Mary-Mary

by Joan G. Robinson

  Mary-Mary followed them from room to room, but they all said, “Oh, do go away, Mary-Mary.” “You’re interrupting.” “Don’t be a nuisance.” “Leave us alone.”

  So Mary-Mary went next door to see Miss Summers. But Miss Summers was busy too. She said, “I’m so sorry, Mary-Mary, but I’ve no time for visitors today, because I’m going away.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Mary-Mary.

  “To stay with a friend,” said Miss Summers.

  “How long for?” asked Mary-Mary.

  “I haven’t quite decided yet,” said Miss Summers. “I’ll see how I like it. Just now I’m busy getting ready.”

  Mary-Mary went home again, and went up to the bedroom.

  “Miriam,” she said, “I won’t talk to you while you’re writing your letter, but will you tell me when you’ve finished writing it so that I can talk to you? Because I shan’t know how long to go on not interrupting you if you don’t tell me when you’ve finished, and it would be a pity to go on not talking if you had finished, wouldn’t it?”

  Miriam said, “Oh, do stop talking, Mary-Mary, and go away!”

  So Mary-Mary went down into the kitchen and said, “Martyn, will you tell me when you’ve finished painting so that I shall know when I won’t be interrupting you?”

  But Martyn said, “Oh, go away, Mary-Mary!”

  Then Mary-Mary went into the dining-room.

  “Mervyn,” she said, “I know you haven’t finished making your model yet, so I won’t interrupt you; but will you tell me when you have finished, because then I shall be able to come and see it without interrupting you, and if I don’t know when you’ve finishd I might come and interrupt you without meaning to?

  “You’re interrupting me now,” said Mervyn. “Go away!”

  So Mary-Mary went into the sitting-room to see Meg, but before she had time to say a word Meg looked up crossly and said, “Go away, Mary-Mary!” So Mary-Mary went.

  “That’s funny,” she said to herself. “They all said the same thing. Every one of them told me to go away.”

  She stood in the hall for a minute, thinking hard, then she went next door again.

  Miss Summers, in her best hat, was just coming out of the house.

  Mary-Mary said, “Do you mind telling me before you go what you had to do to get ready to go away?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things,” said Miss Summers. “Pack my bag, leave a note for the milkman, lock the back door—why do you want to know?”

  “I might be going away myself,” said Mary-Mary, “and it’s useful to know.”

  “But you can’t go away by yourself until you’re grown up,” said Miss Summers.

  “Why not?” said Mary-Mary.

  “Because little girls can’t,” said Miss Summers. “You’ll have to wait till you’re a grown-up lady.”

  She kissed Mary-Mary good-bye.

  “I’ll probably be back on Tuesday,” she said, “then you must come and see me again.”

  Mary-Mary went home again, thinking hard all the way.

  Miriam was half-way through her letter when the door opened, and Mary-Mary looked in with a tea-cosy on her head.

  “Does this look like a lady’s hat?” she asked.

  Miriam laughed. “It does rather,” she said.

  “Do I look like a grown-up lady?”

  “No,” said Miriam, “you haven’t got ladies’ shoes on.”

  Mary-Mary went away and tried on several pairs of Mother’s shoes. They were all rather large.

  But I’ll soon get used to that, she said to herself.

  She chose a pair with high heels, because they made her look taller, and carried them downstairs in her hand. Then she put them on and hobbled into the kitchen where Martyn was still busy painting.

  “Do I look like a grown-up lady?” she asked.

  Martyn laughed. “You might if your skirt was longer,” he said.

  Mary-Mary slipped the straps of her skirt over her shoulders so that her skirt fell down nearly to her ankles. Then she hobbled away to find Mervyn, who was still busy with his model.

  “Do I look like a lady who’s going away?” said Mary-Mary.

  Mervyn looked up.

  “Jolly nearly,” he said, laughing. “But where’s your handbag?”

  “Oh, yes—my handbag! I quite forgot!” said Mary-Mary, and she went away and dug it up out of the sand-pit.

