Miss Jillgall clasped her hands distractedly. “It’s my ignorance I’m so ashamed of. Dear cousin, forgive me, enlighten me. I don’t know how to pronounce your other daughter’s name. Do you call her Euneece?”
The dinner was getting cold. I was provoked into saying: “No, we don’t.”
She had evidently not forgiven me for leaving her by herself. “Pardon me, Helena, when I want information I don’t apply to you: I sit, as it were, at the feet of your learned father. Dear cousin, is it—”
Even my father declined to wait for his dinner any longer. “Pronounce it as you like, Selina. Here we say Euni’ce—with the accent on the ‘i’ and with the final ‘e’ sounded: Eu-ni’-see. Let me give you some soup.”
Miss Jillgall groaned. “Oh, how difficult it seems to be! Quite beyond my poor brains! I shall ask the dear girl’s leave to call her Euneece. What very strong soup! Isn’t it rather a waste of meat? Give me a little more, please.”
I discovered another of Miss Jillgall’s peculiarities. Her appetite was enormous, and her ways were greedy. You heard her eat her soup. She devoured the food on her plate with her eyes before she put it into her mouth; and she criticised our English cookery in the most impudent manner, under pretense of asking humbly how it was done. There was, however, some temporary compensation for this. We had less of her talk while she was eating her dinner.
With the removal of the cloth, she recovered the use of her tongue; and she hit on the one subject of all others which proves to be the sorest trial to my father’s patience.
“And now, dear cousin, let us talk of your other daughter, our absent Euneece. I do so long to see her. When is she coming back?”
“In a few days more.”
“How glad I am! And do tell me—which is she? Your oldest girl or your youngest?”