"Oh, yes. No doubt about it; Barrington taught him to swim."
A GOOD STAYER.
Sergeant. "Gawn tae be releevit, are we? Weel, we're no gawn. We've been here the best pairt o' a week noo, and we're up tae a' the dir-rty tricks o' thae German beggars, and if they pit new yins in here they'll just mak a rare mess o' it!"
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Is not Come Out To Play (Constable) a delightful title for a story? And, believe me, not better than the story itself, which I should call, save for one defect, a perfect masterpiece in miniature. To have done with blame, I will say at once that the defect is the end, which, to my thinking at least, seems both inartistic and cowardly. I can hardly explain my meaning more clearly without spoiling your enjoyment. But I will hint that this tragedy of unfulfilled promise (for the book is a tragedy, though concealed beneath a surface merriment) seemed too delicate for so melodramatic a climax. Miss M. E. F. Irwin writes with an ease and finish that is amazing. She has form, too, and a quite unusual beauty of style that gives to her work something that is very difficult to analyse. The book is the story of a boy called Truffles (which of course was not his real name), a boy with a long white face and dark eyes under heavy lids that gave him the look of Pierrot. Nothing very special happens in his life. He has a genial spendthrift father, a prig of an elder brother, a rather jolly sister and a host of admiring friends. And the lot of them drift along in the artificial comedy of London existence in peacetime, flirting and idling, working and loving, all a little self-consciously; setting their emotions for the most part to an accompaniment of popular comic songs, those vacuous jingles whose light-heartedness Time so quickly turns to a wistful and poignant melancholy. You will gather that the actual story is no great matter. It is the faintly pathetic grace of the telling that makes this book one of the very few to which the misused adjective "beautiful" can honestly be applied. Perhaps in reading it you may be reminded, as I was, of another modern novel, one that was praised greatly in these pages and has leapt since to fame. I name no names, because I am far indeed from charging Miss Irwin with imitation. The more present-day writers who can display this same sensitive and compelling charm, the better I shall be pleased.