration.  It was her turn next.

Meanwhile today they would have a good old-fashioned day out, the kind
of day that had seemed the height of excitement to them, back in the
time before the charm had crossed their path.  They would put all their
allowances together, go downtown on the street car and spend the day,
have lunch and see a movie.

To phone their mother and persuade her to tell Miss Bick to let them go
was a mere matter of five minutes' wheedling.

Miss Bick made her usual remarks of gloomy foreboding, but the children
turned deaf ears, and assembled in Katharine and Martha's room.

"Shall we take it with us or leave it?" Katharine wanted to know.

No one needed to be told what "it" was.

"If we leave it Miss Bick'll be sure to find it," Mark pointed out, "no
matter how carefully concealed."

"Think if she made a wish and got half of it!" cried Martha.  "What do
you suppose it would be?"

"I'd rather not," said Jane.  "Some depths are better left unplumbed."

So Jane brought the charm along, wrapped in a special package of old
Christmas paper, in her handbag.  All the children tied strings around
the little finger of each hand, to remind them not to wish for
anything, no matter what happened.  Then they emerged, and stood
waiting at the corner, where they had so often beguiled the summer days
by putting pieces of watermelon on the car tracks and waiting for them
to squish.

The ride downtown on the street car was uneventful--only the usual
trouble between the people who wanted the windows left closed, and the
four children, who wanted them open.

Downtown, the children looked in shop windows for a while, then entered
that lovely place, the five-and-ten.  They bought and ate some
saltwater taffy, listened to a young lady play "I Wish I Could Shimmy
Like My Sister Kate" on the piano, and bought and ate some parched corn.

It was then time for lunch.

The four children always lunched at the best soda fountain in town.
Today Jane ordered a banana split with chocolate ice cream and
raspberry sauce, and Katharine enjoyed a Moonbeam Sundae, thick with
pineapple syrup and three kinds of sherbet.  Martha always had the same
thing, a soda she'd invented, marshmallow with vanilla ice cream, which
made the others gag.

There were two things listed on the menu which had intrigued Mark for
years.  One was called celery soda and the other was called malt
marrow, and Mark wondered very much what they could be.  Each time he
came he promised himself he'd order them next time, but next time his
courage always failed.  Today he thought of it, thought better of it,
and had a double hot fudge dope.

After lunch it was time to choose what movie to see.

The children did this by first making a tour of all the movie theaters
in town and looking at the pictures on the outside.  A time of argument
followed.  Mark liked Westerns and thrilling escapes, but Martha
wouldn't go inside any theater that had pictures of fighting.

Jane and Katharine liked ladies with long hair and big eyes and tragic
stories.  They wanted to see a movie called Barbara LaMarr in _Sandra_.
Mark finally agreed, because there were a lot of pictures outside of a
man who wore a mustache, and that meant he was the villain, and that
meant that somebody would hit him sooner or later.  Martha agreed
because all the other theaters had either pictures with fighting or
Charlie Chaplin.

All of the four children hated Charlie Chaplin, because he was the only
thing grown ups would ever take them to.

When they came into the theater Barbara LaMarr in _Sandra_ had already
reached its middle, and the children couldn't figure out exactly what
was happening.  But then neither could the rest of the audience.

"But, George, I do not seem to grasp it all!" the woman behind the four
children kept saying to her husband.

The four children did not grasp any of it, but Barbara LaMarr had lots
of hair and great big eyes, and when strong men wanted to kiss her and
she pushed them away and made suffering faces at the audience with her
eyebrows, Jane and Katharine thought it was thrilling, and probably
quite like the way life was, when you were grown-up.

Mark didn't think much of the love blah, but he watched the villain
getting more villainous, and the hero getting more heroic, and
patiently waited for them to slug it out.

Martha hated it.

That was always the way with Martha.  She wanted to go to the movies
like anything until she got there, and then she hated it.  Now she kept
pestering the others to read her the words and tell her what was
happening (for in those days movies did not talk).  And when the others
wouldn't, she began to whine.

"Be quiet," said Jane.

"I want to go home," said Martha.

"You can't!" said Jane.

"Shush!" said all the other people in the theater.

"I want to, anyway," said Martha.

Jane finally had to put her under the seat.  This usually happened in
the end.

"Let me out!" said Martha, rising up from below.

But Jane pushed down heavily on the seat, and Martha collapsed under it.

It was dark and gloomy down there, with nothing to look at but dust and
old gum other people had got tired of.  Martha thought of crying, but
she had tried this once in the past, and Jane had kicked her.  She
decided she might as well go to sleep.

Meanwhile, on the screen above, the hero was finally having his fight
with the villain, and Jane and Mark and Katharine forgot all about
Martha in their excitement.  Jane also forgot to keep hold of her
handbag, and it slipped from her lap and fell to the floor.

The wretched Martha, thankful for small favors, took the handbag and
put it under her head, though it made rather a lumpy pillow.

I hope it is not necessary to remind you of what was in the handbag.

Jane remembered suddenly, and felt for it, in a panic.  It wasn't on
her lap.  She reached down to feel for it on the floor.  At that moment
she heard Martha speak.

"Ho hum.  I wish I weren't here!" Martha said sleepily.

"Darn!" was the first thought of Jane.  "Another wish wasted.  Now
she'll be only _half_ here, I suppose."

Then, as the idea of this sank in, her blood froze.  She didn't dare to
look.  Would just a severed head and shoulders meet her gaze, or would
there be only a pair of gruesome legs running around down there?

At last she made herself lean over and see.

The charm hadn't worked it out that way at all.  Martha was half there,
to be sure, but it was _all_ of her that was half there!  Her outline
was clear, but her features and everything that came between were sort
of foggy and transparent.  It was as though it were the ghost of Martha
that stared up at Jane.

She stared up at Jane and saw her horrified expression; then she stared
down at herself.  And then Martha--or the half of her that was still
there--lost her head completely.  Uttering a low wail, she struggled to
her feet, scrambled out through the row of seats, and ran up the aisle.

It is not often that one is watching a movie, and suddenly a wailing
ghostly figure rises from the floor and scrambles past one.

Most of the ladies Martha scrambled past merely fainted.

The woman who had not grasped it all, before, now gave a shriek, and
grasped her husband.

"Oh!" cried Jane, in a rage, catching up her handbag.  "I wish I'd
never even _heard_ of that charm!"

And immediately she had only _half_ heard of it.  It was like a story
she had read somewhere and half forgotten.  And so naturally she didn't
think of using the charm to bring Martha back to normal again.
Instead, she ran up the aisle after her.  Mark and Katharine ran after
Jane.

An usher, running down the aisle to see what the commotion was, ran
into them.  He saw the handbag, heard the woman screaming, and decided
Jane had stolen the bag.  This slowed the children up a little, though
no one was seriously hurt.  The scratch the usher received was a mere
scratch.

Meanwhile the ghostly Martha had run on up the aisle.  In the darkness
of the theater, not many people noticed her, but in the brightly lit
lobby it was another story.  The ticket-taker squealed, and threw her
tickets in the air.  The manager came running out of his office.  He
saw Martha, and turned pale.

"Oh, what next?" he cried, tearing his hair.  "As if business weren't
bad enough already, now the theater is _haunted_!"  He aimed a blow at
her with his cash-box.  "Get along with you, you pesky thing!" he
cried.  "Why don't you go back where you came from?"

The hapless Martha moaned, and flitted on through the lobby, and into
the street.

The appearance of her ghostly form upon the sidewalk caused quite a
stir among the city's crowd of shoppers.

"It's an advertising stunt!" said a stout woman.  "What they won't
think of to sell these here moom pitchers next!"

"It's a sign!" said a thin woman.  "It's the end of the world, and me
in this old dress!"

"Tell it to go away!" groaned a well-dressed gentleman.  "And I'll give
back every cent I stole!"

"It's an outrage!" muttered an elderly person.  "I shall complain to my
Congressman!"

"It's a little girl, only she's only half there," said a child, but of
course nobody paid any attention to _her_!

Some people who were afraid of ghosts started running, to get away from
the horrible sight.

Martha started running in the opposite direction, to get away from the
people.

Other people saw them running, and began to run, too, without knowing
why.  In no time at all a panic began to spread, as it will when people
start behaving in this way, without thinking.

"What's the matter?" said a man to another man who was running by him.
"You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"

"I just did!" cried the man.  "Look!"  And he pointed at the fleeing
Martha.

"Don't be silly.  There's no such thing," said the first man, who
happened to be a learned professor.  He glanced at the misty Martha.
"Marsh gas," he said.  "Very interesting."

"Martians?  Did you say Martians?" said a third man, who happened to be
passing.  "The Martians are invading us!" he cried, without waiting for
an answer.  He began to run and everyone who heard him began running,
too.

By the time Jane and Mark and Katharine had dealt with the usher and
emerged from the movie theater, pandemonium reigned in the street.
Someone had called the fire department and turned in a general alarm.
Someone else had telephoned the police and asked them to send the riot
squad.  The wails of approaching fire sirens and the screeches of
police whistles added confusion to the scene.

A crowd of people rushed past the theater.

"The Martians have landed!" they cried, pointing back in the opposite
direction.  "We saw one of them, all transparent and horrible!"

Jane and Mark and Katharine looked up the street in the direction the
people were pointing in.  Far in the distance they could just make out
the dim figure of Martha, running along all by herself.  They ran after
her.


By this time no one was paying any attention to Martha at all.
Everyone was too busy worrying about imaginary men from Mars.

But somehow, once she had started running, Martha found that she
couldn't stop.  And the more she ran, the more frightened she felt.
This often happens.

She came to a corner, and turned it.  The noise of the shouting and the
sirens died away behind her.  She was in a quiet street she had never
seen before, a street of little shops.  The street was deserted.
Martha chose the middle shop and went in.


A few seconds later Jane and Mark and Katharine came round the corner
and stood looking at the little shops.  There was no sign of any part
of Martha.

"Use the charm!" Mark cried.  "Wish!"

"Oh, that old story!" said Jane.  "Who ever believed that?"

Mark and Katharine stared at her with open mouths.

"What did you say?" said Mark.

Jane didn't answer.  Quickly making up her mind, she chose a shop at
one end of the row, and started in.  Mark and Katharine, wondering what
in the world had happened to Jane, followed.  Then the three children
stopped in the doorway, horrified.

The shop was a jeweler's, and costly diamonds and rich rings glittered
on its counters.  In the shop were a man and a woman.  The man had a
cap pulled low over his eyes.  The woman wore a black-and-white skirt
and a red blouse.

"Come on," the man was saying.  "Now's de chance to loot de joint while
everybody's away watchin' de riot!"

The man and woman started loading their pockets with pieces of jewelry
from the counter.  Katharine chose this moment to sneeze.  The man and
woman turned, and saw the three children standing in the doorway.

The man with the cap advanced toward Jane in a menacing fashion.

"O.K.," he said.  "Hand over de bag."

Jane clutched her handbag to her.  She seemed to half remember that
there was a particular reason why she shouldn't lose it, but she
couldn't think what the reason was.  She didn't know what to do.

But Mark knew.  He put his hand on the bag Jane was holding, and wished
he and Jane and Katharine were where Martha was, only twice as far.

The next moment the man in the cap and the woman in the red blouse were
alone, looking at the spot where the three children had been.

"Jeepers creepers!" said the man in the cap.  "Dey've flew de coop!"


When Martha ran into the middle shop, at first she didn't see anybody,
only books.

There were books in shelves on all the walls, and books on tables in
all the corners.  There was a large desk in the middle of the shop,
piled high with books, and at first that seemed to be all.  Then a face
peered at Martha from over the pile of books on the desk, and a second
later a rather small gentleman emerged from behind it.  The gentleman
wore a small pointed beard, and he held an open book in one hand.

He looked at Martha.

Martha looked back at him, waiting for him to scream, or faint, or run
away, the way everyone else had.

But the rather small gentleman did none of these things.  He smiled,
and bowed politely.

"Good afternoon," he said.  "I presume this is a ghostly visitation?  I
am honored.  Did you come out of one of the books?  You might be Little
Nell, I suppose, or Amy March, though the clothes don't look right."

"No, I'm Martha," said Martha.  "And I didn't come out of a book; I
came by magic charm."

And although she was old enough by now to know that no grown up ever
will credit any story that has magic in it, she proceeded to tell the
small gentleman all about the charm, starting from the beginning.  The
small gentleman seemed particularly interested in the part about the
children's mother.

"This didn't happen out on West Bancroft Street, by any chance, did
it?" he interrupted her to ask.  "About three nights ago?"

"Why, yes!  How did you know?" said Martha, amazed.

"Never mind," said the small gentleman.  "Do go on.  Tell me more."

So Martha told him all about the movies, and Jane's putting her under
the seat, and the wish she had made, and all that had happened
afterwards.

"And so here I am," she ended, "only I'm only half here."

"So I see," said the small gentleman.

"It's kind of an interesting feeling, now I'm not scared any more,"
said Martha.  "Only I'm about ready for it to stop now.  Mother'll be
expecting us by dinner-time, and I'm afraid she might not like it if I
came home like this.  She isn't good with magic, the way you are.  It
upsets her."

"Yes, I know it does," said the small gentleman, absently.

"Oh, do you know Mother?" said Martha.

"Well, not exactly," said the small gentleman.

"Then how do you know about her?  Are you magic, too?  Are you a wizard
or something?  I thought you might be, when I saw that beard.  Do you
know any tricks to put me back together again?"

"I'm afraid not," said the small gentleman.

"Of course if Mark and Jane and Katharine were here," Martha went on,
"they've got the charm, and they could wish me back.  Don't you have
any spells to sort of summon people?"

The small gentleman shook his head.  "No spells.  And I'm not a wizard,
I'm sorry to say.  This is the first magic thing that ever happened to
me, though I always hoped something would.  But maybe we can find them
by regular means.  What did they do when you ran out of the theater?
Did they run after you?"

Martha looked startled.  "Why!" she said.  "I never even thought to
look back!"

"They probably did," said the small gentleman.  "They've probably been
following you all the time.  They're probably outside the shop right
now, looking for you!"

"I'll go see," said Martha, starting for the door.

And it was at that exact moment that Mark, in the jewelry store down
the street, made the wish that was to take him and Jane and Katharine
to Martha's side.  Immediately they were there.

"I did it!" said Martha.  "I found them!"

"No, you didn't.  Mark wished on the charm," said Katharine.

"I don't see why you all keep talking like that," said Jane.  "There's
no such thing as charms."

"Oh?" said the small gentleman.  "That's not what your sister's been
telling me."

"Who are you?" said Jane, rudely.

"Quiet," said Mark.  "This is no time for mere bickering.  We've got to
fix up what we did.  We've got to stop that awful panic.  It's
terrible--we were going to be so careful, and look what happened!
You'd think that charm would have better sense!"

"There is no charm," said Jane.

"Stop saying that," said Mark.  "Listen!"

The distant sound of fire sirens and police whistles and a cry of
people could be heard.

"Now that you mention it," said the small gentleman, "I _did_ think I
noticed some slight disturbance, earlier."

"Slight," said Mark, "is not the word.  Compared with the events of
today, the Johnstown Flood will go down in history as a mere trifle!"

"I know it's my fault for wishing that wish," said Martha, "but I think
it's everybody else's fault, too.  Why did they all have to get so
excited and start running?"

"One of the least admirable things about people," said the small
gentleman, "is the way they are afraid of whatever they don't
understand."

"And by now thousands are probably killed or homeless," went on Mark,
drearily, "and burglars on every hand looting the deserted city!  And
Mother knows we're downtown!" he added, as a new thought struck him.
"She'll be worried, and out looking for us!"

"If I may make a suggestion," said the small gentleman, "now if ever is
a time for a really good wish."

"I'd be ashamed," said Jane.  "Misleading these innocent children,
pretending you believe in it!"

"Oh, what's the matter with her?  Stop her, somebody!" said Katharine.

"Let me," said Martha.  "I got us into this.  I ought to get us out."

She tried to take the handbag from Mark.  But of course the handbag
just fell through her misty hand onto the floor.  So then Mark held the
bag, and Martha draped herself against it, in a clinging, clammy sort
of way, like fog against a windowpane, as Katharine afterwards put it,
and wished that Jane might be twice cured of whatever it was that ailed
her.  And right away Jane remembered about the charm.

The next wish was that their mother might find them safe and sound in
four minutes' time.

"That gives me two minutes," said Martha, "to put myself back together
in."  For the third time she draped herself against the bag.  "I wish,"
she began.

But there was an interruption.

Some people had appeared in the doorway of the shop.  It was the man in
the cap and the woman in the red blouse.  Their pockets were bulging,
probably with ill-gotten loot.  The man looked round at the walls of
bookshelves.

"Dis joint ain't no good, Mae," he said.  "Dey ain't got nothin' but
books."

"May I help you?" asked the small gentleman, stepping forward.

"How could you help me, if you ain't got nothin' but books?" said the
man.  Then he broke off, as he saw the four children.  "Well, if it
ain't de vanishin' marvels!" he said.  "Kids, you got some disappearin'
act!  You carry it in dat bag?"

"What bag?" said Mark, putting the handbag behind him.

The man had seen Martha now.

"What's de matter wid _her_?" he said.  "She get stuck half
disappeared?"  Then he smiled grimly.  "O.K.," he said.  "Tricks like
dem I can use.  Hand over de bag."

"I won't," Mark started to say, bravely.  But before he could say it,
the man snatched the bag from his hands and turned to run.

For the second time that afternoon Mark made a wish in the very nick,
in the words of Katharine.  He dove at the man in a flying tackle, and
as the two of them went down together, he touched the bag and wished
that he might capture the thieves singlehanded.

Of course one-half as good as singlehanded is double-handed; so it took
him both hands to do it.

But thirty seconds later, when the two minutes were up and the
children's mother walked into the bookshop, a startling scene met her
gaze.

A male and a female thief lay bound and gagged on the floor, while Mark
stood over them victoriously, his hands dripping diamonds and rubies.

Watching him in admiration were Jane and Katharine and Martha, only
Martha seemed to be completely transparent.

And perhaps oddest of all, there stood the rather small gentleman with
the beard who had given her a lift on the night she visited Uncle Edwin
and Aunt Grace and had the strange adventure.

The combination of all these surprises, after the worry she had had
during the panic in the streets, proved too much for her.  She stood
swaying in the doorway for a moment, a prey to conflicting emotions.
Then she tottered to a chair and collapsed.  Like many another in that
unfortunate city, during the half-hour since Martha made her first
wish, she had fainted.

The small gentleman bent over her and chafed her wrists.

"She'll be all right, won't she?" Martha asked, anxiously.

"I think so.  I'm sure so," said the small gentleman.

"Good.  To work, then," said Martha.  And she draped herself against
the handbag and wished that she might be twice as much there as she
ever was.

"That's better," she said, a moment later, looking down at her old,
solid self with satisfaction.  Then she took the handbag firmly in her
own substantial hand, and wished that the man in the cap and the woman
in the red blouse might become twice as reformed in their characters as
any two thieves had ever yet become.

Mark and Katharine unbound and ungagged the two thieves.

"Oh, what a wicked one I went and been," said the man in the cap.  "Now
I'm sorry."

"I been twice as wicked as you was," said the woman in the red blouse.
"I'm twice as sorry, too!"

"You ain't," said the man in the cap.  "You ain't capable."

Tiring of this, Martha wished them twice as far as where they belonged,
and they went away, probably to join the Salvation Army.

The next thing was to wish the stolen jewelry all back where it
belonged, too, and this was a simple problem.  Then came a harder one.

"I wish," said Martha, "that anybody who's been hurt or upset, or
anything that's been broken, or gone wrong because I wished that wish,
may be twice as good as it was before.  And I wish that everything that
has happened because I made that wish should go right out of
everybody's mind, and be as though it were a dream.  Only twice as much
so."

"Except me, please," said the small gentleman.  He was standing looking
down at their mother in rather an odd way.  "I should hate not to
remember every bit of this afternoon."

"Except," Martha began.  Then she broke off.  "What's your name?"

"Smith," said the small gentleman.

"Except Mr. Smith," said Martha.  "And us, too, of course," she added.

They stood listening.

In the distance the sound of the fire sirens and the police whistles
and the crowd broke off suddenly.  There was a silence.  Then faintly,
the normal roar of city traffic, usually so ugly, but for this one time
so beautiful to hear, fell on their charmed ears.

Martha relaxed with a sigh.

"I was afraid it might wear out before it got through that one," she
said.

"It was a pretty big wish," Mark agreed.  "It must have been quite a
strain on it.  Maybe that'll be the last wish we get."

"Let's wait a while before we find out," said Katharine.

Their mother stirred, and opened her eyes.  She looked around her.

"Where am I?" she said, just like fainted people in books.  Then she
saw the four children, and held out her arms.

The three girls ran to her.  So, even though he was a boy, did Mark.

"I had such a terrible dream," their mother said.  "I dreamed there was
an awful panic in the city, and I was out in it, looking for you, and
then--"

"And then you came into my shop and found them," said Mr. Smith.

Their mother looked at him.

"It really is you," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"But I thought--" their mother began.

"I could have sworn--" she began again.

She passed her hand over her forehead, and smiled rather palely at Mr.
Smith.  "Every time we meet I seem to think something strange has just
happened!"

She got to her feet and looked round the room again.

"There really weren't any thieves or diamond necklaces, were there?"
she said.

"What?" said Mark.

"You must have dreamed it," said Martha.

"I think I'd better go home and lie down," said their mother.  "I feel
very peculiar."

"Ahem," said Mr. Smith, clearing his throat nervously.  "I have a
better idea.  Couldn't you all come out to dinner with me?  We could go
to a movie or something afterwards."

"We really couldn't," said their mother.  "And yet I think I'd like
to," she added suddenly, in rather a surprised voice.

"Only no movies, please," said Martha.

"Well, then," said their mother, rather shyly, "perhaps we could all go
out to our house after dinner."  She looked at Mr. Smith, and laughed.
"We seem to be fated to know each other better!" she said.

And perhaps they were.

Because that's what they did.




6.  What Happened to Jane

The dinner with Mr. Smith and the evening that followed were an almost
complete success.  And the biggest success of the evening, for Mark and
Katharine and Martha, was Mr. Smith himself.

The four children generally divided all grown ups into four classes.
There were the ones like Miss Bick and Uncle Edwin and Aunt Grace and
Mrs. Hudson who--frankly, and cruel as it might be to say it--just
weren't good with children at all.  There was nothing to do about
these, the four children felt, except be as polite as possible and hope
they would go away soon.

Then there were the ones like Miss Mamie King, who--when they were with
children--always seemed to want to pretend _they_ were children, too.
This was no doubt kindly meant, but often ended with the four
children's feeling embarrassed for them.

Somewhat better were the opposite ones who went around treating
children as though the children were as grown-up as they were,
themselves.  This was flattering, but sometimes a strain to live up to.
Many of the four children's school teachers fell into this class.

Last and best and rarest of all were the ones who seemed to feel that
children were children and grown ups were grown ups and that was that,
and yet at the same time there wasn't any reason why they couldn't get
along perfectly well and naturally together, and even occasionally
communicate, without changing that fact.

Mr. Smith turned out to be one of these.

He allowed, and even urged, the four children to choose anything they
wanted from the menu at dinner, at the same time frankly advising Mark
that he thought he would enjoy rare steak and fried onions more than he
would codfish tongues.

Jane said she wasn't very hungry, and would her mother order something
for her, please?  And no, she didn't think she cared for any dessert,
thank you.  The other three stared at her in disbelief.

After dinner came the ride home, and that was exciting, for everyone
did not own a motor car in those days, and the four children were among
the ones who didn't.  Mr. Smith showed them the way to shift from high
into second without stopping, and Mark thought this almost as magical
as anything the charm had done for them so far.

Jane said she had seen it before.  The other three thought this rude of
her.

When they arrived at home Mr. Smith proved an adept player of Fan Tan
and I Doubt It, and when card-playing palled was enthralling in his
description of his travels in Darkest Australia.

Jane said she was tired and didn't feel like playing games or talking,
and she guessed she'd go to bed and finish _Hildegarde's Harvest_
instead.  The other three looked at each other, and decided they had
better have a word with Jane later on.

But when at last, very late, they were sent to bed, and stopped to peek
into her room, she was asleep, or pretending to be.

And the next morning they didn't get a chance to ask her what had been
the matter, because the next morning was Saturday and Saturday mornings
in that house were always a thing of frenzy.

On Saturdays the children's mother came home from work early, and Miss
Bick stayed only a half-day, and those were two good things about
Saturday.

But on Saturdays Miss Bick always seemed bent on cramming a whole day's
fussing and nagging into one morning, and today the four children were
kept so busy polishing silver and cleaning out bureau drawers and
dusting and doing errands that they scarcely had time to exchange a
word if two of them met by chance in the hall.

So it wasn't until along toward lunchtime that one or two, and finally
three and four were able to gather together in Katharine and Martha's
room and examine the outlook of the day.

The outlook of the day naturally hinged on the charm, and what they
were going to do with it next.

"There's one thing bothers me," Martha was saying to Katharine, as Mark
and then Jane joined them.  "When I was only half there, where did the
other half of me go?"

"Don't," said Katharine.  "That's one of those questions that give you
a headache just to think about.  Like which came first, the chicken or
the egg."

"All the same," said Mark, sitting down next to them, "it might be fun
to find out."

"You mean wish ourselves there?" Katharine's eyes were round.
"Wherever it is?"

"I don't want to!" said Martha.  "It might be just nowhere at all!  We
might be just nothingness!"

"If we were, we wouldn't know it," Mark pointed out.

"But that's _worse_!  Then we'd never get back at all!" Martha cried,
getting excited.  "I don't _want_ to not know it!  I don't want to be
just nothingness!  If we wish that, I won't come!"

"Well, you won't have to because we aren't going to!" said Jane,
speaking for the first time.  She walked over to the secret place and
took out the charm.  "It's my turn next and I don't feel like wishing.
I may not make a wish for years and years.  If ever."  And putting the
charm in her pocket, she started for the door.

"What's the matter with _you_?" said Mark, getting up to follow.

"Oh, nothing at all!" said Jane, turning on him.  "Not a thing!
Everything's just wonderful!  Everything's just fine and dandy!
Everything's just hunky-dory!"

"Well, isn't it?" asked Katharine.

"Everything's just spoiled, that's all!" Jane cried.  "Everything's
just utterly and completely ruined!  All because some people have to
tell everything they know!"  And she glared at Martha.

"What did I do?" said Martha.

"As if you didn't know!" said Jane.  "Here I thought we were going to
have a wonderful, exciting, secret summer full of thrilling adventures,
and you had to go and tell the whole thing to the first old stranger
that came along!"

"You mean Mr. Smith?" said Martha, surprised.  "He's not a stranger any
more.  He's a friend."

"Oh, he is, is he?" said Jane.  "That makes it all just lovely, doesn't
it?  And now I suppose we'll have grown ups butting in and telling us
what to wish all the time, and like as not wanting to borrow the charm
and wasting its substance on their own devices and desires, and it's
just all utterly and completely ruined!"  And she went down the hall
and into her own room and shut the door.

The others stared after her, amazed.

"Doesn't she like Mr. Smith?" said Martha.

"No," said Mark.  "I don't think she does."


In her room Jane sat on the bed and gave way to gloom.  She felt awful
inside, the way you always do when you've been perfectly hateful to
those you love best, and she didn't even know why she had done it.  She
didn't know why the mere thought of Mr. Smith upset her so--or if she
did know the reason she didn't want to admit it, even to herself.

But the thing was that Jane was the only one of the four children who
really remembered their father.

Martha was only a baby when their father died, and Katharine and even
Mark were still very young, too young for them to recall very much
about him now.  But Jane remembered him clearly and with a great deal
of love, and for that reason she couldn't bear the thought of Mr.
Smith's coming into their lives and getting to know them better and
better, and finally growing to be just like one of the family, and even
trying to take the place of a father to them, which was what she was
perfectly sure Mr. Smith hoped to do.

So now she sat in her room and thought and thought, and felt thoroughly
miserable.  Even the presence of the charm in her pocket was no
comfort, because while it would serve the others right if she made a
wish all by herself, the only wishes she could think of to make were
horrible murderous ones, and she was old enough and nice enough to know
that wishing herself invisible and going and pulling Mr. Smith's beard,
or writing him a threatening letter with a pen dipped in blood wouldn't
really be a bit of help or make her feel a bit better.

After a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and Mark and
Katharine and Martha trooped in, looking solemn.

"We've been thinking," Mark said, "and we thought we ought to hold a
Council."

"About Mr. Smith," said Martha.

"Go away," said Jane.

"You'd like him if you really got to know him," said Mark.  "He was
lots of fun last night."

"Humph!" said Jane.

"He was a big help when I wasn't all there," said Martha.  "He's
sensible about magic, not like most grown ups at all."

"Ha!" said Jane.

"So we were thinking," said Katharine, and then trailed off, looking at
Mark.

"Well?" said Jane.

"You tell her," said Katharine to Mark.

"We were thinking," said Mark, "that maybe before we make another wish
we ought to go see Mr. Smith and sort of ask his advice.  Just in a
general way."

"_What?_" said Jane.

"_I_ think we ought to take him along in the wish _with_ us," said
Martha.  "Then he could help us out again if we get in more trouble!"

"The way we always seem to," said Katharine.

"Then you could really get to know him," said Mark.

"And everything would be all right again," said Martha.

Jane was looking at them as if she couldn't believe her ears.  "Has
everyone in this family gone utterly and completely _insane_?" she
cried.  "Don't you know why he's so interested in us and nice about
things?  Haven't you seen the way he and Mother keep looking at each
other?  Do you want some old _stepfather_ moving in here and changing
everything?"

The others looked surprised at this, but not really terribly shocked.

"I should think he might make kind of an ideal one," said Katharine.

"It's good for a growing boy, having a man around the house," said Mark.

"I've always wished I had a father," said Martha.

Jane began to storm.  "Do you really think he could ever take Father's
place?  Him and his old beard!  Don't you know what stepfathers always
turn out to be like, once the fatal deed is done?  Don't you remember
Mr. Murdstone?  Oh!" she cried, glaring round at them all.  "It's no
use!  You don't understand!  I wish..."

She broke off in alarm, remembering the charm.  Then, a prey to utter
recklessness, she plunged her hand into her pocket, grasped the charm
firmly, and went on.  "Yes, I do!  I wish I belonged to some other
family!  I wish it twice!"

Mark and Katharine and Martha gasped.  This was the worst thing that
had happened yet.  They hardly dared look at Jane, for fear she might
start turning into someone else before their eyes.

But when they did look, there stood the same brown-haired, blue-eyed,
snub-nosed Jane they had grown to know and love through the years.
Nothing seemed to have happened.  Maybe nothing had.  Mark decided to
find out.

"Look here, old Jane-ice," he said, putting his hand on her arm and
using a pet name that was reserved for unusual serious moments.  "You
didn't mean it, did you?"

"You let me go, you bully!" remarked a prim, lady-like voice none of
the children had ever heard before in their lives.  "You horrid big
boy!  I don't like boys!  And I don't like _you_!"

"Oh!" cried Martha, turning pale.  "She doesn't know us!"

"Of course she does," said Katharine.  "You know me, don't you, dear?
Kathie, that you've been through thick and thin with?"

"No.  I don't know you and I don't wish to.  Your frock is soiled,"
said the voice that, to their horror, seemed to be coming out of Jane.
"My mama told me never to play with strange children."

Martha began to sniff.

"What an insanitary little girl," said the voice.  "Tell her to use a
handkerchief.  She'll give me a germ."

"Oh, what's the matter with her?"  Martha's voice rose to a wail.

"It's not her fault," Katharine said, trying to be reassuring for
Martha's sake.  "It's the way she's been brought up, I suppose.  By
that other family she belongs to, now.  It _does_ show what a good
influence we've been, doesn't it?  She was lots nicer under our tender
care."

"I don't believe it," said Mark.  "She's just trying to fool us, aren't
you, Jane-ice?"

