Chapter I

The Wishing Post grows right out of the ground at the Top of the World. Some very wise men with bald heads and long white beards say it isn’t a Wishing Post at all, and call it the North Pole, but Maida knows more about it than they do for she has been there and they haven’t. She really and truly went there in a flying ship, and I can’t begin to tell you all that she saw and all that she did, but I will try and remember as much as I can.

If you doubt my story ask Maida herself. She is a dear little girl, just nine, with curly brown hair and deep blue eyes, and she lives in a big house with papa and mama and Aunt Mary. If you want to find her go to Central Park and turn to the left. Maida’s house is the third from the corner. I don’t just remember the number, and I’ve forgotten the street, but as she nearly always wears a red dress and you know how she looks, you can easily find her.

All the trouble began because Maida was such a little girl. She was just big enough to know how little she was, and she didn’t like being a little girl at all. She wanted to be grown up. She told me so herself. She had reasons, too, oh so many. To begin with, there was ICE-CREAM. Maida loved ICE-CREAM. She could never get enough. (Perhaps you can never get enough, so you know just how she felt.) And she could eat and eat and eat, and ICE-CREAM never hurt her. On this point she differed with papa and mama.

Once she awoke in the night with a most burning feeling right in her tummy, and had to drink all sorts of horrid medicine before she felt better. But she could not convince mama and papa it was the brown bread and baked beans she had eaten two days before. They insisted it was three plates of ice-cream for supper. Grown-ups are so silly sometimes.

Then there was bedtime. Maida hated to go off to bed as soon as supper was over and leave everyone else up having a good time. Just at dusk when the flames in the fireplace began to dance and glitter and flash--and she could see castles and trees and mountains in the coals--SOMEBODY with a white cap and apron would snatch her up and carry her off to a little pink and white room and plump her into a pink and white bed--when she wasn’t a bit sleepy. Maida often meant to rebel at such treatment, but somehow when she cuddled up in the pink and white bed and finished yawning, she overlooked it, and the next thing--it would be morning.

Still this ruffled her dignity every time it happened--as if she were sleepy, and didn’t know it, and she realized--just as you do--that it was because she was a little girl; for grown-ups can stay awake as long as they like.

Then there were the clothes. Maida wore dresses which reached only to her knees, and plain little petticoats, while her shoes were so strong and tough--oh, you’ll never believe what tough shoes they were unless you wear the same kind. It was almost impossible to kick holes in them. Then her hair was done in a braid and she had to wear a pinafore--oh, I can’t tell you how badly Maida felt about her clothes--especially when she looked at Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary wore fluffy dresses all hangy and traily, and the sweetest slippers with great high heels, and her hair was puffed out all over her head--oh, it was simply beautiful.

And Aunt Mary read lovely books too, all about lords and ladies, while all of Maida’s books were about, Where is Peru? and, How many is six times eight? Poor Maida, she had so many troubles--but you understand, don’t you? So she wished and wished with all her heart that she were a really grown-up; that she could read those lovely books and have her hair fuzzed all over her head--that she could wear those traily, hangy gowns, and stay up nights, and never, _never_, NEVER have to eat anything but ICE-CREAM.