30 APRIL 1932, Page 26

OLD WINE AND NEW. By Warwick Decping. (Cassell. 7s. fal.)—Spenser

Scarsdale had been a reviewer on the Sera- tutor, but found himself a back number after the War. His face had a wistfulness. Always he looked wistful. He lost job after job, was defrauded by a Hard Young Woman, and took Cheap Lodgings in Astey's Row, where his landlady. Eleanor Richmond, obligingly became the Star of his Life. When an editor sent one of his stories back with a note, she rescued the note from the waste-paper basket, took it back to the editor, persuaded him to ask Spenser to rewrite the story, helped Spenser to rewrite it, and further encouraged him to write a masterpiece, whereupon he married her, and they became fabulously rich and fabulously unspoilt, and lived happily ever after,