Miriam stood looking at her laughing face and listening to her hoarse, whispering voice. Gertrude turned and went downstairs.
Miriam followed her, cold and sick and shivering, and presently glad to be her assistant as she bustled about the empty kitchen.
Upstairs the other girls were getting ready for the outing.
13
Starting out along the dusty field-girt roadway leading from the railway station to the little town of Hoddenheim through the hot sunshine, Miriam was already weary and fearful of the hours that lay ahead. They would bring tests; and opportunities for Fräulein to see all her incapability. Fräulein had thrown her thick gauze veil back over her large hat and was walking with short footsteps, quickly along the centre of the roadway throwing out exclamations of delight, calling to the girls in a singing voice to cast away the winter, to fill their lungs, fill their hearts with spring.
She rallied them to observation.
Miriam could not remember having seen men working in fields. They troubled her. They looked up with strange eyes. She wished they were not there. She wanted the fields to be still—and smaller. Still green fields and orchards ... woods....
They passed a farmyard and stopped in a cluster at the gate.
There was a moment of relief for her here. She could look easily at the scatter of poultry and the little pigs trotting and grunting about the yard. She talked to the nearest German girl, of these and of the calves standing in the shelter of a rick, carefully repeating the English names. As her eyes reached the rick she found that she did not know what to say. Was it hay or straw? What was the difference? She dreaded the day more and more.
Fräulein passed on leading the way, down the road hand-in-hand with Emma. The girls straggled after her.