"Don't call me that," said the voice.  "That's not my name.

"All right, then," said Mark, turning on her suddenly.  "If that isn't
your name, what is?"

The strange girl who looked like Jane, yet was Jane no longer, seemed
startled for a moment, as if she weren't quite sure of the answer.
Then her face cleared.

"My mother calls me her Little Comfort," she said.

Mark made a gagging noise.

Katharine looked disgusted.  "To think one of us should have come to
this!" she mourned.

"It would be an errand of mercy to put the poor thing out of her
misery," Mark agreed.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane was staring around the room.

"I don't like this house," she said.  "The furnishings are in poor
taste.  It is gaudy."  Her lower lip began to tremble.  "I want to go
home."

"Oh, you do, do you?" said Mark.  "Well, I can fix that.  No sooner
said than done."  And he made a dive for the pocket where he knew the
charm lay concealed.

But She (who was no longer Jane) pulled away, and gave him a
surprisingly hard slap for such a miminy-piminy, ladylike type.

"Take that!" she cried.  "You are a thief, as well as a bully!"  She
glared round at them all.  "You are a lot of badly-brought-up children.
You kidnapped me, and then tried to rob me.  I'm going to tell my
mother!"

And with these words, she flounced out into the hall and started down
the stairs.  By the time the others had recovered from their shock and
dashed after her, she was in the act of mincing out the front door.

Mark and Katharine took the stairs three at a time.  Martha used the
banister.  But in the lower hall Miss Bick leaped forth and barred the
way.

"No, you don't!" she said.  "Not a soul leaves this house until the
table's set for lunch!"

There was nothing the children could do about this, and nothing that
they felt prepared to say.  They didn't even point out that Jane had
already left.  As Katharine said afterwards, the way Jane was acting,
right then she probably didn't _have_ a soul!

But never was table set with such wild abandon, never did silver fly
through the air with such great ease as it then flew.  Hardly more than
one precious minute had been wasted in idle drudgery before Mark and
Katharine and Martha rushed out the front door and down the steps onto
the sidewalk, and stood scanning the offing in all directions.

Far down Maplewood Avenue they could just make out a genteel figure in
Jane's dress, picking its way along and toeing out in a way that the
real Jane would have scorned to be seen doing in public.  As they
watched, the figure turned to the right, into Virginia Street.

And as they started to dash after it, a car drove up before the house,
and Mr. Smith got out and held the door open for their mother.

"Company for lunch!" their mother called, blushing pink and looking
embarrassed and pretty.  "Where's Jane?"

The three children looked at each other and then quickly looked away
again.

"We don't know, _exactly_," said Katharine.

"We think she's visiting somebody over on Virginia Street," said Mark,
hoping that he spoke the truth, and that She (who was all that was left
of Jane) had not strayed farther.

"Well, go and get her," said their mother, taking some
interesting-looking packages from the car.  "This is a party."

The three children looked at the ground, hopelessly.

"Or wait," their mother went on, not noticing.  "You all go in the car
and pick her up; that'll be quicker.  I'll be breaking the news to Miss
Bick about the party."  And she started toward the house, her arms
loaded with packages.

Mark and Katharine and Martha waited till she was safely inside.  Then
they turned to Mr. Smith and all started to speak at once.  Then they
stopped and looked at each other again.

"Shall we tell him?" Katharine asked.

"Yes."  Mark nodded decisively.  "There comes a time in the affairs of
men, and this is it."

"I _said_ we ought to, all along," said Martha.  "I said he'd know what
to do.  This'll prove it."

And she and Mark and Katharine all piled into the front seat of the car
and began telling Mr. Smith about the dread events of the morning.
They didn't go into the reason for Jane's upset, though, or the way she
felt about stepfathers, out of consideration for his feelings.

And Mr. Smith didn't waste time in unnecessary questions.  ("Which
proves," said Mark to Katharine, afterwards, "that he would make an
ideal step, and not Murdstone at all!")  He started the motor, and the
car shot down Maplewood and turned into Virginia Street.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane was no longer to be seen.

"She must be in this block somewhere," said Katharine.  "She hasn't had
time to walk any farther."

"What do we do now?" said Martha.

"The question is moot," said Mark.  "She could be in any one of these
houses."

"We could holler 'Fire!' and everyone would come running out,"
suggested Katharine.

"Let's not have any more fires or running."  Martha shuddered,
remembering certain past experiences.  "Let's knock at all the doors
and ask them if they want to subscribe to the _Literary Digest_."

"That's no good," said Mark, who had done this one summer to try to
earn spending money.  "All they ever say is 'No,' and shut the door."

Martha turned to Mr. Smith.  "It's up to you," she said trustingly.

Mr. Smith looked pleased and touched.  He also looked a little nervous,
as though he were hoping he might live up to their trust.  He cleared
his throat.

"Well," he said, "first of all, does any of these houses look like the
kind of house the family of that kind of girl would live in?"

Mark and Katharine and Martha stared up and down the block.  Luckily it
was a short one, with only eight houses in it, four on each side of the
street.  Almost all the houses looked very much like their
own--comfortable, slightly shabby, family sort of houses, with an
easy-to-get-along-with, lived-in look.

All but one.

The eighth house was made of cold-looking gray stone, and sat primly on
an impossibly neat emerald lawn that was shut off from the street by a
forbidding hedge of evergreens.  A small sign on the lawn said
"Please."  The walk to the front door was of bright blue gravel, edged
with some boring plants that looked as though they had never blossomed
and didn't intend to.  There were no croquet wickets on the lawn and no
bicycles or kiddy-cars sitting around, the way there were in front of
most of the other houses.

"That's the one."  Mark was positive.  "It has to be.  It looks just
like her."

He and Katharine and Martha and Mr. Smith got out of the car and
advanced stealthily up the street till they stood confronting the gray
stone house.  No one was in sight.  From within came the sound of
someone practicing a difficult piece upon the piano.

"That couldn't be Jane," said Martha.  "She hates practice."

"I bet she doesn't now," said Mark.

"We'd better not let her see _us_," said Katharine.  "She doesn't seem
to like us very well any more."

"If her new family's anything like her, I don't think they'll like us
either," said Mark.  He turned to Mr. Smith.  "I guess it's still up to
you, sir."

Mr. Smith cleared his throat nervously again.  "All right," he said.
"I'll try."

So Mark and Katharine and Martha hid behind the evergreen hedge, and
Mr. Smith, after checking to make sure that no telltale parts of them
were exposed to the public gaze, squared his shoulders and marched
bravely up the blue gravel walk and knocked on the front door with the
imitation antique brass knocker.

When She-who-was-no-longer-Jane turned out of Maplewood into Virginia
Street, she went straight to the gray stone house and up the blue
gravel walk, and in at the front door.  After all, this was her house
and she belonged to this family now.

She went in at the front door and up the front stairs to what was now
her room.  There were hand-woven curtains of a cold gray at the
windows, and the walls were painted in the same colorless tint.  There
were no colored pictures on the walls, only sepia prints of Sir Galahad
and a lady called Hope.  The book-shelves were full of heavy,
instructive-looking books, and no toys or games, only a few sets of the
helpful kind that show you how to weave linen and tool leather in six
easy lessons.

She-who-was-no-longer-Jane sat down on an uncomfortable imitation
antique chair and began looking at one of the instructive books.  She
did this as though it were perfectly natural and as though she'd been
doing nothing else for years, but all the same, deep down inside her,
she felt strangely empty and uncomfortable, as though she didn't belong
in this prim gray room at all.

After a bit, deciding she didn't feel like being instructed just now,
she put down the book and took a round, shining object from her pocket.
She sat staring at it for a long while.  In a dim way her mind
connected it with the empty, uncomfortable feeling that seemed to hang
over her, but she couldn't remember why the shiny thing made her feel
lonely and unhappy.

Of course the trouble was that when she wished to belong to another
family, she hadn't said a thing about not being Jane any longer.  And
so she had become the girl Jane would have been if she had been brought
up in this cold, gray house.  But down inside her somewhere, the real
Jane was still struggling to exist.  This is called heredity versus
environment, and it is quite a struggle.

After she had been sitting by herself (or by her two selves) for a few
minutes, a lady appeared in the door.  She was dressed in a gown of
sober gray wool.

"Why, here you are!" she cried.  "Mother has been worried.  She
couldn't find her Little Comfort anywhere!"

"I was playing," said
She-who-was-now-part-Jane-and-part-Mother's-Little-Comfort (only from
now on I think it will save time if we just think of her as She).

"Where were you playing?" said the gray lady.  "You weren't in the
solarium and you weren't in the patio!"

"I was around the corner.  I was playing with some children."

"But we don't know anyone around the corner," said the gray lady in
alarm.  "Mother wants you to have fresh air and exercise, of course,
but one can't be too careful about speaking to strangers!  Were they
nice children?"

She hesitated.  "_You_ wouldn't like them," She said, finally, hanging
her head and looking closer at the round shining thing in her hand.

"Really, Comfort, you are not behaving like yourself today!" said the
lady, reproachfully.

"I know it," said She, unhappily.

"Haven't I told you always to look at me when I am speaking to you?"
the lady went on.  "What is that you have in your hand?"

"I don't know.  I found it."

"Let me see," said the lady.  She took the shining thing in her own
hand.  "But this is very interesting!  It seems to be some kind of
ancient talisman.  See, there is writing on it, but I don't recognize
the language.  It is not Greek or Latin.  Probably it is Sanskrit.
Father will translate it for us when he comes home.  And now how would
you like to take a nice nap until dinnertime?"

Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha had all scorned naps for years,
and the small remnant of Jane that was still there somewhere, buried
under layers of Little Comfort, rose to the surface.  "I wouldn't like
it at all," She said.

"But you always have a nap at this hour!" cried the lady.

"Do I?" said She, her heart sinking.  "Couldn't I dig some worms and go
fishing instead?"

The lady looked shocked.  "Why, Comfort!  You know fishing is cruel,
except when necessary to provide food, and we are all vegetarians here!"

"Build a block fort and have a war with toy soldiers?" suggested She,
faintly.

"Why, Comfort!" cried the lady again.  "There are no toy soldiers in
this house!  They are symbols of world militarism, and not suitable
playthings!  I can't think what has come over you today!  It must be
the influence of those bad children!  No, let us go down to the drawing
room and put this ancient talisman in the curio cabinet, and then you
can practice your new piece till Father comes."

The remnant of Jane that still existed didn't like seeing the round
shining thing go out of her possession at all, and she didn't much want
to practice a new piece either.  And she had her doubts about a house
in which naps were taken and bright colors were shunned, and things
that were ordinary and fun were made to seem ugly and wicked.  But She
dejectedly followed the gray lady out of the room and down the stairway
into the drawing room, which was large and cold and grey, and took her
seat on the piano stool.

And it turned out that practicing on the piano, which was always sheer
torment to Jane in the past, was a mere cinch now.  She played away
primly and perfectly, while the gray lady sat in a stiff chair of
carved oak, and looked at a magazine called _The Outlook_.

This went on for what seemed like years, and the last trace of Jane was
just beginning to think it might as well die away forever when there
was an interruption.  Someone knocked at the front door.

"Who could that be?" said the lady.  "Father would use his key, and we
never have visitors here."

"I bet you don't!" thought the small spark of Jane, with a last flicker
of life.

The lady went to the front door and opened it.  A rather small
gentleman stood outside.  He wore a pointed beard and a nervous
expression.

"Good afternoon, madam," he said, putting one hand behind his back as
though he were crossing his fingers (which he was).  "I am writing a
book on child psychology, and I hear you have a very intelligent
daughter.  I wonder if I might interview her?"

"How interesting!" cried the lady.  "I have made a life study of child
psychology myself!"

"You have?" said the small gentleman, looking more nervous.

"Yes.  What method do you follow, the Schwartz-Metterklume or the
Brontossori?"

The small gentleman looked as if he wished he were somewhere else.  "I
have my own method," he said.  "You wouldn't have heard of it."

"But how interesting!" cried the lady.  "You must come in and tell me
all about it."  And she led the small gentleman through the gray hall
into the gray drawing room.


Outside, Katharine leaned out from her evergreen hiding place.  "Psst,"
she said.

"Come on," said Mark, from behind his.

And followed by Martha, they crossed the emerald lawn and mounted the
front steps of the house.  The lady had left the front door ajar in her
excitement, and standing in the hallway the children could hear
everything that happened in the drawing room perfectly.

"Of course we wouldn't want any publicity," the lady was saying.  "You
won't use her real name in the book, will you?"

"Naturally not," said the voice of Mr. Smith (for of course the small
gentleman was he).  "I shall call her chapter The Jane Case."

Mark and Katharine and Martha heard a gasp, as though the name had
meant something to someone in the room.

"Unless of course that is her name?" Mr. Smith's voice went on.

"Oh, no," said the voice of the lady.  "We call her Comfort, but her
name is Iphigenia."

"If a what?" said Katharine to Mark, in the front doorway.

"Shush," said Mark to Katharine.

"I see," came the voice of Mr. Smith, from the drawing room.  "How do
you do, Iphigenia?  Do you believe in magic?"

"Oh no," came the voice of the lady, before She could answer.  "I'm
afraid your method is a bit old-fashioned.  Iphigenia has never
believed in magic, or anything else untrue."

"How sad for her," said the voice of Mr. Smith.  "However, what _are_
her interests?  Does she collect anything, perhaps?"

"Why, yes," said the lady, before She could answer again.  "She
collects objects of art.  Only this afternoon she brought home a rare
old talisman!"

In the doorway Martha pinched Katharine.  "The charm!" she hissed.

"Shush," Katharine hissed back.

"You don't say?" Mr. Smith's voice sounded excited.  "I wonder if I
might see it for a moment?"

"I don't see why not," came the voice of the lady.  Her footsteps could
be heard, crossing the room, and the suspense was more than Mark and
Katharine and Martha could bear.  They moved across the hall to see
what was happening.

The floor of the hall was highly polished and there were some little
gray hand-hooked rugs scattered about on it.  Martha tripped on one of
the rugs, slipped on the floor, and fell into the drawing room with a
crash, just as the lady was turning from the curio cabinet with the
charm in her hand and Mr. Smith was reaching out his own eager hand to
take it.  Mark and Katharine followed Martha into the room.

"Hello," said She, smiling at them.  After half an hour in the gray
house, She liked their looks better than she had at their last meeting.
She turned to the gray lady.  "These are the children I was playing
with this afternoon."

"Well, I'm afraid they are very rude children," said the lady,
recovering from her surprise.  She looked at Mark and Katharine and
Martha sternly.  "In this house we don't walk in the front door without
being asked.  I think you had better go home at once.  Iphigenia
doesn't want to see you."

"Oh yes, she does, if she only knew it!" said Mark bravely, advancing
into the room.  "Let me take that charm a minute and I'll prove it.  It
belongs to us anyway!"

"If you mean this rare old Sanskrit talisman," said the lady, "it
certainly does not.  It belongs to my Iphigenia."

"She's not yours; she's ours," said Martha, getting up from the floor.

"Her name isn't what you said; it's Jane," said Katharine.

"She doesn't live here; she lives over on Maplewood," said Mark.

"Not another word," said the lady.  "Such awful fibbing I never heard!
You are either the worst-brought-up children I have ever seen or you
are all mentally unbalanced!  I'm afraid I shall have to telephone your
parents!"

"No, don't do that!" said Mr. Smith, coming forward anxiously.  "I'm
afraid this is all my fault.  I'm afraid I asked these children to
come.  Just a little experiment, you know.  All part of my method."

"Then I don't think much of it," said the lady, getting really cross.
"I don't believe you are a child psychologist at all, or if you are,
you shouldn't be allowed to be!  I shall write to the _Psychology
Journal_ and complain!"

"Very well.  You're right.  I'm not," said Mr. Smith, giving up.  "But
don't be alarmed; I can explain everything.  Only it's a long story; so
if you'd just let me have that charm..."

"So that's it!" cried the lady.  "I see it all now!  It's a plot!
Coming here pretending to be writing a book, and all the time trying to
steal our art treasures!  For shame, taking advantage of these
unfortunate children!"

"No, no," said Mr. Smith, becoming agitated.  "This is all a mistake.
That little girl isn't who you think she is at all."

"You wouldn't like her if you got to know her," put in Katharine
earnestly.  "You would find her a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"She's my sister, only she has what-d'you-call-'ems," said Mark.

"Hallucinations," explained Mr. Smith.

"We want to take her where they'll be kind to her," said Martha.
"Jane, Jane, come on home out of this cold, slippery house!"

The remnant of Jane, down in the heart of Iphigenia, heard Martha's
call.  She thought how much happier she felt with Martha and Mark and
Katharine, yes, and Mr. Smith, too, than she did with the gray lady.
She remembered her own home and her own family, and wished she belonged
to them again.  She yearned to answer Martha.  And she made a great
effort, and forced her way to the surface and started to speak.

But before she could there was an interruption.  A thin, gray gentleman
appeared in the drawing room.

"Yarworth!  Here you are at last!" cried the gray lady.  "This
criminal, aided by these delinquent children, was trying to rob our
Iphigenia!"

"Dear me," said the gray gentleman, retreating slightly.  "Are you
sure?"

"Don't just stand there!" cried the lady.  "Defend us!  What will
Iphigenia think of her father?"

What Iphigenia would have thought of her father will probably never be
known.  For at that moment Mr. Smith, having had quite enough of both
Iphigenia and her parents, decided to act.

"I'm sorry to appear rude, madam, but you'll be glad of it afterwards,"
he said.  "At least I hope so."

And he snatched the charm from the lady's hand, took a deep breath, and
wished that Jane might be twice as much Jane as she ever was.

Jane, finding herself suddenly herself again, gave a glad cry and ran,
much to the surprise of Mark and Katharine and Martha, straight to Mr.
Smith.

"You were wonderful," she said.  "Part of me was here all along, hoping
you'd save me, and you did!  You were wonderful!"

"It was nothing," said Mr. Smith, modestly.

"We told you so," said Mark and Katharine to Jane.

They had run to Mr. Smith, too, and so had Martha, and now the five of
them stood united, looking defiantly at the gray lady and the gray
gentleman.

The lady was bunking her eyes.  The gentleman was rubbing his.  They
looked rather like two people who have just awakened from a nightmare.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" demanded the gray lady.  "What
are you doing in our house?  Go away at once!"

"This isn't your little girl, then?" asked Mr. Smith, with his arm
around Jane.

The lady looked at Jane with distaste.  "I never saw the horrid little
thing before in my life!"

"You don't even _have_ a little girl, perhaps?" went on Mr. Smith.

"Certainly not," the lady said thankfully.  "So noisy and tiresome and
such a strain!"

"Then if we take her away with us, it will be quite all right with you?"

"If you don't all leave this house at once, my husband will take steps!
Won't you, Yarworth?" said the gray lady.

The gray gentleman took a step backwards in alarm.  He did not reply.

"Thank you, madam.  That's all I wanted to know," said Mr. Smith.  And
bowing politely, he touched the charm and made another wish.

Of course if he had asked the four children's advice, they could have
told him how to word his second wish much better.

As it was, being new to magic, he didn't put in any of the things
experience had taught them, like not being gone too long, and arriving
back in a normal way, and their mother's not noticing anything out of
the ordinary.  He just wished they were twice as far as home again.

And so, a split second later, when the children's mother came into the
living room and it was empty, and then suddenly Mr. Smith and the four
children were all sitting around it in chairs, she was more than a bit
surprised.

"How funny!" she said.  "I didn't see you sitting there.  I didn't hear
a car drive up, either."

She glanced out of the window, and it was then that Mr. Smith
remembered that his car was still sitting back on Virginia Street,
where he'd parked it, what seemed like ages ago.

He touched the charm in his pocket, and made a quick wish, but not
quick enough.  When the children's mother looked from the window, first
she saw the empty street, then suddenly the car was sitting there.

She put her hand to her head and sat down suddenly.

"I really must go to the doctor about my eyes," she said.  "I keep
thinking I see the strangest things!"

"It's the sun," said Mr. Smith.  "It's awfully strong today."

"_I_'ve been thinking I saw some awfully strange things this morning,
too.  Over on Virginia Street," said Mark, daringly, with a wink at Mr.
Smith and Jane.

Martha giggled.

"Luncheon is served," said Miss Bick sourly from the doorway, and they
all trooped in to where the festive board groaned.

The luncheon party was a great success with the four children, but
their mother seemed a bit worried and preoccupied, and kept putting her
hand to her forehead as if she were trying to puzzle something out, and
this seemed to make Mr. Smith a bit worried, too.

The spirits of the children were so very high, however, that their
mother couldn't stay upset for long.  And the behavior of Jane, in
particular, was enough to warm any mother's faltering heart.

She was so unselfish about second helpings, so eager to pass things
without being asked, so tireless in her efforts not to accept the last
extra butterscotch tart, lying luscious under its whipped cream, but to
bestow it on a friend or relation, so anxious generally to show how
much she loved this family above all others, that no one could believe
it was the usual good old hasty hot-tempered Jane who sat there among
them.

"That charm certainly does improve people, once they've been through
the mill of it," Katharine whispered to Mark.

"Whisperers at the table shall breakfast in the stable," said their
mother.

"Kath was only saying Jane certainly was full of charm this morning,"
said Mark, with another daring wink at the others.

"Yes, you'd almost think she were a different person!" said Katharine,
equally daring.

Martha giggled.  So, I regret to say, did Mr. Smith.

