In Girl Neighbours (Blackie and Son), Miss Sarah Tytler gives
us one of the most effective and quietly humorous of her stories. There is no plot to speak of, although the story contains an accident, an attack of fever, and a slight epidemic of small-pox. Some three hundred and fifty pages are occupied in telling bow two girls, Harriet Cotton and Sapientia Stubbs (by-the-way, we are not much impressed with the humour of the names Miss Tytler gives to her characters), who are the nearest of neighbours, but are separated by differences in education and the social grades of their parents, are brought into the closet friendship,—with the help, it is perhaps unnecessary to say, of the brother of one of them. In the course of the events which lead up to this consummation, the girls and their relatives show what they are made of, and so do their relatives and friends. Then, lady- nurses, and lady-cooks, and ladies colleges are all introduced with that art which conceals art. Everybody, in short, is busy teaching everybody else, and yet nobody is aware of the fact. Altogether, Girl Neighbours is a delightful comedy, not so much of errors as of prejudices got rid of,—very healthy, very agreeable, and very well written.
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