  Then, with the tea-cosy on her head, Mother’s shoes on her feet, her skirt almost down to her ankles, and her dreadful-looking handbag over her arm, she went off to find Meg.

  Meg was still busy with her sums. She was frowning, thinking hard, and counting on her fingers.

  “Do I look like a grown-up lady?” asked Mary-Mary.

  Meg went on frowning and counting, not looking up.

  Mary-Mary asked her again.

  “Oh, go away!” said Meg.

  “Yes. Good-bye,” said Mary-Mary.

  Meg looked up, surprised, but Mary-Mary had gone.

  She had gone to the cupboard under the stairs to get a paper carrier bag. After that she fetched her toothbrush and a nightie and Moppet. She wrapped them up in a small bundle of comics and put them in the carrier bag.

  Then she wrote a note for the milkman. It said, “Dear Milkman, I’ve gone away, love from Mary-Mary.” After that she locked the back door. Then she was ready.

  She stopped in the hall to say good-bye to herself in the mirror.

  “I shall probably be back on Tuesday,” she said.

  “Very well, madam,” she answered herself. “Have a nice time.”

  “Thank you,” said Mary-Mary, and stepped out into the street.

  A boy was sitting on the wall on the other side of the road. When he saw Mary-Mary come out of the house wearing her tea-cosy hat, her high-heeled shoes, and with her skirt nearly down to her ankles he stared hard. Then he whistled. Then he laughed out loud.

  Mary-Mary took no notice of him and started walking carefully down the road. But her shoes slipped this way and that, and it was difficult not to turn her ankle over, so after a while she stepped out of them and put them in the carrier bag.

  The boy got off the wall and followed her down on the other side of the road.

  “Where do you think. you’re going?” he called.

  “I’m going away,” said Mary-Mary.

  “I don’t believe it,” said the boy. “Where to?”

  “To stay with a friend,” said Mary-Mary.

  “Yah!” said the boy. “I don’t believe it.”

  And he sat down on the wall to watch which way she would go.

  Mary-Mary had been in such a hurry to get out without anyone seeing her that she had forgotten to make up her mind where she was going. She began thinking quickly which of her friends she could be going to stay with. Miss Summers had gone away, so it was no good going there. Mrs Merry had no spare bed. Mary-Mary decided that Mr Bassett would be very glad to have her. She turned in at his gate, put on her shoes, and rang the front-door bell.

  “I bet you didn’t really ring the bell!” shouted the boy.

  Mr Bassett’s front door opened. Mary-Mary turned round quickly, made a face at the boy, and stepped inside with a polite cough. Mr Bassett himself had opened the door.

  “Dear me!” he said, looking down at her. “Where are you going? You look as if you’re going away.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m going to stay with you,” said Mary-Mary.

  “Are you really? How long for?”

  “I haven’t quite decided yet. We’ll see how I like it, shall we?” said Mary-Mary.

  “Dear, dear!” said Mr Bassett. “Well, you’d better come in.”

  He took her into the front room, and Mary-Mary sat on the edge of a large leather armchair.

  “Would you like to take your hat off?” asked Mr Bassett.

  Mary-Mary took it off, and Mr Bassett put it on the sideboard.

  “It looks rather like a tea-cosy on there, doesn’t it?” said Mary-Ma
ry.

  “Yes,” said Mr Bassett, “I almost thought it was one. Perhaps we’d better hang it on a peg.”

  “No, it’s all right,” said Mary-Mary, “don’t bother. It can go in this bag with my toothbrush and nightie.”

  “Toothbrush and nightie?” said Mr Bassett. “Do you mean you’re going to sleep here?”

  “Yes,” said Mary-Mary.

  “But I didn’t ask you, did I?”

  Mary-Mary thought hard.

  “Do people have to be asked before they go away?” she said.

  “They do usually.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Mary-Mary. “And I forgot to ask you to ask me. You’d better ask me now, hadn’t you?”

  Mr Bassett sat down and wrote her an invitation which said, “Dear Mary-Mary, Please will you come and stay with me from two to four o’clock today. I shall be so pleased if you will.”

