A great deal depends on how much joking make-believe a
reader can stand. Perhaps the length and the quality of, say, one of Hans Andersen's fairy-tales may be enough for many ; but again there may be—must be--..7-some who, having not yet shed all their childhood's likings, enjoy a whole bookful of it. These will be made happy by Mr. Algernon Blackwood's Dudley and. Gilderoy (Benn, 8s. 6d.); a story of how Dudley, an extremely soigne grey parrot, and Gilderoy, a skinny red- haired cat, took first-class railway tickets from their home in Kent for London and Adventure. There the pets, loosed from restraint,- display their respective psychologies something in the way with which the Jungle Books and Mr. Thompson Seton have made us familiar, but with much more delicate humour. Sometimes Gilderoy, " bolshevik of most abandoned type," bursts into love-song, which induces Dudley to remark, " Goto- hellcutitout ! Doctoranyhope ? Goodmorningdudleynildes- perandumgilderoy ! Cutitouteuckooitdoesn'tworkwithmeblast- yoududley." It was Dudley, too, who started in the Press the famous ornithological controversy about the hearing of the cuckoo on the London tiles in early March. The book is decorated with jolly little thumbnail sketches and is most delightfully bound and printed.
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