Isabelle flattens out her hand and places another sugar cube carefully on her palm. Agnes’s lips are searching for it before Isabelle has even reached out all the way, her big yellow teeth flashing. “Get a good look at her so you can think of names that might suit her babe. They always look quite a lot like the mare, I think. They always seem to have the mother’s eyes.” Her grandmother cups the horse’s cheeks, round and solid and strong. The hair looks softer there, and even softer on the neck, where it looks long enough to run fingers through. “Of course, we won’t know whether it’s a filly or a colt until it’s born, so you’ll have to come up with both boy and girl names.”

Isabelle blinks at the horse. The horse blinks at her. She can see herself reflected in that eye, swallowed up again and again behind the heavy lashes. She traces the white streak that runs from the horse’s forehead to her nose. She will have to be careful in choosing a name, she thinks. It is no small thing to be responsible for telling someone who he or she is.

“Knock knock,” a man’s voice calls. Isabelle and her grandmother turn around. A man stands just inside the door. He’s wearing a long black coat with a bright red flannel scarf. White hairs curl from beneath his black wool hat, and behind a crooked pair of glasses his eyes glisten deep in their sockets.

“Dr. Marks!”

“Eleanor, my dear,” he says. He pulls his hat from his head and gives a little bow. His curls waver. He returns the hat to his head, but with one free hand—the other holds a doctor’s bag—all he can do is set it there. Isabelle watches it slide slowly to the side of his head and then to the floor.

“Ah, well, there goes the hat,” he says.

“It’s too cold to be polite, Dr. Marks,” her grandmother says. The man has set his bag down and squatted to retrieve his hat. “You know you’re losing heat by the second now. Up and out the top, like a chimney.”

“And you,” he says, standing, tugging the hat back over his ears, “in nothing but a handkerchief!”

“I’ve got lots of hair up here to keep me warm,” she says. She pats the blue silk kerchief, stained and frayed along the edges. Underneath, her white hair is coiled and pinned. Isabelle wonders what it looks like down.

Isabelle looks from her grandmother to the man and the bag on the floor beside him. It is a triangular black leather bag, the kind old-fashioned doctors used. She wonders how old this doctor is. One of the bag’s handles has broken and been mended with thick silver tape. “And who’s this?” the man is saying. Isabelle looks up.