AN HOUR IN THE MORNING

Even as late as World War I it was not uncommon for a promising twelve year-old like Kate to be yanked from school and shunted into a life of domestic service. But if Kate's teacher Miss Crompton bewails the tragedy, Kate herself is only dimly aware of other possibilities and finds a degree of contentment in her work at Linden farm despite the rigors of 5:30 risings and chilblained hands. And above all, Kate is loyal to Miss Nell, the master's daughter whose secret romance with young Sir Edward of Ellswood Park she intuits, and whose sorrowful exile -- after Edward dies in the war and Nell is driven from her home by the parvenu who buys Ellswood Park -- she mourns. Kate apparently was created to bear witness to the end of an era, but her sedate submissiveness evokes only a diffused glow of nostalgia for the decline of the gentry -- and a neatly constructed, traditionally restrained story whose leisurely pace is true to the conventions of the era it depicts.