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Show A PROTESTED MSS. H McDonald frowned, twiddled the worn flimsy B manuscript between impatient fingors, and thrust H it hastily back into the return envelope, which H he tossed into the mailing basket. H "Here, James," said he to the tow-head K ofllce boy the boy who singly and alone in his H undersized body formed the "Co." of "McDonald B & Co." "seal this along with the rest of 'em, B and mail 'em while I'm out." B Then to himself he grumbled: "How tho devil does Elizabeth Barnett, Miss Elizabeth B Barnett,' with brackets around the 'Miss,' think B I am on the market for her idiotic drivel? H 'Christmas on the Coast!' The title's enough to B queer it, all by itself, even if the murdered English Eng-lish didn't. And the typewriting! How the deuce did she ever get my name? Just imagine mistaking this embryonic agency of mine for a magazine! She must be dumb!" He rubbed his bristly moustache with a puzzled puz-zled air. Then his frown cleared as he pushed away the litter on his desk, as he prepared to go out to lunch. The lunch somehow didn't taste good to McDonald. His mind was not at ease. The puzzle of Miss Elizabeth Barnett's error obtruded past his wedge of pie, and arose wraithlike wraith-like with his aromatic coffee steam. He could not put it away. There was something in the Incongruity of mistaking him for an editor that made him smile despite his vexation at Miss Elizabeth's "dumbness." His little agency was somewhat anemic. The idea of being called the proprietor of a magazine did not entirely displease dis-please him. "Hang it," he growled, "wish I was an editor instead of a hack ad. writer! Then I'd have a chance at really passing my opinion once in awhile, and not have to take other people's all the time or starve. Starve! Gad, It must be hard lines to be absolutely up against it-in a city like this as she is. Maybe I was a trifle hasty in firing the stuff back at her whoever she is without having thought it over,, some more. I might possibly have placed it for her with White or Davis. But pshaw! the truck was absolutely worthless; absolutely all to the bad!" McDonald scraped the sugar out of his coffee cup and ate it thoughtfully. "That letter of hers, though h'm certainly was a hard-luck letter, and no discard on that. Trying to make a living, liv-ing, nobody but that brother of hers to 'help her, and all that sort of rot. She's a novice, all right, all right, or she'd know it wasn't etiquette to send hard luck stories with manuscripts. They're worth about as much with editors as sand is per pint on the Sahara. I'll give her credit for a splendid nerve, though; trying to dodge an old ladies' home, or something of that sort,- with no capital but a set of weak tea brains and a bum typewriter! The article, though, was certainly a killing frost. What could I really have done with it? I guess the only thing I could have done was just what I did do fire it back." He rose from the revolving stool, shoved his dishes over to the waitress, paid his insignificant insig-nificant check, and departed. On his way back through Main street to the offlce a dago's tip-cart tip-cart of oranges distracted his attention from Miss Elizabeth. A street gamin had kicked the supporting pole from under the end of the cart, resulting in a golden flood of fruit down the gutter, gut-ter, a shrieking, jumping dago, swarming and glutted hordes of boys, a cop, and a hilarious mob. McDonald reached the offlce, still chuckling. chuck-ling. He rather pitied the dago, but yet He opened the offlce door. "Well, James?" he inquired with polite and freezing irony. "Engaged "En-gaged .in. literary pursuits? I thought I told you to seal up those letters and take 'em out." "Gee!" exclaimed the startled James. "I I fergot, see? Long Larry was just waitin' for the Fire Brand at tho end of the trail, when a shot rang out and a piercin' shriek broke from the lips of" "There, James, that'll be about all for you! What do yd 'hinlc I am paying you the princely salary of five a week for? The next boy I get will have to file a certificate he can't either read or write. Fix up those letters, now, in a hurry. And then I want you to take this stale bill around to Armstrong, and if he fsn't in, wait till he is in. Don't you come back here without that fifteen! Don't you dare come back? Tell him I am just getting ready to sue. Now, then, go at it!" James' chapped hand reached for the letters, but McDonald detained it. "No, no, not that one I want to look It over again. Here, take these. Now, don't lot me hear a peep out of you again! And say, James, here's a nickel. Maybe you'd like to add a few cast-iron sinkers or an extra mug of doped slush to your menu this noon. Shut up!" McDonald drew Miss Elizabeth Barnett's iff manuscript out of the envelope and looked it B over again carefully. He started in and read it B j over .from start tp finish, grumbling unseemly jff ' words as he fouled or the snags and jams of iff English that obstructed tho flow of banal de- lB' scription. "This is awful, just awful tho story, H the mistakes, the whole dang business! 