Books: The Macloud Gulf

THE LONG WING (246 pp.)—Elizabeth Fenwick—Rlnehart ($2.75).

Old Mrs. Macloud was impatient, but at 80, having bossed the Macloud household for 50-odd years, she knew a trick or two. That evening in St. Louis, while waiting for her eldest, son to call, she wore her grey silk dress and looked as calm as Whistler's mother. The lamp over her chair was lit, but her eyes were closed and her head was tilted back, "as if some beneficent rays were reaching her from the 60-watt bulb."

At last the door chimes echoed through the house. "Well, child,"...