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More "Deferential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... were almost deferential to her, the Church saw that she did not want. She walked without passion, like a shade, tormented into moments of love by the child. Her dying husband with his tortured eyes and the skin drawn tight over his face, he was as a vision to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... to the governor nearly led to a quarrel. That dignitary was by no means so deferential as on the previous visit; indeed, he was barely civil. Many things had happened during the previous weeks. A ship had arrived from Spain, and she carried an important passenger—to wit, Brother Basil. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... arms. She pushed against his shoulders with steady hands. They were not struggling hands but firm and definite of meaning, and Halloway released her. He released her readily as a man may who can afford to be deferential in ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... particular line, submissiveness should be his characteristic. The possession of this quality was the foundation of Mr. W. H. Smith's remarkable success as Leader. It is true he could not, had he tried, have varied his deferential attitude towards the House by one of sterner mould, and the House enjoys the situation more keenly if that alternative be existent. It took Mr. Smith as he was, and the two got on ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and worry increased momentarily, especially since Graydon, beyond a little furtive observation, completely ignored her. She naturally ascribed his course to resentment at her first greeting of Arnault, his continued presence at her side, and the almost deferential manner with which he was treated by her father, who had joined his family at supper, when no queries ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... don't say that," spoke up a deferential voice from the face of a rather sallow-skinned young man, with long, ringleted, yellow hair. "Don't create a prejudice, I beg of you. Andrew Zane was my classmate. He gave his excellent father some trouble, but it shouldn't be remembered against him ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... wounded, tired-out man? Why did she always seem to be holding him at arm's-length when there was, surely, no earthly reason why she should do so? His manner had always been perfectly courteous to her, and even deferential. He had done her father many acts of kindness, without as much as referring to them, and still, with a spice of perversity, she had always shrunk from appearing to notice him. She shrewdly suspected that ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... sprang to his feet and stood over Mrs. Groome with his charming deferential manner, but he had far too much tact to offer assistance as she rose heavily ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... but livelier or more complaisant companions; but they continued to like her and to pay her much general attention. She never, in any nuance of manner, even tried to make a difference; nevertheless, their attitude toward her was always more deferential ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... the elder Robusti, but, on the contrary, induced him to put the boy into the school of Titian, where Tintoretto only remained a short time. Titian did not choose to impart what could be imparted of his art to his scholars, and, in all probability, Tintoretto was no deferential and submissive scholar. There is a tradition that Titian expelled this scholar from his academy, saying of the dyer's son, that 'he would never be anything ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... all the trainers and owners, or takes care to give the impression that he does. He slowly and pompously hauls out his race book, and one of his satellites opens the ball by saying, in a deferential way: ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... garment up about his waist, were a mass of scars. He was lean, angular, yet peculiarly straight considering his years. As he stood before us he let his shirt-like garment drop, and the change from scarecrow to deferential servant was instantaneous. He was so wrinkled, and the wrinkles were so deep, that one scarcely noticed his sightless eye, almost hidden among a nest of creases; and in spite of the wrinkles, his polished, shaven head made him look ridiculously youthful because one expected ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... greatly to see her entangled in the dilemma, into which Cuthbert led her, occasionally completely posing her by his laughing objections. Of an evening Cuthbert often went up to Porthalloc, where he was warmly welcomed by Anna's mother, whose heart he won by the gentle and deferential manner that rendered him universally popular among the ladies of the families of his artist friends. She would sit smilingly by when the conflicts of the morning were sometimes renewed, for she saw with satisfaction that Anna at ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop—there was nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me "Sir Richard," or "General," or "Your Lordship"—and when people began to stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day. I think that for the time being these things were realities to him. He once ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... proceedings at the office, Murray Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal of talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... spread silks of pride and glittered with the jewels of spendthrift vanity, and yet few knew that high in the building one of the most admired women of the city lived in almost monastic seclusion. The few men who recognized her in the elevator or in the hall bowed with deferential admiration. She was never seen in the dining-rooms, and it was known that she denied herself to all callers except a very few ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... one great act of duplicity which shadowed his whole life, Ronald was true and honorable. Valentine admired his clear Saxon face and firm lips; she admired his deep bright eyes, that darkened with every passing emotion; she liked his gentle, chivalrous manner, his earnest words, his deferential attention to herself, his affectionate devotion ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... A man who believes that determination brings strength, strength brings endurance, and endurance brings success. You know how often in his novels he speaks of the influence of women, socially, morally, and politically, yet his manner was the least interested or deferential in talking that I have ever met with in a man of his class. He certainly thought this particular woman of singularly small account, or else the brusque and tactless allusion to his books may perhaps have annoyed him as it ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... narrow one.... Ah! Ha! Ha! Ha! How scared!" Dentatsu did not deny it—"More than frightened; thoroughly scared." He scanned his companion. "A most surprising fellow! Surely...." He was perplexed. But Jimbei paid no attention to his questioning deferential manner. He was plainly the master—"Come now! All haste is to be made." Urging the pace soon they were amid the hills. The white light of dawn was approaching as they were reaching the top of a difficult climb. "The Utsunoya-to[u]ge (pass)," said Jimbei. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... placidly made, Daisy's mamma offered no response. Winterbourne took for granted that she deeply disapproved of the projected excursion; but he said to himself that she was a simple, easily managed person, and that a few deferential protestations would take the edge from her displeasure. "Yes," he began; "your daughter has kindly allowed me the ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... they do not profess to love. No; the bearing of the Gy-ei towards males in ordinary is very much that of high-bred men in the gallant societies of the upper world towards ladies whom they respect but do not woo; deferential, complimentary, exquisitely polished—what ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to her side with his deferential air, and told her that he could not stay for the evening meal. He explained that he was expecting several friends that night over the Wilderness Road. It was possible that they might already have arrived and were now awaiting him in his cabin. He must hasten homeward ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... conforming to all those relations that demand subordination, with propriety and cheerfulness. When does a man, however high his character or station, appear more interesting or dignified than when yielding reverence and deferential attentions to an aged parent, however weak and infirm? And the pupil, the servant, or the subject, all equally sustain their own claims to self-respect, and to the esteem of others, by equally sustaining the appropriate relations and duties of ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... mathematics, and a few vague conceptions of science; such was the dainty intellectual equipment with which he prepared to do battle with the great world. But for all that he knew something of the art of dealing with men. He had learnt to obey and to command, to be deferential to authority and to exact due obedience, and he had too a priceless treasure of friendship, of generous emotion, untinged with sentimentality, that threw a golden light back upon the tall elms, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the Mystic underwent a change. He had been deferential, even submissive; seldom a teacher so amiable and unmasterful; now he concentrated his power of spirit, and shot it a continuing flash ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... pleased at all with Harboro's friend. He had assumed the attitude of a deferential guide, and his remarks were almost entirely addressed to Harboro. But she was not to be put out by so small a part of the night's programme. After all, Valdez was not planning to return with them, and they were likely to have the ride back by themselves. Valdez, she had ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... have taken the trouble to go, but a kindly message from a very high place as to his troubles had made him feel it a more gracious response to do so. The valet was a trifle distant, if any shade of manner could have been detected in his deferential attitude towards his master. Dawkins was not pleased with Sir Edmund; he felt that his ten years of service had been based on a delusion; he had not intended to be valet to a ruined man. Happily he had been careful. He had not trusted blindly to Providence, and, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Pliny does not mind owning up to it. But this vanity of his peeps out in curious places. When we find him speaking of a young Roman of fashion standing for hours in a crowd to listen to his pleading in the courts, or of his audience pressing him not to omit a single line of his poems, or of the deferential way in which certain young barristers of promise hang on his lips, copy his gestures and bow to his judgment, one cannot resist a smile. When he tells us that he went on calmly reading and taking notes during ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... The deferential Nepaulese did not wait to be asked. "Salaam, sahib," he said, bowing again very low till his forehead almost touched the ground. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... witnessed some strange things. Longstreet, wet and muddy, was the first to enter. He had ridden round most of the battle-field, and his report was not particularly cheerful. Jackson was very quiet, never volunteering any counsel or suggestion, but answering when questioned in a brief, deferential tone. His countenance was very serious, and soon became very troubled. After a time the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard, and two gentlemen came in, dripping. They were the President and his nephew. Davis and Lee then drew to the table, and entered into an animated military ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... recently released from the weight of the coming manager, Bruce Carmyle of all people in the world insinuated himself with that well-bred air of deferential restraint ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... gentlemen in Washington a terrible scare, prompting them to collect funds to relieve the famine in China and even renouncing all claim to the war indemnity of 1901 to smooth matters over. But Japan apparently took no notice of all this and continued to be deferential and polite, even when the growing heaps of unsold goods in the warehouses at Shanghai made the Americans ready to sacrifice some of their national pride. Since Japan wished to take the enemy by surprise, she had to be very careful not to ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... associated products about ten o'clock in the morning, I perceived in the shadow of the cavern no less a person than Miss Oman. She saw me at the same moment, and beckoned peremptorily with a hand that held a large Spanish onion. I approached with a deferential smile. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... the small cabins to ourselves that night. He was still deferential to Elza, but in his manner and in the glitter of those little black eyes, there was irony, and an open, though unexpressed, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Winwood, to whom Archbishops had been deferential and Cabinet Ministers had come for, guidance, meekly promised to send at once for Pater's 'Renaissance' and so fill in a most ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... required the deferential offer of his arm; and somehow, the deference seemed to please her. So he felt that the tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints. Moreover, in matters of architecture he felt at home—if he could only steer clear of any discussion of the grounds. He had ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... an antiquated fashion, and had very capacious seats. We were waited upon by two women, who looked and acted not unlike the countryfolk of New England,—say, of New Hampshire,—except that these may have been more deferential. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... never-ending delight lay therein. That which his right hand had found to do he did with all his might, his frail craft being the admiration of all, while the confidence with which others managed them proved their quality. They toyed with the sea in its placid moods, and were deferential in its ill-humour. But Cassowary never ventured beyond easy hail from the shore, however urgent the occasion or ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... forgetting her first bitter moment. Hal Macy's direct hand-clasp and frank, bright smile of welcome stamped him with sincerity and truth. She liked equally well Lawrence Armitage's deferential greeting and she found the Crane's wide, boyish grin irresistible as he bowed low over her small hand. Yes, the Sanford boys were certainly nice. She was not so sure that she liked the girls. They made too much of Marjorie, and Marjorie had proved herself disloyal ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... years later, as already mentioned, I was king-bee and sole "subject" in the mesmeric show; it was the beginning of the second week; the performance was half over; just then the majestic Dr. Peake, with his ruffled bosom and wristbands and his gold-headed cane, entered, and a deferential citizen vacated his seat beside the Grants and made the great chief take it. This happened while I was trying to invent something fresh in the way of a vision, in response to the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... influences working on the more susceptible of the younger minds. On Mr. Gladstone they told with full force. He became, and never ceased to be, not merely a High-churchman, but what may be called an Anglo-Catholic, in his theology, deferential not only to ecclesiastical tradition, but to the living voice of the visible church, respecting the priesthood as the recipients (if duly ordained) of a special grace and peculiar powers, attaching great importance to the sacraments, feeling himself nearer to the Church of Rome, ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... although I was not fond of him. Travers was a good type of rising young common-law barrister, tall, not bad-looking, with keen dark eyes, black whiskers, and the mobile forensic mouth which can express every shade of feeling, from deferential assent to cynical incredulity; possessed, too, of an endless flow of conversation that was decidedly agreeable, if a trifling too laboriously so, he had been a dangerous rival. But all that was over now; he saw it himself at once, and during ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... thus abide in Christ have the habit of reserve and quiet; they are not rattling and reckless talkers, they will not always have an opinion about everything, and they will not always know what they are going to do. There will be a deferential holding back of judgment, and walking softly with God. It is our headlong, impulsive spirit that keeps us so constantly from hearing ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... "Everybody was always very deferential to him. He always made a sensation if he came into the room. No one could help looking at him. He wasn't one of those tame sneaking creatures that are to be met in country houses, of whom no one takes the least notice; he was much more inclined to take no notice of any ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had been cross and rough while he was weak, became gentler, kinder, and more deferential to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... had just ascended the iron ladder, approached, touching his cap with a deferential forefinger. "A letter addressed to you, sir. Found it in the corridor outside your stateroom. Must have fallen from ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... His success in defending the Southwest, ending in a blaze of glory below New Orleans, utterly eclipsed all the other achievements of the war, excepting alone the darling triumphs on the ocean and the lakes. The deferential spirit of Mr. Monroe's letters to the General, and the readiness of every one everywhere to comply with his wishes, show that his popularity, even then, constituted him a power in the Republic. It was said in later times, that "General Jackson's popularity could ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... of mahogany counters and plate glass windows to the back of the bank, finally stopping before a door bearing the name, in modest lettering—BENJAMIN AUGUSTUS CLYMER. The bank president was sensitive on one point; he never permitted initials only to be used before his name. The messenger's deferential knock was answered by a gruff command to enter. Clymer welcomed Kent with an ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... did not look well at "the Romish King;" besides, Thekla was shrieking with delight at the sight of her father, tall and splendid on his mighty black charger, with a smile for his child, and for the lady a bow so low and deferential that it was evidently remarked by those at whose approach every lady in the balconies was rising, every head in the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a day or two before Godwin was brought face to face with Mr. Cusse, who answered too well to the idea Charlotte's brother had formed of him. He had a very smooth and shiny forehead, crowned by sleek chestnut hair; his chin was deferential; the bend of his body signified a modest hope that he did his duty in the station to which Providence had summoned him. Godwin he sought to flatter with looks of admiring interest; also, by entering upon a conversation which was meant to prove that he did not altogether lack worldly ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and talent. It looks very ill in her that she will not help in the schools with Anna—not even in the Sunday-school. What you or I advise is of no consequence to her: and poor Fannie is completely under her thumb. But I know you think better of her," Mrs. Gascoigne ended with a deferential hesitation. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... you to answer this fellow—" Sprudell's voice shook and his pink face had again taken on the curious chalkiness of color which it became under stress of feeling. Forgetting prudence, his deferential pose, forgetting everything that he should have remembered in his rage at Bruce's hardihood, and the fear of exposure, he shook his ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... noticed of late a change in Kouaga's manner towards us?" I asked him. "At first he was deferential and submissive to your every wish, but it occurs to me that of late his manner is overbearing, and he watches us closely, as ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is little in the play that seems designed to recommend it to the Court before which it was first performed. But the two emphatic references to a ruler's dislike of mobs, despite his love of his people, were perhaps penned in deferential allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds was notorious. In act i. sc. i. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the same thing—could have done no more for me than the chance of Fate; for at the moment the duke's voice called "Sampson!" loudly from the house. I ran in obedience to his summons. He stood in the porch with the little stranger by him; and the stranger wore a deferential, but extremely ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... mentally exclaimed Lake, telegraphing, at the same time, with a bow and a smile of deferential alacrity, and making his way through the crowd as deftly as he could; what a —— fool I was to go ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... bodyguard was pleasantly deferential, lighting cigarettes for him, listening respectfully to his opinions, drawing him out with questions that showed he understood what he was ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... governor, ma'am?" asked the commissioner, with a deferential manner he always used toward the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... had a turn for mimicry; and it was with an irresistible feeling of deferential awe creeping over him that Coates heard the contents of Lady Rookwood's epistle delivered with an enunciation as peremptory and imperious as that of her ladyship's self. The letter was hastily indited, in a clear, firm hand, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... began to eat, and in a little the colour came back to her cheeks, the brightness returned to her eyes, and the coldness in her manner wore off. The landlord himself personally attended to us, and I observed that, whilst his manner towards mademoiselle was deferential and respectful in the extreme, his tone towards me was that of sulky obedience. This was so different from my first reception that, with my suspicions already aroused, it was impossible for me not to see it, and so I took the chance of a shot in the ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... cue from this and that stronger nature, until by chance she came in hailing distance of Mrs. Hilbrough. The two were perfect counterparts. Mrs. Hilbrough was clairvoyant and of prompt decision, but she lacked the commanding position for personal leadership. She was superficially deferential to Mrs. Van Horne's older standing and vastly greater wealth, but she swiftly gained the real ascendancy. Her apparent submission of everything to Mrs. Van Horne's wisdom, while adroitly making up a judgment for the undecided little lady, was ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Derisively deferential, he had resigned to me this secluded chamber in the ell—his own particular sanctum, I remember to have heard—and betaken himself, in all probability, to the more spacious mansion of his ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... deferentially before her father and asked his permission to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two young children only. Peggy said she would not ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... gloves and a straw hat; she made no other change in her dress, having taken off her apron before she set out after Prince. She found her new friend standing with the reins in his hand, as if he were to drive and not she; and Diana was helped into her own waggon with a deferential courtesy which up to that time she had only read of in books; nor known much even so. It silenced her at first. She sat down as mute as a child; and Mr. Knowlton handled Prince and the waggon and all in the style of one that knew how and had ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... dainty little plates and glasses, while Billy's special apology appeared in the form of two steaming little tumblers of rum-punch, the characteristic beverage of the day. All severity of tone and manner had disappeared, and there was something almost chivalric in the deferential smile and rude grace with which the old fellow handed his waiter to the ladies and assured them of the harmless mildness of the punch. Depositing his burden upon a little stand within easy reach of the sofa, Billy turned to leave, but paused as his eye wandered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Secretary received him in a manner different from that adopted by either the Millionaire or the Iron King. The two men were of nearly the same age, but in a deferential, if mis-spent life the Private Secretary had learned to be non-committal. Well he knew that he had but one bedroom; well he knew that, on admitting it, the Poet ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... addition, I stipulate that there shall be no attempt whatever made to communicate with those who are connected with me: these terms agreed upon, I place myself in your hands. You will find in me, as I said before, a deferential patient, and I trust not a troublesome one. I hope you will excuse my adding, that I shall myself pay the charge of my sojourn here from week to ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... leading peers in attendance. After a short pause the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen are subalterns, younger sons without means, youths sent to learn their military duty and the ways of the world: a whole pack of men without wives, without homes, and usually without fortune. High above all this deferential male crowd, moves the lady of the castle: highborn, proud, having brought her husband a dower of fiefs often equal to his own, and of vassals devoted to her race. About her she has no equals; her daughters, scarcely out of the nurse's hands, are given away ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... out of the chateau. Britt stormed and threatened, but the inscrutable Mohammedans shook their heads and hastened toward the gates. Despair reigned in the chateau; tears and lamentations were no more effective than blasphemy. The major-domo, suave and deferential, gravely informed Mr. Britt that they were leaving at the instigation of their legal adviser, who had but that ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, "It's a young lady." Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: "Are we anywhere ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... in wheel of Compensation Bill. Rose after questions on paper disposed of, and asked for ruling of SPEAKER on an important point affecting Parliamentary Procedure. TIM'S manner boded ill for the Government—deferential, low-voiced, with total absence of self-assertion or aggression, TIM stood, the very model of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... in the livery of Peter of Blentz, bowed, and with a deferential sign to the girl led the way from the room. Emma von der Tann followed her guide up a winding stairway which spiraled within a tower at the end of a long passage. On the second floor of the castle the servant led her to a large and beautifully furnished suite of three rooms—a ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... always we talked about the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and saying, "Wait, let me do that for you," and that pleased him, too. I gave him seven fish-hooks—all I had—and made him take them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... HARCOURT, in one of his stage asides, "this is a revelation indeed. Always thought OLD MORALITY was an easy-going gentleman, deferential in manner, unassertive in action. It seems he's a regular tyrant, a sort of unapproachable Padishah. In his bosom are looked all the secrets of State, all the purposes of the Ministry. He takes no one into his confidence, but broods over the destinies of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... babe." He is assured that Mr. BURTIE, who plays this neutral part, "has seen some five-and-twenty summers, and has advanced intellectual views about most things." Mr. Punch's Dramatic Critic has been instructed to "give him double bowing" by way of deferential compensation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... no use taking on, all the same," she said, in a tone somewhat less deferential and kind than before. "And it's too bad a day for you to go out and look for anything. It's going to snow, I'm thinking; so you'd better have your breakfast in bed and stay ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... conversed with not only the Professor, but with Long and Ashman in turn. They were as deferential as they knew how to be, but all the same, their sagacity told them he bore them no good will, and would have been much better pleased had the Aryks wiped them out before they ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... feeling surprised to find that she accepted Kennedy's deferential commands, for after all that was what they amounted to. Almost I felt that she was turning to him for help, that he had broken down some barrier to her confidence. He seemed to exert a sort of hypnotic influence ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... thrown. Edward was thoroughly the cavalier, deeply imbued with the romance of chivalry, and, while making the absolute woman his plaything, always treated the ideal woman as a goddess. A refined gallantry, a deferential courtesy to dame and demoiselle, united the language of an Amadis with the licentiousness of a Gaolor; and a far more alluring contrast than the court of Charles II. presented to the grim Commonwealth seduced the vulgar in that of this most brave and most beautiful prince, when compared ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a great silence fell upon the whole assembly, and it then became the duty of the performer, assuming an attitude of profound and deferential obeisance, to salute the lieutenant-general after a fashion more easily describable by Rabelais or by M. Armand Silvestre than by me, and which seems to have been derived from some of the singular rites attributed by Von Hammer to the Templars, as a ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... With a deferential lifting of his cap the pedlar again murmured his grateful thanks, and made his way out the way he had come in. Fanny waited to lock the yard gate after him, murmuring to herself: "That gate didn't ought to have been left open—it's ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Street, I found a stack of letters awaiting me, also several telegrams. Simon, my man, was expecting me—I had telegraphed from Newhaven—but almost directly he opened the door I noticed a change in his expression, and to some extent in his manner. Deferential, also curiously reserved, he had always been, but now there was a "something" in his eyes, a look which made me think he had something on his mind—something he wished to say to me ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Four days of toros, he said again; and all the people of the country around would come to the fiestas, and there would be a great pilgrimage to this Hermitage of the Virgin.... As he talked in his slow deferential way, a little conscious of his volubility before strangers, there began to grow in my mind a picture of ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... would have ventured to impart such a secret. I was appeased, especially when, after a few minutes' silence, he took my hand and kissed it, the first and last kiss. He said nothing further, and departed. The next time I saw him he was more than usually deferential, more than ever desirous to come closer to me, and I thought the final word must ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... her to fix the day for our marriage." He bowed with old-fashioned gallantry over the pearl-grey suede, held out in farewell, and the Duchess rustled away with Soames, the deferential, in ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... emperor were awaiting the princely pair, and when they entered the hall together, followed by the cortege of Prussia, every head bowed with deferential awe, and every eye sought the ground. One head only bent slightly, and one pair of eyes looked boldly into the face ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... darkness. "And have you really driven over four-and-twenty miles of Barsetshire roads on such a day as this to assist us in our little difficulties? Well, we can promise you gratitude at any rate." And then the vicar shook hands with Mrs. Proudie, in that deferential manner which is due from a vicar to his bishop's wife; and Mrs. Proudie returned the greeting with all that smiling condescension which a bishop's wife should show to a vicar. Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... hand, part of the fascination of cats may be due to the fact that it is so difficult to come to an understanding with them. A man talks to a horse or a dog as to an equal. To a cat he has to be deferential as though it had some Sphinx-like quality that baffled him. He cannot order a cat about with the certainty of being obeyed. He cannot be sure that, if he speaks to it, it will even raise its eyes. If it is perfectly comfortable, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... we seat ourselves, flanked by with two massive dogs, and soon are discussing a nondescript repast which is too late for lunch and too early for dinner but which is remarkably appetizing in either view. An hour later, we are again in Luchon, greeted by the deferential head-waiter of the Richelieu, whose starchy bosom expands with hourly welcome for each ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... What ideal? That of a moral order, founded on respect for self and for others, and on reverence for duty—in a word, upon personal worth and dignity. The master shows consideration to his guests, the children are deferential to their parents, and every one and everything has its place. They understand both how to command and how to obey. The little world is well governed, and seems to go of itself; duty is the genius loci—but duty tinged with a reserve and self-control which is the English characteristic. The children ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a little fat man with small eyes and a punctilious deferential manner, and his voice was ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the most exact distance. Gil Perez kept his hat in his hand, his body at a deferential angle. His weaving hands were never still. Manuela, her first act of royal rage ended, held herself superbly. Her eyes were half closed, her lips tightly so; and she so contrived as to get the effect of looking down upon him from a height. Manvers imagined that his ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... the pride of the theological chair and even the pulpit in America, and while declining the use of current phraseologies even for the expression of current ideas, he held himself loyally subject to the canon of the Scriptures as his rule of faith, and deferential to the voice of the church catholic as uttered in the concord of testimony of holy men in all ages. Endowed with a poet's power of intuition, uplifted by a fervid piety, uttering himself in a literary style singularly rich and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and for other purposes," I returned the same to the House with my objections to its becoming a law. These objections, which had entirely satisfied my own mind of the great impolicy, if not unconstitutionality, of the measure, were presented in the most respectful and even deferential terms. I would not have been so far forgetful of what was due from one department of the Government to another as to have intentionally employed in my official intercourse with the House any language that could be in the slightest degree offensive to those to whom it was addressed. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... his breath, bade Anna not despair, and avowed a devotion to the safety and comfort of "ole mahs's and mis's sweet baby" as then and forever his higher law. He was still autocrat of the basement, dropsied with the favor of colonels and generals, deferential to "folks," but a past-master in taking liberties with things. As he talked he so corrected the maid's arrangement of the screen that the ugly hole in the wall was shut from the view of visitors, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... horticultural ambitions, and Jobbing Gardener, "highly recommended" for skill and low charges. The latter is a grizzled personage, very bowed as to back, and baggy as to breeches, but in his manner combining oracular "knowingness" and deferential plausibility ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... that person was entirely unconscious how the incumbent regarded her soft eyes, meek pensiveness, motherly sweetness, and, above all, the refined graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would have led him, and she was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before on his banjo; and the "Old Gray Horse" flourishes still in imperishable youth! It is the same old Sweeney, with his mild and deferential courtesy, his obliging smile, his unapproachable skill in "picking on the string." Listen! his voice rings again as in the days of '61 and '62. He is singing still "Oh Johnny Booker, help this nigger!" "Stephen, come back, come back, Stephen!" "Out of the window I did sail!" "Sweet Evelina," ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... courtly and charming little person, this Tuscan youth. Above all he had a ready address. So bright and strong, and yet so deferential did he look, pleading his cause among them, Lionella could have kissed him again for ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Mr. Wild, Captain?" remonstrated the other, in a deferential tone. "You know this is a pet project. It might ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... true. Agatha and Florence were neither fretful nor dissatisfied; they were never disrespectful, perhaps because Mrs. Ledwith demanded less of deferential observance than of a kind of jolly companionship from her daughters; a go-and-come easiness in and out of what they called their home, but which was rather the trimming-up and outfitting place,—a sort of Holmes' Hole,—where ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the world whom he so regarded and admired and loved; but yet it was not merely a tender and deferential sentiment. He laid his mind open before her, and it was safe to do that, because my mother never had any wish to prevail by sentiment or by claiming loyalty. He knew that she would be perfectly candid ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... welcome and distasteful. Thereby opportunities are brought to their notice, but tinkling notoriety jars upon refined benevolent sense. Overzealous would-be almoners of desired bounties press special claims with deferential yet impertinent persistence. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... smiling, easy, and deferential enough to reassure her with a greeting that became him, as he saluted her pretty hand, held it a moment in possession, laughingly, and ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... happening once when I was playing Beatrice to his Benedict. I have not the least notion what I did that struck my father with such irrepressible merriment, but I suppose there must have been something in itself irresistibly ludicrous to him, toward whom my manner was habitually respectfully deferential (for our intercourse with our parents, though affectionate, was not familiar, and we seldom addressed them otherwise than as "sir" and "ma'am"), to be pelted by me with the saucy sallies of Beatrice's mischievous wit, or pummeled with the grotesque outbursts ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... majority of so-called Christian homes. Early trains and late dinners, succeeded by evening engagements, have crowded out family prayers, and the pious custom, honored in all ages, of "grace before meat," is in many houses disregarded, except when a clergyman is at the table. Then the deferential bend of the host's head in the direction of the reverend guest is rather a tribute to the cloth than an acknowledgment of the Divine Giver to whom thanks are due. In the olden days it was the pupil who studied the Sunday-school lessons as needfully as he conned the tasks ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... into her mind, because her creed seemed to suit her circumstances so admirably. The well-dressed congregation, the well-trained choir, the cushioned seats and reserved pews, the suave, optimistic rector, and deferential curates—these were all part of a nicely balanced state of society which kept motor-cars, or at least broughams, and paid its tradesmen's bills by cheque on the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all questions, and Arthur walked with him towards the library, where his Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the house who knew nothing about Hetty. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter was unmixed with any other ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... one of the associates of Fagin the Jew. Tom Chitling was always most deferential to the "Artful Dodger."