Mary: A Nursery Story for Very Little Children — Edition Insights

(3 User reviews) 676

In Category - Fantasy Juvenile Worlds

Authors: Molesworth, Mrs., 1839-1921, Brooke, L. Leslie (Leonard Leslie), 1862-1940 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2013 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Faith -- Juvenile fiction; Family -- Juvenile fiction; Birthdays -- Juvenile fiction; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction; Sick -- Juvenile fiction; Storytelling -- Juvenile fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 40,770

Reading time 178 min

Text sections 5

Mary: A Nursery Story for Very Little Children — Edition Insights can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 40,770 words, 2 hr 58 min estimated reading time, and 5 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 16.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Christian life -- Juvenile fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #43131

Mrs. Molesworth's 1878 nursery story follows four-year-old Mary through birthday wishes, baby sister worries, and everyday discoveries, with gentle humor and precise child psychology.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg43131

Read the Text

She thought Little Sarah was very stupid sometimes.

"I'm calling nurse," Mary went on, "I don't want you, Little Sarah. You can go and dress Master Artie."

If Little Sarah was rather stupid, she was also very good-natured. She glanced at Mary with a smile, but with rather an odd look on her face too.

"What does you want? What is you looking at me for?" said Mary.

"Oh, nothing," said Sarah. "I was only thinking whatever would you do without nurse if--if nurse was busy and couldn't be so much with you, Miss Mary."

"Nurse wouldn't never be busy like that," said Mary.

"Oh, well, never mind. I'll dress Master Artie and I dare say nurse--" began Sarah, but she stopped short. Nurse just then came into the room.

"Here's Miss Mary worretting for you," said the girl.

Nurse hurried up to the little girl's bed.

"Have you been awake long, my dear?" she said. "I'm so sorry."

"Nurse," whispered Mary, pulling nurse's head close down so that she could whisper to her, "I heard Old Sarah and Little Sarah talking, and Old Sarah sayed `Thursday' and `May.' Is it my birfday comed, nurse? Mamma sayed it was coming in May, and it would be Thursday."

"My dearie," said nurse, "you've guessed right. It is your birthday-- the 18th of May."

Mary felt pleased, but also a little disappointed. She had been waiting for her birthday and thinking about it for such a long time that now she could scarcely believe it had come. For it seemed just like other days. No, not quite like other days, not as nice. For nurse had got up so early and Old Sarah and Little Sarah had been talking in the nursery-- she did not like anybody to talk like that in the nursery.

"Dress me quick, please, nurse," she said, "and then I'll go to mamma's room, and then p'raps my birfday will begin. I don't think it can have beginned yet. I thought--" and then she stopped and her lips quivered a little.

"What, my dearie?" said nurse.

She was a very kind, understanding nurse always, but this morning she spoke even more kindly than other mornings to Mary.

"I don't know," said Mary. "I think I thought mamma would come to kiss me in bed like a fairy, and--and--I thought there'd be stockings or somefin' like that--like Kissimas, you know."

Nurse had lifted Mary out of her bath by this time, and was rubbing her with a nice large "soft-roughey" towel--"soft-roughey" was one of Mary and Artie's words--it meant the opposite of "prick-roughey." They did not like "prick-roughey" things. She wrapped Mary all round in the big towel for a minute; it was nice and warm, for it had been hanging in front of the fire; then she gave Mary a little hug.

"You mustn't be unhappy, dear Miss Mary," she said. "Mamma meant to come, I'm sure, but she's fast asleep--and when she wakes I'm afraid she'll have a headache. So I'm afraid your birthday won't be quite like what you planned. But I'm sure there'll be some pretty presents for you--quite sure."

But Mary looked up with her lips quivering still more, and the tears beginning to come too.

"It isn't presents I want," she said. "Not presents like that way. I-- I want mamma. Mammas shouldn't have headaches. It takes away all the birfday-ness."

