Miggs Carmody Malone

Miggs Carmody was one of Beany's two best friends, the other being Kay Maffley. Beany notes that the two seem to hop in and out of her life, one present while the other is elsewhere. She eventually marries Beany's brother, Johnny, and they have a daughter, Melody.

From Image Cascade Publishing's page:

Childhood friend of Beany's whose father became and oilman when Miggs was living in Oklahoma. The legend of Beany and Miggs' relationship is as follows:

"(Beany's) mother and Miggs s mother had given birth to girl babies at the same hospital on St. Patrick s morning almost seventeen years ago. The two women had occupied the same room. They had planned to leave the hospital with their two baby girls the same day. Beany knew that part of the legend too?"

"Katie had to come home with Mother because it was snowing so hard that her husband phoned and said he couldn't get the car through the lane from their farm to the highway.' They had never called Miggs's mother 'Mrs. Carmody'; it had always been 'Katie.' "

"'And it kept snowing night and day," Mary Fred filled in, 'and so Katie stayed on here. And lucky she did, or you d probably have kicked the bucket, what with Mother coming down with something the day after they got home. I suppose it was a virus, because she ran a high temperature, and her milk dried up, and you yelled like a banshee' I remember that...' "

"'Oh, you don't any such thing. You were only three.' "

"'When events make an indelible impression on you, you can remember even earlier than that,' " Mary Fred said firmly in the voice of a psychology major.

"'And so Katie nursed me, along with her own baby,' Beany said."

"'And saved your life," Mary Fred reminded her. 'Because you couldn't take any of the formulas the doctor tried on you, and you began shriveling up.' "

Untouched and somewhat embarrassed by her family's wealth, Miggs was thoughtful and quiet. She lived and dressed simply taking pleasure in her love of animals and her friendship with Beany and the Malone family. . . . "Miggs's hazel eyes were set in an oval face that wore an all-the-year-round tan, and her dark hair was sun-bleached at the edges from being outdoors so much of the time. She never wore jewelry, and often forgot lipstick.

Dulcie Lungaarde, whose taste ran to bright hues of orange, purple, and green, was always scolding Miggs. "You oughtn't to wear those dishwater browns. They make you look all of a piece."

And often a student at Harkness would say to Beany, 'I suppose your rich Miggs Carmody lives in a swanky country place.' To which Beany always answered, 'She lives in an old made-over farmhouse. Once her father rented a posh penthouse, but Miggs and her mother were both miserable in it. Mrs. Carmody likes to raise chickens and grow strawberries, and you know how Miggs is. She's up earlier every morning than any farmhand, milking the cow and taking care of Mary Fred s mare and colt, and a whole raft of rabbits that she keeps for Andy Kern s little brothers because their landlady and their father wouldn't let them keep them at home. Of course, there was only a pair to start.'"

"The Carmodys lived on a small farm out beyond the university. Miggs, like Mary Fred, was a horsewoman. But then Miggs had a way with all animals. It was in the Carmody stable and the Carmody pasture that Mary Fred kept the beautiful Miss Goldie (though she was registered as Golden Miss) and her colt."

"Mary Fred took loving care of both mare and colt, as did Miggs and her mother. Sometimes Beany had a left-out feeling when Miggs and Mary Fred talked of three-gaited stakes and maiden jumpers, for she shared neither their knowledge nor their enjoyment. Miss Goldie with her gentle topaz eyes was the one piece of horseflesh that Beany 'cottoned' to. 'To think I'd have a sister that was such a scaredy-cat around horses,' Mary Fred lamented."