NOT OF HIS SEEKING.
Andy Hayes' _debut_ in the House of Commons was not, of course,
sensational; very few members witnessed it, and nobody outside took the
smallest heed of it. Moreover, like other beginnings of his, it was
unpremeditated, in a manner forced upon him. He had not intended to
speak that afternoon, or indeed at all in his first session, but in
Committee one day an honourable gentleman opposite went so glaringly
astray as to the prices ruling for bacon in Wiltshire in the year
nineteen hundred and something--which Andy considered a salient epoch in
the chequered history of his pet commodity--that he was on his feet
before he knew what he was doing, and set the matter right, adding
illustrative figures for the year before and the year after, with a
modestly worded forecast of the run of prices for the current year.
Engrossed in the subject, he remembered that the House was a formidable
place only after he had sat down; then he hurried home to his books,
found that his figures were correct, and heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
It was no small thing to get his maiden speech made without meaning to
make it--and to find the figures correct! He attempted nothing more that
session. He only listened. But how he listened! A man might talk the
greatest nonsense, yet Andy's steady eyes would be on him, and Andy's
big head untiringly poised at attention. What was the use of listening
to so much nonsense? Well, first you had to be sure it was nonsense;
then to see why it was nonsense; thirdly, to see how, being nonsense, it
was received; fourthly, to revolve how it should be exposed. There were
even other things that Andy found to ponder over in all the nonsense to
which he listened--and many more, of course, in the sense.
But even Andy took a holiday from public affairs sometimes, nay more,
sometimes from the fortunes of Gilbert Foot and Co. He was in the office
this morning--the Saturday before Whitsunday--finishing up some odd jobs
which his partner had left to him (Gilly had still a trick of doing
that), but his thoughts were on Meriton, whither he was to repair in the
afternoon. As he mused on Meriton, he slowly shook the big head, thereby
indicating not despair or even despondency, but a recognition that he
was engaged on rather a difficult job, perhaps on a game that he was not
very good at, but which had to be won all the same. This particular game
certainly had to be won; his whole heart was in it. Yet now he was
accusing himself of a mistake; he had been impatient--impatient that
Vivien should still be less than happy, that she should still dwell in
gloom with gloomy Wellgood, that she would not yet come into the
sunshine. Well, he would put the mistake right that very day, for Vivien
was to lunch with him, attended by the Nun, with whom she had been
spending a night or two in town; and then the three of them were to go
to Meriton in the motor-car together. The Nun was not singing at this
time.
"I must go slow," concluded Andy, whose friends were already smiling at
the deliberate gait with which he trod the path of love. "Hullo, there's
an hour before lunch! I may as well finish some of these accounts for
Gilly."
This satisfaction he was not destined to enjoy. He was interrupted by a
visitor.
Harry Belfield came in, really a vision to gladden an artist's eyes, in
a summer suit of palest homespun--he affected that material--with his
usual blue tie unusually bright--shirt and socks to match; a dazzlingly
white panama hat crowned his wavy dark locks. He looked immensely
handsome, and he was gay, happy, and affectionate.
"Thought I might just find you, old chap, because you're always mugging
when everybody else is having a holiday. Look here, I want you to do
something for me, or rather for Isobel. I'm off yachting for three or
four months--rather a jolly party--and Isobel's going to take a house in
the country for herself and the boy. She doesn't know much about that
sort of business, and I wanted to ask you to let her consult you about
the terms, and so on, to see she's not done, you know. That'll be all
right, won't it? Because I really haven't time to look after it."
"Of course. Anything I can do--please tell her. She's not going with
you?"
"No," said Harry, putting his foot on the table and regarding it fondly,
as he had at a previous interview in Andy's office. "No, not this trip,
Andy. She doesn't care much for the sea." The slightest smile flickered
on his lips. "Besides, it's 'Men only' on board." The smile broadened a
little. "At least we're going to start that way, and they're taking
me--a respectable married man--along with them to help them to keep
their good resolutions. Well, old boy, how do you like it in the House?
I haven't observed many orations put down to you!"
"I've only spoken once--hardly a speech. But I'm working pretty well at
it."
"I'll bet you are! And at it here too, I suppose? Lazy beggar, Gilly
Foot!"
"Gilly's woken up wonderfully. You'd hardly know him."
