IN THE SPRING
Yes, it was all true! The events of that Red Letter Day had really
happened. When Arthur awoke the next morning, he had a queer feeling of
its all being a dream, a mirage born of ambition. No. The morning paper
proved it; a glance at his own table added confirmation.
Revolving Time had brought round the Easter vacation again. The last
case heard in the Court of Appeal that sittings was _Crewdson v. The
Great Southern Railway Company_, on appeal from Knaresby, J.'s, judgment
on the findings of the jury. (The subsequent history of the great Dog
Case lay still in the future.) It was a time of political excitement;
Sir Humphrey Fynes, K.C., M.P., had chanced the case being reached, and
gone off to rouse the country to a proper sense of its imminent peril if
the Government continued so much as a day longer in office. Consequently
he was not there to argue Miss Crewdson's case. Mr. Tracy Darton, K.C.,
was there, but he was also in the fashionable divorce case of the
moment, and had to address the jury on the respondent's behalf. He cut
his argument before the Court of Appeal suspiciously short, and left to
his learned friend Mr. Lisle the task of citing authorities bearing on
tricky points relating to the subject of Common Carriers. Arthur was in
a tremor when he rose--nearly as much frightened as he had been before
Lance and Pretyman, JJ., a year ago--but his whole heart was with his
dog; he grew excited, he stuck to his guns; they should have those
authorities if he died for it! He was very tenacious--and in the end
rather long perhaps. But the Court listened attentively, smiling now and
then at his youthful ardour, but letting him make his points. When they
came to give judgment against his contention, they went out of the way
to compliment him. The Master of the Rolls said the Court was indebted
to Mr. Lisle for his able argument. Leonard, L.J., confessed that he had
been for a moment shaken by Mr. Lisle's ingenious argument. Pratt, L.J.,
quite agreed with what had fallen from My Lord and his learned Brother
concerning Mr. Lisle's conduct of his case. Even Miss Crewdson herself,
whose face had been black as thunder at Sir Humphrey's desertion and Mr.
Darton's unseemly brevity, and whose shoulders had shrugged scornfully
when Arthur rose, found a smile for him in the hour of temporary defeat;
that she would lose in the end never entered the indomitable woman's
head. Then--out in the corridor, when all was over--Tom Mayne patted him
on the back, and almost danced round him for joy and pride--it was
impossible to recognise in him the melancholy Mr. Beverley--Norton Ward,
hurrying off to another case, called out, "Confound your cheek!" and, to
crown all, the august solicitor of the Great Southern Railway Company,
his redoubtable opponents, gave him a friendly nod, saying, "I was
afraid you were going to turn 'em at the last moment, Mr. Lisle!" That
his appreciation was genuine Arthur's table proved. There, newly
deposited by triumphant Henry, lay a case to advise the Great Southern
Railway Company itself.
"Once you get in with them, sir----!" Henry had said, rubbing his hands
together and leaving the rest to the imagination.
Such things come seldom to any man, but once or twice in their careers
to many. They came to Arthur as the crown of a term's hard work, mostly
over Norton Ward's briefs--for Norton Ward had come to rely on him now
and kept him busy 'devilling'--but with some little things of his own
too; for Wills and Mayne were faithful, and another firm had sent a case
also. His neck was well in the collar; his fee book had become more than
a merely ornamental appurtenance. Long and hard, dry and dusty, was the
road ahead. Never mind! His feet were on it, and if he walked warily he
need fear no fatal slip. Letting the case to advise wait--his opinion
would not be needed before the latter part of the vacation, Henry
said--he sat in his chair, smoking and indulging in pardonably rosy
reflections.
"Rather different from what it was this time last year!" said Honest
Pride with a chuckle.
A good many things had been rather different with him a year ago, he
might have been cynically reminded; for instance the last Easter
vacation he had dedicated to Miss Marie Sarradet, and he was not
dedicating this coming one to Mrs. Sidney Barslow; and other things,
unknown a year ago, had figured on the moving picture of his life, and
said their say to him, and gone their way. But to-day he was looking
forward and not back, seeing beginnings, not endings, not burying the
past with tears or smiles, but hailing the future with a cheery cry of
welcome for its hazards and its joys.
Henry put his head in at the door. "Sir Christopher Lance has rung up,
sir, and wants to know if you'll lunch with him to-day at one-thirty--at
his house."
"Yes, certainly. Say, with pleasure." Left alone again, Arthur
ejaculated "Splendid!" Sir Christopher had seen the report in the paper!
