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 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.”