"And then," asked Everychild, "were you not unhappy?"

"No. You see, by that time I had begun to wish for something else.
This time it was a pair of little doves which a merchant had brought
from far away in the Himalaya mountains. And I dreamed by day and
night of the time when I should own the little doves. No coin was too
small to be saved. The little coins would become as much as a yen in
time. And at last I was the proud possessor of a yen!"

"And then you got the little doves?"

"No. By that time I cared more for the yen than for the little
doves--and besides, the doves had died."

"But with the--the yen, you could buy something else you wanted,"
suggested Everychild.

"Not so. By that time I coveted some ivory chessmen, worth many yen.
And I was very happy, planning how some day I should become rich enough
to buy the ivory chessmen."

"But if you only kept on wishing for things," murmured Everychild, "and
never got them, you'd of course become very unhappy some day!"

But Aladdin slowly shook his head. "I cannot tell how it may be," he
said. "But my poor mother was always happy, and she never really got
what she wished for, unless it was the last thing of all."

"And that?" inquired Everychild.