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More "Nonchalant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interfered, or taken any interest in the matter, and Palmerston conducted it all just as he thought fit. This year Cabinet after Cabinet passed over, and no mention was ever made of the affairs of the East, till one day, at the end of a Cabinet, Palmerston, in the most easy nonchalant way imaginable, said that he thought it right to mention that he had been for a long time engaged in negotiation upon the principles agreed upon at the Cabinet at Windsor, and that he had drawn up a Treaty, with which it was fit ...
— 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
... men, no braver than their master, shifted their positions in a nonchalant manner so as to be screened by their superiors in case of our firing, and on second thoughts, judging even such a precaution to ensure them but scanty safety, they one after the other got up, walked steadily away for half-a-dozen steps, to ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fellow, who had witnessed the conversation, was compelled to accept its ostensible suggestion, and departed finally with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders and a Tammany tilt of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... while, they abandoned all their pretence of nonchalant confidence and did not talk at all. Of course, they knew Florette would come in her own good time, but the stifling atmosphere of that musty hole and the thought ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... hurts of his schoolmates' recent slights under a nonchalant manner. Each one, while it cut deeply, seemed to aggravate him to greater wilfulness. Well bred as he was, took no real pleasure in the sports of the company of which he had made a part since the loss of the position he so desired, and for which he had worked so faithfully. He felt himself ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... shining spire in the middle distance arrests the eye. It marks the village of Ancient Lorette, a nine miles' drive from Quebec, where a pitiful moiety of Canada's noblest Indian tribe ekes out an existence by the making of baskets and beaded moccasins, and by that nonchalant culture of the soil which ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... hand so hard and said that, really the same nonchalant young man who had leaned out of the carriage window, gurgling with laughter? And what had made the difference? She buried her face in the heliotrope, whose perfume seemed the memory of his visit; then, going to the piano, began to play. She played Debussy, McDowell, Ravel; the chords ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and Joan bent her attention on the stage once more, though all the time that her eyes and ears were absorbing the shifting scenes and brilliant dialogue of the play a little, persistent inner voice at the back of her brain kept repeating Diana's nonchalant "I really don't see very much of her nowadays," and querying ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... (wiz your permizion I shall call you mine friend,") replied Gusher, still cool and nonchalant, and again giving Romer's hand a decided shake, "I have hear zat grand rascal tell ze same story so many times. You shall know zat I meets ze grand rascal on Broadway—a ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... impressionable sensuousness, the sensitiveness and sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd, vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness. She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity, so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... called up the warerooms, but Lester was not there. He then telephoned to the house, and tactfully made an appointment. Lester was still indisposed, but he preferred to come down to the office, and he did. He met Robert in his cheerful, nonchalant way, and together they talked business for a time. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Perhaps it was both. Very suddenly he wheeled upon Kennedy. His voice became low and vibrant with feeling. Here was none of the steeled self-control of Manton, the deceptive outer mask which Werner used to cover his thoughts, the nonchalant, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... stormed, called him "demented Bismarck," "Napoleon worshiper," "hollow braggart," "a country gentleman of moderate political training, inconsistent, nonchalant, insolent to a degree;—pray when did Bismarck ever express ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... had brought her carried her back on his steed much faster than they had come. But the next market-day, when she sallied forth to sell her eggs, whom should she see but the same ill-looking scoundrel busied in pilfering sundry articles from stall to stall. So she went up to him, and with a nonchalant air addressed him, inquiring after his wife and child, who, she hoped, were both as well as could be expected. "What!" exclaimed the old pixy thief, "do you see me to-day?" "See you! to be sure I do, as plain as I see the sun in the skies; and I see you are busy ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Professor, and he and John exchanged smiling glances, and both of them took the bulbs and began the meal with them in the most nonchalant manner. The boys could not understand the Professor's defiant manner in eating a poisonous bulb, and George cried out: "Didn't you say that the bulb ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... had come back from her lair, quite unconcerned. She informed the company, in a nonchalant sort of way, that this was the third adventure of the kind she had been engaged in, and, although they seemed to make a great fuss about it; on the other side (Van Diemen's Land), it was considered a mere necessary nuisance; and so proceeded to prepare such supper as she could. In ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... dining-room of country hotels, or at cheap department stores. That it was appraised highly in Siminol, however, was beyond question, and on every side swarthy faces watched eagerly to see what impression it would make upon us, though the owner himself assumed a nonchalant air, as became the possessor of so rare an article of virtu. It had evidently been in Siminol a long time, and was possibly stolen from a trading-post on some piratical expedition, or looted from a Spanish planter's home during a raid ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... in pleasanter company, I must say!" she said in her old nonchalant tone. "So I'll leave you to yourself. Good-night, fair Lady Elaine, and ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... he says, "Mr. Disraeli took the chair at the annual dinner of the 'Printers' Pension Society,' when the stewards, of whom I was one, received him in the drawing-room of the 'Albion,' in Aldersgate Street. Immediately after his entrance he posted himself in a nonchalant fashion with his back to the mantelpiece, and his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, an attitude Thackeray was fond of assuming, and began to chat familiarly with those near him. In a minute or two he asked if Mr. Leech was present (Leech was one of the stewards), as if he would ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... angry outburst, the fountains of his sorrow seemed to dry up and he became more the old, nonchalant Louis whom ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... entrance that gave on the cross street—then his pace quickened. He traversed the block, crossed the road, turned the corner, and a minute later was approaching the house she had designated. It was one of a row. His pace slowed to a nonchalant stroll again. It was still quite light, and he was by no means the only pedestrian on the street; a moment's preliminary, even if cursory, examination of the exterior would not be amiss! Counting the numbers ahead of him, he had already located ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... on the countenances of her companions having yielded to an expression of interest, Ulyth continued her information with increased zest, and a conscious though would-be nonchalant air of importance. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... is probable that Mr. Blake will find there is no chance to water Dry Mesa," she replied, in a tone strangely nonchalant considering her former expressions of apprehension. She drew the crumpled letter from his relaxing fingers, and smoothed it out ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... didn't often kiss her good-night. There had been a strange touch of excitement, of emotion, in his manner to-night. It was natural that she herself should be moved by Nancy Dampier's distress. But Gerald? Gerald, who was generally speaking rather nonchalant, and very, very critical ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Christobal was annoyed. Notwithstanding his conventional polish, he was not a man to conceal his feelings when deeply stirred. Yet Elsie failed to catch his intent, other than that he was adopting his usual nonchalant tone. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... nearly all musical, and wonderfully imitative," answered he. "They can catch almost anything they hear." He spoke in a nonchalant tone, but she felt his arm tremble as she leaned upon it. He had never before made such an effort to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... was finished. Hamza got up from his haunches, lifted up the brazier, and went softly away, carrying it with a nonchalant ease almost as if it were a ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... turban was a mass of sparkling diamonds, and his whole person seemed loaded with jewels. His sturdy body-guard, all armed with double-barrelled rifles, stood close behind his chair, and were the only soldiers in the tent; the nonchalant way in which he addressed the rajah, with folded arms and unbended knee, betokened the unbounded power he possesses in the state. Perhaps it is not very politic in him to arrogate so much to himself in a land where every man's hand is against him, in proportion as he is feared by ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... examination by General Serano, and wished he had not assumed quite so nonchalant an air, although he felt that he could not have answered the questions which would perhaps involve the safety of Captain Dynamite. They were unquestionably in a disagreeable situation. He realized that if he were to tell the entire truth they would be immediately ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... antagonist crumple to the ground. The Frenchman was too experienced a marksman not to know that he had scored a hit. Still Tarzan made no move to raise his pistol. De Coude fired once more, but the attitude of the ape-man—the utter indifference that was so apparent in every line of the nonchalant ease of his giant figure, and the even unruffled puffing of his cigarette—had disconcerted the best marksman in France. This time Tarzan did not start, but again De Coude knew that he ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Jumna Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... you have done for me, dear girl," he said in a low tone as he pressed her hand. The next moment, with a nonchalant "So-long," the parting of the plains, he had dug the spurs into his horse ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... day—and made Laura bite her lip. Outside he showed a strong desire to walk with Miss Fountain that he might instruct her in the details of the Bessemer process and the manufacture of steel rails. But the ease with which the little nonchalant creature disposed of him, the rapidity with which he found himself transferred to Polly, and left to stare at the backs of Laura and Hubert hurrying along in ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and her curious friendship with Natalie. Audrey the careless, with her dark lazy charm, her deep and rather husky contralto, her astonishing little French songs, which she sang with nonchalant grace, and her crowds of boyish admirers whom she alternately petted and bullied—surely she and Natalie had little enough ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... United States; and in the third, its determination to stand by the Queen's dominions on the other side of the Atlantic. Language so just and so clear would lead to the inevitable result of renewed negociation. But who should negociate? The incapable, nonchalant people who have so signally perilled the interests of Great Britain,—or new and capable men? Or should the whole state of our relations with the United States be remitted ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... body lay across the threshold without a sign of life. The buzz of the roulette-wheel was resumed and the crap- dealer began his monotonous routine. Every eye was fixed on the nonchalant man at the bar, but the unconscious creature outside the threshold lay unheeded, for in these men's code it behooves the most humane to practise a certain aloofness in the matter ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... not until he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in general, and the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... back to the Count with a nonchalant air, as of a man who had quite made up his mind about them, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... recollection many a similar hour spent by me in company with Don Rafael and his companions. Vessel after vessel passed the reef, but none took notice of our signal. At last, on the tenth day of our imprisonment, a couple of small schooners fanned their way in a nonchalant manner towards our island, and knowing that we were quite at their mercy, refused our rescue unless we assented to the most extravagant terms of compensation. After a good deal of chaffering, it was agreed that the salvors should land us ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... his dreadful deeds, a touch of this sympathy is felt again when we hear his nonchalant reflections before ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... There had been a time when the first move for departure was as trying as the ordeal of entrance, but he had got beyond that. Tonight he felt that he did it in quite an easy nonchalant way, the ladies, true to a gracious tradition, trailing after him into the hall. It was there that an unexpected blow fell; Chrystie, the enfant terrible, delivered it. Gliding about to the hummed refrain of the Castanet song her eye fell ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... exciting things, New York things, began to happen at once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen, with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied, bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem to occur ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... most nonchalant manner.] My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am. I hope you will be more ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... for it, since she had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling. Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... request; an altogether unwise emotion. Better that he had remained at the window, and drawled out a nonchalant denial. But he was apt to be as earnestly genuine on the surface as he was in reality. It set Lady Hartledon wondering; and she resolved to "bide ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... undergone a change. When in the presence of Barbara he had been confident, nonchalant. When he dismounted from his horse and walked toward Harlan there was about him an atmosphere that suggested carefulness. Before Haydon had taken half a dozen steps Harlan was aware that the man knew him—knew ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... for your introduction," said the Count quietly, and, bowing, he withdrew with the same nonchalant air as he had entered. Trust the devil to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... curiously affected, he could not tell why. There was something in the dawn's delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery- coloured joys, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... and I found that the nonchalant and care-free attitude of the average British officer was really a mask and simulated to keep his mind off the whole beastly business: this great big dirty job which ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... perfectly motionless, even to her fingers and eyelids. The Iron Duke standing at her left, bent, and trembled slightly—supporting with evident difficulty the ponderous sword of State. Prince Albert, sitting tall and soldier- like, in his handsome Field-Marshal's uniform, looked nonchalant and serene, but with a certain far-away expression in his eyes. The Earl of Derby held the crown on its gorgeous-cushion gracefully, like an accomplished waiter presenting a tray of ices. On a like ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... The nonchalant enquiry sent the blood in another hot wave to her cheeks. Had she ever presumed to be angry with this ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... simply wild about you, Baroness. We were at your concert the other night." Maude, the lean and tawny, and Beatrice, the dark and pretty, had followed deftly in their mother's wake and were smiling, Maude with steely brightness, Beatrice with nonchalant ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of an open window smoking a cigar. When he saw Carrie he removed it from his mouth and came forward in a somewhat nonchalant ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... reason for supposing the Vicomte engaged at so early an hour. But as I entered the room, after knocking and awaiting his permission as usual, I saw that some one was leaving it by the other door. His back was presented to my sight, but there was no mistaking the slim form and a nonchalant carriage. Charles Miste again! And only the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... case. All this nonchalant indefiniteness means nothing more, one suspects, than that the Brahmans have elected to keep the history of their country unknown to us poor Mlechhas. Then there are Others, too: the Guardians of Esotericism in a greater sense; who have not chosen so far that Indian history should be known. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to the bank. On these earlier occasions she had felt rather like an inexpert forger, who was endeavouring to get money by false pretence, and it was both a relief and a wonder to her when the nonchalant cashier thrust thick wads of bank-notes under the grille, without so much as ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... with the stuff that is coarse and stuff'd with the stuff that is fine, One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same, A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and hospitable down by the Oconee I live, A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth, A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisianian or ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... most curious to see what a power a few calm words (in Merely a brief proclamation) appear to possess on the people. Order is perfect, and peace; the city is utterly tranquil; And one cannot conceive that this easy and nonchalant crowd, that Flows like a quiet stream through street and market-place, entering Shady recesses and bays of church, osteria, and caffe, Could in a moment be changed to a flood as of molten lava, Boil into deadly wrath and wild homicidal delusion. Ah, 'tis an excellent race,—and even in old ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... above them, and the vicar, shrugging his shoulders to get his white surplice into position, came bustling out of the vestry. To him it was all the most usual, commonplace, and unimportant thing in the world, and both Frank and Maude were filled with amazement at the nonchalant way in which he whipped out a prayer-book, and began to rapidly perform the ceremony. It was all so new and solemn and all-important to them, that they had expected something mystic and overpowering in the function, and yet here was this brisk little man, with an obvious cold ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Get the cards. Let us tell our fortunes, eh?" The three girls gather about the table; the other two shuffle and cut. The cards turn out well for them. Carmen watches them. After a moment she reaches for the pack. She is very nonchalant about it, and glances at Jose as she shuffles the cards. Then she sits half upon the table and cuts. A glance! a moment of sudden fear! she has cut death for herself! The blow has come to her in her most reckless moment. After an instant's pause she sings ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... clambered Over his knees, and waged a mimic warfare across them, Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him. Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household, Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance, Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen; Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him, Coming behind his chair, and clasping her fingers ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... coxcombs, with his soft smile and conscious air of superiority—a mere bag of vanity, whose emptiness is partly hidden by gorgeous raiment, gold embroidery, rings, snuff-box, muff and what-not. With what genteel condescension does he greet Sir Charles; how gracefully nonchalant is he to my Lord Morelove. "My dear agreeable! Que je t'embrasse! Pardi! Il y a cent ans que je ne t'ai veu. My lord, I am your ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and gave the hand she still held a squeeze. "You're adorable, that's what you are!" She exploded this pointblank charge in Sylvia's face with nonchalant ease, and went on with another. "Jerry Fiske is quite right about you. I suppose you know that you're here today so that Jerry ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... betray him as one of the English-speaking pest, and the crowd, with its mind so full of English hatred, does not readily distinguish the American. So drop into a word of English in a cafe: your neighbor glowers and draws away. You face it out with a nonchalant air, but gradually the tension grows, especially when, as happened to-day at the prisoners' camp at Zossen, twenty miles south of Berlin, a great burly Prussian puts a menacing eye on you and says, without introduction: 'It is very dangerous for an ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Colonel. But no, friendship had never existed between her and the young lady; she was too eccentric and ill-mannered. Just imagine, Jonker, she came to our house one evening when she knew there was to be dancing and music. Yes, she dropped in, as nonchalant as possible, in a dark merino dress, fastened up to the neck, with a turn-down collar and a silk neckerchief—just for all the world like a boy. And her boots—they might have belonged to some plough-boy. Upon my ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... I presume?" and seeing he was right, he added, with a nonchalant air, "Glad to see you; ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... does it matter to me?" I said, affecting to speak in a nonchalant way. "I shall never see this woman again, and if I liked her before meeting her, it is quite different now ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... said in the most nonchalant manner imaginable, "we've got a jolly, strolling, German band up at the hotel; and we're going to have an evening's gaiety. Get into a pretty dress, and don't keep ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and Brainard stood beside me. Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known,—not a hint in this pale creature, whose breath struggled through chattering teeth, and whose hands worked in uncontrollable spasms, of the nonchalant elegant I had known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those angry and determined eyes of the gayly selfish spirit of my ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... allowed himself to make a provoking movement, a dubious gesture of any sort, I would have flung myself upon him at once; but the nonchalant manner in which he looked away, while he extended to me his hand with the candlestick, amazed me. I simply took it from him. He stepped back, with a ceremonious bow for Seraphina. La Chica ran ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... man, so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and went red, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many beats of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. "I must be cautious," he told himself. "In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment." At the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant and candid. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... passion, could not fail to see that the Greek was remarkably nonchalant for one who had witnessed the utter collapse of ten ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... with her most provokingly nonchalant air, "I haven't made any inquiry, but I presume they will continue them all day just the same as if we were here. I don't think they will change the programme ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... glad to see him go from the house. Soon he returned to demand Wilfrid's address. Arabella wrote it out for him with rebuking composure. Then he insisted upon having Captain Gambier's, whom he described as "ce nonchalant dandy." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one engaged in the conflict bore some token of its severity. I did not wait for the thunder-storm I foresaw: I rose with a nonchalant yaw n of ennui—marched out of the apartment, called a servant—demanded my own room—repaired to it, and immersed the internal faculties of my head in Mignet's History of the Revolution, while Bedos busied himself in its ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... display, in what is known as poise. This third generation Jewish-American has dropped all the mannerisms of excitability in gesture and voice, and his adherence to good form includes that attitude of nonchalant humor so characteristic ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Two days elapsed, then Leslie received a second communication too austere to be disregarded. She went to the president's office in considerable trepidation and emerged from it an hour later, her heavy features set in anger. Undertaking to assume her usual nonchalant pose, she had been brought with alarming suddenness to a wholesome respect for Doctor Matthews' dignity. She had also received a lecture on reckless driving which she was not ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... an attitude of intense watchfulness. As a steward passed down the corridor he assumed a careless expression and lit a cigarette with nonchalant elaboration. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... to me, and lit a cigarette in his old, nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frockcoat of the book merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... finger nails on his right hand, and a frown creased his brow. He was enwrapped by a long purple bathrobe which tied closely about his neck. As he caught sight of Mr. Gubb, he started slightly and doubled his hand into a fist, but he immediately calmed himself and assumed a nonchalant air. As a matter of fact, Mr. Enderbury led a dog's life. For years he had loved Syrilla devotedly, but he was so bashful he had never dared to confess his love to her, and year after year he saw her smile upon one thin man after another. Now it was Mr. Lonergan; again it ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Cheyenne was "horstile." Fortunately, I never encountered Jeff Carr. I passed through Cheyenne in a blizzard. There were eighty-four hoboes with me at the time. The strength of numbers made us pretty nonchalant on most things, but not on Jeff Carr. The connotation of "Jeff Carr" stunned our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole gang was mortally scared of ...
