Charles de Bernard - "Gerfaut, v1"

Thomas D'Arcy McGee - "A Popular History of Ireland V1"

Emerson Hough - "The Law of the Land"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1592"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories




"The Colonial Theatre, as fast as you can!" said she, as they jumped
in. She was obviously nervous, biting her lips and humming under her
breath as she watched the brilliantly lighted streets they threaded
so slowly. Almost before it stopped she was out of the cab, at the
entrance of a Broadway theatre. Duncan, alert and suspicious, read
the name "Colonial" in flaming letters, and learned from a larger
sign that Miss Eleanor Forsythe and an all-star cast were appearing
therein in a revival of Reade's "Masks and Faces."

In the foyer Mrs. Coppered asked authoritatively for the manager. It
was after ten o'clock, the curtain had risen on the last act, and a
general opinion prevailed that Mr. Wyatt had gone home. But Mrs.
Coppered's distinguished air, her magnificent furs, her beauty, all
had their effect, and presently Duncan followed her into the hot,
untidy little office where the manager was to be found.

He was a pleasant, weary-looking man, who wheeled about from his
desk as they came in, and signed the page to place chairs.

"Mr. Wyatt," said Mrs. Coppered, with her pleasantest smile, "can
you give us five minutes?"

"I can give you as many as you like, madam," said the manager,
patiently, but with a most unpromising air.

"Only five!" she reassured him, as they sat down. Then, with an
absolutely businesslike air, she continued: "Mr. Wyatt, you have Mr.
and Mrs. Penrose in your company, I think, both very old friends of
mine. She's playing Mabel Vane,--Mary Archer is the name she uses,--
and he's Triplet. Isn't that so?"

The manager nodded, eying her curiously.

"Mr. Wyatt, you've heard of their trouble, of course? The accident
this morning to their little boy?"

"Ah, yes--yes," said Wyatt. "Of course. Hurt by a fall, poor little
fellow. Very serious. Yes, poor things! Did you want to see--"

"You know that one of your big surgeons here--I've forgotten the
name!--is to operate on little Phil tomorrow?" asked Mrs. Coppered.

"So Penrose said," assented the manager, slowly, watching her as if
a little surprised at her insistence.

"Mr. Wyatt." said Mrs. Coppered,--and Duncan noticed that she had
turned a little pale,--"Mrs. Penrose wired me news of all this only
a few hours ago. She is half frantic at the idea that she must go on
tomorrow afternoon and evening; yet the understudy is ill, and she
felt it was too short notice to ask you to make a change now. But it
occurred to me to come to see you about it. I want to ask you a
favor. I want you to let me play Mrs. Penrose's part tomorrow
afternoon and tomorrow night. I've played Mabel Vane a hundred
times; it's a part I know very well," she went on quickly. "I--I am
not in the least afraid that I can't take it. And then she can be
with the little boy through the operation and afterward--he's only
five, you know, at the unreasonable age when all children want their
mothers! Can't that be arranged, Mr. Wyatt?"

Duncan, holding a horrified breath, fixed his eyes, as he did, on
the manager's face. He was relieved at the inflexible smile he saw
there.

"My dear lady," said Wyatt, kindly, "that is--absolutely--OUT of the
question! Anything in reason I will be delighted to do for Penrose
and Miss Archer--but you must surely realize that I can't do that!"

"But wait!" said Mrs. Coppered, eagerly, not at all discouraged.
"Don't say no yet! I AM an actress, Mr. Wyatt, or was one. I know
the part thoroughly. And the circumstances--the circumstances are
unusual, aren't they?"

While she was speaking the manager was steadily shaking his head.

"I have no doubt you could play the part," said he, "but I can't
upset my whole company by substituting now. Tomorrow is going to be
a big night. The house is completely sold out to the Masons--their
convention week, you know. As it happens, there couldn't be a more
inconvenient time. No, I can't consider it!"

Mrs. Coppered smiled at him. She had a very winning smile.

