"Fretful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with loving word, Be each tone kindly spoken, For sometimes is the holy cord By angry jarring broken. Then curb thy temper in its rage, And fretful be thou never; For broken once, a fearful ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... round and gem-like body, and the rings, concentric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like swift revolving motion, renders it almost invisible. Caterpillars, too, in great plenty—miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the earth-measurer, has drunk himself green with chlorophyll so as to escape detection. Vain precaution! since eccentric motion betrays him to keen avian ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... from Heaven across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth Spins like a fretful midge. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... fractious nerves to that degree that I was of half a mind to go and wake him. Since Penelope had left for London, two days before, he and I had been staying with Jack at the Manor. And very silent the great place had seemed without her; Jack had been more fretful than usual, and more than once I had thrown down my cards in a huff, for cards, after all, were a very sorry substitute for our lovely, laughing Pen. Hereupon I must needs fall to thinking of her mother (as indeed I oft do of late)—dead now these twenty years and ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... he says. That's where we're sthrong, Hinnissy. We may get licked on th' battle field, we may be climbin' threes in th' Ph'lippeens with arrows stickin' in us like quills, as Hogan says, into th' fretful porcupine or we may be doin' a mile in five minyits flat down th' pike that leads to Cape Town pursued be th' less fleet but more ignorant Boers peltin' us with guns full iv goold an' bibles, but in th' pages ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... for a long while regarding the bright vacant courts of Heaven. "And what will you do now?" says Jurgen, aloud. "Oh, fretful little Jurgen, you that have complained because you had not your desire, you are omnipotent over Earth and all the affairs of men. What now is your desire?" And sitting thus terribly enthroned, the heart of Jurgen was as lead within him, and he felt old and very tired. "For I do ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... a comely fold of wood on the mountain side, beckons and allures his imagination day after day, and is yet as inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds. The sense of distance grows upon him wonderfully; and after some feverish efforts and the fretful uneasiness of the first few days, he falls contentedly in with the restrictions of his weakness. His narrow round becomes pleasant and familiar to him as the cell to a contented prisoner. Just as ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Viscount Melville. See post, under Nov. 29, 1777. Boswell wrote to Temple on May 22, 1775:—'Harry Dundas is going to be made King's Advocate—Lord Advocate at thirty-three! I cannot help being angry and somewhat fretful at this; he has, to be sure, strong parts, but he is a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog.' Letters of Boswell, p. 195. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the rankest of all Scotchmen, and odious for that bloody speech that had fixed on him the nick-name ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... himself silently in the arm-chair beside the bed, and kept his soothing hold on her shoulder. The time had come when he went through all these accustomed acts of pacification as mechanically as a nurse soothing a fretful child. And once he had thought her weeping eloquent! He looked about him at the spacious room, with its heavy hangings of damask and the thick velvet carpet which stifled his steps. Everywhere were the graceful tokens of her presence—the vast lace-draped toilet-table strewn ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... have someone to confide in right soon, he got me worked up to fever pitch. Now I've had to cool down. There isn't going to be any development. Our hair won't have to stand tip on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. In so many words, Colon, it's all off, ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... pressing it affectionately. She eagerly swallowed the medicines prescribed, as they were sweet; and one day, while a draught of manna was being prepared, which she thought too long delayed, she showed every sign of impatience, and threw herself from side to side like a fretful child; at last, throwing off the covering, she seized her physician by the coat with so much obstinacy that he was compelled to yield. The instant she obtained possession of the eagerly coveted cup she manifested ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... talking business with somebody, and all of a sudden the front half of the largest East Indian elephant in the world shoves three or four thousand pounds of herself in at that side door and begins waving her trunk around in the air, meanwhile uttering fretful, complaining sounds. I've lost two or three customers that way,' he says. 