Life and Mary Ann — Catherine Cookson

It is impossible to imagine Mary Ann Shaughnessy as anything but an enchanting, aggravating and utterly natural child, possessed of an outsized love for her father and with an inherent inclination to put right the lives of those near to her.

Yet children must grow up. Mary Ann is now “going on” seventeen and life, as it really is, comes forcing itself on her attention. Mary Ann the teenager is much the same as the diminutive warrior when it comes to affairs of the heart. She is still in love with her childhood sweetheart Corny Boyle, but Corny takes the carrot dangled by Mr. Lord -- the old devil -- and deserts her to go to America.

So the field is once again open to Mr. Lord's grandson to court Mary Ann. But does she want him to? As is to be expected he proposes to Mary Ann…