He read the law reports, of course. A thought crossed Arthur's
mind--would they read the law reports at Hilsey? They might not have
kept their eye on his case. He folded up the paper and put it carefully
in the little bag which he was now in the habit of carrying to and fro
between his lodgings and his chambers.
Sir Christopher was jubilant over the report. "A feather in your cap to
get that out of Leonard--a crusty old dog, but a deuced fine lawyer!" he
said. But the news of the case from the Great Southern Railway Company
meant yet more to him. "If they take you up, they can see you through,
Arthur."
"If I don't make a fool of myself," Arthur put in.
"Oh, they'll expect you to do that once or twice. Don't be frightened.
The dog of yours is a lucky dog, eh? All you've got to do now is to take
things quietly, and not fret. Remember that only one side can win, and
it's not to be expected that you'll be on the right side always. I think
you'll be done over the dog even, in the end, you know."
"Not I!" cried Arthur indignantly. "That Harrogate cur's not our dog,
sir."
"Human justice is fallible," laughed the old man. "Anyhow it's a good
sporting case. And what are you going to do with yourself now?"
"I'm off to Hilsey for a fortnight's holiday. Going at four o'clock."
"Losing no time," Sir Christopher remarked with a smile.
"Well, it's jolly in the country in the spring, isn't it?" Arthur asked,
rather defensively.
"Yes, it's jolly in the spring--jolly anywhere in the spring, Arthur."
Arthur caught the kindly banter in his tone; he flushed a little and
smiled in answer. "It was very jolly there in the winter too, if you
come to that, sir. Ripping skating!"
"Does all the family skate?"
"No, not all the family." He laughed. "Just enough of it, Sir
Christopher."
The old man sat back in his chair and sipped his hock. "Some men can get
on without a woman about them but, so far as I've observed you, I don't
think you're that sort. If you must have a woman about you, there's a
good deal to be said for its being your own wife, and not, as so often
happens, somebody else's. May we include that among our recent
discoveries?"
"But your own wife costs such a lot of money."
"So do the others--very often. Don't wait too long for money, or for too
much of it. Things are jolliest in the spring!"
"I suppose I'm rather young. I'm only twenty-five, you know."
"And a damned good age for making love too!" Sir Christopher pronounced
emphatically.
"Oh, of course, if that's your experience, sir!" laughed Arthur.
Sir Christopher grew graver. "Does the wound heal at Hilsey?"
"Yes, I think so--slowly."
"Surgery's the only thing sometimes; when you can't cure, you must cut.
At any rate we won't think hardly of our beautiful friend. I don't
believe, though, that you're thinking of her at all, you young rascal!
You're thinking of nothing but that train at four o'clock."
Arthur was silent a moment or two. "I daresay that some day, when it's a
bit farther off, I shall be able to look at it all better--to see just
what happened and what it came to. But I can't do that now. I--I haven't
time." They had finished lunch. He came and rested his hand on the old
man's shoulder. "At any rate, it's brought me your friendship. I can't
begin to tell you what that is to me, sir."
Sir Christopher looked up at him. "I can tell you what it is to me,
though. It's a son for my barren old age--and I'm quite ready to take a
daughter too, Arthur."
Arthur went off by the four o'clock train, with his copy of _The Times_
in his pocket. But out of that pocket it never emerged, save in the
privacy of his den, and there it was hidden carefully. Never in all his
life did he confess that he had "happened" to bring it down with him.
For, on the platform at Hilsey, the first thing he saw was Judith
waiting for him. As soon as he put his head out of the window, she ran
towards him, brandishing _The Times_ in her hand. No motive to produce
his copy, no need to confess that he had brought it!
His attitude towards Judith's copy was one of apparent indifference. It
could not be maintained in face of her excitement and curiosity. The
report seemed to have had on her much the same effect as skating. She
proposed to walk home, and let the car take his luggage, and, as soon as
they were clear of the station, she cried, "Now you've got to tell me
all--all--about it! What are the Rolls, and who's the Master of them?
What's Lord Justice Leonard like? And the other one--what's his
name?--Pratt? And what was it in your speech that they thought so
clever?"
"I thought perhaps you wouldn't see it," said Arthur, not mentioning
that he had taken his own measures to meet that contingency, had it
arisen.
"Not see it! Why, I hunt all through those wretched cases every morning
of my life, looking for that blessed dog of yours! So I shall, till it's
found, or buried, or something. Now begin at the beginning, and tell me
just how everything happened."
