[Illustration:  He enjoyed his long neck very much.]

Instead of a chariot and four, Carrie went off in an open wagon, with the rest of the girls.  It made her feel so to see Ben, with his long neck, that she got her mother’s permission to spend the night with the friend in whose grounds the picnic was to be held.

She carried baskets of chocolate creams, and she found numbers of the girls, who had not eaten any, who were delighted with them, and promised to come the next day, to buy and carry away any amount of them.  She began to grow more cheerful, though she felt no appetite, and instead of eating everything, as she always did at picnics, she could not even touch Mattie Somers’s cream-pie nor Julia Dale’s doughnuts.  She stayed as late as she could at her friend Mattie’s; but she felt she must get home in time for her third wish, at twelve o’clock.

Would it be necessary for her to wish that Ben Sykes’s neck should be made shorter?  She hoped she might find that it had grown shorter in the night; then she could do as she pleased about her third wish.

She still clung to the desire for the chariot and four.  If she had it, she and her mother and Jimmy could get into it and drive far away from everybody,—­from Ben Sykes and his long neck, if he still had it,—­and never see any of them any more.  Still, she would like to show the chariot and four to her friends; and perhaps Ben Sykes would not mind his long neck, and would be glad to keep it and earn money by showing himself at a circus.

So she reached home in the middle of the morning, and found the whole Sykes family there, and Ben, still with his long neck.  It seems it had given him great trouble in the night.  He had to sleep with his head in the opposite house, because there was not room enough on one floor at home.  Mrs. Sykes had not slept a wink, and her husband had been up watching, to see that nobody stepped on Ben’s neck.  Ben himself appeared in good spirits; but was glad to sit in a high room, where he could support his head.

Carrie suggested her plan that Ben should exhibit himself.  He, no doubt, could earn a large sum.  But his mother broke out against this.  He never could earn enough to pay for what he ate, now his throat was so long.  Even before this he could swallow more oatmeal than all the rest of the family put together, and she was sure that now even Mr. Barnum himself could not supply him with food enough.  Then she burst into a flood of tears, and said she had always hoped Ben would be her stay and support; and now he could never sleep at home, and everybody looking after him when he went out, and the breakfast he had eaten that very morning was enough for six peoples’ dinners.

They were all in the parlor, where the chocolate creams were partially cleared away.  They were in a serried mass on two sides of the room, meeting near the centre, with the underground passage, through which Ben had worked his way to Carrie’s dress.  Mrs. Fraser had organized a band to fill pasteboard boxes, which she had obtained from the village, and she and her friends were filling them, to send away to be sold, as all the inhabitants of the town were now glutted with chocolate creams.