Jerry Junior, by Jean Webster

is a delightful little romance for light reading. The hero, an ingenious American youth, finds himself stranded at an Italian hotel with no diversion but the view, the head waiter, and the parrot, whose vocabulary is enlarged with some choice American expressions.

In a pink villa, not far from the hotel, lives an American girl, who occasionally visits the hotel. The youth falls a victim to her charms and when she wishes to engage a guide, he bribes his friend, the waiter, to let him play the role. It subsequently develops that the girl is an intimate friend of the hero's sister, with the inevitable result.

The author has a gift for writing these amusing, breezy tales, and the book is altogether most attractive.