Burmese Days

by George Orwell

“Do you know, if you don’t mind, I think I ought to be going,” the girl said. She had stood up. “I’ve been out quite a long time. They may be wondering where I’ve got to.” “Must you really? It’s quite early. I’ll see that you don’t have to go home bareheaded in the sun.” “I ought really——” she began again. She stopped, looking at the doorway. Ma Hla May was emerging on to the veranda. Ma Hla May came forward with her hand on her hip. She had come from within the house, with a calm air that asserted her right to be there. The two girls stood face to face, less than six feet apart. No contrast could have been stranger; the one faintly coloured as an apple-blossom, the other dark and garish, with a gleam almost metallic on her cylinder of ebony hair and the salmon-pink silk of her longyi. Flory thought he had never noticed before how dark Ma Hla May’s face was, and now outlandish her tiny, stiff body, straight as a soldier’s, with not a curve in it except the vase-like curve of her hips. He stood against the veranda rail and watched the two girls, quite disregarded. For the best part of a minute neither of them could take her eyes from the other; but which found the spectacle more grotesque, more incredible, there is no saying.