—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... it was a Lecomte. A minute later the chaps outside were talking to the Duke of Carmona, who stopped his car where they were. They talked a bit; then he gave the wheel to his chauffeur and came into the police office. The chief treated him very deferential; they laid their heads together in a corner, but I could see them reading a telegram, and once and again they had a squint ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... courteous to men; to a friend or intimate, as myself, an ever-new delight and joy; to all people, truthful to fantasy; and to women, on the rare occasions on which I ever saw him in their company, he was polite and deferential—but rather overwhelmingly so; it was a politeness which raised a barrier, and there was a glacial surface to the manner. I remarked this, and speculated about it. He seemed to have one manner to every woman with whom he had anything to do; the maid-servant who, at her ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... bronchial cough, and glad to have something fresh to look at, something new to play with. Manuel filled the bill; Manuel was very welcome. He was toward fifty years old, tall, slender, with a slight stoop—an artificial stoop, a deferential stoop, a stoop rigidified by long habit—with face of European mould; short hair intensely black; gentle black eyes, timid black eyes, indeed; complexion very dark, nearly black in fact; face smooth-shaven. He was bareheaded and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you have to get a good legislature and to keep it good. To keep it good it must have a sufficient supply of business. To get it good is a precedent difficulty. A nation in which the mass of the people are intelligent, educated, and comfortable can elect a good parliament. Or what I will call a deferential nation may do so—I mean one in which the numerical majority wishes to be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... to be idle—and important too It is hard to be polite to cowards Jews everywhere treated worse than the Chinaman One always buys back the past at a tremendous price One doesn't choose to worry Saying uncomfortable things in a deferential way Slow-footed hours wandered by, leaving apathy in their train That anxious civility which beauty can inspire The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings The sea is a great breeder of friendship ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... knew what to say to him. The manner was not that of a philanthropist desiring him to come to a "pleasant afternoon for the people"; he detected no air of patronage, no vulgar curiosity—indeed, the curate of St. Philip's was almost deferential. ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... they were some sort of animal, aunt," laughed Peggy. "I daresay there is no reason to be alarmed at them. I've always heard that they were very courteous and deferential to ladies." ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... the next morning, my scout came in with a face of the most ludicrous importance, and quite a deferential manner. I declare I don't think he has ever got back since that day to his original free-and-easy swagger. He laid a card on my table, paused a moment, and then said, 'His ludship is houtside ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... had but lately left behind what might be described as a condition of servitude. So Johnny yielded the right of way. He lowered his little snub nose by a few degrees, took some of the gay smile out of his twinkling blue eyes, and waited with an upward glance of friendly yet deferential sobriety until ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... said Loman, who in the presence of this universal genius was quite deferential; "when ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... lives of Turner and Giorgione, and of the different circumstances under which their art-minds severally dawned and developed. The remainder of the book is almost wholly devoted in glowing strains, like the pompous glory of the crowning movement of a Beethoven symphony, to loving yet deferential homage to Turner. His works and life are traced out and lingered over, not with biographical exactness, but with some effort to make them explicable of the character of the great painter. 'Much of his mind and heart I do not ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... he heard Miss Thorne ask if there wasn't something she could do. Lynch's reply was indistinct, but the tone of his voice, deferential, yet with a faint undercurrent of honey-sweetness, irritated him inexplicably. With a scowl, he spurred forward, exchanged a brief greeting with Bud Jessup as he passed, and finally joined Kreeger, who was having considerable difficulty in keeping ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... has acquired the highest charm of repose. Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathed smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... making love to me, and when he would go on, I said it bored me to death, and if he wanted to remain friends with me he must simply amuse me; and then to tease him I got up and went and talked to the Western senator. He had such a quizzical entertaining look in his keen eye—he was being stiffly deferential to one of the ladies, a Mrs. Welsh, who was talking to him so brightly. It looked like a huge mastiff allowing a teeny griffon ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... the fountain's edge; he knew every waiter at each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet, he saw the maitre d'hotel coming forward smiling to receive his command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow, deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once more bound to his cot ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... questioned the sincerity of the kind interest which he affected to take in her. He waited until the door was fairly closed, and then drew his chair near to Dumiger's. The latter, quite unaccustomed to the neighborhood of so great a man, immediately withdrew his seat to a more deferential distance; but the dimensions of the room speedily put a stop to the retrogression and his modesty by ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... control may be found in the fact that the generation of the Revolution had been accustomed to monarchy and to an upper class and that the people were wont to take their ideas and to accept suggestions from their betters without question or murmur. This deferential attitude is attested by the indifference of citizens to the right of voting. In our own day, before the great extension of woman suffrage, the number of persons voting approximated twenty per cent of the population, but after the Revolution less than five per cent of ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible index of true progress is found in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor his breeding, nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents, nor all together can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit than his own. If he have not found his home in God, his manners, his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build, shall I say, of all his opinions will involuntarily confess it, let him brave it out how he will. If he have found his centre, the Deity will ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... has no sure defense within itself. Its Maker has hung no flaming sword turning every way above it to ward off danger. There is nothing in the world of man and things which impels a provident regard for it. Suns, winds, frosts, storms, time, diseases, and death pay no deferential respect to it. Man respects it, bows to it, but while he does it, it withers under his devotion, so little does he mingle wisdom and care in his regard. Society professes to respect it, and so it does, but it subjects it ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... behind, lowered her eyes, put on a very deferential manner, and thanked Edouard for the kind sentiments he had uttered; but at the same time she took the liberty to warn him against believing the extravagant stories Dard had been telling about her mistress's poverty. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... economic conditions in America and abroad,—the trend of development. He talked in a large and leisurely way all through the courses, and when Cairy would interpose some objection, his judicious consideration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then tossed it high on the shore of his buttressed conclusions. Vickers listened in astonishment to the argument, while Isabelle, her hands clasped tight before her, did not eat, but shifted her eyes from her husband's face to Cairy's and back again ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Government; he seems aware of the difficulties and the necessity of acquiring more strength, of the universal persuasion that the Duke will be all in all, and says that in the Cabinet nobody can be more reasonable and yielding and deferential to the opinions of his colleagues. But Murray's appointment, he says, was a mistake,[2] and no personal consideration should induce the Duke to sacrifice the interests of the country by keeping him; it may be disagreeable to dismiss him, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... stranger's deferential manner sent a warm glow of importance to the woman's heart. Mrs. Blaisdell was suddenly reminded that she was Mrs. James D. Blaisdell ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... so deferential to skin prejudice, will doubtless find it strange that such a measure as the Civil Rights Bill should have passed a Congress of Americans. Assuredly with the feeling against the coloured race which custom and law had engrafted into the very nature of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... in Ralston, which Dora was quick to feel. He was deferential, as always, and as eager to please; but he no longer sought her company, and she missed the quick exchange of sympathetic glances at the table. It seemed to her, also, that the grimness in his face was accentuated of late. She found herself crying one night, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... advantage. During the evening they heard frequent allusions to "the Americans," but could not understand what was said. The hotel men were more than obsequious; the military men and citizens were exceedingly deferential; the women who strolled on the piazza or in the great garden back of the hotel ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... good points of all; he had a deep and real veneration for humanity, and rarely allowed himself an unkind expression, or a look which indicated ennui, even to those associates by whose presence he was most unspeakably bored. Hazlet mistook his courteous manner for a deferential agreement, and was, too often, in Julian's presence more than usually insufferable in ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... not say, sir." Mr. Norbury's manner is dignified, deferential, and dry. More serious than need ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... laird of Black Hill, a little more withered, a little more stooped than of old, but still fluent, caustic, and with now and then to the surface a vague, cold froth of insincerity, made up much to this magnate of commerce. He stood on his own heath, or by his own fountain, but his neck had in it a deferential crook. Lacs—rupees— factories—rajahs—ships—cottons—the words fell like the tinkle of a golden fountain. Listening to these two stood, with his hands behind his back, Mr. Wotherspoon, Black Hill's lawyer and man of business down from Edinburgh. At a little ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... deferential personages in rich costumes, we proceeded up staircases and along gilded corridors to a suite of sumptuous apartments, with many wax candles in candelabra, which were immediately lighted by an attendant, and their ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... in the deferential manner of inferiority to acknowledged excellence, certainly pleased Robert; for what heart is unsusceptible to subtle flattery? And of all modes of influence, men are most easily flattered or disparaged ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... obtained an introduction to the Governor's wife, Lady Mary, lost no time in endeavoring to "cultivate the amenities of life," so far as that very influential person was concerned. He had paid the most deferential court to her on several occasions where he had been able to meet her socially; and had impressed the Governor's lady very favorably, as being an unusually handsome, well-bred and highly cultivated ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... themselves upon him, and to get rid of them as soon as possible. Fox applied himself assiduously to the duties of office, as indeed he did during the Rockingham administration, and strove in vain to overcome the king's dislike by deferential behaviour. George's hostility was strengthened by the friendship between Fox and the Prince of Wales. The prince's habits were dissolute and extravagant; he was an undutiful son, and the king a somewhat unforgiving father. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Her deferential recognition of the change which is coming is pathetic and full of etiquette; it is at once so jealous and so unselfish. Because her sense of the proprieties will not allow her to do so much longer, she comes up to my room and makes opportunity ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... the long pipe, with its stem of maple-root, and filled it with tobacco with her own pretty fingers. A sweet smile and a deferential look from Eric recompensed her. When he saw M. de Vermondans seated in his chair, and inhaling the aroma of tobacco through the amber ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hard-pressed, took it and shamefacedly presented it to me, that I might enjoy the spending of it. Hopper belongs to our family, or the family belongs to him. I am never sure which. You must have missed in him the deferential bearing of a man-servant in Paris, yet he is true gold, like the sovereign you bestowed upon him, and he bestowed upon me. Now here, Monsieur, is the evidence of the theft, together with the rubber band and two pieces of cardboard. Ask my friend Gibbes to ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... difference between his table and mine-for instance, atmosphere; the guests stood in awe of him, and naturally they conferred that feeling upon me, for, after all, I am only human, although I regret it. When a guest answered a question he did it with a deferential voice and manner; he did not put any emotion into it, and he did not spin it out, but got it out of his system as quickly as he could, and then looked relieved. The Emperor was used to this atmosphere, and it did not chill his blood; maybe it was an inspiration to him, for he was alert, brilliant, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... him speaking of a young Roman of fashion standing for hours in a crowd to listen to his pleading in the courts, or of his audience pressing him not to omit a single line of his poems, or of the deferential way in which certain young barristers of promise hang on his lips, copy his gestures and bow to his judgment, one cannot resist a smile. When he tells us that he went on calmly reading and taking notes during the eruption of Vesuvius, though the hot ashes were threatening ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... at last, for about a mile, and then came another sudden stop—another fierce growl from Mr. Egremont, another apparition of the servant at the window, saying, in his alert deferential manner, 'Sir, the bridge have broke under a carriage in front. Lady Delmar's, sir. The ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the head of a Department, to a high Government official, or to a superior officer, it is customary to write in a strain a little more deferential than ordinary, so that, instead of saying, as you would to a friend, "I have to acquaint you," "I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter," you would say, "I have the honor to acknowledge." The ending, too, of such letters should be slightly different: "I have the honor to be, General, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... her, bowing respectfully, and my deferential air and downcast eyes seemed to ask forgiveness for having disturbed her. A slight blush tinged her pale cheeks at my approach. I returned to my room trembling and wondering that the evening air should thus ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Emily, as soon as the study-door had closed upon her brother and Moses, "what a handsome young man he is! and what a beautiful way he has with him!—so deferential! A great many young men nowadays seem to think nothing of their minister; but he comes to seek advice. Very proper. It isn't every young man that appreciates the privilege of having elderly friends. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... days in that week, having been summoned to a meeting of the leading gentlemen of the party at White Lackington, where he was forced into the unwelcome company of his future brother-in-law, to meet with courteous, deferential ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... times a week and whiled away many hours in her stimulating society. Occasionally her husband found him there, but if the fact annoyed him he gave no evidence of it. It was observed, too, that the manner of the visitor was gingerly deferential toward his host; he evidently desired no trouble with "Mistah Breckenridge." Occasionally he took Hannah for a walk; several times he brought her simple offerings of chickens and melons, heartening her to their consumption by participating in the same. One evening ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... had turned the subject gracefully to European politics, and he watched her with a detached air. Trent's attitude toward her amused him. It was more deferential and admiring than infatuated. . . . Whatever her charm, she was no longer in her first youth, and only unripe fruit could sting that senescent palate. But the other two! Clavering smiled sardonically. Dinwiddie, hanging on her every word, was ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Dr. Palfrey describes the Turk's method, which only a Turk, however, could have carried out: "Prompted by that superstitious reverence which he (the Turk) was educated to pay to lunatics, as persons inspired, he received these visitors with deferential and ceremonious observance, and with a prodigious activity of genuflections and salams, bowed them out of his country. They could make nothing of it, and in that quarter gave up their enterprise ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... oozed from his every pore. In fact, he was always grumbling about the amount of work he had to do for nothing. He was a genial, generous host; unostentatiously conspicuous in the local religious life of his denomination; in court a model of obsequious urbanity, deferential to the judges before whom he appeared and courteous to all with whom he was thrown in contact. A good-natured, easy-going, simple-minded fat man; deliberate, slow of speech, well-meaning, with honesty sticking out all over him, you would have said; one in whom ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... The captain made a deferential salute. Bully as he was, he knew how to be courteous when it suited his purpose. He had heard enough of the wealthy banker's aristocratic wife to treat her ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... be indiscreet," said Arsene Lupin, in the deferential tone which he adopted toward Shears, "would it be indiscreet to ask what general opinion you ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... with which he works indispensable to knavery; and knowing what he would do himself in such a case, Mr Pecksniff argued, 'if this young man wanted anything of me for his own ends, he would be polite and deferential.' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Mary Gray on Friday morning, as she entered the school at an early hour. She waited only to place her books in neat order in her desk, ere she approached the teacher, and whispering in a voice that laughed in spite of her efforts to make it low and deferential—"After this week sister Nellie is coming to school every day, and oh, I am ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... us one of the small cabins to ourselves that night. He was still deferential to Elza, but in his manner and in the glitter of those little black eyes, there was irony, and an open, though unexpressed, admiration for ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... and sincerity about the young lieutenant which at once gained Miss Verner's regard. It was very different to what she had been accustomed, still his manner towards her was gentle and deferential, as if he in no way presumed on the service he had rendered her. Indeed, it never entered his head that he had rendered her any especial service, or that he had the slightest claim on her regard. He felt, as he wrote to his father, "that he had had the good fortune to command ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... up the lean-to ventilator above the door in frantic haste, and would have darted over and be sitting down beside me, talking earnestly and ventre-a-terre of matters of grave moment, almost before I could rise to my feet and conform to those deferential observances that are customary when a junior officer has to deal with one of much higher standing. Some subjects treated of on these occasions were of an extremely confidential nature, and in view of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... her father and asked his permission to stay with his grand-aunt. In the same deferential manner she asked permission of her mother. Madame Saucier leaned on her husband's shoulder and wept. It was plain that the mother must go with her two young children only. Peggy said ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... verandah chatting about one thing and another. Asking when I expected you, and so on. Then, incidentally, he mentioned that they—his master and himself—were very much bothered by a ferocious white man—my friend—who was hanging about that woman—Omar's daughter. Asked my advice. Very deferential and proper. I told him the white man was not my friend, and that they had better kick him out. Whereupon he went away salaaming, and protesting his friendship and his master's goodwill. Of course I know now the infernal nigger came to spy and to talk over some of my men. Anyway, eight ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... my reason cannot possibly be two different beings. It is an absolute contradiction that I should receive that as true which my understanding rejects as false. Faith, therefore, is nothing but submissive or deferential incredulity. But why should this submission be exercised when my understanding invincibly recoils? The reason, we well know, is, that my understanding has been persuaded that the mysteries of my faith are laid down by God himself. All, then, that I can do, as a reasonable being, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... than welcome everywhere. Girls in the backwoods are much the same as girls in thickly populated and civilized districts. They liked his manly ways; his frank and pleasant manners; and when to these virtues he added a certain deferential regard, a courtliness to which they were unaccustomed, they were all the better pleased. He paid the young women little attentions, such as calling on them, taking them to parties and out driving, but there was not one of them who could think that ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the storms of circumstance. He had leisure to grow ripe, to remember, and to dream. But he never secluded himself, like Tennyson, from normal contacts with his fellowmen. The owner of the Craigie House was a good neighbor, approachable and deferential. He was even interested in local Cambridge politics. On the larger political issues of his day his Americanism was sound and loyal. "It is disheartening," he wrote in his Cambridge journal for 1851, "to see how little sympathy there is in the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Isabel II, or of Magellan, according to what family happened to be reigning in Madrid. Without paying any attention to the rich odor of chocolate, or to the rattle of boxes and coins which came from the treasury, and scarcely acknowledging the respectful and deferential salute of the procurator-brother, he entered, passed along several corridors, and knocked ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... perfect her being, sharing her pleasures, lessening her woes, consoling her heart. Still, there was one office that he had failed to perform; he was not obsequious. Not that he was ever wanting in attention and deferential courtesy, or that he ever failed to betray a warmth of feeling or a generous devotion; but his manner was prosaic, thoroughly practical both in action and in expression. He spoke his thoughts directly and forcibly. He was never enthusiastic, never demonstrative, never warm or impulsive, but definite, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... certain attitude, combative at once and deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the kind interest which he affected to take in her. He waited until the door was fairly closed, and then drew his chair near to Dumiger's. The latter, quite unaccustomed to the neighborhood of so great a man, immediately withdrew his seat to a more deferential distance; but the dimensions of the room speedily put a stop to the retrogression and his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... attention to his duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beautiful, and intellectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential courtsey.... With a prospect of taking the lead in another periodical, he at last voluntarily gave ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... not deferential, even toward his superiors; there was barely enough discretion in his roughness to save him from offending. Among those of his own station, he dispensed even with discretion. And he had looked upon Alwin with unfriendly ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... have had a large liberty of choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and even gallant. In one of his letters to a young ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... Oxford, he came there with an enthusiasm so simple and warm as to be almost childish. He reverenced even the velvet of the Pro.; nay, the cocked hat which preceded the Preacher had its claim on his deferential regard. Without being himself a poet, he was in the season of poetry, in the sweet spring-time, when the year is most beautiful, because it is new. Novelty was beauty to a heart so open and cheerful as his; not only because it was novelty, and had its proper charm as such, but ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... upon a large system of averages, declares at a certain age to be incapable of further service, and who demonstrate the worth of such a system by spending their declining years in exploring Morocco, or shooting lions in Somaliland. He was a dark, straight, aquiline man, with a courteously deferential manner, but a steady, questioning eye; very neat in his dress and precise in his habits, a gentleman to the tips of his trim finger-nails. In his Anglo-Saxon dislike to effusiveness he had cultivated a self-contained manner which was apt at first acquaintance ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perfectly plain to anybody that he liked her. There was in his manner towards her a mixture of business formality and the deferential ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the room in which she found herself. It was here, evidently, that the function of "reception" was accomplished. The manservant admitted the client; one rose from one's place at the little inlaid desk in the alcove and rustled forward across the gleaming parquet, with pleased and deferential alacrity to bid Monsieur or Madame welcome, to offer a chair and the incense of one's interest and delight in service. One added oneself to the quality of the big, still apartment, with its antique furniture, ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... freely as in ordinary times, without fear of any annoyance. During the whole six months I never saw or heard of a single instance where a woman was treated with the slightest disrespect; the bearing of both officers and men was invariably deferential to all women, ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at all with Harboro's friend. He had assumed the attitude of a deferential guide, and his remarks were almost entirely addressed to Harboro. But she was not to be put out by so small a part of the night's programme. After all, Valdez was not planning to return with them, and they ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... Your skill and ingenuity brought us through triumphant," said Meadows, resuming the deferential, since he ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... honourable." The attainment of glory exceeding even his own great aspirations coincides with dereliction from the plain rules of honor between friends, and with public humiliation to his wife, which he allowed himself to inflict, notwithstanding that he admitted her claims to his deferential consideration to be unbroken. In this contrast, of the exaltation of the hero and the patriot with the degradation of the man, lie the tragedy and the misery of Nelson's story. And this, too, was incurred on behalf of a woman whose reputation and conduct were such that no ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... in happy ignorance of the dark designs of the wardrobe dealer, had also gone home. He was only just beginning to realize the comparative unimportance of a retired shipmaster, and the knowledge was a source of considerable annoyance to him. No deferential mates listened respectfully to his instructions, no sturdy seaman ran to execute his commands or trembled mutinously at his wrath. The only person in the wide world who stood in awe of him was the general servant Bella, and she made ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... rode on; but presently, without the least appearance of intruding, since she had overtaken him, he was at her side and, speaking with downcast eyes and deferential ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... stood again at the outer door, Bison Billiam, knob in hand, arching above her in deferential leave-taking. "I will see to everything," he assured her; "everything. This is certainly most worthy of being looked into. And I shall do it myself. Myself," he repeated, emphasizing the two little syllables as though that fact were ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... and did not unbend even when the station master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a deferential welcome. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... salutation of Salam Alaikum in the most modest and deferential tone; but his former friend was so far from responding in their former strain of intimacy, that, having consulted the eye of his older companion, he barely pointed to a third carpet, upon which the stranger seated himself cross-legged, after ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done up high, and a gown more fashionable than Dolly's, was as new and expensive as the whole room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... as she returned the low, deferential bow bestowed upon her, felt anew the thrill of anxiety which had come to her of late when she thought of this dangerous stranger in connection with ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Territory train does not need to bend its neck to the galling yoke of a minute time-table, yet, like all bush-whackers, it prefers to strike its supper camp before night-fall, and after allowing us a good ten minutes' chat, it blew a deferential "Ahem" from its engine, as a hint that it would like to be "getting along." The bushman took the hint, and after a hearty "Good luck, missus!" and a "chin, chin, old man," left us, with assurances that "her size 'ud ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... peons were very deferential to white men. I could rarely get a sentence from them, though they chattered much among themselves, with a constant sprinkling of obscenity. They had a complete language of whistles by which they warned each other of an approaching "jefe," ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... upon your honour's lavings you would have me get fat?" rejoined Mr. O'Carroll, with an air of deferential inquiry. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... last mistress were satisfactory; and, therefore, when Kitty had gone, she put Anne in her place without misgiving, Anne's principal recommendation being that she was a nice-looking girl, and had pretty deferential manners. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to the comfort of Sir Arthur, who had now quite recovered consciousness, but was still feeling faint and ill. He told him as much of the truth about Vane as he knew, and while he was doing so, Jepson, the scout, came in from the bedroom, and said with an air of deferential confidence: ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Mary returned, almost forgetting her first bitter moment. Hal Macy's direct hand-clasp and frank, bright smile of welcome stamped him with sincerity and truth. She liked equally well Lawrence Armitage's deferential greeting and she found the Crane's wide, boyish grin irresistible as he bowed low over her small hand. Yes, the Sanford boys were certainly nice. She was not so sure that she liked the girls. They made too much of Marjorie, and Marjorie ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... little fat man with small eyes and a punctilious deferential manner, and his voice was ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the governor nearly led to a quarrel. That dignitary was by no means so deferential as on the previous visit; indeed, he was barely civil. Many things had happened during the previous weeks. A ship had arrived from Spain, and she carried an important passenger—to wit, Brother Basil. He was weeks behind the Golden Boar, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... "Glowworm," however, continued to glow fearfully, impelled to eruptive scintillation by the crank, and the vocal lady "walked with Billy," and presently the minstrel came through the trees with his hat in his hand, his dark eyes very humble and deferential. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the warm friendliness of two blue china knobs and her thin lips were closed until her mouth looked merely a vivid scratch. Yet, somehow, the boy managed to say with his manner of deferential courtesy: ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... sits with one foot up on a chair. On a brass table beside him are such things as Mr. Sims needs. But they are few. Wealthy as he is, the needs of Mr. Sims reach scarcely further than Martini cocktails and Egyptian cigarettes. Such poor comforts as these, brought by a deferential waiter, with, let us say, a folded newspaper at five o'clock, suffice for all his wants. Here sits Mr. Sims till the shadows fall in the street outside, when a limousine motor trundles up to the club and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... horror and wonder, which led me at once to perform the duties of a general introduction, preliminary to taking possession of Mr. Barr, and relegating to Aunt Helen the less unconventional philosopher. Paul Barr however bowed to her in so superb and deferential a manner that I thought she looked rather flattered than otherwise, which relieved my worst apprehensions, and I found myself straightway chatting with him in a somewhat spirited vein. Heard, in my own drawing-room, Mr. Barr's compliments and ardent speeches ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... duped, or, in any case, misled. Her anger and worry increased momentarily, especially since Graydon, beyond a little furtive observation, completely ignored her. She naturally ascribed his course to resentment at her first greeting of Arnault, his continued presence at her side, and the almost deferential manner with which he was treated by her father, who had joined his family at supper, when no queries could ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... did not come to replace him," corrected Mr. Jefferson, making his best bow, and which was very courtly and deferential, indeed, "not to replace him—no one can do that—only ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... sat talking with Mrs. Carnaby, in the latter's drawing-room. Her manner was deferential, but that of a friend. Sibyl, queening it at some distance, had the air of conferring a favour ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... an air of jovial, careless cruelty. He expressed no wonder at the extraordinary story—no pleasure or excitement—no incredulity either. He betrayed no sentiment whatever. Only with a politeness almost deferential suggested that "the bird might have flown while Mr.—Mr. Razumov was running about ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... stood with the deferential attendant listening to Ostrog's retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question and answer and of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrog reappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed the room in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Graham's ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... quite right. Katy was not thinking of any such thing. She liked Ned Worthington's frank manners; she owned, quite honestly, that she thought him handsome, and she particularly admired the sort of deferential affection which he showed to Mrs. Ashe, and his nice ways with Amy. For herself, she was aware that he scarcely noticed her except as politeness demanded that he should be civil to his sister's friend; but the knowledge did not trouble her particularly. ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... nationality except a striped silk head-dress with the camel-hair band around the forehead. He was a handsome fellow, with a black beard trimmed to a point, and perfect manners, polished no doubt in a dozen countries, but still Eastern in slow, deferential dignity. He could talk good French. I fell in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... which seems to let the thoughts out through the face so that any can read them. That which her face expressed at that moment was a clear and definite refusal to confide anything whatsoever in this little dark man who stood in front of her, looking into her eyes with a deferential and sympathetic glance. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... were always perfect, deferential,—why should she shrink before him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:—the two men could not find ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... first sound of his voice, the surprised commandant had turned quickly round, and there encountered the usual deferential ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... "And have you really driven over four-and-twenty miles of Barsetshire roads on such a day as this to assist us in our little difficulties? Well, we can promise you gratitude at any rate." And then the vicar shook hands with Mrs. Proudie, in that deferential manner which is due from a vicar to his bishop's wife; and Mrs. Proudie returned the greeting with all that smiling condescension which a bishop's wife should show to a vicar. Miss Proudie was not quite ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... made friendly ever-changing circles of light, and Carl no longer feared the dangerous territory of the yard. Riding pick-a-back on Bone Stillman, he looked down contentedly on the dog's deferential tail beside them. They found Gertie asleep by the fire. She scarcely awoke as Stillman picked her up and carried her back to his shack. She nestled her downy hair beneath his chin and closed ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... appearance, together with a scar over his brow that gave him a most repulsive look, was evidently a pensioner or old soldier. This person was engaged in examining some rusty fire-arms that had been submitted to his inspection. His self-importance was amusing, as was also the deferential aspect of those who, with arms in their hands, hammering flints or turning screws, awaited patiently their turn for his opinion of their efficiency. But perhaps the most striking group of all was that in which a thick-necked, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cousin Gerald she had always been considerate and friendly. When on several occasions he had taken particular pains to gratify her slightest wish, and pay more deferential regard than was necessary to the demands of their relationship, Lady Rosamond affected utter ignorance of the cause by treating him with a familiarity that gave him no ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... was turning from the window I saw the figures of two men come out of the sharp angle of St. Mary's and walk towards the town. Both were tall, both in cloaks; but one wore his hat and the other carried it. By this, as well as his drooping, deferential shoulders, I knew this latter to be the servant, the former his patron. Midway towards the Via de' Benci they stopped, while he of the bare head explained at length, pointing this way and that with his hat, then counting on his fingers. I was now expert enough to be able to read an Italian conversation ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... really care for any one else? More than one young man in Yerbury had paid her the peculiar deferential attention that asks encouragement if there is any to give, but is too truly delicate to proceed without. Then there was Jack, who understood her soul better than any one else; but had he touched her heart in ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Lady Cantourne and with Millicent. Then he stood with a deferential half-bow, waiting for the introduction to the girl who was young enough to be his daughter—almost to be his granddaughter. There was something pathetic and yet proud in this old man's uncompromising adherence to the lessons ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... obedience of the woman as wife to the husband, of children to the parents, of the younger children to the elder. In this obedience man first renounces his self-will and his natural roughness; he learns to master his passions, and to conduct himself with deferential gentleness. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... legislation. But not a word is said of the relation of these functions to representation, or to the method of election. It is asserted that the reason the House of Commons is able to exercise these functions is because England is a deferential nation, and the people leave government in the hands of their betters, the higher classes. On one point he is emphatic, and that is the absolute necessity of ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... was so agitated at the unexpected boldness of such a proposal from one hitherto so boyish and deferential that she sank into the observing-chair, her intention to remain for only a few minutes ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before him. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... view the body, together with Dr. Baird, who was almost pathetically deferential to his senior colleague. The two medical men were together in the room with the body for some time, and when they came out Viola Carwell was there to meet them. Dr. Lambert put his arms about her. He had known her all her life—since she first ventured into this world, in fact—and ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... unchanged, irreproachable. He placed salt and pepper, bread, butter, whatever it was that Mr. Crawford wanted, before him before the older man had realized that he wanted it. His attitude toward Argyl was at all times deferential, eloquent of respectful admiration. Hapgood was nothing if not urbane. Toward Conniston, however, he did not once glance. To his way of thinking, evidently, there were but three people in the room—the wonderfully masterful Mr. Crawford, the radiantly beautiful ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... upon Miss Whyte's occupations an hour after school had begun. What school-mistress could fail to be proud of the distinction of obtaining his three daughters as pupils at any hour of the twenty-four when he saw fit to proffer them? He expected to find a cringing, deferential young person, who would, in the interest of her own bread and butter, accede without a murmur to any stipulations which so important a patroness as Mrs. Horace Barker might see fit to impose. He became conscious, in the first place, that the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... hunger was appeased, the king became dull and gloomy again; the more so in proportion to the satisfaction he fancied he had manifested, and particularly on account of the deferential manner which his courtiers had shown toward Fouquet. D'Artagnan, who ate a good deal and drank but little, without allowing it to be noticed, did not lose a single opportunity, but made a great number of observations which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... The dullest and least imaginative saw the endless possibilities in the application of his discovery to the arts and sciences. During all of this time the young American had kept himself under perfect control and had answered all questions in the most deferential and respectful manner; and now, having received from the King permission to continue, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... faded as his kindly eyes took in the advancing group. Led by Joseph in a most deferential, not to say deprecating, manner, the two ladies slowly crossed the big room, and came around the great table to the chair set for them near Mr. Oldfield's accepted harbor ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... every afternoon, he had been wheeling his mistress about through the narrow streets of the town. From this long and devoted service, and then from this daily tete-a-tete, a kind of familiarity arose between the old lady and the devoted servant, affectionate on her part, deferential ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... dinner-hour had brought him back, he being a man in authority there, very well dressed and deferential, declaring himself immensely distressed at the occurrence, and at having accosted Gregorio and attracted his attention. It was about four o'clock, he thought, and he described the exact spot where the little boy had been sailing his vessel fastened to a string. They might have ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clothes and weapons. He was merely a hunter and warrior. All property and rank descended through the female line. The lands of the village which were communal were partitioned for cultivation by the women. The clan council of five was called the Zu-wai-yu-wa, and the lone man was always deferential in the presence of the four women who had elected him. The men councilors, however, had some privilege. When it became necessary to choose the Grand Sachem of the whole nation, they alone did it. But they were compelled to heed the voices of the women who constituted the whole voting population, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... observing all the forms of godliness, the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations of Scripture, and, occasionally (to please his wealthy parishioners) the necessity of deferential obedience from the poor to the rich—supporting his maxims and exhortations throughout with quotations from the Fathers: with whom he appeared to be far better acquainted than with the Apostles and Evangelists, and whose importance he seemed to consider at least equal to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... an early period of society, as well as the deferential forms which we style politeness," I replied. "A child does not see the least moral beauty in truth until he has been flogged half a dozen times. It is so easy, and apparently so natural, to deny what you cannot be easily convicted of, that a savage as well as a child lies to excuse himself ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... little practice he had had in the paternal or fraternal line, he really did it remarkably well: be it understood, it was only en petite comite that all this went on; in general society his manner was strictly formal and deferential. It provoked her though, sometimes, and one day she ventured to say, "I wish you would learn to treat me like a grown-up woman!" Royston's eyes darkened strangely; and one glance flashed out of the gloom that made her shrink away from him then, and blush painfully ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the old times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we others could not shake off our depression. Our tone toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased; and we were constantly doing him deferential little offices of courtesy, and saying, "Wait, let me do that for you," and that pleased him, too. I gave him seven fish-hooks—all I had—and made him take them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a humming-top painted red and yellow—atonements for swindles practised upon him formerly, ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... do it till I can help you," said Karen. "To-morrow morning." She had a manner at once deferential and masterful of addressing the old lady. They were friendly without being intimate. "Now promise me that you will wait till I can ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hints, that L'Isle threw out—not as advice, but inquiries and chance suggestions, being mingled with deferential attention to all the Spaniard had to say—neither startled his vanity, nor chafed his pride. He was pleased with L'Isle, talked frankly to him, and presented him ceremoniously to his officers, who now began to wait upon him. When L'Isle was about to take his leave, he urged him to return ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed somehow communicated to Millicent's face as she looked down at him from beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was standing ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential towards the foreign nomenclature of their towns. Thus if one of them is talking to you of Novi Sad he will almost invariably add, until it grows rather wearisome, the German and the Magyar forms: Neu Satz ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... conversation with him about the state of the Government; he seems aware of the difficulties and the necessity of acquiring more strength, of the universal persuasion that the Duke will be all in all, and says that in the Cabinet nobody can be more reasonable and yielding and deferential to the opinions of his colleagues. But Murray's appointment, he says, was a mistake,[2] and no personal consideration should induce the Duke to sacrifice the interests of the country by keeping him; it may be disagreeable to dismiss him, but he must do it. Hay told me that for the many ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... waiter, who was standing at a respectful distance from the table, and was sipping his wine with deferential slowness. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... observed a peculiar leer on the man's face, which I could not account for. He appeared, however, to have been affected by my threats, for he ceased to scowl, and assumed a deferential air as he replied, "Vell, sir, it do seem raither 'ard that a cove should ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... occurrences of the day, furnish the topics for conversation, from which ill-natured remarks are exploded. A ceremoniousness of manner, reminding one of la Vieille Cour, and probably rendered a la mode by the restoration of the Bourbons, prevails; as well as a strict observance of deferential respect from the men towards the women, while these last seem to assume that superiority accorded to them in manner, if not entertained in fact, by ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the door, we could see the whole of the ceremony. The Queen was absent as she had caught cold at the Princess of Wales's ball. The ladies, in consequence, only passed with a side step and solemn demeanour, making en passant a low, deferential bow to the King. But I was extremely amused at their manner directly this was over. As soon as they arrived within a short distance of our door, their solemn and respectful countenances relaxed into a smile of mockery, their side swimming ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... boycott gave the gentlemen in Washington a terrible scare, prompting them to collect funds to relieve the famine in China and even renouncing all claim to the war indemnity of 1901 to smooth matters over. But Japan apparently took no notice of all this and continued to be deferential and polite, even when the growing heaps of unsold goods in the warehouses at Shanghai made the Americans ready to sacrifice some of their national pride. Since Japan wished to take the enemy by surprise, she had to be very careful not ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... young democrats who were lolling about the room in various attitudes, rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather deferential "How-dy'ge," to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were some strange being, dropped from another sphere. The two eldest were of the male gender, as was shown by their clothes—cast-off suits of the inevitable reddish-gray, much too large, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... chuckling. He could imagine the deferential way in which John, who had caused the accident, had offered help. When we went down Alice met him in the hall and he thrilled at something in her manner as she gave him her hand. It was getting dark and the glow of the fire flickered ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... towards her, and without preface or introduction, commenced, "I am informed that your ladyship has done me the honor to request my presence, and, like an obedient slave, I am at your ladyship's command," and he bowed with the most deferential politeness as he delivered himself of this harangue; then recollecting for the first time that he had no card of invitation from, or introduction to, her ladyship, began to stammer forth his excuses, that he had dropped in on the strength of having met Sir Lexicon for a few minutes at the mess of ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... begun to authorise a sentiment against perverts which differed not only in degree, but in kind, from the purely spiritual anathemas which had formerly fallen upon them. Personally she had no fear. The prophet knew of her unbelief, and his conduct was increasingly kind and deferential, but for others she disliked exceedingly the new symptoms of tyranny. Yet it was but natural, she admitted; men who had offered their own lives in sacrifice for a creed were likely to think it of more worth to the soul ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the Knight's brow; his eyes, though tired, were no longer sombre; his manner was more than usually courteous and deferential, as if to atone for the defiant ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the carriages, and would be sitting snugly at home while the peasant on the box faced the elements in consideration of a large number of extra francs to his master, retired with a deferential smile, and told Emilio ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gave upon the road, retraced his unfamiliar steps and asked a question, to which—it was so unusual from one in his habit—he received a hesitating but correct reply. A moment later he passed Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope, who stood in his path with a hostile stare and got out of it with a deferential bow, and knocked at a door upon which was pasted the name, in large red letters cut from a poster, of Miss Hilda Howe. It was a little ajar, so he entered, when she cried, "Come in!" with the less hesitation. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... which Mr. Featherton met him reaffirmed in his mind the belief that at last the lawyer had determined to give him a chance. He was almost deferential as he asked Bert into his private office, and shoved ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... I'm presuming—" he said, in a mock deferential way that showed he didn't imagine ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... heart, whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton's companion in both states of existence, and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher: a deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a suppressed voice, who looks after the young ladies' wardrobes, and leads them to infer that she has seen better days. Perhaps this is the reason why it is an article of faith with the servants, handed ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... said the Frenchman, with a Parisian shrug of the shoulders. "Your father has treated me very kindly, and I have heard a great deal about his brave and accomplished son," said Mr. Gilfleur, with a very deferential bow. ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... of his stage asides, "this is a revelation indeed. Always thought OLD MORALITY was an easy-going gentleman, deferential in manner, unassertive in action. It seems he's a regular tyrant, a sort of unapproachable Padishah. In his bosom are looked all the secrets of State, all the purposes of the Ministry. He takes no one into his confidence, but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... usually with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fountain's edge; he knew every waiter at each of the tables, he felt again the gravel crunching under his feet, he saw the maitre d'hotel coming forward smiling to receive his command, and the waiter in the green apron bowing at his elbow, deferential and important, presenting the list of wines. But his adventure never passed that point, for he was captured again and once more bound to his cot with ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... consolations, and, consequently, had never analysed it in any way. Doubt had never entered into her mind, because her creed seemed to suit her circumstances so admirably. The well-dressed congregation, the well-trained choir, the cushioned seats and reserved pews, the suave, optimistic rector, and deferential curates—these were all part of a nicely balanced state of society which kept motor-cars, or at least broughams, and paid its tradesmen's bills by cheque on the first of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Austrian bowed and apologized, this time to Miss Cassandra, who, from his softened voice and deferential manner, realized that whatever deadly peril had menaced her was happily averted, and throwing her arms around the Countess Z——'s neck, she exclaimed, "My dear countrywoman! Thee has the face of an angel and, like an angel, thee has brought peace to our troubled minds. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... curt negation while, caked in mud and inexpressibly serious-faced, Fyne seemed to be backing her up with all the weight of his solemn presence. Nothing more absurd could be conceived. It was delicious. And I went on in deferential accents: "Am I to understand then that you entertain the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... commenting on this speech, "could have made a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a king to pay. It was decisive." "But did you make no reply to this high compliment?" asked one of the company. "No, sir," replied the profoundly deferential Johnson, "when the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... in a meekly deferential tone: "So you will not mind my worshiping him. He is a hero, ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... angular, and awkward, as though she were made of lead. She was always afraid, and she would get up from her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a member of the Zemstvo or the school guardian. And she used formal, deferential expressions when she spoke of any one of them. And no one thought her attractive, and life was passing drearily, without affection, without friendly sympathy, without interesting acquaintances. How awful it would have been in her position if ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... attachment she had expected to feel was strangely slow, and though it was early to indulge in regrets her heart sometimes grew heavy as she looked forward to the future. Clarence was considerate, attentive and deferential in a polished way, but he lacked something one looked for in a lover. Besides, she was anxious about him; he looked worn, his manner suggested that he was bearing a strain, but this was in his favor, for it roused her compassion. She ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... children uniformly respect and obey their parents, and seek by every kind attention and praiseworthy effort to please them, it is not in human nature that they should fail to be unspeakably loved and caressed. Deferential treatment, patient service, quick sympathy, expectant attention, an obvious desire to please, are the most potent charms that mortals can wield. They show that the parties are important to each other. They give life its highest value. In their ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... York. The defendant was arraigned at the bar without counsel, owing to the absence of his lawyer through sickness, and Mr. Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, the later Lieutenant-Governor of the State, was assigned to defend him. At this juncture Browne arose and addressed the Court. In the most deferential and conciliatory manner he urged that he was entitled to an adjournment until such time as he could produce William R. Hubert as a witness; stating that, although the latter had been in town on December 14th, and had personally given him the deeds in question, which he had handed to Levitan, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... of this bitterness. Gaspar, who looked on, was astonished by a certain deferential politeness on the part ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... announcement, very placidly made, Daisy's mamma offered no response. Winterbourne took for granted that she deeply disapproved of the projected excursion; but he said to himself that she was a simple, easily managed person, and that a few deferential protestations would take the edge from her displeasure. "Yes," he began; "your daughter has kindly allowed me the ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... attachment of a citizen, but with feelings more like the positive antipathy of an exile. His sympathies are all in favor of the perpetual drill, the mechanical obedience, the secret government proceedings, the narrow and prescribed range of ideas, the silent and deferential demeanor, the methodical, though tardy, action—of Sparta. Whatever may be the justice of his preference, certain it is, that the qualities whereby he was himself enabled to contribute so much both to the rescue of the ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... between his wrists filled all my mind. Who could he be? The sense of warmth that had come with his smile, and that very curious sensation I had had when he had come up close to the bar and spoken to me, were with me yet. His voice had been pleading and deferential, surely nothing in it to resent. The memory of his face made me forget the chain between his wrists; as if he himself had been greater than any of the people ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... garment; worship &c 990. keep one's distance, make room, observe due decorum, stand upon ceremony. command respect, inspire respect; awe, inspire awe, impose, overawe, dazzle. Adj. respecting &c v.; respectful, deferential, decorous, reverential, obsequious, ceremonious, bareheaded, cap in hand, on one's knees; prostrate &c (servile) 886. respected &c v.; in high esteem, in high estimation; time-honored, venerable, emeritus. Adv. in deference to; with all respect, with all due respect, with due respect, with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... part of her day from which Lee hurried was that part over which the girl herself lingered. As he turned his eyes from his canvas to meet hers, Stedman, the charming, the deferential, the adroit, who never allowed his painting to interrupt his talk, told her of what he was pleased to call his dreams and ambitions, of the great and beautiful ladies who had sat before his easel, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... who bore whatever blows fortune gave him, or seemed to give, with a courage that had a fine elastic temper in it. He may have made his business engagements at the river or in the city a little more frequent and prolonged after this; but always there was the same deferential show of tender feeling toward his father's guest, whenever he happened in Ashfield. Indeed, he felt immensely comforted by a little report which Rose made to him in her most despairing manner. Adele had told her that she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... outside the station, and she had a momentary fear lest she should receive deferential recognition from the chauffeur. But he was as solid and stolid as any other portion of the car, and paid no more attention to her than he did to her baggage. The one was a nurse; the other, a box, both common nouns, and merely articles to be conveyed to Gleneesh ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... Chamber on a certain ticklish question which had that morning come under discussion. The young lawyer was struck with admiration for the depth of his father's insight, touched by his cordiality, and especially by the deferential tone which seemed to place the two men on a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... downcast eyes. Her manner with the Doctor when others were present was professionally deferential. It was only when they were alone that the nurse ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... capable of all, reckless, impassioned, poised upon the brink of some desperate plunge.... Then the hands of consequences seemed to lay compelling hold upon him; the fire was extinguished; the vision gone like a mirage. His eyes were friendly, his lips smiling, as he bowed to her, in deferential courtesy, to all appearances a gentleman of ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... she should look at him, but at this particular moment she felt it quite impossible to be mannerly. He had said nothing of a thrilling nature, yet his whole tone and expression, his air of deferential regard, stirred a new feeling in her mind—the conviction that he cared for her more than it was well for either of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... sir," replied Williams with a deferential but expressive smile, which became his face ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... flattered his vanity. We can not throw off all our weaknesses at a moment's notice, no matter how stupendous the crisis in our fortunes, any more than, though our boat be sinking under us, we can divest ourselves of our clothes with a single shrug; and sympathy and deferential respect had still their weight with Richard Yorke. Perhaps, too, his nature had not yet even got quit of its gregariousness, and he was not sorry to have his acquaintance sought, though by ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... deciduous, declivity, decompose, decorous, dedicatory, deduction, deferential, deficiency, deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, despicable, desuetude, desultory, deteriorate, diacritical, diagnosis, diaphanous, diatribe, didactic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of hostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy kindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow made Becky more uneasy than other people's ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Windsor on Monday, told me he had been exceedingly struck with Lord Melbourne's manner to the Queen, and hers to him: his, so parental and anxious, but always so respectful and deferential; hers, indicative of such entire confidence, such pleasure in his society. She is continually talking to him; let who will be there, he always sits next her at dinner, and evidently by arrangement, because he always takes in the lady-in-waiting, which necessarily places him next her, the ...
— 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
... days at Matocton, that he might put his house in order against his nearing marriage. It was a pleasant sight to see the colonel stroll about the paneled corridors and pause to chat with divers deferential workmen who were putting the last touches there, or to observe him mid-course in affable consultation with gardeners anent the rolling of a lawn or the retrimming of a rosebush, and to mark the bearing ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Probably one couldn't borrow much money directly in New York on the strength of a fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is the snobbishness there, one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, any quantity of that deferential respect from rich people which is, in some circumstances, easily convertible into ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... contentedly. Things had not turned out quite according to his expectations, but he was well pleased to have a little playfellow in True, and though she adopted a slightly superior and motherly air with him, she was a deferential listener to any of Nobbles' exploits. She had no difficulty in believing that he was alive; in fact she was quite ready to explain his existence in a manner quite new ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... at breakfast the next morning, my scout came in with a face of the most ludicrous importance, and quite a deferential manner. I declare I don't think he has ever got back since that day to his original free-and-easy swagger. He laid a card on my table, paused a moment, and then said, 'His ludship is ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... on your way home? May I walk with you?" He asked the favor with deferential tenderness. She granted it with an effective flutter of the lids. Each, realizing the other's proficiency in the game, was spurred ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... to supplant Pasquale. They had died sudden, violent deaths. Ramon had been a great favorite of the dictator, but it was claimed signs were not lacking to show that a rupture between them was near. Watching them now, Yeager could well believe that this might be true. Culvera was suave, adroit, deferential as he raked in his chief's gold, but the irritability of the older man needed only ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... the young private, whose name was William Armstrong. Our hero was of an affectionate disposition, and would have allowed his warm feelings to expend themselves on a dog rather than have denied them free play. No wonder, then, that he was attracted by the handsome manly countenance and deferential manner of Armstrong, who, although an uneducated youth, and reared in the lower ranks of life, was gifted with those qualities of the true gentleman which mere social position can neither bestow nor take away. His intellect also was of that active and ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
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