1903. From the author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. The story begins. 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 upstairs window making hideous faces and kicking the furniture. The depth of her repentance could always be gauged by the violence of her conduct. Miss Bell looked at her as she should have looked at one of the hieroglyphs on the Obelisk. She had been trying to decipher her for thirteen years.