"Cranky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am getting cranky and diffident. I am beginning to get nervous about people's opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a sad case for a man who never used to care a straw for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Tod was getting awfully eccentric, living this queer, out-of-the-way life with a cranky woman year after year; never reading anything, never seeing any one but tramps and animals and villagers. And yet, sitting there beside his eccentric brother on that fallen tree, he had an extraordinary sense of rest. It was, perhaps, but the beauty and sweetness of the day with its dappling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, he has no rest till he proclaims it, or in some way "works it off." "What shall I think ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... book-case which my father had recently purchased of some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size something like the old-fashioned "wardrobes" which one sees in bed-rooms without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's night-dress. It had glass doors. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... neglected are the streets of this once wealthy and important city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In the hot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the narrow High Street, it appears to awaken echoes in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... to-night, no matter what comes, make your mind up to that. And, win or lose, it's my last. Get that? But I've got a definite reason for it. You see I haven't been as idle as you think. I've been hunting around on the trail of Peter Blunt. Folks all think him a fool, and cranky some. I never did. He's been a gold prospector most of his life. And it's not likely he don't know. Well, I'm not giving you a long yarn, and to cut it short, I'm right on to a big find. At least ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... cranky an' foul, she was stubborn an' slow (Let 'er go—let 'er go), An' she shipped it green when it come on to blow; 'Er crews was starved an' their wage was low, An 'er bloomin' owners was ready to faint At a scrape ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... on her way, bounding over the low, gentle swell of the calm ocean. Tom shivered whenever he thought of the possibility of the motors becoming cranky. With such important human freight aboard any mishap to the machinery would be ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... up something or other on the side of a hill. She might be gathering flowers, but he could not see any. He stopped and watched her for a while and then went nearer. She did not take any notice of him, so he thought the poor thing had been lost in the bush, and had gone cranky. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... affair known as a "flat." It was long and narrow, with square ends and sides, and from its cranky motion evidently ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... want me to support you enny longer? I am your godfather and you are my godchild and it is a legal afare, dad sez, and if ennybody sez ennything about it they will have to deel with me, see? Ennyway mebbe I was kinder cranky about it, and you kinder fibbd, so lets say we had a scrap and shake on it and let it go at that. Lots of the fellers hear have scraps with the girls, and last weak Dinky Odell who is Carl Odells yungist brother had one with Heloise because he hollerd, ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... child," observed Pike, "you'll turn man hater if you keep on working your imagination. Luz tells me you are cranky against Kit, and that the ranches are tied up in business knots tighter than I had any notion of, so you had better unload the worst you can think of on me; that's what I'm here for. What difference do the Perez favorites make ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... business-like. The wives made pleasant homes and the husbands came and went at will. In their spare time the wives developed their personal interests and "lived their own lives," as critic number two advises. When the husbands took cranky streaks the wives simply made light of it to themselves, and forgot it as soon as possible. They lived on as comfortable terms as if the wives were simply first-class hired house-keepers; little crankisms were all in the bargain. Eventually every one ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... rude little fort and small garrison of Beluch soldiers, and a Wali, or governor. Starting the following morning, we put to sea again, and in three days—sailing against a strong southerly current, aggravated by a stiff north-easterly breeze, almost too much for our cranky little vessel, and which frightened the crew and our little timid Sheikh so much that they all lost presence of mind, and with the greatest difficulty were repressed from "'bouting ship," and wrecking themselves, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying the child a cranky Noah's Ark, very much down by the head, that he had gone in and asked the ladies' permission to treat him to a tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such a handsome boy might not grow up with a ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... despise—even to anti-Semitism.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} As a matter of fact, it was then high time to bid him farewell: but the proof of this came only too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact, though, a cranky and desperate decadent, suddenly fell helpless and broken on his knees before the Christian cross.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Was there no German at that time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... again have to pay the bill largely; and it would be very wise on your part to study him: Sancho Panza may escape a good many sad experiences by knowing his master's weaknesses. But as Nietzsche no longer belongs to the Quixotic class, as Germany seems to emerge with him from her youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of being thrashed in the company of your Master: no, you will be thrashed all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human being. ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their way to ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... asking yourself all this while just what a fat run is, here is your answer: Tips; a fine train filled with fine ladies and fine gentlemen, not all of them so cranky as X, of Cleveland—thank heaven for that!—though a good many of them have their peculiarities and are willing to pay generously for the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... his hair out at the roots & he wares meny a horrible scar upon his body, inflicted with mop-handles, broom-sticks, and sich. Occashunly they git mad & scald him with bilin hot water. When he got eny waze cranky thay'd shut him up in a dark closit, previsly whippin him arter the stile of muthers when thare orfsprings git onruly. Sumptimes when he went in swimmin thay'd go to the banks of the Lake & steal all his close, thereby ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... known which follow in the pathway of woman's ballot. No one can look upon the face of that venerated, noble woman, who has grown gray in her life-work, and not be impressed that there has been something more than sentiment, more than a cranky idea, impelling her in ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of setting up your cranky opinions against the hard facts? The plain truth is that everybody who ever heard of Stanhope is going to give you the cold shoulder for a dog; we can depend ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... as if considering the matter, "folk that are cranky, often take more to them as shows 'em love, than to them as is clever and gifted. Happen yo'd rather have this'n," opening a cage-door, and calling to a dull-coloured bird, sitting moped up in a corner, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky; that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan, although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland and was a prince with his money, but drank; and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... of flame-swept paper. Others pitched forward in the bottom of their crafts, while still others stood for a minute swaying from left to right like drunken men, to finally crash over the sides like fallen trees, taking their cranky crafts over with them in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... weeks later. It struck me, namely, that they might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things—one who, moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for certain labours—once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all that, was ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to New Orleans I so telegraphed General Grant, and he, thinking General Caravajal (then in Washington seeking aid for the Republic) would answer the purpose, persuaded him to report to me in New Orleans. Caravajal promptly appeared, but he did not impress me very favorably. He was old and cranky, yet, as he seemed anxious to do his best, I sent him over to Brownsville, with credentials, authorizing him to cross into Mexico, and followed him myself by the next boat. When I arrived in Brownsville, matters in Matamoras had already reached a crisis. General Mejia, feeling ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... I don't want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... ever went to, and it was taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, the sister of William Timberlake who shot all those stags' heads you've got hanging in your hall. Nobody ever knew why she taught school. Plenty to eat and drink. William gave her everything that she wanted, but she got cranky when she'd turned sixty, and insisted on being independent. Independent, she said! Pish! Tush. Never learned a word from her. Taught us English history, then Virginia history. As for the rest of America, she ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... canoe turns over it does not sink. Some experts can right a capsized canoe and clamber in over the side even while swimming in deep water. The seaworthiness of a canoe depends largely upon its lines. Some canoes are very cranky and others can stand a lot of careless usage without capsizing. One thing is true of all, that accidents occur far more often in getting in and out of a canoe than in the act of sailing it. It is always unsafe to stand in a canoe ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... play in that first scenario was "The Fault-Finder," but my cranky Conan broke from that narrowness. If the play has a moral it is given in the words of the Mother, "It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child." The ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... sad little heart lying as heavy as a plummet in her breast, was just as bright and useful and entertaining to her cranky old friend as if life was a boon instead of a bane to her. You know from her letter how bitter life was to her; and I think if you have ever known sorrow and a great disappointment, you will comprehend how it was possible ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... in a mortal fright, not knowing whether we might find a precipice at the bottom, and be shot over, perhaps into the sea. Very soon, too, we reached some steps, down which we went, of course faster than ever, with terrific bounds, till the cranky old vehicle could no longer stand ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other paddlers in the next largest; ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... legs, and with a deck-load of lumber she's cranky and topheavy. I'm warning you, Joey. Remember he is a poor ship owner who ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... entirely satisfied me as to weight and model. I bought the smallest birches I could find; procured a tiny Chippewa dugout from North Michigan and once owned a kayak. They were all too heavy and they were cranky to a degree. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... river, more or less, till ye git to Chartham, that's sitooated to the mouth. Well, these fellers has been in the habit o' gittin' together and goin' deown river and hirin' once in a spell, some sort of old, cranky craft and goin' skylarking reound to Eastport and Portland. Arter a while they'd cum back and smuggle in a cargo o' somethin' or 'nother from the States, and sheirk the dooties. Well, 'beout a week ago, there was a confounded ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... comicality of his vein could be restrained by good taste." Reynolds, the dramatist, relates that on one occasion he was sitting in the front row of the balcony-box at the Haymarket, during the performance of O'Keeffe's farce of "The Son-in-Law," Parsons being the Cranky and Edwin the Bowkitt of the night. In the scene of Cranky's refusal to bestow his daughter upon Bowkitt, on the ground of his being such an ugly fellow, Edwin coolly advanced to the foot-lights, and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... surprise of Isabel, who saw the red spark on the lawn. She thought her brother must be tired, and perhaps it really was the long day without food that made him so restless in mind and so uneasy. Bernard Clowes had been more than usually cranky that afternoon. Even the patient Val had had thoughts of throwing up his job when the cripple made him go through his week's accounts, scrutinizing every entry and cross-examining him on every transaction ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... folk-people who believe is doing right without telling everybody about it, in obliging you without pulling a face over it; and there are also individuals in the rank and file of