All 3 Uses of
scarcity
in
A Tale of Two Cities
- I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct.†
Chpt 2.14 *scarce = in short supply OR barely or hardly (by a small margin)
- In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.†
Chpt 2.16
- The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.†
Chpt 2.23scarcity = shortage (having an amount that is less than desired)