Mary's First Love.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 411, 24 March 1904, Page 2

Mary's First Love.

Bv Mrs. Lovett Cameron.

Up to the time when the great trouble of her life befell her, Mary Boss had led an existence perhaps as happy and as free from _ care as in this troublesome and transitory world it is possible to conceive. The only child of very wealthy parents, who had reached middle age before this treasured/child had been born to them, Mary had been all her life encompassed about by their tenderest love and devotion. From her cradle to her twentythird year, at which, period I introduce her to my readers, she had never known an ungratified desire or an unfulfilled fancy—had never heard s harsh or unjußt word, nor had ever been chilled by the blighting breath of unkindness or neglect. Such a child is frequently spoilt and selfish, diecontented and ill-tempered j but in May Boss no such disastrous results had ensued. What rendered her so very happy was not so much the circumstances which surrounded her, as the peculiar and charming sweetness and simplicity of her character.

Her father, a self-made man who had began life as a factory lad oh the banks of the Clyde, where he is now the head of a prosperous firm, might at times be a little proud of hia rise in life, and a little given to boasting of his success and money. Her mother again, whose origin was a humble one, ani who had worked for her bread as a daily governess in Glasgow for many long and weary years before she had at length married her James, was sometimes unduly shy and ill at ease in the London world of fashion in which her lot was now caet. But in Mary herself there was neither boastfulness nor diffidence. She was perfectly natural and unaffected, as well as absolutely unspoilt and free from self-consciousness.

It did not occur to her in -the least that people made much of her because she was a great heiress, or that h;r popularity was dae to any other cause save to the obvious and ostensible one of her own amiable and pleaswt disposition. Honey had come so easily into her hands all her life that she attached no undue importance 'to the p3ißS3sion of it. She spent it indeed freely and unstintingly, but never tquandaringly and extravagantly—her Scotch blood kept her from this. It was only in her charities that Mary waß inclined to be lavish,, for her heart was so waim and tender that it hurt her to thin* that otiera were in want of the things of which ehe had enough and to spare, • Mar? Ejbs was by no means beautifnl. She herself admired the many beautiful women she constantly lnet in London drawing-rooms with an almost passionate admiration, but she was not in the least enviouß of them For it had never seemed to make any difference to her enjoyment in life that ehe was short and a thought stumpy in figure,' and that hee square but honest face had net, Btriotly speaking, a single good feature in it. (To te continued.)