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In writing her second book Miss HILDA M. SHARP has allowed herself what
is, I suspect, the lady novelist's greatest treat, the extraordinary
achievement of using the first person singular and making it masculine.
She has done it very well too, and I am happy to recall that, in another
place, I was among the many who prophesied good concerning her future
when she made her _debut_ as a novelist with _The Stars in their
Courses_ in Mr. FISHER UNWIN'S "First Novel Library." _A Pawn in Pawn_
comes very properly from the same publisher. It has one of those plots
which it is most particularly a reviewer's business, in the reader's own
interest, not to reveal, but it is permissible to explain that the
"pawn" of the title is a little girl adopted from an orphanage, where,
as someone says, "the orphans aren't really orphans," by _Julian
Tarrant_, whom a select circle acknowledged as the greatest poet that
the last years of the nineteenth century produced. Miss SHARP earns my
special admiration by getting through the inevitable description of the
beginning of the Great War in fewer words than anybody whose attempt I
have yet encountered, and steers throughout a pleasant course midway
between a "bestseller" and a "high-brow." _Lydia_, the "pawn," is very
charming, but quite possibly so, and though, of course, she must marry
one of the three men interested in her adoption Miss SHARP will probably
keep most of her readers, as she did me, in doubt as to which it is to
be until quite the end of the book. I think that he may prove an
acquired taste with most readers; but directly I found that he was apt
to quote the reviews in _Punch_ I realised that he was a man of
discrimination and deserved his good luck.

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[Illustration: "PROPER FED UP WIV YOU, I AM. CRY, CRY,
CRY ALL DAY LONG. I'D 'IT YER OVER THE 'EAD WIV THE
BOTTLE IF I WOS A MODERN WOMAN."]

* * * * *

An Urgent Request.

"---- CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, LTD.

Members are requested to hand in their Share Pass Books
for Audit Purposes to the Head Office on or before AT
ONCE."--_Local Paper._

* * * * *

"Rev. ---- writes:--'I have a Cousin residing in the
Transvaal who has been living on three plates of
porridge made of ---- for five years, and is well and
strong on it.'"--_South Afri