"Ankle-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along the shadowy depths of the forest where once Twenty-Third Street had lain. Bravely and strongly the girl bore her half of the load as they broke through the undergrowth, clambered over fallen and rotten logs, or sank ankle-deep in mossy swales. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... The explorers walked ankle-deep in dust through a maze of rooms until they came to a big central hall of statues. So artistically fashioned were they that they seemed lifelike in their attitudes, and for a moment all held their breath. This hall was dustless, and Muflog pointed out that it ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... are trapped to buy some unchewable old poultry, tough tup-mutton, stringy cow beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food. With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way, like a goose that has got ankle-deep into good luck. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... so. Then four sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered the little town with its business row facing the water front. One glance at the empty levees told you of the town's dead glory. Not a steamboat's stacks, blackening in the gloom, broke the peaceful glitter of the river under the stars. But ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... my sword. I, too, adore my native land—no one more than I! I, too, bow before the infinite judge and submit my case to His wise decision. O God, Thou who protecteth France, look down and behold him who rides yonder, his horse ankle-deep in the blood of his countrymen, who looks without pity on the dying legions and says, 'It is well!' Then, O God, look Thou upon this saint here, who prays for her persecutors, and pass judgment between the two: which of the two ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... pine-trees, interspersed with many others of different species, growing in great profusion, within three yards of the edge of the water, upon a soil of decomposed vegetable matter, which in many parts was so soft that we often suddenly sank ankle-deep, and occasionally up to the knees in it: this swampy nature of the soil is to be attributed to the crowded state of the trees; for they grow so close to each other as to prevent the rays of the sun from ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... again. Then I went, crying thrice like a jackal, to the appointed place which was near the byre of the headman's house. But my Love was already there, weeping. She feared that the flood had swept my hut at the Barhwi Ford. When I came softly through the ankle-deep water, She thought it was a ghost and would have fled, but I put my arms round Her, and—I was no ghost in those days, though I am an old ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... unseat its passengers and scatter its cargo. To the occupants it seemed as if its joints were opening, as if the boards themselves were being wrenched loose from the ribs to which they were nailed. The men were drenched, of course, for they traveled in a cloud of spume; their feet were ankle-deep in cold water, and every new deluge caused ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... with stirring incident. When the company reached Bradford, Pennsylvania, they found the town in the throes of oil excitement. Oil was on everybody's tongue and ankle-deep in some of the streets. A great multitude collected at the theater. After the first part of the show the gallery, which was full of people, creaked and settled a few inches, creating a near panic. While this ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton's prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris; But, as Cicero says he won't say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate'er he could possibly think of,— I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, 350 Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you'd have gritted, An 'twere not for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... her hand and sprang for another rock. But her feet slipped on the seaweed, and she splashed down into a pool ankle-deep. ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... human dwelling. The Germans had broken all locks and emptied the contents of all bureaus, closets, and desks upon the floor, the more easily to pick and choose what they wanted. The floors were covered ankle-deep in the resulting litter which was composed of everything from lace to daguerreotypes, from bric-a-brac to hosiery. The relics and treasures of past generations of the owner's family carpeted the house, until each room seemed in a worse state ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... farthest horizon; level ground is found nowhere; it is all up hill and down hill,—now rough, craggy pavements that blister the feet, and at the very first tread upon which all latent corns shook prophetically; now deep, muddy ruts, into which you sink ankle-deep, oozing slush creeping into the pores, and moistening the way for catarrh, rheum, cough, sore throat, bronchitis, and phthisis; black sewers and drains Acherontian, running before the thresholds, and so filling the homes behind with effluvia, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... round with a skin and passed out again, for I could not stay still. I went to and fro, till at length I reached the spot where my huts had been. The outer fence of the huts still stood; the fire had not caught it. I passed through the fence; there within were the ashes of the burnt huts—they lay ankle-deep. I walked in among the ashes; my feet struck upon things that were sharp. The moon was bright, and I looked; they were the blackened bones of my