Mary Marie

Mary Marie

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
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MARIE ***

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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, 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 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