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.

One night, however, she said: "Well, if I'm not almost forgetting to
tell you!"

Mary Alice jumped; that sounded like the Secret. But it
wasn't--although it was "leading up to it."

"Tell me what?" she cried, excitedly.

"Why, to-day I saw one of your fairies."

"My what?"

"Your fairies that you said were left out of your christening party."

"You did! Where?"

"I'll tell you that presently. But it seems, from what this fairy
said, that there are a great number of your fairies with gifts for you,
all waiting quite impatiently to be found. She says that it is
considered quite 'ordinary' now, to send all of a great gift by one
fairy--yes, and not at all safe. For if that one fairy should miss you
and you should not find her, you'd be left terribly unprovided for, you
see. So the gift is usually divided into many parts, and a different
fairy has each part. Now, the gift of beauty, for instance; she is one
of the fairies who has that gift for you."

Mary Alice's eyes opened wide. Her belief in this wonderful Godmother
was such that she was almost prepared to see Godmother wave a wand and
command her to become beautiful--and then, on looking into a mirror, to
find that she was so. "What did she say?" she managed at last to gasp.

"She said: 'Has she pretty hair?' And I answered, 'Yes.' 'Then,' the
fairy went on, 'the one who had that gift must have got to the
christening, somehow. Maybe the mother wished for her--and that is as
good as an invitation.'"

"She did!" cried Mary Alice. "She's always said she watched me so
anxiously when I was a wee baby, hoping I'd have pretty hair."

"Well, that's evidently how that fairy got to you. But it seems there
were two. This one I saw to-day says there are two beauties in 'most
everything--but especially in hair--one is in the thing itself and the
other is in knowing what to do with it. It seems she is the