"It would mean a rehearsal; I suppose THAT would be inconvenient, to
begin with," she said.

"Exactly," said Wyatt. "Friday night. I can't ask my people to
rehearse to-morrow."

"But suppose you put it to them and they were all willing?" pursued
the lady.

"My dear lady, I tell you it's absolutely--" He made a goaded
gesture. Then, making fierce little dashes and dots on his blotter
with his pencil, and eying each one ferociously as he made it, he
added irritably, but in a quieter tone: "You're an actress, eh?
Where'd you get your experience?"

"With various stock companies on the Pacific Coast," she answered
readily. "My name was Margaret Charteris. I don't suppose you ever
heard it?"

"As it happens, I HAVE," he returned, surprised into interest. "You
knew Joe Pitcher, of course. He spoke of you. I remember the name
very well."

"Professor Pitcher!" she exclaimed radiantly. "Of course I knew him-
-dear old man! Where is he--still there?"

"Still there," he assented absently. "You married, I think?"

"I am Mrs. Coppered now--Mrs. Carey Coppered," she said. The man
gave her a suddenly awakened glance.

"Surely," he said thoughtfully. They looked steadily at each other,
and Duncan saw the color come into Margaret's face. There was a
little silence.

Then the manager flung down his pencil, wheeled about in his chair,
and rubbed his hands briskly together.

"Well!" he said. "And you think you can take Miss Archer's place,
Mrs. Coppered?"

"If you will let me."

"Why," he said,--and Duncan would not have believed that the
somewhat heavy face could wear a look so pleasant,--"you are doing
so much, Mrs. Coppered, in stepping into the gap this way, that I'll
do my share if I can! Perhaps I can't arrange it, but we can try.
I'll call a rehearsal and speak to Miss Forsythe to-night. If you
know the part, it's just possible that by going over it now we can
get out of a rehearsal tomorrow. She wants to be with the little
boy, eh?" he added musingly. "Yes, I suppose it might make a big
difference, his not being terrified by strangers." And then, turning
toward Margaret, he said warmly and a little awkwardly: "This is a
remarkably kind thing for you to do, Mrs. Coppered."

"Oh, I would do more than that for Mary Penrose," said she, with a
little difficulty. "She knows it. She wired me as a mad last hope
today, and we came as fast as we could, Mr. Coppered and I." And she
introduced Duncan very simply: "My stepson, Mr. Wyatt."

Duncan, fuming, could be silent no longer.

"I hope my--Mrs. Coppered is not serious in offering to do this,"
said he, very white, and in a slightly shaking voice. "I assure you
that my father--that every one!--would think it a most extraordinary
thing to do!"

Mrs. Coppered laid her hand lightly on his arm.

"Yes, I know, Duncan!" said she, quickly, soothingly. "I know how
you feel! But--"

Duncan slightly repudiated the touch.

"I can't think how you can consider it!" he said passionately, but
in a low voice. "A thing like this always gets out! You know--you
know how your having been on the stage is regarded by our friends!
It is simply insane--"

He had said a little more than he meant, in his high feeling, and
Margaret's face had grown white.

"I asked you only for your escort, Duncan," she said gently, but
with blazing eyes. There was open hostility in the look they
exchanged.

"I can't see what good my escort does," said the boy, childishly,
"when you won't listen to what you know is true!"

"Nevertheless, I still want it," she answered evenly. And after a
moment Duncan, true to his training, and already a little ashamed of
his ineffectual outburst,--for to waste a display of emotion was, in
his code, a lamentable breach of etiquette,--shrugged his shoulders.

"Still want to stay with it?" said Mr. Wyatt, giving her a shrewd,
friendly look.

"Certainly," she said promptly; but she was breathing fast.

"Then we might go and talk things over," he said; and a moment later
they were crossing the theatre to the stage door. The final curtain
had fallen only a moment before, but the lights were up, the
orchestra halfway through a swift waltz, and the audience, buttoning
coats and struggling with gloves, was pouring up the aisles. Duncan,
through all his anger and apprehension, felt a little thrill of
superiority over these departing playgoers as he and his stepmother
were admitted behind the scenes. He was young, and the imagined
romance of green-rooms and footlights appealed to him.

