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