wives and children. I flung myself down in the ashes in bitterness of heart; I covered myself over ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... and what they saw in nowise relieved the tenseness of the situation. Two carabinieri and an inspector of seals, dusty but stern of countenance, came up the path. O'Mally, recollecting the vast prison at Naples, saw all sorts of dungeons, ankle-deep in sea-water, and iron bars, shackles and balls. Every one stood up and waited for this new development to unfold itself. La Signorina alone seemed indifferent to this official cortege. The inspector signed to ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... our variegated pelts cause us to resemble an unsuccessful compromise between Esau and an Eskimo, they keep our bodies warm. We wish we could say the same for our feet. On good days we stand ankle-deep; on bad, we are occasionally over the knees. Thrice blessed then are our Boots, Gum, Thigh, though even these cannot altogether ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... although I perceived the motion of the waves through the mist that hung over them, their color and every object along the shore was quite indistinct. The next morning was beautiful. Dall and I ran down to the beach before breakfast; there are no sands, unluckily, but we stood ankle-deep in the shingles, watching the ebbing tide and sniffing the sweet salt air for a long time with great satisfaction. After breakfast we rehearsed "The Provoked Husband," and from the theater proceeded to ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... broken out in the city; at the same time he stated that more than eight hundred cases of small-pox were reported in Merida, and that many of them were of the most virulent. Sunday we had walked through dust ankle-deep upon the roads; Tuesday and Wednesday it was with difficulty that we could cross the streets, which were filled with mud, and, part of the time, with muddy water a foot and more in depth. This is a frequent occurrence, and foot-passengers who desire ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... front verandah the scene was straight-cleared road, running right and left to Out-Back, and to Bourke (and ankle-deep in the red sand dust for perhaps a hundred miles); the rest blue-grey bush, dust, and the heat-wave ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... side dripping with the fog-drops and looking dirty and cheerless with the black streaks running from the corners of each window, like tears down the face of some chimney-sweep or coal-boy, till, reaching the foot of Ludlow Street, we stood ankle-deep in mud, waiting for the little steamer, which still ploughed its way through the dark, sullen-looking water thick with the red mud which the late rise had brought down, and with here and there heavy pieces of ice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... and leaving the Grand Trunk road a short distance from the rear of our camp, we made across country to a town named Nanglooi, distant six miles. The men were in high spirits notwithstanding the difficulties we had to encounter in traversing a route wellnigh impassable from the recent rains, and ankle-deep in mud. Two broad swamps also had to be crossed, the soldiers wading waist-high in the water, and carrying their ammunition-pouches on their heads. Three hours and more were passed before we arrived ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... geodetic work. The base line was to be measured south from near Kanab for about ten miles. Christmas day came with rain and small prospect of special enjoyment, and we all kept the shelter of the tent after hunting up the horses in mud ankle-deep. But our dinner was a royal feast, for Mrs. Thompson herself made a huge plum-pudding and Prof. supplied butter and milk from Kanab, making this feature of the holiday an immense success. In the evening a number of us rode up to the settlement ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... above him; but he did not know that it was the sound of the sea. At length he came to a place where the earth rose up in long ridges of yellow sand, on which nothing grew but scattered tufts of stiff, yellow grass. As he toiled over the loose sand, sometimes sinking ankle-deep in it, the curious deep murmuring sound he had heard for so long grew louder and louder, until it was like the sound of a mighty wind in a wood, but deeper and hoarser, rising and falling, and at intervals broken by great ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... shop the usual game of quaits" was in progress, and the drug clerk on the corner was chasing a crony with the squirt pump, with which he was about to wash the windows. A few teams stood ankle-deep in the mud, tied to the fantastically gnawed pine pillars of the wooden awnings. A man on a load of hay was "jawing" with the attendant of the platform scales, who stood below, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... hat-box on to her knee, and unlocked it, and came to a thick cloth, which she partly withdrew, and then there was a scream from Mrs Machin, and the hat-box rolled with a terrific crash to the tiled floor, and she was ankle-deep in sovereigns. She could see sovereigns running about all over the parlour. Gradually even the most active sovereigns decided to lie down and be quiet, and a great silence ensued. Denry's ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... is called for at every deal, and the "old" ones are then thrown upon the floor, and in such an immense quantity, that the writer of this letter has seen a very large room nearly ANKLE-DEEP, in the greatest part of it, by four o'clock in the morning! Judge, then, to what height they must ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... in his pockets and splashed cheerfully into the ankle-deep mud. Bob shouldered his little bag and followed. Somehow he had vaguely expected ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... gold, and those of Cleopatra and Antony were of gold set with jewels. The dishes also were all of gold set with jewels, the walls were hung with purple cloths sewn with gold, and on the floor, covered with a net of gold, fresh roses were strewn ankle-deep, that as the slaves trod them sent up their perfume. Once again I was bidden to stand, with Charmion and Iras and Merira, behind the couch of Cleopatra, and, like a slave, from time to time call out ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... no footing to brace himself. Already he was ankle-deep in the quicksand. It flashed across his mind that he could not fight his own way out without abandoning Charlton. For one panicky moment he was mad to get back to solid ground himself. The next he was tugging with all the strength of his arms ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... morning, but the farmyard was ankle-deep in water and slush, and the sky was leaden with lurid clouds in the east, when we started at 4.10 A.M. We pushed on slowly in column for the few miles to Serches, and there we halted at the cross-roads on the top of the plateau and parked the brigade ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... ought to have come to two days ago, had the water permitted you. In crossing the plain at the most advantageous place you are above ankle-deep in water for three hours; the remainder of the way is dry, the ground gently rising. As the lower parts of this spacious plain put on somewhat the appearance of a lake during the periodical rains, it is not improbable ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... the edge of the sand hill and down the slanting face. His coming was as silent as death, for his feet made no noise as he sank ankle-deep in the yielding surface. So, stealthily, step by step, he descended, reached the bag, lifted it silently. Levi, still bending over the chest and searching through the papers within, was not four feet away. Hiram raised the bag in his hands. He must have made ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... sheep-track, on the surrounding cliffs. As if they had caught fire from it, a score of torches broke into flame on the eastward rocks, and in the sudden blaze, under the detonating fire of musketry, the men of Troy could be seen tumbling out of their boats and splashing ankle-deep to the shore. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... against which the white stems of the graceful birch stand out in bold relief; while the bank of some stream, or the margin of a lake, is marked by fringing thickets of alder. In many parts are moist, swampy bogs, into which the sportsman sinks ankle-deep at every step. The ground, however, is everywhere thickly carpeted by a luxuriant growth of a species of lichen. It possesses wonderfully nutritive qualities; so much so, that large quantities of alcohol have lately been extracted from it, as well ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... almost microscopic notes which he kept fully and precisely every night by the camp-fire (even when I had to crouch over him and the precious paper with my water-proof focusing cloth) somehow bestowed about him. Up and down pathless cliffs, through tangled canons, fording icy streams and ankle-deep sands, we travailed; no blankets, overcoats, or other shelter; and the only commissary a few cakes of sweet chocolate, and a small sack of parched popcorn meal. Our "lodging was the cold ground." When we could ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre of the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... stand upright, often so low as to compel them to creep on all- fours in the black slime of the floors. Some with laden baskets on their backs climbed many times a day up steep ascents. Some stood ankle-deep in water from morning till night in the depths of the pit, wearing out their little lives ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... report as vice-president-at-large to the California campaign, as she had spent the greater part of the past year in that State. She closed by saying: "Our reception by the Californians was such as to make them forever dear to us. I wish you could have seen Miss Anthony for once walking ankle-deep in roses. It showed that the sentiment for suffrage had reached the point where its advocates not only were tolerated but honored. I used to like to see her sitting in a chair all adorned with flowers and with a laurel ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... what had once been human beings. But all this debris had long since been cleared away. Under the skilful hands of the Russians the rebuilt trenches had taken on a neat and orderly appearance. The earthen walls had been revetted with wire chicken-netting, and instead of tramping through ankle-deep mud, we had beneath our feet neat walks of corduroy. We tramped for what seemed interminable miles in the darkness, always zig-zagging. Now and then we would come upon little fires, discreetly screened, built at the entrances to dugouts burrowed from the trench-walls. Over these fires ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... she reached the end of the board-walk, and plunging ankle-deep into the sand, trudged slowly along as if pushed back by the wind. It whipped her skirts about her and blew the ends of her fringed scarf back over her shoulder. She made a bright flash of color against the desolate background. Scarf, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hundred families were homeless in the street. Half a