promised to continue.

Presently she withdrew her head from the pillow and lay looking into
the dark where, as we all know, the things that might be, that should
have been, shape themselves so much more readily than in any light.
And, lying there, Mary Alice wondered if there were any fairy power on
earth that could make of her a being half so sweet as that girl she had
seen this afternoon.

Then she heard her mother open the sitting-room door and call her. It
was time to get their simple supper ready.

"In a minute!" she called back. "I'm changing my dress." And she
jerked at the hooks of her blue taffeta "jumper dress" with uncareful
haste; bathed her face in cold water; put on her dark red serge which
had been "good" last year; and went down-stairs to help her mother.

She could see it all as she went--all she was to do. There was the
threadbare blanket they used for a silence cloth, and the table-cloth
with the red stain by Johnny's place where he had spilled cranberry
jelly the night before last, when the cloth was "span clean." There
were the places to set, as always, with the same old dishes and the
same old knives and forks; and with the mechanical precision born of
long practice she would rightly place, without half looking at them,
the various napkins each in its slightly different wooden ring. The
utmost variety that she could hope for would be hot gingerbread instead
of the last of Sunday's layer-cake, and maybe frizzled beef, since they
had finished Sunday's roast in a meat pie this noon.

"I didn't hear you come in," said her mother as Mary Alice opened the