'They get right up and go away sudden,' he says, 'and they don't never come back no more, not even for their hats and umbrellas. They send ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... time the man sat smoking. Occasionally he turned his head to watch with keen eyes the fretful movements of a fly hovering above the water. Then a sudden dimple in the smooth surface of the stream arrested his attention. A few concentric ripples widened, travelled towards him, and were absorbed in the current. His lips curved ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... out in sudden, fretful admiration: "What a fellow you are, Dawes! What are you—I mean, what ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... demeanour; and no fawning flattery of the elder could thaw away the wall of ice which the younger interposed between them. But with her son, the old lady had better success: he would listen to all she had to say, provided she could soothe his fretful temper, and refrain from irritating him by her own asperities; and I have reason to believe that she considerably strengthened his prejudice against me. She would tell him that I shamefully neglected the children, and even his wife did not attend to them as she ought; and that he must look after ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... in the habit of associating with nervous, irritable people, quit it until you grow strong in the power of concentration, because irritable, angry, fretful, dogmatic and disagreeable people will weaken what powers of ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... resting against the dash, by the side of the young conductor, and evidently his intimate friend. The man wears a broad-brim white hat. Among the jam inside, near the door, a young Englishwoman, of the working class, with two children, has had trouble all the way with the youngest, a strong, fat, fretful, bright babe of fourteen or fifteen months, who bids fair to worry the mother completely out, besides becoming a howling nuisance to everybody. As the car tugs around Capitol Hill the young one is more demoniac than ever, and the flushed ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... more life's fretful noise, Heed not here pale Envy's sting, Far from life's distempered joys; To the waters murmuring, To the shadows of the sky, To the moon that rides on high, To the glimpses of the night, We perform our airy rite, While care and pain, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... studiously avoided. He is not an easy patient to deal with; he doesn't like people to go near him. I think, therefore, it will be well if even you do not see him. He seems to have an odd distrust of people, especially of women. It may be that he is fretful in his blindness, which is in itself so trying to a strong man. But besides, the treatment is not calculated to have a very buoyant effect. It is apt to make a man fretful to lie in the dark, and know that he has to do so for indefinite ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... He was a frail, fretful little creature, with a very red face just fading into yellow, about as much golden down on his little pate as would furnish a moth with plumage, and eyes like sloe-berries. It was fortunate rather than otherwise that he was so ailing for some weeks ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Limousine turned in under the wrought bronze portico of one of the palatial houses of upper Fifth Avenue. As the car stopped, the face of a woman of about forty appeared at its window. Her expression was one of fretful annoyance, as though the footman who had sprung off the box and hurried up the steps to ring the front doorbell had, in his haste, stumbled purposely. The look she gave him, as he held the door open for her to alight, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... all this unnecessary rabble is helping to make everything horriblement cher. The price of things makes one's hair stand on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. I can assure you that le moindre petit diner coute les yeux de la tete. Poor Bobbie Lacklands had a tragic experience yesterday. He said he quite unthinkingly dropped into that most recherche ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... with its legs in apparently inextricable intimacy; sharp elbows digging into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house desk; chin some six inches above the pages of a huge leather-covered ledger, hair rumpled and fretful, mouth doleful, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... what 't is," whined Brida,—"anything 'bout a kitty. Oh, don't I wisht I had me own darlin' Popover right here in me arms!—Why don't yer begin?" urged the fretful voice, for Polly sat gazing ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... The apprehensive and fretful may show, in varying degree, signs of either or all these conditions, according as ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... out of town a week yet," she said. "We're not half settled. Not having any one to help makes it harder; and the baby is rather fretful." ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... always is fretful, Unhappy, and cross, No matter what she may be doing, And cry-baby Belle Pleases nobody well ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... keep those children in a little better order," said the fretful voice. "And get me a drink of cold ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... patience, gives a sudden jerk, and brings drawer and contents into the middle of the floor. His hostility to this unlucky piece of furniture increases every day, as if incensed that it does not grow better. He is like the fretful invalid who cursed his bed, that the longer he lay the harder it grew. The only benefit he has derived from the quarrel is that it has furnished him with a crusty joke, which he utters on all occasions. He swears that a French commode is the most ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... sacred books of the East, there is practically no reference to the kind of worry that is the bane and curse of our Occidental world. In conversation with the learned men of the Orient I find this same delightful fact. Indeed they have no word in their languages to express our idea of fretful worry. Worry is a purely Western product, the outgrowth of our materialism, our eager striving after place and position, power and wealth, our determination to be housed, clothed, and jeweled as well as our neighbors, and a little better if possible; in fact, it comes from our failure to know ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... little like that, also. He continued to cuss in a fretful, objectless way, even after Rabbit had stopped and waited for him with apology written in the very droop of his ears. When he had remounted, and the horse had settled again to his straight-backed, shuffling fox-trot, Starr would frequently think of something else to say upon the subject of fool horses ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud. We seldom called him "master;" we generally called him "Captain Auld," and were hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt not that our conduct had much to do with making him appear awkward, and of consequence fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly. He wished to have us call him master, but lacked the firmness necessary to command us to do so. His wife used to insist upon our calling him so, but to no purpose. In ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... up thy soul;[101] freeze thy young blood; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end,[102] Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:[103] But this eternal blazon[104] must not be To ears of flesh and blood.