Inside the croft, I saw the remains of that morning’s breakfast: on the table was a pipkin of lard, the imprints of thin fingers on the slippery white surface betraying that she’d been eating it by the fistful. There was an eggshell, from which she’d sucked the contents raw, and an onion, with bites out of it, that she’d eaten like an apple. Uncouth, perhaps, but sustaining. As we entered the tiny, earth-floored croft, she made haste to clear the table and asked us, most politely, to sit. I wondered at her self-possession and felt a stab that I had not made more of an effort to know her
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