The Project Gutenberg EBook of Missy, by Dana Gatlin

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Title: Missy

Author: Dana Gatlin

Posting Date: February 12, 2009 [EBook #3491]
Release Date: October, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISSY ***

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MISSY

By Dana Gatlin

TO
VIOLA ROSEBORO'

CONTENTS

I THE FLAME DIVINE

II "YOUR TRUE FRIEND, MELISSA M"

III LIKE A SINGING BIRD

IV MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE

V IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS

VI INFLUENCING ARTHUR

VII BUSINESS OF BLUSHING

VIII A HAPPY DOWNFALL

IX DOBSON SAVES THE DAY

X MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

CHAPTER I. THE FLAME DIVINE

Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never had
before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days, feelings
she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of having grown
to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age--almost grown up!
She could look back, across the eons which separated her from
seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little girl
who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed that
bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all. She
still thought there was a Santa Claus!--would you believe that? And,
even at eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on the
flower-beds by moonlight, and talking in some mysterious language with
the flowers!

Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books and
pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well... she almost
knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone--out in the summerhouse on
a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight when that one very
bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch,
or when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her
pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with her fingers--at
such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reali