“Look there instead.” She pointed to a small pine sapling growing at a slight remove from this stand, its trunk grown straight up from a granite boulder, its small roots coiling down around the rock in snakelike fashion to seek the plenishing soil below. I considered the comparison Miss Grange had forced, thinking she meant me to see the old adage about bending with harsh forces played out here among the unsuspecting pines.

“And I am meant to take hope from this one?”

“Hope!” She swung round at me with a laugh. “Heavens above, Maisie Thomas. There is no hope to be found in the spectacle of a sapling struggling for nourishment from a rock—separated from its own soil—” She broke off.

I took her on, playful and serious all at once. “But it has adapted to its situation, Miss Grange.”

“Adaptation—yes.” Miss Grange stepped backward. “A very woman of the woods,” she muttered, as if in converse with a prior thought.

“Miss Grange?” I turned to her.

“‘A woman will be loved’”—my companion’s voice had risen and ordered itself into the swayback rhythms of a pedant—“‘in proportion as she makes those around her happy; as she studies their tastes, and sympathizes in their feelings. In social relations, adaptation is therefore the true secret of her influence.’”

“I beg your pardon?”

She smiled at me and performed a slight bow to the tree before us.

“The immortal words of Mrs. Sandford, Maisie—written for the edification of girls, these sixty years past.”

“I see,” I offered lamely.

“Adaptation”—Miss Grange signaled the poor sapling now become but an analogue for Mrs. Sandford’s unfortunate opinion—“is well for a tree, Maisie—never for a woman.”

And with that, she adjusted the basket strap, which had slipped down upon her arm, and stepped on.

“Well,” I said, and fell in behind.

Far into the heart of the woods we walked, a silent pair, arriving at the old blacksmith’s shop around midmorning. Leaning slightly to the left and more derelict than the previous summer, still it stood, defiant and skeletal. From the outside of the shop, one could look straight through the walls into the trees behind, the past winter having blown through the structure, widening the gaps between loose boards and opening holes. I hovered somewhere between a laugh and a word of condolence.

“Poor place.” Miss Grange sighed.

“How long has it stood here?”

She shook her head. “My mother brought me here as a child, and it was abandoned even then.”

Now this intrigued. Once or twice, Miss Grange had spoken of her childhood, but I had always imagined she had spent it elsewhere. “What an uncanny place to bring a child!”

Something flickered over Miss Grange’s face.

“She sat us down here”—she pointed to the threshold stone—“and told us stories.”

“What type of story?” I asked.