The women by whom _Geoffrey_, the weak and the
wayward, was attracted hither and thither are also well drawn; but here Mr.
MAIS shows his present limitations. Nevertheless I feel sure that he has
within him the qualities that go to make a great novelist, and that if he
will free himself from certain marked prejudices his future lies straight
and clear before him.
* * * * *
It was a happy idea of the Sisters MARY and JANE FINDLATER to call their
new book of short stories _Seen and Heard_ (SMITH, ELDER), with the
sub-title, _Before and After 1914_. I say short stories, but actually these
have so far outgrown the term that a half-dozen of them make up the volume.
They are all examples of the same gentle and painstaking craft that their
writers have before now exhibited elsewhere. Here are no sensational
happenings; the drama of the tales is wholly emotional. My own favourites
are the first, called "The Little Tinker," a half-ironical study of the
temptation of a tramp mother to surrender her child to the blessings of
civilisation; and how, by the intervention of a terrible old woman, the
queen of the tribe, this momentary weakness was overcome.
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