One particularly charming experience came to Mary Alice through the Captain’s appreciation of her eagerness.  Godmother had taught her to love the stars.  As well as they could, in New York where, to most people, only scraps of sky are visible at a time, they had been wont to watch with keen interest for the nightly appearance of stars they could see from their windows or from the streets as they went to and fro.  And when they got aboard ship and had the whole sky to look at, they revelled in their night hours on the deck, and in picking out the constellations and their “bright, particular stars.”  This led the Captain to tell Mary Alice something of the stars as the sailors’ friends; and she had one of the most memorable evenings of her life when he explained to her something of the science of navigation and made her see how their great greyhound of the ocean, just like the first frail barks of the Tyrians, picked its way across trackless wastes of sea by the infallible guidance of “the friendly stars.”  All this particularly interested Mary Alice because of Some One who lived much in the open and spent many and many a night on the broad deserts, looking up at the stars.

They landed at Naples, and lingered a fortnight in that lovely vicinity; then, up to Rome, to Florence and Venice, to Milan and the Italian Lakes, through Switzerland into France, and so to Paris.  Godmother had once spent a winter at Capri; she had spent several winters in Florence.  She knew Venice well.  She had hosts of dear, familiar things to show Mary Alice in each place.

At last they came to Paris.  Godmother lamented that it was in July they came; but Mary Alice, who had no recollections of Paris in April and May, found nothing to lament.  They stayed more than a month—­and made a number of the enchanting little journeys which can be made out of Paris forever and ever without repeating, it seems.

Then, with a trunk in which were two “really, truly” Paris dresses—­very, very modest ones, to be sure, but unmistakably touched with Parisian chic—­and a mind in which were hundreds of wonderful Paris memories, Mary Alice crossed to England.  They went at once to London where, it seemed to Mary Alice, she must stay forever, to be satisfied.  Godmother had hosts of charming friends in London, even beyond what she had in Italy and France; but for the first fortnight she gave up her time entirely to Mary Alice’s sightseeing.  By and by her friends began to find out she was there and to clamour insistently for her.  And as the exodus from town was as complete as it ever gets, most of the invitations were from the country.  So that Mary Alice began to see something of that English country-house life she had read so much about, and to meet personages whose names filled her with awe—­until she remembered the Secret.  And thus she came to the Great Event of her life.