worshippers who are very Pecksniffian and dismal, cranky, windy, authoritative, who would look sour if eating sugar, would call a "church meeting" if you wore a lively suit of clothes, and would tell you that they were entitled to more grace than anybody else, and had got more. The better washed and more respectably ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... said; "but I want to go home. I should have taken a fly at Wil'sbro'. Cranky will see to me without bothering anybody else. If you ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cranky!" said Master Putnam. "A pretty world the rascals would make of it, if the honest men were too good to fight. It seems to me there is something absolutely wicked ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... out of any new problem which presented itself. But soft-hearted as he was, he repented of his irritation a moment later and soothed the waiter's wounded feelings by a rich tip. The boy ran out to open the cab door for his strange customer and looked after him, wondering whether the man was a cranky millionaire or merely a poet. For Joseph Muller, by name and by reputation one of the best known men in Vienna, was by sight unknown to all except the few with whom he had to do on the police force. His appearance, in every way inconspicuous, and the fact that he never sought acquaintance with ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced around the needle beak there yawned the open muzzles of a ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... them and kiss them and have them throw their arms about me, before going to bed. I get the best nurse I can for them—the present one is a Swede, the last one, Irish—but they seem to be such stupid, cranky things! However, one thing I insist upon—they are not to slap the children, and are to let them have their own way, as far as possible. And I make it equally plain to the children that if they have any grievance, they needn't mind about their father—all they have to do is come to me, and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... toss of her head, "the on'y differ there is in it is that I am the same as ever I was, an' you have turned crabby an' cranky." ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... lord Martin, his eyes glistening with triumph, "with all submission, Corbulo I believe had been assassinated, before Arria so gloriously put an end to her existence." "Thou thing," cried Miss Cranky, "and hast thou escaped the torrent of my invective! Thou eternal blot to the list, in which are inserted the names of a Faulkland, a Shaftesbury, a Somers, and above all, that Leicester, who so bravely threw the lie in the face of his sovereign!" "He! he!" cried ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... all. There were a few who stood at his back, sich as the Bentons, an' me an' Empty. Nellie Strong, God bless her, an' Nan, her sister, didn't go agin 'em, but they were in a difficult persition with that cranky father ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... now," she said on this occasion. "She is more cranky than you think. She is, really, ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Good joke on Post. Big day. Pelican goes from here to York, stopping at Ungava on way out and comes back again. Brings supplies. Captain Gray came on shore. Has been with company thirty years, in northern waters fifty years. Jolly, cranky, old fellow. "You'll never get back" he says to us. "If you are at Ungava when I get there I'll bring you back." Calder, lumberman on Grand River and Sandwich Bay, here says we can't do it. Big Salmon ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... Rousseau a retreat in her little house, the Hermitage. There it was that he began the tale of La Nouvelle Heloise, which was finished at Marshal de Montmorency's, when the susceptible and cranky temper of the philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions of Grimm. The latter had but lately said to Madame d'Epinay "I see in Rousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him; you will ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... by the horror of the thing they had done, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun, took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a sudden stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they were in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, the trunk of the uprooted tree only five. Joel, still ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... chattering over a checker-board for the pleasure of the silvery, tinkling music of their voices. But woe is me for the voices, male and female, that you so often hear in New England,—the harsh, strident voices, the monotonous, cranky, yanky, filing, rasping voices, without modulation, all rise and no fall, a monotonous discord, no soul, no feeling, and no counterfeit of it, loud, positive, angular, and awful. Indeed, I do not see how we New-Englanders are ever to rid ourselves of the reproach of our voices. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the floor a minute and then was silent. He had been given only a mild shock, but it had been enough for his fluttery, cranky heart. ...
— Watchbird • Robert Sheckley
... that they seem almost strange to us. Nor do they express the characters. There is an expression, but it seems not the one to which we are accustomed. Mr. Pickwick is generally shown as a rather "cranky" and testy old gentleman in his expressions, whereas the note of all "Phiz's" faces is a good softness and unctuousness even. Now this somewhat philosophical analysis points to a principle in art illustration which accounts in a great measure ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... girl is making me as hysterical as a cranky old maid!" growled Mr. Walraven. "If she doesn't appear in half an hour, I'll go up to her room and carry ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... is running for Judge again: really, Laura, I hope he'll win. George says he will. George says Henry Fenn is the only trouble Mr. Van Dorn will have, though I don't see as Henry could do much. Though George says he will. George says Henry is cranky and mean about the Judge someway and George says Henry is drinking like a fish this spring and his legs is hollow, he holds so much; though he must have been joking for I have heard of hollow horn in cattle, but I never ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... made of finer stuff than that stolid sponge inside your pia mater, that can take in quantum sufficit of beer, fog, and tobacco-smoke, unharmed. He can't stand it, and he's too rare and delicate a machine to go cranky thus soon. You've got the child under your thumb,—bring him out o' that. Make him take a dose of Verulam, get him back into the world again, and order him four hours per diem ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with special ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Bert Lloyd could hardly