Harry yawned. "Well, I'm wanting a rest," he said. "I've had one or two
worries lately. Oh, it's all over now, but I shall be glad to get away
for a bit. By Jove, Andy, the great thing in life is to be able to go
where you like, and when you like"--his smile flashed out again--"and
with whom you like, isn't it? Are you off anywhere for Whitsuntide?"
"Only down to Meriton."
"Quiet!" But Harry had not always found it so; it was the quieter for
his absence.
"I like being there better than anywhere else," was Andy's simple
explanation of his movements.
A clerk came in and handed him a card. "I told the lady you had somebody
with you, and asked her to take a seat in the outer room for a moment."
Andy read the card. "I'll ring," he said absently, and looked across at
Harry.
"Lady? Eminent authoress? Or is this not business? Have her in--don't
hide her, Andy!"
"It's Vivien Wellgood."
Harry turned his head sharply. "What brings her here?"
"I don't know. I was to meet her and Doris Flower for lunch, and go down
with them to Meriton afterwards. Perhaps something's happened to stop
it, and she's come to tell me."
A curious smile adorned Harry's handsome features. He looked doubtful,
yet decidedly interested.
"I'd better go out and see her," said Andy. "I mustn't keep her
waiting."
Harry broke into a laugh, half of amusement, half of impatience. "You
needn't look so infernally solemn over it! It won't kill her to bow to
me--or even to shake hands."
Andy came to a sudden resolution. Since chance willed it this way, this
way it should be.
"As you please!" he said, and rang the bell.
Harry rose to his feet, and took off the panama hat, which he had kept
on during his talk with Andy. His eyes were bright; the smile flickered
again on his lips. He had not seen Vivien since that night--and that
night seemed a very long way off to Harry Belfield.
In the brief space before the door reopened, a vision danced before
Andy's eyes--a vision of Curly the retriever, and of a girl standing
motionless in fear, and yet, because he was there, not so much afraid.
In his mind was the idea which had suddenly taken shape under the
impulsion of chance--that she had better face the present than dream of
the past, better see the man who was nothing to her, than pore over the
memory of him who had been everything. She might--nay, probably
would--resent an encounter thus sprung upon her. Andy knew it; in this
moment, with the choice suddenly presented, he chose to act for himself.
Perhaps, for once in his life, he yielded to a sort of superstition, a
feeling that the chance was not for nothing, that they three would not
meet together again without result. Mingled with this was anger that
Harry should take the encounter with his airy lightness, that his eyes
should be bright and his lips bent in a smile. Andy was ready for the
last round of the fight--and ready to take his chance. Suddenly under
the pressure of his thoughts--perforce, as it were--he spoke out to
Harry.
"None of this has been of my seeking," he said.
"None of what? What do you mean, old fellow?"
There was no time for answer. Vivien was in the room, and the clerk
closed the door after she had entered.
She stood for a moment on the threshold and then moved quickly to Andy's
side.
"I knew," she said. "I heard your voices."
"I'm just going," said Harry. "I won't interrupt you. I had a hope that
you wouldn't mind just shaking hands with an old friend. I should like
it--awfully!" His smile now was pleading, propitiatory, yet with the
lurking hint that there was sentimental interest in the situation;
possibly, though he could not be convicted of this idea--it was too
elusively suggested--that there was, after all, a dash of the amusing.
She paused long on her answer. At last she spoke quietly, in a friendly
voice. "Yes, I'll shake hands with you, Harry. Because it's all over."
She smiled faintly. "I'll shake hands with you if Andy will let me."
"If Andy--?"
"Yes; because my hand belongs to him now. I came here to tell him so
this morning." She passed her left arm through Andy's and held out her
right hand towards Harry. Her lips quivered as she looked up for a
moment at Andy's face. He patted her hand gently, but his eyes were set
on Harry Belfield.
The hand she offered Harry did not take. He stretched out his for his
hat, and picked it up from the table in a shaking grip. The smile had
gone from his lips; his eyes were heavy and resentful; he found no more
eloquent, appropriate words.
"Oh, so that's it?" he said with a sullen sneer.
"It's none of it been of my seeking," Andy protested again. In this last
moment of the fight the old feeling came strong upon him. He pleaded
that he had been loyal to Harry, that he was no usurper; it had never
been in his mind.