"What's the joke?" said the children's mother.

"Oh, nothing," said the four children.

"I'm just feeling happy," said Mr. Smith.  "This is a treat for me.  I
live all alone, you know, and it's years since I've been to a family
party like this."

Jane looked round the room, at the colored pictures on the lemon-yellow
walls and the gay printed curtains at the window and the bright rugs on
the floor and the smiling faces around the table.

"This is a wonderful family to belong to," she said.  "It's the best
family to belong to in the whole world!"

Then she smiled at Mr. Smith.

"I think _you_'re going to think so, too," she said.




7.  How It Ended

"Who gets the charm today?" said Martha, early next morning.  "We've
all had a turn now.  Do we start over and take seconds, or should we
agree on something and wish it together?"

"I think we ought to give it a day of rest," said Katharine.  "After
all, today's Sunday."

And once the other children thought about it, they agreed that magic on
Sunday didn't seem quite right.  Or at least there was a chance that it
wouldn't be, and the four children were taking no further chances, now
they knew how difficult the charm could be when roused.

So Katharine spent the morning reading _The Ingoldsby Legends_, which
she had just discovered, and Mark built derricks with his Meccano set.

Jane humored Martha by playing dolls with her, a pursuit Jane usually
scorned, but she was still feeling kindly toward her family, as a
result of yesterday's adventure.  Her true nature reasserted itself
during the course of the game, however, and many a doll was stabbed to
the heart or burned at the stake before the morning was over.

The four children all hated big noon dinners on Sunday; so when hunger
reared its hideous head they just had soup and toast, and it was right
after that that Mr. Smith arrived, and asked if they and their mother
wouldn't like to come for a drive with him, and a picnic supper
afterwards.  He said he knew of a wonderful picnic place with a river
and swings and a meadow and woods, and he had had six box lunches made
up at Meinert's Pastry Shop.

Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha could hardly wait to start.

"What is it that makes box lunches always sound so delicious?"
Katharine wondered.  "It makes you think there might be almost anything
inside.  Duck eggs and nectar and kinds of sandwiches nobody ever had
before!"

Their mother said she had a headache and thought she'd better stay
home, which didn't sound like her at all.  The four children stared at
her.

"You never have headaches," said Mark.

"You never want to stay home and spoil things, either," said Katharine.

"It won't be any fun without you," said Jane.

And of course after that the children's mother had to give in, and five
minutes later away they went.

The picnic place proved to be all that was ideal, as Mr. Smith had said
it would.  Martha went picking butterfly weed in the meadow, only it
seemed to be beeweed, too, and one stung her, and Katharine wandered
romantically through the woods, and was almost sure she saw a snake,
and Jane and Mark tried to build stepping stones across the river and
fell in with all their clothes on, and altogether it was a typical
happy family outing.

The box lunches turned out not to contain any duck eggs or nectar, but
the sandwiches were sufficiently unusual, and there were deviled eggs
and potato salad and lots of little assorted cakes that the children
had fun with, deciding which ones they liked best and trying to trade
off the others.

Supper was eaten round a bonfire deftly constructed by Mark and Mr.
Smith, and stories were told and songs were sung, until what with one
thing and another, it was long after nine o'clock when they packed
themselves into the car once more, and drove home through the purple
darkness.

And the four children were all so tired and happy and sunburned and
sleepy that they went straight to bed with almost no ado.

Martha, as sometimes happens, was so tired that she couldn't seem to go
to sleep, and she noticed that Mr. Smith didn't go home right away, but
sat talking to their mother for what seemed like hours and hours.

And much later, in the middle of the night, she woke up, possibly as a
result of too many cakes, and was almost sure she heard their mother
crying.

This couldn't be, of course.  Martha had never heard of a mother who
cried, and certainly not _their_ mother, so happy and strong and busy
and sensible, and the pride of the Toledo _News-Bee_!

She tiptoed to the door and listened, but there didn't seem to be any
sound now.  She decided with relief that she must have been mistaken,
and went back to bed and to sleep.

But in the morning their mother hardly said a word at breakfast, and
her cheeks looked pale and her eyes looked tired, and Martha began to
wonder again.

After breakfast, when their mother had gone to work, Jane, whose new
family devotion continued to shine forth, volunteered to do the dishes
alone and unaided, and this brilliant example so bestirred the finer
feelings of Mark and Katharine that they insisted on helping.

Martha followed them out into the kitchen, and sat watching, and
wondering whether her worries about their mother were too far-fetched
for her to mention them.

"Does everyone realize we've had the charm a week now?" Jane was
saying, scraping toast crumbs off plates and then plunging the plates
in soapy water.

"Really?" said Katharine.  "It seems like months, at least."

Mark began counting it out.  "The fire was Tuesday and the desert was
Wednesday, we met Launcelot on Thursday and went to the movies on
Friday, Jane belonged to that other family on Saturday, and we rested
on Sunday."

"And today's Monday," said Jane.  "The seventh day.  I read somewhere
that seven's a magic number.  Maybe today'll be the biggest wish yet."

"When you come to think of it, no great big lasting thing has happened
so far," said Mark.  "We've had lots of adventures, but we're still
just the same as we were before we found it."

"Our characters are improved," said Katharine, "and I think we're sort
of happier."

"I don't think Mother is," said Martha.

Three faces turned to her, and, "What do you mean?" said three voices
at once.

But before Martha could answer, the telephone in the hall began to ring.

Mark got there first.

"Hello?" he said.  "Oh, hi."  He turned to the others.  "It's Mr.
Smith."

"Let me," said Jane, grabbing the phone.

"Honestly," Mark complained to Katharine.  "After we had all that hard
work getting her to like him at all, now you'd think he were her own
special property!"

"Yes," Jane was saying into the phone excitedly.  "Yes.  All right.  We
will.  Yes, right away!"

She hung up, and turned from the phone, looking serious and important.
"Big Council meeting!  At the bookshop in twenty minutes.  Carfare will
be refunded.  Can we scrape together the wherewithal?"

The week had been given over so completely to magic experiment that
allowances remained practically intact; so that was all right.

"Are we taking the charm?" Martha wanted to know.

"Naturally!  What else would an Important Council be about?" said Jane,
witheringly.

Katharine fetched the charm from its hiding place, and the four
children waited for a moment when Miss Bick's attention was elsewhere
(elsewhere being with the gas-meter man) to steal down the front
stairs, hurry out the door, and run two blocks up Bancroft Street
before waiting for the street car, so she wouldn't see them from the
window and take unpleasant steps.

The ride downtown seemed endless but turned out at last not to be, and
ten minutes later found them hurrying into the bookshop.

Mr. Smith rose from his desk, and came to greet them.  He seemed uneasy.

"Hello," he said.  "You were quicker than I expected.  Please sit down.
I have something to tell you."

The four children looked around, but there were piles of books on all
the sitting places; so they stayed standing.  Mr. Smith didn't seem to
notice.  He hesitated, cleared his throat, took his handkerchief out
and put it away again, and looked at the floor.

"Dear me, I find this very difficult," he said.  "I think perhaps first
of all it might help if you stopped calling me Mr. Smith and called me
Hugo."

Jane shuddered.  "I _couldn't_!"

"That's a terrible name," said Mark, ever candid.

"Maybe if we shortened it?" Katharine suggested.  "Hugh isn't so bad."

"I shall call him Huge," announced Martha independently.  "After all,
he looms huge in our future, if you-know-what is going to happen!  You
know, if he's going to be our--" she broke off, and uttered the last
word in a piercing whisper that carried to all corners of the
room--"_stepfather!_"

Mr. Smith heard the whisper, and a blush mantled his cheek.

"Then you know!" he said.  "And here I was wondering how to break it to
you.  That's what I had to tell you.  It's true.  I have come to care
very deeply for your mother and have asked her to be my wife."

"We thought you would," said Martha.

"Any day now," said Mark.

"We think it's wonderful," said Katharine.

"Specially me," said Jane.

"Thank you," said Mr. Smith.  "You are four very pleasant children, and
I should be proud and happy to be your stepfather, and you may call me
Huge or anything else you like."

"_Uncle_ Huge," said Mark.  "It's more respectful."

"There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Smith.

"Won't she have you?" asked Katharine.  "Is she being coy and hard to
please?"

"I could go and reason with her if you like," offered Mark.  "I'm quite
good at it, really."

"_I_ shall tell her I think she's a very lucky woman to have landed
you!" said Martha.

"Please, I beg of you, do not say anything of the kind!" cried Mr.
Smith in alarm, blushing again.  "No.  Your mother has admitted that
she thinks she could care for me in return.  But yesterday evening she
told me definitely that her answer is no.  The reason is that she
believes herself to be ill.  Mentally ill.  I leave you to guess why."

"She's noticed things," said Jane.  "Us appearing suddenly out of
nowhere and things."

"That wish she half got, when she ran into you out on Bancroft Street,"
said Katharine.

"Me with all those diamonds and robbers," said Mark.

"I _did_ hear her crying last night, then," said Martha.

"Oh, dear.  Was she?" said Mr. Smith.

"That's bad," said Mark.

"And it's all our fault," said Katharine.

The four children looked solemn.  Then Jane's face cleared.

"It's all right.  We can fix it up," she said.  "What could be simpler?
We'll confess.  We'll tell her the whole thing from the beginning."

"Do you think she'll believe it?" said Mr. Smith.  "Remember, your
mother is a very practical person."

"Stubborn, too," agreed Katharine.

"We could _show_ her," suggested Mark doubtfully.  "We could have the
charm take her somewhere."

"That's it!"  Jane's eyes were shining.  "We'll let her wish--we'll
give her whatever her heart desires!  This will be the best deed yet!
Come on, let's go over there right now!"

"Do be careful," said Mr. Smith.  "Hadn't we better plan it out, first?"

But his words were wasted on the bookshop air.  Jane had the charm in
her hand, and rashly, excitedly, without thinking what she'd do when
they got there, she wished.

The next moment they were in their mother's office.

The children's mother was Women's Club Editor of the newspaper, and
that meant that she wrote all those little pieces that say which ladies
are going to meetings at which other ladies' houses and what they are
going to have to eat.

It wasn't a very important job, and her office was tiny, and today it
was already quite filled by a fat lady who was telling their mother all
about the Potluck Pageant she was planning to give for the League of
Needless Women.

So that when Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha and Mr. Smith were
suddenly all there in the office, too, it made quite a crowd.

"Oh!" cried their mother, turning pale, as the five familiar figures
appeared out of nowhere before her gaze.  "There it is, happening
again!"

"Really!" said the fat lady to Jane and Katharine and Martha, who were
wedged tightly against her.  "Stop shoving."

"I'm sorry, but we haven't time for you now," said Jane to the fat
lady.  And she wished her twice as far as where she belonged.

The lady was quite annoyed to find herself suddenly at home in her own
kitchen, and later sued the newspaper for witchcraft.  But she was
never able to prove her case, and anyway that does not come into this
story.