dozen patrol wagons and five ambulances were taking the people away to shelter, women and babies first. It was an hour—an hour of standing in the street, with bare feet on the ice, under the ankle-deep slush—before old Tom and his wife got their turn to be taken. Then Susan and Etta and Ashbel, escorted by a policeman, set out for the station house. As they walked along, someone ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... with a mixture of emotions, tore through the garden and into the old orchard. Bees were busy, and countless bright-coloured butterflies flitted hither and thither, sipping from hundreds of trees, white or pink with bloom—their beauty was lost upon me. I stood ankle-deep in violets, where they had run wild under a gnarled old apple-tree, and gave way to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... which we were peering was about six feet wide at the bottom, coming together some twenty feet above our heads, having been apparently widened at the base by the action of the water, which, being here ankle-deep, rushed foaming over and around the many blocks of lava with which the channel was encumbered. As far as we could see, the fissure led straight away without a bend; and Joe was for trying to walk down it at once. I suggested, however, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... lighter than the night. He crossed the lake, his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half- hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more faintly than the last, until they ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... coming in. It was night. It had been raining for thirty-six hours, and as we stepped into the unlighted hut, my muchacho and I, right away the floor grew sticky and slimy with the mud on our feet, and as we groped about blindly, we seemed ankle-deep in something greasy and abominable like gore. After a while the boy got a torch outside, and as he flared it I caught sight of Miller on his cot, backed up into one corner. He was sitting upright, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... pace to warm my blood, which had taken a chill from the draught of the doorway. The snow by this time lay ankle-deep, and even deeper in the pitfalls with which the ill-lit streets abounded; but in twenty minutes I had reached the Via Balbi. The wind was rising; in spite of the snow driven against my face I had not noticed until I heard it humming in the alley which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... distance, presents a curious appearance, each house being fitted, as at Sonmiani, with a large "badgir," or wind-catcher. Like most Eastern cities, Beila does not improve on closer acquaintance. The people are dirty and indolent. There is little or no trade, and the dark, narrow streets, ankle-deep in mud and filth, are crowded with beggars and pariah dogs, while the dull drab colour of the mud houses is depressing in the extreme. The fort and palace alone are built of brick, and, being whitewashed, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... recruit in Kitchener's Army, went rapidly through the first courses of his training; sleeping under canvas; marching in sun and wind and rain; digging trenches, ankle-deep, waist high, breast high in earth, till his clear skin grew clearer, and his young, hard body ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... morning of the 7th the Brigade had been under weigh for an hour and we were tramping over the uneven ground which marked the site of the enemy's old front line, battered out of all shape by seven days' artillery bombardment. The sand was more than ankle-deep and the going heavy in the extreme. The day was hot and steel helmets were never the lightest of head-gear. Still the men marched admirably and by 17.00 the Battalion was at the Wadi Hesi, twelve miles north of Gaza, where ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... Upper and Lower Houses turned out en masse to see the first of the hockey series and stood ankle-deep in the new snow while Upper proceeded to administer a ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... though the weather was very dry, for oyster-shells, fish heads and bones, potato-skins, and cabbage-stalks littered the roads; but dirty was a word which does not give the faintest description of the almost impassable state in which I found them, when I waded through them ankle-deep in mud some ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... to the southeast, lies Tabiri, the "Grand Quivira." Huddled on the projecting slopes of the rounded ridges, access to it is a weary, dreary march. The nearest water is forty miles away. Toiling through sand ankle-deep, the traveler plods across the edge of the plains, through troughlike valleys, and up the wooded slope of the Mesa de los Jumanos. A mile to the south a whale-back ridge springs ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... first month of the year dragged itself slowly to an end, and the great city underwent all those pleasing alternations, from snow to mud, from the slipperiness of a city paved with plate-glass to the sloppiness of a metropolis ankle-deep in a rich brown compound of about the consistency and colour of mock-turtle soup, which are common to great cities at this season; and still John Saltram lingered on in the shabby solitude of his Temple chambers, slowly mending, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... stone wall; Sarah Adams, an erect, prim little figure, ankle-deep in dry grass, stood beside it, holding Thankful. Thankful was about ten inches long, made of the finest linen, with little rosy cheeks, and a fine little wig of flax. She wore a blue wool frock ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... there