Later a telegram went forth: “_Bambi_ is ours. Love at first sight.” Miss Cooke sat to Mary Green Blumenschein for the illustrations to her book; that’s why they are what they ought to be. And you are to picture her just as you would picture Bambi, say as sitting on a low couch, her feet tucked in, enthroned among billowy cushions, that is, of course, if you, the caller, are really acquainted. It will be sufficient to be acquainted with Bambi when you call. What else? _Bambi_ was followed by _Cinderella Jane_ and that interesting tale of the studio cleaner who was married to the painter without love on either side--they made a success of it and were rewarded by becoming lovers--that tale was succeeded by _The Threshold_, in which Miss Cooke chose a theme which would give full and legitimate play to her interest in social problems. A rich bachelor, Gregory Farwell, employs Joan Babcock as housekeeper and companion for himself and his 17-year-old nephew. Farwell’s employees strike; the nephew, inspired by Joan, takes the workers’ side. The result is a thoroughly dramatic story in which the problems of capital and labor, social relations and the like arise fairly and squarely out of the action and are not foisted on the reader. Miss Cooke manages exceedingly difficult material well. If you go to interview Miss Cooke about her own beliefs on serious subjects she will answer you out of the mouths of her people in _The Threshold_, and chiefly from the utterances of Joan Babcock--which does not mean that she makes her characters say what she wants to say to the world at large. No! It means merely that she herself has advanced no farther along the path to an answer to all these questions than Joan Babcock got. When Miss Cooke started to write _The Threshold_ she knew, as a good novelist does, exactly what she wanted to do. She wanted to find out how a certain type of ardent young American woman feels about the future and its social and industrial problems. You ask: why didn’t she go out and, finding a woman of that type, ask her? To do that was to run risks. You might not find the young woman. She might return evasive answers or answers either intentionally or unintentionally misleading--so few of us really know what we think about anything in the future! There was just one safe and certain way to set about it, and that was to create a young woman of the sort Miss Cooke had in mind, put her in the midst of events, and see what she would say and do, what she would come to believe about the things ahead. Miss Cooke’s _The Clutch of Circumstance_, on the other hand, is just a good mystery yarn about secret service work and international plots--but based on fact. It has a serious defect in that the heroine, some of whose qualities are plainly exhibited for the reader’s admiration, is guilty of atrocious treachery, becoming, in fact, a German spy!