Miss Birdseye's visitors, those of Doctor Prance, and of other
tenants--for Number 756 was the common residence of several persons,
among whom there prevailed much vagueness of boundary--used to leave
things to be called for; many of them went about with satchels and
reticules, for which they were always looking for places of deposit.
What completed the character of this interior was Miss Birdseye's own
apartment, into which her guests presently made their way, and where
they were joined by various other members of the good lady's circle.
Indeed, it completed Miss Birdseye herself, if anything could be said to
render that office to this essentially formless old woman, who had no
more outline than a bundle of hay. But the bareness of her long, loose,
empty parlour (it was shaped exactly like Miss Chancellor's) told that
she had never had any needs but moral needs, and that all her history
had been that of her sympathies. The place was lighted by a small hot
glare of gas, which made it look white and featureless. It struck even
Basil Ransom with its flatness, and he said to himself that his cousin
must have a very big bee in her bonnet to make her like such a house. He
did not know then, and he never knew, that she mortally disliked it, and
that in a career in which she was constantly exposing herself to offence
and laceration, her most poignant suffering came from the injury of her
taste.
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