o expect of her novels: the
friendly, witty, blundering servants; the hunting society in which
wealth and poverty, breeding and vulgarity, cheerfully rub shoulders;
the descriptions of the wistful beautiful West of Ireland in autumn
and winter; and above all the horses. Added to all this there are Sinn
Fein raids, real and imaginary, to bring things up to date. A rather
unconvincing plot, with a dash of _Great Expectations_ in it, yet
offers a situation which has plenty of amusing possibilities. _Honor_
and _Evie Nutting_, two middle-aged spinsters, find themselves the
possessors of eight thousand a year, on condition that they spend it
all. That sounds, of course, a very pleasant arrangement; but they
have been struggling for years to make ends meet and economy has
become a habit. The end of the first quarter finds them sending
_Harris_, the English manservant, in haste to buy a frying-pan with
the last unspent three shillings and sixpence. That the _Uncle Pierce_
of the title should be really a brother, that characters should change
their names without rhyme or reason from paragraph to paragraph, and
that inverted commas should make their appearance just anywhere--all
this, I think, is the author's clever way of suggesting an atmosphere
of Irish irresponsibility, and it is quite successful. _Uncle Pierce's
Legacy_ is a pleasant tale most pleasantly told, and it is not Mrs.
CONYERS' fault, but her misfortune (and ours), that novels which
describe the lighter side of Irish life, even with the tenderest
humour, are more likely just now to make one sigh than smile.

* * * * *

I do not know whether _The Scar_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) first saw
publication in any of our popular dailies, but from internal evidence
I should be strongly inclined to suspect it. At least Miss RUBY M.
AYRES has written an admirable example of the class of tale, beloved
of our serial public, in which new every morning are the tribulations
of the elect, only to vanish with startling suddenness in the last
days of June or December. For example, _Mark_, the hero, begins as the
misunderstood son of one of those widower-fathers who in such stories
dwell for ever behind the locked doors of studies, leaving in this
instance _Mark_ to be the victim of an aunt whose lack of sympathy
approaches the pantomimic. All the usual results follow, even to the
acquisition by _Mark_ of a faithful hound, which the least experience
of se