Harry stood in silence, fingering his hat. He cast a glance across at
them--where they stood opposite to him, side by side, her arm in Andy's.
Very fresh across his memory struck the look on her face--the trustful
happiness which had followed on the tremulous joy evoked by his
wonderful words. It was not his nor for him any more, that look. He
hated that it should be Andy's. He gave the old impatient protesting
shrug of his shoulders. What other comment was there to make? He was
what he was--and these things happened! The Restless Master plays these
disconcerting tricks on his devoted servants.
"Well, good-bye," he mumbled.
"Good-bye, Harry," said both, she in her clear soft voice, Andy in his
weightier note, both with a grave pity which recognised, even as did his
shrug of the shoulders, that there was no more to be said. It was just
good-bye, just a parting of the ways, a severing of lives. Even good
wishes would have seemed a mockery; from neither side were they offered.
With one more look, another slightest shrug, Harry Belfield turned his
back on them. They stood without moving till the door closed behind him.
He was gone. Andy gave a deep sigh and dropped into the arm-chair by his
office desk. Vivien bent over him, her hand on his shoulder.
"Why did you let me meet him, Andy?"
Andy was long in answering. He was revolving the processes of his own
mind, the impulse under which he had acted, why he had exposed her to
such an ordeal as had once been in the day's work at Nutley.
"It was a chance, your coming while he was here, we three being here
together. But since it happened like that"--he raised his eyes to
hers--"well, I just thought that neither of us ought to funk him." The
utterance seemed a simple result of so much cogitation.
But Vivien laughed softly as she daintily and daringly laid her hand on
Andy's big head.
"If I 'funked him' still, I shouldn't have come at all," she said. "I
think I'm just getting to know something about you, Andy. You're like
some big thing in a dim light; one only sees you very gradually. I used
to think of you as fetching and carrying, you know."
Andy chuckled contentedly. "You thought about right," he said. "That's
what I'm always doing, just what I'm fit for. I shall go on doing it all
my life, fetching and carrying for you."
"Not only for me, I think. For everybody; perhaps even for the
nation--for the world, Andy!"
He caught the little hand that was playing over his broad brow. "For you
first. As for the rest of it--!" He broke into a laugh. "I say, Vivien,
the first time I saw you I was following the hounds on foot! That's all
I can do. The hunt gets out of sight, but sometimes you can tell where
it's going. That's about my form. Now if I was a clever chap like
Harry!"
With a laugh that was half a sob she kissed his upturned face. "Keep me
safe, keep me safe, Andy!" she whispered.
Andy slowly rose to his feet, and, turning, faced her. He took her hands
in his. "By Jove, you kissed me! You kissed me, Vivien!"
She laughed merrily. "Well, of course I did! Isn't it--usual?"
Andy smiled. "If things like that are going to be usual--well, life's
looking a bit different!" he said.
Suddenly there were wild sounds in the outer office--a door slammed, a
furious sweet voice, a swish of skirts. The door of the inner office
flew open.
"What about lunch?" demanded the Nun accusingly.
"I'd forgotten it!" Vivien exclaimed.
"So had I, but I'm awfully hungry, now I come to think of it," said
Andy. "The usual place?"
"No," said the Nun. "Somewhere else. Harry's there--lunching alone! The
first time I ever saw him do that!" She looked at the pair of them. Her
remark seemed not to make the least impression. It did not matter where
or how Harry Belfield lunched. She looked again from Vivien to Andy,
from Andy to Vivien.
"Oh!" she said.
"Yes, Doris," said Vivien meekly.
The Nun addressed Andy severely. "Mrs. Belfield will consider that
you're marrying above your station, Andy."
Andy scratched his big head. "Yes, Doris, and she'll be quite right," he
said apologetically. "Of course she will! But a fellow can only--well,
take things as they come." He broke into his hearty laugh. "What'll old
Jack say?"
The Nun knew what old Jack would say--very privately. "I wish it had
been you, miss!" But she had no envy in her heart.
"For people who do fall in love, it must be rather pleasant," she
observed.
"The worst of it is, I've got so little time," said Andy.
The two girls laughed. "I only want you to have time to be in love with
one girl," Vivien explained reassuringly.
"And, perhaps, just friends with another," the Nun added.
