You just can't be horrid and superior about [Young Entry] even though salmon fishing and fox shooting mean nothing in your life—and never will. The spirit of the young author is in every sentence, in the stiff phrasing, in the clichés and stock characters and the rough, eager form of the novel. You can't help liking her aliveness, which is neither deep nor lyrical but a surface quality of health and sturdiness. You smell good things all through the story; you smell the people and their excellent clothes and the clean, cool air….

All the time the two girls. Prudence and Peter, are not very different from the healthy girls who used to be in "The Youth's Companion," always making trouble for their elders and then saving the day in some fashion at the very end. But you have to like these girls anyway, you like...