"I say, this isn't the shortest way home, you know."
"I know it isn't. Begin now directly, Arthur." She had hold of his arm
now, _The Times_ still in her other hand. "Godfrey's quite excited
too--for him. He'd have come, only he's got a bad cold; and Margaret
stayed to comfort him. Begin now!"
His attitude of indifference had no chance. All the story was dragged
from him by reiterated "And thens--?" He warmed to it himself, working
up through their lordships, through Miss Crewdson's smile ("She looks an
uncommonly nice old girl," he interjected), through Tom Mayne's raptures
and Norton Ward's jocose tribute, to the climax of the august solicitor
and the case to advise which attested his approval. "That may mean a lot
to me," Arthur ended.
"The people you'd been trying to beat!" Her voice sounded awed at the
wonder of it. "I should have thought they'd just hate you. I wish I was
a man, Arthur! Aren't you awfully proud of it all?"
Well, he was awfully proud, there was no denying it. "I wish the dear
old mater could have read it!"
She pressed his arm. "We can read it. I've helped Margaret to spell it
out. She's feeling rather afraid of you, now that you've got your name
in the paper. And Godfrey's been looking up all the famous Lisles in the
County History! You won't have to be doing Frank Norton Ward's work for
him now all the time--and for nothing too!"
In vain he tried to tell her how valuable the devilling was to him. No,
she thought it dull, and was inclined to lay stress on the way Norton
Ward found his account in it. Arthur gave up the effort, but, somewhat
alarmed by the expectations he seemed to be raising, ventured to add,
"Don't think I'm going to jump into five thousand a year, Judith!"
"Let me have my little crow out, and then I'll be sensible about it,"
she pleaded.
But he did not in his heart want her sensible; her eyes would not be so
bright, nor her cheeks glow with colour; her voice would not vibrate
with eager joyfulness, nor her laugh ring so merrily; infectious as Miss
Ayesha Layard's own, it was really! Small wonder that he caught the
infection of her sanguine pleasure too. Long roads seemed short that
evening, whether they led to fame and fortune, or only through the
meadows and across the river to Hilsey Manor.
"Now the others will want to hear all about it," said Judith, with
something like a touch of jealousy.
The story had to be told again--this time with humorous magniloquence
for Margaret's benefit, with much stress on their lordships' wigs and
gowns, a colourable imitation of their tones and manner, and a hint of
the awful things they might have done to Arthur if he had displeased
them--which Margaret, with notions of a trial based on _Alice in
Wonderland_, was quite prepared to believe. Godfrey shuffled about
within earshot, his carpet slippers (his cold gave good excuse for them)
padding up and down the room as he listened without seeming to listen,
and his shy, "Very--very--er--satisfactory to you, Arthur!" coming with
a pathetic inadequacy at the end of the recital.
Then--before dinner--a quiet half-hour in his own den upstairs, where
everything was ready for him and seemed to expect him, where fresh
fragrant flowers on table and chimney-piece revealed affectionate
anticipation of his coming, where the breeze blew in, laden with the
sweetness of spring, through the open windows. As he sat by them, he
could hear the distant cawing of the rooks and see the cattle grazing in
the meadows. The river glinted under the setting sun, the wood on the
hill stood solid and sombre with clear-cut outline. The Peace of God
seemed to rest on the old place and to wrap it round in a golden
tranquillity. His heart was in a mood sensitive to the suggestion. He
rested after his labours, after the joyful excitement of the last
twenty-four hours. So Hilsey too seemed to rest after its struggle, and
to raise in kind security the head that had bent before the storm.
He had left his door ajar and had not heard anyone enter. But
presently--it may be that he had fallen into a doze, or a state of
passive contemplation very like one--he found Judith standing by the
arm-chair in which he was reclining--oh, so lazily and pleasantly! She
looked as if she might have been there for some little while, some few
moments at all events, and she was gazing out on the fairness of the
evening with a smile on her lips.
"I've been putting Margaret to bed--she was allowed an extra hour in
your honour--and then I just looked in here to see if you wanted
anything."
"I shall make a point of wanting as many things as I possibly can. I
love being waited on, and I've never been able to get enough of it. I
shall keep you busy! Judith, to think that I was once going to desert
Hilsey! Well, I suppose we shall be turned out some day." He sighed
lightly and humorously over the distant prospect of ejection by
Margaret, grown-up, married perhaps, and the _châtelaine_.
