Page:Oswald Bastable and Others - Nesbit.djvu/246

214 go too. And she had been wishing for these vain and unsatisfying things for more than a week before she thought of asking for a little girl to play with.

The genie brought a little girl at once, but she was a horrid little girl, with a red pigtail and a green frock trimmed with black bead trimming, and she broke the toys and laughed at Fina when she tried to tell her the story of the pagoda and the Ring Slave. Also there was no room to play in the secret nook in the wood, and when the little girl had slapped Fina and taken the pagoda away from her it seemed best to ask the genie to take the little girl herself away. Fina never saw her again, and never wanted to either! At last Fina knew that what she really wanted was not only someone to play with, but a good place to play in, so she shut her eyes and thought—as hard as a not very clever person of eight can think—and then she rubbed the ring and said:

'Please take me somewhere where there is a little girl who will play with me, a nice little girl, and room to play in.' And at once the wood vanished—like a magic-lantern picture when the kind clergyman who is