— The Road • Jack London
... plumper since her marriage. Then to his great surprise he made out, further in at the back of the room, chatting with Capitan Basilio, the curate, and the alferez of the Civil Guard, no less than the jeweler Simoun, as ever with his blue goggles and his nonchalant air. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... acquainted, at least. The great detective's tone when he greeted his visitor was as distinctly ironical as the latter's was uneasy, although he replied with a mirthless chuckle, which was intended to be airily nonchalant. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... to feel that she had met her master; for, with a hurried look in his face, she drew slowly back, and, folding her arms, waited for him to move with a patience too nonchalant not to be forced. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... away, easy and nonchalant; but inwardly he carried a load of dread and he saw clearly that he must learn where he stood with little Miss Blythe, or not know the feeling of easiness from one day to the next. Better, he thought, to be the recipient of a painful and undeserved ultimatum, than to ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... been much amused with the awkwardness and nonchalant manners of the servants in America. Two American ladies who had just returned from Europe, told me that shortly after their arrival at Boston, a young man had been sent to them from Vermont to do the duty of footman. He had been a day or two in the house, when they rang the bell and ordered ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... never again assuming its normal tilt. She held small Pete by one chubby hand, and with a wry face he was licking out an absurd little red tongue at least twice each moment, as if uncertain as to whether his olfactory or gustatory nerves had been offended. Billy was standing with the nonchalant unconcern of one strong of stomach, and the four other little Poteets, ranging in size from Shoofly, on the floor, to Tobe, the buried, were shuffling their bare feet in the dust with evident impatience to be off to gloat over ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Monroe, looking around, read the whole situation at a glance. Masterson still suspected him, and was listening! Monroe frankly laughed and made a little sound, the mere whisper of a whistle, as he met Masterson's baffled look with one of cool mockery; it was nonchalant to the verge of insolence, and enraged the Southerner, strong in his convictions of right, as a blow could not have done. For a blow a man could strike back, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... with an easy nonchalant air ahead of the party, on a very narrow footpath, suddenly stopped to listen with a look of anxiety. A moment later and he entered the bush that fringed ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... minutes later it was quite another Jimmie Dale, composed, nonchalant, imperturbable, who entered an up-town subway train, and, choosing a seat alone near the centre of the car, which at that hour of night in the downtown district was almost deserted, took the crushed letter from his pocket. For a moment he made no attempt to read it, his dark eyes, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Orgreave gave a curt nod, and departed, in nonchalant good-humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any farther would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality. And Edwin nodded with equal curtness and made off slowly into the maze of Bursley. The thought ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... wait for anything more, but sneaked off by himself to think. The change of the name seemed nothing at the time, but the suggestion that his great-grandfather had been hanged was startling enough to give food for many meditations. Fortunately, or unfortunately, his aunt's manner had been too nonchalant to give him any clues. And from the manner of his mother he gathered merely that the asking of questions would be useless. So it came about that Keith for the first time in his life regretted the premature death of his paternal grandfather, ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... and taste would have availed him little with his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirked no part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He even came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one who was conversant with the best—a nonchalant social connoisseur—yet who realized the stern primitive ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... was something in the outlaw's manner, in the cold, measured tone of his voice, in his nonchalant disregard of the pistol in Lawler's hand that brought a swift suspicion into Lawler's mind. It was a presentiment that the outlaw was not alone in the cabin; that he had carefully laid his plans, and that they did not include a gun fight in which he ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... despise that Medici family and all that belongs to them. So no sympathy with the subjects blinded my eyes, and drew me gradually from all else in the hall to contemplate these. It was simply the love of power and of fertility that held me astonished, which seemed to express with nonchalant ease what other painters attain by laborious efforts. It occurred to me that other painters are famous for single heads, or figures, and that were the striking heads and figures with which these pictures abound to be parcelled out singly, any one of them would make a man's reputation. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cost. He is there because he elected to be there. He is going to stay by until the thing is done, or he is. He says very little about it. He is uncomfortable if any one else says anything about it. He is rather matter of fact, indeed, and nonchalant as long as things are being done fairly. But there is nothing calm about his attitude when his opponent hits below the belt. It was a sense of fair play, as well as humanity, that made England rise to the call of Belgium. It is England's sense of fair play that makes her soldiers ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... up in Kitty's cheek as she answered, still half hiding her face in the beloved handkerchief: "Of course I have, lots of it, only I'm ashamed to show it to most people, because it's the style to take everything in the most nonchalant way. My gracious, Rose, you'd have thought me a romantic goose last night while Steve proposed in the back parlor, for I actually cried, he was so dreadfully in earnest when I pretended that I didn't care for him, and so very dear and nice when I told ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... figure suddenly relaxed; he leaned against a chair with a return of his habitual nonchalant air, and waved ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... keen November wind to emphasise our blessings. The water in the pocket was clear and pure, but it was full of small "wigglers." We tried to dip up a pail which should be free from them. The Major, seeing our efforts, took a cup and without looking drank it down with the nonchalant remark, "I haven't seen any wigglers." The Pai Utes had killed some rabbits, which they now skinned and cooked. I say cooked, but perhaps I should say warmed. Dexterously stripping off the skins they slit open the abdomen, removed the entrails, and, after squeezing out the contents ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... pulse. World-wide and centuries old as is the experience, personally I was about to "spring my badge" for the first time. Suppose the doortender should refuse to honor it and force me to impress upon him the importance of the Z. P.—without a gun? Outwardly nonchalant I strolled in between the two ropes. Proprietor Shipp looked up from counting his winnings and opened his mouth to shout "ticket!" I flung back my coat, and with a nod and a half-wink of wisdom he fell back again to computing his ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the nonchalant manner in which Louis's ambassadors treated him, indignant at the injury to his heritage by the redemption of the towns on the Somme, and further, already alienated from his royal cousin through the long series of petty ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... telling daily untruths for a daily paper, if at the end of said period said cousin and friend, forced by a steadily diminishing bank account to return to the stern necessities of life, had written you a nonchalant little note telling you to 'look up a place for them to lay their heads'—which being translated in terms of action meant that you were to walk the streets looking for vacant houses when vacant houses there were none—if this combination of circumstances befell you, Mr. Beason—just ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... dispelled. He regained his assurance, and walked around the terrace twice, treading the gravel with the step of a conqueror, making it feel the full weight of his foot. He finally seated himself on a bench; he had the nonchalant attitude of a man who is at home. Five or six doves were billing and cooing on the ledge of the roof; he could readily understand that they were talking of him, and that they were saying, "Here he is—we ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... from it, and the blackened demon who sits on its neck also leaps down from it, and they move gingerly towards the puppy. A little while ago the motor-bus might have overturned a human cyclist or so, and proceeded nonchalant on its way. But now even a puppy requires a post-mortem: such is the force of public opinion aroused. Two policemen appear ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... still nonchalant—"the Haves against the Haven'ts. No nonsense left, by that time, about 'blood' and 'family.' Society will have dropped all those little trimmings and embroideries. We shall have come ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moved behind the scenes and yet were free to speak their thoughts, are unique. Written with the satirist's eye upon the object of his sarcasm, tinged with the license of his vagabondage, throbbing with the passionate and nonchalant afflatus of the wine-cup, they wing their flight like poisoned arrows or plumed serpents with unerring straightness at abuses in ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... eager faces peered at his opponent, who was sliding slowly forward in his chair, and for the length of a minute no sound but the guarded breathing of the onlookers could be heard. This was broken by a nervous cough from the rear of the room, and the faces assumed their ordinary nonchalant expressions, their rugged lines heavily shadowed in the light of the flickering oil lamps, while the shuffling of cards and the clink of silver became audible. Hopalong Cassidy had objected to insulting ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... magic to silence the bandits, to check movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed careless and nonchalant. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Mrs. Pember looked back at the ten years of her married life with a shudder. With the rigid training of her somewhat dogmatic communion still potent, she listened in a horrified expectancy, rather actual than figurative, for the heavens to strike or the earth to swallow up her nonchalant husband. Nor was this all. The weakness for grog, unfortunately supposed to be inherent in a nautical existence, was carried by Captain Pember to an extent inconsiderate even in the eyes of a seafaring public; and when, under its genial influence, ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Guard running from their respective homes and churches to the Town Hall, and thence, in orderly squads of four, with grim and stern faces, to the redoubts. Non-combatants, in compliance with the proclamation, went reluctantly to their houses. Tram-loads of scared women and nonchalant babies were hurried in from Beaconsfield. The streets were soon deserted. There was no panic; but many a poor woman felt that the life of a husband, a father, a lover, or a brother was in jeopardy, and many a fervent ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of mild curiosity. The stranger was the first to see him, and with an expression of evident disgust gave Merrick warning of his approach. If the detective felt any annoyance he did not betray it as he turned and nodded to Scott in the most nonchalant manner possible, as though dragging the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... upon inaccessible heights, awesome and powerful, to be propitiated with humbleness and prayer; and the mere sight of him in her immediate neighbourhood brought her heart into her mouth. For once she lost her nonchalant demeanour, her free and easy speech, and stood nervously silent before him with hanging head and reddened cheeks. Fortunately for her she was dressed that day in a quiet and well-fitting frock of blue serge, and wore less than her usual number of jingling brassy ornaments. The bishop, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... and dance cards, his own face convulsed with grief, and turned, appalled, from his own image. His resourceful brain refused its functions. He could not guess her movements after that silent, definitive leave taking. He could but picture her tall, erect figure, outwardly composed and nonchalant, as she must have stood, facing the outer world, looking out to what—to what? A mad hope rose in his breast. Would she turn to him? Would her instinctive steps lead her to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... stood the familiar form of the Jan Lucar; and a few feet beyond, a figure from which came a clear, cool, nonchalant voice; ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... floods of pity gushed; people sprang to their feet, and somewhere in the wide auditory a woman sobbed. Habitues of a celebrated Salon des Etrangers recall the tradition of a Hungarian nobleman who, apparently calm, nonchalant, debonair, gambled desperately; "while his right hand, resting easily inside the breast of his coat, clutched and lacerated his flesh till his nails dripped with blood." With emotions somewhat analogous, Mr. Dunbar sat as participant in this judicial ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Strahan struck a nonchalant attitude, as he coolly remarked: "My venerable friend, your passion is unbecoming to your years. Miss Vosburgh, I humbly ask your pardon that my ears were not long enough to catch the purport of this interview. I am not in the habit of listening at a lady's door before I enter. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of your blood made mine flow fast; But you sipped your tea With a nonchalant air, and balanced the spoon, And balanced ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... Tuileries, to see the Emperor and the rest of us come home. He went round by the Rue Rivoli, but I walked through the gardens. The soldiers from Africa sat by the gilded portals, as usual,—aliens, and yet always with the port of conquerors here in Paris. Their nonchalant indifference and soldierly bearing always remind me of the sort of force the Emperor has at hand to secure his throne. I think the blouses must look askance at these satraps of the desert. The single jet fountain in the basin was springing its highest,—a quivering ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... chagrin, that he collided with a dapper young man in a dinner jacket at that moment about to enter Therese's sitting-room. Pulling up short, he looked to see who it was who made so free of the house, and, simultaneously, the visitor wheeled round with an expression of nonchalant arrogance. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... of Scott's writing, its digressiveness, its nonchalant carelessness, its indifference to artistic quality, has in some sort of way numbed and atrophied the interest in his work of those who have been caught up and waylaid by the modern spirit. And yet Scott's novels have ample and admirable excellencies. In his expansive and digressive fashion ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... a while, maintaining a pretense of nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time, but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then, for half an ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... customer by a renowned French dressmaker: "Un rien et madame est habillee!" They are coquettishly revealing their claims to the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his hand. Paris and his friend are in the most nonchalant of attitudes. They could not be more indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were they dandies judging the class for costermonger's donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The three most beautiful women in the world are squirming and posturing for praise, and a decision, before ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country? " she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard anything about him for ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... major his jaw squared itself determinedly. There was a rather forceful sort of man appearing under the nonchalant David whom his friends had known for years. A wild pride stirred in Phoebe to such an extent that she caught her breath while she waited for the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... represents him about this epoch [when "neither physical nor moral consumption of any kind prevented him from attending freely to his labours as well as to his pleasures"], slender, and in a nonchalant attitude, gentlemanlike in the highest degree: the forehead superb, the hands of a rare distinction, the eyes small, the nose prominent, but the mouth of an exquisite fineness and gently closed, as if to keep back a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... but she was interested. She saw beyond the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of- the-world airs. "I'd never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she, "if ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... had hidden the hurts of his schoolmates' recent slights under a nonchalant manner. Each one, while it cut deeply, seemed to aggravate him to greater wilfulness. Well bred as he was, took no real pleasure in the sports of the company of which he had made a part since the loss of the position ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... enough loose silver in their two purses to pay the modest charges at the cabaret and buy a litre or two of petrol to get them to Paris. Yet they dallied on in the way of young love and drove up to the bank just before it closed. When Adelle in her nonchalant manner asked the young man at the window to give her five thousand francs in notes, she received a great shock—the worst shock of her life. The young cashier, who had paid out to her through the little brass guichet many tens of thousands of pretty white notes and gold-pieces, informed ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... have been a few inches over three feet, and the stretch of its arms over rather than under five feet, but at the great height at which it was seen—not less than eighty feet—it looked much like an ordinary monkey. It was hanging in the most easy nonchalant way by one hand from the branch of a tree, utterly indifferent to the fact that to drop was ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... open and went through. Tog Lee Chang Chu was sitting at a desk, nonchalant and petitely beautiful as usual, comfortably seated in easy-chairs were two young men by their attire probably citizens of United Planets ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Holywell Street the centre of Europe—when three knocks of a peculiar nature were heard, and Mendoza starting up, said, "Ha! there are only four men in the world who know that signal." At once, and with a reverence quite distinct from his former nonchalant manner, he ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in at last. Jeffreys could see the boy pacing in a nonchalant way down the platform, evidently expecting anything ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... he was actually in the room, his cold appraising eyes upon her, that the poor woman realized that her position towards him had changed. She could not summon up the nonchalant distant civility which, according to her ideas, was sufficient for her country neighbors in general, and the Pratts ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... much amused with the awkwardness and nonchalant manners of the servants in America. Two American ladies who had just returned from Europe, told me that shortly after their arrival at Boston, a young man had been sent to them from Vermont to do the duty of footman. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to see them tangle themselves all up, what with the pole and the halters. Not a bit of it. They stopped, panting, and still trying to toss their heads, and the Aspirant quietly picked up a halter, and passed the horses over to the men, saying, in a most nonchalant manner: "Fasten that pole more securely. Some of you go quietly down the hill. You'll meet them coming back," and he returned to the garden, and resumed the conversation just where ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... fall of twenty feet, turned and scrambled back to the promenade. He was cried and exclaimed over by the hysterical ladies, and scolded for a bittie fule by the sergeant. To this Bobby returned ostentatious yawns of boredom and nonchalant lollings, for it seemed a small matter to be so fashed about. At that a gentleman remarked, testily, to hide his own agitation, that dogs really had very little sense. The sergeant ordered Bobby to precede him through the postern, and the little ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... country hotels, or at cheap department stores. That it was appraised highly in Siminol, however, was beyond question, and on every side swarthy faces watched eagerly to see what impression it would make upon us, though the owner himself assumed a nonchalant air, as became the possessor of so rare an article of virtu. It had evidently been in Siminol a long time, and was possibly stolen from a trading-post on some piratical expedition, or looted from a Spanish planter's home during a raid ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... walking with an easy nonchalant air ahead of the party, on a very narrow footpath, suddenly stopped to listen with a look of anxiety. A moment later and he entered the bush that fringed the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... said the Count quietly, and, bowing, he withdrew with the same nonchalant air as he had entered. Trust the devil to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... was enjoying a choice Havana. He took no note of external objects as they flashed with almost lightning rapidity past the car windows, and he seemed equally unconscious of the presence of his fellow passengers. His dress and manner, as well as his nonchalant, graceful attitude, and even the delicate poise of his cigar, were all indicative of wealth and refinement, and of a courtesy innate, not acquired. His head was slightly thrown back, and with half-closed, dreamy eyes, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the car and guided it by an apparently careless winding of the wheel she felt a glow that was almost pride in his appearance and nonchalant mastery of this abstruse mechanism. She was frightened at the speed and at the narrow margin by which he missed other vehicles and obtruding corners. When he flourished to an impressive halt under the Whipple porte-cochere ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... works than that,—without faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet. But here they were literally unable to reach the works; the fatal rifle-bullet drew a line at which bravery and cowardice, nonchalant veterans and trembling boys, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... which was rapidly losing its delicate contour and bloom. Marion's pink and white beauty was at its zenith, and the social attentions she was beginning to receive only served to render her elder sister more than ever irritable and envious. Louis was his old nonchalant self, careless and listless, with an ever deepening expression of ennui which was pitiful in one so young. His European travels had not improved him, ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... said Pepper, affecting a nonchalant tone, and arranging his cravat before the glass,—"nay, as you will. Ned Pepper requires no man's companionship against his liking; and if the noble spark of ambition be not in your bosom, 't is no use spending my breath in blowing at what only existed in my too flattering ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its splendour ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... has counted the cost. He is there because he elected to be there. He is going to stay by until the thing is done, or he is. He says very little