She visited Aunt Matilda nearly every day; but the woods around her cabin were principally pine, and pine forests are generally very sombre.
But the "Near Woods" were principally of oak and hickory, with dogwood, sweet gum, and other smaller trees here and there; and there were open spots where the sun shone in and where flowers grew and the insects loved to come, as well as heavily shaded places under grand old trees.
She thoroughly enjoyed herself in a wood like this.

She did not feel in the least lonely, although she would have found herself sadly alone in a busy street of a great city.
Here, she was acquainted with everything she saw.

There was company for her on every side.

She had not been in the habit of passing the trees and the bushes, the lichens and ferns, and the flowers and mosses as if they were merely people hurrying up and down the street.

She had stopped and made their acquaintance, and now she knew them all, and they were her good friends, excepting a few, such as the poison-vines, and here and there a plant or reptile, with which she was never on terms of intimacy.
She would often sit and swing on a low-bending grape-vine, that hung between two lofty trees, sometimes singing, and sometimes listening to the insects that hummed around her, and all the while as happy a Kate as any Kate in the world.
It was here, on the grape-vine swing, that Harry found her, the day after his little affair with George Purvis.
"Why, Harry!" she cried, "I thought you were having a meeting.
"There's nothing to meet about," said Harry, seating himself on a big moss-covered root near Kate's swing.
"There will be when the telegraph things come," said Kate.
"Oh, yes, there'll be enough to do then, but it seems as if they were never coming.