"If you want to know your future, I happen to be able to tell you," said
Judith. "Margaret arranged it while she was getting into bed."
"Oh, let's hear this! It's important--most important!" he cried, sitting
up.
"If you don't want to go on living here, you're to have a house built
for you up on the hill there. On the other side of the wood, I insisted;
otherwise you'd spoil the view horribly! But Margaret didn't seem to
mind about that."
"Yes, I think I must be behind the wood--especially if I'm to have a
modern artistic cottage."
"There you're to live--when you're not in London, being praised by
judges--and you're to come down the hill to tea every day of the week."
"It doesn't seem a bad idea--only she might sometimes make it dinner!"
"She'll make it dinner when she's bigger, I daresay. At present, for
her, you see, dinner doesn't count."
"Why does she think I mightn't want to go on living here? Is she
contemplating developments in my life? Or in her own? And where are you
going to live while I'm living on the top of the hill, out of sight
behind the wood? Did Margaret settle your future too, Judith?"
"I don't think it occurs to her that I've got one--except just to go on
being here. We women--we ordinary women--get our futures settled for us.
I think Bernadette settled mine the day she ran away and left poor
Hilsey derelict."
He looked up at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Should you
put the settling of your fate quite as early as that, Judith?"
She saw what he meant and shook her head at him in reproof, but her eyes
were merry and happy.
"Have you thought over that idea of Switzerland in the winter?"
"It's the spring now. Why do you want to think of winter?"
"The thought of winter makes the spring even pleasanter." She smiled as
she rested her hand on his shoulder and looked down on his face. "Well,
perhaps--if I can possibly persuade Godfrey to come with us."
"If he won't? What are we to do if we can get nobody to go with us?"
She broke into a low gentle laugh. "Well, I don't want to get rusty in
my skating. And it's splendid over there." Her eyes met his for a moment
in gleeful confession. "Still--the best day's skating I ever had in my
life, Arthur, was the first day we skated here at Hilsey."
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
WILLIAM BRANDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
METHUEN'S POPULAR NOVELS
Crown 8vo. =6s. each=
AUTUMN, 1915
JOSEPH CONRAD VICTORY
H. G. WELLS BEALBY
ARNOLD BENNETT A GREAT MAN
ANTHONY HOPE A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON SECRET HISTORY
GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM GOSSAMER
MARJORIE BOWEN BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS
D. H. LAWRENCE THE RAINBOW
RICHARD PRYCE DAVID PENSTEPHEN
W. PETT RIDGE THE KENNEDY PEOPLE
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM Mr. GREX OF MONTE CARLO
LADY TROUBRIDGE THE EVIL DAY
Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY THE SECRET SON
ASHTON HILLIERS DEMI-ROYAL
P. G. WODEHOUSE SOMETHING NEW
H. C. BAILEY THE HIGHWAYMAN
SAX ROHMER THE YELLOW CLAW
MAURICE DRAKE THE OCEAN SLEUTH
CONSTANCE COTTERELL THE PERPETUAL CHOICE
EVELYN APTED CHARLES QUANTRILL
MARJORIE L. PICKTHALL LITTLE HEARTS
ORDER FORM
To..............................
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Kindly send me the several books which I have marked on the above
list.
Name....................................
Address.................................
[P.T.O.
=VICTORY. By Joseph Conrad,= Author of 'Chance.'
In this story Mr. Conrad returns to the manner of his famous early
romance, _The Outcast of the Island_. The principal character, a lawless
adventurer called 'Enchanted Heyst,' is one of the great figures in Mr.
Conrad's gallery; the scene is laid in and about the tropical island of
Samburan; and the theme is love and jealousy.
=BEALBY. By H. G. Wells.=
This new novel is a feast of fast and furious fun. Mr. Wells throws
problems of all sorts to the dogs, and revels in the diverting
adventures of a small boy who, in the course of one brief week, works
havoc in the lives of many people. Delightful people are they all, as
portrayed by Mr. Wells, from the self-important, philosophic Lord
Chancellor down to the socialistic (and very dirty) tramp.
=A GREAT MAN. By Arnold Bennett,= Author of 'Clayhanger.'
This is a new edition of a well-known novel by Mr. Arnold Bennett,
called by him a 'frolic.' It may be said to have paved the way for his
famous comic romance _The Card_ and its sequel _The Regent_. In _A Great
Man_ Mr. Bennett describes the life and achievements of Henry
Shakespeare Knight, who from humble beginnings becomes a world-famous
novelist and one of the wealthiest of playwrights, a goal attained only
after much amusing adventure by the way.
