re irreverent moments. Which is to say that _What Not_ wanders
out of the key. But what on earth does that matter if one is made to
laugh quite often and to smile almost continuously at a very shrewd
piece of observation, whimsicality and tempered malice? And you will
like the serene _Pansy Ponsonby_ (out of "Hullo, Peace!"), who could
scarcely be called _Kitty's_ "sister-in-law," but was of the most
faithful. The odd thing is that under all her gibing the author
seems to have a queer furtive admiration for her precious Ministry
of Brains.

* * * * *

Among the many things I like in DORETHEA CONYERS' novels is the
artistic subtlety, achieved by few of our other novelists, with which
she manages to write them as it were in character. I am quite sure
that if _Berenice Ermyntrude Nicosia Nevin_, who is called by her
initials on the cover and inside by what they spell, had tried to
write a novel it would have been remarkably like _B.E.N._ (METHUEN).
There would have been the same keen delight in horses, hunting and
Irish scenery, and the same cheerful disregard for such trifles as
spelling or such conventions as making quite sure that your reader
knows which character is speaking at any given moment, and the same
excellent humour, which, if it is at the expense of the Irish, is
kindly enough for all that. It seems to me that in her new novel Mrs.
CONYERS, wisely refusing to stray to that suburbia in which her gifts
lack this charm, has recaptured much of the careless rapture of her
earliest books; and very careless and very rapturous they wore. But I
am not quite sure that in real life even _Ben_, when as second whip to
the East Cara hounds she lost her horse, would have found an aeroplane
useful to catch up with. In case it should be objected that anything
so funny as the tea at _Miss Talty's_ never could happen, even in the
Caher Valley district, I want to put it on record here and now that it
could and does.

* * * * *

_The Mystery Keepers_ (LANE), by MARION FOX, reminds me of the old
riddle, "What is it that has feathers and two legs, and barks like
a dog?"--the answer being a stork. People who protest that a stork
doesn't bark like a dog are told that that part is put in to make
it harder. I find that the greater part of the mystery kept by _The
Mystery Keepers_ is put in to make it harder. The Abbey at Clynch St.
Mary has a "coise" put on it by the la