they sat, ankle-deep in cards. No attempt at breakfast now, no affectation of making a toilet or airing the room. The atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it well became such a Hell. There they sat, in total, in positive forgetfulness of everything but the hot game they ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... clothes had become worn by the brush and faded by the sun and rain. In the course of the morning he lay in wait very patiently near a spot overflowed by the river, where, the day before, he had noticed lily-pads growing. After a time a doe and a spotted fawn came and stood ankle-deep in the water, and ate of the lily-pads. Thorpe lurked motionless behind his screen of leaves; and as he had taken the precaution so to station himself that his hiding-place lay downwind, the beautiful animals were unaware of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... off her hat, and, heedless of the ribbon upon it, filled it with water again and again and drenched the swollen leg. It was so great a relief to him that he hardly noticed that she stood ankle-deep in the river to do it. She wore a little red tartan shawl upon her shoulders, and she dipped this also in the river, binding it round and round the ankle, and tying it ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... I shall remember belonging to Modder camp is the sight of the soldiers at early mass. You can picture to yourself a wide, flat dusty plain held in the bent arm of the river, with not a tree or bush on it; flat as a table, ankle-deep in grey dust, and with a glaring, blazing sun looking down on it. The dust is so hot and deep that it reminds one more of the ashes on the top of Vesuvius—you remember that night climb of ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... spirits rose. We straightened in our saddles, we breathed deep, we joked. The country was scorched and sterile; the wagon-trail, almost paralleling the mountains themselves on a long easy slant toward the high country, was ankle-deep in dust; the ravines were still dry of water. But it was not the Inferno, and that one fact sufficed. After a while we crossed high above a river which dashed white water against black rocks, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... enemy's front we tumbled into the trenches already in possession of Battalion B, and I found myself ankle-deep in mire, beside a unit of another regiment who was enjoying a cigarette and blowing rings of smoke into the air. Although no enemy was visible we got the order to fire, and I discharged three rounds ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... a wave of his hand to Leddy; he was going over the precipice's edge after thanking the danger sign. He did not hasten, nor did he loiter. The precipice resolved itself into an incident of a journey of the same order as an ankle-deep stream trickling ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... until they stood on the cross-beams behind and underneath it. The position was exceedingly awkward, for the ladder obliged them to stoop, and they did not dare to move their feet except with caution, for fear of slipping off the beams into the water—in which, even as it was, they were ankle-deep while standing on the beams. They were soon soaked to the skin by the drippings and spirtings from the pipes, and almost incapable of hearing each other speak, owing to the din. If Rooney had dropped the lead-soled boots or the shoulder-weights, they would have sunk at once beyond recovery, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those times. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... a passionate love of flowers, and, utterly heedless of all but the joy of seeing them, she ran down the slope, and only stopped when she found herself ankle-deep in the marsh below, in ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the sparks fly upward; it has its hardships and privations. There were days, as the wagons dragged their slow lengths along, when the clouds obscured the sky and the wind whistled dismally; days when torrents fell and swelled the streams that must be crossed, and when the mud lay ankle-deep; days when the cattle stampeded, and the round-up meant long, extra hours of heavy work; and, hardest but most needed work of all, the eternal vigil 'gainst an ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... had been through Oleron's study and had found nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the alley. The kitchen ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... hung in the balance. It seemed as though a straw either way would suffice to turn the scales. Dead silence reigned in the house in Thurloe Square: the street outside was ankle-deep in straw: doctors and nurses took possession of Nan's pretty rooms, where all her graceful devices and gentle handicrafts were set aside, and their places filled with a grim array of medicaments. The servants, who loved their mistress, went about with melancholy faces and muffled voices; ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... violence of the eruption is diminished," remarked the young merchant, who was in search of fun, as he prepared to wade ankle-deep in the loose pumice up the slopes of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there were peasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at the doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then there was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to the taper ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... day after day, from daybreak to dark, most of the time through spruce bogs where the water was sometimes ankle-deep, and at times up to our thighs. We were wet all the time, and our shoes began to