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More "Dawdle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading his homily,—pass by a folio in twenty grenadier volumes to greet a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... by me will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I watch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... know, speak the vernacular wretchedly. But I do emphasize the fact that proficiency here is of prime importance and I would also add that it should be the first work of a missionary after entering his field. To dawdle with the language the first year, is, generally speaking, to fail ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... swift stream like a fly on a leaf, my intention was to crawl up the gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available on the margin of the river or on the ledges of the cliffs. Thus I should not be obliged to treat every fresh view as if it were a bird on the wing, but could dawdle as long as I pleased over this or that object without being a trouble ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... kitchen, where I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... work harder than ever. The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call her ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I don't I shall fail the editor and be left without money. I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind; but by the time I get to the middle ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... mind. And now, in Janet's bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was still ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it may snow. Worse than all, the hawthorn-trees ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... bound us to one another, and which nothing could destroy, had opportunity to speak. Entirely unlike each other in our pursuits, our tastes, our opinions—his life being one of eager exercise, active sport, and all the amusements of the field, while mine is to dawdle over books and spend my time in languid self-contemplation—we have, nevertheless, had such a sympathy as almost passes the love of women. My poor Hal confessed as much to me, for his part, in his artless manner, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the State Trumpeter in a neighbouring kingdom, is of some note and importance, and all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Dissenting minister, being mentioned, he said, 'I took to Dr. Gibbons.' And addressing himself to Mr. Charles Dilly, added, 'I shall be glad to see him. Tell him, if he'll call on me, and dawdle over a dish of tea in an afternoon, I shall ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... can start in and 'pinch back' this prairie climber—do you hear, Phil? I won't let you dawdle around and yawn while I'm pricking my fingers every instant! Make him ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... finances. That the money available had lasted till his schooling ended, was, at least, a good thing, and, as for the future, was it not his business to attend to that presently? Meanwhile he would dawdle for ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... in the hem. Her bra was a Graceform, size thirty two, medium cup, but the girl on the bed did not have much need for molding, shaping, uplifting, padding or pretense. She was all her and she filled it right to the brim. I let my perception dawdle on the slender ankles, the lissome ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... vote themselves large emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay is there "fresh and fresh"? Why should they turn up on time for their task? Why should they not dawdle at their labor sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk? If among them is one who cares to work with a fever of industry that even socialism cannot calm, let him do it. We, his fellows, will take our time. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the "Argus." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... thought a good deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ending and no direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and the streets and crowds tearing ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... stood ready to let go of the ball he seemed inclined to dawdle over it. It wasn't going to be one of his snappiest—-any onlooker could judge that, ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Why do you dawdle talking? Bring them back to tea. Bring back some milk, cakes, honey. The change will do you good. George has been working very hard at his office. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... her that I was coming? Since then I have seen her more daintily shod than when her bare brown legs hurried from view into broken shoes of twice her size. Since then the hard little hand has turned white and thin and tapering, to such a hand as women are wont to let dawdle over the arms of chairs. Then I was a boy, with a boy's haughty way of regarding girlish softness. I was haughtier that day because I sought in my pride to cover up my debt to her. Now I am a man, but the boy's picture of Penelope Blight, the little girl in the patched blue ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Percy," called Joel across the table, "and don't dawdle so. We're going to make a double ripper, four yards long, to go down that hill there." He laid down his spoon to point out the window at a ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... vice-royalty deserves better treatment than this. In Ireland he was an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... her fault as well as her misfortune. Circumstances, natural indolence, and her sister's extreme indulgence had brought about a condition of life that propagated itself. One languid day was the parent of another, it was so much easier to dawdle than to act. Thus she had lost her opportunity. If he had won health, even Graydon said it would have brought her beauty. She might have secured his admiration, respect, and even love, instead of his pity. What could be more absurd than to ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Listen, I will not live Less lovely, nor this cruel beauty lose, And I perforce grow kind: I'll not survive The deep delicious poison of a smile Nor mortal music of the sighing bosom That slowly overcomes the fainting brain. It shall not dawdle downward to the grave; I'll pass upon the instant of perfection. No woman shall behold Poppaea fade: And ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... said I to myself, "nice boys these to be going in for an exam.! How can they expect to do anything if they dawdle away their time in this way! I declare I quite feel as if I were taking an unfair advantage of them to be ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Mr. Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure of a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lazy student would only bring clearly before his mind the examination-room, and the unanswerable paper, and the bitter mortification when the pass-list comes out and his name is not there, he would not trifle and dawdle and seek all manner of diversions as he does, but he would bind himself to his desk and his task. If the young man who begins to tamper with purity, and in the midst of the temptations of a great city to gratify the lust of the eye and the lust of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... opening upon him all the tenderness of her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion, and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul—still louder, that I may be further relieved of this ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... children than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or to ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... were six scruts still to be negotiated. He knew that what he was doing was a thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thing that would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet he kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland's ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Min Allah, for the end is with Him!' There is not a pin to choose in fatalism here between Muslim and Christian, the lazy, like Mohammed and Suleyman (one Arab the other Copt), say Min Allah or any form of dawdle you please; but the true Muslim doctrine is just what Yussuf laid down—'do all you can and be resigned to whatever be the result.' Fais ce que dois advienne qui pourra is good doctrine. In fact, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Meanwhile the women dawdle through the day, superintending their domestic work, look after their children's and their own toilette, tend the fire, attend to the cooking, and smoke consumedly. The idle sit with the men at the doors of their huts; those industriously disposed weave mats, and, whether lazy or ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the rest of us will do what we can to help Jim. Breakfast will be all ready by the time you return, so don't dawdle on the way, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Frank, "that's the best way. None of us want to dawdle our lives out in this place all day, and you don't want to leave any of us behind, Uncle Moses; so if we all go together, we'll ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to prolong the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to do, Molly!" And to Vickers she complained: "Children nowadays seem perfectly helpless. Unless they are provided with amusement every minute, they dawdle about, waiting for you to do something for them. Miss Betterton should ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... pray for is dry weather, that the ladies may spend their days on deck, for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the skipper-job can be combined ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in groups, talking loudly and discussing the situation pro and con, and the general inquietude communicating itself to the officers, they knew not what answer to make to those of their men who ventured to question them. They ought to be marching, it would not answer to dawdle thus; and so, when it became known about five o'clock that the aide-de-camp had returned and that they were to retreat, there was a sigh of relief throughout the camp and every ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing. "Edna!" he cried, "I say that your Captain Horn is treating me shamefully. In the first place, he let me come up here to dawdle about, doing nothing, when I ought to have been down there helping him get more of that treasure. I fancy he might have trusted me, and if I had been with him, we should have brought away nearly twice as much gold, and at this minute we should be twice ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading his homily,—pass by a folio in twenty grenadier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was home from school by four o'clock for at half-past three her room was dismissed and it never took her more than half an hour to say good-by to her numerous new friends and dawdle home. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... disorder. This so-called disorder betokens good health on their part and is a revelation of the fact that they have a keen appreciation of the fitness of things. They cannot brook monotony and it irks them to dawdle about in the anteroom of action. They are eager to do their work if only the teacher will get right at it. But they are impatient of meaningless preliminaries. They see no sense in calling the roll when everybody ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... There might be a chance there to pick up a bit of river news which would help you. I wonder whether old Moung San is up in Mandalay yet. He started up river with his hnau weeks back, and you know how they dawdle along, picking up every ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Would you please tell Mrs Butler to bring out grannie's parcels and post at once. I'm afraid to dawdle, it's ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... your 'right' for the present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... marshes, the meadows were white with Queen Anne's lace. She must have sent a lot of it to America! Tiger lilies grew wild, dazzling colonies of them, and from gray rocks ferns spurted and showered. Isn't it charming that a river called the Mystic should run, or, rather, gently dawdle, through a world like this? Its mother is the Sound; and perhaps because it's very historic, it justified its dignity by leading us out of this flowery fairyland, past stern, faded farmhouses to a wide country of rolling downs, bathed ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... deep in thought when the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for the last half hour, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend "Corven" in large letters showed that ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the district everything had been arranged for a drive of a couple hundred miles through some of the prettiest parts of the country from Kuopio to Iisalmi. We were to have a carriage with a hood (a rare honour) and two horses, to dawdle as we liked by the way, and just order our vehicle when and as we wanted it, so that we might really peep into the homes of the people, as well as avail ourselves of the Baron's many kind introductions. But late on the afternoon before that named ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides yourself? Where ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the profits of petty larceny are declining; he will be taught to regret the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... from some of the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in human nature—wrapt up in an immense great-coat, and urging on two starved ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... course that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem to have the smallest capability of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... us lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the river's ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... real government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede: a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... leisurely country tradespeople, who if Theo had meant to carry his bride there must have postponed that happiness for a year or two—not much wonder, perhaps, since they were left by the young master to dawdle on their own way. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... good deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly so; and she ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available on the margin of the river or on the ledges of the cliffs. Thus I should not be obliged to treat every fresh view as if it were a bird on the wing, but could dawdle as long as I pleased over this or that object without being a trouble ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... you want Frank, you'd better tell him not to dawdle over Annette's gate half an hour," began Jack, who could not resist teasing his dignified brother about one of the few foolish things he was ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... that when she was losing self-control she was accustomed to seek her own room, and see how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know as to some folks that the more they are out of doors the better ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... things together, quick, and don't dawdle; we're at home now, and you will have to ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... as swiftly with an invitation for him to step inside. There was something inexplainable about this maid who veiled her eagerness to admit him with such transparencies. Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she went ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence, hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins in the green aisles of the garden. But mostly the old couple just pretended to do their chores, and sat on the porch and watched the clouds go by and the frogs flop into ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Grand Hotel in Rome was filling up. People were dining rather late—it was the end of May and the entertainments were lessening, so they could dawdle over their repasts and smoke ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it may snow. Worse than all, the ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ants. The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... straightened up and walked! Mr. Durant talked to us some about our lessons. He seemed pleased when we told him we liked geometry. When we got back to the college we told the girls about meeting Mr. Durant. I guess nobody will want to dawdle along after ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... time that luncheon, "picked up" though it was, was over. By then everybody was very tired. Aunt Wess' exclaimed that she could not stand another minute, and retired to her room. Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work unpacking her trunk and putting her clothes away. Her fox terrier, whom the family, for obscure reasons, called the Pig, arrived in the middle of the afternoon in a crate, and shivering with the chill of the house, was tied up behind the kitchen range, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... state of his mind while his wife was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I don't I shall fail the editor and be left without money. I let myself go at the beginning and write ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... The Lohndiener would of course have taken him straight to his hotel, and he would have been spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it was with ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... State Trumpeter in a neighbouring kingdom, is of some note and importance, and all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; till I have letters, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... before, at eight o'clock, her hour to go, had made her hang back and dawdle. She did last things or pretended to do them; to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she was afraid. The most ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... and so positive that she could whisk through her dressing in ten minutes, and that it was quite unnecessary to get up so soon: even when the others mercilessly pulled the bed-clothes from her, and pointed to their watches, she would dawdle instead of "whisking," and spend much superfluous time over manicure or dabbing on cucumber cream to improve her complexion. She was so innocent about her little vanities, and conducted them with such child-like complacency, that the girls tolerated them ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... I'll tell you a tale, Though to shock and surprise you I fear it won't fail; Of Master John Dawdle my story must be, Who, I'm sorry to say, is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... morning until the men who were bound for Fretly had all ridden off and were well out of sight of the house. What he had stayed for he would have been somewhat puzzled to explain. He was not the kind of man who, as a rule, cared to dawdle about all day with women when there was any kind of sport to be had from hunting down to ratting; more especially was he disinclined for any such dawdling when Helen Romer was amongst the number of the ladies so left to be danced attendance upon. And yet he distinctly told himself that he ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... he was so quick in his operations, did not dawdle over his luggage, and took the early coach: for as soon as the mistake about Prince Bulbo was found out, that cruel Glumboso sent up a couple of policemen to Prince Giglio's room, with orders that he should be carried to Newgate, and his head taken off before ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a well-known fact that in the world of to-day time is an essential factor in the race for success. No young man can afford to dawdle for four long years in acquiring a so-called "higher" education. Three-fourths of that time is, if anything, more than sufficient in which to attain all the graces and culture that the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... would all be pouring out of school, and wouldn't they stare when they saw her! She felt almost shy at the thought of facing them, and gladly turned into Mr. Henders' out of their way. She would dawdle about in there, she told herself, until most ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... upon a new scene. It was an unusual thing for me to do. Generally, I dawdled over my breakfast and I seldom took the trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away; but on that morning, for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness of the event, I did not dawdle. And yet I was not in a hurry. I pulled the cord casually, and while the faint tinkling somewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, I am ready ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... fops while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... satisfaction was too much for General Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held erect ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... cuckoo-clock. Where did it come from? How long had they had it? What a jolly little customer the wee bird was, darting out and darting in with his hurry-call to anyone who would listen! It made a fellow feel ashamed to dawdle at his work. It wouldn't do to let any mere bird get ahead of him—a wooden bird ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... humbler sort loves to dawdle along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Presently he reaches that bridge—the jewellers' bridge. He thinks he must buy a ring. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the village was very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the faint ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... your time." This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license[A] to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness[A] or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet[A] realisation of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time[A] enough for every point and shade of meaning, and ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... show you—she knows all the trails. Yes, indeed, she'd be delighted, I'm sure.... Oh, any time you prefer. Don't let her dawdle along, though; she's such a strange child—sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of them said, clutching the shoulder of her neighbor. "He's in the red canoe! It's Willie Dawdle, and he's ahead! Hurrah for Edgemere! Oh, he's coming, he's coming! I knew we'd annihilate them, I just knew it! Oh, it's ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... was not unwilling to dawdle under the shade of an old wall with Mrs. Delaport Green that ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... declared that young person gaily, "as the reward of virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to the theater in ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... much as I ought to," he answered, "for the reason that I can't find any one I like to go with me. My mother and sisters go away to some watering-place every summer and stay there, and father sticks to business. I either dawdle around where the folks are summers, or stay in town and hate myself, if I can't find some one to go off on my yacht with me. The fact is, Miss Page," he added mournfully, "I have hard work to kill time. I can get a little ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay is there "fresh and fresh"? Why should they turn up on time for their task? Why should they not dawdle at their labor sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk? If among them is one who cares to work with a fever of industry that even socialism cannot calm, let him do it. We, his fellows, will take our time. Our pay is there as certain and as sound as his. Not ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... at Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago, he told me, without a 'heller', and is now the owner of cattle and land and horses to a large amount. But then the Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the English drink. 'New wine' is a penny a glass (half a pint), enough to blow your head off, and 'Cape smoke' (brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the real calamity. If the Cape had ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every day, write some—reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... been more years than he could remember since this young American had taken a real holiday except for an occasional fishing trip on the Gunnison or into Wyoming. He had lived a life of activity. Now for the first time he learned how to be lazy. To dawdle indolently on one of the broad porches, while Miss Yuste sat beside him and busied herself over some needlework, was a sensuous delight that filled him with content. He felt that he would like to bask there ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... me will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... Mildmay. But what in the name of goodness, my dear fellow, has produced this wonderful revolution in all your plans in the course of a few hours? I thought you were going to mope away life on the Lake of Geneva, or dawdle it ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... always following fast upon your heels. There is no time to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied—you are edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to be found, anxious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... once, and took out his cigarette-case. "Now you mention it, I think I do. But I mustn't dawdle. I have got to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... and teamsters who travel that road. Here would they gather in the endless summer twilight, or by the light of the harvest moon, and sit round a table at the door; and tipple, and laugh, and quarrel, and fight, and sing drowsy songs, and dawdle away the hours until the deep solemn notes of St. Paul's clock ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... its dark side. Its possession, indeed, enabled Madame Valiere to loiter on the more lighted stairs, or dawdle in the hall with Madame la Proprietaire; but Madame Depine was not only debarred from these dignified domestic attitudes, but found a new awkwardness in bearing Madame Valiere company in their walks abroad. Instead of keeping ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... am not doing that," said Father Payne, "but my theory is this. You must know, first of all, what you are aiming at, and you must apply your discipline sensibly to that. There are certain things in us which we know to be sloppy—we lie in bed, we dawdle, we eat too much, we moon over our work. All that is obviously no good, and all sensible people try to pull themselves up. When you have found out what suits you, do it boldly; but the