Compare Mr. White's feelings about the monkey's paw when he makes the first wish ,second wish and third wish.

When making the first wish, Mr. White is having fun... he's smiling and feeling a bit foolish.

His father, smiling and with an embarrassed look for his foolishness in believing the soldier’s story, held up the talisman. Herbert, with a serious face, spoiled only by a quick smile to his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few grand chords.
“I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man clearly.

During the second wish, Mr. White is afraid.

He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.” The talisman fell to the floor, and he looked at it fearfully. Then he sank into a chair and the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and opened the curtains.

The third wish finds Mr. White frantic.

If only he could find it before the thing outside got in. The knocks came very quickly now echoing through the house, and he heard the noise of his wife moving a chair and putting it down against the door. He heard the movement of the lock as she began to open it, and at the same moment he found the monkeys’s paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.