The company, suddenly summoned, appeared in various stages of street
and stage attire. Peg, a handsome young woman with brilliant color
and golden hair, still wore her brocaded gown and patches, and wore,
in addition, a slightly affronted look at this unprecedented
proceeding. The other members of the cast, yawning, slightly
curious, were grouped about in the great draughty space between the
wings that it cost Duncan some little effort to realize was the
stage.

From this group, as Margaret followed the stage manager into the
circle of light, a little woman suddenly detached herself, and,
running across the stage and breaking into sobs as she ran, she was
in Margaret's arms in a second.

"Oh, Meg, Meg, Meg!" she cried, laughing and crying at the same
time. "I knew you'd come! I knew you'd manage it somehow! I've been
praying so--I've been watching the clock! Oh, Meg," she went on
pitifully, fumbling blindly for a handkerchief, "he's been suffering
so, and I had to leave him! They thought he was asleep, but when I
tried to loosen his little hand he woke up!"

"Mary--Mary!" said Mrs. Coppered, soothingly, patting the bowed
shoulder. No one else moved; a breathless attention held the group.
"Of course I came," she went on, with a little triumphant laugh,
"and I think everything's ALL right!"

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Penrose, with a convulsive effort at self-
control. She caught Margaret's soft big muff, and drew it across her
eyes. "I'm ru-ru-ruining your fur, Margaret!" she said, laughing
through tears, "but--but seeing you this way, and realizing that I
could go--go--go to him now--"

"Mary, you must NOT cry this way," said Mrs. Coppered, seriously.
"You don't want little Phil to see you with red eyes, do you? Mr.
Wyatt and I have been talking it over," she went on, "but it remains
to be seen, dear, if all the members of the company are willing to
go to the trouble." Her apologetic look went around the listening
circle. "It inconveniences every one, you know, and it would mean a
rehearsal tonight--this minute, in fact, when every one's tired and
cold." Her voice was soothing, very low. But the gentle tones
carried their message to every one there. The mortal cleverness of
such an appeal struck Duncan sharply, as an onlooker.

The warm-hearted star, Eleanor Forsythe, whose photographs Duncan
had seen hundreds of times, was the first to respond with a half-
indignant protest that SHE wasn't too tired and cold to do that much
for the dear kiddy, and other volunteers rapidly followed suit. Ten
minutes later the still tearful little mother was actually in a cab
whirling through the dark streets toward the hospital where the
child lay, and a rehearsal was in full swing upon the stage of the
Colonial. Only the few actors actually necessary to the scenes in
which Mabel figures need have remained; but a general spirit of
sympathetic generosity kept almost the entire cast. Mr. Penrose, as
Triplet, had the brunt of the dialogue to carry; and he and
Margaret, who had quite unaffectedly laid aside her furs and entered
seriously into the work of the evening, remained after all the
others had lingered away, one by one.

Duncan watched from one of the stage boxes, his vague, romantic
ideas of life behind the footlights rather dashed before the three
hours of hard work were over. This was not very thrilling; this had
no especial romantic charm. The draughts, the dust, the wide, icy
space of the stage, the droning voices, the crisp interruptions, the
stupid "business," endlessly repeated, all seemed equally
disenchanting. The stagehands had set the stage for the next day's
opening curtain, and had long ago departed. Duncan was cold, tired,
headachy. He began to realize the edge of a sharp appetite, too; he
and Margaret had barely touched their dinner, back at home those
ages ago.

He could have forgiven her, he told himself, bitterly, if this
plunge into her old life had had some little glory in it. If, for
instance, Mrs. Gregory had asked her to play Lady Macbeth or Lady
Teazle in amateur theatricals at home, why one could excuse her for
yielding to the old lure. But this, this secondary part, these
commonplace, friendly actors, this tiring night experience, this
eager deference on her part to every one, this pitiful anxiety to
please, where she should, as Mrs. Carey Coppered, have been proudly
commanding and dictatorial--it was all exasperating and
disappointing to the last degree; it was, he told himself, savagely,
only what one might have expected!

