_Oliver Bligh_; then, summoned North to live with her futile and
uncomprehending parents, she fell (as did her sister _Milly_ and most
of the local spinsters) under the fascination of one _Clive Maxwell_,
who was an author and had appealing eyes and obviously a way with him.
Then _Oliver_ turned up again, and poor _Effie_ didn't know which of
them she wanted. I speak lightly, but, if you think all this made
for comedy, your conception of Miss MEYNELL's methods is very much
at fault. Love to her is very much what it was to _Patience_ in the
opera--by no means a wholly enviable boon. I can hardly praise too
much the exquisite refinement and restraint of her treatment of
commonplace things. But one small point baffled me: _Oliver_ appears
to have been a professional diver and bath-keeper--we are told,
indeed, that he had occupied that position at Rugby (a statement
that I have private and personal reasons for discrediting)--yet we
find him staying as a welcome and honoured guest in the house of the
_Rutherglens_, whom I take to be more or less "county." Surely this,
though of no real importance, is at least remarkable?

* * * * *

"What," I asked myself, "is just the matter with this apparently quite
nice book?" (It was _Joan's Green Year_, and written by E.L. DOON and
published by MACMILLAN.) It is the kind of book that grows out of a
romantic disposition and an assiduously stuffed commonplace book. It
consists of letters from _Joan_, a paying guest in the Manor House
Farm at Pelton, to her brother _Keith_, a soldier in India, telling
him all about her year of holiday and "soul discipline" in the
country, the village gossip, her proposals and her one acceptance, and
giving a sort of farmer's calendar of the seasons as interpreted by
the guileless amateur. _Joan_ has what is known as a nice mind. But