Authors: Edward Eager
The Well-Wishers
Look for more of Edward Eager's tales of magic in Odyssey Classics editions
Copyright © 1960 by Harcourt, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1988 by Jane Eager
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First Harcourt Young Classics edition 1999
First Odyssey Classics edition 1990
First published 1960
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eager, Edward.
The well-wishers/by Edward Eager; illustrated by N. M. Bodecker.
p. cm.
"An Odyssey/Harcourt Young Classic."
Sequel to: Magic or not?
Summary: James, Laura, and Deborah, along with their friends Kip, Lydia, and
Gordy, relate their experiences when the unpredictable old wishing well in the
backyard continues to involve them in a variety of magical adventures.
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Wishes—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.]
I. Bodecker, N. M., ill. II. Title.
PZ7.E115We 1999
[Fic]—dc21 99-22564
ISBN 978-0-15-202071-2 ISBN 978-0-15-202072-9 (pb)
Printed in the United States of America
MV C E G H F D B
MV I K M O P N L J H
(pb)
1. James BeginsFor all my friends and relations
named Stephen and Michael
I know people who say they can read any kind of book except an "I" book, and sometimes I think I agree with them. When I say "I" books, I mean the kind where somebody tells the story, and it starts out, "Little did I think when I first saw the red house how large it would loom in my life." And later on, the person sees a sinister stranger digging a grave in the garden and he says, "If I had only remembered to telephone the police next morning, seven murders might have been averted."
Laura and I often run into books like that, and Laura always says she holds the people who tell those stories in utter contempt, which is her way of saying they give her a pain. If we saw a sinister stranger digging a grave in our garden, we would remember to telephone the police, all right. And when we first saw
our
red house, we
knew
how large it would loom.
Laura is my sister, and not bad as sisters go. Sometimes she has quite sound ideas.
One of her ideas was that we should tell the story this way, "I" book or not. Because the things that happened that winter happened to six of us (not counting parents), and the way they happened was different for each person. The way we felt about it was different for each person, too. So it is only right that each one should tell his part.
Laura says I should begin the whole thing because I have a well-organized mind. I am not boasting. That about my mind is what Mrs. Van Nest said one day. Mrs. Van Nest is our teacher, and sometimes her ideas are quite sound, too. She lets us do book reports on any book we like, and it doesn't have to be on the list.
So I am beginning this story, and after that each one will tell what happened to him or her, as the case may be, and each one will tell it in his own way. Only we have made one rule, which is not to tell about the days when nothing happened, because who would want to read about them? And another rule is not to put in things that don't mean anything and are just there to try to make it more exciting. Like saying, "There I stood, my heart beating." Naturally your heart would be beating. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing there; you'd be lying down dead.
But we are going to stick to the facts.
The first important fact about me is that my name is James Alexander Martin and I am in grade six-one-A, Mrs. Van Nest's homeroom. Kip and Laura and Lydia are all in my class, too, but Gordy is in six-one-B and has to have Miss Wilson. Wow, do I pity him!
We try to be specially kind to Gordy, for that and other reasons, but sometimes we forget. Gordy is not a person who makes it easy for other people always to remember. Sometimes we have to be firm with him for his own good, but we try never to stoop to physical violence. Physical violence never solved anything in the world, we all realize. But sometimes with Gordy we forget that, too, or at least Kip and I do. Girls are soft.
If you wonder why Laura and I are in the same class in school, it is because we are the same age, being twins. But we do not look alike, or think alike, either, particularly about the magic, only that comes later.
As for my other sister Deborah, she is a mere babe, just starting the first grade, and by rights she shouldn't come into this story at all. But rights have never meant a great deal to Deborah.
The story I'm talking about began one day in fall.
Of course it really began long before that, way back at the beginning of the summer, when Laura and I and our family first moved into the red house on Silvermine Road. Before that we lived in New York City.
The red house has a well in the garden, and the day we moved in a girl called Lydia Green, who lives in a funny big old place up the road, told us that it was a wishing well. Of course I knew better than to believe that. But Laura would believe anything, or try to.
Still, some very strange things did happen that summer. A lot of quite good wishes came true and some pretty keen good turns got done. That was the way the well was supposed to work. Selfish wishes didn't mean a thing to it.
