"Mumbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shaped vs the true Idoea of a Witch, an old weather-beaten Croane, hauing her chinne, & her knees meeting for age, walking like a bow leaning on a shaft, hollow eyed, vntoothed, furrowed on her face, hauing her lips trembling with the palsie, going mumbling in the streetes, one that hath forgott[e] her pater noster, and hath yet a shrewd tongue in her head, to call a drab, a drab. If shee haue learned of an olde wife in a chimnies end: Pax, max, fax, for a spel: or can say Sir Iohn of Grantams ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... out into the street basking in the golden rays of the setting sun. In the intoxication of freedom, he danced and leapt, seeing everything, men and horses, carriages and shops, in a charmed light, and out of sheer joy of life mumbling at his Aunt Servien's hand and arm, as she walked home with him carrying ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... the stately Lady Ashton, kept close guard over her; and it made me shudder to behold, also, the old hag, Ailsie Gourley, crouching down by her bonny mistress, and stroking the lily-white hand which hung so listless at her side, mumbling the while what seemed to me must be some incantation to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Then heavily mumbling a scurvy grace, he washed his hands in fresh wine, picked his teeth with the foot of a pig, and talked jovially with his attendants. Then the carpet being spread, they brought great store of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did not say what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was in a bad humour, he had a strange fashion of catching at some word that either he himself, or those with whom he spoke, had uttered, and after often repeating it, or rather mumbling it over in his mouth, as if he were chewing it, off he started into a canter of ridiculous rhymes to the aforesaid word, and sometimes one of these rhymes would suggest a new idea, or some strange association which had the oddest effect possible; and to increase the absurdity, the jingle was gone ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... over, with a touch of sudden humility in his demeanor. "I'm only doing my duty as it's laid out by the statutes," he muttered. He quailed under the old man's eyes. He did not like the sound of the mumbling at the windows nor relish the looks of the men who had just come flocking into the yard at the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... for he caught a glimmer of light at the edge of a window shade in the courthouse, saw several indistinct figures congregated at the side door, outside. He slipped behind a tool shed at the side of the track, and crouching there, watched and listened. A mumbling of voices reached him, but he could distinguish no word. But it was evident that the men outside were awaiting the reappearance of one of their number who had ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... earshot and muttered[FN411] to himself and said, "In the pot are sixty ducats and I have with me other twenty in such a place and to-day I will unite the whole in the pot." When the Sharper heard him say this to himself, muttering and mumbling, repeating and blundering in his speech, he repented him of having taken the sequins and said, "He will presently return to the pot[FN412] and find it empty; wherefore that for which I am on the look-out will escape me; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... together on the steps," said Ben, with a burst of laughter at the remembrance, "and we spoke before we meant to; couldn't help it, you know; just ran into each other—and he read your note, and then he flew into the house, and was gone a moment or two, and came back mumbling it was all his fault, and he'd written; that you'd understand, or something of that sort, and he gave me this note to carry back; and I guess Pick is all right, Polly." Ben drew a long breath of relief after he got through; he was so unaccustomed to ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... only existed in pugilism. At peace, Veuillot was no more than a mediocre writer. His poetry and novels were pitiful. His language was vapid, when it was not engaged in a striking controversy. In repose, he changed, uttering banal litanies and mumbling childish hymns. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Indians, too, and will often hear their low mumbling and give little growls before I dream that one is near. They have a disagreeable way of coming to the windows and staring in. Sometimes before you have heard a sound you will be conscious of an uncomfortable ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... string. When they had entered, Sol, who knew the house well, busied himself in lighting a fire, the driver going off with a lantern to the stable, where he found standing-room for the two horses. Mountclere walked up and down the kitchen, mumbling words of disgust at the situation, the few of this kind that he let out being just enough to show what a fearfully ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... through a few nonsensical manosuvres, consisting chiefly of an ostentatious affectation of reverence toward an altar covered with tattered drapery, by never turning their backs toward it while they walk about, Bible in hand, mumbling and sighing. My self-constituted guide and myself comprise the whole congregation during the "services." Whenever the priests heave a particularly deep- fetched sigh or fall to mumbling their prayers on the double quick, they invariably cast a furtive ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... he whispered aloud. "Then I am still mad. Careful ... mad. For there was blood ... and not mine. So it would seem I have been seducing myself with optimisms. A true madman. Yes, a lunatic mumbling excitedly to himself in the snow ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... removed, pipes were brought out and tankards sent on their rounds. By this time poor old Tim's weak brains were muddled, and he was discovered leaning back against the wall and mumbling out the tag-end of an ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... as she lay helpless on the bed, she watched him. She was racked with pain, and he was mumbling that it would be all right again in a little time. "A week from now," said he, "and you will have ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... out at the door, and overthrew his father in his flight. The old gentleman would not spend time in getting up, but crawled backwards like a crab, with great speed, till he had got over the threshold, mumbling exorcisms all the way. I was exceedingly mortified to find myself in danger of perishing through the ignorance and cowardice of these clowns; and felt my spirits decay apace, when an old woman entered the barn, followed by the two fugitives and with great intrepidity ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... together; I repeat the word advisedly, for there was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tongue offered an irresistible invitation to the mumbling fly which had escaped with the Wildcat from the Sheriff's office. The fly enjoyed the viscous environment until he succeeded in getting himself all squashed up in an instinctive gesture back of which were the clutching fingers of the ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... looked at one another in silence for a moment, and then both began to speak at once, their counsellors interrupting them and mumbling their guttural comments with anxious earnestness. It did not take them very long to see that they were all of one mind, and then they both turned to Gordon and dropped on one knee, and placed his hands on their foreheads, and Stedman raised ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... double-wondered glory of the dust Hast thrust Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, Where are the deeds that needs must be, The dreams, the high delights, That I once more may hear my voice From cloudy door to door rejoice— May stretch the boundaries of love Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears To the faint-remembered glory of those years— May lift my soul And reach this Heaven of thine With mine? Where are the gleams? Thou shalt tell me, Shalt compel me. The sometime glory shall ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... I am ashamed to see how pale and mumbling a tribute they are to this fine spirit. Could I but put him before you as he was in those last days! I used to go up to Burkitt House to see him: in summer we would sit in the little arbour in ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... itself felt, and the circle spontaneously broke up, everybody moving at once by a common instinct. The professor's wife left the party abruptly, with excuses about an early start next morning. She first shook hands with Rushton, mumbling something about his comfort in ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wild eyes and vermilion-painted cheeks, is to be seen prophesying in some public place. And the "Holy man," too, who is incessantly walking like the wandering Jew, always in a hurry and all the while mumbling his prayers. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Mumbling a vague acceptance of the too-genial invitation, the exalted detective rose and ambled cheerfully down the room and out of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and came out directly, still absorbed in his idea, and tendered him a cigar, mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache, "Children growing up—and girls, too! Girls!" ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... her nose still balanced, as it were, in preparation to strike. Then she lowered her head with the air of one who carefully replaces a weapon, and mumbling something about being "dreadfully late as it was," continued her interrupted plunging into the resistances that separated her from her goal. The others followed, as if they were being trailed in her wake by invisible hawsers. None of them took ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... usual; he entered with his jovial, self-satisfied, and stubborn air, without noticing Sam, who was standing at the left side of the door, his right hand hidden in his trowsers, and passed rapidly by the first frames, tossing his head, mumbling his words, and casting his glance, which was law, here and there, not perceiving that the eyes of all who surrounded him were fixed upon him as upon a fearful phantom. On a sudden he turned sharply round, surprised to hear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... minutes a hail of shrapnel was greeting us, but hardly any one of us was conscious of it, so terribly and deeply were we affected by the scene of tragedy that had just been enacted before us. I remember foolishly mumbling something to the silent man riding next to me, something about the power of recuperation of youth, about the comparative harmlessness of the pointed, steelmantled rifle bullets which on account of their terrific percussion make small clean wounds and rarely ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... they got away, and even, if necessity arose, painting their throats with turpentine when they were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, when the lamps were lit, and Mrs. Ukridge petted Edwin and sewed, and Ukridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling Mose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write—and write—and write—and go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyes refused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come to feel ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says 'miserable sinners', as if she were calling all the congregation names. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... folk there were not many. A few mothers with brown babies in their arms; a few mumbling crones, and bent old men with faces like strange masks; but the flow of children ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... Prince occupied was overrun, like other contiguous spaces. The object of the invaders was to secure a position near the revered building as possible; for immediately on attaining it they dropped to their knees, and began counting their rosaries and mumbling prayers. At length it befell that the terraces far and near were densely crowded by ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... huida! with children whose heads were shaved in hideous patterns; and now and then, as if to point a moral lesson in the midst of the whirling diorama, a funeral passed through the throng, with a priest in rich robes, mumbling prayers, a covered barrel containing the corpse, and a train of mourners in blue dresses with white wings. Then we came to the fringe of Yedo, where the houses cease to be continuous, but all that day there was little interval between them. All had open fronts, so that the occupations ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... two after a voice was heard round the corner of the building, mumbling, 'Ah, I used to be strong enough, but 'tis altered now! Well, there, I'm as independent as one here and there, even if they do write 'squire after ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... at this place for the outcries of astonishment and marvel which were never lacking. Then Jed went on, mumbling his toothless gums in delight over ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... claimed their eyes. There was nothing new, the "mem" passed every day at this hour. She did no harm and no good. He, too, looked at her as she came closer, offering her paper to Alladiah Khan, a man impatient in his religion, who refused it, mumbling in his beard. With a gesture of appeal she pressed it on him, saying something. Then Alladiah's green turban shook, his beard, dyed red in Mecca, waggled; he raised his arm, and Laura, in white astonishment, darted from under it. They seldom ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... for one of his age, the professor recovered his footing, mumbling something about tripping a heel, then resumed his examination of the curiosities as though he had care ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... it!' And with these words, your Worship, she stretched out her thin bony hands to me and gave me this paper. All the people turned around in my direction, as I said, amazed, 'Grandam, what in the world is this you are giving me?' After mumbling a lot of inaudible nonsense, amid which, however, to my great surprise, I made out my own name, she answered, 'An amulet, Kohlhaas the horse-dealer; take good care of it; some day it will save your life!'