fail to be a happy boy, and no one that knew him would ever have thought of him as being anything else. He had his dull times, of course. What boy with all his faculties has not? And he had his cranky spells, too. But neither the one nor the other lasted very long, and the sunshine soon not only broke through the clouds, but scattered them altogether. Happy are those natures not given to brooding over real or fancied troubles. Gloom ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... caverns, not taverns: a mummy in a tavern would frighten all the idlers and ragamuffins out of it. I don't know but what it would be a good plan, but you two dear little twisters and turners of the king's English would frighten that cranky old fellow, Dr. Johnson, into a long sickness, if he was only alive and could hear you. I love to hear you talk; it does me good. Don't go out of the room, but take that pack of cards I gave you to play with, and sit down on the floor ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... cranky!" sounded from all the furniture; there was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look at ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... Mother: I hope you are coming home soon. I really think you should. Aunt Lizzie is here and she brought two friends, and, mother, I feel so responsible for them! Aunt Lizzie is sane enough, if somewhat cranky; but Miss Tish is almost more than I can manage—I never know what she is going to do next—and I am worn out with chaperoning her. And Miss Aggie, although she is very sweet, is always smoking cubeb cigarettes for hay ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thy deceased grandfather used to call us double-lived; but the Lord only knew how much longer thou wouldst ramble about abroad. Well, but thou art a dashing fine fellow, a fine fellow; thou canst still lift ten puds in one hand as of yore, I suppose? Thy deceased father, excuse me, was cranky in some respects, but he did well when he hired a Swiss for thee; thou rememberest, how thou and he had fistfights; that's called gymnastics, isn't it?—But why have I been cackling thus? I have only been keeping Mr. Panshin" (she never called him Panshin, as she ought) "from arguing. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the gutter, to splash in the sink about the hydrant, and to dance to the hand-organ that came regularly into the block, even though they sadly missed the monkey that was its chief attraction till the aldermen banished it in a cranky fit. Dancing came naturally to them, too; certainly no one took the trouble to teach them. It was a pretty sight to see them stepping to the time on the broad flags at the mouth of the alley. Not rarely they had for an appreciative audience the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Too old and cranky or something like that?" teased Jane. Her hair was bursting from her cap like an over-ripe thistle, and her cheeks were velvety in a rich glow of early winter tints. She hardly looked too old even for skipping ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Mr. D'Eyncourt and Mr. Hawes, who makes soap yellow and mottled! And hasn't Sir Benjamin Hall, and the gallant Commodore Napier, Made such a cabal with Cabbell and Hamilton as would make any chap queer? Whilst Sankey, who was backed by a Cleave-r for Marrowbone looks cranky, Acos the electors, like lisping babbies, cried out "No Sankee?" Then South'ark has sent Alderman Humphrey and Mr. B. Wood, Who has promised, that if ever a member of parliament did his duty—he would! Then for the Tower Hamlets, Robinson, Hutchinson, and Thompson, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... a good enough kind of a fellow if you know how to take him," was the reply. "He's a bit cranky if he's had a glass too much, but that don't ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... who really caused the trouble. He spent a good deal of time in the spring-house trying to fool his stomach by keeping it filled up all the time with water. He had got past the cranky stage, being too weak for it; his face was folded up in wrinkles like an accordion and his double chin was so flabby you could have tucked ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that section in the Legislature. It was entirely characteristic of him to vote against the adoption of the Federal Constitution, on the ground that it authorized other people to tax Carolinians; which he said was taxation without' representation. That was just like a narrow, cranky, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... you call them (and you are very rude to a lot of good, nice women, Edna), are not necessarily cross and cranky; the unmarried women I know are all busy, cheerful creatures, full of life and energy, and very useful in their generation. Father says he always enjoys a talk with an unmarried lady; so many of them keep their freshness and youth, even ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... over the welfare of distinguished visitors, American and foreign. They had seen the help come and go; she was still the "girl of the parlor floor." Discreet, silent, honest, they might well allow her a share of caprice. "Cranky" they called her, yet no one found fault. She neglected no duty. The lady manager of the interior was not always the same. She changed from time to time; Treesa was always the same, and always there. At length there came a dainty little woman, full of native pluck, ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... me, and the place in which we stood was lighted up—feebly, but enough to show me a cell-like sort of room, stone-walled, of course, and destitute of everything in the furnishing way but a bit of a cranky old table and a couple of three-legged stools on either side of it. With the released hand he had snapped the catch of an electric pocket-lamp, and in its blue glare he drew the revolver away from my head, and stepping aside, but always covering me with his weapon, motioned me to the further ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... as to how a nice, large, juicy steak would go about now. This is no place for jokes, yet his jokes are cheering and make us all feel more light-hearted. He is the "life of the funeral" and by his cheerfulness has kept our spirits from sinking to a dead level, and when the Esquimos commenced to get cranky, by his diplomacy he brought them to think of other subjects than going ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... Yanks! Knowed we didn't see dat ghos' fer nothin' las' night!" Wagon masters shouted, guards and sentries looked townward with anxious eyes. The aide got a flag from the quartermaster's tent; found moreover a very few artillery reserves and an old cranky howitzer. With all of these he returned to the head of the main street, and about the moment the cavalry at the bridge divided, succeeded in getting his forces admirably placed in a strong defensive position: Coffin and Billy Maydew joined just as an outpost