FATHER AND SON

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 129, 2 June 1928, Page 21

FATHER AND SON

"The Old Tree Blossomed." By Ernest Baymond. London: Cassell and Co., Lta. Families similar to that of the Gallimores to whom we are introduced have i been met with before in fiction. Mr. j H. O. Wells, in fact, would proUably know them well, but that does not say that Mr. Raymond' is a plagiarist. Not, a bit of it: the1 Gallimores arc refreshing folk, poseurs if you like on the male side, but all innocently honest j and iovablo. It was inevitable that Stephen, the apple of his father's eye, should follow in father's footsteps, which led to the ranks of correspondence clerks in a big store. Then Stephen married beneath him, for Florrie was but a waitress and had not the Gallimores eomo of good lineage? Had not the grandfather, a poor country curate, unearthed a wonderful genealogy? Mrs. Gallimoro took the marriage cheerfully, as she did all else; if Stephen loved the girl, wliy should lie not marry her? Stephen nearly did not when he saw I'Morric's home, but his sense of chivalry came to the rescue and he had tho knot tied. When love seemed to grow cold, the war came, and Stephen went east with a' commission. , Of fighting he saw none, which irked him terribly. He got typhus, and his battalion went to the front without him, but with the Armenians at Baku on the Caspian he had his one chance, a chance which he took, although no Stephen ever returned to1 the Gallimore household. For father Gallimore, however, it was not the end, and it is Gallimoro, sen., Eobert, who is the hero of the book. Robert Gallimore will be loved, as_ he is laughed at. Always imagining him-self-a hero (the type varied, with the latest novel-he had read), he at last did have a romantic adventure. Alone in a boat with a lady friend on. a moonlight night, his good wife was- forgotten. He took the girl's hand:— Nothing happened— tlic sides did not fall. She just leftv it in his'without comment, nor did the liiind itself tell of her unspoken feelings by no much as the tiniest tremble;, it just lay there as iucrt as any other urtlulo ho might have picked up in tho boat, and now I that he had it, ho wondered what to do with lit. Ho dropped it. Ono could not hold it for ever. Would it never bo time to go homo? .She replaced her hand on her lap, and ho elected to feel injured. "Oil, well, ir she won't uneottr.igo mo sho won't. .I'm not the brutal, insensitive kind thai rushes in uninvited. . . It's not that I want her to do anything bold. . . But' a little something she ought to do: a man of sensitiveness and delicacy can't do everything himself. . '. I don't like people who smllo when ono doesn't know what they're smiling about. . . I cannot— I simply cannot force my attentions on. any woman. It's not my nature. I am not. made 1 that way, and I never have been, and she ought to see it. It's her fault—her fault every time. . -It1 serves her right." That was the end of Eobert's romance, and he heroically kept away from the lady when he next met her. One romance of Stephen's, with a German girl, wont further, but not much, but Stephen, one feels, plays but a secondary part in this delightful tale, which is rich in ripe comedy and full of understanding.