A Yorkshire village turns itself topsy turvy for the anual choir picnic and outing and musicale in a neighboring town -- and the reader penetrates rather deeply into the village, heart and soul. The story revolves around Rose, who hopes the day will bring a proposal from Bob -- and Rose's small brother, Les, who is counting on the puppy promised him by a farmer's wife a year before. But the emotional patterns of many other lives go through changes- many of them unexpected- before the day's end. A drifting, rudderless youth, a war casualty, has something to do with the upheavals, but in the end serves as a generous deus ex machina. Viewed as a closeup of the kaleidescopic effects behind a quiet community where nothing ever happens, this has the qualities of warmth and sympathy one expects from Evelyn Smith. The diffuseness however spreads thin the emotions and one feels a sense of once over lightly as the book closes.