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More "Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each case as a sort of revulsion from, or parody of, the solemn ways of the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the "Phebus" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation and faire of the piece, when taken together ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... I admire the pert Blue-wren And his dainty little hen— Though she hasn't got a trace of blue upon her; But she's pleasing, and she's pretty, And she sings a cheerful ditty; While her husband is a ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about it for me. I put this little white ruffle in the neck ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... means a young girl, or very young woman. It is one of the prettiest words in the Nipponese language; it seems almost as if there were a little pout in the very sound—a pretty, taking little pout, such as they put on, and also as if a little pert physiognomy were described by it. I shall often make use of it, knowing none other in our own language that conveys the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much harder ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... The pert vivacity of La Fille at Montreuil was all we could find there worth remarking: it filled up my notions of French flippancy agreeably enough; as no English wench would so have answered one to be sure. She had complained of our avant-coureur's ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... unsuspiciously. She had half a mind to reply, "Is that so strange?" But her respect for Harley stopped her. The words would have seemed to her pert. "I am told he ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eaten my oats, I looked round. In the stall next to mine stood a little fat gray pony, with a thick mane and tail, a very pretty head, and a pert little nose. I put my head up to the iron rails at the top of my box, and said, "How do you do? What is ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... refilling the prescription on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... a living truth. While the rest of her family suffered and magnified their sufferings, she, by a vivid imagination, placed herself in the path of fortune and obtained the thing she demanded. The simple country schoolhouse that year, dreary and cheerless enough to the pert Miss who had come out from Topeka to teach there, and incidentally to collect twenty-five dollars a month from the school board, was to be the scene of the initial change in Lizzie ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... of that kind of address, which is here distinguished by the name of gallantry: it is no more than his making love to every woman who will give him the hearing. It is an exercise, by the repetition of which he becomes very pert, very familiar, and very impertinent. Modesty, or diffidence, I have already said, is utterly unknown among them, and therefore I wonder there should be a term to express it in ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to these exegetical commentaries the Northern reader probably needs to be informed that the phrase 'peerten up' means substantially 'to spur up', and is an active form of the adjective 'peert' (probably a corruption of 'pert'), which is so common in the South, and which has much the signification of 'smart' in New England, as e.g., a 'peert' horse, in antithesis to a 'sorry' — i.e., poor, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... not here any longer," smartly replies his pert successor, to whom the fall of Jaggers ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... punishment than a pleasure; but for sheer discomfort this stay capped the climax. Under Zara's incompetent rule John's home had degenerated into a lawless and slovenly abode: the meals were unpalatable, the servants pert and lazy, while the children ran wild—you could hardly hear yourself speak for the racket. Whenever possible, Mahony fled the house. He lunched in town, looked up his handful of acquaintances, bought ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and pert Than those who understand an art; As little sparkles shine more bright Than glowing coals ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... is the purity of that great Bennu which is in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold, I am the nose of the God of the winds, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the Eye (Utchat) of Ra is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month(89) of the season Pert (i.e., the season of growing) [in the presence of the divine lord of this earth].(90) I have seen the Eye of Ra when it was full in Annu, therefore let not evil befall me in this land and in this Hall of double Maati, because I, even I, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And contradicts what all ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... our friend Edward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perking in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full growth, (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll,) Robert at fifteen would have made two of him,—such was ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... I have an unpleasant remembrance of the girl, too." Mrs. Tweksbury smiled grimly. "She was always a pert chit, and I believe she is like her disreputable father—you ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... pert Fellow's this, that whisks it along in a Silk-Drugget Suit, with the empty Air of a Fop Mercer, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the great men go; If greatness be, it wears no outer sign; No more the signet of the mighty line Stamps the great brow for all the world to know. Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo! Fragments and fractions of the old divine, Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design, Dapper and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... scorn Vanessa sat, Scarce list'ning to their idle chat; Further than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent; And said, she valued nothing less Than titles, figure, shape, and dress; That merit should be chiefly placed In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste; ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... terrible girl; she belies herself so. Any one becoming cognizant of some of her vagaries would form a very unfavorable judgment of her and most unjustly. In her heart she is anything but the wild creature she makes herself appear. Her squawks of merriment, her rude interruptions of her elders, her pert remarks, her sarcastic jokes, are all the manifestations of mere overflowing animal spirits, of warm-blooded youth and hearty health. She will tone down. She is the most startling and incalculable child I ever heard of. No one could anticipate her eccentricities. There ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... on well; all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them for myself. For the boy? But he never must know! ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... sors et dura! Hic reliqui plura, Sed sub mala cura. Des! quel dommage! Qui pert la ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Princes. There, besides the brown-haired, fair-skinned English boy, was the quick fiery Welsh child, who owned an especial allegiance to the Prince; the broad blue-eyed Fleming, whose parents rejoiced in the fame of the son of Philippa of Hainault; the pert, lively Gascon, and the swarthy Navarrese mountaineer—all brought together in close and ever-changing contrast of countenance, habits, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Fay. "She said we were pert, forward misses, and we must hold our tongues, for we should be whipped if we ever said you name, Cousin—Sister Aura, again; and she would not let us go to wish Brother Amyas ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to snap out little sharp speeches, which he always laughed at; and I suspect that was one thing that made me so pert. I looked up to him as a superior being, except when I was angry with him, which was about half the time. I told Ruphelle Allen he was a "bad, naughty boy;" but when she said, "Yes, I think so, too," I instantly cried out, "Well, I guess ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... dare you, pert stranger! interfere between a free woman and her slave. By the gods! despite your fine tunic and your filthy perfumes, I doubt whether you are even a ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... flannel, her feet in dilapidated slippers, and her hair in curl-papers along her forehead. Although she saw that her visitor was quite a stranger to her, she did not offer to rise, but simply raising her pert, faded, but still ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... A pert little wave by the sea-shore one day, Came dashing along in its impudent way; A wee little maiden was straying too near. Said the wavelet—I'll catch you my child, never fear, "I will carry you home ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... Calm Nature gives her children. At times the thrush shall sing, and hush The twitt'ring yellow-hammer; The blackbird fluster from the bush With panic-stricken clamour; The finch in thistles hide from sight, And snap the seeds and toss 'em; The blue-tit hop, with pert delight, About the crab-tree blossom; The homely robin shall draw near, And sing a song most tender; The black-cap whistle soft and clear, Swayed on a twig top slender; The weasel from the hedge-row creep, So crafty and so cruel, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... womb, Grown old in fraud, though yet in manhood's bloom, 70 Adopting arts by which gay villains rise, And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud; A pert, prim, prater of the northern race,[16] Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face, Stood forth,—and thrice he waved his lily hand, And thrice he twirled his tye, thrice stroked his band:— At Friendship's call (thus oft, with traitorous ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... round casting frowning looks As the low giggle and the shuffling foot Betray the covert jest, or idleness. Oft does he call with deep and pompous voice, The class before him, and shrill chattering tones In pert or blundering answers, break the soft And dreamy hum of study, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... "'Minx' yourself," was the pert reply. "No mistress shan't interfere with me and my work, as you've done this last week. If you was a real lady, you wouldn't ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... particular, I should think. Wasn't it a pity they didn't have Lady Langham for the Faerie Queen? I do call it absurd the way Sir Cyril Meres has put that pert, insignificant cousin of his forward in quite half the pictures—and when he ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Natalie continued looking charmingly blank. Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Armada leaves me no repose," he said; "I can think of nothing else. I don't content myself with what I have written, but write again and again, although in great want of light. I hear that the Armada has sunk and captured many English ships, and is refitting in a Scotch pert. If this is in the territory, of Lord Huntley, I hope he will stir up the Catholics of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so dark that I did not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's division; he then repaired ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... answer, being no whit inclined to bandy words with this pert young housemaid. And so ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... her new linsey-woolsey and shining bandana as a turban, started off in great glee for the Court House. That she might appear there fresh, brisk, and pert, she was not suffered to walk, but Washington, the coachman, was ordered to drive her in the ark of the plantation wagon. Joe, smart, smiling, and newly-equipped in clothes, sat by her side, scarcely knowing whether he ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... here?" said a pert-looking, little pug-nosed man, who had taken upon himself the part of Quince the carpenter, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. "You, Nick Bottom," continued he, addressing another, "are set down ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... are going to be upon the high ropes, it seems I might as well have stayed away," was Afy's reply, given in the pert, but good-humored manner she had ever used to Joyce. "My hand won't damage yours. I ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... ther ranch, ther cattle, ther mustangs; didn't owe a dollar, and hed money in ther bank. I hed been doin' right pert, and the property war a-raisin' every day. Do yo' know the blamed igiots was a-talkin' o' sendin' me to ther Legislature. But after awhile something happened. A lot o' ther boys cum in one day and said: 'Jordan, it's a blasted shame the way the childer is growin' up yere. We orter 'av a school.' ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... there he seemed known, and several came to greet him and some to whisper in his ear. At last a pert boy in a satin suit that was striped in the Imperial livery of black and yellow, pushed his ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... copies of the mosaics from Ravenna. He has also built a comfortable rectory, which he has filled with rare bric-a-brac. They say that no one is a better match for the wily dealers in antiquities than the reverend gentleman, and the pert little cabmen don't dare to try any of their tricks ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... about considering how to behave; and nobody knowing, as yet, upon what footing I came on board, they took me for a passenger, as my dress did not at all bespeak me a sailor; so every one, as I sauntered about, had something to say to me. By and by comes a pert young fellow up: "Sir," says he, "your servant; what, I see our captain has picked up a passenger at last."—"Passenger?" says I; "you are pleased to be merry, sir; I am no passenger."—"Why, pray," says he, "what may you be then?"—"Sir," says I, "the captain's steward."—"You ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... my Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat hardly echoed the note ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she gave him the full benefit of her eyes—both of the fond, appealing glance into his ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip of her tongue, but she was too ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... boat a half-mile in his life. Annette could do it tip-top; why not he? But things were unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so understandingly aware—so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds lustily, unevenly—an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went the old oar! Off the seat he tumbled, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... tired of the house, tired of the frozen garden, tired of scolding the slovenly girl who pottered around all day in a boudoir cap and slovenly wrapper. Tired of Anna's rebellious face and pert answers. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... size, Pushing tail-first by every road that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... cold in consequence, and his little pert nose is tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed with envy in ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Disappears Head and ears! Then, sly as a fox, Swift as Jack in his box, Pops up boldly again! What does he mean by thus frisking about, Now up and now down, and now in and now out, And all done quicker than winking? What does it mean? Why, 'tis plain—fun! Only Fun! or, perhaps, The pert little rascal's been drinking?— There's a cider-press yonder all ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... young coxcomb enters to order a drug. His real intention is to see Grilletta. He is not slow to see, that Mengino loves her too, so he sends him into the drug kitchen, in order to have Grilletta all to himself. But the pert young beauty only mocks him, and at Mengino's return Volpino is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving no wake behind! It seemed as if all the process of rowing had too much noise and bluster, and as if the sharp slender wherry, in particular, were rather too pert and dapper to win the confidence of the woods and waters. Time has dispelled the fear. As I rest poised upon the oars above some submerged shallow, diamonded with ripple-broken sunbeams, the fantastic Notonecta or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... an oath that was half a prayer, and the pert secretary did the first thing that was familiar since he was seen with the company—he laid his hand on Don Ruy's shoulder and felt that the horse lost was as a brother lost, and Chico had a fancy of his own to caress it, and even burnish the silver ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... severe countenance to mirth, and the most cheerful heart to sadness; it seemed impossible that such messengers could bring less than a defiance. The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the godly city of Gloucester; and extremely ready were they, according to the historian, to give insolent and seditious replies to any question; as if their business were chiefly, by provoking the king, to make him violate his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Miss Pert," said her mother, laughing. "I wish you would learn to be more steady and to remember what is ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... particulars of his amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a weekly paper, called the North Briton. This journal, written ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the soft light that issued from two girandoles on the mantel-piece of figured marble, all lent their cheering aid to make complete the radiant picture of a happy home. But Montague sat nervous with anxiety. "Mother won't be a minute!" said a pert little fellow of some seven summers, who played with his hands as he sat on the sofa, and asked questions his emotions forbid answering. On an ottoman near the cheerful fire, sat, with happy faces, the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Karlee was a gentleman; for the Vishnu Pooran was his Chesterfield, and he had its precepts by heart. "A wise man," he would say to the pert young Kitmudgars, as they bragged and wrangled, between their hubble-bubbles, on the back stairs,—"a wise man will never address another with the least unkindness; but will always speak gently, and with truth, and never make public another's faults. He will never engage in a dispute with either ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the whole will read a work today, Of moderate sense, with any pleasure? And as regards the dear young people, they Pert and precocious are ...
— Faust • Goethe
... and name. And now I discern gay diners in a mansion-place, And the guests dropping wit—pert, prim, or choice, And the hostess's tender and laughing face, And the host's bland brow; I cannot help hearing a hollow voice, And I'd fain not ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... good-natured, industrious, and intelligent: but the scenery was monotonous to the Pierian colonists, and the people distasteful. The clipped hair and penitential scowl of the men made heavy the hearts of the Muses; their daughters and wives had a sharp, harsh, pert "tang" in their speech, that grated upon the ears of Apollo, who held with King Lear as to the excellence of a low, soft voice in woman. Each native seemed to the strangers sadly alike in looks, dress, manners, and pursuits, to every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... K.—"Look at my pert wisehead! Knowest thou not, that he who mocks the words of the wise goes straight to hell, as happened to that disciple who laughed at the Rabbi Jochanan when he said that precious stones should be set in the gates of Jerusalem, three ells long and three ells broad? [Footnote: ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... alone must have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; the pert, jumping puce from hungry France, the wary, watchful pulce with his poisoned stiletto; the vengeful pulga of Castile with his ugly knife; the German floh with his knife and fork, insatiate, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Vollar—they had adopted the father's name—was attractive in a decided French way, with crisp black hair, a pert nose and dimple, and, why, good heavens, twenty-one or two years old if she was a week! How time did run. It was nothing extraordinary if Gerrit had been seen a time or two with her on the street, or even if he had called ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... arrived safe in the outer shop, where the books of the firm were exposed to sight, in process of being subscribed for by the trade. There a pert young man asked him to take a seat, while he carried his name to the publisher, and there for some time he waited, reading titles he found himself unable to lay hold of; and there, while he waited, the threatened ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... the bustling inmates. Carriages from different parts of the city were successively arriving, discharging their loads of gaily-dressed ladies and gentlemen at the door, and rattling off again at the crack of the whips of the pert and jauntily equipped drivers. Others on foot, and from the more immediate neighborhood, were, in couples and singly, for some time constantly dropping in to swell the crowd, witness, and perhaps add to, the attractions of the occasion, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... downright courage of the little woman, had its effect. A roar of sympathetic applause followed the act. "Cut and run while you can," she whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without altering the other's attitude of pert and saucy defiance toward the audience. But even as she spoke the poet tottered and sank fainting upon the stage. Then she threw a despairing whisper behind the scenes, "Ring down ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is devoid of interest," he continued, ceasing his thoughts for a moment, to listen to the piece of modern music which the choir was just then rendering. "Ah, who will take on himself to proscribe that pert mysticism, those fonts of toilet-water which Gounod invented!... There ought indeed to be astonishing penalties for choir masters who allow such musical effeminacy in church. This is, as it was this morning ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... "This wild bombast is rather dry: I hate your d——n'd insipid song, That sullen stalks in lines so long; Come, give us short ones like to Butler, Or, like our friend Auchinleck[7] the cutler." A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne'er write verses tripping pert and short: Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you're really in the wrong; To make a line that's good, I say, James, make ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... plumes, and powder of the Marquise became her stately figure; and Demi in his court suit, with sword, three-cornered hat, and white wig, made as gallant a Baron as one would wish to see. Josie was the maid, and looked her part to the life, being as pretty, pert, and inquisitive as any French soubrette. These three were all the characters; and the success of the piece depended on the spirit and skill with which the quickly changing moods of the quarrelsome lovers were given, their witty speeches made to tell, and by-play suited to the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a photograph of a popular actress, pert and pretty. The sight of it sent Lena's thoughts afield into ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... so poor a pretext, and yet was vexed with the stupidity that made the witnesses so evidently find the pretext sufficient. He inwardly groaned at the delusion under which he had saddled himself with the Tragic Muse—a tragic muse who was strident and pert—and yet wished his visitors would go away and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a Brown-study, and is usually attended with worse Consequences in case of a Repulse. During this Twilight of Intellects, the Patient is extremely apt, as Love is the most witty Passion in Nature, to offer at some pert Sallies now and then, by way of Flourish, upon the amiable Enchantress, and unfortunately stumbles upon that Mongrel miscreated (to speak in Miltonic) kind of Wit, vulgarly termed, the Punn. It would not be much amiss to consult Dr. T—W—[2] (who is certainly a very ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sentence was lost in the louder tones of a pert little miss, who in company with her mother was rummaging over a box of trimmings on the counter ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the fresh rosy pink of the Anna Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharme; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cecile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry-colour, enormous as a Paul ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... same.—A characteristic dialogue with the pert Betty Barnes. Women have great advantage over men in all the powers that relate to the imagination. Makes a request to her uncle Harlowe, which is granted, on condition that she will admit of a visit from Solmes. She complies; and appoints that day sevennight. Then ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted outcast, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... has no standard of conduct but his own notions, and is absurdly complacent as to all his doings. The wise seeks better guidance than his own, and is docile, because he is not so ridiculously sure of his infallibility. No type of weak wickedness is more abominable to the proverbialist than that of pert self-conceit, which knows so little that it thinks it knows everything, and is 'as untameable as a fly.' But in the wisest sense, it is true that a mark of folly is self-opinionativeness; that a man who has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sir Amar Singh for authority to engage ekkas, and I sent for the Tehsildhar of Baramulla to complain of my ekkas being taken. He appeared in due course—a somewhat pert little person—who promised to do what he could, which I knew would be nothing. A farewell dinner on board Walter's ship concluded a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... his hands behind his back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... agreeable and useful. An under-bred Frenchman is the most offensive civil thing in the world: a well-bred Frenchman, quite the reverse.