Gossips Green. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney. (Cassell and Co. 6s.)—It
is extremely difficult for any reader to be interested in a heroine who is apparently in love with two people at once. Mrs. Dudeney, however, seems to think this quite a possible situation, and represents her heroine, Lucy, as devoted to her doctor husband, and at the same time as suffering from a. fantastic passion for the remarkable foundling whom the sea has cast up on the beach of the village. The date of the story is the early years of the nineteenth century, and in the first chapter Mrs. Dudeney gives a charming description of the seaside village of Gossips Green. It would be interesting to know where she found this very attractive name, which does not sound as if it were an invention. The story, owing to the situation com- mented on above, is not always pleasant reading, and it is extremely difficult to believe in the reality of Quaker Jay, the foundling. At any rate, Mrs. Dudeney does not succeed in con- vincing her readers of the charm with which in her own mind she obviously invests him.
Previous page
