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MARY MARIE
BY
ELEANOR H. PORTER
With Illustrations by Helen Mason Grose
1920
TO MY FRIEND
ELIZABETH S. BOWEN
CONTENTS
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
"IF I CONSULTED NO ONE'S WISHES BUT MY OWN, ISHOULD 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
PREFACE
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 sheread it once—that the children of unlikes were always a cross-currentand a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm thechildren. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm goingto be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'mgoing to live half the time with Mother and the other half withFather. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here—adivorce, you know.
I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got adivorce in their families, and I always did like to be different.Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just livingalong, common, with your father and mother in the same house all thetime—especially if it's been anything like my house with my fatherand mother in it!
That's why I've decided to make a book of it—that is, it really willbe 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 accountof Father? And I won't, of course, the six months I'm living withMother in Boston. But, oh, my!—the six months I'm living here withhim—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'tlet 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 keepsone himself, and he told me it would be an excellent and instructivediscipline for me to do it, too—set down the weather and what I didevery day.
The weather and what I did every day, indeed! Lovely reading thatwould make, wouldn't it? Like this:
"The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went toschool, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to CarrieHeywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour.Talked with Mother upstairs in her roo