Andy joined in the laughter. "I shall fit those two things in all
right!" he declared.
The afternoon saw them back at Meriton; it was there that Andy Hayes
truly tasted the flavour of his good fortune. There the winning of
Vivien seemed no isolated achievement, not a bit of luck standing by
itself, but the master-knot among the many ties that now bound him to
his home. The old bonds held; the new came. In the greetings of friends
of every degree--from Chinks, the Bird, and Miss Miles, up to the great
Lord Meriton himself--in Wellgood's hard and curt, yet ready and in
truth triumphant, endorsement of an arrangement that banned the very
thought of the man he hated, in old Jack's satisfaction in the vision of
Andy in due time reigning at Nutley itself (his bit of sentiment about
the Nun was almost swallowed up in this)--most of all perhaps in
Belfield's cordial yet sad acceptance of his son's supplanter--he found
the completion of the first stage of his life's journey and the
definition of its future course and of its goal. His face was set
towards his destination; the love and confidence of the friends of a
lifetime accompanied, cheered, and aided his steady progress. No high
thoughts were in his mind. To find time for the work of the day, his own
and what other people were always so ready to leave to him, and to move
on a little--that was his task, that bounded his ambition. Anything else
that came was, as he had said to Harry Belfield, not of his seeking--and
never ceased rather to surprise him, to be received by him with the
touch of simple wonder, which made men smile at him even while they
admired and followed, which made women laugh, and in a sense pity, while
they trusted and loved. He saw the smiles and laughter, and thought them
natural. Slowly he came to rely on the love and trust, and in the
strength of them found his own strength growing, his confidence
gradually maturing.
"With you beside me, and all the dear old set round me, and Meriton
behind me, I ought to be able to get through," he said to Vivien as they
walked together in the wood at Nutley before dinner.
She stopped by a bench, rudely fashioned out of a tree trunk. "Lend me
your knife, Andy, please."
He gave it to her, and stood watching while she stooped and scratched
with the knife on the side of the bench. Certain initials were scratched
out.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the spot where they had been.
"Only a memorandum of something I don't want to remember any more," she
answered. She came back to him, blushing a little, smiling, yet with
tears in her eyes. "Yes, Meriton, and the old friends, and I--we're all
with you now--all of us with all our hearts now, dear Andy!"
Andy made his last protest. "I'd have been loyal to him all my life, if
he'd have let me!"
"I know it. And so would I. But he wouldn't let us." She took his arm as
they turned away from the bench. "The sorrow must be in our hearts
always, I think. But now it's sorrow for him, not for ourselves, Andy."
In the hour of his own triumph, because of the greatness of his own joy,
tenderness for his friend revived.
"Dear old chap! How handsome he looked to-day!"
Vivien pressed his arm. "You can say that as often as you like! There's
no danger from him now!"
The shadow passed from Andy Hayes' face as he turned to his own great
joy.
THE END.
Notes on
Nelson's New Novels.
_No work of unwholesome character or
of second-rate quality will be
included in this Series._
The novel is to-day _the_ popular form of literary art. This is proved
by the number of novels published, and by the enormous sales of fiction
at popular prices.
While _Reprints_ of fiction may be purchased for a few pence, _New
Fiction_ is still a luxury.
The author of a New Novel loses his larger audience, the public are
denied the privilege of enjoying his latest work, because of the
prohibitive price of 4s. 6d. demanded for the ordinary "six shilling"
novel.
In another way both author and public are badly served under the present
publishing system. At certain seasons a flood of new novels pours from
the press. Selection becomes almost impossible. The good novels are lost
among the indifferent and the bad. Good service can be done to
literature not only by reducing the price of fiction, but by sifting its
quality.
The number of publishers issuing new fiction is so great, that the
entrance of another firm into the field demands almost an apology--at
least, a word of explanation.
Messrs. Nelson have been pioneers in the issue of reprints of fiction in
Library Edition at Sevenpence. The success of _Nelson's Library_ has
been due to the careful selection of books, regular publication
throughout the whole year, and excellence of manufacture at a low cost,
due to perfection of machinery.
Nelson's Sevenpenny Library represents the best that can be given to the
public in the way of _Reprints_ under present manufacturing conditions.
Nelson's New Novels (of which this book is one of the first volumes)
represents the same standard of careful selection, excellence of
production, and lowest possible price applied to _New Fiction_.
The list of authors of Nelson's New Novels for 1910 includes Anthony
Hope, E. F. Benson, H. A. Vachell, H. G. Wells, "Q," G. A. Birmingham,
John Masefield, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, J. C. Snaith, John Buchan, and
Agnes and Egerton Castle. Arrangements for subsequent volumes have been
made with other authors of equally high standing.
Nelson's New Novels are of the ordinary "six shilling" size, but are
produced with greater care than most of their competitors. They are
printed in large, clear type, on a fine white paper. They are strongly
bound in green cloth with a white and gold design. They are decorated
with a pretty end-paper and a coloured frontispiece. All the volumes are
issued in bright wrappers. The books are a happy combination of
substantial and artistic qualities.
A new volume is issued regularly every month.
The price is the very lowest at which a large New Novel with good
material and workmanship, and with an adequate return to author,
bookseller, and publisher, can be offered to the public at the present
time.
_Descriptive Notes
on the Volumes for 1910_:--
FORTUNE. _J. C. Snaith._
Mr. J. C. Snaith is already known to fame by his historical novels, his
admirable cricketing story, his essay in Meredithan subtlety "Brooke of
Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy "Araminta." In his
new novel he breaks ground which has never before been touched by an
English novelist. He follows no less a leader than Cervantes. His
hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir John Falstaff grown athletic and
courageous, with his imagination fired by much adventure in far
countries and some converse with the knight of La Mancha. The doings
of this monstrous Englishman are narrated by a young and scandalized
Spanish squire, full of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard is a
new type in literature--the Rabelaisian Paladin, whose foes flee not
only from his sword but from his Gargantuan laughter. In Mr. Snaith's
romance there are many delightful characters--a Spanish lady who
dictates to armies, a French prince of the blood who has forsaken his
birthright for the highroad. But all are dominated by the immense Sir
Richard, who rights wrongs like an unruly Providence, and then rides
away.
THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY. _H. G. Wells._
If the true aim of romance is to find beauty and laughter and heroism in
odd places, then Mr. Wells is a great romantic. His heroes are not
knights and adventurers, not even members of the quasi-romantic
professions, but the ordinary small tradesmen, whom the world has
hitherto neglected. The hero of the new book, Mr. Alfred Polly, is of
the same school, but he is nearer Hoopdriver than Kipps. He is in the
last resort the master of his fate, and squares himself defiantly
against the Destinies. Unlike the others, he has a literary sense, and
has a strange fantastic culture of his own. Mr. Wells has never written
anything more human or more truly humorous than the adventures of Mr.
Polly as haberdasher's apprentice, haberdasher, incendiary, and tramp.
Mr. Polly discovers the great truth that, however black things may be,
there is always a way out for a man if he is bold enough to take it,
even though that way leads through fire and revolution. The last part of
the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga. We
leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering dimly about
the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found his niche in life.
DAISY'S AUNT. _E. F. Benson._
It is Mr. Benson's chief merit that, without losing the lightness of
touch which makes good comedy, he keeps a firm hold upon the graver
matters which make good fiction. The present book is a tale of
conspiracy--the plot of a beautiful woman to save her young niece from a
man whom she regards as a blackguard. None of Mr. Benson's women are
more attractive than these two, who fight for long at cross-purposes,
and end, as all honest natures must, with a truer understanding.
THE OTHER SIDE. _H. A. Vachell._
In this remarkable book Mr. Vachell leaves the beaten highway of
romance, and grapples with the deepest problems of human personality and
the unseen. It is a story of a musical genius, in whose soul worldliness
conquers spirituality. When he is at the height of his apparent success,
there comes an accident, and for a little soul and body seem to
separate. On his return to ordinary life he sees the world with other
eyes, but his clearness of vision has come too late to save his art. He
pays for his earlier folly in artistic impotence. The book is a profound
moral allegory, and none the less a brilliant romance.
