Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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, "the smoother my hair was the better I liked it. I used to brush it down with soap and water to make it stay."

Lovey Mary looked at the water-waves and sighed.

"If you're ugly you never can get married with anybody, can you, Miss
Bell?" she asked in a spirit of earnest inquiry.

Miss Bell's back became stiffer, if possible, than before.

"Marriage isn't the only thing in the world. The homelier you are the better chance you have of being good. Now the Lord meant you to be plain"—assisting Providence by drawing the braids so tight that the girl's eyebrows were elevated with the strain. "If he had meant you to have curls he would have given them to you."

[Illustration: "'Now the Lord meant you to be plain'"]

"Well, didn't he want me to have a mother and father?" burst forth Lovey Mary, indignantly, "or clothes, or money, or nothing? Can't I ever get nothing at all 'cause I wasn't started out with nothing?"

Miss Bell was too shocked to reply. She gave a final brush to the sleek, wet head and turned sorrowfully away. Lovey Mary ran after her and caught her hand.

"I'm sorry," she cried impulsively. "I want to be good. Please— please—"

Miss Bell drew her hand away coldly. "You needn't go to Sabbath-school this morning," she said in an injured tone; "you can stay here and think over what you have said. I am not angry with you. I never allow myself to get angry. I don't understand, that's all. You are such a good girl about some things and so unreasonable about others. With a good home, good clothes, and kind treatment, what else could a girl want?"

Receiving no answer to this inquiry, Miss Bell adjusted her cuffs and departed with the conviction that she had done all that was possible to throw light upon a dark subject.

Lovey Mary, left alone, shed bitter tears on her clean gingham dress. Thirteen years ought to reconcile a person even to gingham dresses with white china buttons down the back, and round straw hats bought at wholesale. But Lovey Mary's rebellion of spirit was something that time only served to increase. It had started with Kate Rider, who used to pinch her, and laugh at her, and tell the other girls to "get on to her curves." Curves had signified something dreadful to Lovey Mary; she would have experienced real relief could she have known that she did not possess any. It was not Kate Rider, however, who was causing the present tears; she had left the home two years before, and her name was not allowed to be mentioned even in whispers. Neither was it rebellion against the work that had cast Lovey Mary into such depths of gloom; fourteen beds had been made, fourteen heads had been combed, and fourteen wriggling little bodies had been cheerfully buttoned into starchy blue ginghams exactly like her own.

Something deeper and more mysterious was fermenting in her soul— something that made her long passionately for the beautiful things of life, for love and sympathy and happiness; something that made her want to be good, yet tempted her constantly to rebel against her environs. It was just the world-old spirit that makes the veriest little weed struggle through a chink in the rock and reach upward toward the sun.

"What's the matter with your hair, Lovey Mary? It looks so funny," asked a small girl, coming up the steps.

"If anybody asts you, tell 'em you don't know," snapped Lovey Mary.

"Well, Miss Bell says for you to come down to the office," said the other, unabashed. "There's a lady down there—a lady and a baby. Me and Susie peeked in. Miss Bell made the lady cry; she made her wipe the powders off her compleshun."

"And she sent for me?" asked Lovey Mary, incredulously. Such a ripple in the still waters of the home was sufficient to interest the most disconsolate.

"Yes; and me and Susie's going to peek some more."

Lovey Mary dried her tears and hurried down to the office. As she stood at the door she heard a girl's excited voice protesting and begging, and Miss Bell's placid tones attempting to calm her. They paused as she entered.

"Mary," said Miss Bell, "you remember Kate Rider. She has brought her child for us to take care of for a while. Have you room for him in your division?"

As Lovey Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing profusion under the brim of the showy hat.

"Mary, answer my question!" said Miss Bell, sharply.

With an involuntary shudder of repugnance Lovey Mary drew her gaze from Kate and murmured, "Yes, 'm."

"Then you can take the baby with you," continued Miss Bell, motioning to the sleeping child. "But wait a moment. I think I will put Jennie at the head of your division and let you have entire charge of this little boy. He is only a year old, Kate tells me, so will need constant attention."

Lovey Mary was about to protest, when Kate broke in:

"Oh, say, Miss Bell, please get some other girl! Tommy never would like Lovey. He's just like me: if people ain't pretty, he don't have no use for 'em."

"That will do, Kate," said Miss Bell, coldly. "It is only pity for the child that makes me take him at all. You have forfeited all claim upon our sympathy or patience. Mary, take the baby up-stairs and care for him until I come."

