Miriam’s sense of her duties closed in on her. Trying not to see Elsa’s elaborate clothes and the profile in which she could find no meaning, no hope, no rest, she spoke to her.
“Do you like milk, Elsa?” she said cheerfully.
Elsa began swinging her lace-covered parasol.
“If I like milk?” she repeated presently, and flashed mocking eyes in Miriam’s direction.
Despair touched Miriam’s heart.
“Some people don’t,” she said.
Elsa hummed and swung her parasol.
“Why should I like milk?” she stated.
The muddy farmyard, lying back from the roadway and below it, was steamy and choking with odours. Miriam who had imagined a cool dairy and cold milk frothing in pans, felt a loathing as warmth came to her fingers from the glass she held. Most of the girls were busily sipping. She raised her glass once towards her lips, snuffed a warm reek, and turned away towards the edge of the group, to pour out the contents of her glass, unseen, upon the filth-sodden earth.