about it. He is uncomfortable if any one else says anything about it. He is rather matter of fact, indeed, and nonchalant as long as things are being done fairly. But there is nothing calm about his attitude when his opponent hits below the belt. It was a sense of fair play, as well as humanity, that made England rise to the call of Belgium. It is England's ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the corridor. Antinea immediately fell back into the nonchalant pose in which I had first seen her. One had to see such a transformation to ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... supporting her, and she found it hard to credit the fact that it was he, the hard, nonchalant man of the world she knew, who had spoken. She clutched ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... seem nonchalant, although he is obviously trying to justify himself.] I dropped by to remind ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... exquisitely beautiful; beautiful always, but more so now in the pathos of her helplessness. Somewhat perfunctorily, because in his ignorance of women he thought that it would please her, and also because vaguely something human and elemental had suddenly roused his pulses, he relinquished his nonchalant attitude, and came a step nearer ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Morva walked home on the evening of Will's arrival. He had nodded at her in a nonchalant manner, with a kindly, "Well, Morva!" in passing, just as he had done to Magw and Shan, but further than that had not spoken to her again, though his eyes followed her everywhere as she moved about ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... before he saw her. He was walking with three men—joking, laughing absent-mindedly, while his eyes searched for a face in the crowd. She waited a moment, hidden, suffocated with anticipation, her heart turning over and over, until he said a nonchalant good-bye to his companions, who were pounced upon by eager relatives. Then she crept up behind and put both her hands ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... nose of masculine beauty; the habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth bespoke an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His bearing was nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage of his head, especially when he talked with action, much dignity, energy, and nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural condition for his voice, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... over my work one day, when the door burst open and Brainard stood beside me. Brainard, I say, and yet in no sense the man I had known,—not a hint in this pale creature, whose breath struggled through chattering teeth, and whose hands worked in uncontrollable spasms, of the nonchalant elegant I had known. Not a glimpse to be seen in those angry and determined eyes of the gayly selfish spirit of ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... looked at the Professor, and he and John exchanged smiling glances, and both of them took the bulbs and began the meal with them in the most nonchalant manner. The boys could not understand the Professor's defiant manner in eating a poisonous bulb, and George cried out: "Didn't you say ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... at Rufus. It was abundantly evident that he had not realised how near to open violence the young fisherman had been. His nonchalant explanation was plainly all-sufficing in his own opinion, and during the very marked silence that followed he displayed no faintest hint of anxiety or even interest as to the fashion of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... to-day in her hateful big car. She did not find me a very agreeable hostess, I'm afraid, but curled up like a nonchalant green snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke and talk. She asked where Duncan was and I had to explain that he'd been called out to the mines on imperative business. And that started her going on the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half a million before he was through with that ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... been—she who had insisted on six as a proper breakfast hour, and had grudgingly consented to postpone it till half-past out of deference to her sleepy-headed elders. Her father had finished his egg and hers too, before she appeared, as nonchalant and smiling as if she were ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... revolver-barrel placed at my temple could not more effectually have put me out of business than this nonchalant reception. Consequently I gasped out something about its being the sultriest 47th of August in eighteen years, and plumped back into a chair opposite him. "I wouldn't mind a Remsen cooler myself," he went on, "but the fact is your butler is off for to-night, and I'm hanged if I ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... large red face, marked with a purple scar down his cheek and chin, a fair mustache, smooth hair, parted on one side, a gold-rimmed eyeglass, gold studs in his shirt-front, and rings on his fat fingers. He had his hat and an umbrella in his hands. He came up to Christophe in a nonchalant manner. Christophe, who was dreaming as he sat, started with surprise. He seized Diener's hands, and shouted with a noisy heartiness that made the assistants titter and Diener blush. That majestic personage ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... conscious of a whisper and a buzzing sound as he walked through the gates in what he intended to be a nonchalant fashion, but which proved to be very conscious, and then most conscious as a ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... erudite physicist, dwarfed by the big chassis, gave the appearance of a small boy trying to hide an outsize treasure; but the nonchalant humor that normally poked constant fun at both his profession as a physicist and the traditions of his ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... I noticed that Mr. Prime seemed to play the dandy more consummately than usual, as though he were reflecting that come what might he would go down as he had declared, with a smile on his face and a flawless coat on his back. I had never known him to be more amusing and nonchalant than in the half hour which followed his previous outburst. When we reached a flower-stand at the corner of the streets where our ways divided, he asked me to wait a minute, and, selecting a boutoniere and a beautiful white rose, he ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and talk the matter of the letter over with her. But he had read it through again twice ere she appeared, and then, to his dismay, equipped for a journey, and saying, in the most matter-of-fact, nonchalant manner possible, "Ross, Mrs. Keller has come to say good-bye. I am going with her to Newport, where she makes the only perilous part of the trip—the, to her, dreadful change from cars to boat. So I shall be away ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and diamonds and a smile. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... went on. "That's just it. The mediums are so nonchalant while causing these marvels that they fail to convince. Why, when I was holding a slate in order that they might write upon it, I minded the scratching no more than a clock a-ticking, they had made me that careless ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... laws of regeneration, at present almost totally beyond our control. Some say that it is a matter of the wear and tear of our blood vessels, those rubber-like tubes which transport food and drainage with nonchalant equanimity to all cells as long as they last. In the classic phrase: a man is as old as his arteries, ergo his ductless glands will be as old as their arteries. And the age of arteries is simply a matter of wear and tear, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... jostling heavily upon court etiquette, and at first the Lady Emir was very clearly inclined to resent it, and had sharp orders for repression ready upon her lips. But she changed her mind, perhaps through some memory that by blood she was related to this nonchalant race; and presently cushions were brought, on which Captain Kettle bestowed himself tailor-fashion (with his back cautiously up against a wall), and then a negro slave knelt before him and offered sweet sticky sherbet, which he drank ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... with such anxiety in their faces that I felt it more than my own peril, Louison gave me a tender look out of her fine eyes, and the thought of it was a light to my soul in many an hour of darkness. She had seemed so cool, so nonchalant, I was surprised to feel the tremor in her nerves. I knew not words to say when Louise took ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... fool—let's amuse ourselves. Get the cards. Let us tell our fortunes, eh?" The three girls gather about the table; the other two shuffle and cut. The cards turn out well for them. Carmen watches them. After a moment she reaches for the pack. She is very nonchalant about it, and glances at Jose as she shuffles the cards. Then she sits half upon the table and cuts. A glance! a moment of sudden fear! she has cut death for herself! The blow has come to her in her most reckless moment. After an instant's pause she sings with a simple fatalism ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... face wore a singular expression, full of gravity and significance. Another of the company rose hastily, and, with some appearance of alarm, prepared to take his leave. There were only two who held their ground, Brackenbury and an old red-nosed cavalry Major; but these two preserved a nonchalant demeanour, and, beyond a look of intelligence which they rapidly exchanged, appeared entirely foreign to the discussion that had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great surprise he made out, further in at the back of the room, chatting with Capitan Basilio, the curate, and the alferez of the Civil Guard, no less than the jeweler Simoun, as ever with his blue goggles and his nonchalant air. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... us talked the matter of quarantine freely as we rode along, yet no one ventured any proposition looking to an agreement as to who should go on the diplomatic mission. I was the youngest and naturally took refuge behind my years, yet perfectly conscious that, in spite of the indifferent and nonchalant attitude assumed, all three of us foremen were equally anxious for the chance. Matters remained undecided; but the next day at dinner, Lovell having met us before reaching the railroad, the question arose who should go up to Miles City. Dave and Quince were also eating at my wagon, and ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... face brightened again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country? " she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard anything about him ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... members of the Town Guard running from their respective homes and churches to the Town Hall, and thence, in orderly squads of four, with grim and stern faces, to the redoubts. Non-combatants, in compliance with the proclamation, went reluctantly to their houses. Tram-loads of scared women and nonchalant babies were hurried in from Beaconsfield. The streets were soon deserted. There was no panic; but many a poor woman felt that the life of a husband, a father, a lover, or a brother was in jeopardy, and many a fervent prayer went up ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... with the nonchalant thoughtless cruelty of youth, "considering that we all saw the Countess off in the funicular at three o'clock, I don't see how you could have been ski-ing with her when it was nearly dark." And the child ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and went about the pair. Neither heard nor indeed heeded it. The old man was easy, almost nonchalant; the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... of course, my dear Sir Hugh," replied the other, with a nonchalant air. "But if I were you I would not be in too great a hurry to make such a declaration. You may require a friend in the near ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... the drawing of blinds and curtains. Mr. Prohack had glimpses of enormous and magnificent interiors,—some right in the sky, some on the ground—with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily framed pictures, mighty furniture, statuary, and superb and nonchalant menials engaged in the pleasant task of shutting away those interiors from the vulgar gaze. The spectacle continued furlong upon furlong, monotonously. There was no end to the succession of palaces of the wealthy. Then it would be interrupted while Mr. Prohack crossed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... letting his head go down between his knees, and so disgusting the stranger that he turned sharply upon his heel and strutted off, swinging a black cane with a silver top and silk tassels to and fro, and then stopping in a very nonchalant manner to take out a silver hunting watch and look at the time, at the same moment taking care that Will should have a good view of the watch, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... I have watched you since I was ten. But if you had a little real love, A little strength, You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers And go walking down the white ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... his shoulders. He felt a great weariness concerning the situation, nonchalant scorn of what happened in the future of this woman. As for Mary Faithful—that was a different matter, but he could not think about Mary Faithful while standing in the salon of the Villa Rosa with ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new preoccupation, seemed to reply: 'Yes, I know! You need not ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... on deck to answer our hail, and invited us aboard. I played the sailor and the man, fending off the skiff so that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiff astern on a long painter, and making the painter fast with two nonchalant half-hitches. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... business. Busy the Consul undoubtedly was, writing and studying; nevertheless, he welcomed his visitor. The young man came in like an inhabitant of another world, as he was; in spotlessly neat attire, leisurely manner, and with his blue eyes sleepily nonchalant at the sight of all the stir of all the world. But they smiled at ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... partner in all the charges of the day—and made Laura bite her lip. Outside he showed a strong desire to walk with Miss Fountain that he might instruct her in the details of the Bessemer process and the manufacture of steel rails. But the ease with which the little nonchalant creature disposed of him, the rapidity with which he found himself transferred to Polly, and left to stare at the backs of Laura and Hubert hurrying along in ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... trumps with a woman, for they indicate inexperience and uncertainty. The man who proposes in a finished and nonchalant manner, as if he had done it frequently and were sure of the result, is now and then astonished at a refusal. It is also a risk to offer a ring immediately after acceptance. The suspicion is that the ring has been worn before, or else the man was sure enough of the girl ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... roasting pine-cones at charcoal fires—with children in the agonies of having their hair combed—with degraded poultry and homeless dogs—with fruit-stands and green groceries, and the little edifices of ecclesiastical architecture for the sale of lemonade—with wandering bag-pipers, and herds of nonchalant goats—with horses, and grooms currying them—and over all, from vast heights of balcony, with people lazily hanging upon rails and looking down on the riot. Reentering the stream of the Toledo, it carried us almost ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the presence of her inferiors of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with interest and indulgence. Helena stared. The cousin twisted his little moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the day were being brought out of the Conciergerie to take their places in the waiting tumbrils. Fourteen they numbered, and there was a woman amongst them as composed as any of the men. She descended the prison steps in nonchalant conversation with a witty young man of some thirty years of age, who had been one of the ornaments of the prerevolutionary salons. Had the pair been on the point of mounting a wedding coach they could not have shown ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... to appear nonchalant but his eyes widened regardless. Sam enjoyed this. He said, "Yes, you'll have as much chance ...
— Mr. Chipfellow's Jackpot • Dick Purcell
... was still nonchalant—"the Haves against the Haven'ts. No nonsense left, by that time, about 'blood' and 'family.' Society will have dropped all those little trimmings and embroideries. We shall have come ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face by way of an invitation, led her to the quadrille. The contrast between these two couples, placed opposite to each other, was striking, and yet common enough in a mixed ballroom. Captain Kockney was desperately nonchalant, his partner full of airs and graces; their conversation was silly, ignorant, and conceited, beyond the reach of imagination—such things must be heard to be believed. Young Van Horne was clever, and appeared to less advantage ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... me, and at the same time the sauce-dish was uncomfortably near my neck, and directly under my nose. This was too nonchalant, and my surprise was still greater when the servant, in an unnatural and gruff voice, said, "Do you want any of this stuff?" I looked up at the man, and recognized a twinkle in a familiar eye, and as the twinkle was accentuated ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... if Fotheringham had seen, would have saved him a vast amount of trouble. But the messenger, too busy to notice his visitor, paid him no attention, and in a moment Bronson was puffing his cigar with a nonchalant air, that would disarm any suspicions which the messenger might have entertained, but he had none, as it was a common practice to send new men over his run, that he might "break ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... sits up and dusts ourselves off in a nonchalant manner while the little old choo-choo continues upon her way to Utica, Syracuse, and all points west, leaving me and the Sweet Caps Kid with all the bright world before us, and nothing behind us ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... quietly moving round each other. The graceful activity of the amateur was somewhat characteristic of his school, while the ex-professional contented himself with almost imperceptible movements of his feet, watching with a nonchalant yet wary caution for the coming attack. With the suddenness of a flash the Lieutenant led with his left and was back ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... mother love and sympathy; but Dreda was smiling still, her grey eyes wide open, her very gums showing in the unnatural stretching of her lips. She submitted to be kissed, but offered no caress in return, and turned with a nonchalant air to examine the photographs on the mantelshelf, while Miss Bretherton escorted her mother ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sank very low, and his easy, nonchalant attitude changed very perceptibly, when Messrs. Reed and Hiscock, the Republican members, took him in hand and subjected him to one of the most merciless cross-examinations ever heard in a committee room. The two keen cross-questioners evidently ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... in her nonchalant fashion again; her chin between her two hands now, and her head making little appreciative nods. "That's like condensed milk; a great deal in a little of it. I'll put the fig-leaves away now, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... elegance, this essence of luxury, and this joy of life brought back to my memory the vision of our Bois de Boulogne, so elegant and so animated a few years before, when Napoleon III. used to drive through on his daumont, nonchalant and smiling. Ah, how beautiful it was in those days—our Bois de Boulogne, with the officers caracoling in the Avenue des Acacias, admired by our beautiful ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... unnoticed. Garrison days were but a merry-go-round with him. "If that's a specimen of the bridegroom cometh," said he to himself, "I've got no more use for matrimony than I have for the catechism." And doubtless to this gay and nonchalant spirit the deeply religious temperament of the Parson seemed a sombre and repellent thing,—a thing to be lamented, yet indulged as something too solemn ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... that I was near by," he said, "at the moment of the encounter. I had taken my stand near a large beach-chair, which, for reasons, interested me. I was nonchalant, impassive; alert, without seeming to be so. Many of the women passing I had met upon the boulevards under circumstances the most peculiar; concerning many of the men I knew more than they would wish the world to know. Seeing me standing ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... way, reader, have you observed that a person who is exceptionally nonchalant with his inferiors, is never nonchalant with persons of a higher rank? Why is that? But ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... with the thing—point out how foolish it is to waste its time on us," I suggested, trying to appear as nonchalant as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... cattlemen's bunks?" Nippers asked of an oiler who stood, nonchalant, somewhat contemptuous, looking over the side at the seething, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... watching her pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously nonchalant risings and sittings, and her perfunctory genuflexions, and thought what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in happier circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with his work that made him go ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the odd-looking, rough, shapeless coat, yet with a certain expensive, fashionable air about the rest of his dress, who stood leaning against the chimney-piece in a nonchalant attitude, was her eldest cousin, Elliot Lyddell. The other, a great contrast in appearance, small, slender, and pale, with near-sighted spectacles over his weak, light grey eyes, dressed with scrupulous precision and quietness, who had retreated to the other end of the room and taken ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... With a nonchalant air which excited Mr. Oppner's admiration, Alden walked to a lamp some little distance away, tore open the yellow envelope, and ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... to see what a power a few calm words (in Merely a brief proclamation) appear to possess on the people. Order is perfect, and peace; the city is utterly tranquil; And one cannot conceive that this easy and nonchalant crowd, that Flows like a quiet stream through street and market-place, entering Shady recesses and bays of church, osteria, and caffe, Could in a moment be changed to a flood as of molten lava, Boil into deadly wrath and wild homicidal delusion. Ah, 'tis an excellent race,—and even in old degradation, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... I was standing thus in the most easy and nonchalant attitude I could assume that a horrible discovery forced itself upon me. I happened to be regarding with a certain amount of languid interest a couple of promenaders, consisting of a very lovely girl and a somewhat foppish ensign, when I suddenly caught the eye of the latter fixed upon me. He ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... from the door he slowed up, put on a nonchalant air, and strolling in, looked about for Castile soap. There it was, the same kind, displayed in a box and looking just as ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... city in its development has laid out alleys and boulevards instead of merely making ways, with the result that in spite of brilliant sky and burning sun, coolness and shadow are ever to be had. The Cannebire, with its blue sky, glowing foliage and gay, nonchalant, heterogeneous crowds, reminds me of the Rambla of Barcelona. Indeed, the two cities have many points of resemblance. Marseilles is greatly changed from the Marseilles I visited twenty-five years ago, to say nothing of Arthur Young's description of 1789. The only advantage with which he accredited ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to the question, the nonchalant intruder went on: "What plunder are you loaded with? Salt or whiskey, or