Lovey Mary

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Lovey Mary, by Alice Hegan Rice

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Title: Lovey Mary
Author: Alice Hegan Rice
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5970] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 2, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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LOVEY MARY
BY
ALICE HEGAN RICE
AUTHOR OF "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch"
1903

TO
CALE YOUNG RICE WHO TAUGHT ME THE SECRET OF PLUCKING ROSES FROM A CABBAGE PATCH

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
A CACTUS-PLANT II A RUNAWAY COUPLE III THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD IV AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT V THE DAWN OF A ROMANCE VI THE LOSING OF MR. STUBBINS VII NEIGHBORLY ADVICE VIII A DENOMINATIONAL GARDEN IX LABOR DAY X A TIMELY VISIT XI THE CHRISTMAS PLAY XII REACTION XIII AN HONORABLE RETREAT XIV THE CACTUS BLOOMS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"They met at the pump." ..... Frontispiece
"'Now the Lord meant you to be plain.'"
"'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"
"''T ain't no street...; this here is the Cabbage Patch.'"
"She puffed her hair at the top and sides."
"'She took on mighty few airs fer a person in mournin'.'"
"She sat on the door-step, white and miserable." 67
"Mrs. Wiggs took pictures from her walls and chairs from her parlor to beautify the house of Hazy."
"Mr. Stubbins, sitting in Mrs. Wiggs's most comfortable chair, with a large slice of pumpkin-pie in his hand."
"'Stick out yer tongue.'"
"Asia held out her hands, which were covered with warm red mitts."
"Master Robert Redding was right side up again, sobbing himself quiet in Lovey Mary's arms."
"'Have you ever acted any?' he asked."
"Europena stepped forward."
"Sang in a high, sweet voice, 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'"
"'Haven't you got any place you could go to?'"
Susie Smithers at the keyhole
"Lovey Mary waved until she rounded a curve."

LOVEY MARY
CHAPTER I
A CACTUS-PLANT
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear,... Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. BROWNING'S "A Death in the Desert."
Everything about Lovey Mary was a contradiction, from her hands and feet, which seemed to have been meant for a big girl, to her high ideals and aspirations, that ought to have belonged to an amiable one. The only ingredient which might have reconciled all the conflicting elements in her chaotic little bosom was one which no one had ever taken the trouble to supply.
When Miss Bell, the matron of the home, came to receive Lovey Mary's confession of repentance, she found her at an up-stairs window making hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance could always be gaged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked at her as she would have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.
Miss Bell was stout and prim, a combination which was surely never intended by nature. Her gray dress and tight linen collar and cuffs gave the uncomfortable impression of being sewed on, while her rigid black water-waves seemed irrevocably painted upon her high forehead. She was a routinist; she believed in system, she believed in order, and she believed that godliness was akin to cleanliness. When she found an exception to a rule she regarded the exception in the light of an error. As she stood, brush in hand, before Lovey Mary, she thought for the hundredth time that the child was an exception.
"Stand up," she said firmly but not unkindly. "I thought you had too much sense to do your hair that way. Come back to the bath-room, and I will arrange it properly."
Lovey Mary gave a farewell kick at the wall before she followed Miss Bell. One side of her head was covered with tight black ringlets, and the other bristled with curl-papers.
"When I was a little girl," said Miss Bell, running the wet comb ruthlessly through the treasured curls,