Chapter II

If you stand with one hand on the Wishing Post, and think hard of what you would like most in all the world, your wish comes true. Isn’t that lovely? Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But it isn’t a fairy tale at all, it’s really true. Of course those old men with the goggles and the bald heads don’t believe it. If you ask them they will tell you the North Pole is just the end of the axis of the earth, whatever _that_ may mean, and they will insist it isn’t a Wishing Post at all. Now, when they tell you this, here’s a crusher for them. Ask them how they know. Ask them if they’ve ever been there to see. Just see what they say to that. Maida has been there, and she knows all about it. To commence at the very beginning, this is how she came to make the trip.

One evening, Maida was lying on the hearth kicking her fat legs in the air and watching the Flame Folk when she heard _somebody_ (you know which one I mean--the one with the white cap and apron) coming. Now of course Maida wasn’t the least bit sleepy and she did not want to go to bed, so she slipped out of the door and down the long hall to the very end. Then she heard somebody talking--oh, such a fine voice somebody had, just like the growl of a bear--but a nice soft growl, mind you--and what the Man with the Growly Voice said must have been ever so funny, for Aunt Mary laughed and laughed. So Maida peeked. There sat Aunt Mary in one of the traily, fluffy dresses, and her pretty neck and arms looked so pink and soft, and her eyes were so bright and her cheeks were so red, that Maida envied her clear to the tips of her toes. The Man with the Growly Voice sat oh very close to Aunt Mary, and he was smiling a little and holding Aunt Mary’s hand (Aunt Mary did not seem to mind a bit), then Maida heard him say--“Name the day.”

So she went boldly in (because Aunt Mary knew it was some kind of a riddle or something and didn’t answer), and said to the Man with the Growly Voice, “How can anybody name days? There are only seven and they’re already named--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then it begins all over again.” That must have been the answer to the joke, for Aunt Mary laughed, and the Man with the Growly Voice laughed, and the first thing Maida knew she was sitting on his knee, all comfy and happy. Well, the Man with the Growly Voice was an Arctic Explorer--if you know what that means. If you don’t, I’ll tell you. It’s a man who wants to go away up North so far that his next step will start him South; and he had just come back from the land where it is always Winter.

Somehow Maida found him the nicest grown-up she had ever met, he was so interested in everything she said, and somehow when she was cuddled against his big arm, with her nose nestled against his breast it was so easy to explain that she was tired--oh, so tired of being a little girl; and tell him all her troubles.

He listened to every word and then he told her about the _Wishing Post_. He had really seen it many, many times--he had made ever so many wishes and all but one had come true and he had great hopes of _that_. He must have told Aunt Mary about the wish for she seemed so interested.

Then the Man with the Growly Voice told Maida lots and lots of other things,--not stories mind you, true tales. He had been so long in the cold North that he could only sleep in the refrigerator, and he had to eat icicles and snowballs all the time because he was used to them. Then he told her of the Eskimos; funny little tame Indians who guard the North Pole, with great white bears, so no one can steal it, and when he dined with them they gave him nothing to eat but ice-cream.

Think of it, all the little Eskimo children just eating ice-cream all day long. Maida decided she would be an Eskimo. Oh, the wonders he told her. How the seals swim in once a year with their cast-off skins and give them to the traders in return for charlotte russe and sugar-plums, and this was something Maida was glad to find out, for she never could understand how Aunt Mary could get a sealskin coat without hurting the seal, so it was quite a relief to find the seals were glad to exchange them for charlotte russe and sugar-plums. But the most wonderful thing of all was the day the Man with the Growly Voice met Santa Claus, for he did really meet him face to face. It seems the Eskimos have Christmas on the Fourth of July, so Santa Claus drove about all day in his sledge with the six reindeer, giving away presents and taking the little Eskimo children for a ride. What a happy little girl Maida was that night, for _somebody_ in a white cap and apron didn’t know where to find her, and there she was sitting up for once with the grown-ups and not a bit sleepy, not a _bit_.

She grew so intent on the wonders told her by the Man with the Growly Voice that now and then she would miss something he said. Then Aunt Mary would laugh as if Maida were drowsy, which of course she wasn’t. Of all his tales the Wishing Post was the best. If she could only go there and wish herself grown up, oh, wouldn’t that be splendid. So she made him promise to take her on his next voyage. She was so happy when he said he would, she shut her eyes to think about it, besides the light was very bright and--well, to this day Maida doesn’t remember what else the Man with the Growly Voice told her that night.