=A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR. By Anthony Hope.=
The story of an eventful year in the life of Arthur Lisle, of the Middle
Temple, Esquire: recounting his fortunes and ventures, professional,
speculative, and romantic, and showing how he sought without finding,
and found without seeking, and, at the end of the year, was twelve
months older and as much wiser as young men are for such experiences.
=SECRET HISTORY. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson,=
Authors of 'The Lightning Conductor.'
The title of this book refers to the 'secret history' of a recent
critical episode between the United States and Mexico. Taking the form
of the dramatic and sensational love stories of two Irish girls and two
officers, the romance has its scenes partly at an army post in Texas and
partly in diplomatic circles in London in 1914-15. The story is told in
the first person by Lady Peggy O'Malley.
=GOSSAMER. By George A. Birmingham,= Author of 'Spanish Gold.'
In this book the principal characters are a leader in the world of
international finance, an Irish country gentleman who has parted with
his estate, an Irish journalist who is also a member of Parliament
attached to the Nationalist party, a lady artist, and an inventor
occupied with mechanical devices. The story ends with the declaration of
war in August 1914, and culminates in the effect of that catastrophe on
the lives and fortunes of the various characters.
=BECAUSE OF THESE THINGS. By Marjorie Bowen.=
This story relates the inevitable tragic drama of the reckless union of
two diverse temperaments and races, brought together by a useless
passion. The scene changes from Bologna, the most dissipated city of
Italy, to the Calvinistic gloom of Scotland.
=THE RAINBOW. By D. H. Lawrence,= Author of 'Sons and Lovers.'
This story, by one of the most remarkable of the younger school of
novelists, contains a history of the Brangwen character through its
developing crisis of love, religion, and social passion, from the time
when Tom Brangwen, the well-to-do Derbyshire farmer, marries a Polish
lady, to the moment when Ursula, his granddaughter, the leading-shoot of
the restless, fearless family, stands waiting at the advance-post of our
time to blaze a path into the future.
=DAVID PENSTEPHEN. By Richard Pryce,= Author of 'Christopher.'
The author deals with the early years of a boy's life. The action of the
story, opening abroad, and then moving to London and to English country
houses, takes place in the seventies. The story is almost as much the
story of David's mother as of David himself, and shows, against a
background of the manners of the time, the consequences of a breaking
away from the established order. How, under the shadow, David's
childhood is yet almost wholly happy, and how on the threshold of
manhood he is left ready--his heart's desire in view--to face life in
earnest and to make a new name for himself in his own way, these pages
tell.
=THE KENNEDY PEOPLE. By W. Pett Ridge,= Author of 'The Happy Recruit.'
The author is, in this novel, still faithful to London, but he sets out
here to till something like fresh ground. A description is given of
three generations of a family, and particulars are conveyed of the kind
of chart that represented their advances and their retreats. The story
is told in Mr. Pett Ridge's lively and characteristic manner.
=Mr. GREX OF MONTE CARLO. By E. Phillips Oppenheim,= Author of 'Master
of Men.'
Mr. Oppenheim has never written a more absorbing story than this one, in
which an adventurous young American first falls in love, then into
trouble, and becomes a part of events that are making history.
In Monte Carlo three men skilled in international intrigue meet in
secret conference; two Ministers of foreign affairs and a Grand Duke
plan to make over the map of Europe, while a diplomat representing a
fourth great world-power, aided by skilled secret-service men, aims to
thwart their endeavours. Then--enter the American. How young Richard
Lane, wealthy and used to having his own way, fell in love with
mysterious Mr. Grex's daughter, how he was not discouraged even when he
found out what an important personage Mr. Grex really was, how he took a
hand in events and caused an upset, is told in a thrilling love story
that lays bare the methods of modern international diplomatists and
incidentally conveys a warning to America to arm herself against the
possibilities of war.
=THE EVIL DAY. By Lady Troubridge.=
In this book Lady Troubridge abandons for the first time the study of
the very young girl, to give us one of a woman of forty, who, until the
story opens, has led a quiet, retired and domestic existence.
Circumstances, however, bring the heroine face to face with modern life
and its developments in their most vivid form, and she does not pass
through the experience altogether unscathed.
=THE SECRET SON. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney.=
Mrs. Henry Dudeney's new novel is a delightful story of the Sussex
Downs. Its types and characters are rustic, and in it comedy and tragedy
are skilfully mingled by this most accomplished writer. The theme of the
book is the relation between mother and son, and the reader passes to
the close of a very human story with a most absorbing interest.
=DEMI-ROYAL. By Ashton Hilliers,= Author of 'The Adventures of a Lady of
Quality.'
That the famous Mrs. Fitzherbert, legal and loyal wife of the Regent,
_may_ have borne him a child is indisputable. That she did so is the
author's thesis in this diverting romance; and the fortunes of this
child, legitimate, but un-royal, trepanned, lost, mourned as dead,
repudiated, traced, acknowledged, are his theme. The mother-love of a
noble woman, the fears of a selfish voluptuary, the self-sacrifice of
honest York, form the warp across which runs the woof of a girl's life
lived innocently and spiritedly in Puritan surroundings, watched over by
the Order of Jesus, the unconscious centre of vehement antagonisms.
=SOMETHING NEW. By P. G. Wodehouse,= Author of 'The Little Nugget.'
The treatment of this story is farcical, but all the characters are
drawn carefully as if it were a comedy. Ashe Marson, a struggling writer
of adventure stories, sees an advertisement in a paper in which 'a young
man of good appearance who is poor and reckless, is needed for a
delicate and perilous enterprise.' Joan Valentine, the heroine, who has
been many things in her time, also answers an advertisement requiring 'a
woman to conduct a delicate and perilous enterprise.'
=THE HIGHWAYMAN. By H. C. Bailey,= Author of 'A Gentleman Adventurer.'
This is a story set in the last years of Queen Anne. Naturally, Jacobite
and Hanoverian plots and conspirators furnish much of the incident. They
are, however, only a background to the hero and heroine, whose love with
its adventures and misadventures is the main subject of the novel.
Though Marlborough and the Old Pretender, Queen Anne and other figures
of history play their part, it is the hero and heroine who hold the
centre of the stage.
=THE YELLOW CLAW. By Sax Rohmer,= Author of 'Dr. Fu-Manchu.'
This is an enthralling tale of Eastern mystery and crime in a European
setting. The action moves from an author's flat in Westminster to the
'Cave of the Golden Dragon,' Shadwell, and the weird Catacombs below the
level of the Thames, and circles round 'Mr. King,' the sinister and
unseen president of the Kan-Suh Opium Syndicate. We meet with the
beautiful Eurasian, Mahâra, 'Our Lady of the Poppies,' and are
introduced to M. Gaston Max, Europe's greatest criminologist, and to the
beetle-like Chinaman, Ho-Pin.
=THE OCEAN SLEUTH. By Maurice Drake.=
This is an exciting story, by one of the most promising of the younger
novelists, of perils by sea and criminal hunting by land. The tale
begins with some exciting salvage while off the Cornish coast, and
passes on to the allurements of detective work in England and Brittany.
In Austin Voogdt, the hero, Mr. Drake has created a commanding figure in
romance.
=THE PERPETUAL CHOICE. By Constance Cotterell,= Author of 'The Virgin
and the Scales.'
_The Perpetual Choice_ runs between poverty and wealth, passion and
prejudice, London and the country, and is the story of a high-spirited
girl. She has to discover the precariousness of housekeeping on
enthusiasm with her strange friends, and finds that poverty is partly
fun and partly a blight. Three men love her, all differently, and when
she falls in love her crisis has come.
=CHARLES QUANTRILL. By Evelyn Apted.=
A story of quiet charm and of intense human interest. The interest of
the book does not depend on sensational effects, but rather in the
endeavour to apply insight and imagination to the faithful description
of events and problems which might confront any one of its readers. The
scene shifts at times from England to South Africa, Norway, and the
Riviera. A perfectly natural sequence of events leads to the marriage of
a girl of strong character with a man of principles less high than her
own. The writer brings the story to a dramatic close about two years
after the marriage.
=LITTLE HEARTS. By Marjorie L. Pickthall.=
A story of the Forest and the Downs in the troubled times of the
eighteenth century, telling how Mr. Sampson, a gentleman engaged in the
production of a Philosophy of Poverty, rescues and shelters one Anthony
Oakshott, who is thrown from horseback over his wall, and whom he takes
for an heroic Jacobite, much wanted by the King's men. By so doing he
changes his own life and that of the girl he loves.
=METHUEN & CO. LTD., 36 Essex Street, LONDON, W.C.=