Lovey Mary, hot with rebellion, picked him up and went out of the room. At the door she stumbled against two little girls who were listening at the keyhole.

Up-stairs in the long dormitory it was very quiet. The children had been marched away to Sunday-school, and only Lovey Mary and the sleeping baby were on the second floor. The girl sat beside the little white bed and hated the world as far as she knew it: she hated Kate for adding this last insult to the old score; she hated Miss Bell for putting this new burden on her unwilling shoulders; she hated the burden itself, lying there before her so serene and unconcerned; and most of all she hated herself.

"I wisht I was dead!" she cried passionately. "The harder I try to be good the meaner I get. Ever'body blames me, and ever'body makes fun of me. Ugly old face, and ugly old hands, and straight old rat-tail hair! It ain't no wonder that nobody loves me. I just wisht I was dead!"

The sunshine came through the window and made a big white patch on the bare floor, but Lovey Mary sat in the shadow and disturbed the Sunday quiet by her heavy sobbing.

At noon, when the children returned, the noise of their arrival woke Tommy. He opened his round eyes on a strange world, and began to cry lustily. One child after another tried to pacify him, but each friendly advance increased his terror.

"Leave him be!" cried Lovey Mary. "Them hats is enough to skeer him into fits." She picked him up, and with the knack born of experience soothed and comforted him. The baby hid his face on her shoulder and held her tight. She could feel the sobs that still shook the small body, and his tears were on her cheek.

"Never mind," she said. "I ain't a-going to let 'em hurt you. I'm going to take care of you. Don't cry any more. Look!"

She stretched forth her long, unshapely hand and made grotesque snatches at the sunshine that poured in through the window. Tommy hesitated and was lost; a smile struggled to the surface, then broke through the tears.

"Look! He's laughing!" cried Lovey Mary, gleefully. "He's laughing 'cause I ketched a sunbeam for him!"

Then she bent impulsively and kissed the little red lips so close to her own.

CHAPTER II

A RUNAWAY COUPLE

"Courage mounteth with occasion."

For two years Lovey Mary cared for Tommy: she bathed him and dressed him, taught him to walk, and kissed his bumps to make them well; she sewed for him and nursed him by day, and slept with him in her tired arms at night. And Tommy, with the inscrutable philosophy of childhood, accepted his little foster-mother and gave her his all.

One bright June afternoon the two were romping in the home yard under the beech-trees. Lovey Mary lay in the grass, while Tommy threw handfuls of leaves in her face, laughing with delight at her grimaces. Presently the gate clicked, and some one came toward them.

"Good land! is that my kid?" said a woman's voice. "Come here, Tom, and kiss your mother."

Lovey Mary, sitting up, found Kate Rider, in frills and ribbons, looking with surprise at the sturdy child before her.

Tommy objected violently to this sudden overture and declined positively to acknowledge the relationship. In fact, when Kate attempted to pull him to her, 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. Then the sun got too high up in the heavens to watch little runaway orphan girls. Nobody saw her steal through the deserted playroom, down the clean bare steps, which she had helped to wear away, and out through the yard to the coal-shed. Here she got the reluctant Tommy into his clothes, and tied on his little round straw hat, so absurdly like her own.

"Is we playin' hie-spy, Yuvey?" asked the mystified youngster.

"Yes, Tommy," she whispered, "and we are going a long way to hide. You are my little boy now, and you must love me better than anything in the world. Say it, Tommy; say, 'I love you better 'n anybody in the whole world.'"

"Will I det on de rollin' honor?" asked Tommy, thinking he was learning his golden text.

But Lovey Mary had forgotten her question. She was taking a farewell look at the home, every nook and corner of which had suddenly grown dear. Already she seemed a thing apart, one having no right to its shelter and protection. She turned to where Tommy was playing with some sticks in the corner, and bidding him not to stir or speak until her return, she slipped back up the walk and into the kitchen. Swiftly and quietly she made a fire in the stove and filled the kettle with water. Then she looked about for something more she might do. On the table lay the grocery book with a pencil attached. She thought a moment, then wrote laboriously under the last order: "Miss Bell I will take kere Tommy pleas don't be mad." Then she softly closed the door behind her.

A few minutes later she lifted Tommy out of the low shed window, and hurried him down the alley and out into the early morning streets. At the corner they took a car, and Tommy knelt by the window and absorbed the sights with rapt attention; to him the adventure was beginning brilliantly. Even Lovey Mary experienced a sense of exhilaration when she paid their fare out of one of the silver dollars. She knew the conductor was impressed, because he said, "You better watch Buddy's hat, ma'am." That "ma'am" pleased her profoundly; it caused her unconsciously to assume Miss Bell's tone and manner as she conversed with the back of Tommy's head.