—and vanished. Well," Kohlhaas continued good-naturedly, "to tell ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... appeased that strife, and would admit none but him selfe to have the scorching and carbonadoing of it, and he kissed his hands thrice, and made as many humblessos before he woulde finger it; and, such obeysances performed, he drest it as he was enjoyned, kneeling on his knes, and mumbling twenty Ave Maryes to hymselfe, in the sacrifizing of it on the coales, that his diligent service in the broyling and combustion of it, both to his kingship and to his fatherhood ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... knees to the right of the steps, her hands hidden beneath her scapulary, her eyes bent in lowly reverence upon the sunlit flagstones, her lips mumbling chance sentences ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... isle The silent water slipping from the hills, They sent a crew that landing burst away In search of stream or fount, and fill'd the shores With clamor. Downward from his mountain gorge Stept the long-hair'd long-bearded solitary, Brown, looking hardly human, strangely clad, Muttering and mumbling, idiotlike it seem'd, With inarticulate rage, and making signs They knew not what: and yet he led the way To where the rivulets of sweet water ran; And ever as he mingled with the crew, And heard them talking, his long-bounden tongue Was loosen'd, till ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... forest; For angels she sent him as men —in the forms of the tawny Dakotas, And they led his feet from the fen, —from the slough of despond and the desert. Half-dead in a dismal morass, as they followed the red-deer they found him, In the midst of the mire and the grass, and mumbling "Te Deum laudamus." "Unktmee [72]—Ho!" muttered the braves, for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit That dwells in the drearisome caves, and walks on the marshes at midnight, With a flickering torch ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... appointed time, Copernicus Droop might have been seen approaching the white cottage. Still nursing a faint hope, he walked with nervous rapidity, mumbling and gesticulating in his excitement. He attracted but little attention. His erratic movements were credited to his usual potations, and no one whom he passed even gave him ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... mumbling insults. "Carrion, you want to die like a dog, but I am here!" He picked up the crucifix, and with a gleam in his eyes, sure of crushing him, waited ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... at once, mumbling to himself some inarticulate gibberish. Half an hour later, the servants came in and found him. He was seated in his chair, still doddering feebly. The house was roused. A doctor was summoned, and the Colonel put to bed. Lady Emily watched him with ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of lying and cheating also, both practised with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for penance. "God forgive me," he muttered, "God forgive me, God forgive me," and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, "How much?" The merchant continued his prayers and did his business ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... suffering, brought him to the grave. During his illness he was constantly and zealously tended by his wife, but he displayed great aversion to her, declaring himself bewitched, and that an old woman was ever in the corner of his room mumbling wicked enchantments against him. But as no such old woman could be seen, these assertions were treated as delirious ravings. They were not, however, forgotten after his death, and some people said ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... people—and yes, all Rhaetians, I believe. I could not let you go back to your own land with the idea that we do not love the noblest Emperor country ever had. As for what I said about the portrait, I didn't know that I spoke aloud, I am so used to mumbling to myself, since I began to grow deaf and old. But of course, I wished it put away only because it is such a poor thing, it does Unser Leo no sort of justice. You—you would not recognize him from that picture, if you ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... knocked upon the door and it opened. And they went inside and all was quiet and black as night. And they groped their way till they heard a low mumbling sound, and, pulling aside a curtain, they saw an old man with a long white beard, sitting in a room with ...
— Kernel Cob And Little Miss Sweetclover • George Mitchel
... (not mumbling his lines, as a privileged actor sometimes does at rehearsal, but addressing them properly ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... voice was lost in unintelligible mumbling, and, much excited, she appeared to count eagerly. With her bony forefinger she numbered over the fingers of her left hand, as if each were a fortune that she ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... what you do, miracles or fruitless deeds, You're a man, man, man, if you do them with a will; And no matter how you loaf, cursing wealth or mumbling creeds, You are nothing but a noise, and its weight ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... gentleman appeared, walking with a sober elderly gait upon the grassy margin of the highway, and looking pleasantly around him as he walked. From time to time he paused, took out his note-book and made an entry with a pencil; and any spy who had been near enough would have heard him mumbling words as though he were a poet testing verses. The voice of the wheels was still faint, and it was plain the traveller had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Perk was mumbling to himself as if he might be on the verge of reaching some sort of decision. He bent forward several times as if about to make an important remark and on each occasion drew back, as though he could hardly decide how to approach the matter he had