—Having dined at the table of a person of fashion at Aix, a pert priest, one the company, asked me many questions relative to the customs and manners of the English nation; and among other things, I explained to him the elegance in which the tables of people of the first fashion were served; and told him, that when any one changed his ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. From ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... pressure, treated me almost as an equal, and one or two who seemed actually disposed to look on me as a friend. I certainly never encountered any actual rudeness from the American hotel clerk such as I have experienced from the pert young ladies who sometimes fill his place in England; and in the less frequented resorts he sometimes took a good deal of trouble to put the stranger in the way to do his business speedily and comfortably. His omniscience is great, but not so phenomenal ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... does yo' tink I could sit up dar an' tell dat precious chile we had chicken when I knew her little stomack was jes' groanin' for chicken? No, 'deed. Do I am deaconess, I'd rather be burned for a lie. So I jes' answers as pert-like as pos'ble. 'Law, honey, we jes' had mutton like yo'r brof ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... lad of fifteen or sixteen, a precocious, pert boy, who is much indulged by Lady R—, and, if report says true, is nearer related to her than she is willing to acknowledge. Did you never observe that there ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... the northern hotels, there used to be a portly and rubicund waiter who might have passed for the High Priest of the Goddess of Health. His face shone, if I may say so, with the radiance of perfect digestion. A pert commercial, one day, approached him with an affected look of deep concern and said, "Well, I hope you're keeping better," accompanying the remark with a dig in the waiter's stomach. The waiter, who had never known a minute's ill-health in his life, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... a small and exceedingly pert crossing-sweeper, who chanced to be standing near the open door of the shop, and overheard the question. "I'll show you the way for a copper, sir, but silver ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... the parties the matter was easily arranged. 'The beauty in question was a pert little Eutaw wench, that had been taken prisoner, in some war excursion, by a Shoshonie. She was readily ransomed for a few articles of trifling value; and forthwith figured about the camp in fine array, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... her with a readiness that was practically pert. "To have it, first. Not, at any rate, to go on not having it. ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's for so many years that she is rumored to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... me to the source whence all your corruption flows. It is that famous nursery of learning where you, too, were bred up. There, yes, there they cherish the heresy that makes the gods into puppets of straw, and the majesty of the throne into an owl for pert and insignificant birds to peck at. Thence comes the doctrine that teaches men and women to laugh at virtue and to break their word. There, where in other days noble minds, protected by the overshadowing favor of princes, followed out great ideas, they now teach nothing but words—empty, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, an' ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... late—she had almost given up looking—but he was coming! She knew be would come. Coming at a breakneck pace—he must be pretty anxious, too. The schoolma'am recovered a bit of control and revolved in her mind several pert forms of greeting. She would not be too ready to forgive him—it would do him good to keep him anxious and uncertain for a while before ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, haying evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he thought; but Lucy pitied him plunging there, and cut ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... permitted familiarly to approach him, he was exceedingly affable, and with such he frequently jested, and hilariously enjoyed the piquant story in mirthful humor; but this was for the few. He was a proud man, and was at no pains to conceal his contempt for pert folly or intrusive ignorance, wherever and in whomsoever he ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Sheffield; "it makes me laugh to think what I have done, when a boy, to escape dancing; there is something so absurd in it; and one had to be civil and to duck to young girls who were either prim or pert. I have behaved quite rudely to them sometimes, and then have been annoyed at my ungentlemanlikeness, and not known how to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Thomas Hunt, the author, was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, and was esteemed a person of quick parts, and of a ready fluency in discourse, but withal too pert and forward. He was called to the bar, and esteemed a good lawyer. In 1659 he became clerk of the assizes at Oxford circuit, but was ejected from the office at the Restoration, to his great loss, to make room for the true owner. He wrote, "An Argument for the Bishops' right of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Hortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very first words of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified little grunt; for he had known them both—the writer of that letter and its recipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with a pert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a ragged gray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded the printed lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew—only now they were old men and old women—faded, wrinkled ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... now, till I've done a little chance of business," cried the constable, creeping out from a corner of the barn, where the husked ears had been piled, and planting himself, like a pert exclamation point, before the old man. "I've got to make a levy on this corn heap," he said; "the oxen out yonder, and sundry other goods and chattels about the Old Homestead. I want to do everything fair and above board, so just wait to see the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the blue wren so much—a tiny birdeen with tail and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured, but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the peculiarity of two feathers growing out of the same little ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... also presents a well-arranged group of interesting objects; but to behold them to any advantage, it is necessary to turn your back upon a pert little cafe, roofed with party-coloured tiles like the scales of a fancy fish, which glares from under the shade of the trees. From hence you look over a handsome balustrade into a large excavated space adorned with stone steps, which collects the waters of a fine fountain, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... be pert. To come back to what I was originally saying—I repeat, sir, I am at twelve paces from my object, six from the mirror, which, doubled by reflection, makes twelve; such is the law of optics. I suppose you ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... frock who should have occupied the end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap was a child's shoe,—a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay an absurd bit of crumpled, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... something, she did not quite know what. The pastor was a ginger-haired caricature imitated from the northern stage, quite a lay figure. The peasants never laughed, they watched solemnly and absorbedly like children. The servant was just a slim, pert, forward hussy, much too flagrant. And then the son, the actor-manager: he was a dark, ruddy man, broad and thick-set, evidently of peasant origin, but with some education now; he was the important figure, the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... aware of the woman watching me, and glancing at her as she leaned cross-legged against an adjacent boulder, she seemed no woman but a pert and handsome lad rather. Her thick hair, very dark and glossy, fell in curls to her shoulders like a modish wig, her coat was of fine blue velvet adorned with silver lace, her cravat and ruffles looked new-washed like her silk stockings, and on her slender feet were a pair of dainty, buckled ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... I had received overnight, I presented myself at the office of the Daily Gazette in good time on the morning after my interview with the editor. A pert boy showed me into the news-editor's room, after an interval of waiting, and I found myself confronting the man who controlled my immediate destiny. He was dictating telegrams to a shorthand writer, and, for the moment, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... lying at her feet. The fast girls talked as loud as possible and laughed in a corresponding style in spite of the sick man. They must have been on a picnic, from the way they talked. One in a short dress complained that she had not seen her sweetheart. A pert little miss of thirteen cried, "You can bet your head I never went to any place where I did not see one of my sweethearts." One of about seventeen, a perfect beauty, declared she would die of thirst. "So will I! and I don't want to die before I get a husband!" exclaimed her vis-a-vis. They evidently ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... always seem more pert upon paper than they did upon her lips. Her naivete, the twinkling light in her eyes, and the smile flitting about her mouth, always modified greatly the expression ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... arrangements to elope, and on July 28, 1814, crossed from Dover to Calais in an open boat, taking Jane Clairmont with them on the spur of the moment. Jane also had been unhappy in Skinner Street. She was about Mary's age, a pert, olive-complexioned girl, with a strong taste for life. She changed her name to Claire because it sounded ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... But this was because I masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... relative the dayflower, the spiderwort opens for part of a day only. In the morning it is wide awake and pert; early in the afternoon its petals have begun to retreat within the calyx, until presently they become "dissolved in tears," like Job or the traditional widow. What was flower only a few hours ago is ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. Then the Tenderfoot discovered ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... was not in the habit of mistrusting Jerry. The intrusion of the stranger was an accident, not likely to occur again. It was only after our discussion had taken many turns and curiously enough had always come back to the pert intruder that I realized that Jerry's interest had really been aroused. Late at night over our evening reading the boy made the comments upon the visitor's appearance, her voice and the texture of her skin. He had been quite free in his opinions, favorable and unfavorable ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... I am afraid she means mischief, ma'am,' persisted Chatty, who had a great dislike to Miss Darrell, which she showed by being somewhat pert to her, 'for she said in such a queer tone to master, "There, I told you so: now you will believe me," and master looked as ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the work was Young's, and that his colleague did little more than furnish the Preface, which is partly written in the first person, and betrays its origin by a sudden and not very relevant attack upon the "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the "infinite Wit" of Wycherley had degenerated under Cibber. It also contains a compliment to the numbers of the "inimitable Author" of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Progress, and stuff. I see how it's drifting, dear MAGOG. The Munching House and the Gildhall. Did use to be London's fust pride. Is it so in these days? Not at all! Whippersnappers cock snooks at us, MAGOG; A ignerent pert L.C.C., To whom Calipash is a mistry, whose soul never loved Calipee, A feller elected by groundlings, who can't tell Madeira from Port, Some sour-faced suburban Dissenter—he, MAGOG, may make us his sport, Without being popped in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... for him, which he could blame; nevertheless, the thought of him gave an oblique cast to Staniford's reflections, which he cut short by saying, "This sort of worship is every woman's due in girlhood; but I suppose a fortnight of it will make her a pert and silly coquette. What does she say to your ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh bear-track near a spring below the head of a ravine; and, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank. Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the outskirts ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Mr. Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the ceremony he would have used for a grand duchess—or Miss Patricia Adair—offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny, good-humored, rather pretty face ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was clever and intelligent and had seen a great deal of colonial life and some hard times. Every night when supper was over and we sat by the fire in our little hut, I read aloud, to his great delectation, and his remarks, pert questions, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... if I told Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... near London somewhere in the seventies, were interrupted by the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom and pair and received the shots in its panels! Out West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me for selection; he said "he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for me; I could come and choose for myself." However, when criticism has been exhausted it is an undeniable ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... King was not easily to be appeased. "I am not wont to be so browbeat," said he hotly. "This is your Squire, Master John. How comes it that you can stand there and listen to his pert talk, and say no word to chide him? Is this how you guide your household? Have you not taught him that every promise given is subject to the King's consent, and that with him only lie the springs of life and death? ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that will open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart that his prayer was granted. In due time a son was born to him, and, eager to show his gratitude, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... along in small groups, with a solid man or so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents must be dribbled ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... joyous faces were lit up with bright smiles, and they were chatting gaily of the afternoon's party, and the anticipated evening's walk, heedless of the care worn man of business that shuffled in by their side, or prudent ladies who looked upon the gay party as pert or presuming. They were, many of them, the children of wealth, and waved in their hands rich boquets of beautiful and rare exotics, while others were equally satisfied with more simple flowers. They advanced to the head of the boat, and stood with their hands placed ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... A putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks an' cartridge-box, I guess ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... singing. He is nearly the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... transports us into the midst of a Germanic Feiertag in spring-time, with its bright sunlight, its throngs of townspeople streaming into the country—happy and merry without vulgar rowdyism; the smugly dressed apprentice and the servant-girl in her Sonntagsputz; the pert student and the demure Buergermaedchen with her new Easter hat and her voluminous-waisted Frau Mama; the sedate school-master or shopkeeper, leading his toddling child; sour-faced officials; grey-locked and spectacled professors and 'town-fathers' discussing the world's ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... somewhat by their associates and friends; but young people especially are susceptible to the influence of example. And it is a painful but well known fact that young people are much more easily and quickly influenced by bad example than by good. One frivolous, vain, forward, pert young girl, coming for a season into association with a company of young people, may in a few short weeks make her impress on the manners and conversation of the whole of them. Her slang expressions will be adopted; ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... condition to go back to the house, and so did not return until it was time for supper. He found a good meal awaiting him, and his wife on hand as pert ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... reason for leaving Harrietta was a good one. It would have to be, for she was of that almost extinct species, the devoted retainer. Irish Mary wasn't the kind of maid one usually encounters back stage. No dapper, slim, black-and-white pert miss, with a wisp of apron and a knowledgeous eye. An ample, big-hipped, broad-bosomed woman with an apron like a drop curtain and a needle knack that kept Harrietta mended, be-ribboned, beruffled, and exquisite from her garters to her ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... is a fiction? No. Go to Simoorie And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri, A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin— She's always about on ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... slept all the winter at the bottom of the horse-pond; talked, like Raleigh, Grenville, and other low persons, with a broad Devonshire accent; and was in many other respects so very ignorant a youth, that any pert monitor in a national school might have had a hearty laugh at him. Nevertheless, this ignorant young savage, vacant of the glorious gains of the nineteenth century, children's literature and science made easy, and, worst of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... great annoyance, found that the church having been left open, so many idle people were standing about that she could not bear to mingle with them. Had it been only the Holt vassalage, either their feeling would have been one with her own, or they would have made way for her, but there were some pert nursery maids gaping about with the children from Beauchamp, whence the heads of the family had been absent all the winter and spring, leaving various nurses and governesses in charge. Honora could not encounter ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some of the first gentlemen in England, of whom you youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a little breeding, and a little modesty." And the Major began to think that Pen was growing exceedingly pert and conceited, and that the world made a great deal ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the first on the list of performances, was determined to do the thing in style. Bertha and Carmel between them evolved a poster. It was painted in sepia on the back of one of Dulcie's school drawings, sacrificed for the purpose. It represented the profile of a rather pert looking young person with a tip-tilted nose and an eye several sizes larger than was consistent with the usual anatomy of the human countenance. Lower down, in somewhat shaky lettering, was set ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... shoulders braced back, instead of bounding forward, as Nature directs to complete her own design, in the various attitudes so conducive to health. The pure animal spirits, which make both mind and body shoot out and unfold the tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and. spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and, sharpening the understanding before it gains proportionable strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully characterizes the female mind,—and, I fear, will ever characterize it while ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... girl, And the witty girl, And the girl that bangs her hair; The girl that's a flirt, And the girl that is pert, And the girl with the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... tiresome to sit listening to the tramping overhead, or the quarrels below, watching the slow hands of the clock; and Druse was afraid in the streets yet, though she did not dare say so, because her bold, pert little cousins laughed at her. She was indeed terribly lonely. Her uncle was a man of few words; he ate his supper, and went to sleep after his pipe and the foaming pitcher of beer that had frightened Druse when she first came. For Druse had been a "Daughter ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... the pupils sat still with their pens and books before them; my three beauties in the van, now well humbled by a demeanour of consistent coolness, sat erect with their hands folded quietly on their knees; they had given up giggling and whispering to each other, and no longer ventured to utter pert speeches in my presence; they now only talked to me occasionally with their eyes, by means of which organs they could still, however, say very audacious and coquettish things. Had affection, goodness, modesty, real talent, ever employed those bright orbs as interpreters, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... motley, others in discoloured travel-stained garments, who pressed about the soprano with cries of joyous recognition. He was evidently an old favourite of the band, for a duenna in tattered velvet fell on his neck with genial unreserve, a pert soubrette caught him by the arm the duenna left free, and a terrific Matamor with a nose like a scimitar slapped him on the back with a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... always followed in all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which greatly ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... have been, with Lucy reigning over it in her pert self-sufficiency, Gilbert and Sophy running riot and squabbling, and Maria Meadows coming in on them with her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its way through a pleasant stretch of woodland where the birds sang cheerily, and occasionally a squirrel paused and cocked its head in pert amazement at this rude intrusion into its domain. It crossed a little brook where Tom and Roy had fished many times, and groped for pollywogs and crawfish when Tom was a tenderfoot at Temple Camp. Those ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand. "'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... undoubtedly, a good old thing—Aunt Soph. Forever sending a model hat to this pert little niece in Seattle; or taking Adele, Sister Flora's daughter, to Chicago or New York as a treat on one of her ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... over: A Dotterel first open'd the ball with the Plover; Baron Stork in a waltz was allow'd to excel, With his beautiful partner, the fair Demoiselle;[12] And a newly-fledged Gosling, so fair and genteel, A minuet swam with the spruce Mr. Teal. A London-bred Sparrow—a pert forward Cit! Danced a reel with Miss Wagtail and little Tom Tit. And the Sieur Guillemot[13] next perform'd a pas seul, While the elderly bipeds were ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... my arm. No, no bon pere. So great a girl is too much for you to carry. Don't be afraid, my darling, we are not going to a sermon, no one will beat her; oh no, and if the insolent retainers and pert lacqueys laugh at her mother, no one ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curiosity but not my suspicion. I was not in the habit of mistrusting Jerry. The intrusion of the stranger was an accident, not likely to occur again. It was only after our discussion had taken many turns and curiously enough had always come back to the pert intruder that I realized that Jerry's interest had really been aroused. Late at night over our evening reading the boy made the comments upon the visitor's appearance, her voice and the texture of her skin. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... in vain; Behold the fifth! behold a babe again! My wife's gay friends th' unwelcome imp admire, And fill the room with gratulation dire: While I in silence sate, revolving all That influence ancient men, or that befall; A gay pert guest—Heav'n knows his business—came; A glorious boy! he cried, and what the name? Angry I growl'd,—My spirit cease to tease, Name it yourselves,—Cain, Judas, if you please; His father's give him,—should you that explore, The devil's or yours: —I said, and sought the door. My tender ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... fire The humbler muse of comedy require. But in known images of life, I guess The labour greater, as th' indulgence less. Observe how seldom even the best succeed: Tell me if Congreve's fools are fools indeed? What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ! How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does Astraea tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed! And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... wait, child," she replied. "I have brought up several hundred young bees this spring and given them lessons for their first flight, but I haven't come across another one that was as pert and forward as you are. You seem to ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... And there the pert and sawcy Elfe, Behau'd her as twere Iuno's selfe, And made the Peacocks ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Austrian soldier, nor the Prussian, nor even the Russian, made himself abhorred, employed his study in vexing the feelings of the people, had a perpetual sneer on his visage, or exhibited in his habits a perpetual affectation of that coxcomb superiority to all other human beings, that pert supremacy, that grotesque and yet irritating caricature, which makes the Moi, je suis Francais, a demand for universal adoration, the concentrated essence of absurdity, the poison-drop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... minding the calves back while the cows was being milked. One evening I was minding the calves and old Master come along. He say, "What you doin' nigger?" I say real pert like, "I ain't no nigger, I'se a Negro and I'm Miss Liza Mixon." Old Master sho' was surprised and he picks up a switch and ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... uncouth, according to Clarendon, figures so habited and