28 APRIL 1894, Page 11

Paul Romer, by C. J. Hargreaves (A. and C. Black),

is a very agreeable story of cross-purposes in love-making, with a little art and a great deal of tea-drinking and other equally harmless enjoyments thrown in. One can quite see from the first that these two healthy minded and high-spirited young folk, Paul Romer and Nell Creith, are made for each other, and will ulti- mately come together, even although there has been a litigation between the families which has not ended well for the Creiths. Nell has an invalid brother, Kit, who tries not very successfully to make a living by literature, and Paul Romer has an invalid stepbrother. Nell acts as a good angel to both, and so is com- pelled to see a good deal of Paul, who, besides, appears to be the only man in the book that has a command of ready money. But it is unnecessary to say more. Paul Romer is not superlatively clever. It is not subtle in any sense. It is not studded with epigrams of the kind to which " John Oliver Hobbes" is prone. But it is a good, wholesome, enjoyable story ; and the simply idyllic, almost matter-of-fact romance of Kit Creith and Nora Conroy serves admirably as a foil to the main plot in which false pride prevents Paul and Nell from being quite true to themselves and to each other.