Enchanted Ground. By Catharine E. Smith. (S.P.C.K.)— Christabel Hughes, the
heroine of this story, is a child left to the care of a Welsh farmer and his wife by a particularly weak and silly mother. She becomes discontented with her lot, and has ambitious ideas about her future, ideas which are encouraged by the acquaintance which she makes with a visitor to the place. How she is cured of her discontent, and brought to feel thankful and more than thankful with the lot that she had once despised, is told in a pleasant though somewhat commonplace tale.— Was It in Vain? By G. E. M. Vaughan. (Same publishers.)— Here we have something of the same plot. Mary Stanley is "an advertisement child," as she puts it ; and is confronted with a very undesirable mother indeed,—an artist's model not a little given to drink. The daughter has a gift for art, and is in a fair way of using it to some purpose, when the new duty of caring for this almost hopeless creature presents itself. How she discharges this duty is naturally the most interesting part of the story. But the whole is excellent, The style is brisk and telling ; there is plenty both of humour and of pathos ; altogether, we have found Was It in Vain? as good a thing of the kind as has come in our way for some time.
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