accoutred, as at once moved the most severe countenance to mirth, and the most cheerful heart to sadness; it seemed impossible that such messengers could bring less than a defiance. The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert, shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the godly city of Gloucester; and extremely ready were they, according to the historian, to give insolent and seditious replies to any question; as if their business were chiefly, by provoking ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... once, when the two were together at Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I wish I ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... "Such a kid!" he murmured. "Why didn't you lay low, and not go butting down their door? Why didn't you lose the old man and snub up one of the girls—marry her? Big one's a rip-snortin' beauty; pert, by ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Bjarnason," says Ingeborg Christianson, the pert young wife with the blue-eyed twins, "why is it we see these things only when we stand beside you and you ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up; Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup; Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine, It's rolling down upon her neck ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the pursuit of Emma, of whom she had become suddenly and passionately fond, partly because she possessed a loving nature, but chiefly because Emma was her counterpart. Lewis had forgotten it in pursuit of Nita, of whom he had become extremely fond, partly because she was pretty and pert, but chiefly because he—he—well, we cannot say precisely why, seeing that he did not inform us, and did not himself appear clearly to know. Slingsby had forgotten it in the ardent effort to reproduce on ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and this is the only infallible outward mark of distinction between the two animals. But it is the permanent record of a long history. The sheep was never anything but sheepish; the goat and its forefathers were pert as kids and insolent when their beards grew. It is useless to inquire why insolence should express itself by an upturned tail until someone can advance a reason why it should express itself ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... not pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal what portal I enter, since I'm to be render'd immortal: So clysters applied to the anus, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... your seat upon your elders' approach; you shall never be pert to your parents or do any other unseemly act under the pretence of remodelling the image of Modesty. You will not rush off to the dancing-girl's house, lest while you gaze upon her charms, some whore should pelt you with an ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Sir," I hear you cry, "This wild bombast is rather dry: I hate your d——n'd insipid song, That sullen stalks in lines so long; Come, give us short ones like to Butler, Or, like our friend Auchinleck[7] the cutler." A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne'er write verses tripping pert and short: Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you're really in the wrong; To make a line that's good, I ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... twelve years, a girl of nineteen, and a girl of three. Attending the case, was a little old woman, the grandmother, wearing a knitted knobby bonnet, sitting high on the top of her head and tied under her chin—a conical frame for her pert, dark eyes and firm mouth. She was a tiny woman, every detail of her in miniature, clearly defined, except the heavy, noisy wooden shoes. She carried in her personality an air of important indignation. With the confidence ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... coarse speech and ribald song brought up, by the power of contrast, the pure, sweet faces of Mary and his sister Maud. Two or three times in his boyhood he had come near to slaying pert lads who had dared to utter coarse words in his sister's presence. There was in him too much of the essence of the highest ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... he spoke to him tenderly, telling him that he had come from a friend with a little money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At first, on seeing Pierre's cassock, the old man had growled some coarse words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: "Well, then, I'll willingly drink a drop," he said distinctly, "and have a bit of bread with it, if there's the needful; for I've lost taste of both for a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... just as they do at home. There is something strange and yet familiar in this country, where so many different sorts of trees and plants grow, that a man coming from almost anywhere in the world will find something that carries his heart back home. Besides the daisies we have the sparrows, just as pert and neat as our own sparrows, yet other things are odd. Yesterday we saw a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders; he wore a striped garment hanging down on each side of his neck, and even the sheep did not seem quite the same as ours. It was some time before we discovered why, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... tops of her tall laced boots lost beneath its hem. Her gray flannel waist was laced at the bosom like a cowboy's shirt, adorned at the collar with a flaming scarlet necktie done in a bow as broad as a band. Her brown sombrero was tilted, perhaps unintentionally, a little to one side of her rather pert and independently ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... bug-eyed. Was she a stunner? I'll gurgle so. What had become of that extra 20 pounds I wouldn't even try to guess. But she's right there with the svelte figure, the school girly flush, and the sparklin' eyes. Maybe it was the way the gown was built. Fits like the peel on a banana. Or the pert way she holds her head, or the general excitement of the occasion. Anyway, mighty few 20-year-old screen favorites would ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... building is also a long low cottage viewed from inland, and a tall, grim structure seen from the sea. On a higher level stands St. George's, once a church, but years ago promoted to a cathedral-dignity, making Freetown proud as Barchester Towers. We shall presently pass it and its caricature, the pert little Wesleyan church to its east. The extreme west of the triangle-base is occupied by the gaol. No longer a 'barn-like structure faced by a black wall,' it is a lengthy scatter of detached buildings, large enough to accommodate half the population, and ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Euclid and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... an excellent harpist there—also one of the family—Fraulein Mossner. By the Countess's orders she was made to betake herself and her harp to the garden, where, either at or with her harp, she had a most pert air and looked quite delightful, so that I gained an impression which lingered pleasantly in my mind. Unfortunately I became involved in a quarrel with the young lady because I would not compose a solo for her instrument. From ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the ground in helpless languor lay, Unheeding in his weariness the tumult of the day; In vain a pert mosquito buzzed madly in his ear, His thoughts were far away from earth—its sounds he could not hear; Nor noted he the kindly glance with which his brigadier Looked down upon his manly form when chance had brought him near. It was ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... 'To take away with you 690 Or drink on the premises.' Was it worth while, pray, To weary the peasant With learning his letters In order to read them? The land that we keep Is our mother no longer, Our stepmother rather. And then to improve things, These pert good-for-nothings, 700 These impudent writers Must needs shout in chorus: 'But whose fault, then, is it, That you thus exhausted And wasted your country?' But I say—you duffers! Who could foresee this? They babble, 'Enough Of your lordly pretensions! It's ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Iliad. pert., 265: But Aristarchus is informed that they were twins, not.... such as were the Dioscuri, but, on Hesiod's testimony, double in form and with two bodies and joined ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... all much too heavy to gallope and waltz. What impertinence this, want of grace to ascribe To the Lord of the whole Lepidopterous tribe; I too'll give a ball, and such folks to chastise, I'll not be at home to these pert butterflies. Bid the Empress[3] come hither, and we'll talk about What arrangements to make ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... and, when I held out mine, put both his hands behind his back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over in he grave did he know 'bout some dat 'lasses. Dem black boys don't care. I seen 'em pull rats out de sugar barrel and dey taste de sugar and say, 'Ain't nothin' wrong with dat sugar. It still sweet.' One day a pert one pull a dead scorpion out de syrup kettle and he jes' laugh and say, 'Marse don't want waste none dis syrup,' and he lick de syrup right off dat scorpion's ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... word, With fustian from exploded plays, They celebrate her beauty's praise; Run o'er their cant of stupid lies, And tell the murders of her eyes. With silent scorn Vanessa sat, Scarce listening to their idle chat; Farther than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent; And said, she valued nothing less Than titles, figure, shape, and dress; That merit should be chiefly placed In ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... worshipful priest and a parson told me lately. He said that there were dwelling in Oxford two priests, both masters of art, of whom that one was quick and could put himself forth, and that other was a good simple priest. And so it happened that the master that was pert and quick, was anon promoted to a benefice or twain, and after to prebends and for to be a dean of a great prince's chapel, supposing and weening that his fellow the simple priest should never have been promoted, but be alway an Annual, or at the most a parish priest. So ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... for his taking the command of a very important expedition, when Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 23rd of January, 1516. Cabot returned at once to England, having probably obtained leave of absence. Eden tells us that the following year Cabot was appointed with Sir Thomas Pert to the command of a fleet which was to reach China by the north-west. On the 11th of June, he was in Hudson's Bay at 67-1/2 degrees of latitude; the sea free from ice spread itself out before him so far that he reckoned upon success in his enterprise, when the faintheartedness ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... my old graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead carcass. The worms will close their mortgage on it ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... lately, to send you a good little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the third member of the party indignantly—a sprightly youth with a very short tunic and a pert expression. "Do they want you to return your small kit when you get the mitten? Watch me returnin' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he resembles those naughty little boys who will not learn A, lest they should be obliged to learn B, too. He is a native ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... said a voice, which strove to drown in an artificial squeak the pert, conceited tone of Oliver Proudfute. "But a sight of thy lovely daughter had been more sweet to us young bloods than a whole ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Mark would have made to this pert speech was cut short by a loud cry of pain or terror from the old half-dismantled barn on the other side of the road. All eyes were at once turned in that direction, and beheld Joe Fairthorn rushing at full speed down the bank, making for the stables below. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... pleasure; but for sheer discomfort this stay capped the climax. Under Zara's incompetent rule John's home had degenerated into a lawless and slovenly abode: the meals were unpalatable, the servants pert and lazy, while the children ran wild—you could hardly hear yourself speak for the racket. Whenever possible, Mahony fled the house. He lunched in town, looked up his handful of acquaintances, bought necessaries—and unnecessaries—for the voyage. He also hired a boat ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... any longer," smartly replies his pert successor, to whom the fall of Jaggers was a ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query "A quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... help me to get into bed if you like," she said. "The muggy day has made me wonderfully drowsy, and I'll be glad to lie down. It's only that. I'll be as pert as a cricket ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... on the other side of the street and beamed at him generously, his round red face resembling, Duncan thought, more than anything else a summer sun rising through mist. Josie Lockwood (he was to discover her name later) passed with her pert little nose ostentatiously pointed away from him; none the less he detected a gleam in the corner of her eye.... Others went by, singly or in groups, all more or less openly interested ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... those who were staying at Cranston's, with whom I had danced, to whom I had made pretty speeches, and had given the bell button that was sewn just over my heart. She certainly was not the best of them, for I can see now that she was vain and shallow, with a pert boldness, which I mistook for vivacity and wit. Three years ago, at the age of twenty, my knowledge of women was so complete that I divided them into six classes, and as soon as I met a new one I placed her in one of these classes ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... home the milk is coming; Honey's made while the bees are humming; Duck and drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake; And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... breath of it is mine, Whene'er it breathes on thee; for I am thine. But pardon now—if I have seemed sometime Impatient, glib, too pert for things sublime, Remember that I meant not so to sink; Forgive your Glycera, when you come ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the table. By the way she kept her eye upon him, contradicting every word he said, and snubbing him at every opportunity, she was evidently his wife. Another good-looking lady was playing with a very pert-looking boy, who wore a pair of toy wings on his shoulders, and appeared to be a general favourite with every one except the other ladies, who seemed generally a disagreeable lot, and not at all good form ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... and smiling tremulously. It was late—she had almost given up looking—but he was coming! She knew be would come. Coming at a breakneck pace—he must be pretty anxious, too. The schoolma'am recovered a bit of control and revolved in her mind several pert forms of greeting. She would not be too ready to forgive him—it would do him good to keep him anxious and uncertain for a while before ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... suggestion of mean finery or shabby splendour, as now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it, but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' was what in German 'tapfer' is; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold; 'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness as well; 'lewd' meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common people might be supposed to be. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... utter worthlessness. The Gold of Chickaree is a continuation of Wych Hazel, and the two stories are as much alike as two halves of a slate pencil. Wych Hazel herself is rich and insufferably pert; her lover, Rollo, Dane, Duke, or Olaf, as he is called indifferently, is rich and in his ways 'masterful.' The earlier novel ends with the engagement of these two, and here is described their sudden marriage, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... consisting of large sheets loaded with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... existed in "the good old Knickerbocker days." But the truth is, odious though the millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the "I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present writer has seen something of this element; in the decade from 1865 to 1875 it was still extremely active. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... wasted no more words of entreaty upon his sister, but seized her in his arms, and pulling the coverlet in which she had huddled herself up with her pert chin on her knees, more closely about her, he strode along the passage with her in his arms till he stopped at an open door leading into a large chamber which looked to ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Sir Thomas Pert and Sebastian Cabot about the year 1516, to Brazil, St Domingo, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... brother's foot to latt him understand that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will please ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Many a young soldier and many a lass "paired off" in little nooks and corners among the stacks of bales and boxes, but at the table nearest the staging all seemed gay good humor. A merry little woman with straw-colored hair and pert, tip-tilted nose and much vivacity and complexion, had apparently taken the lead in the warfare of chaff and fun. Evidently she was no stranger to most of the officers. Almost as evidently, to a very close observer who stood ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... eye. I begged Ghostie to hide me in her room, and we waited and waited, but these terrible men seem to have taken root here." She twinkled at them gaily, but no one appeared to have recovered sufficiently from shock to reciprocate her pert amusement. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... while he wanted to be quiet, and sentimentalise over the roaring of the wind outside. Then—she thought of nothing but those children. Why did she not take a book and occupy her mind? To which she had her pert, though just answer, about her mind having quite enough to do to keep clothes on the children's backs, and so forth,—let who list imagine the miserable little squabble;—till she says,—"I know what has put you out so to-night; nothing but the news of my sister's coming." He answers,—"That ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... her fingers. "I fancied I gave it to Jemima when her first baby was born," she muttered dreamily. It was darned and yellow, but it carried her back all the same, and recalled happy hours with wonderful vividness. She remembered the post-chaise and the postillion. "He was such a pert little fellow, and how we laughed at him! He must be either dead or a very shaky old man by now," said the old lady. She seemed to smell the scent of meadow-sweet that was so powerful in a lane through which they drove; and how clearly ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was intended to have been uttered with a pert archness; but the crimson cheek and tremulous lips entirely defeated ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight—a tiny, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... hollow-chested, dapper young Englishman, whose insignificant Cockney countenance was splashed with orange-coloured freckles of immense size. Between his thin anaemic lips dangled the inevitable cigarette. And Emigration Jane, toying with the dregs of her tumbler, recognized the pert, sharp, sallow face seen over the sleeve of a large burgher's outstretched arm. With some trouble she caught the eye of the short, pale young man, and he instantly became a red one. To reach her was difficult, but he dived and wriggled his way across the saloon, wedging his frail person ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and slapped his hand with much energy upon the table. Mrs. Tag-rag wiped her eyes, sighed, and resumed her book. Miss Tag-rag began to make tea, her papa gradually forgetting his rage, as he fixed his dull gray eyes fondly on the pert ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... shrubbery—the tree which bore the great white Bigareau cherries; and it was quite time they were picked, for some were split right down the side from over-ripeness, while the sparrows had been attacking others, and had committed sad havoc amongst them—the little pert rascals having picked out all the finest and ripest for their operations, and then, after taking a few bites out of the richest and sweetest part, they commenced upon another. As for Harry, who was not at all a particular youth, he used to make a point of choosing the sparrow-picked cherries— ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... slowly. She never knew what to do, there came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed to the children; and when, relying on some pert little girl for information, she had started a lesson, she did not know how to go on with it properly. The children were her masters. She deferred to them. She could always hear Mr. Brunt. Like a machine, always in the same hard, high, inhuman voice ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... fed the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With science poorly mask their hurt; And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you Still are ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to Edward Henry and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver of the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted the broad ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... track, among thick hazel copses; occasionally, through a gap, he had a view of a great valley, all wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert face. "It ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... "It was pert and unbecoming," said Father Francis, gravely, though a twinkle in his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very sorry, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... made arrangements to elope, and on July 28, 1814, crossed from Dover to Calais in an open boat, taking Jane Clairmont with them on the spur of the moment. Jane also had been unhappy in Skinner Street. She was about Mary's age, a pert, olive-complexioned girl, with a strong taste for life. She changed her name to Claire because ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... were none within the circle of her father's and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... New England Primer, small though it has been, was one of the most influential of publications. It was in every home. From it the children learned their A, B, C's. In it were pert rhymes expressing the theology of the people, such as "In Adam's fall, We sinned all"; and the set of biblical questions beginning with "Who was the first man?" The prayer of childhood, "Now I lay me down to sleep," is in its pages. Of songs, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... those, perchance the most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of the parties the matter was easily arranged. 'The beauty in question was a pert little Eutaw wench, that had been taken prisoner, in some war excursion, by a Shoshonie. She was readily ransomed for a few articles of trifling value; and forthwith figured about the camp in fine array, "with rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes," and a tossed-up ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... view, and declares that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of writing—like a ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Carrie was not quite so handsome as she might be, when with an angry frown she dropped into her seat, hissed by a big, cross-eyed, red-haired boy, in the corner, because she happened to spell pumpkin, "p-u-n pun k-i-n kin, punkin." I do not think she ever quite forgave me for the pert, loud way in which I spelled the word correctly, for she never gave any more calicos or silks, and instead of calling me "Mollie," as she had before done, she now addressed me as ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... of critics. One would scarcely ask for originality in such a case, any more than one would desire a writer on ethics to invent new laws of morality. "We require neither Pope nor Aristotle to tell us that critics should not be pert nor prejudiced; that fancy should be regulated by judgment; that apparent facility comes by long training; that the sound should have some conformity to the meaning; that genius is often envied; and that dulness is frequently beyond the reach of reproof. "We might even guess, without ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... in the tops of the sycamores. From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!" from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among a cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. And the breeze tossed up and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of the young man and the young woman, great billows of ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... We, that are of purer fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, 120 Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... was all that. I don't know if I make myself clear at all.... You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only that—Lord, no! It was a great deal more than that, and it was just beginning; ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... It furnished an occupation to fill in the time; it gave Kalvar Dard an excuse for surrounding himself with half a dozen charming girls, and the girls seemed to enjoy being with him. There was tall blonde Olva, the electromagnetician; pert little Varnis, the machinist's helper; Kyna, the surgeon's-aide; dark-haired Analea; Dorita, the accountant; plump little Eldra, the armament technician. At the moment, they were all sitting on or around the desk in the corner of the store-room, going over the inventory when they ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... an' moder are honahing dar moder, an' you are goin' to hab a chance ter honah dem an' your granma, too. You will hab temptations in de streets ter be pert an' idle, ter stop an' talk to dis one and ter answer back to dat one in a way you shouldn't. But if you go along quiet an' steady, an' do what you're