  “Thank you,” said Mary-Mary. “I shall like to come very much. But why only till four?”

  “I don’t like planning things too far ahead,” said Mr Bassett.

  “How funny,” said Mary-Mary. “I like looking forward to things. Never mind—you can write me another invitation at four o’clock asking me to stay till Tuesday. What shall we do now?”

  “We could play ludo,” said Mr Bassett. “Or would you like to come and see my rabbits?”

  “Oh, do you keep rabbits?” said Mary-Mary. “I am glad.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Bassett, “and the people next door keep chickens. But I like rabbits better.”

  “You’re lucky,” said Mary-Mary. “My father and mother only keep children. I like rabbits better too. Let’s go and see them first, and we can play ludo after. That will be very nice.”

  So Mary-Mary went into the garden with Mr Bassett and fed the rabbits and played with them, and after that they settled down to ludo.

  By this time Miriam and Martyn and Mervyn and Meg had finished writing and painting and cutting out and counting. They looked around for Mary-Mary, but she was nowhere to be seen. They looked upstairs and downstairs and all round the garden, but they couldn’t find her anywhere. Then Miriam went out of the back door and found the note to the milkman inside the empty milk bottle. She read it, then she shouted to the others, and they all came running.

  “She’s gone away!” said Miriam.

  “Where to?” said Martyn.

  “Doesn’t she say?” said Mervyn.

  “How silly!” said Meg.

  Then they all said together, “Oh, dear! Whatever will Mother say?” And they began to get really worried.

  They went down the road, looking in at the windows of all the shops and asking everyone they knew. A boy was standing outside the sweetshop sucking a liquorice pipe.

  “Have you seen a little girl come this way?” they asked him. “With a bag?” “And a hat?” “And a pair of shoes?”

  “Yes,” said the boy, “and jolly funny she looked. Said she was going away to stay with a friend. She went into the old gent’s house up there.”

  Very relieved, they all went up the road again to Mr Bassett’s house, the boy following them. He sat on the wall to watch what would happen, and Miriam, Martyn, Mervyn, and Meg rang the bell.

  Mary-Mary opened the door. She looked very surprised to see them.

  “You naughty girl!” they all said together. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  “Come home at once.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone away.”

  Mary-Mary shut the door. Then she said through the letter-box, “You shouldn’t shout outside other people’s houses. I’m ashamed of you.”

  “Mary-Mary, you must come home!” called Miriam.

  “No,” said Mary-Mary, “you told me to go away, and I’ve gone away.”

  “Open the door,” said Miriam.

  “No,” said Mary-Mary.

  “Where is Mr Bassett?” said Martyn.

  “He’s playing ludo and mustn’t be disturbed,” said Mary-Mary.

  “Let us in,” said Mervyn.

  “No, said Mary-Mary.

  “Mother will be coming home soon,” said Meg. “You must come back. We’re supposed to be looking after you.”

  “I’m not coming back,” said Mary-Mary.

  The others all whispered together in a worried sort of way, and the boy on the wall laughed rudely.

  Then Miriam said, “Mary-Mary, dear, I’m sorry we all told you to go away. Will you come back now?”

  There was silence for a moment, then Mary-Mary opened the door.

  “Please will you come back?” they said, all together.

  Mary-Mary smiled.

  “I don’t think I’ll come back,” she said, “but I might come and stay with you if you ask me properly.”

  “All right—please will you come and stay with us?”

  “Will you treat me like a visitor?”

  “We’ll try,” they said.

  “What will there be for tea?”

  Miriam thought quickly and said, “Sardine sandwiches.” (They were Mary-Mary’s favourite.)

  “Will you remember to say, ‘Take two as they’re so small’?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Miriam.

  Mary-Mary started to shut the door again.

  “I’m sorry I can’t come and stay with you today,” she said. “Perhaps some other time—”

  But Martyn held the door open, and Miriam said, “Yes, yes—take two as they’re so small. Take three if you like. But do please come home—I mean, do please come and stay with us!”

  “Very well,” said Mary-Mary; “as you all want me so much, I’ll come. But I must just go and pack my things. You can go on if you like and start getting tea ready for me.”