Then she turned her head round and pressed it in to nurse's shoulder and burst into tears.

Poor nurse was very sorry. But she knew it would not do to be _too_ sorry for Mary, for then she would go on crying. And once Mary got into a long cry it sometimes went on to be a very long one indeed. So nurse spoke to her quite brightly.

"My dearie," she said, "you mustn't cry on your birthday morning. It's quite a mistake. Look up, dear. See, the sun's coming out so beautiful again, and we'll have Master Leigh and Master Artie calling for their breakfast. And you'll have to be quick, for your papa gave me a message to say you were to go down to see him in the dining-room."

Mary gave a little wriggle, though she still kept her face hidden. But as nurse went on talking she slowly turned round so that her dressing could go on.

"I've something to say to you before you go down," nurse went on. "There's something that's come just in time for your birthday. I'll give you each two guesses--you and Master Leigh and Master Artie, while you're eating your breakfast."

"Where's my hankercher?" she said, and when nurse gave it to her she wiped her eyes.

That was a good sign.

Continue Reading →

Mary, not yet four, wakes early on a May morning and tries to puzzle out whether today is her birthday. The narrator stays close to Mary's limited understanding: she can read well but finds knitting harder, and she dislikes being told she'll understand when she's older. The opening establishes a voice that takes a child's logic seriously, even when it leads to mistakes—like Mary's worry that her birthday might have "changed out of May" because she cannot grasp how days and months work.

A Child's Reasoning on Display

The first chapter shows Mary working through problems with only her own resources. She knows that last year her birthday was Wednesday, and that next year it will be—she cannot remember. She tries to deduce whether months are easier than days: "In April there were showers, and in May flowers." The text does not correct her; it lets her think aloud. Later, when she worries that baby sister has no teeth and may never speak, nurse laughs and explains that teeth come gradually. Mary's relief is immediate, but the episode reveals how seriously she takes her responsibilities as an older sister.

Nursery Rhythms and Small Dramas

The story moves through ordinary days: a drive to town to choose a perambulator, a conversation about a blue sash, a moment when Mary cries because she cannot make baby understand her. The narrator notes that Mary "was not a very asking child" because big people did not always understand her questions. This detail recurs—Mary's internal life is full of unspoken confusions. The prose mirrors her pace, lingering on sensory details like sunshine making old nursery furniture look "shiny and sparkling, as if fairy fingers had been rubbing it up."

The Role of the Adult Witness

Mamma and nurse appear as patient observers. When Mary is upset about baby's teeth, nurse does not dismiss her fear but sits on the grass and laughs—then explains. Mamma, seeing Mary's red eyes, does not press but instead announces the drive to town, knowing that "the tears were rather ready to come back." These adults do not lecture; they redirect. The story trusts that young readers will recognize the kindness in such moments, just as Mary recognizes that nurse's laughter is not mockery but affection.

Language and the Very Young Reader

The vocabulary is simple but not condescending. Words like "perambulator" and "grounding" appear without explanation, letting context supply meaning. Mary's own speech is transcribed phonetically—"birfday," "p'raps," "'amember"—which signals her age without making her seem foolish. The narrator occasionally addresses the reader directly: "I never knew a baby that did not want a lot of things." This technique creates a shared, conspiratorial tone, as if the adult reading aloud and the child listening are both in on the joke.

Readers who attend to the small details—Mary's careful spelling of "May" and "Mary," her silent frustration with explanations she cannot follow—will find a portrait of early childhood that is both affectionate and unsentimental. The story rewards a slow reading, one that pauses to notice how the narrator balances a child's limited view with an adult's understanding.

There are moments in Mary—the quiet watching of a baby sister, the small ache of a wish deferred—that feel less like fiction and more like a memory of being four. I found that same tender honesty in Little Nettie; or, Home Sunshine — Reading Notes; it lingers on the gentlest of childhood struggles without ever hurrying past them. Perhaps old books simply remember us better than we remember ourselves.