Dodo the Second. By E. F. Benson. (Hodder and Stoughton.
6s.)—" Forty years do change a girl so," as was pointed out some time ago in the pages of Punch, and twenty years seer* to have had the same disastrous effect in the case of Ifr; Benson's heroine. The conversation of Dodo the Second bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Mrs. Nickleby—her epigrams are, of course, sharper, but the general effect of breathless babble is much the same. The book is also marred by faults of taste which were necessarily absent from its pre- decessor. Dodo in her early twenties had not had time to have three husband; and neither her complicated sentimental history nor the constant presence of her divorced husband is particularly edifying. The " Gampishness" of the book is also rather trying, and makes one long for the decorous Victorian hovel in which, as Kipling sings, " We never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came." Altogether, though Dodo cannot be accused of immorality, her marriages through the force of circumstances remind one too strongly of houses taken on the short leasehold system.
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