Lovey Mary | Page 4

he fled for protection to Lovey Mary and
cast belligerent glances at the intruder.
Kate laughed.
"Oh, you needn't be so scary; you might as well get used to me, for I
am going to take you home with me. I bet he's a corker, ain't he, Lovey?
He used to bawl all night. Sometimes I'd have to spank him two or
three times."
Lovey Mary clasped the child closer and looked up in dumb terror. Was
Tommy to be taken from her? Tommy to go away with Kate?
"Great Scott!" exclaimed Kate, exasperated at the girl's manner. "You
are just as ugly and foolish as you used to be. I'm going in to see Miss
Bell."
Lovey Mary waited until she was in the house, then she stole
noiselessly around to the office window. The curtain blew out across
her cheek, and the swaying lilacs seemed to be trying to count the china
buttons on her back; but she stood there with staring eyes and parted
lips, and held her breath to listen.

[Illustration with caption: "'Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother.'"]
"Of course," Miss Bell was saying, measuring her words with due
precision, "if you feel that you can now support your child and that it is
your duty to take him, we cannot object. There are many other children
waiting to come into the home. And yet--" Miss Bell's voice sounded
human and unnatural--"yet I wish he could stay. Have you thought,
Kate, of your responsibility toward him, of--"
"Oh! Ough!" shrieked Tommy from the playground, in tones of
distress.
Lovey Mary left her point of vantage and rushed to the rescue. She
found him emitting frenzied yells, while a tiny stream of blood trickled
down his chin.
"It was my little duck," he gasped as soon as he was able to speak. "I
was tissin' him, an' he bited me."
At thought of the base ingratitude on the part of the duck, Tommy
wailed anew. Lovey Mary led him to the hydrant and bathed the injured
lip, while she soothed his feelings. Suddenly a wave of tenderness
swept over her. She held his chubby face up to hers and said fervently:
"Tommy, do you love me?"
"Yes," said Tommy, with a reproachful eye on the duck. "Yes; I yuv to
yuv. I don't yuv to tiss, though!"
"But me, Tommy, me. Do you love me?"
"Yes," he answered gravely, "dollar an' a half."
"Whose little boy are you?"
"Yuvey's 'e boy."
Satisfied with this catechism, she put Tommy in care of another girl
and went back to her post at the window. Miss Bell was talking again.

"I will have him ready to-morrow afternoon when you come. His
clothes are all in good condition. I only hope, Kate, that you will care
for him as tenderly as Mary has. I am afraid he will miss her sadly."
"If he's like me, he'll forget about her in two or three days," answered
the other voice. "It always was 'out of sight, out of mind' with me."
Miss Bell's answer was indistinct, and in a few minutes Lovey Mary
heard the hall door close behind them. She shook her fists until the
lilacs trembled. "She sha'n't have him!" she whispered fiercely. "She
sha'n't let him grow up wicked like she is. I won't let him go. I'll hide
him, I'll--"
Suddenly she grew very still, and for a long time crouched motionless
behind the bushes. The problem that faced her had but one solution,
and Lovey Mary had found it.
The next morning when the sun climbed over the tree-tops and peered
into the dormitory windows he found that somebody else had made an
early rise. Lovey Mary was sitting by a wardrobe making her last will
and testament. From the neatly folded pile of linen she selected a few
garments and tied them into a bundle. Then she took out a cigar-box
and gravely contemplated the contents. There were two narrow hair-
ribbons which had evidently been one wide ribbon, a bit of rock crystal,
four paper dolls, a soiled picture-book with some other little girl's name
scratched out on the cover, and two shining silver dollars. These
composed Lovey Mary's worldly possessions. She tied the money in
her handkerchief and put it in her pocket, then got up softly and slipped
about among the little white beds, distributing her treasures.
"I'm mad at Susie," she whispered, pausing before a tousled head; "I
hate to give her the nicest thing I've got. But she's just crazy 'bout
picture-books."
The curious sun climbed yet a little higher and saw Lovey Mary go
back to her own bed, and, rolling Tommy's clothes around her own
bundle, gather the sleeping child in her arms and steal quietly out of the
room.