for her. He had never come
back, and she feared that he too was dead. Pet did not know these
things, of course, until she had formed her wish and was living in the
old woman.

This was the saddest existence that Pet had experienced yet, and she
felt very anxious for the month to pass away. After the happiness she
had enjoyed in Silver-country, the excessive hardship and loneliness of
the old woman's life seemed very hard to bear. All day long she wandered
about the woods, picking up sticks and tying them in little bundles,
and, perhaps, in the end she would only receive a penny for the work of
her day. Some days she could not leave her hut, and would lie there
alone without anything to eat.

"Oh, my son, my dear son!" she would cry, "where are you now, and will
you ever come back to me?"

Pet watched her clock very eagerly, longing for the month to come to an
end; but the clock still kept going and going, as if it never meant to
stop. For a good while Pet thought that it was only because of her
unhappiness and impatience that the time seemed so long, but at last she
discovered to her horror that her key was lost!

All her searches for it proved vain. It was quite evident that the key
must have dropped through a hole in the old woman's tattered pocket, and
fallen somewhere among the heaps of dried leaves, or into the wilderness
of the brushwood of the forest.

"Tick, tick! tick, tick!" went that unmerciful clock from its perch on
the wall, all through the long days and nights, and poor Pet was in
despair at the thought of living locked up in the old woman all her
life. Now, indeed, she could groan most heartily when the old woman
groaned, and shed bitter tears which rolled plentifully down the old
woman's wrinkled cheeks and over her nose.

"Oh, Time, Time, my friend!" she thought, "will you not come to my
assistance?"

But though Time fully intended to stand her friend all through her
troubles, still he did not choose to help her at that particular moment.
And so days, weeks and months went past; and then the years began to go
over, and Pet was still locked up in the miserable old woman.

Seven years had passed away and Pet had become in some degree reconciled
to her sorrowful existence. She wandered about the forest picking up her
sticks, and trying to cheer herself up a little by gathering bouquets of
the pretty forest flowers. People passing by often saw the sad figure,
all in gray hair and tatters, sitting