brought a statement ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Grey to be a jolly, cranky old seadog of the old school. He has been with the Hudson's Bay Company for thirty years, and has sailed the northern seas for fifty. He shook his head pessimistically when he heard about our expedition. "You'll ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... variety of bright-coloured shirts and caps, flashing up and down a double paddle, the ends of which were painted in gay colours, or emblazoned with the owner's crest. But Mr. Verdant Green, with a due regard for his own preservation from drowning, was content with looking at these cranky canoes, as they flitted, like gaudy dragon-flies, over ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... float at Coombs's landing, looking at a sailboat that lay at its berth alongside. It was not exactly a handsome craft; with too great length for its beam, and its lines drawn out so fine astern that it bade fair to be somewhat cranky. It had no cabin, and there was seating room for a large party—a design calculated ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... "I haven't enough trouble trying to keep a cranky man like her pa in good humour, without being plagued by Julia Elizabeth"—she paused, for there was a knock at the door.—"If," said she to the door, "you are a woman with ferns in a pot I don't want you, and I don't want Dublin Bay herrings, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... four cork-trees, a cranky canoe, the landing-place of a bush-road, a banana-plantation, and a dwarf clearing, where sat a family boiling down palm-nuts for oil, proved that here and there the lowland did not lack lowlanders. The people stared at us without surprise, although this was only the ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... of his cranky moods, fretful at circumstances, and at her father who kept him there on the shore, and had no word of another ship to take the place of the Jean. Of late he had been worse than usual, for he had ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... impotent &c 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic^, asthenic^; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate^, womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he fingered the horrible ridged cicatrice, he could see the boundless ocean and the boundless blue sky from a wretched cranky canoe-shaped boat, in which certain Arab, Somali, Negro, and other gentlemen were proceeding all the way from near Berbera to near Aden with large trustfulness in Allah and with certain less creditable ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... sir—thanking you kindly; it ain't many suvrings as comes my way—though I hate the sight on it, I do. I'd like to stave a hole in the bottom of that there cranky concern; it ain't safe, and that's the fact. There'll be another accent out of it one of these fine days and no coming to next time. But, Lord bless you, it's her way of pleasuring herself. She's a queer un is Miss Beatrice, and she gets queerer and queerer, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... conveniently to hand. The wind freshened perceptibly while I was thus engaged, veering into the southeast, so that all the cloth I dare spread was the jib and a closely reefed mainsail. The boat acted a bit cranky, but, confident she would stand up under this canvas, I crawled back to the tiller, eased off the sheet a trifle more, and waited results. We shipped a bucket full of water, and then settled into a good pace, a cream of surge along our port gunwale, and a white wake astern. The woman kept on bailing ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of the boards as the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... things. He wants me to give up buying him the fur-trimmed overcoat and get a coat and shoes for Goodman's children, as they were praying so hard for them, but I have enough to do without clothing other people's children. If Goodman would quit his cranky notions and use his talents for people who could understand him, instead of preaching to those ragamuffins he might now be receiving a magnificent salary and ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... raft, I was not long in discovering it to be a very cranky thing, so that I had to keep my hold of the rope in order to maintain my balance. But in a short time I was able to defeat the raft's attempts to turn turtle, and then, kneeling on it, still gripping the rope, I looked anxiously for signs that the attention of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... mid-summer he can take me right into the interior, in that cranky red car. And I don't know but what I am ready to risk it; there are places I'd like to see—where he was caught his first winter in a blizzard, and where he picked up the nuggets for my necklace. You remember it—don't you?—Mrs. Daniels. I wore it that night ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... here just yet. The person I should wish for is not easy to find. I myself know a great deal more than you do, and I have my own ideas with regard to instruction. I may as well tell you at once that I am a very severe teacher, and somewhat cranky, too. A girl who does not know her lessons is apt to find herself seated at my left side. Now, my right side is sunshiny and pleasant; but my left side faces due northeast. I think that will explain everything to you. We will meet in the schoolroom to-morrow ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... do," said Moriarty to me—"better hang your socks on Nosey Alf's crook to-night. His place is fifteen mile from here, and very little out of your way. Ill-natured, cranky beggar, Alf is—been on the pea—but there's no end of grass in his paddock. And I say—get him to give you a tune or two on his fiddle. Something splendid I believe. He's always getting music by ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... at her desk when he came out, and something about her appearance caused the old warrior to look twice. He was exactly on time, but the judge could wait. He was a cranky old scoundrel anyhow, was Judge Halloran, and it would do him good to cool his heels for a few minutes. Tom paused with his hand upon ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... bulb grower; that's why he won't make the profit he might; he comes of generations of growers, and they venerate their bulbs. He has cranky notions of how things ought to be done, and no other way will ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... to know what things look like, old Pam, so I'll try and tell you. In the first place, it's just a glorious spring day. At the back of the cranky bit of a ruined farm where we have our diggings (by the way, you may always go back at night and find half your bedroom shot away—that happened to me the other night—there was a tunic of mine still hanging on the door, and when you opened the door, nothing but a hole ten feet deep full ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cross and cranky, Nelly. At any rate I've no business to be here this minute. I started for Annapolis, but my wits got wool-gathering, I reckon, and I let Shashai turn in here without noticing where he was going. Aunt Katherine will reach Annapolis before I do and—then—" and Peggy stopped and wagged her head ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... wild hunting expedition. This first excursion was not to be a very formidable one; it was only a canoe trip several miles up the coast, to a place where the wild ducks and geese were numerous. Like all white people, on their first introduction to the birch canoe, they thought it a frail, cranky boat, and were quite disgusted with it, and some of the tricks it played upon them, on some of their first attempts to manage it. For example, Frank, who prided himself on his ability in pulling an oar, and in managing ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... wo'th a cent," he whined, as they took their places in the cranky pirogue; "but I might jes' happen to kill a squir'l or ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... with compassion. How little romance there was in a Japanese girl's life! O'Kami San, so young and pretty and charming, too, was about to enter into years of drudgery perhaps; the wife of a cranky old man, and here she was accepting her fate as calmly as a novitiate about to take the vows for life ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... to do to that—man," cried Betty, trying to think of something bad enough to call the cranky farmer, who still urged his team along squarely in the middle of the road and refused to give an inch. "Only I'd like to scare him to death. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... a strand of gray hair will be invited. As for the lame, the halt and the blind, they can come next week. I've just been looking you over, Peter; you are getting old and wrinkled and pretty soon you'll be as cranky as the rest of them, and there will be no living with you. The Major, who is half your age"—I had come early, as was my custom, to pay my respects to the dear woman—"is no better. You are both of you getting into a ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... but if it wasn't for their goin's on, trying to snatch a kiss now and then, life would seem awful tame for us poor, patient women. And even the worst of 'em's better'n none at all. Look at me! I had the luck to get a cross-grained, cranky one, as you know. Poor Seth!" She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. "But you got to admit, Sadie, that even he was white enough to up and die before I got too old for other gentlemen to take ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... motor over, first of all. Perhaps it's a small matter, and I can fix it up. Sometimes these new machines act a bit cranky. Want of oil will even bring about trouble. Jerry, you take a look with me. Two heads are often better than ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... and Hella and Verbenowitsch because we shan't see Frau Doktor M. any more for nearly 3 months. I only had 2 in History and Natural History, but 1 in everything else. Franke says: Anyone who is not in Professor Igel-Nigl's good books can find out that he's cranky and stupid and he could never get a one. Father is quite pleased. Of course Dora has got only ones and Hella has three twos. Lizzi, I think, has 3 or 4. Father has given each of us a 2 crown piece, we can blow it, he says and Mother has given ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... satisfaction, the prescribed toll of unexacting labour, a little sensual pleasure, a little rational conversation, a cool argument, a judicious appreciation of all that the intellect can apprehend. Into this existence burst suddenly a cranky fanatic, with a religion. To the Greek it seemed that the breath of life had blown through the grave, imperial streets. Yet nothing in Rome was changed, save one immortal, or mortal, soul. The same waking eyes opened on the same objects; yet all was changed; all was charged with meaning. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... without slipping away for good; and finally, the foot-warmers are miserable wrecks, hingeless, charred, broken away about the holes. It would be impossible to give an idea of the old, rotten, shaky, cranky, worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of the furniture without an exhaustive description, which would delay the progress of the story to an extent that impatient people would not pardon. The red tiles of the ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... here already, sir," returned the ferryman, rising. "Most of my boats have gone into winter quarters, your Honor. The Mayflower went into dry dock last week to be calked up; the Pinta and the Santa Maria are slow and cranky; the Monitor and the Merrimac I haven't really had time to patch up; and the Valkyrie is two months overdue. I cannot make up my mind whether she is lost or kept back by excursion steamers. Hence I really don't know ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... you he wouldn't do any harm," the man repeated in irritated tones; "he will be with me most of the time, and not around the house. You're getting too cranky for living, Lettice." He set the dog upon his feet. "What I'll call him I don't know; he's as gritty as—why, yes, I do, I'll call him General Jackson. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the salt scent of the sea mingling with the pungent fragrance of the yellow gorse, hot with the sun ... surely the Cornish coast was a very favoured spot, and the Scilly Isles, to which passage could be taken in a queer, cranky boat, were indeed the Fortunate Isles, cradled by the bluest, most magical, most romantic waters ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and be just as I was before I married. There are some of my clothes still hanging up in my old room, I shall put them on, and grub in the garden, rake, weed, and mow. Our poor machine was dreadfully cranky before I left; I should think it has fallen to pieces by now, but I mean to have a try. Mother's bit of front lawn is the pride of her heart. Black Bess will meet me at the station, and Rover—dear affectionate dog. I shall swing on the gate and ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... very nearly so—and all that is left to the luckless wanderer in search of the beautiful, is to ogle the beauties of Dame-street, who are shopkeepers in Grafton-street, or the beauties of Grafton-street, who are shopkeepers in Dame-street. But, confound it, how cranky I am getting—I must be tremendously hungry. True, it's past six. So now for my suit of sable, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... of a gregarious temperament, and missed his fellow-lodger. The cranky little man, with all his soured outlook, must still have had some power of evoking sympathy, some attractive element in his composition. He concealed it under sharp words and moody bitterness, but it must still have been there, for Westray felt his loss more than he had thought possible. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... always distinguish the back of Marie-Joseph from the others. To-day she brought me a present of milk and potatoes, and we sat down to chat over a cup of coffee—nay, four cups of coffee, for Marie-Joseph has no cranky ideas about abstinence from food and drink, and I must, perforce, pretend I have none. I love her and her ways, though she always manages to disturb me when I wish to work or think. Writing and thinking are not work to Marie-Joseph. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... "It makes me cranky," observed Whitney, "to see the way a lot of the girls seem to notice just such fellows as Prescott, Darrin, Reade, Dalzell—-fellows who, by rights, ought to be through with their schooling and earning wages as respectful grocery clerks or ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... There was a cranky Governor— His name it wasn't Waterman. For office he was hotter than The love of any lover, nor Was Boruck's threat of aiding him Effective in dissuading him— This pig-headed, big-headed, singularly ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me the broad waters of Helena Sound. The fresh salt breeze from the ocean struck upon my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my efforts to get within a region of higher land, and to a ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... in dreamland?" she demanded. "When you're just irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What's she going to ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... bitterness in the tone with which he gave this advice; he threw out his hands impatiently, and then flung himself back, so that the cranky chair creaked and tottered. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... picture-collecting; the railroad wrecker gathers rare editions of the Bible; and tens of thousands of humbler Americans carry their inherited idealism into the necessarily sordid experiences of life in an imperfectly organized country, suppress it for fear of being thought "cranky" or "soft," and then, in their imagination and all that feeds their imagination, give it vent. You may watch the process any evening at the "movies" or the melodrama, on the trolley-car or in the easy chair ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing- gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the whole content of the Captain's summons ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage along the gutter into Bows and Costigan's window, and I sent Jack Alias along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for it had grown very cranky; and then, after a parley, let in Mons. Morgan ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... excellent for wear in wet boats. When, in order to change my uncomfortable position, I placed both legs on one side, the edge of the prahu nearly touched the water and the Dayaks would cry out in warning. I have not on other rivers in Borneo met with prahus quite as cranky as these. At the Bugis settlement I bought fifty delicious pineapples at a very moderate price ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... he's so awfully important just because he's making a fool of himself. Most boys attract more attention the first time they kick over the traces than they ever did in all their lives before. 'Tisn't any wonder to me that the elder brother gets a little cranky when he sees the fuss made over the prodigal, first because he's gone wrong and then because he's going right, same as decent folks have been doing all ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... that no man may thoroughly understand a ship—after all. I will say that new ships are cranky and unsteady; that old and seasoned ships have their little crochets, their little fussinesses that their skippers must learn and humour if they are to get anything out of them; that even the best ships ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... which (man and tackle included) we were to pay two dollars per diem. It was a canoe of the smallest, built to hold one person besides the man at the small oars. It was impossible to stand up in such a cranky craft, and your seat was about 6 in. from the bottom boards. No wonder all the fishing was done by hand-lines. The local method was simplicity itself. To fifty yards of line of the thickness of sash-cord was attached a large Colorado spoon, armed with one big triangle, and mounted ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... knowed what his poor, cranky system needed, an' I knowed how to get it into him, especially as he'd never tasted meat in all his life. From that time on, he never saw no meat on our table, nor no chickens, nor sea scavengers, nor ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... limited enough, either way," Mr. Valentin retorted easily. He had no hankering for the East and no grudge against fate for making him a Western man malgre lui. "I've known kickers who didn't appear to grow much, except to grow cranky," he said. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... standing around to bear, and then he ran for the train, which had just come in. Soon he and his brothers were on board and off, leaving poor Ricks to be heartily laughed at by those who had observed his sudden terror. It was many a day before the cranky station master heard the last ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... making arrangements for the transport of our safari, when it should arrive, we entrusted ourselves to a small boy and a cranky boat. An hour later, clad in tropical white, with cool drinks at our elbows, we sat in easy-chairs on the veranda ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... deal better than that—and so do we, too!—you're only cranky! a little cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit without either rhyme or reason—as when you tried to persuade me that it is the safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of a canister into a pound flask, with a lighted cigar between your teeth; to demonstrate which ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... know she'd give it up if she knew I wanted it! She's an unselfish little thing. She took it because it was all that was left when Laura disposed of the 'soulful poet' part," Ivy said. Then after a silence, "I wonder why bad health makes me cranky and selfish and envious, instead of patient and meek, like the little ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... few words as to Tom the hunter? Was ever a keener, a more patient, a more self-possessed, and consequently a more successful, sportsman? He it was who, from a cranky punt (no white man would venture out to sea in such a craft,) at three o'clock one windy afternoon, harpooned an immense bull-turtle, which towed him towards the Barrier Reef, into the track of the big steamers ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... States. Our Anglo-Saxon element think normally; and the vast majority of our German citizens have always been on the sensible and morally right side of national questions—there's nothing long-haired or cranky about them. I like the Germans because they don't hanker after the unknown. I believe that most reading Americans—that is to say three-fourths of all—feel toward England as Irving and Hawthorne did.