A couple and their two daughters, Lex and 'Toria, are driving to the forest with a family friend, Edward, who came out of the Second World War with a bad ear and a gift for poetry. The father wants to find plants in the forest - he promises his daughters a dime if they can find white lady's-slippers. The children tear about the forest, but Edward is reserved; he wanders away and gets lost. The girls locate white lady's-slippers for their father and rip up handfuls of the pink ones to take home to their grandmother. They are badly startled by a partridge, which bursts out of the undergrowth and takes flight. The children comment on how glad they are that it wasn't Edward who got startled by the bird, as the guns and bombs in the war had left him with a poor shock response. The wife finds Edward wandering around - it is his first time in Canada, and the children asked him if he missed New York's subway stations while he was lost. He replies saying that he did not, and diverts the conversation onto his poetic pursuits, which does not interest the girls. The father privately wishes that Edward was more mindful of the children and what they might want to talk about. As they drive back, a herd of cows crosses them. Motorists have to pay hefty fines if they hurt a cow on the road, so the father drives cautiously - but a heifer escapes. She jumps a fence and ends up in a corral with a vicious bull, who leaves his own herd and chases her wildly. The father pursues them, but the heifer and her pursuant make straight for where Edward and 'Toria are standing - Edward is able to throw a rock at the bull and chase it away. The parents are worried, knowing that 'Toria is probably hurt, or at least scared, but when Edward and 'Toria walk back, she's laughing and joking around with him and Lex. On the drive back, Edward sits with the children instead of the adults.