in his mind. Then ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... an unpleasant feeling of momentary discomfort, but, not being able to locate his ideas clearly, he irritably gave up the attempt to arrive at a solution of this instinctive sensation, mumbling to himself: "This tropical hell is enough to set ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... waller," our driver said, mumbling to himself, ignoring the official location and looking back as though measuring the distance with his eye. "Yeah, ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... you, or I'll break your heart!" said Tim, doubly angry because the charge she made struck deep. He glowered at her, mumbling and growling as if considering ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... deal of it down as I went, and, grappling him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down, with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead, mumbling with his ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... at this, Mr. Polk fumbled with his hat and cane, and, very red in the face, bowed himself out, still mumbling, Mr. Calhoun ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... last meeting place. Flash after flash she sent that way, until the sun went altogether behind the clouds and she could signal no more. Not a glimmer of an answering twinkle could she win from the peak. The most she did was to stimulate old Mike to the point of mumbling wild harangues to the uneasy pines, the gist of which was that folks better look out how they went spyin' around after him, an' makin' signs back and forth with glasses. They better look out, because he had good eyes, if Murphy didn't have, and they couldn't ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a haughty drawback motion, and a supercilious arching of her brows, was "happy to have the honour." Honour nasally prolonged, and some guttural sounds followed, but further words, if words they were, which she syllabled between snuffling and mumbling, were utterly unintelligible; and Helen, without being "very happy," or happy at all, only ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... night, long after midnight, that wakeful Helen, passing stealthily by her son's door, saw a light streaming through the chink of the door into the dark passage, and heard Pen tossing and tumbling, and mumbling verses in his bed. She waited outside for a while, anxiously listening to him. In infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a night before, the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... corpse if it had not been for the dark glare in his sunken eyes. Billy smelled the odor of whisky; he smelled food. He saw no sign of welcome in the faces turned toward him, but he advanced upon them, mumbling incoherently. And then the spark, the fighting spark in him, gave out, and he crumpled down on the floor. He heard a voice which came to him from a great distance, and which said, "Who the hell is this?" and then, after what seemed to be a long time, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... ahead at the platform, but he heard their feet rustling in the straw, and knew that they had sat down on the bench behind Hansard and Jennie. He overheard Bates, who could not possibly speak in a whisper, ask her in a mumbling bass voice if she wanted her cloak, and he saw the shadows of the couple on the ground as she stood up and allowed him to ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... at the monstrosity wonderingly. "'Tis a rare big bean," he said, in the trembling quaver of old age, and with a mumbling laugh like that of a pleased child. "I'll give you two shillin's for it. I suppose you want money badly, or else you wouldn't be wanderin' about at ten o'clock at night tryin' to sell it. I hope you come ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... Sir," he went on mumbling, while his trembling fingers vainly tried to undo the knot in the tape, "you shall read it. And then mayhap you'll tell me if your Pitt was ever half so eloquent. Curse these knots!" he ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... sometimes running,—and all this he does to please the devil, and to coax him to come out of the sick person. This is what he pretends;—but in reality, he seeks to get money by his tricks. The people are very fond of these devil-dancers; it tires them to listen to the Buddhist priests, mumbling out of their books, the five hundred and fifty histories of Buddha; but it delights them to watch all night the ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... but finding he could not damp the burning curiosity which devoured me, and that my ears were deaf to the somewhat rough music of his reasoning and his predictions, the worthy man at length closed the fountain of his eloquence, and, though growling and mumbling in an under tone at my juvenile obstinacy, which had deprived him of his bed and his supper, quietly took his seat in the tree; then drawing from the bottom of his pocket some tobacco and a short pipe—his consolation in his greatest misfortunes—he whiffed away, burying ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... came in with the luggage. Pepe rewarded him with a liberality to which the countryman was not accustomed, and the latter, after humbly thanking the engineer, raised his hand to his head with a hesitating movement, and in an embarrassed tone, and mumbling his words, he ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... last speaker, Samuel Fielden, was saying, "In conclusion——," a good part of the crowd had been driven home by rain which began falling when he started his speech—a squad of armed police descended upon the Haymarket Square. Mumbling orders for the crowd to disperse, they fell upon the assembled men and women with clubs ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... words sounded! She could hear everything said, and yet it was in another language, and seemed as if they were mumbling over gibberish, like a couple of children for their own amusement, except that the chief most of the time acted as though he was angry at the white man, who looked so pleasant and kind that she was sure he must have a ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my life I've been in London, hoping ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... said presently, "I can't stand this any longer. I must see the ticker. I must find out how it opened to-day. Gad, I'll go crazy if I sit here all day mumbling '57-1/2!'" ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... you!" she murmured cavernously and drank deep. She put the saucer back where nice persons leave theirs at all times. "Say, it was hot over on that bench to-day. I was getting out that bunch of bull calves, and all the time here was old Safety First mumbling round—" ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... third pamphlet in the booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase, generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly remarkable instance. The phrase, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... they permitted that it gave no appeasement to the hunger pang that was much of the stomach, but more of the brain. And Labiskwee, delirious, maddened by the taste of her tiny portion, sobbing and mumbling, yelping sharp little animal cries of joy, fell upon the next day's portion and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... me,—I've been crying ever since,—you won't marry me after all I dare say, though I let you do it." "So help me God I will, I'll marry you." He swore quite loudly. "Hish!" "Mother won't let us, she hates you." The female whimpered, then was mumbling, kissing, soothing, quietness, then all of a sudden, "Oh! you're hurting me with your fingers." "Hish!—hish!—be quiet!" Then I could hear nothing;—then, "No, I'll be getting in a mess like Bess." Said the man half angrily, "She were a fool, she needn't a had a child; ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Ward's command two warriors fell upon me and fastened cords to my wrists and ankles and staked me out in spread-eagle style, and then sat beside me, one on each side. Half a dozen of the older men remained in the camp. Dale was mumbling something to the girl and she rose as if at ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... closed the doors and windows, and prayed to the Virgin for deliverance from the impending evil. Never had there been seen in Castrillo such a counting of rosaries and beating of breasts, such genuflexions, and mumbling of aves and paters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... paused, pinching his chin with thumb and index finger, and mumbling his tobacco. John, who had listened with more attention than interest—wondering the while as to what the narrative was leading up to—thought something might properly be expected of him to show that he had followed it, and said, "So Mrs. Cullom ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... wonder, my breast bare, and hair tossed about, drenched by the sleet that fell from the roof. At length recovering from my bewilderment, I returned to the loft and found Wilfred, who looked at me with a haggard expression and was mumbling a prayer. I hastened to bolt the door, dress myself, and replenish ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... against the dogmas of superstition. How fine was his great word about Voltaire—"Irony incarnate for the salvation of mankind." Like Gambetta, Victor Hugo is to be buried without religious rites, according to his will. No priest is to profane the sanctity of death by mumbling idle words over his grave concerning what he is as ignorant of as the corpse at his feet. In death, as in life, the Freethinker would confront the universe alone from the impregnable rock of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers—it was a tin-can, cow-bell discord in ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... And mumbling the last lines of the poem, I hastened to the cafe near the Luxembourg Gardens, wondering if I should find courage to ask the girl to come away to the South and live, fearing that I should not, fearing it was the idea ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... poetry for the magazines and permanently destroyed what little respect Kedzie had for the art. Hunting for some little love-word that was unimportant when found threw him into frenzies of rage. He went about mumbling gibberish. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... than the large results from very small efforts in the right direction. Polly and I prospered in our efforts to "attend." I may say for myself that, child as I was, I began to find a satisfaction and pleasure in going to church, though the place was hideous, the ritual dreary, and the minister mumbling. When by chance there was a nice hymn, such as, "Glory to Thee," or "O GOD, our help in ages past," we were quite happy. We also tried manfully to "attend" to the sermons, which, considering the length and abstruseness of them, was, I think, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... terror throughout the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... shut my mouth and watched him. And suddenly his lips began to work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you know. After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... rumble of the guns can be heard—and the detrainment takes place. You fall your Highlanders in by the side of the train, you jerk your pack about in a vain effort to make it hang comfortably, a whistle blows, and you start off on your long march to your regiment, to those dull, mumbling guns, to ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the monks to the church, and, amid the solemn tolling of the bell, throwing himself prostrate on the cold pavement, began to read and sing. Ruus, who had ever shown himself a wayward convert, liked not the lamentable voice of devotional services; and strove to sneak out from the mumbling group, but the Abbot, with resolute horror, seized him by the cloak, and exorcised him, quickly as his tongue would speak, into a red horse; and, by the sanctity of invested power, constrained him, by way of punishment for his wicked designs, to pass through the air day ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Marcus paid the locksmith his ten shillings, and suggested that he need not wait longer. The locksmith, having received the money, thought it incumbent upon him to apologize and explain still further, till Marcus took hold of the door, as if to close it, when he accepted the hint, and departed, mumbling an apology as ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of labor. Her husband was watching her intently—and thought how beautiful she looked as the blood mantled to her white forehead, descending and rising as her thoughts took turn after turn. The unfortunate deacon was mumbling forth a few ill-connected sentences. At last with a groan he sank to his seat and placed a handkerchief to his fevered brow. Presently Augusta sat down and there was again an awful silence. No one advanced another ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... upon a wheel? P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys: So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, ...
— English Satires • Various
... in and behind a curtain drawn before my father's open wardrobe, which stood just inside the room. Nearer and nearer and nearer came the echoing footsteps. There was a strange coughing and shuffling and mumbling outside. My heart beat with expectation and fear. A quick step now close, close beside the door, a noisy rattle of the handle, and the door flies open with a bang. Recovering my courage with an effort, I take a cautious peep out. In the middle of the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the old man entered. He was mumbling. He was saying, in that jumble of sound which it was difficult for even Alan to understand—and which Sokwenna had never given up for the missionaries' teachings—that he could hear feet and smell blood; and that the feet were many, and the blood ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... flower- garden ought to have been. At first the place seemed altogether deserted. We knocked, shouted, ran hither and thither in vain. By-and- by crawled forth, one after the other, three ancient, hag-like women, staring at us and mumbling words we could not understand. On nearer inspection they seemed worthy old souls enough, evidently members of the household; but as their amount of French was scant, they hurried indoors again. A few minutes later a young, handsome, untidy ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... wedding of Rodriguez and Serafina, of which gossips often spoke at their doors in summer evenings, old women mumbling of fair weddings that each had seen; and they had been children when they saw this wedding; they were those that threw small handfuls of anemones on the path before the porch. They told the tale of it till they could tell no more. It is the account of the last two or ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... rejected Pulcheria's attempts to take her friend's part, and he trotted home again, mumbling curses between ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... down from the Island! Well—how did you like it up there? Plenty water—eh?" The sarcasm was too plain, and the young man, mumbling some sort of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... aneueh for dogs, begging your honour's pardon—Ay! I might nae doubt hae heard the curate linking awa at it in his white sark yonder, and the musicians playing on whistles, mair like a penny-wedding than a sermon—and to the boot of that, I might hae gaen to even-song, and heard Daddie Docharty mumbling his mass—muckle the better I wad hae been ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to which a person who was present by compulsion at the commission of a crime, and voluntarily confessed it, would get off with a year's imprisonment. The jailer held the lantern close to the tanned face of the reader and nodded encouragingly to Bousquier. The latter was mumbling the Lord's Prayer. Greatly agitated, and groping about for a way out of his plight, he said finally that everything was as he had first related, only the tobacco-dealer had paid him not with a gold-piece but a couple of silver coins. He repeated his confession ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... after mumbling for a while under his breath, "this is the most utter tomfoolery that ever I heard of. Here you've got an invention that would revolutionize mechanics, and instead of utilizing it you rush off into space on a hairbrained adventure. You might have been twenty ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... cried again. "I can't, Jerry, I can't!" Again her voice fell to low mumbling. "Yes, go. Go at once. I promised, you know.—They haven't any mother.—I promised. Jerry! Jerry!" Her voice rang out so wildly that Connie, down in the dungeon, heard her cries and sobbed anew, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... own fireside. Now while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, "LAY not up for yourselves treasures upon ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... glided down upon them, like chickens when a hawk appears. I surprised an ancient fisherman seated on a spit of gravelly beach, with his back upstream, and leisurely angling in a deep, still eddy, and mumbling to himself. As I slid into the circle of his vision his grip on the pole relaxed, his jaw dropped, and he was too bewildered to reply to my salutation for some moments. As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, and saw ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... got pretty merry, till one of them tried to move back to the village. He staggered up and down, and tumbled against rocks, and finally he lay flat and held on tight. The others, most of them, were no better as soon as they tried to move. A rare fright they were in! They began praying and mumbling; praying, of all things, to the soul of the taboo pig! They thought they were being punished for the awful sin they had committed in eating him. The interpreter improved the occasion. He told them their faults pretty roundly. Hadn't he warned them? Didn't they ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... precisely, as if every word belonged to a charm and must be repeated just right or it would not work. The man's mumbling words halted after hers. He was reflecting upon the curious tableau they would make to the chance passer-by on the desert if there were any passers-by. It was strange, this aloneness. There was a wideness here that made praying ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... could be seen to decrease perceptibly in size, from a broad sheet to a wide band, a narrow ribbon, a line, a hair and then disappear altogether. While the distant mountains were still growling, mumbling and playing shuttlecock with the echoes a timid chief hare went hopping across a green half-acre of grass at the damp edge of a melting snow patch in my path. Overhead a golden eagle sailed with a small mammal in its talons; strange reddish-colored ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... the room where they worked together for the discomfiture of the opposite party, and had given him some account of the representation of the play at the Parthenon. Her father was delighted to find her in high spirits. So many people come back from the theater looking glum and worn out, yawning and mumbling when asked what they have seen and what it had all been about. Phyllis was not glum, nor did she mumble. She was able to describe scene after scene, and more than once she sprang from her seat, carried ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... of information could I elicit relative to the religion beyond the continual "Um mani panee, Um mani panee!" which our friend seemed never tired of mumbling; and although the sepoy was, I believe, considerably more adapted for the extraction of reluctant supplies of food for our kitchen than for eliciting such information on the subject of theology as I was in search of, the real cause of failure was more to be attributed to the extreme ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... rhythm, and composed in stark defiance of those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock of the Duke's death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I didn't let the actual fact be told you by a Messenger. Come, do you really think your grievance against me is for a moment comparable with that of Mrs. and Miss Batch against Clarence? Did