Presently, when Duncan was numb in every limb, Margaret began to
button herself into her outer wraps, and, escorted by Penrose, they
went to supper. Duncan hesitated at the door of the cafe.

"This is an awful place, isn't it?" he objected. "You can't be going
in here!"

"One must eat, Duncan!" Mrs. Coppered said blithely, leading the
way. "And all the nice places are closed at this hour!" Duncan
sullenly followed; but, in the flood of reminiscences upon which she
and Penrose instantly embarked, his voice was not missed. Mollified
in spite of himself by delicious food and strong coffee, he watched
them, the man's face bright through its fatigue, his stepmother
glowing and brilliant.

"I'll see this through for Dad's sake," said Duncan, grimly, to
himself; "but, when he finds out about it, she'll have to admit I
kicked the whole time!"

At four o'clock they reached the Penroses' hotel, where rooms were
secured for Duncan and Margaret. The boy, dropping with sleep, heard
her cheerfully ask at the desk to be called at seven o'clock.

"I've a cloak to buy," she explained, in answer to his glance of
protest, "and a hairdresser to see, and a hat to find--they may be
difficult to get, too! And I must run out and have just a glimpse of
little Phil, and get to the theatre by noon; there's just a little
more going over that second act to do! But don't you get up."

"I would prefer to," said Duncan, with dignity, taking his key.

But he did not wake until afternoon, when the thin winter sunlight
was falling in a dazzling oblong on the floor of his room; and even
then he felt a little tired and stiff. He reached for his watch--
almost one o'clock! Duncan's heart stood still. Had SHE overslept?

He sat up a little dazed, and, doing so, saw a note on the little
table by his bed. It was from Margaret, and ran:

DEAR DUNCAN:

If you don't wake by one they're to call you, for I want you to see
Mabel's entrance. I've managed my hat and cloak, and seen the child-
-he's quiet and not in pain, thank God. Have your breakfast, and
then come to the box-office; I'll leave a seat for you there. Or
come behind and see me, if you will, for I am terribly nervous and
would like it. So glad you're getting your sleep. MARGAEET.

P.S. Don't worry about the nerves; I ALWAYS am nervous.

Duncan looked at the note for three silent minutes, sitting on the
edge of his bed.

"I'm sorry. She--she wanted me. I wish I'd waked!" he said slowly,
aloud.

And ten minutes later, during a hurried dressing, he read the note
again, and said, aloud again:

"'Have breakfast'! I wonder if she had HERS?"

He entered the theatre so late, for all his hurry, that the first
act was over and the second well begun, and was barely in his seat
before the now familiar opening words of Mabel Vane's part fell
clearly on the silence of the darkened house.

For a moment Duncan thought, with a great pang of relief, that some
one else was filling his stepmother's place; but he recognized her
in another minute, in spite of rouge and powder and the piquant
dress she wore. His heart stirred with something like pride. She was
beautiful in her flowered hat and the caped coat that showed a foam
of lacy frills at the throat; and she was sure of herself, he
realized in a moment, and of her audience. She made a fresh and
appealing figure of the plucky little country bride, and the old
lines fell with delicious naturalness from her lips.

Duncan's heart hardly beat until the fall of the curtain; tears came
to his eyes; and when Margaret shared the applause of the house with
the gracious Peg, he found himself shaking with a violent nervous
reaction.

He was still deeply stirred when he went behind the scenes after the
play. His stepmother presently came up from her dressing-room,
dressed in street clothes and anxious to hurry to the hospital and
have news of the little boy.

Duncan called a taxicab, for which she thanked him absently and with
worried eyes; and presently, with her and with the child's father,
he found himself speeding toward the hospital. It was a silent trip.
Margaret kept her ungloved fingers upon Penrose's hand, and said
only a cheerful word of encouragement now and then.

