A LION IN THE GARDEN

Miss Stern, in her lightest vein -- but as always, unfailingly good entertainment and wholly original. There are lots of chuckles for the reader and good escape from today's problems, as she unfolds the stories of the servants' hall through the middle-aged housemaid, Brooks, who inherits a nest egg and blows it all on the tables at Monte and the racetrack at Brighton; and the elderly caretaker, whose one claim to fame, even in his own eyes, dates back to the discovery of the lion at his elbow, while he was peacefully weeding in his garden, and who ""enviggles"" the lion into the kitchen, behind locked doors, before he has a chance to be frightened. With these two as the chief actors, and the minor characters the members of the household, the story takes some odd twists and turns. Rarely does the reader find understatement and anticlimax more adroitly and deliberately used than in Miss Stern's skillful hands.