—But, from your description, that must be ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... started his first day with a superior manner of knowing all about leather and the ways of cranky customers. He ended it with a depressed feeling that he knew nothing about anything, that he couldn't keep up the holiday pace of the younger clerks—and that the assistant buyer of the department had been watching him. He walked home with strained, weary shoulders, but as he turned ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... course I know next to nothing of it myself. Ann says it's that makes it so dangerous for women folks to worry at their brains too much, for she's taken notice, she says, that mostly they're sickly or cranky that works too much that way. Hard to get on with, she says they are, the best ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... "the faithful Mike, who has been in charge here ever since Mr. Butterwood took to travelling about for the good of his rheumatisms? Why, my dear young lady, the whole country looks upon Mike as a pattern man-of-all-work. He may be getting a little cranky and independent in his notions, for he has been pretty much his own master for years, but I am sure you could find no one to take his place who would be more ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... motherless baby over here; and he said: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' Those were his very words: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety bachelor notions flew out of my head. I knew then, in a flash, that all my knowledge and all my queer ideas of life were just humbug! I had missed the Child in the House. Yes,"—his voice dropped ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... the gang lived in apartment buildings with back yards only designed for clothes-drying apparatus, and that the other half lived in houses built upon so cramped an acreage that the yards were no fun to play in. But grown-ups were in the habit of committing such oversights—especially the skinny, cranky ones. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... vehemently championed was away on detached service, and Canker really did not know just what to do, and was too proud and sensitive to seek advice. He was a gallant soldier in the field, but a man of singularly unfortunate disposition,—crabbed, cranky, and suspicious; and thus it resulted that he, too, joined the little band of Ray haters, despite the fact that he felt ashamed of himself for ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... crank, and Jakie's a waxed angel," she surrendered with a little grimace. "You think so now, but that's because you are being led astray by your appetites, like all men. You just wait: You'll be homesick for a sight of that fat, bald-headed, cranky old Patsy bouncing along on the mess-wagon and swearing in Dutch at his horses, before you're through. If you're not so completely gone over to Jakie that you will eat nothing but what he has cooked, come on up to the house. The Countess is making a twogallon freezer of ice-cream for ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... will be a handsome bridegroom. Is anybody but you going to stand up with him? Well, then it will be a handsome wedding party." She made a droll face at Emil, who flushed. "Frank," Marie continued, flicking her horse, "is cranky at me because I loaned his saddle to Jan Smirka, and I'm terribly afraid he won't take me to the dance in the evening. Maybe the supper will tempt him. All Angelique's folks are baking for it, and all Amedee's ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... I began removing every tree, bush, vine, and plant of medicinal value from the woods around to my land; I set and sowed acres in ginseng, knowing I must nurse, tend, and cultivate seven years. If my neighbours had understood what I was attempting, what do you think they would have said? Cranky and lazy would have become adjectives too mild. Lunatic would have expressed it better. That's close the general opinion, anyway. Because I will not fell my trees, and the woods hide the work I do, it is generally ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... hobbies, and was a well-read man and superior to those around him; and perhaps this was the cause of his holding himself aloof from most of the villagers. They termed him "cranky and cracked," but his goods were always acceptable, and he was thoroughly successful in his business. When his shop was closed he would go out on the hills, and there spend his time studying geology and botany. He knew the name of every plant and insect, and the strata of the ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... platform below. It was in this oak that we decided to build our house. It was a very inaccessible spot, and to reach it we had to make a wide detour around the back of the hill, and through the fields of a cranky farmer, who more than once threatened to fill us with bird shot for trespassing on his property. How were we to carry all our building materials up to this great height? One would think that the difficulties would be enough ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... in her face, which touched Pitt again curiously. Somehow, the contrast between his own strong, varied, rich, and active life, with its abundance of resources and enjoyments, careless and satisfied,—and this little girl alone at home with her cranky father, and no variety or change or outlook or help, struck him painfully. It would hardly have struck most young men; but Pitt, with all his rollicking waywardness and self-pleasing, had a fine fibre in him which could feel things. Then Esther's nature, he knew, was one rich in possibilities; ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the trials of the young soul going through it, a suffering so great that suicide is often seriously contemplated as the only solution. And all this turmoil is kept within the heart of the sufferer. To the outsider the boy, the girl, is merely "cranky" or "contrary." If not constantly nagged at and reproved for his awkwardness at home, he is sure to have it ridiculed by his schoolmates, particularly by those of the opposite sex. He cannot help being ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... were all ashore and looking around, before Bandy-legs managed to jump out of his cranky cedar canoe. He acted as though glad at least to have arrived safe and sound, ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie |
