Everybodys Lonesome | Page 5

people
who walked by with only an uninterested glance; as if she'd like to
bring them back and prod them into life, and cry, "Don't you see? How
can you pass so carelessly what cost so much in toil and tears?"
Godmother had that kind of a viewpoint about everything, it seemed.
When they went to the theatre, she could tell Mary Alice--before the
curtain went up, and between the acts--such things about the actors and
the playwright and the manager, as made the play trebly interesting.
On the East Side they visited some of the Settlements and "prowled"
(as Godmother loved to call it) around the teeming slums; and
Godmother knew such touching stories of the Old World conditions
from which these myriads of foreign folk had escaped, and of the
pathos of their trust in the New World, as kept Mary Alice's eyes bright
and wet almost every minute.
One beautiful sunny afternoon they rode up on top of a Fifth Avenue
motor 'bus to 90th Street, and Godmother pointed out the houses of
many multi-millionaires. She knew things about many of them,
too--sweet, human, heart-touching things about their disappointments
and unsatisfied yearnings--which made one feel rather sorry for them
than envious of their splendours.
Thus the days passed, and Mary Alice was so happy that--learning from
Godmother some of her pretty ways--she would go closer to that dear
lady, every once in a while, and say: "Pinch me, please--and see if I'm
awake; if it's really true." And Godmother always pinched her, gravely,
and appeared to be much relieved when Mary Alice cried "Ouch! I
am!"
They didn't see anybody, except "from a distance" as they said, for
fully a week; they were so busy seeing sights and getting acquainted.
Every night when Godmother came to tuck Mary Alice in, they had the

dearest talks of all. And every night Mary Alice begged to be told the
Secret. But, "Oh, dear no! not yet!" Godmother would always say.
One night, however, she said: "Well, if I'm not almost forgetting to tell
you!"
Mary Alice jumped; that sounded like the Secret. But it
wasn't--although it was "leading up to it."
"Tell me what?" she cried, excitedly.
"Why, to-day I saw one of your fairies."
"My what?"
"Your fairies that you said were left out of your christening party."
"You did! Where?"
"I'll tell you that presently. But it seems, from what this fairy said, that
there are a great number of your fairies with gifts for you, all waiting
quite impatiently to be found. She says that it is considered quite
'ordinary' now, to send all of a great gift by one fairy--yes, and not at all
safe. For if that one fairy should miss you and you should not find her,
you'd be left terribly unprovided for, you see. So the gift is usually
divided into many parts, and a different fairy has each part. Now, the
gift of beauty, for instance; she is one of the fairies who has that gift for
you."
Mary Alice's eyes opened wide. Her belief in this wonderful
Godmother was such that she was almost prepared to see Godmother
wave a wand and command her to become beautiful--and then, on
looking into a mirror, to find that she was so. "What did she say?" she
managed at last to gasp.
"She said: 'Has she pretty hair?' And I answered, 'Yes.' 'Then,' the fairy
went on, 'the one who had that gift must have got to the christening,
somehow. Maybe the mother wished for her--and that is as good as an

invitation.'"
"She did!" cried Mary Alice. "She's always said she watched me so
anxiously when I was a wee baby, hoping I'd have pretty hair."
"Well, that's evidently how that fairy got to you. But it seems there
were two. This one I saw to-day says there are two beauties in 'most
everything--but especially in hair--one is in the thing itself and the
other is in knowing what to do with it. It seems she is the 'what to do'
fairy."
And so she proved to be. For, when she came to luncheon next day, she
told Mary Alice how she had always been "a bit daft about hair."
"When I played with my dolls," she said, "I always cared much more
for combing their hair and doing it up with mother's 'invisible' pins,
than for dressing them. And it used to be the supreme reward for
goodness when I could take down my mother's beautiful hair and play
with it for half an hour. I'm always wanting to play with lovely hair.
And when I saw yours at the theatre the other evening, I couldn't rest
until I'd asked your godmother if she thought you'd let me play with it."
So after