Back in her office, the children's mother sat staring palely at the
place where the lady had been.

"It's all right," Jane told her.  "We know what you're thinking, but
you're wrong.  We can explain everything."

"What you thought was you going crazy was just us," said Martha.

"We've got a magic charm," said Mark.

"We've had it for a week, only we didn't tell you," said Katharine.
"We thought you were too old to know."

"And that night you went to see Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin and wished
you were home, _you_ had it," said Jane.  "And it works by halves.  And
that's how you happened to meet Mr. Smith.  And that proves what a good
charm it is, because we think he'd make a wonderful stepfather and not
a bit Murdstone, and we've adopted him for our Uncle Huge, and we think
you ought to marry him right away!"

Their mother looked at Mr. Smith reproachfully.

"You told them!" she said.  "And now they're making all this up to make
me feel better.  How could you?"

"No, that isn't it at all," said Jane.  "There really is a charm!
Look."  And she put the charm in their mother's hands.

"That's a nickel," said their mother.

"That's what I thought at first, too," said Jane, "but it isn't.  See,
it's got old ancient signs on it!  Wish, why don't you?  That'll prove
it.  For whatever your heart desires!  Or wait, I'll show you how."
And she touched the charm, where it lay in their mother's hand.

"I wish," she began, trying to think of something simple and harmless,
yet unusual.  "I wish two birds would fly in the window and speak to
us."

Immediately a chickadee flew in through the window and stood on the
desk.

"Hello," it said.  It flew out again.

Their mother had her eyes shut tight.  "Tell it to go away!" she said.

"It just did," said Martha.

Their mother opened her eyes again.  "That proves it," she said.  "It's
just as I was afraid it was!  Everything's been too much for me and my
mind's given way."

"Now, now," said Mr. Smith.  "You mustn't get excited."  But Mark
interrupted him.

"Honestly!" he said to Jane in disgust.  "Making birds come in and talk
to her!  No wonder she thinks she's crazy!  Whose heart's desire would
that be?  No, don't you remember how she always used to say she wanted
to be City Editor of the paper some day?  Let me have that."  And he
took the charm from Jane.

"Careful!" said Mr. Smith.

"It's all right.  I know what to say," Mark reassured him.  And he
wished.

The owner of the newspaper walked into the office.

"Ah, dear lady," he said.  "How happy you look with your little family
around you!"

Their mother turned a woebegone face upon him and said nothing.

"What part of Mother's little family is Mr. Smith?" whispered Katharine
to Mark, giggling.

"Shush," said Mark.

"We are making some changes in the organization," the owner of the
paper went on, "and I am glad to tell you that from this moment on you
may consider yourself City Editor, at a sizeable increase in salary."

"No," said the children's mother, shaking her head stubbornly.  "It
isn't true.  It's just some horrible crazy dream!  You aren't even
real.  You're just a ... a figment of my imagination!"

"Well, really!" said the owner of the paper, looking displeased.
Apparently he did not like being called a figment.

"Aw, Mother," said Mark.  "Don't worry; just take it.  Don't you
remember how you've always said you could run the paper singlehanded
better than the rest of this whole dopey crowd down here does?"

"You don't say!" said the owner of the paper, coldly.  "In that case,
perhaps I had better withdraw my offer.  Perhaps you had better look
for a job somewhere else!"  And he made a dignified exit.

"This is worse and worse!" moaned the children's mother.  "Now I'm
unemployed!  And he'll tell everybody it's because I've gone raving,
tearing mad, and he'll be right, because I have!"

"There, there," Katharine soothed her.  "Mark just didn't know.  He
couldn't, because I'm the only one who knows what your heart's desire
really is!"  She turned to the others.  "Mother told me once that when
she was our age she always wanted to be a bareback rider."  And
Katharine took the charm in her hand.

"Dear me, I hardly think--" began Mr. Smith.

But before he could finish his sentence Katharine had wished, and he
and the four children found themselves sitting in the front row of the
grandstand inside an immense circus tent, and the ringmaster was just
cracking his whip and announcing that La Gloria, the Best Bare Back
Rider in the World, would now perform her death-defying act.

There was a crash of cymbals, and La Gloria rode into the ring on a
white horse.  La Gloria was the children's mother.  Only she didn't
look at all like herself in pink tights and a frilly skirt.  And she
didn't act like herself, either.

She rode round the ring with grace and speed, and jumped her horse
through hoops with spirit and style.  And, what was most alarming of
all to the four children, she seemed to be _enjoying_ it!

"Hoop-la!" she cried.  "Allez-oop!  Whee!"

"Stop her!" wailed Martha.  "She'll hurt herself!  She'll fall!"  And
she jumped over the rail and ran into the middle of the ring, with Jane
and Mark and Mr. Smith behind her.  Forgetting the charm in her hand,
Katharine ran with them.  La Gloria had to rein in her horse to keep
from running them down.

"Get out of the way!  You're spoiling the act!" she said haughtily.

"This is awful!  She doesn't know us!" cried Martha.

"Of course she does.  Don't you?" said Jane.

"No, and I don't wish to!" said La Gloria.  "Out of the way!  The show
must go on!"

"Why?" said Mark, ever willing to argue a point.

Behind them in the grandstand the audience was beginning to be restless.

"In my opinion people who interrupt other people's entertainment should
be ejected!" said a lady in the front row.

"You're right!" said the lady sitting next to her.  "They should be
ejected first and then put out!"

An angry murmur began to grow.

"Down in front!" yelled somebody.

"Get the hook!" yelled somebody else.

The ringmaster approached, cracking his whip.

Then, just as it looked as though there might be unpleasantness,
Katharine unwished, and they found themselves back in the newspaper
office.

Their mother sat at her desk, a dreamy, far-away smile on her face.
Katharine turned to her anxiously.

"There!" she said.  "_Now_ do you believe?"

Their mother's smile vanished.  She looked stubborn.  "That didn't
happen," she said.  "It was a dream."

"How do we all know about it, then?" said Katharine.

"You don't," said their mother.  "You couldn't."  And nothing any of
the children could say would make her believe anything else.  After
five minutes of trying, they were all breathing hard and beginning to
feel a bit desperate.

"May I point out," said Mr. Smith, at last, "that if you would only
listen to me--"

But Martha interrupted him.

"Of course if you ask _me_," she said, "the trouble is, none of those
wishes were any good because we didn't make her _believe_ first."

The others looked at her.

"Of course," said Mark.

"Out of the mouths of babes," said Jane.

"Why didn't _we_ think of that?" said Katharine.  "Naturally you have
to believe in magic--otherwise if it starts happening to you all sanity
is despaired of!"

"Exactly," said Mr. Smith.  "Now I suggest--"

But Martha had the charm in her hand.

"Oh, Mother," she said earnestly.  "Mother _dear_, if you just wouldn't
be so stubborn about it!  I wish you'd believe what we keep telling
you!  I wish it twice!"

"I do, dear.  I believe you," said their mother.

"You believe there's a magic charm?"

"Naturally, dear.  If you say so, dear."

"And everything's all right and you're going to get married and live
happily ever after?"

"Whatever you say, dear."

"There!"  Martha turned in triumph to the others.

But Mark was looking at their mother suspiciously.

"Something's wrong here," he said.  "That doesn't sound like Mother at
all!"

"No, it doesn't, does it, dear?" said their mother.

"We don't want a mother that just _agrees_ with everything all the
time!"

"No, you don't, do you, dear?" said their mother.  "I wouldn't either."

"You see what I mean?" said Mark.  "Why, I bet if I said the moon was
made of green cheese she'd just say, 'Yes, dear.  I know, dear.'"

"Isn't it true?" said their mother.  "I couldn't agree with you more,
dear."

The other three were just as alarmed as Mark by now.

"This is awful!" Jane cried, turning on Martha.  "You've taken Mother
and turned her into some awful sappy blah character without any
gumption at all!  Why, Mr. Smith won't even want to marry her in this
condition!"

"No, he won't, will he?" said their mother, contentedly.  "I wouldn't,
either."

There was a stunned silence.

"And _now_," said Mr. Smith, in a grim voice, "perhaps you will permit
me to make a suggestion?"

No one had the heart to reply.

Mr. Smith took the charm from Martha's hand firmly.

"I suggest that we start over," he said, "and I suggest that we take it
more slowly.  And that somebody thinks before acting!"  And he held the
charm out before him solemnly, almost as if he were in church.

"I wish first that Alison may be restored to her own natural, stubborn,
lovable self, and I wish this twice.  But I further wish that her mind,
without losing any of its natural, stubborn, lovable character, may be
made open to receiving the secret of this charm, and this I also wish
twice.  And I thirdly wish that she may be twice relieved of the fear
that has come to her through the magic of this charm, and may be twice
ready to receive any boon it may grant her."

There was another silence.  Then the children's mother looked round at
them all, and smiled.  And it was plain that these last wild minutes,
ever since they had arrived in the office, had vanished from her mind.

"Hello," she said.  "How nice of you all to come and surprise me."

"We came," said Mr. Smith, "to bring you a gift."  And he put the charm
on her desk.  "This is a magic charm, and it works by halves.  Ask
twice for whatever you wish, and you will receive it once.  It is from
all of us, with our love.  Now.  What is your heart's desire?"

"But you know what it is," said the children's mother, not picking up
the charm.  "My heart's desire is to marry you and have the children
love you as much as I do.  And not to have to work on the paper any
more, but stay home and take care of the children instead of having to
have Miss Bick.  And to have the children be able to go to the country
in the summers the way they've always wanted to.  And to have you shave
off that beard."

"Really?  Don't you like it?" said Mr. Smith, in surprise.  "I've grown
rather attached to it, through the years.  I'll hate to see it go.  But
for the rest of your desire, if you marry me I'll do my best to give it
to you.  Without the help of any charm.  We won't be rich, because
people who run bookshops seldom are, but summers in the country I think
I can manage."

He took their mother's hand, and the two of them stood looking at each
other.

"Aren't you going to wish?" said Katharine, after a bit.

"Why should we?" said their mother.  "We have our happiness."

"Oh," said Katharine, disappointed.

The faces of the four children fell.  They had never felt so let-down
in all their lives.  Then after a moment Katharine's face brightened.

"But it was a wish that brought you together in the first place," she
said, "and it was another wish that made you meet again.  It was really
the charm that caused everything, in a way!"

"Maybe that's the one big, important thing it came into our lives to
do," said Mark.

"You mean maybe now it's used up and won't work any more?" said Martha,
alarmed.

"Oh, and today's the seventh day, too!" cried Jane.  "Maybe the magic's
over!"  She picked up the charm and turned to Mr. Smith.  "I don't want
to butt in, and I'm sure you could give Mother her heart's desire by
the sweat of your manly brow alone," she said, "but just to make sure,
I wish all her wishes would come true twice!"

