14 JANUARY 1911, Page 24

A Large Room. By Mrs. Henry Dndeney. (W. Heinemann. 6s.)—Mrs.

Dudeney's heroine, Amass Meeks, is perfectly delightful as a child. The description of the long dull afternoons passed by her and her boy companion, Sebastien, in a smutty London square with a background of nurses and tiresome children, strikes the reader with instant conviction as being absolutely true to life, and a real revelation of the mind of a peculiarly constituted child. But when Amara, neglected by her stepmother and with her nerves all on edge from unsympathetic companionship, grows up and enters on her series of unfortunate adventures, the novel becomes much less satisfactory, though the mystic ending when she sees the Cross borne through the streets of London and follows it is, perhaps, appropriate to so strange a personality as hers. Mrs. Dudeney writes with her accustomed mastery of her material, and as a description of a woman destined from her birth to be incomprise the novel must be pronounced a great success.