"We'll go out on the avenue," she said. "We'll go from house to house till I get work. 'Most anybody would be glad to get a handy girl that can cook and wash and sew, only—I ain't very big, and then there's you."

"Ain't that a big house?" shouted Tommy, half way out of the window.

"Yes; don't talk so loud. That's the court-house."

"Where they make court-plaster at?" inquired Tommy shrilly.

Lovey Mary glanced around uneasily. She hoped the old man in the corner had not heard this benighted remark. All went well until the car reached the terminal station. Here Tommy refused to get off. In vain Lovey Mary coaxed and threatened.

"It'll take us right back to the home," she pleaded. "Be a good boy and come with Lovey. I'll buy you something nice."

Tommy remained obdurate. He believed in letting well enough alone. The joys of a street-car ride were present and tangible; "something nice" was vague, unsatisfying.

"Don't yer little brother want to git off?" asked the conductor, sympathetically.

"No, sir," said Lovey Mary, trying to maintain her dignity while she struggled with her charge. "If you please, sir, would you mind holding his feet while I loosen his hands?"

Tommy, shrieking indignant protests, was borne from the car and deposited on the sidewalk.

"Don't you dare get limber!" threatened Lovey Mary. "If you do I'll spank you right here on the street. Stand up! Straighten out your legs! Tommy! do you hear me?"

Tommy might have remained limp indefinitely had not a hurdy-gurdy opportunely arrived on the scene. It is true that he would go only in the direction of the music, but Lovey Mary was delighted to have him go at all. When at last they were headed for the avenue, Tommy caused another delay.

"I want my ducky," he announced.

The words brought consternation to Lovey Mary. She had fearfully anticipated them from the moment of leaving the home.

"I'll buy you a 'tend-like duck," she said.

"No; I want a sure-'nough ducky; I want mine."

Lovey Mary was exasperated. "Well, you can't have yours. I can't get it for you, and you might as well hush."

His lips trembled, and two large tears rolled down his round cheeks. When he was injured he was irresistible. Lovey Mary promptly surrendered.

"Don't cry, baby boy! Lovey'll get you one someway."

For some time the quest of the duck was fruitless. The stores they entered were wholesale houses for the most part, where men were rolling barrels about or stacking skins and hides on the sidewalk.

"Do you know what sort of a store they sell ducks at?" asked Lovey
Mary of a colored man who was sweeping out an office.

"Ducks!" repeated the negro, grinning at the queerly dressed children in their round straw hats. "Name o' de Lawd! What do you all want wif ducks?"

Lovey Mary explained.

"Wouldn't a kitten do jes as well?" he asked kindly.

"I want my ducky," whined Tommy, showing signs of returning storm.

"I don' see no way 'cept'n' gwine to de mahket. Efen you tek de cah you kin ride plumb down dere."

Recent experience had taught Lovey Mary to be wary of street-cars, so they walked. At the market they found some ducks. The desired objects were hanging in a bunch with their limp heads tied together. Further inquiry, however, discovered some live ones in a coop.

"They're all mama ducks," objected Tommy. "I want a baby ducky. I want my little ducky!"

When he found he could do no better, he decided to take one of the large ones. Then he said he was hungry, so he and Mary took turn about holding it while the other ate "po' man's pickle" and wienerwurst.

It was two o'clock by the time they reached the avenue, and by four they were foot-sore and weary, but they trudged bravely along from house to house asking for work. As dusk came on, the houses, which a few squares back had been tall and imposing, seemed to be getting smaller and more insignificant. Lovey Mary felt secure as long as she was on the avenue. She did not know that the avenue extended for many miles and that she had reached the frayed and ragged end of it. She and Tommy passed under a bridge, and after that the houses all seemed to behave queerly. Some faced one way, some another, and crisscross between them, in front of them, and behind them ran a network of railroad tracks.

"What's the name of this street?" asked Lovey Mary of a small, bare- footed girl.

"'T ain't no street," answered the little girl, gazing with undisguised amazement at the strange-looking couple; "this here is the Cabbage Patch."

[Illustration: "'T ain't no street…; this here is the Cabbage
Patch.'"]

CHAPTER III

THE HAZY HOUSEHOLD

    "Here sovereign Dirt erects her sable throne,
     The house, the host, the hostess all her own."