“Make me a promise as well, Maisie.” Onshore, my given name on his lips unsettled me, and I took a small step away from him. “What is it?” I asked lightly. “That I practise my oarsmanship?”

I was surprised by the struggle I saw in his eyes.

“Pray do that first, Miss Thomas,” he answered.

“And second?”

He turned in the direction of the boys fighting to open the gate at the top of the gangway, then turned back and gave me one of his open smiles.

“Second?” He bowed elaborately. “Come row with me again.”

I gave him a deep curtsey and followed him up the gangway, at the top of which he was pulled into the hubbub and wheeled away by a frenzy of white shirts and knickers and the rampaging bluster of boys.

As I walked up the lawn, where Mrs. French and one of Cook’s girls were laying out the croquet course between the rocks, I thought I spied Miss Grange, heavily wrapped, walking slowly through the grasses as if bound for the woods.

Mrs. French broke into my observation. “Will you bring your mother down to play, Miss Thomas?”

Annoyed, I did not reply at first, trying to follow Miss Grange’s progress, but when she vanished into the trees, I said politely, “Mama does not like croquet, Mrs. French.”

The broad-beamed woman exclaimed, “Well then, something in the air up here must have changed her opinion of the game.”

“The air?”

“Why, yes, Maisie, only just this morning your Mama asked if I would be so kind as to set up the stakes.”

“Did she?” Here was something strange.

“Indeed, she did.”

“Well, then perhaps we will play after lunch.” I smiled at her and continued on my way. Despite myself, I could not hold long to the favorable opinion I had formed of Mrs. French, the letter writer, when the woman herself was so distracting. Instead of the wise widow that had shone through her words, here stood a woman who seemed shamelessly to consider herself still in the late bloom of girlhood, dressed as though she were sugarcoated, rather than substantial.

I watched all that afternoon for Miss Grange’s return, stationing myself with a book in the stairway window seat, and when I heard her voice proceeding toward me from the front hall, I stood up so as to catch her on the landing as if by accident. But I saw she was otherwise engaged, for she rounded the bend with Cook behind her, carrying a tea tray laden with the makings of tea for two people.

“Maisie Thomas,” Miss Grange greeted me. “At last.”

Cook stopped so abruptly on seeing me upon the stair, she caused the spoons to clatter upon the tray. “Your mother looks for you, Miss Thomas,” she informed me unceremoniously.

“Thank you, Cook,” I answered, watching as Miss Grange held tightly to the banister and half-pulled herself up the intervening stairs to where I stood.