Everybodys Lonesome

Everybody's Lonesome

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Everybody's Lonesome, by Clara E.
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Title: Everybody's Lonesome A True Fairy Story
Author: Clara E. Laughlin
Illustrator: A. I. Keller
Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #17507]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
EVERYBODY'S LONESOME ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "Both wanted to toast, and they took turns."]

Everybody's Lonesome

A True Fairy Story
By
CLARA E. LAUGHLIN

Author of "Evolution of a Girl's Ideal," "The Lady in Gray," etc.

Illustrated by
A. I. KELLER.

New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1910, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

To
Mabel Tallaferro,
The Faery Child

CONTENTS
I. DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE II. YOUR OWN IS WAITING III.

FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY IV. BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN
V. GOING TO THE PARTY VI. THE "LION" OF THE EVENING
VII. AT CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME VIII. LEARNING TO BE
BRAVE AND SWEET IX. TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER X.
THE OLD WORLD AND THE KING XI. A MEETING AND A
PARTING XII. AT OCEAN'S EDGE

ILLUSTRATIONS
"BOTH WANTED TO TOAST, AND THEY TOOK TURNS" . . . . . .
Title
". . . . FOUND HERSELF LOOKING INTO EYES THAT SMILED
AS WITH AN OLD FRIENDLINESS"

Everybody's Lonesome
I
DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE
Mary Alice came home quietly from the party. Most of the doors in the
house were closed, because it was cold, and the halls were hard to heat.
Mary Alice knew exactly what she should see and hear if she opened
that door at her right as she entered the house, and went into the
sitting-room. There was a soft-coal fire in the small, old-fashioned
grate under the old, old-fashioned white marble mantel.
Dozing--always dozing--on the hearth-rug, at a comfortable distance
from the fire, was Herod, the big yellow cat. In the centre of the room,
under the chandelier, was a table, with a cover of her mother's fancy
working, and a drop-light with a green shade. By the unbecoming light
of this, her mother was sewing. What day was this? Tuesday! She was
mending stockings. Mary Alice could see it all. She had been seeing it
for twenty years during which nothing--it seemed to her--had changed,
except herself. If she went in there now, her mother would ask her the

same questions she always asked: "Did you have a nice time?" "Who
was there?" "Anybody have on anything new?" "What refreshments did
they serve?"
Mary Alice was tired of it all--heartsick with weariness of it--and she
stole softly past that closed sitting-room door and up, through the chilly
halls where she could see her own breath, to her room.
She did not light the gas, but took off in the dark her "good" hat and her
"best" gloves and her long black cloth coat of an ugly "store-bought"
cut, which was her best and worst. Then, in an abandon of grief which
bespoke real desperation in a careful girl like Mary Alice, she threw
herself on her bed--without taking off her "good" dress--and buried her
head in a pillow, and hated everything.
It is hard to be disappointed in love, but after all it is a rather splendid
misery in which one may have a sense of kinship with earth's greatest
and best; and it has its hopes, its consolations. There is often the hope
that this love may return; and, though we never admit it, there is
always--deep down--the consolation of believing that another and a
better may come.
But to be disappointed in the love of life is not a splendid misery. And
Mary Alice was disappointed in her love of life. To be twenty, and not
to believe in the fairies of Romance; to be twenty and, instead of the
rosy dreams you've had, to see life stretching on and on before you, an
endless, uninspired humdrum like mother's, darning stockings by the
sitting-room fire--that is bitterness indeed.
Hardship isn't anything--while you believe in life. Stiff toil and scant
fare are nothing--while you expect to meet at any turning the Enchanter
with your fortune in his hands. But to be twenty and not to believe----!
Mary Alice had never had much, except the wonderful heart of youth,
to feed her faith with. She wasn't pretty and she wasn't clever and she
had no accomplishments. Her people were "plain" and perpetually
"pinched" in circumstance. And her life, in this small town where she
lived,