dear me!" she exclaimed. "The poor little things! How they do cry!
What shall I do with them? I do wish grandmother were here, to help
me take care of them!" and one little baby was immediately changed
back into her grandmother.

"How could you wish me to be old again, Floribel?" she
exclaimed. "Pray wish me to be just seventeen." Then the grandfather
began to cry most clamorously, and Floribel knew he also wished to be
seventeen, instead of a little, helpless baby. She did not know what
to do, for with only one wish left, she could not both wish her
grandfather to be older, and her grandmother to be younger. While she
was standing in this perplexity, half stunned by the cries of her
grandfather, and the entreaties of her grandmother, she chanced to spy
a little dog running along, wagging its tail, and without thinking,
cried, "O dear, I wish I were a little dog, and then I should not have
to choose!" and in the twinkling of an eye, to her great dismay, she
became a little brown dog, jumping about.

You may imagine how the poor grandmother felt, when she returned home,
carrying her old Zachary, a little baby, in her arms, with a brown dog
running beside her, instead of her dear little grandchild, who had
always been the best child in the world. The villagers ran out of
their gates to meet her, and could not keep from laughing, to see
their grave neighbor Zachary a little crying baby; but they felt very
sorry about Floribel, for one and all loved the merry little girl. "O,
we told you how it would be," they said. "We told you the dwarf would
do you some mischief." But this did not comfort poor Betsy, who went
sorrowfully into her house, shut the door, and would have had a good
cry herself, if the baby had not been crying so hard that she had more
than she could do to take care of him. "I never saw such a cross