_A._ Fancy the title somehow must refer to the Author. Clerical
sketches full of unconscious humour. Two volumes but _very_ big ones.
Quite a relief to get to _A False Start_,--by HAWLEY SMART, which is
most entertaining. But in this case the name of the Author is a safe
guarantee for something worth reading.

_Q._ What do you think of _A Modern Circe_?

_A._ I fancy it is not quite so good as _Molly Brown_, by the same
Author.

_Q._ What do you know of _Molly Brown_?

_A._ Nothing--I have not read it.

_Q._ What have you to say about _Scamp_?

_A._ That it is by the Author of _The Silent Shadow_, which I fancy
must be the sequel of another novel called _The Garrulous Ghost_. In
the first chapter the heroine _Scamp_, (a young lady) is discovered up
a tree from which coign of vantage she throws a yellow-paper-covered
novel at the gardener's head.

_Q._ The first chapter then must be vastly entertaining?

_A._ Vastly. I am absolutely dying to read the chapters that follow
it, and will--some day.

_Q._ What is _Brother or Lover_ about? _A._ I don't know--do you?

_Q._ This is trifling! Pray describe _Out of Tune_.

_A._ Ought to have been called _Out of Paganini_--founded upon that
distinguished fiddler's life, although (as the Author says) "it is
necessarily speculative as to its details."

_Q._ Have you read _In the King's Service_?

_A._ Some of it. Fancy it deals with the Peninsular War.

_Q._ How about _Jill and Jack_?

_A._ Book I imagine written before the title. Rather hard work to get
up the hill which ends with the last chapter.

_Q._ What is _Hidden in my Heart_?

_A._ Seemingly the words which finish the third volume, "It is
two years now since _Hubert_ died, and to-morrow is my second
wedding-day."

_Q._ Is this the first novel that the Authoress has written?

_A._ Oh dear no. She has also published _Out of Eden_, _Quite True_,
and a book which apparently refers to the late-in-life "finishing" of
an uneducated ecclesiastic called _The Vicar's Governess_.

_Q._ Don't you think that you are rather hard upon the novelists?

_A._ I hope not. I am sure I owe them a deep, deep debt of gratitude.

_Q._ How so? _A._ Without them I should be a victim to insomnia.

* * * * *

[Illustration: A REMINISCENCE OF THE VERY DRY WEATHER.

_Secretary to Water-Works._ "TUT-T-T-T. 'GETTING VERY SERIOUS, Y'KNOW!
IF THIS DROUGHT CONTINUES, I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE----"

_