Mary Marie

by Eleanor H. Porter

I suppose she saw by my face how awfully I felt 'cause she'd found it. And, of course, she saw something was the matter; and she thought it was—

Well, the first thing I knew she was looking at me in her very sternest, sorriest way, and saying:

"Oh, Marie, how could you? I'm ashamed of you! Couldn't you wear the
Mary dresses one little three months to please your father?"

I did cry, then. After all I'd been through, to have her accuse me of getting those dresses! Well, I just couldn't stand it. And I told her so as well as I could, only I was crying so by now that I could hardly speak. I told her how it was hard enough to be Mary part of the time, and Marie part of the time, when I knew what they wanted me to be. But when she tried to have me Mary while he wanted me Marie, and he tried to have me Marie while she wanted me Mary—I did not know what they wanted; and I wished I had never been born unless I could have been born a plain Susie or Bessie, or Annabelle, and not a Mary Marie that was all mixed up till I didn't know what I was.

And then I cried some more.

Mother dropped the dress then, and took me in her arms over on the couch, and she said, "There, there," and that I was tired and nervous, and all wrought up, and to cry all I wanted to. And by and by, when I was calmer I could tell Mother all about it.

And I did.

I told her how hard I tried to be Mary all the way up to Andersonville and after I got there; and how then I found out, all of a sudden one day, that father had got ready for Marie, and he didn't want me to be Mary, and that was why he had got Cousin Grace and the automobile and the geraniums in the window, and, oh, everything that made it nice and comfy and homey. And then is when they bought me the new white dresses and the little white shoes. And I told Mother, of course, it was lovely to be Marie, and I liked it, only I knew she would feel bad to think, after all her pains to make me Mary, Father didn't want me Mary at all.

"I don't think you need to worry—about that," stammered Mother. And when I looked at her, her face was all flushed, and sort of queer, but not a bit angry. And she went on in the same odd little shaky voice: "But, tell me, why—why did—your father want you to be Marie and not Mary?"

And then I told her how he said he'd remembered what I'd said to him in the parlor that day—how tired I got being Mary, and how I'd put on Marie's things just to get a little vacation from her; and he said he'd never forgotten. And so when it came near time for me to come again, he determined to fix it so I wouldn't have to be Mary at all. And so that was why. And I told Mother it was all right, and of course I liked it; only it did mix me up awfully, not knowing which wanted me to be Mary now, and which Marie, when they were both telling me different from what they ever had before. And that it was hard, when you were trying just the best you knew how.