—List, list, O, list!— If thou didst ever thy ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... in his bearing he could not have shown much of it, though at his deeply sun-burned temples the thick, close-cut hair was silvery; for Austin said with amused and at the same time fretful emphasis: "How the devil you keep the youth" in your face and figure I don't understand! I'm only forty-five—that's scarcely eight years older than you are! And look at my waistcoat! And look at my hair—I mean where the confounded ebb ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... alteration, if any, he do find in himself, and so may be usefull. On this occasion, Dr. Whistler told a pretty story related by Muffet, a good author, of Dr. Caius, that built Keys College; that, being very old, and living only at that time upon woman's milk, he, while he fed upon the milk of an angry, fretful woman, was so himself; and then, being advised to take it of a good-natured, patient woman, he did become so, beyond the common temper of his age. Thus much nutriment, they observed, might do. Their discourse was very fine; and if I should be put out ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bearing was thereupon bestowed in the boot, I followed my cousin into the car, and a few minutes later we were at the mouth of the Adour. Here we left Ping beside Pong, and proceeded to join three figures on the horizon, apparently absorbed in the temper of a fretful sea. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... nodding earnestly. "But she was so fretful, she was always ailing; and it's better they should go when they get like that. But now we're soon going to get married again—when Father Lasse's ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sport. These they are, and usually they are nothing more. The player does not bleed to death in consequence; he simply goes on with the game. Military men, of course, understand this, but nations are too apt to be fretful as though some strange thing had happened ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... heaven, and there admitted among the blessed to enjoy an especial portion of happiness according to their faith. To this the angels replied, that such are indeed received into heaven; but when they are made sensible of the sphere of conjugial love there, they become sad and fretful, and then, some of their own accord, some by asking leave, and some from being commanded, depart and are dismissed, and when they are out of that heaven, a way is opened for them to their consociates, who had been in a similar state of life in the world; and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Infant School may be regarded in the light of a combination of the school and nursery, the art of pleasing, forms a prominent part in the system; and as little children are very apt to be fretful, it becomes expedient to divert as well as teach there. If children of two years old and under are not diverted, they will naturally cry for their mothers: and to have ten or twelve children crying in the school, it is very obvious ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... of the herd were now in a state of pitiable dejection, and pressed closely together as if under a sense of common misfortune. For the most part they stood at rest in a compact body, fretful and uneasy. At intervals one more impatient than the rest would move out a few steps to reconnoitre; the others would follow at first slowly, then at a quicker pace, and at last the whole herd would rush off furiously to renew the often-baffled ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... grey day seemed a long one to those who, for various reasons, were waiting anxiously for the darkness; the court people fretful and on their mettle, the townsfolk suspicious, [151] Duke Carl full of amorous longing. At her distant cottage beyond the hills, Gretchen kept herself ready for the trial. It was expected that certain great ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... which they had been accustomed, edicts of silence were more ineffectual than ever, and yawns became painfully frequent. Every one's temper fell into an uncomfortable state of annoyance and irritation; Miss Morley, instead of her usual quiet, piteous way of reproving, was fretful; Caroline was sharp; Clara sometimes rude like the boys, sometimes cross with them; even Marian was now and then tormented into a loss of temper, when there was no obtaining the quiet which she, more than the others, needed in order to learn ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... served, to be admired. Middle age is the time to reverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather than to receive. Marion had not learned that elementary lesson of life. We all recognise them at sight, the nervous, fretful faces of the middle-aged men and women who want to be loved. And love knows them, too, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... usual thing the first clothes are made too small. The sleeves are too short as well as too small around. There is nothing more uncomfortable than a tight sleeve. Everyone of our readers knows that, and we recall one poor little fellow who kept up a fretful cry until we took the scissors and cut the tightly stretched sleeve up to and including the arm hole. He then relaxed and went to sleep. Sleeves should be made two