A BOOK FOR YOUNG LADIES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 30, 4 August 1923, Page 19

A BOOK FOR YOUNG LADIES

Little David." By Robert Stuart Christie. London: Cecil Palmer (from Dymock's,. Sydney).

Those who have read Robert S Christieis first novel, "The House of Beautiful Mope, ' will find this second work .lust as arresting. It is full of knowledge of human nature and impulses. Little David is introduced as a iad of twelve ?! fo"m e? n x ye?>rs o£ ace-- the Protege of the Dainty Brute"—evidently a thief in immaculate Bond street clothes. The lad is rescued from his pseudo-father, and comes under the protection of one John' Henry Millman. The 1 scene of tne rescue is laad in Soho. Now, Millman is a man in whose mind foolish impulses find a ready home, and his championing, of the boy leads him into a seriocomic narrative which makes delicious reading. It would be realk a pity to disclose the identity of the chief character in the story, for Little" David is lovable in the poses in which the reader finds him; 1. There is a Mabel Canning, too, a girl with no pretensions to beauty, but with a charm all her own, attributable by Fammy. a delightful old bodjr, to her "round-oval scrap of a face." "Fammy" is Mabel's contraction of "foster-Mammy," and she is guardian, adviser, and champion of the girl, and critic of everything that she does. "Fancy me staring at you like a_=Sphinkses—an animal that lives in the East, my dear," she exclaims as Mabel returns to her, discarding the garb of Little David* to sicnify how real" is her home-epming. It is now evident to the reader that Mabel Canning and Little David are one and the same person. Ihe father of Little David is a publisher, and when the girl returns to his home (where she is recognised as. but part of the establishmentr-Jike hi s dogs) she immediately starts to be a source of worry to master and servants alike. After a scene 'with her autocratic father, she iroes back to John Henry Millman, and from that point is developed * a fragrant love story. The author has constructed a likeable story, and is whimsical in a style; it is iotally different from other

novels. Having successfully married Little David to her benefactor, and explained her relations with the "Dainty Brute," the author married Sheila (a staunch friend of Mabel) to her lover, with a sly allusion to John Henry that "he was, you must admit., an odd creature, and also a very • foolish one. I like to believe that he gives pleasure to other people; for to him it was not folly, it was just—life." Certainly "Little David" is a fantastic, delicate, and original novel, written in an easy and witty, manner.