Mr. Smith gave a cry, and clapped his hand to the place where his beard
used to be.  The four children agreed later that he looked very
handsome without it.

Only right now they didn't notice, because right now other things were
happening.

For it seemed as though the room suddenly began to shine, and there
seemed to be a sound of far-off singing and a faint chiming of bells
all about them.  And a fragrance hung in the air that was not quite
cinnamon and not quite vanilla and not quite the perfume of all the
gardens in the world, but a little like all these things and something
else, too.  It was the scent of magic.

And their mother and Mr. Smith stood looking at each other and didn't
see the shining or hear the singing or sense the fragrance because all
they saw was the light of each other's eyes, and all they heard was the
beating of each other's heart and all they felt was their love for each
other.

By and by the shining and the singing and the fragrance died away.

"I guess that's the last wish, all right," said Mark.  "It never rang
bells and smelled like a perfume shop before!"

"What did you say?" said their mother.

"I said I guess that's the last wish," said Mark.  "The last wish on
the charm."

"What charm?" said Mr. Smith.

They had forgotten.  Now that they had their heart's desire, they had
no need of any other magic.  They turned and went out of the office,
and the four children followed them.

Jane still held the charm in her hand, but the children were as sure as
they had ever been of anything in their short, full lives that with
that last wish the magic had gone out of it, and that there would be no
more enchanted adventures for them.

"Still," said Mark, as they reached the street, and just as though the
others had spoken their thoughts aloud.  "Still, we might as well test
it and see.  Wish something.  Any old dumb thing."

"All right, I wish I had four noses," said Jane.

Everyone looked.  But the usual slightly snub one remained the only
feature in the middle of the face of Jane.

"That settles that," said Mark.  "Good-by, charm."  But his voice was
quite cheerful.

"I guess it just came to make us happy," said Katharine.  "And now we
are!"

"Weren't we happy before?" asked Martha.

"Oh, sure, in a kind of way," said Mark.  "The way some people are
happy and some people are unhappy because they're born that way.  But
there were a lot of things we wanted changed, and now they're going to
be!"

"No more Miss Bick!" said Katharine.

"Summers in the country," said Jane, "and a practically perfect
stepfather!  You know," she added, feeling suddenly rather wonderful,
"it looks as if _we_ got our heart's desire, too!"

But all the same, she didn't throw the old, used-up charm away.  As
they hurried to catch up with their mother and Mr. Smith, she stopped
long enough to put it away carefully in her handbag.

She would keep it a while longer, just in case.




8.  How It Began Again

And it turned out there was one more wish, after all.

The last wish was Jane's alone, and she never really knew she made it.

That night, as she was getting undressed, she found the charm in her
pocket, and sat on the bed looking at it for a long time, and pondering
the mystery of how it had come into their hands, and why.

And from that she went on to thinking about their mother's being
married, and the changes it would bring into their lives.

She was quite contented about everything.  But because she was the only
one of the four children who remembered their father, she would have
been more contented still if she could have felt sure that he knew
about what was going to happen, and approved of it.

It had been a full day, and she was ready for sleep.  Already her eyes
had begun to close of their own accord.  But as she put out the light
and tucked the charm absentmindedly under her pillow, her last waking
thought was that she wished her father were with her now, so she'd know
how he felt about things.

She wasn't worrying about the charm, or working out the right
fractions, as she wished it.  But because there was still this one
small corner in Jane that wasn't completely happy, the charm relented,
and thawed out of its icy used-upness, and granted the wish, according
to its well-known fashion.  Immediately her father was _half_ there.

He was there like a thought in her mind, assuring her that everything
was all right, and exactly as he would want it, and that he was happy
in their happiness.

And a wonderful feeling of peace filled the heart of Jane, and she went
to sleep with a smile on her face.

In the morning she'd forgotten all about the wish.  She knew only that
the sun was yellow and warm, and the sky was blue, and a golden future
lay ahead, and all was right with the world.

She found the charm under her pillow when she was making her bed, and
put it in the top bureau drawer, reminding herself to consult with the
others later about what to do with it.

But the next days were so full, what with plans for the wedding, that
Jane never did get around to consulting.

And at last the wedding day came, and happy was the bride the sun shone
on, and happy, too, were the four children.  And after their mother and
Mr. Smith had been pronounced man and wife, Mr. Smith shook hands all
round, and their mother kissed them, and then off the two of them went
for a week's honeymoon, and Miss Bick came and stayed with the children
for the last time, and had her will with them for seven days, and
biffed and banged and cleaned and complained until life became a mere
burden, but there was always the comforting thought that at the end of
the seven days lay freedom.

And the seven days finally were over, and their mother and Mr. Smith
returned, and the four children sang "Good-by forever!" out of the
upstairs windows as Miss Bick took her departure for the last time.

And it was then that their mother told them that Mr. Smith had taken a
house on a lake for the rest of the summer, where it was real country
all around, and yet it was near enough for him to drive in to the
bookshop every day.

So from then on all was bustle and squeak, in the words of Katharine,
and if the children weren't being taken downtown to buy bathing suits
and camera film and badminton birds and beach balls, they were walking
to the library and choosing vacation reading or packing their nice
shabby old suitcases and the nicer new ones Mr. Smith had bought them.

And it wasn't until the morning of the day before they were to leave
that Jane got around to cleaning out her top bureau drawer, and found
the charm again.

Immediately she summoned a Council.

"Do you suppose we ought to keep it forever, sort of In Memoriam?" she
wondered.

"Put it in the curio cabinet with the other objects of art," said
Katharine, giggling.

"Maybe we ought to try it again," said Martha.  "Maybe it was just
tired before, and now it's had a nice rest!"

"Huh-uh."  Mark shook his head.  "That last wish was the end.  You
could tell."

And the others had to agree that you could.  But Martha still wasn't
pacified.

"What about this, then?" she said.  "It's used up for us, but how do we
know it wouldn't still be perfectly good for other people?"

This was a thrilling idea.

"Sure," said Mark.  "It stands to reason.  It's come down through
centuries with its magic unscathed--it'd take more than four paltry
children to make it bite the dust!"

Jane nodded excitedly.  "You mean now we pass it on to somebody else!"

"Anybody we know?" Katharine wondered.

"We could go round being sort of fairy godmothers and granting wishes,"
said Martha.

Mark shook his head

"That's no good.  We'd just get so we wanted to tell everybody what to
wish.  It'd be sort of like trying to have the charm all over again,
secondhand.  I think that would be kind of against the rules.  It came
to us out of the unknown, and I think that's where it ought to go
again.  I think we ought to let some utter stranger find it, and then
put it out of our minds forever."

And the others had to agree that this _did_ seem like the kind of noble
conduct the charm would expect of them.

So it was with feelings of crusader-like righteousness that, five
minutes later, the four children got off a street car in a part of town
they didn't know at all, and stood looking around them.

Lots of people walked past, but they were all grown ups.

"And I think it has to be a child," said Mark.  "Most grown ups
wouldn't understand, unless they're wonderful ones like Mr. Smith, and
you don't find types like him on every street corner."

At last they saw a little girl heading their way.  The little girl had
a baby with her.  The baby was very young and fat, and just learning to
walk, and was exceedingly slow about it.  As the little girl came
nearer, the four children could see that her face, while pleasant, was
tired and pale.

"She looks as if she could do with some happiness," said Katharine.

The others nodded.

So Jane dropped the charm on the sidewalk, in a place where it would
glint in the sun and attract attention, and she and Mark and Katharine
and Martha hid behind a rather scraggly privet hedge nearby, and waited.

"Oh, come along, Baby.  Hurry up!" they heard the little girl saying.
But Baby wouldn't be hurried.  It walked even slower, putting each foot
down carefully and then looking at it to be sure that it landed on
solid ground.  And the third time it looked down it saw the glint of
the charm.

Before the horrified gaze of the four children, the baby picked the
charm up clumsily, and looked at it.  Then the worst happened.  It put
the charm in its mouth and swallowed.

Behind the hedge everyone gasped.

"Is it lost forever, do you think, or will it come up again?" asked
Martha.

"It's a long red lane that has no turning," remarked Katharine.

"Now I suppose the _baby_'ll get a wish," said Martha.  "What do you
suppose it'll be?"

"Probably something horrible," said Jane, "and nobody'll know or be
able to help it because it can't talk and tell them!"

"Don't worry," said Mark.  "It'll probably just be about Pablum or
something."

And it wasn't the baby who got the wish, after all.  For now the weary
little girl, growing tired of walking so slowly, picked the baby up and
began to carry it.

"Oh dear, Baby," she said.  "I wish you didn't weigh so much.  I wish
you didn't weigh anything at all."

And because she was holding the baby who held the charm, right away the
magic began to begin again.

Of course if she'd got her wish whole, the baby would have left the
earth and gone shooting off into space.  As it was, the charm did its
usual trick, and immediately the baby weighed half as little as nothing
at all, which is still very little.  It left the girl's arms, bounced
up toward the sky, then floated gently earthward like a piece of
thistledown.

The little girl caught it, but it went bouncing up again.  The little
girl began to cry.

"Shall we tell her?" said Katharine.

"Wait," said Mark.

They waited.  And the bouncing did its work.  The third time the little
girl caught the baby, something shiny flew out of its mouth and landed
clinking on the sidewalk.  The little girl saw the shine and heard the
clink.  She put the baby down, and ran to pick up the charm.

She stood looking at it.  Then she looked back at the baby, who had
ceased to bounce and was sitting on the sidewalk with its thumb in its
mouth.

And then, plain as day, the four children could see the little girl
beginning to think, and to put two and two together.  A look of wild
wonder and excitement came over her face, the look of one who is about
to make a magic wish.

And it was then that Mark, ever strong-minded, dragged the others away.

"Oughtn't we to tell her the secret?" said Jane.  "About saying two
times everything?"

"Nobody told us, did they?" said Mark.  "I don't think anyone's
supposed to."

He wouldn't even let the others look back as they boarded the street
car.

"You never know--we might be turned into pillars of salt or something,"
he said.  "I don't think we're supposed to know anything about it.
Something tells me."

"At least we know she'll be happy in the end," said Katharine.

But Martha couldn't help wanting to know what was happening right now.
When Mark wasn't watching her, she turned and looked.

The little girl and the baby had vanished, on what wild errand of
adventure Martha could only guess.  But she would never know.  She
would be left to wonder all the rest of her life.

And she wondered something else, too.  After they'd ridden a few
blocks, she put it into words.

"Do you suppose we'll ever have any more magic adventures?" she said.
"Oh, maybe not big ones like these, but any at all?  Just nice little
safe ones, maybe?"

"I wonder," said Jane.

Mark and Katharine didn't say anything, but they were wondering, too.

But it was a long time before the four children knew the answer.






[End of Half Magic, by Edward Eager]