We got our heart's desire in the end, too, just like in that book
The Wonderful Garden
by E. Nesbit that Laura is so crazy about. It is not a bad book, by the way. A boy runs away and so does a tiger, and a portrait comes to life. The ending is nifty, if you're young enough to believe in magic.
I'm not sure whether I am young enough or not. Mostly I think not. Magic doesn't seem at all like the kind of thing that
would
be true, when you come to think of it. Still, neither do airplanes and electric lights and outer space, when you come to think of
them.
And it's hard to explain the things that happened that summer any other way. Or the things that have been happening since, either. Of course it may all be a coincidence, the way Kip keeps saying.
Kip is a boy called Christopher, only he never is. Never is called that, I mean. He lives on our road, too, across from Lydia. He is a good kid, and just about my best friend, I guess.
He and Lydia and Laura and I were in on the magic (if that's what it was) from the beginning. Gordy didn't come into it till later in the summer. We didn't
ask
him in exactly, but once he was there, we didn't mind. Sometimes his ideas are every bit as sound as ours. All he needs is to be curbed once in a while, and shoved back on the right road. He is the victim of an unfortunate environment. His mother is rich. His full name is Gordon'T. Witherspoon III.
When we first made the wish about our heart's desire, we weren't quite sure what our heart's desire was, but when we got it, we knew. What it turned out to be was a little old house in the woods, all our own, to have for our secret clubhouse. How we found the house in the first place, and what we found in it, and exactly how it got to be ours is another story, and if you want to read that story, you will have to get a book called
Magic or Not?
that tells all about it. But we did not write that book ourselves; so it does not have all our thoughts in it, the way this book will.
The part about the heart's desire came right at the end of the summer, and after that the magic (if it
was
magic) seemed to be played out. At least we made quite a few perfectly good wishes on the well and they never came true, no matter how noble. That was all right with me, if that was how the well wanted things to end. But the girls said it was probably just resting and would start up again one day when we least expected it. You never can tell with magic. Or not, as the case may be.
And then suddenly it was fall, and for Laura and me there was a new school to get used to, and learning a new teacher's ways and how to circumscribe them, if that is the word I mean, and that took up all our thoughts, for a while.
Football season began, too; so Kip and I were mainly too busy to bother with girls. I play end, but not very often, being light though rangy. Baseball is my game.
Laura and Lydia do not understand the true importance of football, or baseball either, but that is their female folly. As you grow older, the sexes grow farther and farther apart, I find. It is all part of maturing.
Still, the old group did find time to meet now and then in the house in the woods and have secret conclaves, though there wasn't very much to conclave
for
, now that the magic was a thing of the past.
Maybe that's how we got into the habit of leaving Gordy out; so we'd have something to be secret about. We even had a mysterious secret sign. When it seemed like a good day for a meeting, one of us would hold up one finger, or two, along toward the end of last period. One if all five, two if without Gordy. Lately it was getting to be two most of the time.
Sometimes Gordy would come into the woods looking for us, but when he found us in the secret clubhouse without him, he never seemed to bear any grudge. That is one of the good things about Gordy.
We were always sorry afterward when this happened, and the fact that Gordy didn't seem to get hurt or mad at us made us feel sorrier. You would think that would make us be nicer to him from then on, but it didn't. The sorrier we felt each time, the more we went on leaving him out the next. That is the way people are. I do not think this is right, but it is true all the same. Though unfortunate.
This particular day Kip had held up two fingers just as the last bell rang, and we had all nodded, and when we marched out, everybody but Lydia got away quick without being spotted by the enemy. And Lydia crossed her fingers and told Gordy she had to go to the dentist. Which was not a lie really, because she
did
have to go. Only not that day.
So now there we all were (except you know whom) sitting on the front stoop of the secret house, because it was getting to be late September and the rooms inside were cold. But in front, the woods have been cut away to let the sun through.
Lydia had a pencil in her hand and a sketchbook in her lap, the way she does all the time now that she knows she has talent. It is wonderful how learning that she has talent has changed that girl. Maybe learning to make friends has had something to do with it, too. When we first met her, she was plain ornery, always doing crazy things just to be different, and quarreling with everybody. She is still ornery once in a while, and she and I still argue some. But she is a good kid, for a girl.