tole, an' be car'ful 'bout de money an' de messages an' de orders an' so forth, you will reflect honah on us all an' 'specially on all ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... to resort to the grooms. There were weekly matches in which the hirelings invariably triumphed. One of the Wellington grooms, an alert young cockney, was the bowler, and his success, as well as the distinguished social station of his opponents, appeared to Armitage to have quite turned his pert ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the camel and ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... but by diminishing that of others.... The most diminutive son of fame or of famine has his we and his us, his firstlys and his secondlys, as methodical as if bound in cow-hide and closed with clasps of brass. Were these Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon, but to be dull and dronish is an encroachment on the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... trotting out the foreigner; and he had found him unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the lay-preacher's doings, with a self-conceited smirk that seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... English. There are weather-beaten farm-houses, rolling country, thickets of trees, little hills green and grey in the distance, decorous small fields, orchards, and, I swear, a hedge or two. Most of the towns we went through are a little too vivacious or too pert to be European. But there seemed to be real villages occasionally, and the land had a quiet air ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... beside a "meikle stane"; and a melancholy old woman had hanged herself at the bush aboon the well, as the poem relates: all these matters the poet pressed into the service of the muse, and used them with a skill which adorns rather than oppresses the legend. A pert lawyer from Dumfries objected to the language as obscure: "Obscure, sir!" said Burns; "you know not the language of that great master of your own art—the devil. If you had a witch for your client you would not be able to manage ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to latt him understand that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, the effect of Mary's walk ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I could ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of brand-new, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... by Clarence the perjurer, or by the upstart Woodville, a commoner made noble because his sister took the King's fancy, or by the Queen herself, the housewife who caused great Warwick's death, or by one of her sons, who are pert to the man who had spilt his blood to make their father king. The snarling intellect bites rather than suffer that. It is very terrible, but how if he had not bitten? The vision of all this bloodiness is less terrible than that vision of the sheep triumphing, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... enormous. It was a carnal, self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; the pert, jumping puce from hungry France, the wary, watchful pulce with his poisoned stiletto; the vengeful pulga of Castile with his ugly knife; the German floh with his knife and fork, insatiate, not rising from table; whole swarms from all ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... we kin buy back our old chair, the rocker with the red roses onto it. Seems ter me them roses must 'a' knowed all the time that this was a-goin' ter happen. They was jest as pert an' ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... miles from the place of starting is generally occupied in clearing obstructions on the road, taking up old maids at their own houses, with pug-dogs, pattens, and parrots, or pert young misses at their papas' shop-doors; whose mammas take this opportunity of delaying a coach-load of people to display their maternal tenderness at parting, while the junior branches of the family hover round the vehicle, and assail your ears with lisping out their eternal "good b'yes," and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of this door appeared now a lady of slim, graceful form, in a toilet of the greatest elegance, her head decorated with feathers, flowers, and lace, her cheeks highly painted, and her fine ruby lips encircled by a pert, and at the same time a mocking smile, which displayed two rows of the finest teeth. With this smile upon her lips she moved forward with a light and spirited step, turning her great blazing black eyes with ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... indulgence which Rufe always met at the tanyard, and which served to make him so pert and forward, the tanner said, humoring the privileged character, "What be you-uns a-talkin' 'bout, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... will put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a button on his desk and presently an office boy—a mop of auburn curls, a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers—hurried up with a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... a grave voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw her ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... beg to remark that I have by no means said that an excellent school education will produce all female excellencies. The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by their ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the scene) that when he awoke the next morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out a little pocket volume, lay it down to think, rubbing all the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... discussion was in progress, and meanwhile the door of the study was open—an unprecedented circumstance. As I approached the portals I could hear loud voices raised, for mingled with the pert, venomous accents of De Griers were Mlle. Blanche's excited, impudently abusive tongue and the General's plaintive wail as, apparently, he sought to justify himself in something. But on my appearance ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... postscript. To another brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk at Hamburg, the English correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at Marseilles has the French. For the Italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to Jew-German,—the other languages having been cut off from him,—and, by means of his frightful ciphers, brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents into a hearty laugh ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... prostrate devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquante; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... declare oneself to be the length of a looby, and the breadth of a booby, but what was that as compared with sitting, blindfolded, on a chair, and guessing, among many kisses, which had been bestowed by "the girl he loved best?" As if he loved any of them! These pert and blowsy schoolgirls, with hideous voices, and arrogant curls, or crimped lion-manes of aggressive hair! He, with "his heart set all upon a snowy coif!" (as he chose to wrest Mr. Yeats' line to his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... leaves me no repose," he said; "I can think of nothing else. I don't content myself with what I have written, but write again and again, although in great want of light. I hear that the Armada has sunk and captured many English ships, and is refitting in a Scotch pert. If this is in the territory, of Lord Huntley, I hope he will stir up ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... were clamoring drowsily in the tops of the sycamores. From out of sight beyond the orchard came the monotonous, musical whir of a reaper. A quail whistled his pert, hopeful, careless "Bob White!" from the rail fence edging the wheat field. A bumblebee grumbled among a cluster of swaying clover blossoms which the mower had spared. And the breeze tossed up and rolled over the meadow, over the senses of the young man and the young ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... know, on my faith I think Burnett'd have done it, only she pipes up, sweet and pert as you please: 'Mr. Auctioneer, will you kindly proceed with the sale in the customary manner? I've other business to attend to, and I can't afford to wait all night on men who don't know their own ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... "Pert, but smart, Saxe," he said. "Seriously, though, a mountain climber, who must naturally be often walking along risky places, has enough to think about without indulging in fancies of what might be if this happened or that took place. Such thoughts ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... a fault, be always pert and insolent, and behave yourself as if you were the injured person; this will immediately put your master or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... lumpy salt. Julia ordered tea, and sat a long time waiting for it. She was glad to be away from the noise and confusion of the streets. The low-ceilinged room was empty, and two or three waitresses with thin pert faces lounged in the background staring at her and whispering together. At last the tea was brought in a discolored metal teapot. Julia poured a cup and drank it hastily. It was black and bitter, but it flowed through her ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... the maid's pert "good-morning" seemed to be in very bad taste and to properly reprove her he assumed a grave, dignified air out of which he was promptly startled by Zoie's ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... it, I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her—only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan—the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they make an ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were waddling about ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... affiliation with Americains in matters of business and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert, imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?—and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and free as the fresh rosy pink of the Anna Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharme; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cecile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry-colour, enormous as a Paul Neron; clustering white shoulders, grouped like the blossoms of an Aimee Vibert ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... funny about that," declared Mrs. Hopkins, contemptuously. "The girl's too pert and forward for anything. I told 'Rast not to fool with her, or she'd make ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... plaster. The shops were pitiful booths, and the 'prentices standing at the entrance bare-headed and cap in hand, and lining the passages, as the old French writer avers, comme idoles, [Perlin] kept up an eternal din with their clamorous invitations, often varied by pert witticisms on some churlish passenger, or loud vituperations of each other. The whole ancient family of the London criers were in full bay. Scarcely had Marmaduke's ears recovered the shock of "Hot peascods,—all ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... D'Orleans; Equality that art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and peck? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... young piece for your size!" remarked the horrible man; and though I could have boxed his ears (which stood out exactly like the handles on an urn), I felt my own tingle, because it was true, what he said: I was a pert young piece. Holding my own at home, and lots of other things in life (for sixteen years of life seem fearfully long if they're all you've got behind you), had made me pert, and I didn't love myself for it, any more than ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... elementary glimmering of intellectual and emotional consciousness. They stand as finials on the continued columns that pierce the arcade wall and emphasize the arches. Dividing the spaces above them, on a higher level, are repeated finials of a pert chanticleer, emblem of the east, the ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart that his prayer was granted. In due time a son was born to him, and, eager to show his gratitude, he bestowed munificent ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... "I'm feelin' right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... price of his own devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a figure in the place. It was rather abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to tremble before him, and was just as far removed from pertness ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... spare arms, or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as if he ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whiffs from a Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is an active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he resembles those naughty little boys ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... former resumes, after some silent dipping among his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, 'I see it whenever I go to see Pussy. If I don't find it on her face, I leave it there.