Chapter XXIV
It was Jack-in-the-Box who did it—her chum and playmate, Jack-in-the-Box, who had seen the wonderful change with great sorrow, and who first heard her cry for her childhood. With one bound he reached the Wishing Post, and presto!—she was a little girl again.
Oh, how good it seemed! She felt so much at home. Her clothes just suited her, she knew Santa Claus, she liked Billy, she loved her playmate, Kokomo—oh, she was so happy, so happy.
“It’s awful being grown up,” she sobbed, clinging to Billy. “I’ll want years and years to even get used to thinking about it.”
“You’ll have years and years,” replied Santa Claus drily, and they all sat down to talk it over.
None of them saw the White Lady steal into the Square. None of them saw her approach the Wishing Post and make a wish. But she did. “I wish,” she said softly—and a beautiful light shone from her eyes, “I wish to be as warm as he who sought me from the South.” So, of course, she had her wish, and joined the others to tell them of her good fortune.
While they were discussing this, the Disconsolate Lover ran across the Square, and—well you can never guess the wish he made. “I wish,” said he—“to be as cold and icy as she I came North to seek.”
So when the White Lady saw him and took his hand she nearly froze to death—for they two had simply changed places. They were as badly off as ever, and not another wish to be had during the year. So the White Lady sat and wept, and the Disconsolate Lover comforted her as well as he could—from a distance.
Now the Queen Aurora Borealis had been going about the Square in a fearfully bad temper, working the red light overtime and scolding her minions because the Man with the Growly Voice got away. But as she grew calmer she recollected her errand to the Wishing Post. She meant to wish for her beauty. Just as she drew near the Post, however, she saw Kankakee with his arm around little Kokomo, about to make a wish.
“I shall go back to my own people,” he said. “I wish”—but Aurora was too quick for him.
“I wish you not to have your wish,” she snapped. So, of course, he didn’t, and there he stood with poor little Kokomo, both of them looking very foolish.
“Thought you’d get away, eh?” sneered Aurora. “Thought you’d escape. Well, I’m not done with you yet, my gay and festive Eskimo Chief, and I will attend to your case after I have recovered my beauty, which I will now proceed to do. I wish—to have all my beauty back.”
Then she smirked at the minions and said, “Has it happened?” The expression on their faces told her it had not, and a glance at the mirror which she still carried assured her of it.
“What’s the matter with this thing?” she shouted angrily pointing at the Wishing Post.
“Only one wish during each year, your Majesty,” timidly replied a minion, kneeling at her feet.
My goodness, how she raged!—and how the red light played! Suddenly her eye lit on Maida and a new idea came to her. “That child is a witch!” she screamed. “She has stolen my beauty. If she does not return it, I’ll have her condemned to the Icebergs for life.” (That is just the same as prison for life down here.) “Give me back my angel face,” she howled; “give me back my willowy form.”
Maida shrank away in terror, and Kokomo approached the Queen to try and pacify her. But as soon as Aurora saw Kokomo (and Kokomo was really pretty you know) she screamed, “You’ve got some of my beauty, too! I’ll have you fed to the Walrus ‘à la Newburg.’”
At this dreadful threat Kokomo began to whimper while the minions started to laugh at her distress. The more she grieved the louder they laughed; and Aurora looked so funny and so odd, that despite their anxiety for Kokomo, and their fear about their own plight, all Maida’s friends, and Maida, too, began to laugh at the Queen.
Kokomo, meanwhile, grew very angry. “I wish you would all laugh and laugh and never stop,” she said. Then they couldn’t stop laughing—any of them—because it was a wish. They just laughed and laughed and laughed.
“I’ll have you all fed to the Walrus,” threatened Aurora between her gasps for breath.
“I shall never see my home again,” laughed Kankakee.
“I think she’ll have us all killed,” giggled Billy, while the White Lady tittered, “Good-bye forever,” to the Disconsolate Lover.
No matter what they said or how they felt—whether angry or sorry or afraid—they just had to laugh.
Suddenly a great bell tolled on the top of a tower nearby, and an old man appeared who shouted in a sing-song voice: “It is now the New Year. Every one is entitled to one wish.”
Maida started. The New Year! She could have one wish.
Everybody was rushing toward the Wishing Post, but she was nearest, and she reached it first.
“I wish everything was just as it used to be and I was at home,” she cried.
And she was!