rot ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... erect head, in the first canoe. His canoemen checked their swing, for the beach was close at hand, and then backed water. The bow scraped, and a dozen hands were outstretched in aid, but Governor Denonville stepped briskly out into the ankle-deep water and carried his own pack ashore. A cheer went up from the little line at the sally-port. Du Luth's voyageurs and coureur de bois caught it up, and then it swept far out over the water and was echoed ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July, and seen her trudging about the yard—that was ankle-deep in black liquid filth—with an old pair of Blucher boots on, and an old coat of her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag over her shoulders. I've seen her climbing on the roof by means of the water-cask at the corner, and trying to stop a leak by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And when ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... overhaul us, they drew the edges of their weapons along our flesh, making the blood spurt. We were, as you perhaps know, all manacled together, and at least half our slaves were killed by the enemy's shot. The floor of the vessel was ankle-deep in blood, and the corpses of the dead, still manacled to the living—for there was no time to separate us,—kept time with our strokes as we pulled, in a manner most horrible to look upon. The man next me had had his head ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the golden chain You wore about your neck, That day we waded ankle-deep For lilies ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Swiss and crowded with men of that nationality. When the door was opened, through the smoke-laden atmosphere, dense with the accents of the North, one had a vision of a vast, low room with hams hanging from the rafters, casks of beer standing in a row, the floor ankle-deep with sawdust, and on the counter great salad-bowls filled with potatoes as red as chestnuts, and baskets of pretzels fresh from the oven, their golden knots ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... hands, did not try to lead. It was sufficient if he could keep pace with the rest of the wood-choppers, which was, after all, a thing most men, reared as he had been, would certainly not have done. The lust of conflict was upon him that night, and, balancing himself ankle-deep in water on the trunk that heaved and dipped beneath him, he swung the trenchant steel. He felt that he was pitted against great primeval forces, and, with the gorged veins rising on his forehead and the perspiration ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... wide and a regular heat-trap in summer: in the autumn and the spring it is ankle-deep in mud, and of course in the winter it is buried in snow. But in the late summer it is at its best, one or two heavy showers of rain have laid the dust, and the sunflowers and dahlias round the little school-house and by the presbytery ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... brutes we killed I cannot say, but we did not leave off until our hands had become powerless from exhaustion, and our tomahawks were so blunted as to be rendered of no use. When we left the scene of massacre, we had to pass over a pool of blood ankle-deep, and such was the bowling of those who were not quite dead, that the deer and elk were in every direction struggling to rise and fly [see note 1]. We had been employed more than four hours in our work of destruction, when ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... nature. The live bush, the wounds of the woodman's axe concealed by heaps of vari-coloured mosses, bloomed and rustled under the limelight as I suppose it never bloomed and rustled elsewhere in the history of the theatre, and the stage was ankle-deep in withered leaves; the scent of the forest actually getting beyond the footlights for once in ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... swarmed into the dark alleyway of the inn. The guards drove back the rabble, and the door was closed and barred. The eager crowd remained outside, standing ankle-deep in slush, with their noses flattened against the panes. A profound silence settled upon the house. Having by this time got into my clothes, I opened the door part way to listen, and see if it would be possible to escape from my unpleasant ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... Sometimes they had glass in them, but were oftener stopped up with rags. Before the doors were heaps of manure and pools of stagnant water. There was no regular footway, but a mere beaten track in front of the cabins, and this, on wet days, was ankle-deep in mud. The women hung about the doors all day long, knitting the men's blue stockings, and did little else apparently. Both men and women were usually in a torpid state, the result, doubtless, of breathing a poisoned atmosphere, and of insufficient food. It took strong stimulants to rouse them: ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... standing ankle-deep in the soft, moist sand. Now the girl moved toward her pony, but Roddy still stood looking out to sea. He appeared to have entirely forgotten that Inez was present, and to be intently regarding the waves that surged against the ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... earnest. After a march in the hot sun, it was delightful to bathe in the deep stream of the Brahmaputra, and the mighty forms splashed and disported themselves, sometimes totally submerged, with the drivers standing ankle-deep upon their hidden backs, which gave them the appearance of walking upon the surface. A tip of the trunk was always above water, and occasionally the animal would protrude the entire head, but only ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... under them, and moist, favourable to rank grass and coarse mushrooms. Beneath the ashes, after the first frost, the air is full of the bitterness of their blackened leaves, which have all come down at once. By the beeches there is little underwood, and the hollows are filled ankle-deep with their leaves. From the pines comes a fragrant odour, and thus the character of each group dominates the surrounding ground. The shade is too much for many flowers, which prefer the nooks of hedgerows. If there is no scope ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... before, I once more paid a visit to the old town. I left my side-car on the outskirts of the place and was taken by Mr. Bean, the Australian War Correspondent, into his car. He was going up to take some photographs. The day was intensely hot, and the dust of the now ruined town was literally ankle-deep and so finely powdered that it splattered when one walked as though it had been water. I saw the ruins of the school-house which our ambulances had used, and noticed that the image of the Virgin had been knocked down ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... excursion was to be their last, and Miss Midland had suggested a return to Versailles to see the park in its spring glory. They lunched in a little inclosure, rosy with the pink and white magnolia blossoms, where the uncut grass was already ankle-deep and the rose-bushes almost hid the gray stone wall with the feathery abundance of their first pale green leaves. From a remark of the girl's that perhaps this was the very spot where Marie Antoinette had once gathered about her gay court of pseudo-milkmaids, they fell ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... glittering Pavilion that occupied the furthest end of the saloon, where on a massive throne of ivory and silver sat the chief object of attraction, ... Zephoranim the King. The steps of the royal dais were strewn ankle-deep with flowers, ... . on either hand a bronze lion lay couchant, ... . and four gigantic black statues of men supported the monarch's gold-fringed canopy, their uplifted arms being decked with innumerable rows of large ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the fields were, and the woods, but scarcely touched by the blight of autumn, were gray as usual from the limestone turnpike, which, when he crossed it, was ankle-deep in dust. A cloud of yellow butterflies fluttered crazily before him in a sunlight that was hardly less golden, and when he climbed the fence a rabbit leaped beneath him and darted into a patch of ironweeds. Instinctively he leaped after it, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... early in the cold morning, a little girl stood ankle-deep in the new-fallen snow in front of the grand house where Lily De Koven with ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hens have, of dusting themselves. They do not seem to care for bathing, like canary-birds; but in warm afternoons, when they have eaten their fill, they like to stroll into the highway, where the dust lies ankle-deep in heaps and ridges, and settle down and stir and burrow in it till it has penetrated through all their inmost feathers, and so filled them, that, when they arise and shake themselves, they stand in a cloud of dust. I do not like this habit in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... to take me aboard again," said the captain, when the wharf was reached; and the two men went slowly together into the town, along the streets of ankle-deep sand, towards the office of ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Watchapreague Inlet that had lodged me on this inhospitable marsh; so, trying to exercise my poor stock of patience, I completed my toilet, shaking in my wet shoes. The icy water, into which I stepped ankle-deep in order to launch my canoe, reminded me that this wintry morning was in fact the first day of December, and that stormy Hatteras, south of which was to be found a milder climate, was still ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... meet the salutary discipline when the country is beautiful in mid-April, and the road good and the sun pleasant. The Spring air sets the blood racing as you ride, and when you stop and stand for a moment to enjoy these things, ankle-deep in roadside grass, you can seem to hear the healthy pulses beating and see the wavy line of hills beating with them, as you look at the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... it to Maragon the next morning. The city was shrouded in a low layer of cloud, and his glassed-in penthouse office was gloomy with the morning. He motioned me to sit down. I dragged one of his Bank of England chairs through the ankle-deep pile of his rug and set it down next to ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... in the form of tents or of crude canvas and wooden houses. The few substantial buildings stood like rocks in a tossing sea. No attempt, of course, had been made as yet toward public improvements. The streets were ankle-deep in dust or neck-deep in mud. A great smoke of dust hung perpetually over the city, raised by the trade winds of the afternoon. Hundreds of ships lay at anchor in the harbor. They had been deserted by their crews, and, before they ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the one word with which to describe modern war. Mud everywhere! Mud ankle-deep upon the roads; mud into which you sank up to your knees the moment you stepped off it; tents and huts to which you waded through the mud, avoiding the slimy gangways on which you slipped and fell; mud-bespattered men, mud-bespattered horses, little donkeys, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome |
