Karl May - "My Life and My Efforts"

Susanna Moodie - "Roughing it in the Bush"

George MacDonald - "Malcolm"

Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v1: Joconde"

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




So at one o'clock Paul went upstairs with his letter still
unapproved. He hesitated in the dim upper hallway, wondering if
Patricia, who had left the men to beer and crackers half an hour
earlier, had retired, or was, by happy chance, still gossiping with
Mrs. Tolley or Min. While he loitered in the hall, the door of her
room swung slowly open.

Paul had often been in this room, which was merely a kind of adjunct
to the sleeping-porch beyond. He went to the doorway and said,
"Patricia!"

The room, wide and charmingly furnished, was quite empty. On the
deep couch letters were scattered in a wide circle, and in their
midst was an indentation as if some one had been kneeling on the
floor with her elbows there. Paul noticed this with a curious
feeling of unease, and then called softly again, "Patricia!"

No answer. He walked hesitatingly to his own room and to the window.
Why he should have looked down at the dark path with the expectation
of seeing her, he did not know; but it was almost without surprise
that he recognized the familiar white ruffles and dark head moving
away in the gloom. Paul unhesitatingly followed.

He followed her down the trail as far as he had seen her go, and was
standing, a little undecidedly, wondering just which way she had
turned, when his heart was suddenly brought into his throat by the
sound of her bitter sobbing.

A moment later he saw her. She was sitting on a smooth fallen trunk,
and had buried her face in her hands. Paul had never heard such
sobs; they seemed to shake her from head to foot. Hardly would they
lessen, bringing him the hope that her grief, whatever it was, was
wearing itself out, when a fresh paroxysm would shake her, and she
would abandon herself to it. This lasted for what seemed a long,
long time.

After a while Paul cleared his throat, but she did not hear him. And
again he stood motionless, waiting and waiting. Finally, when she
straightened up and began to mop her eyes, he said, trembling a
little:

"Patricia!"

Instantly she stopped crying.

"Who is that?" she said, with an astonishing control of her voice.
"Is that you, Alan? I'm all right, dear. Did I frighten you? Is that
you, Alan?"

"It's Paul," the boy said, coming nearer.

"Oh--Paul!" she said, relieved. "Does Alan know I'm here?"

"No," he reassured her; then, affectionately: "What is it, Pat?"

"Just--just that I happen to be a fool!" she said huskily, but with
an effort at lightness. Paul sat down, beginning to see in the
darkness. "I'm all right now," went on Patricia, hardily. "I just--I
suppose I just had the blues." She put out a smooth hand in the
darkness, and patted Paul's appreciatively. "I'm ashamed of myself!"
said she, catching a little sob, as she spoke, like a child.

"Bad news--in your letters?" he hazarded.

"No, GOOD; that's the trouble!" she said, with her whimsical smile,
but with trembling lips. "You see, all my friends are in the East,
and some of them happened to be at the same house-party at Newport,
and they--they were saying how they missed me," her voice shook a
little, "and--and it seems they toasted me, all standing, and--and--
" And suddenly she gave up the fight for control, and began to cry
bitterly again. "Oh, I'm so HOMESICK!" she sobbed, "and I'm so
LONESOME! And I'm so sick, sick, sick of this place! Oh, I think
I'll go crazy if I can't go home! I bear it and I BEAR it," said
Patricia, in a sort of desperate self-defence, "and then the time
comes when I simply CAN'T bear it!" And again she wept luxuriously,
and Paul, in an agony of sympathy, patted her hand.

"My heart is just breaking!" she burst out again, her tears and
words tumbling over each other. "It--it isn't RIGHT! I want my
friends, and I want my youth--I'll never be twenty-six again! I want
to put my things into a suit-case and go off with the other girls
for country visits--and I want to dance!" She put her head down
again, and after a moment Paul ventured a timid, "Patricia, dear,
DON'T."

He thought she had not heard him, but after a moment, he was
relieved to see her resolutely straighten up again, and dry her
eyes, and push up her tumbled hair.

"Well, I really will STOP," she said determinedly. "This will not
do! If Alan even suspected! But, you see, I'm naturally a sociable
person, and I had--well, I don't suppose any girl ever had such a
good time in New York! My aunt did for me just what she did for her
own daughters--a dance at Sherry's, and dinners--! Paul, I'd give a
year of my life just to drive down the Avenue again on a spring
afternoon, and bow to every one, and have tea somewhere, and smell
the park--oh, did you ever smell Central Park in the spring?"

Both were silent. After a long pause Paul said:

"Why DO you stay? You've not got to ask a stepfather for a job."

"Alan," she answered simply. "No, don't say that," she interrupted
him quickly; "I'm nothing of the sort! But my mother--my mother, in
a way, left Alan and me to each other, and I have never done
anything for Alan. I went to the Eastern aunt, and he stayed here;
and after a while he drifted East--and he had too much money, of
course! And I wasn't half affectionate enough; he had his friends
and I had mine! Well then he got ill, and first it was just a cold
and then it was, suddenly--don't you know?--a question of
consultations, and a dry climate, and no dinners or wine or late
hours. And Alan refused--refused flat to go anywhere, until I said
I'd LOVE to come! I'll never forget the night it came over me that I
ought to. I am--I was--engaged, you know?" She paused.

Paul cleared his throat. "No, I didn't know," he said.

"It wasn't announced," said Miss Chisholm. "He's a good deal older
than I. A doctor." There was a long silence. "He said he would wait,
and he will," she said softly, ending it. "It's not FOREVER, you
know. Another year or two, and he'll come for me! Alan's quite a
different person now. Another two years!" She jumped up, with a
complete change of manner. "Well, I'm over my nonsense for another
while!" said she. "And it's getting cold. I can't tell you how I've
enjoyed letting off steam this way, Paul!"

"Whenever we feel this way," he said, giving her a steadying hand in
the dark, "we'll come out for a jaw. But cheer up; we'll have lots
of fun this winter!"

"Oh, lots!" she said contentedly. They entered the dark, open
doorway together.

Patricia went ahead of him up the stairs, and at the top she turned,
and Paul felt her hand for a second on his shoulder, and felt
something brush his forehead that was all fragrance and softness and
warmth.

Then she was gone.

Paul went into his room, and stood at the window, staring out into
the dark. Only the door of the power-house glowed smoulderingly, and
a broad band of light fell from Miss Chisholm's window.

He stood there until this last light suddenly vanished. Then he took
a letter from his pocket, and began to tear it methodically to
pieces. While he did so Paul began to compose another letter, this
time to his mother.






THE RAINBOW'S END

"Well, I am discovered--and lost." Julie, lazily making the
announcement after a long silence, shut her magazine with a sigh of
sleepy content; and braced herself more comfortably against the old
rowboat that was half buried in sand at her back. She turned as she
spoke to smile at the woman near her, a frail, keen-faced little
woman luxuriously settled in an invalid's wheeled chair.

"Ann--you know you're not interested in that book. Did you hear what
I said? I'm discovered."

"Well, it was sure to happen, sooner or later, I suppose." Mrs.
Arbuthnot, suddenly summoned from the pages of a novel brought her
gaze promptly to the younger woman's face, with the pitifully alert
interest of the invalid. "You were bound to be recognized by some
one, Ju!"

"Don't worry, a cannon wouldn't wake him!" said Julia, in reference
to Mrs. Arbuthnot's lowered voice, and the solicitous look the wife
had given a great opened beach umbrella three feet away, under which
Dr. Arbuthnot slumbered on the warm sands. "He's forty fathoms deep.
No," continued the actress, returning aggrievedly to her own
affairs, "I suppose there's no such thing as escaping recognition--
even as late in the season as this, and at such an out-of-the-way
place. Of course, I knew," she continued crossly, "that various
people here had placed me, but I did rather hope to escape actual
introductions!"

"Who is it--some one you know?" Mrs. Arbuthnot adjusted the pillow
at her back, and settled herself enjoyably for a talk.

"Indirectly; it's that little butterfly of a summer girl--the one
Jim calls 'The Dancing Girl'--of all people in the world!" said
Julie, locking her arms comfortably behind her head. "You know how
she's been haunting me, Ann? She's been simply DETERMINED upon an
introduction ever since she placed me as her adored Miss Ives of
matinee fame. I imagine she's rather a nice child--every evidence of
money--the ambitious type that longs to do something big--and is
given to desperate hero worship. She's been under my feet for a
week, with a Faithful Tray expression that drives me crazy. I've
taken great pains not to see her."

"And now--?" prompted the other, as the actress fell silent, and sat
staring dreamily at the brilliant sweep of beach and sea before
them.

"Oh--now," Miss Ives took up her narrative briskly. "Well, a new
young man arrived on the afternoon boat and, of course, the Dancing
Girl instantly captivated him. She has one simple yet direct method
with them all," she interrupted herself to digress a little. "She
gets one of her earlier victims to introduce him; they all go down
for a swim, she fascinates him with her daring and her bobbing red
cap, she returns to white linen and leads him down to play tennis--
they have tea at the 'Casino,' and she promises him the second two-
step and the first extra that evening. He is then hers to command,"
concluded Julie, bringing her amused eyes back to Mrs. Arbuthnot's
face, "for the remainder of his stay!"

"That's exactly what she DOES do," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, laughing,
"but I don't see yet--"

"Oh, I forgot to say," Miss Ives amended hastily, "that to-day's
young man happens to be an acquaintance of mine; at least his uncle
introduced him to me at a tea last winter. She led him by to the
tennis courts an hour ago, and, to my disgust, I recognized him.
That's all Miss Dancing Girl wants. Now--you'll see! They'll come up
to our table in the dining-room to-night, and to-morrow she'll bring
up a group of dear friends and he'll bring up another--to be
introduced; and--there we'll be!"

"Oh, not so bad as that, Julie!"

"Oh, yes, indeed, Ann!" pursued Miss Ives with morose enjoyment.
"You don't know how helpless one is. I'll be annoyed to death for
the rest of the month, just so that the Dancing Girl can go back to
the city this winter and say, 'Oh, girls, Julia Ives was staying
where mamma and I were this summer, and she's just a DEAR! She
doesn't make up one bit off the stage, and she dresses just as
PLAIN! I saw her every day and got some dandy snapshots. She's just
a darling when you know her.'"

"Well! What an unspoiled modest little soul you are, Julie!"
interrupted the doctor's admiring voice. He wheeled away the
umbrella and, lying luxuriously on his elbows in the sun, beamed at
them both through his glasses.

"Jim," said the actress, severely, "it's positively indecent--the
habit you're getting of evesdropping on Ann and me!"

"It gives me sidelights on your characters," said the doctor, quite
brazenly.

"Ann--don't you call that disgraceful?"

"I certainly do, Ju," his wife agreed warmly. "But Jim has no sense
of honor." Ann Arbuthnot, in the fifteen years of her married life,
had never been able to keep a thrill of adoration out of her voice
when she spoke, however jestingly, of her husband. It trembled there
now.

"Well, what's wrong, Julie? Some old admirer turn up?" asked the
doctor, sleepily content to follow any conversational lead, in the
idle pleasantness of the hour.

"No--no!" she corrected him, "just some silly social complications
ahead--which I hate!"

"Be rude," suggested the doctor, pleasantly.

"Now, you know, I'd love that!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot, youthfully.
"I'd simply love to be followed and envied and adored!"

"No, you wouldn't, Ann!" Miss Ives assured her promptly. "You'd like
it, as I did, for a little while. And then the utter USELESSNESS of
it would strike you. Especially from such little complacent, fluffy
whirlings as that Dancing Girl!"

"Yes, and that's the kind of a girl I like," persisted the other,
smiling.

"That's the kind of a girl you WERE, Ann, I've no doubt," said the
actress, vivaciously, "only sweeter. I know she wore white ruffles
and a velvet band on her hair, didn't she, Jim? And roses in her
belt?"

"She did," said the doctor, reminiscently. "I believe she flirted in
her kindergarten days. She was always engaged to ride or dance or
row on the river with the other men--and always splitting her
dances, and forgetting her promises, and wearing the rings and pins
of her adorers."

"And the fun was, Ju," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, girlishly, with bright
color in her cheeks, "that when Jim came there to give two lectures,
you know, all the older girls were crazy about him--and he was ten
years older than I, you know, and I never DREAMED--"

"Oh, you go to, Ann! You never DREAMED!" said Miss Ives, lazily.

"Honestly, I didn't!" Mrs. Arbuthnot protested. "I remember my
brother Billy saying, 'Babs, you don't think Dr. Arbuthnot is coming
here to see ME, do you?' and then it all came over me! Why, I was
only eighteen."

"And engaged to Billy's chum," said the doctor.

"Well," said the wife, naively, "he knew all along it wasn't
serious."

"You must have been a rose," said Miss Ives, "and I would have hated
you! Now, when I went to dances," she pursued half seriously, "I sat
in one place and smiled fixedly, and watched the other girls dance.
Or I talked with great animation to the chaperons. Ann, I've felt
sometimes that I would gladly die, to have the boys crowd around me
just once, and grab my card and scribble their names all over it. I
didn't dress very well, or dance very well--and I never could talk
to boys." She began to trace a little watercourse in the sand with
an exquisite finger tip. "I was the most unhappy girl on earth, I
think! I felt every birthday was a separate insult--twenty, and
twenty-two, and twenty-four! We were poor, and life was--oh, not
dramatic or big!--but just petty and sordid. I used to rage because
the dining-room was the only place for the sewing-machine, and rage
because my bedroom was really a back parlor. Well!--I joined a
theatrical company--came away. And many a night, tired out and
discouraged, I've cried myself to sleep because I'd never have any
girlhood again!"

She stopped with a half-apologetic laugh. The doctor was watching
her with absorbed, bright eyes. Mrs. Arbuthnot, unable to imagine
youth without joy and beauty, protested:

"Julie--I don't believe you--you're exaggerating! Do you mean you
didn't go on the stage until you were twenty-four!"

"I was twenty-six. I was leading lady my second season, and starred
my third," said the actress, without enthusiasm. "I was starred in
'The Jack of Clubs.' It ran a season in New York and gave me my
start. Lud, how tired we all got of it!"

"And then I hope you went back home, Ju, and were lionized," said
the other woman, vigorously.

"Oh, not then! No, I'd been meaning to go--and meaning to go--all
those three years. The little sisters used to write me--such forlorn
little letters!--and mother, too--but I couldn't manage it. And
then--the very night 'Jack' played the three hundredth time, as it
happened--I had this long wire from Sally and Beth. Mother was very
ill, wanted me--they'd meet a certain train, they were counting the
hours--"

Miss Ives demolished her watercourse with a single sweep of her
palm. There was a short silence.

"Well!" she said, breaking it. "Mother got well, as it happened, and
I went home two months later. I had the guest room, I remember.
Sally was everything to mother then, and I tried to feel glad. Beth
was engaged. Every one was very flattering and very kind in the
intervals left by engagements and weddings and new babies and family
gatherings. Then I came back to 'Jack,' and we went on the road. And
then I broke down and a strange doctor in a strange hospital put me
together again," she went on with a flashing smile and a sudden
change of tone, "and his wholly adorable wife sent me double white
violets! And they--the Arbuthnots, not the violets--were the nicest
thing that ever happened to me!"

"So that was the way of it?" said the doctor.

"That was the way of it."

"And as the Duchess would say, the moral of THAT is--?"

"The moral is for me. Or else it's for little dancing girls, I don't
know which." Miss Ives wiped her eyes openly and, restoring her
handkerchief to its place, announced that she perceived she had been
talking too much.

Presently the Dancing Girl came down from the tennis-court, with her
devoted new captive in tow. The captive, a fat, amiable-looking
youth, was warm and wilted, but the girl was fresh and buoyant as
ever. They heard her allude to the "second two-step" and something
was said of the "supper dance," but her laughing voice stopped as
she and her escort came nearer the actress, and she gave Julie her
usual look of mute adoration. The boy, flushing youthfully, lifted
his hat, and Julie bowed briefly.

They were lingering over their coffee two hours later, when the
newly arrived young man made the expected move. He threaded the
tables between his own and the doctor's carefully, the eager Dancing
Girl in his wake.

"I don't know whether you remember me, Miss Ives--?" he began, when
he could extend a hand.

Julie turned her splendid, unsmiling eyes toward him.

"Mr. Polk. How do you do? Yes, indeed, I remember you," she said,
unenthusiastically. "How is Mr. Gilbert?"

"Uncle John? Oh, he's fine!" said young Polk, rapturously. "I wonder
why he didn't tell me you were spending the summer here I"

"I don't tell any one," said Julie, simply. "My winters are so
crowded that I try to get away from people in the summer."

"Oh!" said the boy, a little blankly. There was an instant's pause
before he added rather uncomfortably:

"Miss Ives--Miss Carter has been so anxious to meet you--"

"How do you do, Miss Carter?" said Julie, promptly, politely. She
gave her young adorer a ready hand. The usually poised Dancing Girl
could not recall at the moment one of the things she had planned to
say when this great moment came. But she thought of them all as she
lay in bed that night, and the conviction that she had bungled the
long-wished-for interview made her burn from her heels to the lobes
of her ears. What HAD she said? Something about having longed for
this opportunity, which the actress hadn't answered, and something
about her desperate admiration for Miss Ives, at which Miss Ives had
merely smiled. Other things were said, or half said--the girl
reviewed them mercilessly in the dark--and then the interview had
terminated, rather flatly. Marian Carter writhed at the
recollection.

But the morning brought courage. She passed Julie, who was fresh
from a plunge in the ocean, and briskly attacking a late breakfast,
on her way from the dining-room.

"Good morning, Miss Ives! Isn't it a lovely morning?"

"Oh, good morning, Miss Carter. I beg pardon--?"

"I said, 'Isn't it a lovely morning?'"

"Oh--? Yes, quite delightful."

"Miss Ives--but I'm interrupting you?"

Julie gave her book a glance and raised her eyes expectantly to Miss
Carter's face, but did not speak.

"Miss Ives," said Miss Carter, a little confusedly, "mamma was
wondering if you've taken the trip to Fletcher's Forest? We've our
motor-car here, you know, and they serve a very good lunch at the
Inn."

"Oh, thank you, no!" said Julie, positively. "VERY good of you--but
I'm with the Arbuthnots, you know. Thank you, no."

"I hoped you would," said Miss Carter, disappointed. "I know you use
a motor in town," she answered daringly. "You see I know all about
you!"

Miss Ives paid to this confession only the small tribute of raised
eyebrows and an absent smile. She was quite at her ease, but in the
little silence that followed Miss Carter had time to feel baffled--
in the way. "Here is Mrs. Arbuthnot," she said in relief, as Ann
came slowly in on the doctor's arm. Before they reached the table
the girl had slipped away.

That afternoon she asked Miss Ives, pausing beside the basking group
on the sands to do so, if she would have tea informally with mamma
and a few friends. Oh--thank you, Miss Ives couldn't, to-day. Thank
you. The next day Miss Carter wondered if Miss Ives would like to
spin out to the Point to see the sunset? No, thank you so much. Miss
Ives was just going in. Another day brought a request for Miss
Ives's company at dinner, with just mamma and Mr. Polk and the
Dancing Girl herself. Declined. A fourth day found Miss Carter,
camera in hand, smilingly confronting the actress as she came out on
the porch.

"Will you be very cross if I ask you to stand still just a moment,
Miss Ives?" asked the Dancing Girl.

"Oh, I'm afraid I will," said Julie, annoyed. "I DON'T like to be
photographed!" But she was rather disarmed at the speed with which
Miss Carter shut up her little camera.

"I know I bother you," said the girl, with a wistful sincerity that
was most becoming and with a heightened color, "but--but I just
can't seem to help it!" She walked down the steps beside Julie,
laughing almost with vexation at her own weakness. "I've always
admired so--the people who DO things! I've always wanted to do
something myself," said Miss Carter, awkwardly. "You don't know how
unhappy it makes me. You don't know how I'd love to do something for
you!"

"You can, you can let me off being photographed, like a sweet
child!" said Julie, lightly. But twenty minutes later when, very
trim and dainty in her blue bathing suit and scarlet cap, she came
out of the bath-house to join Ann and the doctor on the beach, she
reproached herself. She might have met the stammered little
confidence with something warmer than a jesting word, she thought
with a little shame.

"You're not going in again!" protested Ann. "Oh, CHIL-dren!"

"_I_ am," said Miss Ives, buoyantly. "I don't know about Jim. At
Jim's age every step counts, I suppose. These fashionable doctors
habitually overeat and oversleep, I understand, and it makes them
lazy."

"I AM going in, Ann," said the doctor, with dignity, rising from the
sand and pointedly addressing his wife. A few moments later he and
Julie joyously breasted the sleepy roll of the low breakers, and
pushed their way steadily through the smoother water beyond.

"Oh, that was glorious, Jim!" gasped the actress, as they gained the
raft that was always their goal and pulling herself up to sit siren-
wise upon it. She was breathless, radiant, bubbling with the joy of
sun and air and green water. She took off her cap and let the
sunlight beat on her loosened braids.

"How you love the water, Julie!"

"Yes--best of all. I'm never so satisfied as when I'm in it!"

"You never look so happy as when you are," he said.

"Oh, these are happy days!" said Julie. "I wish they could last
forever. Just resting and playing--wouldn't you like a year of it,
Jim?"

The doctor eyed her quietly.

"I don't know that I would," he said seriously, impersonally.

There was a little silence. Then the girl began to pin up her braids
with fingers that trembled a little.

"Ann's waving!" she said presently, and the doctor caught up her
scarlet cap to signal back to the far blur on the beach that was
Ann. He watched the tiny distant groups a moment.

"Here comes your admirer!" said he.

"Where?" Julie was ready at once to slip into the water.

"Oh--finish your hair--take your time! She's just in the breakers.
We'll be off long before she gets here."

"That reminds me, Jim," Miss Ives was quite herself again, "that
when I was in the bath-house a few moments ago your Dancing Girl and
that pretty little girl who is visiting her came into the next room.
You know how flimsy the walls are? I could hear every word they
said."

"If you'd been a character in a story, Ju, you'd have felt it your
duty to cough!"

"Well, I didn't," grinned Miss Ives; "not that I wanted to hear what
they were saying. I didn't even know who they were until I heard
little Miss Carter say solemnly, 'Ethel, I used to want mamma to get
that Forty-eighth Street house, and I used to want to do Europe, but
I think if I had ONE wish now, it would be to do something that
would MAKE everybody know me--and everybody talk about me. I'd LOVE
to be pointed out wherever I went. I'd love to have people stare at
me. I'd like to be just as popular and just as famous as Julia
Ives!'"

"She HAS got it badly, Ju!" the doctor observed.

"She has. And it will be fuel on the flames to have me start to swim
back to shore while she is swimming as hard as she can to the raft!"
said the lady, tucking the last escaping lock under her cap and
springing up for the plunge that started the home trip.