'Christ- &B mas on tho Coast!' Six months out of season to lBf begin with, and nothing in it, after all cribbed JK out of Our Boys Abroad, or some such twaddle. HH Look, at the typewriting, will you! Done on a B ? Columbus 1492 model, or I'm a liar! Alignment Iff looks like a string of Intoxicated dromedaries B stampeding over the Alps! Here she makes ler B 'O's' out of 'C's' every time, by filling in the IR front door of tho letter 'C with a lead pencil, jflH and every 'W is just two 'V's' put together. She fH must be shy on type. Ribbon worn dry, too, and iff all punched full of holes. I know that brand." lH He glowered over to his own machine, which ifff was nqne of tho best. "It's awful, just awful! IjB And she hopes I can find it available for my pub- lication. That's the first I ever knew , I had a W publication. It's certainly news to me. And SUB she's counting on it for 'pressing necessities.' " H He scratched his chin and stuck out his lower B lip with a characteristic expression. Once he IjB made as if to return the story to its envelope. Wm "Rent for this rat-hole will be duo the third, and iff there's James to pay, and the litho and the com- jiff pany's bill, and just thirty-five plunks on my lff check book, plus the fifteen from Armstrong riff if I get it. Shucks! What's this nonsense of Iff the old girl's to me?" Iff Nothing, apparently; yet McDonald did ,a fflff - curious thing. He got up, went over to his little HL typewriter table and sat down. He took a sheet iB of his best paper' and Inserted it in the machine, B itself a relic of auction room ravages. For a Ov ' few minutes ho wrestled with the machine. jjB When the letter was done he pulled it out and HB looked It over critically. "There," said he with H judicial emphasis. "There! For pure, straight, Iff forceful and artistic prevarication, that's got the Iff fighting politicians slum to a finish. Just think iff o' this: tiff " 'Dear Madam We (We oh, ye gods ! ) are sff in receipt of your manuscript, "Christmas on Iff the Coast," and take pleasure in informing you aft that we find it available for publication in our ff magazine, "The Bubble." Our invariable rule dff is to pay on acceptance. In case you consider Jiff fmfit fifteen dollars satisfactorily remunerative, we beg to hand you herewith our check for that amount. If you will pardon a word of disinterested disinter-ested editorial advice, we would like to say that the literary market at this time is, and will be for an indefinite period, absolutely glutted with essays, travels, poems, reviews, fiction and every other form of work. We should most certainly advise you to accept your brother's hospitality, which you speak of so unwillingly in your letter, and withdraw from a field already overcrowded with aspirants. We trust that the enclosed check will facilitate your leaving our city. As regards tho publication of your article, let us say that it may be somewhat uncertain for some time some Tery considerable time.. "The Bubble" is involved at present in some complications with which I need not burden you; but we hope to have things running again' by the end of the year. " 'Thanking you for your courtesy in submitting submit-ting the MS, '"Very faithfully yours, "'frank Mcdonald, " Editor-in-Chief and 'Treasurer. '"Miss Elizabeth Barnett,'" "Looks like the lltho company might have to wait, now," said McDonald, "or else it's me to a diet of sinkers and dope, myself, for a spell, along with James." He wrote the check, however, enclosed it in an envelope with the letter to Miss Elizabeth, and sealed it with care. Then he took it out into the hall and dropped it quickly down the letter-chute, as though afraid of changing his mind. McDonald came back into the office of the "Advertising Syndicate," took up "Christmas on the Coast" and tore it into small, very small, fragments, which he hurled like a snowstorm into the waste basket. Then, blowing his nose quite unnecessarily hard, he walked over to the window and gazed out across the dreary roofs and chimneys over at the temple. "I'm a damned fool, and I need kicking; that's all," said McDonald. BECKY SHARPE. |