—You know I do, Miss Scornful Pert. Booh!' With a twirl of ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of popping the fatal question ever so many times, by Jove. "And hang it, you know," his lordship would say, "I don't want to marry until I have had my fling, you know." As for Clive, Ethel treated him like a boy, like a big brother. She was jocular, kind, pert, pleasant with him, ordered him on her errands, accepted his bouquets and compliments, admired his drawings, liked to hear him praised, and took his part in all companies; laughed at his sighs, and frankly owned to Laura her liking for him and her pleasure in seeing him. "Why," ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Nietzschean as it deemed itself, but yet cultivated and illuminated and refined, it nevertheless seemed exuberantly sound. The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom, the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive, little folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the close of "Tod und Verklaerung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wagner, the sultry ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... put both his hands behind his back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Jimmy, don't you be pert about the Sisters," said his mother, mildly. And suddenly the Mayor's paper was lowered, and he was looking keenly at his son ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Oscar once, when the two were together at Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... a couple on account," said the pert damsel attached to the young fellow's arm; "they might turn ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta Temple ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Roger, "that space creep had to show up just when I had the whole campaign laid out in my mind." He gazed sadly at the pert heads of the girls in front ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... stream, and this god hath sailed over the water wherein the enemies had banded themselves to-ether against him from that day to this. Now these things took place on the 7th day of the first mouth of the season Pert. And Thoth said, "This region shall be called AAT-SHATET," and this hath been the name of the region from that day unto this; and the Lake which is close by it hath been called Temt from that day to this, ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... about Miss Mapp's cupboard," he said. "And wasn't Mrs. Plaistow down on her like a knife about it? Our fair friends, you know, have a pretty sharp eye for each other's little failings. They've no sooner finished one squabble than they begin another, the pert little fairies. They can't sit and enjoy themselves like two old cronies I could tell you of, and feel at peace ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight—a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... had been invited besides those whom the maid mentioned. But Miss Beaufort continued from seven o'clock until ten, the period at which the ladies left the table, the annoyed victim of the insipid and pert ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... already as if the great big world was only there, just as they had of course expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. She was just old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage. She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"—as her step-mother was wont to say of her own perspicacities,—and put it into jingle, as she had a trick of ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... look pert," added Sage-brush, with what he considered his most winning smile. Fresno snickered and hastily brushed back the hair ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami: Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... I marry?—should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... well in place. Here it was different. The words, perhaps, in this free-spoken world, were gross enough to make a carter blush; and the most suggestive feature was this feint of shame. For such parts the women showed some disposition; they were pert, they were neat, they were acrobatic, they were at times really amusing, and some of them were pretty. But this is not the artist's field; there is the whole width of heaven between such capering and ogling, and the strange rhythmic gestures, and strange, rapturous, frenzied ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coachman had rung several times, an Irish girl opened the door, cautiously (as Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... his first day in Kinder, whom he had despised with all the strength of his young vanity. By to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do him noa harm—a cantankerous yoong rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there was not enough decent linen in the house to lay out the most splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before; and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the audacity to ask her: "Can you show me any relics of the poet?" answered with majestic dignity: "Sir, I am the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two sharp, shrill, impatient ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... may be the case; but still there is no excuse for your folly: and mark me, Sir Gilbert, I will not have that pert minx, Lucy Bargrove, closeted with my daughter Agnes. As to the boy, it is a downright puppy and fool, or, to speak less plebeianly, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Another group of figures consists in naming one thing for something else closely associated with it in thought. When this relation is that of a part to the whole or of the whole to a part, the figure is synecdoche. Thus, when Browning says "pert tongue and idle ear consort 'neath the archway" he conveys the idea that idle gossips gather beneath the archway and with sharp tongues talk over the failings of their neighbors, and he uses synecdoche in making the ear and the tongue, parts of the body, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books are generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to get into expression, though I began rhyming from ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... purity of the great Bennu which is in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold., I am the nostrils of the God of breath, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the Eye of R[a] is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month of the season PERT. [Footnote: i.e., the last day of the sixth month of the Egyptian year, called by the Copta Mekhir.] I have seen the Eye of R[a] when it was full in Annu; [Footnote: The allusion here seems to be to ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... who live in the Green Forest and on the Green Meadows, none is more mischievous than Sammy Jay. It seems sometimes as if there was more mischief under that pert little cap Sammy Jay wears than in the heads of all the other little meadow and forest people put together. When he isn't actually in mischief, Sammy Jay is planning mischief. You see it has grown to be a habit with Sammy Jay, and habits, especially bad habits, have ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... now so dark that I did not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's division; he then ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... do you, hussy? Well, I think I'll take pretty good care of you. Here, Humphrey, I leave this lady in your care. Now you may walk about the garden, Miss Pert; but Humphrey shall go with you wherever you go. So mind, honest Humphrey, I am obliged to go abroad for a little while; let no one but yourself come near her; don't be shame-faced, you booby, but keep close to her. And now, miss, let ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... out that while in the water the princess was very like other people. And besides this, she was not so forward in her questions or pert in her replies at sea as on shore. Neither did she laugh so much; and when she did laugh, it was more gently. She seemed altogether more modest and maidenly in the water than out of it. But when the prince, who had really fallen in love when he fell in the lake, began to talk to her about ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... was deeper than was meant. The Judge was not an unkind man, though he did not relish the reply to his question; he held up his horses on the margin of the water, and perhaps he wanted to be asked by this pert youth for the favor of a passage over. Of course the petition was not, and never would have been made. He lingered a moment, and without another word entered the river, and, turning his horses' heads up stream for a short distance, drove out on the other side; as he turned into the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... he met his match in a pert, jolly, keen-eyed son of Erin, who was up as a witness in a case of dispute in the matter of a horse deal. Curran was anxious to break down the credibility of this witness, and thought to do it by ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Lady Deppingham's pert little nose lifted itself in disgust as she was joggled through the town behind the grunting substitutes for horseflesh. She sat beside her husband in the foremost cart. Mr. Bowles, very tired, but quite resplendent, walked dutifully beside one wheel; Mr. Saunders ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... diminutive son of fame or of famine has his we and his us, his firstlys and his secondlys, as methodical as if bound in cow-hide and closed with clasps of brass. Were these Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon, but to be dull and dronish is an encroachment on ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... United States booth there was a pert Miss walking the floor, monarch of all she surveyed, a typical Uncle Sam's daughter. It was a sorry mistake when a dude presumed too much on her patience or a smart young man made too free with his remarks. She was always ready for them, ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he withstood them. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... that pert way. It sounds like insolence. That will not do, Mr Herrick, if you wish to get on in your profession. Now, sir, your orders were to stop by the landing-place, with the boat in charge, ready for ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... that's the reason!" laughed Mary. "No wonder you feel so pert and chipper—no school! Well, have a good time when ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... son of mine, stood quietly listening to abuse of your father and the house that's made his fortune—his fortune and yours—from a pert young clerk ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... But before I can hope to interest readers in the perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents must be dribbled into the reader's intelligence, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... She spoke with the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in the fine tracing overhead, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I was a man for myself, and set about considering how to behave; and nobody knowing, as yet, upon what footing I came on board, they took me for a passenger, as my dress did not at all bespeak me a sailor; so every one, as I sauntered about, had something to say to me. By and by comes a pert young fellow up: "Sir," says he, "your servant; what, I see our captain has picked up a passenger at last."—"Passenger?" says I; "you are pleased to be merry, sir; I am no passenger."—"Why, pray," says he, "what may you be then?"—"Sir," says I, "the captain's steward."—"You impertinent ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... counterfeits. The real inventor, made by the Deity to carry out his plans, is modest, silent, broodin' over his great secrets, away from the multitude where angels minister to him. But Jabez wuz loud, boastin', arrogant, his pert impudent face proclaimin' the great things he wuz goin' to do, but never did. He wuz in love, too, or what he called love, with a girl that wuz a prime favorite of mine, sweet little Rosamond Nickleson, she and I wuz such ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... very beautiful. You must all have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large, gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat, waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse's head; the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the intelligent, affectionate expression which looks out of the human-like eye of the horse and dog. There ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... "Now, Miss Pert, I want you to listen to me!" That was Mrs. Ladybug's greeting to Betsy Butterfly on one of the most delightful days of the whole summer. "It's my unpleasant duty—" said Mrs. Ladybug, who by that time was enjoying herself thoroughly—"it's ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the Blot in future, you'll know what it is. When I'm very desperate, I may just fling a drop of ink on the paper to relieve my feelings, and that will mean the same thing. The Blot puts on an air of the most exaggerated respect for Sir Lionel. You'd fancy he was talking to a centenarian. Horrid, pert little pig! (I think pigs run in their family.) I know he does it on purpose to be nasty, and make Sir Lionel feel an old stager. Do you remember the pig-baby ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
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