21 NOVEMBER 1885, Page 23

Afloat. By Mrs. Stanley Leathes. (J. F. Shaw and Co.)—This

is a story of a little girl who is sent adrift in a boat by the trick of an idiot, in revenge for a beating, by which her father had punished some mischievous proceedings on his part. She is picked up by a vessel homeward bound from India, and, by one of the convenient coincidences

which we are content to receive in fiction, sent to find a home in the very village from which she had come. Mrs. Stanley Loathes, whose " Caged Linnet " many of our readers will doubtless remember, makes a pretty and touching story, relieved with some effective pictures of nature, out of these materials.