"Crossness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Betty's tended more than my mother's prayers, I fear, to keep me from going. For I hated Betty in those days, as children always hate a cross servant, and often get fond of a false one. But Betty, like many active women, was false by her crossness only; thinking it just for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket; ready to stick to it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way with argument; but melting over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, left along ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Georgina like an inspiration that it wasn't Barby who had forbidden her to play with them, it was Tippy. And with a vague feeling that she was justified in disobeying her because of her recent crossness, she rounded them up for a chase over the granite slabs of the breakwater. If they would be Indians, she proposed, she'd be the Deerslayer, like the hero of the Leather-Stocking Tales, and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... were never interrupted by peevishness; indeed, the temperament of a negro child is generally so sound, that he is not affected by those little morbid sensations, which are the frequent cause of crossness and ill-temper in our children. I do not remember that I ever saw a young black fretful, or out of humor; certainly never displaying those ferocious fits of petty passion, in which the superior nature of infant whites indulges. I sometimes ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... get out of bed on the wrong side puts one out all day. "He got out of bed with the wrong foot foremost" is said of a person who has a fit of crossness. Northern Ohio. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... it so crossly that she knew there was not the least use in staying another minute. She went skipping slowly down the outside walk, thinking him over and saying to herself that, queer as it was, here was another person whom she liked in spite of his crossness. She liked old Ben Weatherstaff. Yes, she did like him. She always wanted to try to make him talk to her. Also she began to believe that he knew everything in ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you are? Can't I be cross back? I'm not afraid of your crossness. You never hit below the belt. Now, promise me you'll give me a ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... There was no more crossness in that house. Elsa's husband grew so proud of her that he went about saying to everybody, "My grandmother was a fine housekeeper, and my mother was a fine housekeeper, but neither of them could hold a candle to my wife. She has only one maid, but, to see the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... lightened, and his father came and scolded over the back fence, but the prince waved his magic cut toe; then they all banged and went up on a Fourth of July sky rocket, till the father fell off and bumped all his crossness out of him, and like birds of a fevver, they ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden |
