The
tale deals with the affairs of a showy fickle cousin and a silent constant
cousin who compete for the love of the same delightful if rather nebulous
young woman, and moves to its _denouement_, against a background of the
great War, which Miss MACMAHON has very sensibly decided to view entirely
from the home front. It contains some fine thinking and some bad writing
(the phrase telling of the middle-aged smart woman who "waved her foot
impatiently" gives a just idea of the author's occasional inability to say
what she means), some quite extraneous incidents and some scenes very well
touched in. The people, with a few exceptions, are of the race which
inhabits this sort of book, and, as we have long agreed with our novelists
that "the county" is just like that, I don't see why Miss MACMAHON should
be blamed for it.
* * * * *
Mr. COSMO HAMILTON lays the scene of _His Friend and His Wife_ (HURST AND
BLACKETT) in the Quaker Hill Colony of Connecticut, the members of which
were typically "nice" and took themselves very seriously. So when one of
them brought a divorce suit against her husband there was a feeling that
the colony's reputation had been irremediably besmirched.
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