Godmother squeezed Mary Alice’s hand sympathetically; and then, because that was not enough, she dropped a brief kiss on Mary Alice’s anxious young forehead.  “I know how you feel, dear,” she whispered.  “All of us, I guess, have fairy charms that we’re afraid to use.  Others have used them, we know, and found them miraculous.  But somehow, we’re afraid.  I’m all undecided in my mind whether to tell you about this place we’re going to, or not to tell you about it.  I want to do what is easiest for you.  Now, you think!  It probably won’t be a very large assembly.  These dear people, who have many friends, are at home on Friday evenings.  Sometimes a large number call, sometimes only a few.  And in New York, you know, people are not ‘introduced round’; you just meet such of your fellow guests as happen to ‘come your way,’ so to speak.  That is, if there are many.  We’ll go down and call this evening—­take our chance of few or many, and try out our Secret.  And I’ll do just as you think you’d like best; I’ll tell you about the people we’re going to see and try to guess as well as I can who else may be there.  Or I won’t tell you anything at all—­just leave you to remember that ‘folks is folks,’ and to find out the rest for yourself.  You needn’t decide now.  Take all day to think about it, if you like.”

“Oh, dear!” cried Mary Alice, “I’m all in a flutter.  I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to decide, but I’ll think hard all day.  And now tell me what I am to wear.”

She went to her room and got her dark blue taffeta and showed the progress of yesterday with the new dark net sleeves to replace the ugly ruffly white lace ones.

“That’s going to be fine!” approved Godmother.  “Now, this morning I am going to help you make the new yoke and collar; and then”—­she squinted up her eyes and began looking as if she were studying a picture the way so many picture-lovers like to do, through only a narrow slit of vision which sharpens perspective and intensifies detail—­“I think we’ll go shopping.  Yesterday, when I was hurrying past and hadn’t time to stop for longer than a peek, I saw in a Broadway shop-window some short strings of pink imitation coral of the most adorable colour, for—­what do you think?  Twenty-five cents a string!  I’ve a picture of you in my mind, with your dark blue dress and one of those coral strings about your throat.”

Godmother’s picture looked very sweet indeed when she came out to dinner that evening.  It was astonishing how many of her fairies Mary Alice had found in two short weeks!  The lovely lines of her shoulders, which she had never known were the chief of all the “lines of beauty,” were no longer disfigured by stiff, outstanding bretelles and ruffled-lace sleeves, but revealed in all their delicate charm by the close-fitting plain dark net.  And above them rose the head of such unsuspected loveliness of contour, which rats and puffs and pompadour had once deformed grotesquely, but which the wonderful