There are, of course, short stories and short stories. On a perusal of those that Mr. RICHARD DEHAN has collected in volume form under the title of _The Cost of Wings_ (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of _The Dop Doctor_. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, which tells of a young wife goaded to hard words by her constant anxiety for an aviator-husband. There is some genuine feeling here; but the climax, in which the pair decide only to fly in company, was dangerously like the end of a stage duologue. Moreover, so swift now-a-days is the flight of time--or the time of flight--that aviation stories very soon come to sound antiquated. Still, after all, there is at least plenty of variety in this volume, and it will be hard if, in a collection of twenty-six brief tales, you do not come upon something to your individual taste. But one word of gentle protest. I fancy the stage has at last agreed upon a close time for supposed infants, against whose arrival from India nurses and rocking-horses are engaged, and who turn out on appearance to be young persons of mature years. Well, I am convinced that it is high time for a similar prohibition in fiction. Mr. DEHAN at least has proved himself far too clever for me to tolerate this threadbare theme, not very illuminatingly treated, from his valuable pen. * * * * *