  So Miriam, Martyn, Mervyn, and Meg went home (the boy on the wall laughed rudely as they went by), and Mary-Mary went and told Mr Bassett she was sorry she couldn’t stay any longer, but her family very much wanted her to go and stay with them for a while.

  She put on her shoes and her tea-cosy hat, and Mr Bassett saw her to the door.

  On the doorstep she stopped to make sure she had got everything. She brought out the small bundle of comics.

  “You might like to keep these,” she said. “I brought them to read in bed, but I’ve got plenty more at home.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Mr Bassett.

  “And thank you for having me,” said Mary-Mary.

  Miriam, Martyn, Mervyn, and Meg all came out to their own doorstep.

  “Tea is nearly ready,” they called. “We shall be so pleased if you will come.”

  “Thank you, I will,” said Mary-Mary, and she set off down the steps.

  The rude boy was still sitting on the wall.

  “That was one up to you, wasn’t it?” he said, laughing.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Mary-Mary.

  “Go on!” said the boy. “Of course you do. Everybody knows what ‘one up to you’ means!”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” said Mary-Mary, and hobbled carefully up to her own front door, where all her big brothers and sisters were politely waiting for her.

  So Mary-Mary went away and then came home again to stay, and that is the end of the story.

  5

  Mary-Mary is a Surprise

  ONE day Mary-Mary sat at the table giving Moppet his breakfast. She sat him beside her plate with one cornflake in front of his nose, and while she was waiting for him to eat it she listened to all her big brothers and sisters talking.

  “Mrs Merry’s party is going to be lovely,” said Miriam. “It isn’t going to end until half-past midnight.”

  “Smashing,” said Martyn.

  “Super,” said Mervyn.

  “Golly!” said Meg.

  “We’ve never been to such a late party before,” said Miriam. “I suppose it’s because it’s a New Year party.”

  “Whizzo,” said Martyn.

  “Hooray,” said Mervyn.

  “Gorgeous!” said Meg.
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  Mary-Mary was very surprised to hear that there was going to be a party.

  “When are we going?” she asked.

  But all the others said, “No, not you, Mary-Mary.” “It’s only us.” “You weren’t asked.” “You’re too little.”

  Mary-Mary moved Moppet’s nose a little closer to his cornflake and didn’t say anything.

  “Never mind,” said Miriam.

  “Wait till you’re bigger,” said Martyn.

  “Then you’ll be able to go too,” said Mervyn.

  “If anyone asks you,” said Meg.

  And they all said, “Never mind, Mary-Mary,” together.

  Mary-Mary got down from her place and said in a busy and rather worried voice, “I couldn’t have gone, anyway. I am far too busy. Moppet has a cold and he needs looking after.”

  She gave a tiny sneeze in Moppet’s voice and looked at the cornflake.

  “You see, he hasn’t even eaten his breakfast. I have to eat it for him.”

  She put the cornflake in her mouth, then, still looking busy and worried, she carried Moppet away and put him to bed in a small cardboard box.

  All the morning, while the others talked about the New Year party and what they should wear and who would fetch them home and what there would be to eat, Moppet’s cold got worse and worse.

  Mary-Mary sat with him and told him stories and tucked him up in cotton-wool and gave him medicine from a doll’s tea-cup, and was so busy that she had no time at all to think about the party.

  About an hour before dinner-time Mrs Merry came in on her way back from shopping. She was a fat, jolly lady whom they all liked; but as soon as Mary-Mary heard her voice in the hall she hid under the table with Moppet. She didn’t want to see Mrs Merry today.

  Miriam, Martyn, Mervyn, and Meg brought Mrs Merry into the dining-room, and they all started talking about the New Year party all over again.

  “I have a lovely plan,” said Mrs Merry. “I am going to dress Mr Merry up as a very old man, with a long white beard—to be the Old Year, you know. Then, when the clock strikes midnight (and it really is the end of the year), I thought how lovely it would be if we could have two or three fairies come in with a great big box of crackers to give away to everybody to wish them a Happy New Year.”