a story, if it is to be worth telling, must move in some
direction, Mr. HILTON will be well advised in future to choose a
different type of heroine. I want to say too that I don't believe that
it is either so easy or so profitable to become a well-known pianist
"not in the front rank" as he seems to imagine it is. I wish I could
think that no one else would believe him.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Knight_ (_to his henchman_). "EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT,
PERKINS? YOU HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ANYTHING? WHAT'S THAT?"

_Henchman_. "IT'S THE PORTRAIT OF YOUR LADY, SIR, THAT YOU PROMISED TO
TAKE INTO BATTLE WITH YOU, SIR."

_Knight_. "DID I? WELL, I MUST E'EN KEEP MY WORD. FASTEN IT ON MY
BACK. ONE NEVER KNOWS--IT MAY BE USEFUL IN CASE OF A REVERSE."]

* * * * *

It seems rather a bright idea of C. NINA BOYLE to dedicate "to THEA
and IRENE, whose lives have lain in sheltered ways," a seven-shilling
shocker about ways that are anything but sheltered. Perhaps the
sheltered in general, and Thea and Irene in particular, will take it
from me that the villainies of _Out of the Frying Pan_ are much
larger than life or, at any rate, much more concentrated, and that
pseudo-orphans like _Maisie_ usually have a better chance of getting
out of frying-pans into something cool than the author allows her
heroine. I also submit that there was nothing in _Maisie's_ equipment
to suggest that she would have been quite so slow in separating goats
from sheep. But let me say that THEA and IRENE have had dedicated to
them an exciting and amusing _fritto misto_ of crooks, demi-mondaines,
blackmailers, gamblers, roues, murderers, receivers and decent
congenital idiots of all sorts. The characterisation is adroitly done
and the workmanship avoids that slovenliness which makes nineteen out
of twenty books of this kind a weariness of spirit to the perceptive.
I wonder if _Maisie_ with such a father and mother would have been
such a darling. Perhaps Professor KARL PEARSON will explain.

* * * * *

The _Hon. William Toppys_ (pronounced "Tops"), brother of _Lord
Topsham_, left Devonshire and retired to an island in the Torres
Straits. There he married a Melanesian woman and became the father of
a frizzy-haired and coffee-coloured son. It is a little strange to
me, who think of Mr. BENNET COPPLESTONE as Devonian to the tip of his
pen-finger, that the _Hon. William_ is