THE BLUE STONE

In a longer story, with the same ring of folklore and mixture of humor and oddity we remember from The Porcelain Man (p. 589, J-195), a simple man and doting husband dreams of a spark falling from heaven and finds on the designated spot an agate-like blue stone. When his teasing wife Bertie accidentally swallows the stone, she is turned into a chicken. Bertie comes to herself after laying the stone in an egg, but by the time Jack has found a minstrel who carries hints of the wishing stone's conditions in an ancient song, it has turned a fierce robber into a duck, pigs into bread loaves and vice versa, and a swallow into a baby which Bertie tries desperately to hold onto though it finally sprouts wings and flies off, an angel. Jack himself is a duck for a while, and Bertie is almost cut 'up by the king's sorcerer, so it's no wonder they finally declare the whole business too wearying. The stone gone, both agree that ""there wasn't much come of it after all""; but as Bertie adds, ""I believe it's a great blessing just to have an angel visit in your house."" And that, as Kennedy adds, is enough.