Mother Bird

"FASTER! FASTER!"--E. M. Delafield--Harper ($2.50).

Claudia was a lady, in the English sense, but she worked like a slave in her London office to keep up a place in the country, a cantankerous husband who had not had a job since the War. three growing children. Most of her family, most of her friends thought Claudia a wonder, gave her their admiring pity for being such a cheerful martyr. But women are hard to fool about women. Her partner Sal, her sister Anna saw through Claudia. One of her daughters was beginning to.

Claudia had been a bossy girl, a domineering young woman. She had never forgiven her sister Anna for breaking away, marrying a rich husband and going her own gait. She had bought a country place she could not really afford, because it was her childhood home, and she secretly wanted her children to be molded into her shape. Claudia prided herself on being a modern mother, and most of all on her absolute honesty. She loved to analyze herself before others, invite and apparently accept criticism of her infallible conduct--and then go on exactly as before.

Her 19-year-old daughter and a middle-aged don fell in love. Her younger daughter wanted to leave home, go to the U. S. with her rich aunt. Her husband at last, and on his own, landed a promising job. All these things upset Claudia. After pretending to herself that she had carefully considered pro and con, she did her domineering best to put a stop to all of them. And if she had not been a bad driver, and had not been so tired one rainy night, she might have succeeded. It would have seemed blasphemous even to think it, but with Claudia out of the way everyone got along much better.

Author E. M. Delafield (Mrs. Arthur Paul Dashwood), a nice mixture of Jane Austen, Punch and her own "provincial lady," writes with malice aforethought but manages to leave a pleasantly salty aftertaste. Seldom frighteningly clever, she preaches entertaining sermonettes that make her listeners laugh out of both sides of the mouth, go chuckling home to Sunday dinner.

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