Duncan waited in the cab, when they went into the big building. She
was gone almost half an hour. Darkness came, and a sharp rain began
to fall.

He was half drowsy when she suddenly ran down the long steps and
jumped in beside him. Her face was radiant, in spite of the signs of
tears about her eyes.

"He took the ether like a little soldier!" she said, as the motor-
car slowly wheeled up the wet street. "Mary held his hand all the
while. Everything went splendidly, and he came out of it at about
four. Mary sang him off to sleep, sitting beside him, and she's
still there--he hasn't stirred! Dr. Thorpe is more than well
satisfied; he said the little fellow had nerves of iron! And the
other doctor isn't even going to come in again! And Thorpe says it
is LARGELY because he could have his mother!"

But the exhilaration did not last. Presently she leaned her head
back against the seat, and Duncan saw how marked was the pallor of
her face, now that the rouge was gone. There was fatigue in the
droop of her mouth, and in the deep lines etched under her eyes.

"It's after six, Duncan," she said, without opening her eyes, "so I
can't sleep, as I hoped! We'll have to dine, and then go straight to
the theatre!"

"You're tired," said the boy, abruptly. She opened her eyes at the
tone, and forced a smile.

"No--or, yes, I am, a little. My head's been aching. I wish to-night
was over." Suddenly she sighed. "It's been a strain, hasn't it?" she
said. "I knew it would be, but I didn't realize how hard! I just
wanted to do something for them, you know, and this was all I could
think of. And I've been wishing your father had been here; I don't
know what he will say. I don't stop to think--when it's the people I
love--" she said artlessly. "I dread--" she began again, but left
the sentence unfinished, after all, and looked out of the window. "I
suspect you're tired, too!" she went on brightly, after a moment. "I
shan't forget what a comfort it's been to have you with me through
this queer experience, Duncan. I know what it has cost you, my
dear."

"Comfort!" echoed Duncan. He tried to laugh, but the laugh broke
itself off gruffly. He found himself catching her hand, putting his
free arm boyishly about her shoulders. "I'm not fit to speak to you,
Margaret!" he said huskily. "You're--you're the best woman I ever
knew! I want you to know I'm sorry--sorry for it all--everything!
And as for Dad, why, he'll think what I think--that you're the only
person in the world who'd do all this for another woman's kid!"

Mrs. Coppered had tried to laugh, too, as she faced him. But the
tears came too quickly. She put her wet face against his rough
overcoat and for a moment gave herself up to the luxury of tears.

"Carey," said his wife, on a certain brilliant Sunday morning a
month later, when he had been at home nearly a month. She put her
head in at the library door. "Carey, will you do me a favor?"

He looked up to smile at her, in her gray gown and flowered hat, and
she came in to take the seat opposite him at the broad table.

"I will. Where are you going?"

"Duncan and I are going to church, and you're to meet us at the
Gregorys' for lunch," she reminded him.

"Yes'm. And what do you two kids want? What's the favor?"

"Oh!" She became serious. "You remember what I told you of our New
York trip a month ago, Carey? The Penroses, you know?"

"I do."

"Well, Carey, I've discovered that it has been worrying Duncan ever
since you got home, because he thinks I'm keeping it from you."

"Thinks you haven't told me, eh?"

"Yes. Don't laugh that way, Carey! Yes. And he asked me in the
sweetest little way, a day or two ago, if I wouldn't tell you all
about it."

"What did you do--box his young ears?"

"No." Margaret's eyes laughed, but she shook her head reprovingly.
"I thought it was so DEAR of him to feel that way, yet never give
you even a hint, that I--"

"Well?" smiled her husband, as she paused.

"Well," hesitated Mrs. Coppered. And then in a little burst she
added: "I said, 'Duncan, if you ask me to I WILL tell him!'"

"And what do you think you gain by THAT, Sapphira?" said Carey, much
amused.

