The Village Claims a Graduate

She came from the university into a village that does not intend to treat her as a guest. The arrangement is blunt and public: while she lives there, the lane talks about her as someone the whole place may claim. She is a grown woman, and the people waiting at the gate still speak as if her consent were a detail of the rent. / The rule they quote is that clothes are a city habit she was expected to leave behind. What she refuses will not stay behind the courtyard wall.