The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Marie, by Eleanor H. Porter
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Title: Mary Marie
Author: Eleanor H. Porter
Release Date: February 18, 2004 [EBook #11143]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY MARIE ***
Produced by Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
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, 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
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 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
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