Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/22

ever she wants. I don't think she cares for it much, for though it 's bad, it 's not bad enough to please her. I thought she would be rather easy to do, as her countenance is made up largely of negatives—no color, no form, no intelligence; I should simply have to leave a sort of brilliant blank. I found, however, there was difficulty in representing an expression which consisted so completely of the absence of that article. With her large, fair, featureless face, unillumined by a ray of meaning, she makes the most incoherent, the most unexpected, remarks. She asked Eunice, the other day, whether she should not bring a few gentlemen to see her—she seemed to know so few, to be so lonely. Then when Eunice thanked her, and said she need n't take that trouble: she was not lonely, and in any case did not desire her solitude to be peopled in that manner, Mrs. Ermine declared blandly that it was all right, but that she supposed this was the great advantage of being an orphan, that you might have gentlemen brought to see you. "I don't like being an orphan, even for that," said Eunice; who indeed does not like it at all, though she will be twenty-one next month, and has had several years to get used to it. Mrs. Ermine is very vulgar, yet she thinks she has high distinction. I am very glad our cousinship is not on the same side. Except that she is an idiot and a bore, however, I think there is no harm in her. Her time is spent in contemplating the surface of things,—and for that I don't blame her, for I myself am very fond of the surface. But