Lovey Mary

								

"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