ABSTRACT
Ralph Straus, reminding readers that he had not read Dusty Answer, and had not been enthusiastic about A Note in Music, said that Rosamond Lehmann's third novel 'was something like the perfect vignette'. Lehmann exaggerated somewhat in her remark to her brother about the change of heart of 'all' her 'old enemies'. The adjectives 'charming' and 'delightful' abound in these and other reviews, applied both to the novel as a whole and to Lehmann's heroine. Later critics have also appreciated that, endearing as the novel is, it is nevertheless not as slight as the contemporary reviewers alleged, nor indeed entirely as 'cheerful' as Lehmann asserted. Ruth Siegel offers a discerning analysis of the description in the novel's opening pages of the Curtis family home, portrayed by Lehmann as being simultaneously 'safe', yet 'not altogether to be trusted'.
