The Lower Fourth. By Brenda Girvan. (T. Nelson and Sons.
2s.)—This is a series of school tales,—girls'-school tales, that is. Cricket is one of the themes. There may be two opinions about cricket for girls, but are we to believe that some members of a school eleven would leave it because they did not like the new captain ? And is not 432 runs a big total for a match which began at "2.30 sharp" ? There was a stoppage for tea—at which the boy eleven seems to have eaten too much—so that the average works out at more than one hundred the hour. This is not thebest part of a book which will doubtless be found amusing.—Sylvia's Victory, by E. L. Haverfield (H. Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 3s. ad.), is another school story of a more distinctly didactic kind. Sylvia is a day scholar, and incurs the enmity of a certain Phyllis, who is a boarder, and whom she displaces from her pre-eminence. This same Phyllis is a little too bad; a girl so hard and selfish could not have become such as we leave her at the end. Still, the story is a good one: Phyllis herself is well drawn.
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