ted, "as a
treat!" Schooldays at Wellington; Cambridge; some topical memoirs of the
Georgian _regime_ in Athens, and (what will interest many readers most
of all) the history of the origin of that famous lady, _Dodo_--these are
but a selection from the contents of a volume that should find hosts of
friends.

* * * * *

_The Girl in Fancy Dress_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) was so very much
disguised in one way and another that _Anthony_, the hero, when he asked
her to marry him, even for the second time, was taking considerable
risks. The speed of the affair must also have been bewildering.
_Cynthia_, the heiress, arrives on a Thursday to stay with his people,
but, having tumbled out of a motor-car into a wet ditch on her way, she
is dressed, rather like a stage coster-girl, in garments borrowed from a
cottager. Naturally, as of course a nursery-governess is much more
likely than an heiress to look like that, _Anthony's_ people mistake her
for a poor country cousin who is also expected, and _Cynthia_,
discovering that her host and hostess and their dreary daughters intend
the heiress to marry _Anthony_ and, worse than that, that he has called
her "the goose with the golden eggs," fosters the mistake and does her
best to pay them all out. She leaves on the following Tuesday, but
before that _Anthony_ has taken her to one dance as a peasant girl and
she has talked to him at another disguised as a green domino, and he has
proposed to her as his cousin and withdrawn his declaration when he
finds she isn't. Next he sees her as _Lady Teazle_ in amateur
theatricals, and then comes his final meeting with her in her proper
person, which brings about a satisfactory ending for everyone but
_Cynthia's_ other lover. I don't say that all these things couldn't have
happened; I only say that as a rule they don't. Apart from that, the
bright bustling action of Mrs. J. E. BUCKROSE'S story has a cheerful
charm of its own, and _Cynthia_, as poor relation of one of the
anxiously best families in a little country town, provides some amusing
situations--for the reader.

* * * * *

If the shade of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON is jealous of its rights and its
copyrights, Mr. JEFFREY FARNOL may look to be hauled up before the
Recording Angel, on his arrival, in the matter of his _Black Bartlemy's
Treasure_ (SAMPSON LOW), which he might just as well have called _Black
Bartlemy's Treasure Isla