Dimsie Grows Up (book #55)

Dorita Fairlie Bruce, 1924.

A picture to keep Jo happy.

Caption is: “SHE SANG IN A HAPPY, CROONING VOICE.” I don’t know who the illustrator was – looks like the name says Collet. The scene illustrated is where Dimsie is sitting on a boulder at dawn, singing Pippa’s Song. The local misanthrope and recluse, Kenneth Orde, finds her there and objects to her song – “How can any one pretend that all’s right with the world, for instance, when they look around them and see the hateful dregs left by that still more hateful war?” Dimsie replies that “it must be [all right] … because God’s in His heaven”. Kenneth ‘threw back his head with a sardonic laugh … “I’m afraid I don’t believe very much in either God or heaven”‘. Dimsie says ’scornfully’ “How extremely silly of you!” and in a few paragraphs has him ‘rais[ing] his cap to the Unknown God who was enshrined in the girl’s deep eyes’.

And here’s something stuck inside the book:

Tags: 1924, children's books, fiction, re-reads, series, women writers