had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed--made new
clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she
took some fancy work and went to see a girl friend, or a girl friend
brought some fancy work and came to see her. Occasionally she and
another girl went for a walk. Semi-occasionally there was a church
social or a sewing circle luncheon, or somebody gave a party.

Somebody had given a party to-day, and Mary Alice had gone to it with
high hope of finding it "interesting" and had come away from it with a
deep despair of ever finding in life that which would make the monotony
of it worth while.

Many another girl, feeling as Mary Alice did, would have gone away from
home seeking "life" in a big city. But Mary Alice, besides having no
qualifications for earning her way in a big city, had a most unhappy
shyness. She was literally afraid of strangers, and never got very
well acquainted even with persons she had associated with for a long
time.

At the party to-day--it was an afternoon tea--Mary Alice had been more
bitterly conscious than ever before of her lack of charms and the bleak
prospect that lack entailed upon her. For the tea was given for a girl
who was visiting in town, a girl of a sort Mary Alice had never seen
before. She was pretty, that visiting girl, and she was sweet; she had
a charm that was irresistible; she seemed to like everybody, and there
was no mistake about everybody liking her. Even the town girls liked
her and were not jealous. Even Mary Alice liked her, and was not
afraid of her. But there she was--that girl!--vital, radiant, an
example of what life might be, at twenty. And Mary Alice came away
hating as she had never done before, life as it was for her and as it