iggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad
knees.

"I name everything on this side--no one from Wayside ever comes
this way, you see. I've played here since I was ever so little. I've
always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." She leveled
serious eyes upon him. "They _must_! You know it's _magic_ the way
things--_are_--here!"

John Westley nodded. "I understand--you climb and you think you're on
top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think
you're in the valley and you come out on a spot--like this--with all the
world below you still."

"Mustn't it have been _fun_ to make it all?" Jerry's eyes gleamed. "And
such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are _so_ different!
And the woodsy glens and ravines--they're so mysterious. I've heard the
trees talk! And the brooks--why, they _can't_ be just nothing but
brooks, they're so--so--_alive_!"

"Oh, yes," John Westley was plainly convinced. "Fairies _must_ live in
the mountains!"

"Of course I know now--I'm fourteen--that there are no such things as
fairies but it's fun to pretend. But I still call this my Wishing-rock
and I come here and stand on it and wish--only there aren't so awfully
many things to wish for that you don't just ask Little-Dad for--big
things, you know."

"Miss Jerry, you were wishing when I--arrived!"

She colored. "I was. Little-Dad says I ought to be a very happy girl and
I am, but I guess everybody always has something real _big_ that they
think they want more than anything else."

John Westley inclined his head gravely. "I guess everybody does, Jerry.
I think that's what keeps us going on in the race. Does it spoil your
wish--to tell about it?"

"Oh, my, yes!" Then she laughed. "Only I suppose it couldn't because
there aren't really fairies."

"What _were_ you wishing?" He asked it coaxingly, in his eyes a deep
interest.

She hesitated, her dark eyes dreaming. "That I could just go on
along that shining white road--down there--around and around to--the
other side of the mountain!" She rose up on her knees and stretched
a bare arm down toward the valley. "I've always wished it since
the days when Little-Dad used to ride that way and leave me home
because it was too far. I know that everything that's the other
side of the mountain is--oh, lots _different_ from Miller's Notch
and--school--and--Sunnyside--and Kettle." Her voice was plaintively
wistful, her eyes shining. "I _