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suffix wealas , which means “foreigner”—hence, the name “Cornwealas” or Cornwall. The Danish and Viking invaders came next, until the Normans from France took over; and finally, after fierce struggle and strife, Cornwall came under the rule of the English kings.
    So the Cornish people have seen foreigners come by land and by sea, with torches blazing, arrows flying and flags waving. I, however, arrived singing.
    “Over the river and through the wood,
To Grandmother’s house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh
Through the white and drifted snow, oh!”
    “Pardon me,” Jeremy said, interrupting my enthusiastic, if slightly off-key, singing, “but there is no snow. What is this little ditty you’re singing?”
    I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding,” I said scornfully. “I realize that you grew up on this isolated, sceptered isle of ye olde England, but surely you’ve heard of a little American holiday called Thanksgiving, have you not?”
    “Is that the one where you rogue Puritan colonists were invited to a nice dinner with the natives, after which you all behaved like very bad guests and took all their land?” Jeremy inquired wickedly. “And anyway, wasn’t that November? It’s only late June, dear girl.”
    “Forget Thanksgiving,” I advised pityingly. “It’s about To Grandmother’s house we go . All my childhood friends sang it whenever they went off on long car drives to visit their grandparents, no matter what the season. I was always wistful because my grannies lived in England and France, so I never got to drive to their house singing this song.”
    “But one fateful summer as a little girl, you finally hopped on a plane to England,” Jeremy reminded me, as if I were the heroine of a fairy tale. “Whereupon you met your future husband, alias moi . You promised to love, cherish . . . and feed me. What say we dig into one of those sandwiches now?”
    “Are you kidding? We’ve just barely gotten out of London,” I objected. “If we break into our stash now, we’ll never even make it to Bristol.” We had pulled away from the great wheel of highways that surrounded London, reaching out to every corner of England.
    “If I were a horse you’d feed me,” Jeremy objected. “How do you expect me to run without fuel?”
    “Okay,” I warned, “but don’t eat all of it, or you’ll be sorry later when we’re only halfway there, driving through the moors with nothing to eat for miles, and the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy wailing to each other across their Wuthering Heights all night.”
    I rummaged around in the cooler and handed Jeremy a wrapped turkey sandwich.
    “Thanks, navigator,” Jeremy said enthusiastically, considerably cheered. “Let me know when the next exit is coming. Because if we take a wrong turn, we could end up in Scotland.”
    I dutifully studied the map, and did my best as co-pilot. Jeremy is a good driver and he steered his way heroically through the big city hubs, beginning with Bristol and its old stone buildings juxtaposed with modern high-rises; then the next major switch at the cathedral city of Exeter, after which things got more rural, with sheep grazing unperturbedly along the green fields near the highway.
    “Keep an eye out for a sign that says Kennards House,” I announced. “That’ll take us right past Dartmoor National Park.”
    “Home of The Hound of the Baskervilles ,” Jeremy announced in a nasal tone like a bus tour guide.
    “Oh, of course!” I cried ecstatically. “I thought I heard Sherlock Holmes telling Dr. Watson that the game’s afoot.”
    Jeremy gave me an affectionate smile. “Who knew that you and I would end up being a team of English sleuths ourselves?” he said. “To think it all began as kiddies in Cornwall pretending to be international spies.”
    “And you taught me Morse code,” I recalled. “You tap-tapped to me all through dinner. Boy, that really annoyed the grown-ups. I was very