SIR GEORGE'S OBJECTION. _Mrs. W. K. Clifford._
Mrs. Clifford raises the old problem of heredity, and gives it a very
modern and scientific answer. It is the story of a woman who, after her
husband's disgrace and death, settles with her only daughter upon the
shore of one of the Italian lakes. The girl grows up in ignorance of her
family history, but when the inevitable young man appears complications
begin. As it happens, Sir George, the father of the lover, holds the
old-fashioned cast-iron doctrine of heredity, and the story shows the
conflict between his pedantry and the compulsion of fact. It is a book
full of serious interest for all readers, and gives us in addition a
charming love story. Mrs. Clifford has drawn many delightful women, but
Kitty and her mother must stand first in her gallery.
PRESTER JOHN. _John Buchan._
This is a story which, in opposition to all accepted canons of romance,
possesses no kind of heroine. There is no woman from beginning to end in
the book, unless we include a little Kaffir serving-girl. The hero is a
Scottish lad, who goes as assistant to a store in the far north of the
Transvaal. By a series of accidents he discovers a plot for a great
Kaffir rising, and by a combination of luck and courage manages to
frustrate it. From the beginning to end it is a book of stark adventure.
The leader of the rising is a black missionary, who believes himself the
incarnation of the mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of
a perverted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which
for centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of
Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon small
things, and by frustrating the leader in these small things, the young
storekeeper wins his way to fame and fortune. It is a book for all who
are young enough in heart to enjoy a record of straightforward
adventure.
LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING. "_Q._"
Sir Oliver Vyell, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, is the British
Collector of Customs at the port of Boston in the days before the
American Revolution. While there he runs his head against New England
Puritanism, rescues a poor girl who has been put in the stocks for
Sabbath-breaking, carries her off, and has her educated. The story deals
with the development of Ruth Josselin from a half-starved castaway to a
beautiful and subtle woman. Sir Oliver falls in love with his ward, and
she becomes my Lady and the mistress of a great house; but to the New
Englanders she remains a Sabbath-breaker and "Lady-Good-for-Nothing."
The scene moves to Lisbon, whither Sir Oliver goes on Government
service, and there is a wonderful picture of the famous earthquake. The
book is a story of an act of folly, and its heavy penalties, and also
the record of the growth of two characters--one from atheism to
reverence, and the other from a bitter revolt against the world to a
wiser philosophy. The tale is original in scheme and setting, and the
atmosphere and thought of another age are brilliantly reproduced. No
better historical romance has been written in our times.
PANTHER'S CUB. _Agnes and Egerton Castle._
This is the story of a world-famed prima donna, whose only daughter has
been brought up in a very different world from that in which her mother
lives. When the child grows to womanhood she joins her mother, and the
problem of the book is the conflict of the two temperaments--the one
sophisticated and undisciplined, and the other simple and sincere. The
scenes are laid in Vienna and London, amid all types of society--smart,
artistic, and diplomatic. Against the Bohemian background the authors
have worked out a very beautiful love story of a young diplomatist and
the singer's daughter. The book is full of brilliant character-sketches
and dramatic moments.
TREPANNED. _John Masefield._
Mr. Masefield has already won high reputation as poet and dramatist, and
his novel "Captain Margaret" showed him to be a romancer of a higher
order. "Trepanned" is a story of adventure in Virginia and the Spanish
Main. A Kentish boy is trepanned and carried off to sea, and finds his
fill of adventure among Indians and buccaneers. The central episode of
the book is a quest for the sacred Aztec temple. The swift drama of the
narrative, and the poetry and imagination of the style, make the book in
the highest sense literature. It should appeal not only to all lovers of
good writing, but to all who care for the record of stirring deeds.
THE SIMPKINS PLOT. _George A. Birmingham._
"Spanish Gold" has been the most mirth-provoking of Irish novels
published in the last few years, and Mr. Birmingham's new book is a
worthy successor. Once more the admirable red-haired curate, "J. J.,"
appears, and his wild energy turns a peaceful neighbourhood into a
hotbed of intrigue and suspicion. The story tells how he discovers in a
harmless lady novelist, seeking quiet for her work, a murderess whose
trial had been a _cause celebre_. He forms a scheme of marrying the lady
to the local bore, in the hope that she may end his career. Once started
on the wrong tack, he works out his evidence with convincing logic, and
ties up the whole neighbourhood in the toils of his misconception. The
book is full of the wittiest dialogue and the most farcical situations.
It will be as certain to please all lovers of Irish humour as the
immortal "Experiences of an Irish R. M."
* * * * *
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS,
London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York.