“M. P.” (she borrowed the initials of her village) is in some sort a nursery Crabbe. There is not an incident in her story outside a country child’s experience: no Babes-in-the Wood opening, no clever animals, no romance of improbable good fortune. This is the “clean pleasant village” of every-day life. The schoolmistress, Mrs. Bell, believes in simple virtues, but has no theories. Boys and girls learn to read, and girls to spin, knit stockings and sew. They are grouped quite simply, as in some old-fashioned print, and M. P., having borrowed Miss Fielding’s device of labelling them with symbolic names, uses it to avoid the complexities of character. Jacob Steadfast and Kitty Spruce are predestined to carry off the prizes which Betsy Giddy, Master Crafty and Jack Sneak inevitably lose; and a child is content with the main distinctions of Good and Bad.