"Tenter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know such a thing was in his line. I had been giving Miss Dora a lesson in the nursery. The old nurse had brought the two little ones in there, and kept us all on tenter-hooks running in and out. One of the doctors, Wells, I think she said, had fainted; it was a very delicate and dangerous operation. When my lesson was over, I slipped quietly out; I was passing through the corridor when Dr. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Long Tom, and he had gradually worked himself up into such an uncontrollable condition of fidgety impatience, running his eye along the sights and then glancing round at me, that it seemed cruel to keep him thus any longer on the tenter-hooks of suspense, and I, rather reluctantly, nodded permission to him to fire. The next instant the gun spoke out, the shock of its discharge jarring the schooner to her keel, and the shot flew high over the mast-heads of the galley and a little ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... hold all the mother's jewels and she's on tenter-hooks every three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay the interest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there, simpleton?" she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francs and I'll talk ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... by Lord Tenterden, the chief-justice of England, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earls of Winchilsea, Harewood, Mansfield, Falmouth, and Ermiskillen. Lord Tenter-den declared against it, because he knew it to be a violation of the constitution, and because he believed that it threatened ruin to the Protestant church, which he valued, not only for the purity of its doctrines, but because, of all churches that ever existed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Loveday took him into the garden, all the while upon tenter-hooks, not lest Buonaparte should appear in their midst, but lest Bob should come whilst he was not there to receive him. When they had got into a corner Uncle Benjy said, 'Miller, what with the French, and what with my nephew Festus, I ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... young thing, whose father went to the devil; he is followed like a salt bitch, and limbed by him that gets up first; his disposition is cut, and knaves rend him like tenter-hooks; he is as blind as his mother, and swallows flatterers for friends. He is high in his own imagination, but that imagination is as a stone that is raised by violence, descends naturally. When he goes, he looks who looks; if he find not good store of vailers, he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Cobden: I received your letters with the enclosures. We are still on the tenter-hooks respecting the conduct of the Lords. There is, however, one cheering point: the majority on the second reading is improving in the stock-books of the whippers-in. It is now expected that there will be forty to fifty ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... houses stand between this street and two or three streets outside Cripplegate. Moorfields are really fields. There are windmills, gardens with summer-houses, pasture-fields with cows, a large 'dogge house,' and fields where women appear to be laying out clothes to dry. Really, they are tenter fields, i.e. fields provided with 'tenters,' or pegs, by means of which cloth could be stretched. North of Moorfields is indicated rising ground with woods. There can be no doubt at all as to the course of the wall, which is here marked with the greatest clearness. On the east ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... ciel des nuages de feu; Suspendez votre marche; il ne faut tenter Dieu. Par monsieur saint Denis! certes ce sont des mes Qui passent dans les airs ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Major in, McMurrough," Asgill said, who on his side was on tenter-hooks lest Flavia and Morty O'Beirne should arrive from the Tower. "You'll like to get rid of your boots before supper, Major?" he went on. "Bid Darby send the Major's man to him, McMurrough; or, better, I'll be going to the stables myself and I'll ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... then that was all the more reason for him to go quickly. But Pocket was not the man to get up and run like that. Perhaps he enjoyed displaying his bravery on the point, and keeping his companion on tenter-hooks on his account; at any rate he insisted on finishing his breakfast, and gave further free expression to the wildest surmises as he did so. And yet he was even then on the brink of a discovery which was some excuse for the wildest of them all, while it demanded a fresh solution of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... nothing if not original. She is a dear, good girl, but quite too funny in her ways. She is really the incarnation of mischief, and keeps me on tenter-hooks from morning until night, but from her manner you would think she was a model of propriety. Nothing delights her so much as to get hold of a new ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... quarter of an hour or so, while we all waited on the tenter-hooks of suspense, an inquisitive land tortoise waddling up to see what we were about, Tom lit a ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of Pascal!" I cried, "even you could detect no casuistry here. And have you no scruple, young man, in keeping an old gentleman on the tenter-hooks of expectation whilst you are splitting hairs? Go on, like a good fellow, I was never so interested in my life. The idea ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... dears; you must have been on tenter-hooks all this time, for, of course, you saw there was a crisis, and you behaved much better than I should have done at your age; but it was only a fait accompli this very day, and we couldn't tell ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge |
