In good weather, Asia goes riding nearly every day, mostly in the morning before the heat comes on. She rides in the neighborhood lanes, between the cabins, into the cool of the woods. She jumps Fanny over streams and logs. She rides into Bel Air to pick up the mail rather than wait for the postboy to deliver it. She is getting to know the neighborhood. She is getting to know the neighbors.

She doesn’t like them.

Miss Woolsey flags her down one morning. The Woolseys own the blacksmith and wheelwright shop on the road to Bel Air as well as the farm abutting the Booths’, a tauntingly prosperous piece of property. As rich as they are, no one will marry them and they all live together, two sisters, three brothers, their parents long dead. The oldest, William Woolsey, is a local philanthropist, who’s paid for Harford’s good opinion by funding many improvements to the county roads. Simultaneously, inch by inch, he’s been moving his property line. In this way, he’s quietly purloined a piece of the Booth fields.

They could take him to court, but he owns all the judges.

The sister who stops Asia is slightly older than Rosalie. On this morning, she’s wearing a gray silk dress with a tatted snowdrop shawl over her shoulders. Her hair spreads like great wings at the sides of her face. Pleasantries are exchanged on the subject of the weather, the pleasing aspect of Tudor Hall, the sad fact that Father was never able to live there. “How well we remember your father!” Miss Woolsey says and Asia dismounts, expecting to hear something of Father’s career, his celebrity, his genius.

Instead Miss Woolsey recounts a story about the death of Father’s pony Peacock. How Mother was made to wrap herself in a white sheet like a toga, and to sit between the dead pony’s legs as Father marched about them in a circle, shooting his rifle into the air. “Your poor mother!” Miss Woolsey says. “She was that terrified! And no one ever able to do a thing to stop him when he took one of his queer turns.” Throughout this account, the smile never leaves her powdered face. Asia thinks that Miss Woolsey is surely too young to have seen any of this. She thinks that Miss Woolsey’s teeth are too large for her mouth. Miss Woolsey has teeth like a rabbit.

And yet, clearly Miss Woolsey imagines this preposterous story will amuse Asia. Asia climbs back into her saddle, adjusts her skirts about her ankles, and gives Fanny’s reins a quick shake. She canters off without another word, which is rude, and no doubt, Miss Woolsey will call it so to all and sundry, but less rude than what Asia would have said if she’d spoken.