Old Maids, Nightmares

THE SILVER THORN, A Book of Stories --Hugh Walpole--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).

Most of these stories have appeared in magazines in the last six years. Collected, they emphasize the author's versatility. He proves himself facile in telling a tale of spinsters in a sparkling seaside village, or one of masculine bitterness in the sinister backwoods. In the first, two old maids are fond of each other, fond of their shop full of cross-stitch samplers, fond of the two little donkeys, Percy and Emily, which trot by every day. Miss Alice is going to marry Mr. Maurice Hunting; she meets him formally to accept his offer of a week ago, and he tells her his plans, tells her his hope of having two children, tells her of the legacy from his late Aunt Emily, his expectations of feeble old Uncle Percy. Overwhelmed by the thought of naming her two children Percy and Emily (the two little donkeys are trotting down there on the sand), Miss Alice bursts out laughing, and snatches the chance to run back to the shop and her spinsterhood.

In contrast, is "The Tarn," another psychological study, but in darker vein. Two men, one successful, the other not, one patronizing, the other resentful, walk in the gathering shadows by a mysterious lake. Suddenly the resentment of years surges up in the one; he strangles his companion, flicks him into the black water. Dazed, he stumbles home and to sleep, but dies of nightmare.