"Why, don't you see? Don't you see it means EVERYTHING to him to
have stood by me in this, and now to clear it all up between us!
Don't you see that it makes him one of us, in a way? He's done his
adored father a real service--"

"And his adored mother, too?"

His tone brought the happy tears to her eyes.

"And the favor?" he said presently.

"Oh! Well, you see, I'm supposed to be 'fessing up the whole
horrible business, Carey, and in a day or two I want you to thank
him, just in some general way,--you'll know how!--for looking out
for me so well while you were away. Will you?"

"I will," he promised slowly.

"He's coming downstairs--so good-by!" said she. She came around the
table to kiss him, and, suddenly smitten with a sense of youth and
well-being and the glory of the spring morning, she added a little
wistfully:

"I wonder what I've done to be so happy, Carey--I wonder what I've
ever done to be so loved?"

"I wonder!" said Carey, smiling.






MISS MIX, KIDNAPPER

I


"Well, he has done it now, confound his nerve!" said Anthony Fox,
Sr., in a tone of almost triumphant fury. He spread the loosely
written sheets of a long letter on the breakfast table. "Here I am,
just out of a sick-bed!" he pursued fretfully; "just home from a
month's idling abroad, and now I'll have to go away out to
California to lick some sense into that young fool!"

"For Heaven's sake, Tony, don't get yourself all worked up!" said
handsome, stately Mrs. Fox, much more concerned for father than for
son. She sighed resignedly as she folded a flattering request from
her club for an address entitled, "Do We Forget Our Maids?" and gave
him her full attention. "Read me the letter, dear," said she,
placidly.

"Of course I always knew some woman would get hold of him," said
Anthony, Sr., fumbling blindly for his mouth with a bit of toast,
his eyes still on the letter; "but, by George, this sounds like
Charlie Ross!"

"Woman!" repeated Mrs. Fox, with a relieved laugh. "Buddy's in love,
is he? Don't worry, Tony, it won't last! Of all boys in the world
he's the least likely to be foolish that way!"

"Of all boys in the world he's the kind that is easiest taken in!"
said his father, dryly, securing the toast at last with a savage
snap. "H-m--she's his landlady! Keeps fancy fowls and takes
boarders--ha! Says they rather hope to be married in June. This has
quite a settled tone to it, for Buddy. I don't like the look of it!"

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Fox, with dawning uneasiness. "You don't mean
to say he considers himself seriously engaged? At twenty! And to his
landlady, too--I never heard such nonsense! Buddy's in no position
to marry. Who IS the girl, anyway?"

"GIRL is good!" said the reader, bitterly. "She's thirty-two!"

Mrs. Fox, her hand hovering over a finger-bowl, grew rigid.

"Thirty-two!" she echoed blankly. Then sharply: "Anthony, do you
think you can stop it?"

"I'll do what I can, believe me!" he assured her grimly. "Yes, sir,
she's thirty-two! By the way, Fanny, this letter's already a month
old. Why haven't I had it before?"

"You told them to hold only the office mail while you were
travelling, you know," Mrs. Fox reminded him. "That one evidently
has been following you. Anthony, can Tony marry without your
consent?"

"No-o, but of course he's of age in five months, and if she's got
her hooks deep enough into him, she--oh, confound such a
complication, anyway!"

"It looks to me as if she wanted his money," said Mrs. Fox.

"H-m!" said his father, again deep in the letter. "That's just
occurred to you, has it? Poor old Buddy--poor old Bud!"

"Oh, he'll surely get over it," said Mrs. Fox, uncertainly.

"He may, but you can bet SHE won't! Not before they're married,
anyway. No, Bud's the sort that gets it hard, when he does get it!"
his father said. "There's a final tone about the whole thing that I
don't like. Listen to this!" He quoted from the letter with a rueful
shake of the head. "'I don't know what the darling girl sees in me,
dad, but she has turned down enough other fellows to know her own
mind. At last I realize what Mrs. Browning's wonderful sonnets--'"