Clara E Laughlin

Everybody's Lonesome Clara E Laughlin

Book Excerpt: ... 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 M...