f the mother and her daughter. The author of _Penny Plain_ and _Ann
and Her Mother_ is a sister of John Buchan, author of _The Thirty-nine
Steps_, _The Path of the King_, and many other books.

_December Love_, by Robert Hichens, will have a greater popularity than
any of his novels since _The Garden of Allah_. It is a question whether
this uncannily penetrative study of power and the need for love of a woman
of sixty does not surpass _The Garden of Allah_. In Lady Sellingworth, Mr.
Hichens is dealing with a brilliant woman. The theme is daring and calls
for both skill and delicacy. Of the action, one really should not say very
much, lest one spoil the book for the reader. The loss of the Sellingworth
jewels in Paris had caused a sensation in the midst of which Lady
Sellingworth was silent. She declined to discuss the disappearance of the
jewels. There followed the advent at No. 4 Berkeley Square of Alick
Craven, a man of thirty, vigorous, attractive and decidedly a somebody.
But inexplicably--at any rate without explanation--Lady Sellingworth
retired from society when Craven appeared.

_Tell England_ by Ernest Raymond is a novel which has been sensationally
successful in England. It is a war story and I will give you some of the
opening paragraphs of the "Prologue by Padre Monty":

"In the year that the Colonel died he took little Rupert to see the
swallows fly away. I can find no better beginning than that.

"When there devolved upon me as a labour of love the editing of Rupert
Ray's book, _Tell England_, I carried the manuscript to my room one bright
autumn afternoon and read it during the fall of a soft evening, till the
light failed, and my eyes burned with the strain of reading in the dark. I
could hardly leave his ingenuous tale to rise and turn on the gas. Nor,
perhaps, did I want such artificial brightness. There are times when one
prefers the twilight. Doubtless the tale held me fascinated because it
revealed the schooldays of those boys whom I met in their young manhood
and told afresh that wild old Gallipoli adventure which I shared with
them. Though, sadly enough, I take Heaven to witness that I was not the
idealised creature whom Rupert portrays. God bless them, how these boys
will idealise us!

"Then again, as Rupert tells you, it was I who suggested to him the
writing of his story. And well I recall how he demurred, asking:

"'But what am I to write about?' For he was always diffident and
unconsciou