ted you to tell us all about some of the old buildings and the
interesting stories about the people who lived in them," said Betty,
"but it's so late now that I don't believe there's time. We have to be
back at Glenmore at five."

"Then sit right down here on my garden-seat and I'll tell you the
shortest tale I know, and some other day if you come when you have more
time I'll tell you more."

"Oh, that will be fine!" they cried, as with one voice.

"How would you like to hear about the wishing-well?"

"That sounds _great_!" declared Betty and then: "Could you begin it with
'Once upon a time?'"

"Surely," was the quick response, "and now I think of it, I'm sure you
must have passed the old wishing-well on your way here. The old well was
supposed to have magic power, and long ago when the old Paxton House was
standing, people came, for miles around, to be near the old well in the
garden, and wish for their heart's desire, feeling sure that their wish
would be granted.

"Of course the idea was absurd, but the townspeople of those days were
superstitious, so that if those things that they wished for beside the
well never came to them, they thought that they must have forgotten to
ask for them in the right way, and later they would try again.

"If they obtained the thing that they had wished for, they laid their
good fortune entirely to the fact that the old well must have approved
of them."

"And where is it!" Valerie asked. "You said that we must have passed
it."

"The old well has a flat wooden cover over it now, with an iron bar to
keep it in place, lest some one be careless and fall in, though now the
wild blackberry vines have nearly hidden it from sight. Even now when
only young leaves are on the brambles, the thorny stems make a network
over the cover. The old Paxton House was gone before my time," Mrs.
Derby said, "but a part of its fine wall remains. It was upon that wall
that the wishers sat.

"Did you happen to notice a fine piece of wall that seemed to belong to
no one at all, and ended in a broad field?"

"The idea!" cried Betty. "Why we _sat_ on that piece of wall, and could
have 'wished' just as well as not, if only we'd known it."

"And it's almost half-past four now," said Valerie. "S'pose we run along
toward Glenmore, and stop just long enough to sit on the wall and wish.
We can be on time at five, if we do that. Then we could come over some
day when we've more time, and hear all about the w