Big Game: A Story for Girls

By Mrs George de Horne Vaizey ________________________________________________________________________ A charming little book. The son of the family aspires to be a poet, much to his father's annoyance: he ought to have a proper job in the family firm.

His sister hits on a plan to get his work published, which would be a step in the right direction, one that might help to change the father's mind. She discovers that the editor of a poetry magazine always takes a holiday in a very remote hotel in the Scottish highlands, so she books a holiday for them in the same hotel.

The woman who runs the hotel hates women guests, and isn't very polite to most people, but they manage to charm her, and get her on their side, until one Sunday they make the fatal mistake of going to the wrong church. That eventually passes over. Meanwhile Margot, the heroine, has been wooing the poetry editor. They go fishing together, and one day they go for a long walk in which the weather turns nasty. Margot catches pneumonia and is very ill.

They get back to their homes in London. Margot's lover turns out not to have been the poetry editor after all, yet somehow young Ron finds that one of his poems has been published. How this happens is revealed in the last chapter. An average length book, probably more for girls than for boys. N.H. ________________________________________________________________________

BIG GAME A STORY FOR GIRLS

BY MRS GEORGE DE HORNE VAIZEY

CHAPTER ONE.

PLANS.

It was the old story of woman comforting man in his affliction; the trouble in this instance appearing in the shape of a long blue envelope addressed to himself in his own handwriting. Poor young poet! He had no more appetite for eggs and bacon that morning; he pushed aside even his coffee, and buried his head in his hands.

"Back again!" he groaned. "Always back, and back, and back, and these are my last verses: the best I have written. I felt sure that these would have been taken!"

"So they will be, some day," comforted the woman. "You have only to be patient and go on trying. I'll re-type the first and last pages, and iron out the dog's ears, and we will send it off on a fresh journey. Why don't you try the Pinnacle Magazine? There ought to be a chance there. They published some awful bosh last month."

The poet was roused to a passing indignation.

"As feeble as mine, I suppose! Oh, well, if even you turn against me, it is time I gave up the struggle."

"Even you" was not in this instance a wife, but "only a sister," so instead of falling on her accuser's neck with explanations and caresses, she helped herself to a second cup of coffee, and replied coolly--

"Silly thing! You know quite well that I do nothing of the sort, so don't be high-falutin. I should not encourage you to waste time if I did not know that you were going to succeed in the end. I don't think; I know!"

"How?" queried the poet. "How?" He had heard the reason a dozen times before, but he longed to hear it again. He lifted his face from his hands--an ideal face for a poet; clean-cut, sensitive, with deep-set eyes, curved lips, and a finely-modelled chin. "How do you know?"

"I feel!" replied the critic simply. "Of course, I am prejudiced in favour of your work; but that would not make it haunt me as if it were my own. I can see your faults; you are horribly uneven. There are lines here and there which make me cold; lines which are put in for the sake of the rhyme, and nothing more; but there are other bits,"--the girl's eyes turned towards the window, and gazed dreamily into space--"which sing in my heart! When it is fine, when it is dark, when I am glad, when I am in trouble, why do your lines come unconsciously into my mind, as if they expressed my own feelings better than I can do it myself? That's not rhyme--that's poetry! It is the real thing; not pretence."