you feel faint at any moment in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... poet down the shelves was fumbling In a dim library, just behind the chair From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling A song about some Lovers at a Fair, Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling That rhymes were ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.... The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman—couldn't conceal—knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... teach their scholars' tongue! But that the foolish both should gaze, With feeble, fascinated face, Upon the wan crest of the coming woe, The billow of earthquake underneath the seas, And sit at ease, Or stand agape, Without so much as stepping back to 'scape, Mumbling, 'Perchance we perish if we stay: 'Tis certain wear of shoes to stir away!' Who could have dreamt That times should come like these! Remnant of Honour, tongue-tied with contempt, Consider; you are strong ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... was evidently awaiting her, for this time she did not hide at the sound of approaching footsteps, but came forward, courtesying and mumbling greetings, while her eyes gleamed with a satisfaction ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... got a word to say," said Dan'l, "'ceptin' that a good deal of it was jest sass." But he kept mumbling to himself as he hobbled along, "Jedge not, fur you 're a-pilin' up sentences on yoreself. I never thought of it that way ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... mad to Moloch's burning fane Devote the choicest children of his brain. 190 Judge for yourself; and as you find report. Of wit as freely as of beef or port. Zounds! shall a pert or bluff important wight, Whose brain is fanciless, whose blood is white; A mumbling ape of taste; prescribe us laws 195 To try the poets, for no better cause Than that he boasts per ann. ten thousand clear, Yelps in the House, or barely sits a Peer? For shame! for shame! the liberal British soul To stoop to any ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... away hastily, mumbling to himself—then glowers about the room scornfully with blinking eyes). It's a grand hotel this is, I'm thinkin', for the rich to be takin' their ease, and not a hospital for the poor, but the poor has ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... So mumbling, with the responsive titter still continuing below and Irving standing there stern and red, Westby disappeared into the loft. There was a moment's silence, then a sudden clicking of a ratchet wheel, and Allison began to rise rapidly towards ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... refocused with a jerk, and I realized that something had unconsciously been perceived by my rods and cones, and short-circuited to my duller brain. Where a moment before was an unbroken translucent surface, were now thirteen strange beings who had appeared from the depths, and were mumbling ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. "I know your mind," said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his "abracadabra" over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up his bamboo-stick and wrote therein—Khalid! This was amazing. "And I know more," said he. But after scouring the heaven, he shook his head regretfully and wrote in the sand the name of one of the hasheesh-dens ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... that by it all diseases were cured."[38] Unfortunately, wells do not always benefit the bathers. Lilly[39] relates that in 1635 Sir George Peckham died in St. Winifred's Well, "having continued so long mumbling his pater nosters and Sancta Winifreda ora pro me, that the cold struck into his body, and after his coming forth of that well he never ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... confused in circles through the brake. He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking; Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!' Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns, He peers around with boding, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping Flapped blindly in his face. Beating it off, He screeched in terror, and straightway ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... got together his last remaining resources, without thought of those who were dependent upon him. He betrayed an incredible energy, walking, ferreting about, and mumbling ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... was nothing but a mumbling and a muttering. And that was Mary. She was the only one who was joining ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... half-caressingly upon the hip of the other. The beaming, broad one was chattering volubly and the slender one listening carelessly. The talking of the heavier girl was interrupted evenly by her mumbling at a juicy strip of meat. Her hunger, it was clear, had not yet been satisfied, and it was as clear, too, that her companion had yet an appetite. The slender one was, seemingly, not much interested in the conversation, but the other chattered on. It was plain that she ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here and there—a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home you sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... followed her; in the passage they disturbed an old hag who did the casual cooking of the household, though she was so decrepit as to be hardly able to understand human speech. She got up and hobbled behind them, mumbling toothlessly. On the verandah a hammock of sail-cloth, belonging to Cornelius, swayed lightly to the touch of Jim's elbow. It ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... undressed, she seated herself at the window in a Voltaire armchair and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... of people are standing around glassy-eyed listening to something mumbling in their ear that ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... conciliate the wicked old creature. Of course, neither my father nor mother paid her the least attention, or made her presents; and no one spoke a word to her, at which she flew into a great rage, and went away shaking her wand, and mumbling in a spiteful manner, 'Well, good people, you are all mighty silent now, but before long you shall have talking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... to shake all over and tell a mumbling story, how they had been set upon by the Scythian troopers in their little farm near OEnophytae, how he had seen the farmhouse burn, his two daughters swung shrieking upon the steeds of the wild Barbarians, and as for himself and his ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was that this discipline cleared poor Wamba's wits or cooled his humor, it is certain that he became the most melancholy fool in England, and if ever he ventured upon a pun to the shuddering poor servitors, who were mumbling their dry crusts below the salt, it was such a faint and stale joke that noboby dared to laugh at the innuendoes of the unfortunate wag, and a sickly smile was the best applause he could muster. Once, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pursue her conquest, and I stood fixed on the defensive part, I heard a rustling among the thick-grown leaves, and through their mystic windings soon perceived the good old Count of Clarinau approaching, muttering and mumbling to old Dormina, the dragon appointed to guard this lovely treasure, and which she having left alone in the thicket, and had retired but at an awful distance, had most extremely disobliged her lord. I only had time enough in this ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... standing by the door, as if she were overhearing something, and then speaking a short monologue. For at least an hour and a half before her cue, while the others were walking, reading, having tea, quarrelling, she never left me and kept on mumbling her part, and dropping her written copy, imagining that everybody was looking at her, and waiting for her to come on, and she patted her hair with ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... old to the appointed means of instructing our youth. The vital knowledge—that by which we have grown as a nation to what we are, and which underlies our whole existence—is a knowledge that has got itself taught in nooks and corners, while the ordained agencies for teaching have been mumbling little else than ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... a magic circle beside the tree, and reverently lit the holy fire. Then the horrible giant Flame-face appeared, mumbling words of his own. He staggered, for he was drunk with blood, and snorted and yawned. His eyes flashed fire and his shadow made the whole ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... passed them each a plate of the fried meat, they ate greedily, making loud mouth-noises—champings of worn teeth and sucking intakes of the breath, accompanied by a continuous spluttering and mumbling. After that, when I gave them each a mug of scalding tea, the noises ceased. Easement and content came into their faces. Zilla relaxed her sour mouth long enough to sigh her satisfaction. Neither rocked any more, and they seemed to ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... broad daylight, the low, stuffy room would have been pitch dark had it not been for the flickering candles on the table beside the bent, grey head of the mumbling fortune-teller, whose bony fingers twitched over and about the crystal globe like wiggling serpents' tails. The window gave little or no light and the door was closed, the grinning grandson leaning against it limply. The picture was a weird, uncanny one, despite ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Flanders, aged nineteen. It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done—for instance, when the train drew into the station, Mr. Flanders burst open the door, and put the lady's dressing-case out for her, saying, or rather mumbling: "Let me" very shyly; indeed he ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... me with a countenance of great alarm; mumbling some sentences to himself, and then taking me by the arm, as if to feel my pulse, he said, with a faltering voice: "Something has indeed befallen you, either in body or mind, boy, for you are transformed, since the morning, that I could not ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne slowly approached him from behind. She said something in her toothless, mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand. He opened it and read, scrawled as if ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... course it looks queer—but they're all old men. I wouldn't be s'prised if old Jerry was off his head, mumbling like he does. As far as being pirates goes, that's all foolishness; pirates ain't old men like them, and besides, piratin' is gone out ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... greeted this detracted nothing from her indignation, and she turned again toward the rear premises, shaking her head and mumbling direful things. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... and used to spend whole days in the woods; but first I want to tell you about a story concerning cows; and this is the trufe too. Every New Years night when the whistles begin to blow, cows get down on their knees lift up their front legs and make a mumbling noise. This is true cause one night I made it my business to be around some cows when the whistles begin to blow and sho nuff they got down on their hind legs and started making that noise. I was so fraid I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... to sleep soon after that. The moon, big, weird, solemn, rose slowly over yonder parallel range of mountains. The men at the fire talked low and mumbling between long intervals. Presently the heavy man rose, skirted the thicket, and stumbled off across the field toward the road. The smell of him polluted the air no more. Then the woman came quietly out of the car and joined the other ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... It is quiet. Only the mumbling of FIERS is heard. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, which dies ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... rose menacingly and moved away to put their boat into the stream. Simon Gosler was left mumbling and sniveling and fingering his coat pocket, in which he kept his glass. Chris, watching him, had a sudden inspiration and whispered to Amos. "Hide here behind those bushes and don't follow me. Don't move or show yourself. I'm ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... lamps, whose smoke in the course of centuries had covered everything with soot that it was nobody's business to remove. So it looked like a coal-black pantheon, and in the darkness you could hardly see the forms of long-robed men who were mumbling through some ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... with you for it, then,"—said the maiden, reluctantly giving to her father the morsel of Mammon, on which he darted as if his bony fingers had been the talons of a hawk seizing its prey; and then making a contented muttering and mumbling, like an old dog after he has been fed, and just when he is wheeling himself thrice round for the purpose of lying down, he followed his daughter behind the tapestry, through a little sliding-door, which was perceived when ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... God," he muttered, putting the things back into the sack, "unless we're claimed first as victims for the sacrifice," he added with a foolish laugh. He dragged the sack into the tent, for safety's sake, I suppose, and I heard him mumbling on to himself, but so indistinctly that it seemed quite natural for ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various |