pork or butter, I reckon? Or maybe you carry passengers? Is it a family of emigrants? I see two chaps on the upper deck; who are they? What might your ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... shot out from his pocket towards the sideboard, as though to snatch up something from it. Then he drew the hand as swiftly back again; but his eyes watched Mary's with an alert and suspicious gaze. That was for a second only; then his face resumed its amused and nonchalant expression. But the movement of the hand and the look of the eyes had not escaped Mary's attention; her voice betrayed some ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... in my life," declared Carter, with a return of his nonchalant manner. "You seem to be ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Miss Custer came down to breakfast radiant and joyous, with a consciousness of being in perfect keeping with the unpoetic sunshine, she was stricken with consternation at finding Mr. Bruce as distant and nonchalant as ever. No lingering, exploring glance this morning—nothing but the usual flash of his dark eyes as he bowed to her. Was it possible that all the fine effects of last night had passed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Emile vividly of her first morning in Barcelona, when he had come in early in the morning to find her dazed with sleep. He remembered also how she had asked him to repeat his remarks, and how carelessly nonchalant ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... so cool and nonchalant a minute or so before, fanned himself with the pocket-handkerchief, and turned red, and went white, and went red, and turned white half a dozen times, in twice as many ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... dare say they will last our time," Westray answered in a nonchalant and reassuring tone; for he remembered that, as regards the tower, he had been specially cautioned to let sleeping dogs lie, but he thought of the Ossa heaped on Pelion above their heads, and conceived a mistrust of the wide crossing-arches which ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... gave a curt nod, and departed, in nonchalant good-humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any farther would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality. And Edwin nodded with equal curtness and made off slowly into the maze of Bursley. The thought ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... pleasant—his aunt's pony carriage. It had crossed the railway, and was advancing up the Roman road along by the straw sacks. His impulse was to retreat, but someone waved to him. It was Agnes. She waved continually, as much as to say, "Wait for us." Mrs. Failing herself raised the whip in a nonchalant way. Stephen Wonham was following on foot, some way behind. He put the Shelley back into his pocket and waited for them. When the carriage stopped by some hurdles he went down from the embankment and helped them to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... flew back. How long had she been gone? She re-entered the room with a most nonchalant air; and in two minutes she had them all in a whirl of conversation, even if ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... at us after we had passed through Chantilly, and on the way to Amiens we sped by forty or fifty ambulances. It was at the Cafe Gobert, in Amiens, that we got out of the automobile and had luncheon. That town was thronged with nonchalant women and blue-clad poilus. Following our refreshment, we continued our journey. We ran into soldiers and guns, aeroplanes, and more guns of all calibres; there must have been two miles of them in ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... corridor, and out of the entrance that gave on the cross street—then his pace quickened. He traversed the block, crossed the road, turned the corner, and a minute later was approaching the house she had designated. It was one of a row. His pace slowed to a nonchalant stroll again. It was still quite light, and he was by no means the only pedestrian on the street; a moment's preliminary, even if cursory, examination of the exterior would not be amiss! Counting the numbers ahead of him, he had already located the house. He frowned a little. A light ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... looking around, read the whole situation at a glance. Masterson still suspected him, and was listening! Monroe frankly laughed and made a little sound, the mere whisper of a whistle, as he met Masterson's baffled look with one of cool mockery; it was nonchalant to the verge of insolence, and enraged the Southerner, strong in his convictions of right, as a blow could not have done. For a blow a man could ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... received a second communication too austere to be disregarded. She went to the president's office in considerable trepidation and emerged from it an hour later, her heavy features set in anger. Undertaking to assume her usual nonchalant pose, she had been brought with alarming suddenness to a wholesome respect for Doctor Matthews' dignity. She had also received a lecture on reckless driving which she ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... me, but, deceived by his coolness and nonchalant tones, and by the lethargy a glimpse of the fish, I gave little heed. of the fish, I gave little heed. I knew very well that, if I had struck a fish that held me down in that way, I should have ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Jon was remembering an old fairy tale he'd read as a kid. Something about a fellow named Socrates who was given a cup of hemlock to drink. It was the finis for Socrates. But the old hero had been nonchalant and calm about ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... was near the window. Suddenly she heard the well-known click of the chain, and she saw Paul fling open the gate, push his bicycle into the yard. She saw him look at the house, and she shrank away. He walked in a nonchalant fashion, and his bicycle went with him as if it ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the clutch of a broad disgust, I could not tell. Perhaps it was both. Very suddenly he wheeled upon Kennedy. His voice became low and vibrant with feeling. Here was none of the steeled self-control of Manton, the deceptive outer mask which Werner used to cover his thoughts, the nonchalant, cold frankness ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... sleepy &c. (inactive) 683; languid, half-hearted, tame; numbed; comatose; anaesthetic &c. 376; stupefied, chloroformed, drugged, stoned; palsy-stricken. indifferent, lukewarm; careless, mindless, regardless; inattentive &c. 458; neglectful &c. 460; disregarding. unconcerned, nonchalant, pococurante[obs3], insouciant, sans souci[Fr]; unambitious &c. 866. unaffected, unruffled, unimpressed, uninspired, unexcited, unmoved, unstirred, untouched, unshocked[obs3], unstruck[obs3]; unblushing &c. (shameless) 885; unanimated; vegetative. callous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... painting and sculpture. Indeed the novel-writer's methods have always seemed to me analogous to those employed by the painter, and the dramatist's methods similar to those used by the sculptor. And I have marvelled at the nonchalant way in which the fiction writer often rushes into the writing of a play, when a painter would never think of trying to "sculpt" until he had learned at least some of the very different processes employed in the strange art-form of sculpture. The ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... incomprehensible to her, Madame d'Espard returned to the general conversation, showing neither offence at that indifferent "As you please," nor curiosity as to the outcome of the interview. The princess stayed an hour longer, seated on the sofa near the fire, in the careless, nonchalant attitude of Guerin's Dido, listening with the attention of an absorbed mind, and looking at Daniel now and then, without disguising her admiration, which never went, however, beyond due limits. She slipped away when the carriage was announced, ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... about Nolla's, but leave mine where the man can pick them up readily, to-morrow, when I leave," returned Barbara, in a nonchalant manner. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... fulmar petrels flashed close to us, and all around we could hear the killers blowing, their short, sharp hisses sounding like sudden escapes of steam. The killers were a source of anxiety, for a boat could easily have been capsized by one of them coming up to blow. They would throw aside in a nonchalant fashion pieces of ice much bigger than our boats when they rose to the surface, and we had an uneasy feeling that the white bottoms of the boats would look like ice from below. Shipwrecked mariners drifting in ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... other evening, and it was quite late before they took their leave. Dr. Addison I was very much pleased with, and so were all the rest. Mr. M——, none of us fell desperately in love with. He is too nonchalant and indifferent, besides having a most peculiar pronunciation which grated harshly on my ears, and that no orthography could fully express. "Garb," for instance, was distorted into "gairb," "yard" into "yaird," "Airkansas," ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... more effort to cope with Miss Martin's suddenly aggressive fiance. John came upon the couple one late, crisp January afternoon, as he was leaving for the paper route. Louise did her best to appear nonchalant as he picked his way carefully across the slippery, wagon-rutted road, and Sid, after a longing glance toward the iron fence which surrounded the home lot, decided to brazen ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... hands with a nonchalant gesture. He was a fatalist worthy of his city, which is now being besieged and ruined not for the first time. The Vandals (I mean the original Vandals) laid waste Arras again and again. Then the Franks took it. Then, in the ninth century, the Normans ravaged it; and then Charles the Simple; ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... to attempt an escape with his eyes upon me; so, assuming as nonchalant a look as my present feelings would allow, I answered his inquiring glance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... ladies. He hesitated a moment, and then consented, and I was led up to and presented to a magnificent creature I had long looked upon with silent admiration. Miss Gennie Williams, who was seated in an easy, nonchalant manner, conversing with a circle of gentlemen, and favored me with a gracious nod. As I stood wondering whether this was the end of my introduction, a mustached dandy came between us and said, "Miss Williams, permit me to relate the joke of the season." To my horror he began the story of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Calhoun Bennett rapped the man across the face with his light rattan cane. Venting a howl of rage, the Eureka partisan leaped forward. Calhoun Bennett, quick as a flash, drew a small derringer and fired; and the man went down in a heap. Superbly nonchalant, Bennett, without a glance at his victim, turned away, the ring of spectators parting to let him through. He saw Keith, and at once joined him, drawing the young man's arm through his own. Keith, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... his books. And suddenly I looked up into the clear noon blue of the ancient sky. A pigeon was flying across the wide open spaces of the square, the sunlight glinting on its wings. I saw the quiet green tops of the trees in the park, and the statue of Roscoe Conkling, turning a nonchalant shoulder toward the heated speaker who said there was no God. How many strange ideas, contradictory arguments, curious logic, have fallen, this last quarter century, upon the stony ears of Roscoe Conkling! Far above me the Metropolitan tower, that wonder work ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... his nonchalant music. Therese, who for eight days had been running to churches and museums in the company of Madame Marmet, was thinking of the annoyance which her companion caused her by discovering in the faces of the old painters ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... falling behind here,' said Twemlow with cold, nonchalant firmness. 