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Jem was grateful beyond measure, but Baby seemed to consider her weak minded.

“It served her right,” she said.

“But when, after looking at the wishes at that end of the room, they went to the other end, her turn came. In one corner stood a shade with a baby under it, and the baby was Miss Baby herself, but looking as she very rarely looked; in fact, it was the brightest, best tempered baby one could imagine.”

“I wish I had a better tempered baby. Mother,” was written on the label.

Baby became quite red in the face with anger and confusion.

“That wasn’t here the last time I came,” she said. “And it is right down mean in mother!”

This was more than Jem could bear.

“It wasn’t mean,” she said. “She couldn’t help it. You know you are a cross baby–everybody says so.”

Baby turned two shades redder.

“Mind your own business,” she retorted. “It was mean; and as to that silly little thing being better than I am,” turning up her small nose, which was quite turned up enough by Nature–“I must say I don’t see anything so very grand about her. So, there!”

She scarcely condescended to speak to them while they remained in the Wish room, and when they left it, and went to the last door in the passage, she quite scowled at it.

“I don’t know whether I shall open it at all,” she said.

“Why not?” asked Flora. “You might as well.”

“It is the Lost pin room,” she said. “I hate pins.”

She threw the door open with a bang, and then stood and shook her little fist viciously. The room was full of pins, stacked solidly together. There were hundreds of them–thousands–millions, it seemed.

“I’m glad they are lost!” she said. “I wish there were more of them there.”

“I didn’t know there were so many pins in the world,” said Jem.

“Pooh!” said Baby. “Those are only the lost ones that have belonged to our family.”

After this they went back to Flora’s room and sat down, while Flora told Jem the rest of her story.

“Oh!” sighed Jem, when she came to the end. “How delightful it is to be here! Can I never come again?”

“In one way you can,” said Flora. “When you want to come, just sit down and be as quiet as possible, and shut your eyes and think very hard about it. You can see everything you have seen to-day, if you try.”

“Then I shall be sure to try,” Jem answered. She was going to ask some other question, but Baby stopped her.

“Oh! I’m falling awake,” she whimpered, crossly, rubbing her eyes. “I’m falling awake again.”

And then, suddenly, a very strange feeling came over Jem. Flora and the pretty room seemed to fade away, and, without being able to account for it at all, she found herself sitting on her little stool again, with a beautiful scarlet and gold book on her knee, and her mother standing by laughing at her amazed face. As to Miss Baby, she was crying as hard as she could in her crib.

“Mother!” Jem cried out, “have you really come home so early as this, and–and,” rubbing her eyes in great amazement, “how did I come down?”

“Don’t I look as if I was real?” said her mother, laughing and kissing her. “And doesn’t your present look real? I don’t know how you came down, I’m sure. Where have you been?”

Jem shook her head very mysteriously. She saw that her mother fancied she had been asleep, but she herself knew better.

“I know you wouldn’t believe it was true if I told you,” she said; “I have been BEHIND THE WHITE BRICK.”