The farm had gone to ruin. On every side the pastures were filled with a
rank growth of thistles and other thorn-bearing flora. The farm
buildings had fallen into a condition of hopeless disrepair, and the old
house, the ancestral home of the Wilbrahams, had become a place of
appalling desolation. The roof had been patched and repatched for
decades, and now fulfilled none of the ideals of its roofhood save that
of antiquity. There was not, as far as the eye could see, a single whole
pane of glass in any one of the many windows of the mansion, and there
were not wanting those in the community who were willing to prophesy
that in a stiff gale--such as used to be prevalent in that section of
the world, and within the recollection of some of the old settlers
too--the chimneys, once the pride of the county, would totter and fall,
bringing the whole mansion down into chaos and ruin. In short, the
one-time model farm of the Wilbrahams had become a by-word and a jest
and, as some said, of no earthly use save for the particular purposes of
the eccentric artist in search of picturesque subject-matter for his
studies in oil.
[Illustration: WITHIN THE ANCIENT HOUSE SAT THE OWNER, RICHARD
WILBRAHAM]
It was a wild night, and within the ancient house sat the owner, Richard
Wilbraham, his wife not far away, trying to find room upon her husband's
last remaining pair of socks to darn them. Wilbraham gazed silently into
the glowing embers on the hearth before them, the stillness of the
evening broken only by the hissing of the logs on the andirons and an
occasional sigh from one of the watchers.
Finally the woman spoke.
"When does the mortgage fall due, Richard?" she asked, moving uneasily
in her chair.
"To-morrow," gulped the man, the word seeming to catch in his throat and
choke him.
"And you--you are sure Colonel Digby will not renew it?" she queried.
"He even declines to discuss the matter," said Wilbraham. "He contents
himself with shaking it in my face every time I approach his office,
while he tells his office-boy to escort me to the door. I don't believe
in signs, Ethelinda, but I do believe that that is an omen that if the
money is not forthcoming at noon to-morrow you and I will be roofless by
this time to-morrow night."
The woman shuddered.
"But, Richard," she protested, "you--you had put by the money to pay
it long ago. What has become of it?"
"Gone, Ethelinda--gone in that ill-advised egg deal I tried to put
through two years ago," sighed Wilbraham, as he buried his face in his
hands to hide his grief and mortification. "I sold eggs short," he
added. "You remember when that first batch of incubator hens began
laying so prolifically--it seemed to me as though Fortune stared me in
the face--nay, held out her hands to me and bade me welcome to a share
in her vast estates. There was a great shortage of eggs in the market
that year, and I went to New York and sold them by the dozens--hundreds
of dozens--thousands of dozens--"
He rose up from his chair and paced the floor in an ecstasy of
agitation. "I sold eggs by the million, Ethelinda," he went on, by a
great effort regaining control of himself. "Eggs to be laid by hens
whose great-great-great-grandmothers had yet to be hatched from eggs
yet unlaid by unborn chickens."
Wilbraham's voice sank to a hoarse, guttural whisper.
"And the deliveries have bankrupted me," he muttered. "The price of eggs
has risen steadily for the past eighteen months, and yesterday a hundred
thousand of January, strictly fresh, that I had to buy in the open
market in order to fill my contracts, cost me not only my last penny,
but were in part paid for with a sixty-day note that I cannot hope to
meet. In other words, Ethelinda, we are ruined."
The woman made a brave struggle to be strong, but the strain was too
much for her tired nerves and she broke down and wept bitterly.
"We have but four hens left," Wilbraham went on, speaking in a hollow
voice. "At most, working them to their full capacity, in thirty days
from now we shall have only ten dozen eggs added to our present store,
and upon that date I have promised to deliver to the International Cold
Storage Company one thousand dozen at twenty-two and a half cents a
dozen. Even with the mortgage out of the way we should still be securely
bound in the clutch of bankruptcy."
A long silence ensued. The clock out in the hall ticked loudly, each
clicking sound falling upon Wilbraham's ears like a sledge-hammer blow
in a forge, welding link by link a chain of ruin that should forever
bind him in the shackles of misery. Unbroken save by the banging now and
then of a shutter in the howling wind without, the silence continued for
nearly an hour, when the nerve-killing monotony of the ceaseless
"tick-tock, tick-tock" of the clock was varied by a resounding hammering
upon the door.
"It is very late," said the woman. "Who do you suppose can be calling at
this hour? Be careful when you open the door--it may be a highwayman."
"I should welcome a highwayman if he could help me to find anything in
the house worth stealing," said Wilbraham, as he rose from his chair and
started for the door. "Whoever it may be, it is a wild night, and
despite our poverty we can still keep open house for the stranger on the
moor."