man who admires discipline for its own sake is a sort ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... time Paw and Maw, and Seth and Masters, and even YOU and ME, dear, had nothing else to do. That was love as I know it; not Seth's sneaking rages, and Uncle Ben's sneaking fooleries, and Masters's sneaking conceit, but only love. And knowing that, I let Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and Masters trifle—and for what? To keep them from me and my boy. They were ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... the pleasureless labor, the restlessness, the noise, the quarrels, the mooning ways, the healthy pessimism which was the motive power of the Euler family, as it is that of all respectable persons, and made their life a foretaste of purgatory. That a woman who did nothing but dawdle about all the blessed day should take upon herself to defy them with her calm insolence, while they bore their suffering in silence like galley-slaves,—and that people should approve of her into the bargain—that was beyond the limit, that was enough to turn you ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... him as he passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into words and ask for his comrades' help to understand. But before that could ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... bitter at the hands of a pretty barmaid rather than from an oleaginous pot-man in his shirt-sleeves; and the sherry-cobbler acquires a racier flavour from the arch looks of the Hebe who dispenses it. If silly young men do dawdle at the bar for the sake of the sirens inside, and occasionally, as we have known to be the case, take unto themselves these same sirens "for better or for worse," we can only cite the opinion of well-informed authorities, that very possibly the young gentlemen in question ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of the Ottoman Empire. At a time when our interests required that we should be well represented, and powerfully supported, we had neither an Ambassador nor a fleet in the Mediterranean; and because Lord Ponsonby is Lord Grey's brother-in-law he has been able with impunity to dawdle on months after months at Naples for his pleasure, and leave affairs at Constantinople to be managed or mismanaged by a Charge d'Affaires ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... but no more wonderful than a thousand other happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average were upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed continent. Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-carts should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction of a plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than that on the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested fakir should be squatting, guarded by British soldiers, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... always believe that there has been a debate as to whether they should take a little rest down on Aarre Water. There are certainly many old ones who know the place again, and plenty of the young are tender-winged, and would fain sit on the water and dawdle away a ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... on Monday, and returned here yesterday; go away to- morrow. It has been a dreadfully idle life all day long, facendo niente, incessant gossip and dawdle, poor, unprofitable talk, and no rational employment. Brougham was here a little while ago for a week. He, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Anglesey form a discontented triumvirate, and are knit together by the common bond of a sense of ill-usage ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in clipped fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking—like part of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... to wait long for Ali Baba, Mujrim, and the camels, for they had not been fools enough to dawdle, with a hundred and fifty balked freebooters within rifle-shot, whose resilient pride was likely to breed anger. You can't lead camels any more than horses as fast as you can ride them; unless stampeded they tow loggily; ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... lead an idle life, and they want every one they see to stop and play with them. I don't want to be rude, but we are not going to dawdle about here; and as for this petty ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... said Tom; "that's some of uncle's fidgetiness; but he will be sure to dawdle at the last. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in bed ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... malice, to John E. Hall. "Hall had the misfortune, some years ago, to fall acquainted with Mr. Thomas Moore, the poet, while Mr. Moore was 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... why, like one hovering on the very verge of being mad. And so I remained, drowned in the ocean of the torture and the nectar of love-longing, every now and then waking as from a day-dream to wonder at the sun, who seemed to dawdle on his way, as if on purpose to separate my soul from my body with impatience. But at last, after all, day began slowly to come to an end, and I set out for the palace, with feet that could hardly be restrained from running as fast ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... mixture[98] of these and other influences, he has made the first volume almost as little of a story as it could possibly be, while remaining a story at all. Seventy mortal pages, pretty well packed in the standard two-volume edition, which in all contains less than six hundred, dawdle over the not particularly well-told business of Gringoire's interrupted mystery, the arrival of the Flemish ambassadors, and the election of the Pope of Unreason. The vision of Esmeralda lightens the darkness and quickens the movement, and this brightness and liveliness continue till she saves her ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Launcelot's extravagance, by which he was in some measure infected, and he dropped an insinuation, that he could eclipse his rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a detective," Dick replied enigmatically, "but I'd like about one minute's talk with Mr. Colquitt, and I mean to have it. Don't let us dawdle on the way ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... they were content to dawdle in the picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old castle, in which Milton's "Masque of Comus" was first played on Michaelmas night of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every American ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to let go of the ball he seemed inclined to dawdle over it. It wasn't going to be one of his snappiest—-any onlooker could judge that, at least, so ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... valuable result. One gets then significantly the sudden impression that the thing to be proved, having the expression of which the properties are to be established, rises out of the manuscript; and when that happens the time has come not to dawdle with the work. Repeated reading causes the picture above-mentioned to come out more clearly and sharply; it is soon seen in what places or directions of the manuscript that expression comes to light— these ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... her smile . . . Strange I Should dawdle near her grace admiringly, When love alarmed and challenged sympathy, Announced in chills of creeping ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... are rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary for an outdoor, ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the fulgid sun looks down Upon a stagnant earth where listless men Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat, Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, — It seems to me somehow that God himself Scans with a close reproach what I have done, Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears, And fathoms ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... a gesture of impatience. "I can't dawdle here any longer! Either you or I, father." He pushed into the hall. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... make the butter, the farmer appears to me to do nothing whatever except go to market and drink himself into a disaffected, discontented condition. He is rarely visible before ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, except on market days, and he appears to smoke and dawdle most of his time away. Just now he broods over his wrongs, and declares he "will have his own again," whatever that may signify. He says he is enormously over-rented. Perhaps he is; but I cannot forget that it is not many years since he and his neighbours in the adjacent county ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... head to pay a call. In this latter line the Scholar had a decided pull. Education had taught him taste; necessity, handiness; and by aid of the two he transformed his rude dwelling into something approaching the rooms in which he used to dawdle away the happy hours, time ago. It was partly drawing-room, partly curiosity-shop. Cups, saucers, and spoons appeared as if by magicians' call, and one blazing afternoon the news flashed round the diamond-pits that Miss Musgrave was "taking afternoon tea with the Scholar." But when ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... her again some day. But, even if I never have the luck to do that, in a way it'll make no real difference. I've written her name in my private calendar, and shall always remember it."—She paused a moment. "We got rather near each other somehow, I think. We didn't dawdle or beat about the bush, but went straight along, passed the initial stages of acquaintance in a few hours, and reached that point of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... stage, to make some remarks upon the vital topic of the first meal of the day. With the great bulk of our population sufficient heed is never given it, and yet it is of infinite consequence. By far the greater number of people dawdle in bed till the last possible moment, when all at once they jump into their bath—that is, if they take a bath—swallow a hasty breakfast, and make a frantic rush for their steamer, train, or tram, in order to begin their daily work. How very ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... of a brown and aged 'Times.' There are no "evenings out." The first sign of eve is the signal for dispersion homewards, and it is only from the safe shelter of his own room that the winter patient ventures to gaze on the perilous glories of the sunset. The evenings are in fact a dawdle indoors as the day has been a dawdle out, a little music, a little reading of the quiet order, a little chat, a little letter-writing, and an early ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... responded. "This was a grand chance for you. Ah, ha! The business riled your stomach a little, but nonsense! that will soon pass off. But we must not dawdle here; someone may come in. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... hour, say? Can you take a party of one rubbernecking this A.M.? I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I have a hankering for the nobility. Catch the idea? Good! Then you'll ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... full of a promise like spring. She felt an approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in her. It gave her pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it gave her pleasure to dip into books, to try on her different garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a new lease of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a child, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... attaches to the perpetrator than to the victim of deceit. Whatever precaution a man may take against his friend, that we took in full. We certainly gave him no pretext for refusing to pay us what he promised. We were perfectly upright in our dealings with him. We did not dawdle over his affairs, nor did we shrink from any work to which ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... word, the brigade swung into the broad road and it marched. It did not dawdle along. It marched, and it marched fast. It actually seemed to Harry after the first mile that it was running, running toward ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... strange there should remain any pressure of business or hurry of life in this place, where workmen look out of the windows of the house (our house and a fact!); they are repairing nine at a time, and boys swing their buckets and dawdle to the well for water, as if Time couldn't be lounged and coaxed off one's hands!! And yet busy I have been, and every mail has been a scramble. Getting into our house was no joke, attending sales and shops, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... dear, you've always seen the seamy side of me," said Meadows, with the slightest change of tone and a laugh. "Perhaps now you'll believe me when I say that I'm not always lazy when I seem so—that a man must have time to think, and smoke, and dawdle, if he's to write anything decent, and can't always rush at the first job that offers. When you thought I was idling—I wasn't! I was gathering up impressions. Then came an attractive piece of work—one that suited me—and I rose ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had all their ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Governor of the district everything had been arranged for a drive of a couple hundred miles through some of the prettiest parts of the country from Kuopio to Iisalmi. We were to have a carriage with a hood (a rare honour) and two horses, to dawdle as we liked by the way, and just order our vehicle when and as we wanted it, so that we might really peep into the homes of the people, as well as avail ourselves of the Baron's many kind introductions. But late on the afternoon before that named for leaving, our cicerone Grandpapa found ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... treatment than this. In Ireland he was an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... her dinner more quickly, shirks the use of her teeth, and sends food, half chewed, into her stomach, is like a man who, having two servants, the one strong and vigorous, the other feeble and delicate, allows the first to dawdle at his ease, and puts all the hard work on the other. He would be very unjust in so doing, would he not? And as injustice always meets with its reward, his work is sure to ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... to thinking so intently about the matter that he began to dawdle. And if there was one thing that the Muley Cow didn't like it was to have to stand still while a slow milker puttered at his work. So she suddenly gave her tail a switch and brought the end of it ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... almost impossible not to attain a fixed and valuable result. One gets then significantly the sudden impression that the thing to be proved, having the expression of which the properties are to be established, rises out of the manuscript; and when that happens the time has come not to dawdle with the work. Repeated reading causes the picture above-mentioned to come out more clearly and sharply; it is soon seen in what places or directions of the manuscript that expression comes to light— these places are grouped together, others are sought that more ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the princess, opening upon him all the tenderness of her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion, and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul—still louder, that I may be further relieved of this ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... are no more attractive to these children than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or to flit from ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Richard was a little doubtful as to her power over the wild girls. There could not be any doubt that John Taylor was in earnest, and had been worked upon just at the right moment; but there was danger that the impression would not last. "And his wife in such a horrible whining dawdle!" said Ethel—"there will be no good to be done if it ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... worth making an exertion about, not even pleasure. They had come, one could see, to a just appreciation of their value in life, and understood quite well the social manners of the mammas and girls in whose company they condescended to dawdle and make, languidly, cynical observations. They had, in truth, the manner of playing at fashion and elegance as in a stage comedy. King could not help thinking there was something theatrical about them altogether, and he fancied that when he saw them in their "traps" on the Avenue they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... way it'll make no real difference. I've written her name in my private calendar, and shall always remember it."—She paused a moment. "We got rather near each other somehow, I think. We didn't dawdle or beat about the bush, but went straight along, passed the initial stages of acquaintance in a few hours, and reached that point of friendship where forgetting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... 'right' for the present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience about that, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... had been forwarded to him for over two months. He had thrown his entire time and care into his work in the North. And now that these arrears had to be cleared off, he attacked the business with an obvious impatience. Formerly he had been used to dawdle over his letters, getting through a good portion of the forenoon with them and conversations with Waters about Buckinghamshire news. Now, even with that omniscient factotum by his side, his progress was slow, simply because he was hurried. He made dives here and there, without system, without settlement. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... to his feet, his eyes flashing. "Edna!" he cried, "I say that your Captain Horn is treating me shamefully. In the first place, he let me come up here to dawdle about, doing nothing, when I ought to have been down there helping him get more of that treasure. I fancy he might have trusted me, and if I had been with him, we should have brought away nearly twice as much gold, and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... tell," he shouted in answer to both questions, half angrily, already on his way. "Don't dawdle," and ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said the doctor, "I will send a steward to help you to dress—you will need a little assistance, with the ship cutting these wild capers—and if you do not dawdle too long over your toilet you will be just in good time for dinner. There goes the first bell," he added, as the strident clamour suddenly pealed out from somewhere on ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... course not. I wouldn't be so mean as to fool you about such a thing. But mamma says you mustn't dawdle to-day. So hurry up and get those towels done. Sylvy is going to be awfully busy, so you'll have to help her, but we're going to clean the knives for you, and shell the peas. Bring them down to the little house; we're going down there. We might set ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... fair set-to with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... pro and con, and the general inquietude communicating itself to the officers, they knew not what answer to make to those of their men who ventured to question them. They ought to be marching, it would not answer to dawdle thus; and so, when it became known about five o'clock that the aide-de-camp had returned and that they were to retreat, there was a sigh of relief throughout the camp and every heart ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... "sneaking," is the same as O.N. slaeikja, "to lick"; a secondary meaning of O.N. slaeikja is "to sneak"; keeal, "kail," could come from O.N. kal or Gael. cal. It is probably from the latter. The word slaister, "to dawdle, to waste one's time," is not clear. The sb. slaisterer, "a slink, an untidy person," is also found. The ai indicates an original diphthong. It is probably the same as Norse sloeysa, sb. "an untidy person," as vb. "to be untidy, to be careless." Ster (slais ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... is not necessary where time is unrecognised, and turbulence of emotion, whether of grief or gladness, is felt to be out of place in a dream-being, whose sole reality is its unreality. Their personal unimportance to the Universe, and remoteness from the Market-place of Life allow them to dawdle. Their experiences have no sharp edges, no abrupt precipices, no divisive gulfs, no defined beginnings and endings. The book of their sojourn in this world has neither chapters nor headings; the page runs on without hindrance from tragedy to comedy, comedy to farce, farce to melodrama, and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... time." This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness, or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet realization of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time enough for every point and shade of meaning and no one will ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... the Ottoman Empire. At a time when our interests required that we should be well represented, and powerfully supported, we had neither an Ambassador nor a fleet in the Mediterranean; and because Lord Ponsonby is Lord Grey's brother-in-law he has been able with impunity to dawdle on months after months at Naples for his pleasure, and leave affairs at Constantinople to be managed or mismanaged by a Charge ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... These people lead an idle life, and they want every one they see to stop and play with them. I don't want to be rude, but we are not going to dawdle about here; and as ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... we're all going to do, some Thursday. We're going to the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you know, and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the fishing fleet come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... I dawdle over my breakfast, the widowed bantam-hen has perched on the back of my drowsy cat. It is needless to go through the form of opening the school to-day; for, with the exception of Waster Lunny's girl, I have had no scholars for nine days. Yesterday she announced ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... written to you sooner. It seems strange there should remain any pressure of business or hurry of life in this place, where workmen look out of the windows of the house (our house and a fact!); they are repairing nine at a time, and boys swing their buckets and dawdle to the well for water, as if Time couldn't be lounged and coaxed off one's hands!! And yet busy I have been, and every mail has been a scramble. Getting into our house was no joke, attending sales and shops, buying furniture—ditto, ditto—as ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... the fire said to her, 'Oh, sweet Beansie! tidy up my hearth a bit, for I am half choked by my ashes,' the unkind girl replied, 'The more fool you for having ashes! You don't suppose I am going to dawdle about helping people who won't help themselves? Not ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... Since then I have seen her more daintily shod than when her bare brown legs hurried from view into broken shoes of twice her size. Since then the hard little hand has turned white and thin and tapering, to such a hand as women are wont to let dawdle over the arms of chairs. Then I was a boy, with a boy's haughty way of regarding girlish softness. I was haughtier that day because I sought in my pride to cover up my debt to her. Now I am a man, but the boy's picture of Penelope Blight, the little girl in ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... he will like his job. What I have to pray for is dry weather, that the ladies may spend their days on deck, for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the skipper-job can ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... take a party of one rubbernecking this A.M.? I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I have a hankering for the nobility. Catch the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, and put my ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... When I ask you a question, or give an order, take it deliberately, and dawdle off to ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... was very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... . After I left Richmond, whence I last wrote to you, I went to Bedford, where I was for five weeks: then returned to spend Christmas at Richmond: and now dawdle here hoping to get some accursed lawyers to raise me some money on what remains of my reversion. This they can do, and will do, in time: but, as usual, find it their interest to delay as much ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... (growing, I think, more lazy every day), over very hilly country to Alicante, a seaport town very strongly protected by a castle on a great rock, armed with guns of brass and iron, so that the pirates dare never venture near. And here I fully thought we were to dawdle away another week at the least, this being a very populous and lively city, promising much entertainment. For Moll, when not playing herself, was mad to see others play, and she did really govern, with her subtle wiles and winning smiles, more ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... problems of the currency which, I bethink me, you have studied deeply. Keep you here in London, for I shall have need of you. Within the month, perhaps within the week, I shall require you. England needs men who can do more than dawdle. Pray you, keep me advised where you may ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... around them as they moved hastily away. There were some bargaining at the markets for withered or decaying vegetables, and others purchasing, at a diminished price, stale bread from dirty bakeries, and many a one loitering along in his filth and squalor, with no object nor aim save to dawdle away the time that hung too wearily upon him. It was a sad and loathsome sight, so near the gorgeous thoroughfare of this mighty city, to see the pitiable objects of unmitigated want; but there they were, and in all that teeming mass but two ministering spirits were visible, gliding ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... minister, being mentioned, he said, 'I took to Dr. Gibbons.' And addressing himself to Mr. Charles Dilly, added, 'I shall be glad to see him. Tell him, if he'll call on me, and dawdle over a dish of tea in an afternoon, I shall ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... All chance of success would depend, though, on the man not being near the office door, or facing that way. But before his thoughts were really formed Paul had put them into action. He was too much alarmed and too full of the responsibility of his position to dawdle. Suppose any harm should come to his mother or the children! He grew sick with terror at the ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Trumpeter in a neighbouring kingdom, is of some note and importance, and all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; till I have letters, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... all the odds in his favor. Now she was of another world, for he was, after all, but a workingman, while she, the daughter of a millionaire lumberman, would dance and associate with those other university men whose financial incomes enabled them to dawdle as they pleased through life. He had no bitterness in this summary, but he sustained an instant's longing for a taste of that old existence, and the camaraderie of such girls as the one who sat before him on ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... bed, amidst a confusion of awful sounds, and were deprived of lights as well as food. When we asked for food or light, and made weak appeals on the ground of faintness, the one steward who seemed to dawdle about for the sole purpose of making himself disagreeable, always replied, "You can't get anything, the stewards are on duty." We were not accustomed to recognize that stewards had any other duty than that of feeding the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... can remember it. I do like to see a girl work with a will, even at frying fish. Most of 'em dawdle so at the few things they try to do. There's a piece of energy for you!" and Captain John leaned forward from his rocky seat to watch Ruth, who just then caught up the coffee-pot about to boil over, and with the other hand saved her ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... losing self-control she was accustomed to seek her own room, and see how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know as to some folks ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... that this was not the case, and that it was much better fun to walk with her than with Miss Perry, who used to dawdle so that we ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with him, and his art so short, that he shall dawdle by the way and wander from his path, reducing his giant intellect—garrulous upon matters to him unknown, that the scoffer may rejoice and the Philistine be appeased while he takes up the parable of the mob and proclaims himself their spokesman and fellow-sufferer? ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... needed than now: I am near Ujiji, but the slaves who paddle are tired, and no wonder; they keep up a roaring song all through their work, night and day. I expect to get medicine, food, and milk at Ujiji, but dawdle and do nothing. I have a good appetite, and sleep well; these are the favourable symptoms; but am dreadfully thin, bowels irregular, and I have no medicine. Sputa increases; hope to hold out to Ujiji. Cough ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... were the delight of the convalescents. They were two peculiarly lazy sultanas of cats—mere jewels of the harem—Oriental beauties that loved to bask in the sun or curl themselves up on the rug before the fire and dawdle away their lives in congenial idleness. Strange to say, Hilda's prophecy came true. Zuleika settled herself down comfortably in the Professor's easy chair and fell into a sound sleep from which there was no awaking; while Roxana met fate on the tiger-skin ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the lounges of fashionable clubs. They may be had tied in bundles by the employers of menial labor. Their women work at the wash-tubs, and crowd the sweat shops of great cities; or, idle rich, they may dawdle in the various ways in which men and women dispose of time, yielding nothing in return for it. You, whom the century wants, belong to none of these classes. Yours must be the spirit of the times, ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Hilda's mind. And now, in Janet's bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks—to obtain an ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars. On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have taken him straight to his hotel, and he would have been spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it was ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... he got Home, he might discover it was Tara, after all. It would need some courage to propose again. For the memory of that juvenile fiasco still pricked his sensitive pride. A touch of the Rajput came out there. Letters from Serbia seemed to dawdle unconscionably by the way. But, in leisurely course, he had received an answer to his screed about Dyan and the quest; a letter alive with all he loved best in her—enthusiasm, humour, vivid sympathy, deepened and enlarged by experiences that could not yet be told. But ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Masters, and even YOU and ME, dear, had nothing else to do. That was love as I know it; not Seth's sneaking rages, and Uncle Ben's sneaking fooleries, and Masters's sneaking conceit, but only love. And knowing that, I let Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and Masters trifle—and for what? To keep them from me and my boy. They were satisfied, and we ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... unpleasant behaviour to women. If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He was always dawdling after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate. Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is earnest as flame, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Circumstances, natural indolence, and her sister's extreme indulgence had brought about a condition of life that propagated itself. One languid day was the parent of another, it was so much easier to dawdle than to act. Thus she had lost her opportunity. If he had won health, even Graydon said it would have brought her beauty. She might have secured his admiration, respect, and even love, instead of his pity. What could be more absurd ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... nothing whatever except go to market and drink himself into a disaffected, discontented condition. He is rarely visible before ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, except on market days, and he appears to smoke and dawdle most of his time away. Just now he broods over his wrongs, and declares he "will have his own again," whatever that may signify. He says he is enormously over-rented. Perhaps he is; but I cannot forget that it is not many years since he and his neighbours in the ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... her helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... waverer, ass between two bundles of hay; shuttlecock, butterfly; wimp; doughface [U.S.]. V. be irresolute &c adj.; hang in suspense, keep in suspense; leave "ad referendum"; think twice about, pause; dawdle &c (inactivity) 683; remain neuter; dillydally, hesitate, boggle, hover, dacker^, hum and haw, demur, not know one's own mind; debate, balance; dally with, coquet with; will and will not, chaser-balancer^; go halfway, compromise, make a compromise; be thrown off one's balance, stagger like ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... scientific economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the advancing ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... unsuspiciously.—"Boys, I warn you against being engaged while you have a demand for brains. I should like to dawdle here before the fire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... inquired rather angrily, for I hated all the tittle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a good many of them professionally at various times, and was well acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The gossiping circle in flat-land about Earl's Court was bad enough, but ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... hurry up your cakes much further, I've got jest two words to say to ye. Don't cut it too fat, or you'll flummux by the way, an' leave nuthin' but a grease-spot. Don't dawdle round doin' nuthin' but stuffin' yerself to kill. Don't act like a gonus,—don't hanker arter the flesh-pots. Wake up, peel your eyes, an' do suthin' for a dyspeptic world, for sufferin' sinners, for yerself. Allers stick close ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... tobacco-fields by a convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn should call ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving a bundle on the field; where food ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... with an invitation for him to step inside. There was something inexplainable about this maid who veiled her eagerness to admit him with such transparencies. Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. The ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... gave the word, the brigade swung into the broad road and it marched. It did not dawdle along. It marched, and it marched fast. It actually seemed to Harry after the first mile that it was ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... glass of bitter at the hands of a pretty barmaid rather than from an oleaginous pot-man in his shirt-sleeves; and the sherry-cobbler acquires a racier flavour from the arch looks of the Hebe who dispenses it. If silly young men do dawdle at the bar for the sake of the sirens inside, and occasionally, as we have known to be the case, take unto themselves these same sirens "for better or for worse," we can only cite the opinion of well-informed authorities, that very possibly the young gentlemen in ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... let you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a long rest there, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... done and admirably done. Future generations will profit by it. But the peasant who had had all his ideas and habits upheaved had had time to forget the oppression of the Turk, but remembered, with kindness, his slop-dawdle tolerance, This happens, I believe, in every land "freed" from the Turk. The people vaguely expect an earthly paradise where every one will do as he pleases, and find to their dismay that you can no longer evade the sheep-tax ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem to have the smallest capability of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking—like part of it, or like a good cop. The first ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... was doing was a thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thing that would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet he kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... it wise to dawdle any longer," he replied. "Surely you have known what I've been driving at ever since I first clapped eyes on you. There's plenty of time. I don't want to hurry you, only I want you to be engaged ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... here, but if you want Frank, you'd better tell him not to dawdle over Annette's gate half an hour," began Jack, who could not resist teasing his dignified brother about one of the few foolish things he was fond ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... in the least. Do come on, Hilda. We shan't have time if you dawdle on here. In any case Pussy will have to pack our ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... that young person gaily, "as the reward of virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to the theater ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he himself ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... elders that the only form of riot or revel ever known to me would be that of the visiting mind. Wasn't I myself for that matter even at that time all acutely and yet resignedly, even quite fatalistically, aware of what to think of this? I at any rate watch the small boy dawdle and gape again. I smell the cold dusty paint and iron as the rails of the Eighteenth Street corner rub his contemplative nose, and, feeling him foredoomed, withhold from him no grain of my sympathy. He is a convenient little image or ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... well-known fact that in the world of to-day time is an essential factor in the race for success. No young man can afford to dawdle for four long years in acquiring a so-called "higher" education. Three-fourths of that time is, if anything, more than sufficient in which to attain all the graces and culture that the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Monday, and returned here yesterday; go away to- morrow. It has been a dreadfully idle life all day long, facendo niente, incessant gossip and dawdle, poor, unprofitable talk, and no rational employment. Brougham was here a little while ago for a week. He, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Anglesey form a discontented triumvirate, and are knit together by the common bond of a sense of ill-usage and of merit neglected. Wellesley ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... could leave New York in May or June, dawdle along the route until we reach Southern California. Those who cannot take time to go to Hawaii, can railroad themselves back home, and we can sail leisurely across the Pacific to visit the Hawaiian Islands. There again, those who cannot go on to the ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to the disappointment of Lord Mildmay. But what in the name of goodness, my dear fellow, has produced this wonderful revolution in all your plans in the course of a few hours? I thought you were going to mope away life on the Lake of Geneva, or dawdle it away ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... just the kind of a sentimental hair-splitting little idiot that I used to be! Instead of getting at her husband's point of view and enjoying with him, at least sometimes, she insists on acting the martyr because he will not dawdle around ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... however, that this part of education is not for everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay is there "fresh and fresh"? Why should they turn up on time for their task? Why should they not dawdle at their labor sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk? If among them is one who cares to work with a fever of industry that even socialism cannot calm, let him do it. We, his fellows, will take our time. Our pay is there as certain and ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... unemployed are mostly utter loafers, who will not give a good day's work for a fair day's wage. They refuse to work for less than eight shillings a day, and many of them if offered work at that price only dawdle about for a few hours and ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... to Hyde's life, and were not altogether approved by him. His pretence of reading law had to be abandoned, for he had promised to remain at home with his mother, and it would not therefore be possible for him to dawdle about Pearl Street and Maiden Lane watching for Cornelia. But he had that happy and fortunate temper that trusts to events; and also, he soon began to realize that if circumstances alter cases, they also ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... the best way. None of us want to dawdle our lives out in this place all day, and you don't want to leave any of us behind, Uncle Moses; so if we all go together, we'll all ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... like Cutlack, which is Guthlac a little changed, and Norman names, like Camps, inherited perhaps from some invalided soldier who made his home there after the great fight. There is but little communication with the outer world; on market-days a few trains dawdle along the valley from Ely to St. Ives and back again. They are fine, sturdy, prosperous village communities, that mind their own business, and take their pleasure in religion and in song, like their forefathers the fenmen, Girvii, who sang their ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to respect her privacy, and then, getting out of the train, which had drawn up in the station, we hailed a taxi and climbed quickly into it. Charing Cross is the last place to dawdle in if you have any objection ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... as hot as that last bourne whither all evil-doers wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Grace would dawdle over the dishwashing, and Percy was a good second. Therefore, those two still had work on their hands when Bess sighted a motor boat coming swiftly toward their camp from the direction of ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... a young country, offering a wide field to all who sought work, adventure, achievement. Her thoughts ran on exultantly. She was rich, she was free, she was young, she was strong; why dawdle and dream among the fiords of Norway? Why scale Swiss mountains? Let that come later, when she had earned a playtime. In the first vigorous years of her youth, let her go out to the sunny land that was her home ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... his office and sat down to dawdle over his report. If the reading of the article in the paper had left him unshaken, this silent passing of the Idalia had done for him still more. It had brought the calm and peace of a situation from which ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... party of one rubbernecking this A.M.? I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I have a hankering for ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... fire said to her, 'Oh, sweet Beansie! tidy up my hearth a bit, for I am half choked by my ashes,' the unkind girl replied, 'The more fool you for having ashes! You don't suppose I am going to dawdle about helping people who won't help themselves? Not a bit ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... While you dawdle, the life blood is being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it is a woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don't realize it. I'm praying to God that I'll rise ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... not dawdle over his supper. In a quarter of an hour he had finished it, and was building up the fire again. Then he stretched himself beside the trio in the rude bunk, drawing one thin blanket over him. Neal, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... it matter now where she went? And yet she must go somewhere, and do something. There remained to her the wearisome possession of herself, and while she lived she must eat, and have clothes, and require shelter. She could not dawdle out a bitter existence under Lady Fawn's roof, eating the bread of charity, hanging about the rooms and shrubberies useless and idle. How bitter to her was that possession of herself, as she felt that there was nothing good to be done with the thing so possessed! ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... day was full of a promise like spring. She felt an approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in her. It gave her pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it gave her pleasure to dip into books, to try on her different garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a new lease of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a child, very attractive and beautiful to everybody, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... nor this cruel beauty lose, And I perforce grow kind: I'll not survive The deep delicious poison of a smile Nor mortal music of the sighing bosom That slowly overcomes the fainting brain. It shall not dawdle downward to the grave; I'll pass upon the instant of perfection. No woman shall behold Poppaea fade: And ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... concentrated practice with the mind fresh and the body rested is better than four hours of dissipated practice with the mind stale and the body tired. With a fatigued intellect the fingers simply dawdle over the keys and nothing is accomplished. I find in my own daily practice that it is best for me to practice two hours in the morning and then two hours later in the day. When I am finished with two hours ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... was called an incorrigible dawdle, and made humble confession of the same, offering to do all in her power to make up for the morning's laziness. But what would Midas be ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; till I have letters, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... returned here yesterday; go away to- morrow. It has been a dreadfully idle life all day long, facendo niente, incessant gossip and dawdle, poor, unprofitable talk, and no rational employment. Brougham was here a little while ago for a week. He, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Anglesey form a discontented triumvirate, and are knit together by the common bond of a sense of ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... thinking and thinking any longer; I must do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, and put my ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... month and feel like shaking that little simpleton!—she is just the kind of a sentimental hair-splitting little idiot that I used to be! Instead of getting at her husband's point of view and enjoying with him, at least sometimes, she insists on acting the martyr because he will not dawdle around and gush ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... him now. And so she told him that he must have supper, and that he must let her go; and there was a sweet tinge of motherly authority in her words—unconsciously to her, arbitrary and unconsciously to him, submissive—and she left him to smoke upon the broad porch, and dawdle in the chair he remembered so well, and talk ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... and Maw, and Seth and Masters, and even YOU and ME, dear, had nothing else to do. That was love as I know it; not Seth's sneaking rages, and Uncle Ben's sneaking fooleries, and Masters's sneaking conceit, but only love. And knowing that, I let Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and Masters trifle—and for what? To keep them from me and my boy. They were ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... with your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking at folk. ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... respectable number of horses and cattle. Our hide and tallow trade is only good; the Russians have monopolized the fur trade; we continue to raise cattle and horses because it would be an exertion to suppress them; and meanwhile we dawdle away our lives very pleasurably, whilst a magnificent territory, filled with gold and richer still in soil, lies idle beneath our feet. Nature never works without a plan. She compounded a wonderful country, and she ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... flat in the shape of a brown and aged 'Times.' There are no "evenings out." The first sign of eve is the signal for dispersion homewards, and it is only from the safe shelter of his own room that the winter patient ventures to gaze on the perilous glories of the sunset. The evenings are in fact a dawdle indoors as the day has been a dawdle out, a little music, a little reading of the quiet order, a little chat, a little letter-writing, and an early ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... job. What I have to pray for is dry weather, that the ladies may spend their days on deck, for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the skipper-job can be combined ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... that luncheon, "picked up" though it was, was over. By then everybody was very tired. Aunt Wess' exclaimed that she could not stand another minute, and retired to her room. Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work unpacking her trunk and putting her clothes away. Her fox terrier, whom the family, for obscure reasons, called the Pig, arrived in the middle of the afternoon in a crate, and shivering ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... always the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you please tell Mrs Butler to bring out grannie's parcels and post at once. I'm afraid to dawdle, it's getting late." ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the tobacco-fields by a convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn should call ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... compelled to admit that her ill health was to some extent her fault as well as her misfortune. Circumstances, natural indolence, and her sister's extreme indulgence had brought about a condition of life that propagated itself. One languid day was the parent of another, it was so much easier to dawdle than to act. Thus she had lost her opportunity. If he had won health, even Graydon said it would have brought her beauty. She might have secured his admiration, respect, and even love, instead of his pity. What could be more absurd than to imagine that he could ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... over to England for a rest after a severe illness, and with an intense craving, after his twenty years of stress and toil, to stand aside and watch the world—the English, conservative world he loved—dawdle by. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience about that, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and bathe, George. Why do you dawdle talking? Bring them back to tea. Bring back some milk, cakes, honey. The change will do you good. George has been working very hard at his office. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the teacher denominates disorder. This so-called disorder betokens good health on their part and is a revelation of the fact that they have a keen appreciation of the fitness of things. They cannot brook monotony and it irks them to dawdle about in the anteroom of action. They are eager to do their work if only the teacher will get right at it. But they are impatient of meaningless preliminaries. They see no sense in calling the roll when everybody is present ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... for over two months. He had thrown his entire time and care into his work in the North. And now that these arrears had to be cleared off, he attacked the business with an obvious impatience. Formerly he had been used to dawdle over his letters, getting through a good portion of the forenoon with them and conversations with Waters about Buckinghamshire news. Now, even with that omniscient factotum by his side, his progress was slow, simply because he was hurried. He made dives here ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... than he could remember since this young American had taken a real holiday except for an occasional fishing trip on the Gunnison or into Wyoming. He had lived a life of activity. Now for the first time he learned how to be lazy. To dawdle indolently on one of the broad porches, while Miss Yuste sat beside him and busied herself over some needlework, was a sensuous delight that filled him with content. He felt that he would like to bask there ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... labor, the restlessness, the noise, the quarrels, the mooning ways, the healthy pessimism which was the motive power of the Euler family, as it is that of all respectable persons, and made their life a foretaste of purgatory. That a woman who did nothing but dawdle about all the blessed day should take upon herself to defy them with her calm insolence, while they bore their suffering in silence like galley-slaves,—and that people should approve of her into the bargain—that ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the "Argus." She had rather expected ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... thinking so intently about the matter that he began to dawdle. And if there was one thing that the Muley Cow didn't like it was to have to stand still while a slow milker puttered at his work. So she suddenly gave her tail a switch and brought the end of ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the negroes to see how much they could get out of the planters and how little they could give in return. They knew they had the whip hand of massa, and they were not slow to profit by the knowledge. They would saunter to their work at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, dawdle through it with intensely provoking unfaithfulness till three or four in the afternoon, and then would raise a prodigious uproar if they were not paid as liberally as if they had done an honest day's work. The poor planter meanwhile ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... places of amusement no matter how bad the night. It is a miserable pretence to say that the weather keeps the majority at home from church. It is only an excuse. I should have a great deal more respect for them if they would say frankly, 'We would rather sleep, read a novel, dawdle around en deshabille, and gossip.' Half the time when they say it's too stormy to venture out (oh, the heroism of our Christian age!), they should go and thank God for the rain that is providing food for ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... possession. He had heard of Sir Launcelot's extravagance, by which he was in some measure infected, and he dropped an insinuation, that he could eclipse his rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they could hardly exist asunder. Davy was an artful sycophant, but he did not flatter ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... lazy every day), over very hilly country to Alicante, a seaport town very strongly protected by a castle on a great rock, armed with guns of brass and iron, so that the pirates dare never venture near. And here I fully thought we were to dawdle away another week at the least, this being a very populous and lively city, promising much entertainment. For Moll, when not playing herself, was mad to see others play, and she did really govern, with her subtle wiles and winning smiles, more than her father, for all his masterful spirit, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Theo at last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle! sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago! To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... battle-field. If you go to college, young man, you have got to be in earnest, too. You have got to say to yourself, "I am going to make more out of what is in me than any man with like ability ever did before." You cannot dawdle—remember that. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... started off briskly into the woodland road, striding along with the splendid swing of the healthy Englishwoman who has not been trained to dawdle. Her walking-skirt gave free play to her limbs; she was far past the well-known "line in the road" before she paused to take a full breath and to recapitulate. Her heart beat faster and the sudden glow in her cheek was not from ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... from Forresters in the hem. Her bra was a Graceform, size thirty two, medium cup, but the girl on the bed did not have much need for molding, shaping, uplifting, padding or pretense. She was all her and she filled it right to the brim. I let my perception dawdle on the slender ankles, the lissome waist, ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... but we can remember it. I do like to see a girl work with a will, even at frying fish. Most of 'em dawdle so at the few things they try to do. There's a piece of energy for you!" and Captain John leaned forward from his rocky seat to watch Ruth, who just then caught up the coffee-pot about to boil over, and with the other ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... acquainted with Mr. Thomas Moore, the poet, while Mr. Moore was 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... matter, after all, from what point of time or space we go home; how we shall smile, after we get there, that we ever gave it one moment's thought! You ask what I am doing; well, I am taking a vacation and not writing anything to speak of, yet just as busy as ever; not one moment in which to dawdle, though I dare say I seem to the folks here at home to be sitting round doing nothing. I must give you a picture of one day and you must photograph one of yours, as we have done before. Got up at seven and went through the usual forms; had prayers and breakfast, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... will behave badly at table if left to their own devices. Even though they may commit no serious offenses, such as making a mess of their food or themselves, or talking with their mouths full, all children love to crumb bread, flop this way and that in their chairs, knock spoons and forks together, dawdle over their food, feed animals—if any are allowed in the room—or become ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not. Didn't I just tell you he has been gone over two hours, delivering an order that should not have taken him more than fifteen minutes at the most? No good boy would dawdle so about his business. But ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... person gaily, "as the reward of virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to the theater in ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... taken him straight to his hotel, and he would have been spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it was with anathema maranatha. He groaned in spirit, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... the least. Do come on, Hilda. We shan't have time if you dawdle on here. In any case Pussy will have to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... ought not to dawdle like this!" exclaimed Phillis, impatiently; and they went on quickly, past the long row of old-fashioned white houses with the green before them and that sweet Sussex border of soft feathery tamarisk, and then past the cricket-field, and down to the whitewashed cottage of the Preventive Station; ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... I wouldn't be so mean as to fool you about such a thing. But mamma says you mustn't dawdle to-day. So hurry up and get those towels done. Sylvy is going to be awfully busy, so you'll have to help her, but we're going to clean the knives for you, and shell the peas. Bring them down to the little house; we're going down there. We might ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... gigantic bubble schemes,— Whoever can invent 'em!— How splendid the prospectus seems, With int'rest cent. per centum His shares the holder, startled, sees At eighty below par: I dawdle to my club at ease, And light a ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... "Here comes your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... mind all these things are necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... The Mule was not in the least disturbed. "Behind me, in the cart," said he, "sits my master. He holds the reins, and flicks me with his whip, and him I obey, but I don't want any of your impertinence. I know when I may dawdle and when I ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Flight that has no ending and no direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and the streets and crowds tearing ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... but he was young and abstracted, and the interest which clings around an abstracted person who is young is often inconsiderable, so he determined for one day at least to leave Sir Cupid to his own devices, for he could not spend all his time defending Margery from amatory dawdle. For this one day he would leave ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede: a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... coming? Since then I have seen her more daintily shod than when her bare brown legs hurried from view into broken shoes of twice her size. Since then the hard little hand has turned white and thin and tapering, to such a hand as women are wont to let dawdle over the arms of chairs. Then I was a boy, with a boy's haughty way of regarding girlish softness. I was haughtier that day because I sought in my pride to cover up my debt to her. Now I am a man, but the boy's picture of Penelope Blight, the little girl in the patched blue frock and broken ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the only "she" would take it into her pretty, capricious head to pay a call. In this latter line the Scholar had a decided pull. Education had taught him taste; necessity, handiness; and by aid of the two he transformed his rude dwelling into something approaching the rooms in which he used to dawdle away the happy hours, time ago. It was partly drawing-room, partly curiosity-shop. Cups, saucers, and spoons appeared as if by magicians' call, and one blazing afternoon the news flashed round the diamond-pits ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence, hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins in the green aisles of the garden. But mostly the old couple just pretended to do their chores, and sat on the porch and watched the clouds go by and the frogs flop ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... truth was a young country, offering a wide field to all who sought work, adventure, achievement. Her thoughts ran on exultantly. She was rich, she was free, she was young, she was strong; why dawdle and dream among the fiords of Norway? Why scale Swiss mountains? Let that come later, when she had earned a playtime. In the first vigorous years of her youth, let her go out to the sunny land that was her home and give it of her best. Let her ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... in ordinary schools in all parts of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or to flit from ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... him to step inside. There was something inexplainable about this maid who veiled her eagerness to admit him with such transparencies. Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... good look at the scholars. On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took out his cigarette-case. "Now you mention it, I think I do. But I mustn't dawdle. I have got to get back ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... wonderful than a thousand other happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average were upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed continent. Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-carts should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction of a plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than that on the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested fakir should be squatting, guarded by British soldiers, who marched on ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... the day just a little from its own loveliness, and lies upon the sighing and expectant city like the substance of a dream made visible. It has the magic to transmute you to this substance yourself, so that while you dawdle afoot, or whisk by in your hansom, or rumble earthquakingly aloft on your omnibus-top, you are aware of being a part, very dim, very subtile, of the passer's blissful consciousness. It is flattering, but you feel like ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... assured her that this was not the case, and that it was much better fun to walk with her than with Miss Perry, who used to dawdle so that ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call her husband "papa." And she ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing theatricalities into motion only at the touch ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... said Nina. "You can start in and 'pinch back' this prairie climber—do you hear, Phil? I won't let you dawdle around and yawn while I'm pricking my fingers every instant! Make ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... are not at all lacking, but there are no noble cathedrals, no vast museums of art and antiquity, no snow-clad mountains. There is a charm of light and shade and color that is to be absorbed slowly rather than swallowed at a single gulp. It is emphatically a place in which to dawdle. Let those who are obliged to do so, work and hurry; the visitor and the traveller should take it without haste. It is far better to see Havana and its vicinity slowly and enjoyably, and look at pictures of the rest of the country, than ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... her mother was greater. There she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. She discovered, indeed, that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... so excitable, man. When I ask you a question, or give an order, take it deliberately, and dawdle off to see ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... quite perhaps as healthy, allowing for difference of years; quite as likely to last his time. But between them there was the difference of the nervous temperament and the lymphatic. Travers, with less brain than Sir Peter, had kept his brain constantly active; Sir Peter had allowed his brain to dawdle over old books and lazily delight in letting the hours slip by. Therefore Travers still looked young, alert,—up to his day, up to anything; while Sir Peter, entering that drawing-room, seemed a sort of Rip van Winkle ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... six, and the boy, more mindful of his own tea than his neighbour's ailments, slips on his jacket and goes home. The last customers dawdle out with a grunt intended for a salutation. Mrs. Mason is softly heard to snore. And all the while Annie Mason- -all the colour vanished from her wholesome face—stands with her hands clutching her dress, gazing down ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... we did not know, but we were taking no chances of reaching Doubloon Spit too late. If we succeeded in getting what we had come after there would be plenty of time to dawdle. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... so-called unemployed are mostly utter loafers, who will not give a good day's work for a fair day's wage. They refuse to work for less than eight shillings a day, and many of them if offered work at that price only dawdle about for a few ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... laughed aloud, without knowing why, like one hovering on the very verge of being mad. And so I remained, drowned in the ocean of the torture and the nectar of love-longing, every now and then waking as from a day-dream to wonder at the sun, who seemed to dawdle on his way, as if on purpose to separate my soul from my body with impatience. But at last, after all, day began slowly to come to an end, and I set out for the palace, with feet that could hardly be restrained from running as ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order half-a-crown's worth of soup ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he had been held up by Doctor Carmack to the other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had all ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... "Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out suddenly out of an impassive face held ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... following fast upon your heels. There is no time to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied—you are edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... both of Saxon appellations, like Cutlack, which is Guthlac a little changed, and Norman names, like Camps, inherited perhaps from some invalided soldier who made his home there after the great fight. There is but little communication with the outer world; on market-days a few trains dawdle along the valley from Ely to St. Ives and back again. They are fine, sturdy, prosperous village communities, that mind their own business, and take their pleasure in religion and in song, like their ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... opinion of times long passed, but certainly we found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure energetically dancing ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... together, quick, and don't dawdle; we're at home now, and you will have to set about ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and manifold discomforts of our ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... never a pupil here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got to be somewhere before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its kind, it is really a very fine school—very ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Grimm—the Mr. Grimm of the bureau. Mr. Grimm was an utterly different type from his chief. He was younger, perhaps thirty-one or two, physically well proportioned, a little above the average height, with regular features and listless, purposeless eyes—a replica of a hundred other young men who dawdle idly in the windows of their clubs and watch the world hurry by. His manner was languid; ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... the butter, the farmer appears to me to do nothing whatever except go to market and drink himself into a disaffected, discontented condition. He is rarely visible before ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, except on market days, and he appears to smoke and dawdle most of his time away. Just now he broods over his wrongs, and declares he "will have his own again," whatever that may signify. He says he is enormously over-rented. Perhaps he is; but I cannot forget that ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... completely, but never dawdle. Be either in harness or out of harness avowedly. Special importance is to be given to painting this year. Pictures are to be first painted in monochrome, in raw umber and white. Read one thing at a time in one language. All ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... time." This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license[A] to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness[A] or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet[A] realisation of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... thinking (almost as bad a thing as desultory reading), which is indeed no thinking at all. Real thinking is what Cleopatra calls "sweating labor," to which the hewing of wood and drawing of water is a joke; but this I carefully avoid, knowing my own incapacity for it; so I dawdle about my mind, and, naturally, arrive at few conclusions; and among those few, no doubt, many ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... trustee, with whom the Government officials deal. They are to a large extent their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange themselves. Sometimes, of course, the officers, in making ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his way in his somewhat eccentric gait, compounded of a hop, and a skip, and a dawdle. He had made about half a mile when the path curved to the mountain's brink. He paused and parted the glossy leaves of the dense laurel that he might look out over the precipice at the distant heights. How blue—how softly blue they were!—the endless ranges about ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... the cuckoo-clock. Where did it come from? How long had they had it? What a jolly little customer the wee bird was, darting out and darting in with his hurry-call to anyone who would listen! It made a fellow feel ashamed to dawdle at his work. It wouldn't do to let any mere bird get ahead of him—a wooden ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... standing there, I don't think I could face it. But then I was with the girl; I had to save her. Fire was behind us, racing after us; water lay in front. Once there and we were safe. It was not a time to dawdle or hesitate, I ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... will go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the profits of petty larceny are ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... his wife was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I don't I shall fail the editor and be left without money. I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind; but by the time I get to the middle I begin to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... no need for haste. She might depart at her leisure, and dawdle as much as she pleased on her homeward way. All she wanted was to be seated neat and trim in a carefully arranged room, ready to pour out Aunt Betsy's afternoon tea, when the cobs returned from Romsey. She put Lear back in his place, and strolled slowly through ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... no oath to dawdle around Europe indefinitely. I propose to return to New York and go ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to go through life reading the signs on the ten-story buildings and acquiring knowledge, than to dawdle and "Ah!" adown our pathway to the tomb and leave no record for posterity except that we had a good neck to pin a necktie upon. It is not pleasant to be called green, but I would rather be green and aspiring than blase ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... stand about railway stations all day long to see trains go by. They dally on the lounges of fashionable clubs. They may be had tied in bundles by the employers of menial labor. Their women work at the wash-tubs, and crowd the sweat shops of great cities; or, idle rich, they may dawdle in the various ways in which men and women dispose of time, yielding nothing in return for it. You, whom the century wants, belong to none of these classes. Yours must be the spirit of the times, strenuous, ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous events which ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem to have the smallest capability of appreciating your ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... later that the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for some time, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend, "Dreever," in large letters showed that they had ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... letters to his favourites; he addressed pretty little poems to them on their birthdays, and composed long nursery rhymes for their edification; whilst overwhelmed with historical labours, and grudging the demands of society, he would dawdle away whole mornings with them, and spend the afternoon in taking them to sights; he would build up a den with newspapers behind the sofa, and act the part of tiger or brigand; he would take them ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily to Crataiis who is Scylla's ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... little folks, listen; I'll tell you a tale, Though to shock and surprise you I fear it won't fail; Of Master John Dawdle my story must be, Who, I'm sorry to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... school is prohibited. When it is, the good boys and quick boys have to learn how to waste their extra time, which seems to be a pity. But with a sensible master, it is a thing understood, that it is better for boys or girls to study hard while they study, and never to learn to dawdle. Taking it for granted that you are in the hands of such masters or mistresses, I will take it for granted that, when you have learned the school lesson, there will be no objection to your next learning the other lesson, which lazier boys will ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the river's ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... quickly in these days, father.... There is no time to dawdle. You understand that you are to remain in ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... schooling was over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was very obedient and industrious, and exerted herself to please Mother Holle, for she thought of the gold she should get in return. The next day, however, she began to dawdle over her work, and the third day she was more idle still; then she began to lie in bed in the mornings and refused to get up. Worse still, she neglected to make the old woman's bed properly, and forgot to shake ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... anything to do, Molly!" And to Vickers she complained: "Children nowadays seem perfectly helpless. Unless they are provided with amusement every minute, they dawdle about, waiting for you to do something for them. Miss Betterton ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... "This was a grand chance for you. Ah, ha! The business riled your stomach a little, but nonsense! that will soon pass off. But we must not dawdle here; someone may come in. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... in-doors and in my big chair nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every day, write some—reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend half the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... evil-doers wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... manifest, however, that this part of education is not for everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... more needed than now: I am near Ujiji, but the slaves who paddle are tired, and no wonder; they keep up a roaring song all through their work, night and day. I expect to get medicine, food, and milk at Ujiji, but dawdle and do nothing. I have a good appetite, and sleep well; these are the favourable symptoms; but am dreadfully thin, bowels irregular, and I have no medicine. Sputa increases; hope to hold out to Ujiji. Cough worse. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... was so quick in his operations, did not dawdle over his luggage, and took the early coach: for as soon as the mistake about Prince Bulbo was found out, that cruel Glumboso sent up a couple of policemen to Prince Giglio's room, with orders that he should be carried to Newgate, and his head taken off before twelve ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He was always dawdling after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate. Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is earnest as flame, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... reconciled to the disappointment of Lord Mildmay. But what in the name of goodness, my dear fellow, has produced this wonderful revolution in all your plans in the course of a few hours? I thought you were going to mope away life on the Lake of Geneva, or dawdle it away in Florence ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the women—except Marion, who took what the men took—used claret sparingly. Coffee was served where ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
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