III
FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY
The next few days were spent in sightseeing; and Mary Alice would never have believed there could be any one so enchanting to see sights with as Godmother. They looked in all the wonderful shop-windows and "chose" what they would take from each if a fairy suddenly invited them to take their choice. No fairy did; but they hardly noticed that.
Then they'd go and "poke" in remnant boxes on the ends of counters in the big department stores, and unearth bits of trimming and of lace with which Godmother, who was clever with her needle and "full of ideas," showed Mary Alice how to put quite transforming touches on her clothes.
They visited art galleries, and Godmother knew things about the pictures that made them all fascinating. Instead of saying, "Interesting composition, that!" or "This man was celebrated for his chiaroscuro," Godmother was full of human stories of the struggles of the painters and their faithfulness to ideals; and she could stand in front of a canvas by almost any master, and talk to Mary Alice about the painter and the conditions of his life and love and longing when he painted this picture, in a way that made Mary Alice feel as if she'd like to shake the people who walked by with only an uninterested glance; as if she'd like to bring them back and prod them into life, and cry, "Don't you see? How can you pass so carelessly what cost so much in toil and tears?"
Godmother had that kind of a viewpoint about everything, it seemed. When they went to the theatre, she could tell Mary Alice—before the curtain went up, and between the acts—such things about the actors and the playwright and the manager, as made the play trebly interesting.
On the East Side they visited some of the Settlements and "prowled" (as Godmother loved to call it) around the teeming slums; and Godmother knew such touching stories of the Old World conditions from which these myriads of foreign folk had escaped, and of the pathos of their trust in the New World, as kept Mary Alice's eyes bright and wet almost every minute.
One beautiful sunny afternoon they rode up on top of a Fifth Avenue motor 'bus to 90th Street, and Godmother pointed out the houses of many multi-millionaires. She knew things about many of them, too—sweet, human, heart-touching things about their disappointments and unsatisfied yearnings—which made one feel rather sorry for them than envious of their splendours.
Thus the days passed, and Mary Alice was so happy that—learning from Godmother some of her pretty ways—she would go closer to that dear lady, every once in a while, and say: "Pinch me, please—and see if I'm awake; if it's really true." And Godmother always pinched her, gravely, and appeared to be much relieved when Mary Alice cried "Ouch! I am!"
They didn't see anybody, except "from a distance" as they said, for fully a week; they were so busy seeing sights and getting acquainted. Every night when Godmother came to tuck Mary Alice in, they had the dearest talks of all. And every night Mary Alice begged to be told the Secret. But, "Oh, dear no! not yet!" Godmother would always say.