He hastened to the door and flung it wide.
"Who's there?" he cried, gazing out into the blackness of the storm.
A heavy gust of wind, icy cold, blew out his candle, and a great mass of
sleet coming in with it fell with a dull, sodden thud on the floor at
his feet, and some of it cut his cheek.
"I am a wanderer," came a faint voice from without, "frozen and starved.
In the name of humanity I beg you to take me in, lest I faint and
perish."
"Come in, come in!" cried Wilbraham. "Whoever you are, you are more than
welcome to that which is left us; little enough in all conscience."
An aged man, bent and weary, staggered in through the door. Wilbraham
sprang toward him and caught his fainting form in his strong arms.
Tenderly he led him to his own abandoned chair by the fireside, where he
and his faithful wife chafed the old fellow's hands until warmth had
returned to them.
"A cup of tea, my dear," said Wilbraham. "It will set him up."
"And a morsel to eat, I implore you," pleaded the stranger, in a weak,
tremulous voice. "The merest trifle, good sir, even if it be only an
egg!"
The woman grew rigid at the suggestion. "An egg? At this time when eggs
are--" she began.
"There, there, Ethelinda," interrupted Wilbraham, gently. "We have two
left in the ice-box--your breakfast and mine. Rather than see this good
old man suffer longer I will gladly go without mine. The fact is, eggs
have sort of disagreed with me latterly anyhow, and--"
"It is as you say, Richard," said the woman, meekly, as with a hopeless
sigh she turned toward the kitchen, whence in a short time she returned,
bearing a steaming creation of her own make--a lustrous, golden egg,
poached, and lying invitingly upon the crisp bosom of a piece of toast.
It was a sight of beauty, and Wilbraham's mouth watered as he gazed
hungrily upon it.
And then the unexpected happened: The aged stranger, instead of
voraciously devouring the proffered meal, with a kindly glance upon his
host, raised his withered hands aloft as though to pronounce a
benediction upon him, and in a chanting tone droned forth the lines:
"Who eats this egg and toast delicious
Receives the gift of three full wishes--
Thus do the fairy folk reward
The sacrifices of this board."
A low, rumbling peal of thunder and a blinding flash as of the lightning
followed, and when the brilliant illumination of the latter had died
away the stranger had vanished.
Wilbraham looked at his wife, dumb with amazement, and she, tottering
backward into her chair, gazed back, her eyes distended with fear.
"Have I--have I been dreaming?" he gasped, recovering his speech in a
moment. "Or have we really had a visitor?"
"I was going to ask you the same question, Richard," she replied. "It
really was so very extraordinary, I can hardly believe--"
And then their eyes fell upon the steaming egg, still lying like a
beautiful sunset on a background of toast upon the table.
"The egg!" she cried, hoarsely. "It must have been true."
"Will you eat it?" asked Wilbraham, politely extending the platter in
her direction.
"Never!" she cried, shuddering. "I should not dare. It is too uncanny."
"Then I will," said Wilbraham. "If the old man spoke the truth--"
He swallowed the egg at a single gulp.
"Fine!" he murmured, in an ecstasy of gastronomic pleasure. "I wish
there were two more just like it!"
No sooner had he spoken these words than two more poached eggs, even as
he had wished, appeared upon the platter.
"Great heavens, Ethelinda!" he cried. "The wishes come true! I wish to
goodness I knew who that old duffer was."
The words had scarcely fallen from his lips when a card fluttered down
from the ceiling. Wilbraham sprang forward excitedly and caught it as it
fell. It read:
HENRY W. OBERON
Secretary, The United States Fairy Co.,
3007 Wall Street
"Henry W. Oberon, United States Fairy Company, Wall Street, eh?" he
muttered. "By Jove, I wish I knew--"
"Stop!" cried his wife, seizing him by the arm, imploringly. "Do stop,
Richard. You have used up two of your wishes already. Think what you
need most before you waste the third."
"Wise Ethelinda," he murmured, patting her gently on the hand. "Very,
very wise, and I will be careful. Let me see now.... I wish I had ... I
wish I had...."
He paused for a long time, and then his face fairly beamed with a great
light of joy.
"I wish I had three more wishes!" he cried.
Another crash of thunder shook the house to its very foundations, and a
lightning flash turned the darkness of the interior of the dwelling into
a vivid golden yellow that dazzled them, and then all went dusk again.
"Mercy!" shuddered the good wife. "I hope that was an answer to your
wish."
"It won't take long to find out," said Wilbraham. "I'll tackle a few
more natural desires right here and now, and if they come true I'll
know that that thunderbolt was a rush message from the United States
Fairy Company telling me to draw on them at sight."
