“So am I,” he echoed gallantly, “but I’m hoping you will ask me again.”

“Indeed I will!” she cried.  “We seem to—­to get on together beautifully.”

“We do,” he agreed, “and if it’s a rare experience for you, I don’t mind telling you it is for me too.”

He couldn’t have been gone more than ten minutes when Godmother came in.

“That gentleman called,” Mary Alice told her.  “He’s just gone.  We had a lovely time.”

“I know,” said Godmother, “I met him down-stairs and we’ve been chatting.  He says he doesn’t know when he’s spent a pleasanter hour.”

“Poor man!” murmured Mary Alice, “he seems to be a lonely body.”

“He is,” said Godmother.  “He likes to come in here, once in a while, for a cup of tea and an hour’s chat.  And I’m always glad to have him.”

“I should think so!” agreed Mary Alice.  “He ate nearly a whole plate of toast.”

Godmother laughed so heartily that Mary Alice was a little mystified.  She didn’t see the joke in being hungry.  She didn’t even see it when Godmother told her who the man was.

“Not really?” gasped Mary Alice.  Godmother nodded.  “Why, he told me him_self_——!” Mary Alice began; and then stopped to put two and two together.  It was all very astounding, but there was no reason why what he had told her and what Godmother said might not both be true.

“If I had known!” she said, sinking down, weak in the knees, into the nearest chair.

“That was what gave him his happy hour,” said Godmother.  “You didn’t know!  It is so hard for him to get away from people who know—­to find people who are able to forget.  That’s why he likes to come here; I try to help him forget, for an hour, once in a while, at ‘candle-lightin’ time.’”

“I see,” murmured Mary Alice.

The man was one of those great world-powers of finance whose transactions filled columns of the newspapers and were familiar to almost every school child.

That night when Godmother was tucking Mary Alice in, they had a long, long talk about the caller of the afternoon and about some other people Godmother knew, and about how sad a thing it is to take for granted about any person certain qualities we think must go with his estate.

“And now,” said Godmother, “I’m going to tell you the Secret.”

And she did.  Then turned out the light, kissed Mary Alice one more time, and left her to think about it.

V

GOING TO THE PARTY

“Now,” said Godmother, the very next morning after she had told Mary Alice the Secret, “to see how it works!  This evening I am going to take you to a most delightful place.”

“What kind of a place?” Mary Alice begged to know.  Already, despite the Secret, she was feeling fearful.