THE LARK SHALL SING

She'll never set the world afire, but she'll give a great many readers a pleasant reading experience. There's a light note too often absent today, in her writing, a kind of sure technique, likeable characters, more or less credible- and usually original- situations. The Lark Shall Sing is no exception. Here is a family story- and a story of how the younger members took hold and solved a situation which the oldest sister- not very old at that- thought insuperable. Both parents were dead. There was no money to run the old home. The year of separation, the family scattered, had seemed to solve the problem. And Lucille was engaged- to a man who offered security and escape from a job she hated. So- she wrote her brothers and sisters that the house must be sold. Their response was wholly unexpected. Nicholas, just out of uniform, invested his all in a broken motor bike- with a side car- to get there in time to stop it. Roselle, for the first time showing some spunk; threw up a job, abandoned the dream of glamorous London, and started for home. Julia virtually ran away from school- and was promptly expelled. And the small boys, Dominic and Simon, walked out of the aunt's home where they felt unwanted anyhow, and made their way home, picking up a ""protector"" en route. In fact the household was increased by eight, all told- and all eight, plus Roselle's devoted swain, Jeff, were against Lucille. It is an amusing and a heart warming story, at times a bit straining the credulity, but doing it so charmingly that the reader swallows it all. Tops for hammock reading.