14
Making some remark to Minna, Miriam secured her companionship and dropped a little behind the group. Minna gave her one eager beam from behind her nose, which was shining rosily in the clear air, and they walked silently along side by side bringing up the rear.
Voices and the scrabble of feet along the roadway sounded ahead.
Miriam noticed large rounded puffs of white cloud standing up sharp and still upon the horizon. Cottages began to appear at the roadside.
Standing and moving in the soft air was the strong sour smell of baking schwarzbrot. A big bony-browed woman came from a dark cottage and stood motionless in the low doorway, watching them with kindly body. Miriam glanced at her face—her eyes were small and expressionless, like Anna’s ... evil-looking.
Presently they were in a narrow street. Miriam’s footsteps hurried. She almost cried aloud. The façades of the dwellings passing slowly on either hand were higher, here and there one rose to a high peak, pierced geometrically with tiny windows. The street widening out ahead showed an open cobbled space and cross-roads. At every angle stood high quiet peaked houses, their faces shining warm cream and milk-white, patterned with windows.
They overtook the others drawn up in the roadway before a long low wooden house. Miriam had time to see little gilded figures standing out in niches in rows all along the façade and rows of scrollwork dimly painted, as she stood still a moment with beating heart behind the group. She heard Fräulein talking in English of councillors and centuries and assumed for a moment as Fräulein’s eye passed her a look of intelligence; then they had all moved on together deeper into the town. She clung to Minna, talking at random ... did she like Hoddenheim ... and Minna responded to the full, helping her, talking earnestly and emphatically about food and the sunshine, isolating the two of them; and they all reached the cobbled open space and stood still and the peaked houses stood all round them.