Becky and Co. By Margaret Baillie Saunders. (Hutchinson and Co.
8s. 6d. net.)—To the wonderfully picturesque things which the author has discovered in the City of London we must now add the firm of "Messrs. Darner and Co.," familiarly known as "Becky and Co.," near the Tower Bridge. The Anglican Catholic element with which her books are coloured is stronger than usual, and a convent of Sisters Minor of St. Francis of Assisi is established, or, as the author would say, re-established, on the top floor of Messrs. Damer's business premises. What the Founder of the Order would say to this rather irregular development does not seem to trouble the author, and the nuns take themselves as seriously as if they were legitimate descendants of the Order which flourished in Roman Catholic England. There is a love story in the book, which is readable but not particularly enthralling.
Rrasuinac NOVELS.—Thoas Who Smiled. By Perceval Gibbon. (Cassell and Co. 7s. 6d. net.)—A series of stories, • Whitewash. By Horace Annealey Vachell. • London Cassell. lea.. net-1 many of them concerning the sea. "Plain German," the scene of which, however, is on dry land, is an interesting, though fan- tastic, study of German psychology.—The Clouding Crystal. By Douglas D. Kennedy. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d. net.)—A war story concerning German spies who used spiritual- istic methods to obtain. information. The book is written in the first person, and it was rather a mistake to make both the narrator and the hero cripples—the former as the result of a pre- war accident. It is impossible not to think of the immortal phrase in The Wrong Box : One drunken man, very good business ; two drunken men, all my eye !—Mr. Preston's Daughter. By Thomas Cobb. (John Lane. 78. 6d. net.)—The two problems in this story are concerned with the same young lady. In the first place her appearance is so conspicuous that it compromises the hero to be seen taking her out to tea. In the second, the question of who is her father produces a series of embarrassments which are ended by the wife of the culprit announcing that she knew all about the matter before she married. Tho book is written with Mr. Thomas Cobb's usual lightness of touch.
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