'Every one knows that. You're getting left. Look how you're being cut out in cheap toilet stuff. In ten years you won't be shipping a hundred dollars' worth per annum of ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... to Henry and me, considering our feelings, that the Major's nonchalant use of that "we" was without the consent of the governed. But when he started forward we followed. Our moral cowardice overwhelmed our physical cowardice, and our legs tracked ahead while our hearts tracked back. The Major swung along the road at a fast clip; Mr. Norton went with ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Mark left. There had been a time when the first move for departure was as trying as the ordeal of entrance, but he had got beyond that. Tonight he felt that he did it in quite an easy nonchalant way, the ladies, true to a gracious tradition, trailing after him into the hall. It was there that an unexpected blow fell; Chrystie, the enfant terrible, delivered it. Gliding about to the hummed refrain of the Castanet ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... bore witness, keeping his eyes fixed on Joe and the gun and trying his best to maintain a nonchalant manner. "I'd ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer considered absolutely essential for success on the English stage, there is really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who charmed us all last June by her merry laugh and her nonchalant ways, should not—to borrow an expression from her native language—make a big boom and paint the town red. We sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the American invasion has done English society a great deal of good. American women are bright, clever, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... brothers, but he didn't often kiss her good-night. There had been a strange touch of excitement, of emotion, in his manner to-night. It was natural that she herself should be moved by Nancy Dampier's distress. But Gerald? Gerald, who was generally speaking rather nonchalant, and very, very critical ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... than willing, for he seldom received instruction. With now and then a word of counsel or warning from the wise man of the west in the corner, he cautiously assembled two other fizzes, while Mr. Pike, in a most nonchalant and roundabout manner, sought information concerning affairs of state, local politics, the Governor-General's household and Princess Kalora. Popova told more than he had meant to tell and more than he knew ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time, but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then, for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass, waiting quietly for ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... had not written to him of her own initiative. Their parting certainly had been discrepant: the clinging and wistfulness had been hers, though she had uttered nothing of complaint or misgiving. But perhaps he had been too gay and nonchalant, a little too much the husband secure. For a week she had shivered at her loneliness; then she had plunged anew into the flood of affairs, and had come out, as from a cold bath, braced and tingling. Round went the wheels of Wanless. The house was new-papered, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... easy and nonchalant; but inwardly he carried a load of dread and he saw clearly that he must learn where he stood with little Miss Blythe, or not know the feeling of easiness from one day to the next. Better, he thought, to be the recipient of ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the man?" said Eastman, in a nonchalant voice. He inhaled the smoke from his cigar with ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I've known her to go through a fellow's war-bag, in his absence, for tobacco. When she's hungry, which I should judge was all the time, she drops in casually upon a patient and humorously raids the pantry—all with that air of nonchalant good fellowship which shields her from much criticism, since what in reality is miserliness and gluttony passes very ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... spell than I was when Lady Alicia's eyes first told me more than her lips revealed; but although I had challenged her right to the title 'mercenary' when she applied it to herself, I could not but confess that her nonchalant recital regarding the friend who desired to be a lover jarred upon me. I found my sympathy extending itself to that unknown young man, on whom it appeared the shadow of suspicion already rested. I was confident that if he had actually taken the emeralds it was not at all from motives ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... engaged at so early an hour. But as I entered the room, after knocking and awaiting his permission as usual, I saw that some one was leaving it by the other door. His back was presented to my sight, but there was no mistaking the slim form and a nonchalant carriage. Charles Miste again! And only the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... have availed him little with his new associates had he been a whit less manly. But as he shirked no part of the universal hardship, they left him his reticence. He even came to enjoy a sort of remote popularity as one who was conversant with the best—a nonchalant social connoisseur—yet who realized the stern primitive beauties of the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... himself as he appeared in the 1855 volume, "hankering, gross, mystical, nude," and another of his old mother, with her shrewd, kindly face. Walt is in his shirt-sleeves, a hand on his hip, the other in his pocket, his neck bare, the pose that of a nonchalant workman—though in actual practice he was always opposed to work of any sort; on his head is a slouch-hat, and you recall his line: "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." The picture is characteristic, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... engaged he greeted it not only with respect but with cordiality. Now and then as the undertaking progressed, he ventured a tactful, almost diffident suggestion, the value of which the inventor was quick to detect. Also, in the same nonchalant fashion, he produced from time to time the necessary materials, weaving a fairy web of prevarication when questioned too ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... forward in his chair, and for the length of a minute no sound but the guarded breathing of the onlookers could be heard. This was broken by a nervous cough from the rear of the room, and the faces assumed their ordinary nonchalant expressions, their rugged lines heavily shadowed in the light of the flickering oil lamps, while the shuffling of cards and the clink of silver became audible. Hopalong Cassidy had objected to insulting ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... papers back to the Count with a nonchalant air, as of a man who had quite made up his mind about them, saying in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... The only nonchalant man of the lot was he who had actually used the weapon. For Ronicky Doone stood with his shoulders propped against the wall, his hands clasped lightly behind him. For all that, it was plain that he was not unarmed. A certain calm insolence about his expression told Frederic Fernand ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... act put a summary end to any further conversation and Joan bent her attention on the stage once more, though all the time that her eyes and ears were absorbing the shifting scenes and brilliant dialogue of the play a little, persistent inner voice at the back of her brain kept repeating Diana's nonchalant "I really don't see very much of her nowadays," and ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... he had tramped the deck of the Dunottar Castle, nor yet the friend of his early days in Cape Town, nor yet again the blithe companion of his last tedious hours of convalescence. This girl was altogether admirable; but a bit awe-inspiring withal. He watched the nonchalant ease with which she provided a white-haired veteran of many wars and many orders with a cup of steaming tea, and then sat and chatted with him while he drank it. He felt himself a bashful boy, as he watched her, and, like any other ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... inquiry from her that he regretted having nothing very substantial to satisfy it with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all right,—overdone it a bit in fact—as long as there was any one around to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis—they were the last—she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... nonchalant answer. For a moment there was silence and a puzzled frown gathered on ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... acknowledged the check as he would any ordinary payment, and then he made us observe that there was still a large sum due him out of the moneys withheld. At this point I proposed to Clemens that we should let the nonchalant victim collect the remnant himself. Clouds of sorrow had gathered about the bowed head of the delinquent since we began on him, and my fickle sympathies were turning his way from the victim who was really to blame for leaving his affairs so unguardedly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... your blood made mine flow fast; But you sipped your tea With a nonchalant air, and balanced the ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... his wine in a nonchalant fashion. His fingers had strayed over the silky coat of the little dog, which she had held out ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kind and charming as an old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet me. And everybody came, principally owing to the "Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it made ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... which set off his slim figure to advantage; his turban was a mass of sparkling diamonds, and his whole person seemed loaded with jewels. His sturdy body-guard, all armed with double-barrelled rifles, stood close behind his chair, and were the only soldiers in the tent; the nonchalant way in which he addressed the rajah, with folded arms and unbended knee, betokened the unbounded power he possesses in the state. Perhaps it is not very politic in him to arrogate so much to himself in a land where every ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... several. "We sometimes stop," said a few, among whom was Eddie. "Very well," said I, "let us stop here a moment to talk. What have you to say, Eddie?" "O, we don't talk; the teacher does the talking," said he, with a most nonchalant air. What likelihood was there that that class, after their four years of school training, would show a fair degree of independence in their study of literature, if their teacher were suddenly ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... him what he meant, he looked up suddenly at me, with deep sadness on his usually nonchalant face. ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... one of the sweetest girls on earth," says Margaret indignantly, stung by his nonchalant demeanour. "You are unworthy of her—you are not capable of understanding her." Rylton shrugs his shoulders. "In time—in time," says the gentle Margaret, now all aglow with anger, "you will learn her ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... about it; I want you to understand that. Many another, seeing that creature so plump and well-fed and knowing the reason, would have broken out into vituperation. But my tactics were more subtle. My manner, as I studied her palm, was at first nonchalant, even urbane. Then I gave a start and faltered, "I—I suppose you wish me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... probable that Mr. Blake will find there is no chance to water Dry Mesa," she replied, in a tone strangely nonchalant considering her former expressions of apprehension. She drew the crumpled letter from his relaxing fingers, and smoothed it out for ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... matter for all time. Doubtless you were right when you said it was nonsense; you ought to know. Changing the subject, I think I'll like Brussels if I stay here long enough." He was again nonchalant, indifferent. Under her mask of unconcern she felt a trifle piqued that he did not persist in his endeavor to learn the contents ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... attitude of intense watchfulness. As a steward passed down the corridor he assumed a careless expression and lit a cigarette with nonchalant elaboration. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
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