Mary Marie. Eleanor H. Porter

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       Eleanor H. Porter

      Mary Marie

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664571465

Table of Contents

       ILLUSTRATIONS

       MARY MARIE

       PREFACE

       CHAPTER I

       CHAPTER II

       CHAPTER III

       CHAPTER IV

       CHAPTER V

       CHAPTER VI

       CHAPTER VII

       CHAPTER VIII

       CHAPTER IX

       THE END

      PREFACE, WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS

      I. I AM BORN

      II. NURSE SARAH'S STORY

      III. THE BREAK IS MADE

      IV. WHEN I AM MARIE

      V. WHEN I AM MARY

      VI. WHEN I AM BOTH TOGETHER

      VII. WHEN I AM NEITHER ONE

      VIII. WHICH IS THE REAL LOVE STORY

      IX. WHICH IS THE TEST

      ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

      "IF I CONSULTED NO ONE'S WISHES BUT MY OWN, I SHOULD KEEP HER HERE ALWAYS"

      "I TOLD HER NOT TO WORRY A BIT ABOUT ME"

      "WHY MUST YOU WAIT, DARLING?"

      THEN I TOLD HIM MY IDEA.

      From drawings by HELEN MASON GROSE

MARY MARIE

       Table of Contents

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS

      Father calls me Mary. Mother calls me Marie. Everybody else calls me

       Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson.

      I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction. That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she read it once—that the children of unlikes were always a cross-current and a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the children. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going to be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'm going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here—a divorce, you know.

      I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got a divorce in their families, and I always did like to be different. Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just living along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the time—especially if it's been anything like my house with my father and mother in it!

      That's why I've decided to make a book of it—that is, it really will be a book, only I shall have to call it a diary, on account of Father, you know. Won't it be funny when I don't have to do things on account of Father? And I won't, of course, the six months I'm living with Mother in Boston. But, oh, my!—the six months I'm living here with him—whew! But, then, I can stand it. I may even like it—some. Anyhow, it'll be different. And that's something.

      Well, about making this into a book. As I started to say, he wouldn't let me. I know he wouldn't. He says novels are a silly waste of time, if not absolutely wicked. But, a diary—oh, he loves diaries! He keeps one himself, and he told me it would be an excellent and instructive discipline for me to do it, too—set down the weather and what I did every day.

      The weather and what I did every day, indeed! Lovely reading that would make, wouldn't it? Like this:

      "The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went to school, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to Carrie Heywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour. Talked with Mother upstairs in her room about the sunset and the snow on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked to by Father down in the library about improving myself and taking care not to be light-minded and frivolous. (He meant like Mother, only he didn't say it right out loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you know.) Then I went to bed."

      * * * * *

      Just as if I was going to write my novel like that! Not much I am. But I shall call it a diary. Oh, yes, I shall call it a diary—till I take it to be printed. Then I shall give it its true name—a novel. And I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it for him to make the spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and periods and question marks that everybody seems to make such a fuss about. If I write the story part, I can't be expected to be bothered with looking up how words are spelt, every five minutes, nor fussing over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes.

      As if anybody who was reading the story cared for that part! The story's the thing.

      I love stories. I've written lots of them for the girls, too—little short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of reading it—only when you're living a story you can't peek over to the back to see how it's all coming out. I shan't like that part. Still, it may be all the more exciting, after all, not to know what's coming.

      I like love stories the best. Father's got—oh, lots of books in the library, and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old histories and biographies. I had to read them when there wasn't anything else to read. But there weren't many love stories. Mother's got a few, though—lovely ones—and some books of poetry, on the little shelf in her room. But I read all those ages ago.

      That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one—the one I'm living, I mean. For of course this will be a love story. There'll be my love story in two or three years,