FICTION.
PEREGRINE IN LOVE.• Miss Fox &urn has chosen an attractive title for her story, which is excellent of its amphibious kind, though we could have done with more of the seafaring element, in which she is pecu- liarly at home. Peregrine, as his name suggests, is a roamer who by the age of thirty-five has gained a wide experience of men and cities but little of the heart of woman. He is, however, himself heartwhole, retaining his old-world chivalry unimpaired by an early disappointment. Returning to British Columbia he plays good genius on the voyage to an English orphan girl who is going out to be married, and rescues her from undesirable companions, recognizing, under the disguise of clerical garb, a notorious scoundrel whom he had met out West. The force of circumstances and his own good nature compel him to continue his self-imposed obligations. Philippa's young man never comes to meet her at Victoria, and Peregrine takes charge of the derelict damsel, hunts up the truant—who proves to be a thorough waster—partially awakens him to his responsibilities, finds him a job, makes good his defalcations, and all the time steadily refuses every opportunity to " butt in " on his own account. Teddy Charteris, however, remains so incorrigible that Peregrine loses patience and finally " shanghais " him to get him out of trouble. Teddy, be it noted, was not only shady in his financial operations : he was not even faithful to Philippa, having fallen under the spell of his typist and " stenog," a young American who makes up in force of character what she lacks in charm. Miss Cassie Adams had sized up Teddy from the first as an engaging youth who could only be rescued and regulated by a strong-minded woman. " As for me," she tells Peregrine in a spasm of expansion, " I guess I've got the habit of being leaned on, so I feel kind o' lost if nobody's doing the leaning act. My poppa started leaning when I was thirteen. I was the eldest of nine, and he sure was the slackest thing in pants in the whole State of Wisconsin. Some of us was boys and some was girls, and they all leaned, but the boys leaned the hardest. I guess I felt kind of lonesome when they were all through with the leaning, so when young Edward came along, I just had to let him lean too." The intelligent reader can guess the sequel, but before the sorting out of partners is completed, much has to happen and comedy comes near to tragedy. Philippa is a nice girl, but no judge of character ; in her blissful ignorance of Teddy's iniquities she resents Peregrine's intervention; she also becomes the associate of an odious couple of adventurous journalists. For the rest the book is a vivid picture of Victoria in transition, with its wreckage and romance, its splendour and squalors ; against a background of noble landscape we have set before us the chequered lives of its motley inhabitants. Indeed, one feels that it requires a great deal of good fortune and careful shepherding for such an " innocent abroad " as Philippa to win through to safety in a world where stiffs and crooks and Dagos and undesirables are on the watch for their prey at every turn.
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