Both Amé and the baby were asleep when Renée opened the door about twenty minutes later.
For a moment she stared at them, the girl with her elaborate white dress spread out on the dirty floor, her naked shoulders pressed against the filthy wall behind her and her head drooping a little sideways but her arms still cradling cosily the sleeping baby.
Amé woke with a little start.
“I am afraid we have both been to sleep,” she smiled. “Did you get the milk?”
“Half a pint,” Renée replied, producing a bottle from under her shawl, “and pitiable stuff it is too. They say the cattle are weak for want of grain and ’ay last winter. A man was tellin’ me at the market that the Queen ’ad it all sent to Austria to ’er own people.”
“I am sure that was not true,” Amé said. “What sort of man was he?”
“
