a boy of the slums, reaching toward 'that broken image of the mind
of God--human love,' goes pretty deeply into me. Since reading those last
words of the book--'Beauty touched him. It was as if he saw, with a flash
of jewelled wings, a Kingfisher fly home'--I keep going back and rereading
bits....

"Won't you tackle _The Kingfisher_? If you'll read to the bottom of page
51, I'll take a chance beyond that. Read that far and then, if you stop
there, I've no word to say."

Although this letter called for no special reply, I received dozens of
replies promising to read the book and then enthusiastic comments after
having read the book. I do not consider _The Kingfisher_ the greatest book
Phyllis Bottome will write, but it marks an important advance in her work
and it is a novel whose positive merits will last; it will be as moving
and as significant ten years from now as it is today.

=vii=

I come to a group of novels of which the chief aim of all except two is
entertainment. _The_ _Return of Alfred_, by the anonymous author of
_Patricia Brent, Spinster_, is the diverting narrative of a man who found
himself in another man's shoes. What made it particularly difficult was
that the other man had been a very bad egg, indeed. And there was, as
might have been feared (or anticipated), a girl to complicate matters
tremendously.

E. F. Benson's _Peter_ is the story of a young man who made a point of
being different, of keeping his aloofness and paying just the amount of
charm and gaiety required for the dinners and opera seats which London
hostesses so gladly proffered. Then he married Silvia, not for her money
exactly, but he certainly would not have asked her if she hadn't had
money. No wonder E. F. Benson has a liberal and expectant audience! In
_Peter_ he shows an exquisite understanding of the quality of the love
between Peter and his boyish young wife.

A. A. Milne is another name to conjure with among those who love humour
and charm, gentleness and a quiet shafting of the human depths. There is
his novel, _Mr. Pim_. Old Mr. Pim, in his gentle way, shuffled into the
Mardens' charming household. Mr. Pim said a few words and went
absentmindedly away,--leaving Mr. Marden with the devastating knowledge
that his wife was no wife, that her first husband, instead of lying
quietly in his grave in Australia, had just landed in England. In short,
the Mardens had been living in sin for five years! Then Mr. Pim came back
for his