Page:Tales of Three Cities (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1884).djvu/341

Rh ring again; and then, with a slight irritation, accused him of not ringing hard enough; but before he could repeat the operation, she left her chair and went herself to the bell. After this she stood before the fire a moment, gazing into it; then suggested to Florimond that he should put on a log.

"Is it necessary,—when your servant is coming in a moment?" the young man asked, unexpectedly, without moving. In an instant, however, he rose; and then he explained that this was only his little joke.

"Servants are too stupid," said Mrs. Mesh. "But I spoil you. What would your mother say?" She watched him while he placed the log. She was plump, and she was not tall; but she was a very pretty woman. She had round brown eyes, which looked as if she had been crying a little,—she had nothing in life to cry about; and dark, wavy hair, which, here and there, in short, crisp tendrils, escaped artfully from the form in which it was dressed. When she smiled, she showed very pretty teeth; and the combination of her touching eyes and her parted lips was at such moments almost bewitching. She was accustomed to express herself in humorous superlatives, in pictorial circumlocutions; and had acquired in Boston the rudiments of a social dialect which, to be heard in perfection, should be heard on the lips of a native. Mrs. Mesh had picked it up; but it must be confessed that she used it without originality. It was an accident that on this