behindtheax

Miss Birdseye

“She was a little old lady, with an enormous head; that was the first thing Ransom noticed – the vast, fair, protuberant, candid, ungarnished brow, surmounting a pair of weak, kind, tired-looking eyes, and ineffectually balanced in the rear by a cap which had the air of falling backward, and which Miss Birdseye suddenly felt for while she talked, with unsuccessful irrelevant movements. She had a sad, soft, pale face, which (and it was the effect of her whole head) looked as if it had been soaked, blurred, and made vague by exposure to some slow dissolvent.”

Henry James, The Bostonians

posted by mary j. @ 5:20 PM