Everybodys Lonesome | Page 6

luncheon they went into Mary Alice's room and wouldn't let
Godmother go with them. "Not at all!" said the "what to do fairy," "you
are the select audience. You go into the drawing-room and 'compose
yourself.' When we're ready for you, we'll come out."
Then, behind locked doors, with much delightful nonsense and
excitement, she divested Mary Alice's head of sundry awful rats and
puffs, combed out the bunches which Mary Alice wore in her really
lovely hair, brushed smooth the traces of the curling iron, and then
made Mary Alice shut her eyes and "hope to die" if she "peeked once."
When permission to "peek" was given, Mary Alice didn't know herself.
"There!" said the fairy, when the excitement of Godmother's delight
had subsided, "I've always said that the three most important beauty
fairies for a girl to find are the how-to-stand fairy, the how-to-dress
fairy, and the what-to-do-with-your-hair fairy. Anybody can find them

all; and nobody who has found them all needs to feel very bad if she
can't find some of the others who have her christening gifts."
Mary Alice began looking for the others, right away. But even one fairy
had transformed her, outside, from an ordinary-looking girl into a
young woman with a look of remarkable distinction; just as Godmother
had transformed her, within, from a girl with a dreary outlook on life,
to one who found that
"The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as
happy as kings."
"Is this the Secret?" she asked Godmother, that night.
"Oh, dear, no!" laughed Godmother, "only the first little step towards
realizing it."

IV
BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN
One day when Mary Alice had been in New York nearly two
weeks--and had found several fairies--Godmother was obliged to go out,
in the afternoon, to some sort of a committee meeting which would
have been quite uninteresting to an outsider. But Mary Alice had some
sewing to do--something like taking the ugly, ruffly sleeves of cheap
white lace out of her blue taffeta dress and substituting plain dark ones
of net dyed to match the silk; and she was glad to stay at home.
"If an elderly gentleman comes in to call on me, late in the afternoon
but before I get back home," said Godmother, in departing, "ask him in
and be nice to him. He's a lonely body, and he'll probably be tired. He
works very hard."
Mary Alice promised, and went happily to work on the new sleeves
which were to give her arms and shoulders something of an exquisite
outline, in keeping with the fairy way of doing her hair, which

Godmother had taught her to admire in a beautiful marble in the
Metropolitan Museum.
About five o'clock, when Godmother's neat little maid had just lighted
the lamps in the pretty drawing-room and replenished the open fire
which was one of the great compensations for the many drawbacks of
living in an old-fashioned house, the gentleman Godmother had
expected called.
Mary Alice went in to see him, and explained who she was. He said he
had heard about her and was glad to make her acquaintance.
He seemed quite tired, and Mary Alice asked him if he had been
working hard that day.
"Yes," he said, "very hard."
"Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?" she asked. And he said he would.
When the tea came, he seemed to enjoy it so much that Mary Alice
really believed he was hungry. Indeed, he admitted that he was. "I
haven't had any luncheon," he said.
Mary Alice's heart was touched; she forgot that the man was strange,
and remembered only that he was tired and hungry.
The little maid brought thin slices of bread and butter with the tea.
Mary Alice felt they must seem absurd to a hungry man. "I know
what's lots nicer with tea," she said.
"What?" he asked, interestedly.
"Toast and marmalade," she answered. "I'm going to get some." And
she went to the kitchen, cut a plateful of toasting slices and brought
them back with a long toasting fork and a jar of orange marmalade.
"At home," she said, "we often make the toast for supper at the
sitting-room fire, and it's much nicer than 'gas range toast.'"

"I know it is," he said; "let's do it."
So they squatted on the rug in front of the open fire. Both wanted to
toast, and they took turns.
"I don't get to do anything like this very often--only when I come here,"
he said, apologizing for accepting his turn when it came.
"Don't you live at home?" asked Mary Alice.
"Well, no," he answered, "I'd hardly call what I do 'living at home.'"
There was something about the way he said it