"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.