the fairy-tale book which was faithfully remembered even on that shadowed day which found Glen nineteen years and one day old.

[114]

“Say, Glen,” the child wanted to know a week later, “have yo’all got a Wishin’ Cyarpet?”

“No, Glory! What made you think of that?”

“Why”—she was a little shy about it—“yo’all live in sech a sweet-pretty house an’ wear sech sweet-pretty cloze, an’ do jes’ whatsoever yo’ wishful to do!”

Glen laughed. Her clothes were of the plainest, and she had no illusions about the hideous house her mother had hated. “No, Glory, dear,” she shook her head, “I have no Wishing Carpet.” But no sooner had she said it than a six-year-old memory flashed before her—her question, and her mother’s answer—her pale and plaintive mother, her frail, frustrated mother who weakly wished for things she knew she could never have....

“Glory,” she said, after a thoughtful moment, watching the small wizened face brighten again, “I forgot! There is a rug I used to think was a Wishing Carpet! Of course, it isn’t really, but when I was little, I used to pretend—and even my mother made believe about it.”

Gloriana-Virginia clasped her unpleasant little[115] claws in rapture. “Oh, Glen! Would yo’all lemme see hit jes’ once? I promise, cross my heart, to be so keerful not to dirty hit!”

[115]

She went home with Glen that night, and halted in breathless and worshipful admiration at the door of the ugly sitting room, her gaze roaming impartially over the glistening golden oak and offensive carpets but coming to rest on the small, patrician rug. “I know in time hit’s jes’ pintly erbleeged to be a Wishin’ Cyarpet!” she murmured, round-eyed. She dropped to her knees and crept close to it. “I wouldn’t go fo’ to tech hit ... hit’s so sweet-pretty an’ hahn’-sum ... but I kin remember hit. An’ some day, when I git me somep’n moughty big’n fine to wish fo’, why, yo’ll lemme come hyar an’ wish on hit, won’t yo’, Glen, honey-heart?”

After she had pattered down the hill her friend stood still, looking at the small section of beauty in her unbeautiful home. “I wish,” she thought rebelliously, “that I could make the rest of the house match it!” And then, quite suddenly and surprisingly, came the determination to do it, and with it a thrill of eagerness and 

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