Vinnie not only disagrees, she secretly pities those of her friends and colleagues who claim to have rejected England, since it is clear to her that in truth England has rejected them. The chill they complain of is a matter of style. Englishmen and Englishwomen do not open their arms and hearts to every casual passerby, just as English lawns do not flow into the lawns next door. Rather they conceal themselves behind high brick walls and dense prickly hedges, turning their coolest and most formal side to strangers. Only those who have been inside know how warm and cozy it can be there.

Her colleagues’ complaints about the weather and the scenery Vinnie puts down to mere blind pique, issuing as they do from people whose native landscape is devastated by billboards, used-car lots, ice storms, and tornadoes. As for the claim that nothing much ever happens here, this is one of England’s greatest charms for Vinnie, who has just escaped from a nation plagued by sensational and horrible news events, and from a university periodically disrupted by political demonstrations and drunken student brawls. She sinks into her English life as into a large warm bath agitated only by the gentle ripples she herself makes and by the popping of bubbles of foam as some small scandal swells up and breaks, spraying the air with the delightful soapy spume of gossip. In Vinnie’s private England a great deal happens; quite enough for her, at least.

England is also a country in which folklore is an old and honorable study. The three collections of fairytales for children that Vinnie has edited, and her book on children’s literature, have been much better received there than in America, and she is in greater demand as a reviewer. Besides, it now occurs to her, the Atlantic