The latest of Mrs. J. B. BUCKROSE'S genial little comedies about a comfortable world is concerned with war-weddings, their cause, and some hints for their successful conduct. She calls it _Marriage While You Wait_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), and illustrates her theme with the case of a young man and maiden, who dashed, like so many others, into matrimony in the breathless haste of short leave, and came dangerously near repenting at leisure. Only near, of course; Mrs. BUCKROSE is too confirmed an optimist not to make it clear that the blackest boredom has a silver lining; and I had never any real fear that her nice young couple were becoming more than quite temporarily estranged. Still, things went so far that _Sophia_ left the cottage where she and _Arthur_ and a cooing dove had proposed to live the idyllic life of happiness-ever-after, and betook herself to the mansion of the local villain; while _Arthur_ cut the throat of the dove (there my sympathies were with him entirely) and relapsed into nervous breakdown. But _Denyer_, being only a BUCKROSE villain, which is a very mild variety, packed _Sophia_ home again; _Arthur_, after the usual crisis, recovered; and the symbolic dove was the only inmate of the cottage for whom the little rift remained unhappily permanent. So there you are; with the gentlest short sermon to wind up, and a blessing to all concerned. Perhaps I have read stories more briskly entertaining from Mrs. BUCKROSE'S flowing pen; one feels that her intent here was not solely laughter. But as a smiling homily, preaching much the same moral that Sir ARTHUR PINERO once treated more caustically in perhaps his best play, her story, _Marriage While You Wait_, should have at least two sympathetic readers in many scores of homes. * * * * * Whenever I finish a book by Mr. S.P.B. MAIS I am left with the feeling that he has only to enlarge his horizon to write something worth reading and remembering. If _The Education of a Philanderer_ (GRANT RICHARDS) had been written, by an unknown man I should have welcomed it as work of great promise. But the trouble with Mr. MAIS is that he seems to find it perilously easy to write about young school-masters who fall in and out of love with facility and who are financially at their wits' end. _Rupert Blundell_, the philanderer, described here, is a clear and clever picture of a young man who loved where he listed and listed quite a lot. As far as he goes he can be visualized perfectly both at Oxford and as a schoolmaster. But he does not go far enough and he belongs to a type of which one can easily tire. Mr. MAIS is not so callow as he once was in his judgement of people mentally distasteful to him, but he still needs a wider outlook on life and a wider knowledge, and I sincerely hope that he will take steps to remove the limitations which at present prevent him from giving entire satisfaction to his admirers. * * * * *