"Well, don't be extravagant," his wife cautioned him.
"I'll be as extravagant as I please," he retorted. "If my fourth wish
works, Ethelinda, my address from this hour on will be Easy Street and
Treasury Avenue. I wish first then that this old farm was in Ballyhack!"
[Illustration: "BALLYHACK! LAST STATION--ALL OUT!"]
"Ballyhack! Last station--all out!" cried a hoarse voice at the door.
Wilbraham rushed to the window and peered out into what had been the
night, but had now become a picture of something worse. Great clouds of
impenetrable smoke hung over the grim stretches of a dismal-looking
country in which there seemed to be nothing but charred remnants of
ruined trees and blackened rocks, over which, in an endless line, a
weary mass of struggling plodders, men and women, toiled onward
through the grime of a hopeless environment.
"Great Scott!" he cried, in dismay, as the squalid misery of the
prospect smote upon his vision. "This is worse than Diggville. I wish to
heaven we were back again."
"Diggville! Change cars for Easy Street and Fortune Square!" cried the
hoarse voice at the door, and Wilbraham, looking out through the window
again, was rejoiced to find himself back amid familiar scenes.
"They're working all right," he said, gleefully.
"Yes," said his wife. "They seem to be and you seem to be speculating as
usual upon a narrow margin. Again you have only one wish left, having
squandered four out of the five already used."
"And why not, my dear," smiled Wilbraham, amiably, "when my next wish is
to be for six spandy new wishes straight from the factory?"
Mrs. Wilbraham's face cleared.
"Oh, splendid!" she cried, joyously. "Wish it--wish it--do hurry before
you forget."
"I do wish it--six more wishes on the half-shell!" roared Wilbraham.
As before, came the thunder and the lightning.
"Thank you!" said Wilbraham. "These fairies are mighty prompt
correspondents. I am beginning to see my way out of our difficulties,
Ethelinda," he proceeded, rubbing his hands together unctuously.
"Instead of dreading to-morrow and the maturity of that beastly old
mortgage, I wish to thunder it were here, and that the confounded thing
were paid off."
The wish, expressed impulsively, brought about the most astonishing
results. The hall clock began instantly to whirr and to wheeze, its
hands whizzing about as though upon a well-oiled pivot. The sun shot up
out of the eastern horizon as though fired from a cannon, and before the
amazed couple could realize what was going on, the village clock struck
the hour of noon, and they found themselves bowing old Colonel Digby,
the mortgage holder, out of the house, while Wilbraham himself held in
his right hand a complete satisfaction of that depressing document.
"Now," said Wilbraham, "I feel like celebrating. What would you say to a
nice little luncheon, my dear? Something simple, but good--say some
Russian caviare, Lynnhaven Bay oysters, real turtle soup, terrapin,
canvas-back duck, alligator-pear salad, and an orange brulot for two,
eh?"
"It would be fine, Richard," replied the lady, her eyes flashing with
joy, "but I don't know where we could get such a feast here. The
Diggville markets are--"
"Markets?" cried Wilbraham, contemptuously. "What have we to do with
markets from this time on? Markets are nothing to me. I merely wish that
we had that repast right here and now, ready to--"
"Luncheon is served, sir," said a tall, majestic-looking stranger,
entering from the dining-room.
"Ah! Really?" said Wilbraham. "And who the dickens are you?"
"I am the head butler of the Fairies' Union assigned to your service,
sir," replied the stranger, civilly, making a low bow to Mrs. Wilbraham.
There is no use of describing the meal. It was all there as foreshadowed
in Wilbraham's gastronomically inspired menu, and having had nothing to
eat since the night before, the fortunate couple did full justice to it.
"Before we go any further, Richard," said Mrs. Wilbraham, after the duck
had been served, "do you happen to remember how many of your last six
wishes are left?"
"No, I don't," said Wilbraham.
"Then you had better order a few more lest by the end of this charming
repast you forget," said the thoughtful woman.
"Good scheme, Ethelinda," said Wilbraham. "I'll put in a bid for a gross
right away. There is no use in piking along in small orders when you can
do a land-office business without lifting your little finger."
"And don't you think, too, dear," the woman continued, "that it would be
well for us to open a set of books--a sort of General Wish Account--so
that we shall not at any time by some unfortunate mistake overdraw our
balance?"
"Ethelinda," cried Wilbraham, his face glowing with enthusiastic
admiration, "you have, without any exception, the best business head
that ever wore a pompadour!"
Thus it began. A cash-book was purchased and in its columns, like so
many entries of mere dollars, Wilbraham entered his income in wishes,
faithfully recording on the opposite page his expenditures in the same.
The first entry of one gross was made that very night: