Miss BEATRICE HARRADEN calls her latest story _Spring Shall Plant_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). She might equally well have called it _The Successes of a Naughty Child_. Certainly it is chiefly concerned with the many triumphant insubordinations of _Patuffa_ (whom I suspect of having been encouraged by her too challenging name) both at home and at the various schools from which she either ran away or was returned with thanks. This is all mildly attractive if only from the vivacity of its telling; but I confess to having felt a mild wonder whether a child's book had not got on to my table by error--when the grown-ups suddenly began to carry on in a way that placed all such doubts at rest. There was, for example, a Russian lady, godmother of _Patuffa_, who escaped from somewhere and established herself, with others of her kind, in an attic in Coptic Street. My welcome for this interesting fugitive was to some extent shaken by a realisation that she was (so to speak) a refugee from the other side and, in a sense, a spiritual ancestress of Bolshevism. Miss HARRADEN would however object, and justly, that the clean-purposed conspirators of the earlier revolution had little in common with the unsavoury individuals who at present obscure the Russian dawn. Soon after this, _Patuffa's_ papa begins to go quite dreadfully off the rails, even to the extent of wishing to elope with her governess and eventually losing all his money and shooting himself. There was also a famous violinist--well, you can see already that _Patuffa's_ vernal experiences were on generous lines. It is to the credit of all concerned that she and her story retain an appreciable charm under adverse conditions. * * * * *