inches longer than they are needed at first, and it ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... wind is moaning In a lonely, fretful mood, Through the lofty spreading branches Of the elm and cottonwood. Where the willows hide the fordway With their fringe of lighter green, Is the dam, decayed and broken, Where the beavers once have been. On the ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... her character stands out in noble contrast to his. She does adopt the boy, and brings him to live with her in spite of all; and when St. John is unnaturally peevish at its childish squalling, Isola bears his fretful animadversions with a patient dignity that touches the hearts of all ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... possessed those qualities of leadership that bind party and friends by ties of unflinching services, he might have reaped the reward his ambition so ardently craved; but his peculiar temper unfitted him for such a career. Jealous, fretful, sensitive, and suspicious, he was as restless as his eloquence was dazzling, and, although generous to the poor, his political methods savoured of selfishness, making enemies, divorcing friends, and darkening his ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... slave herself to death for those she loved; but she was old for work, and the 'ache,' as she called it, had got into her bones. She had slept on the floor for two nights, and her poor old back was tired, and her head muddled with the confusion and her mistress's fretful fussiness. Biddy could have worked well if any one had told her exactly what to do, but between one order and another—between Mr. Cyril's impatience and Miss Mollie's incapable, youthful zeal—she was just 'moithered,' as ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... new house before going to the Hornbys' for the rest of the day. John ceased to be fretful, and by the time for leaving had arrived, Elizabeth had forgotten that he had ever been so. That evening Aunt Susan was told of the engagement, and having divined its arrival, she was able to hide any misgivings she had about it. Besides, not having anything upon ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... fair and bewitching, which lit up the student's face with its reflection, while the other, dark and lowering from its deep and gloomy appearance, shed a cloud of despondency and sadness upon the thoughtful brow, leaving thereon an expression that was fretful and annoying. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... small, and were clad in buff-coloured silk stockings, and little womanish bronze-leather slippers. Two rings adorned his white delicate hands, the value of which even my inexperienced observation detected to be all but priceless. Upon the whole, he had a frail, languidly-fretful, over-refined look—something singularly and unpleasantly delicate in its association with a man, and, at the same time, something which could by no possibility have looked natural and appropriate if it ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... on working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the State begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking, he's a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go live somewheres ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... however, watched the service door at the end of the long hall with fretful eyes. "That piece," she confided to Harkness, the moment not being so important as to still her grumbling, "said she wouldn't come in. And when I told her she could just choose t'wixt this and the door she said she wouldn't dress up, anyways. Impertinent chit! Thinks ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... therefore, that it is a recommendation, rendering their milk fitter for younger children than it would otherwise have been. It produces, however, quite a contrary effect; it much impairs the milk, which will be found to disagree with the child, rendering it at first fretful,—after a time being vomited up, and productive of frequent watery dark ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... He had repeated these words over and over again, and somehow under the heat of his ardor and longing for his native land this hackneyed phrase took on its real and dreadful value. In the sudden sweep of this vital remembrance, Claire Robson rose for a moment above the fretful drip of circumstance.... Blood-red Dawn!... She threw herself back upon ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... become the resentful and fretful appeal of the victim of plot and circumstance. All the savage brutality had been eliminated; the sneer, the truculent attempts to browbeat, the pitiful swagger, the cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... pledging himself to Mercy, he became thoughtful and rather fretful; for he was still most averse to go to Hernshaw, and yet could hit upon no other way; since to employ an agent would be to let out that he had committed bigamy, and so risk his own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... business of yours! I wish you would let me alone!' broke out Dolores, in a fretful fright lest any one should guess that she had anything on ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yawned, and smiled, and almost as if lit with that thin last sunshine seemed the smile that passed for an instant across the reverie of his shadowy face. He drew a hand wearily over his eyes. 'What has he been saying now?' he inquired like a fretful child. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... being petted by every one. Mamma and papa had tried all sorts of things to amuse and do her good; for she was their only little daughter, and they loved her very dearly. But nothing pleased her long; and she lounged about, pale and fretful, till Aunt Laura came. Daisy called her "Wee" when she was a baby, and couldn't talk plainly; and she still used the name because it suited the cheery little aunt ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... In languid dejection or fretful repinings did the unhappy beauty therefore consume the tedious hours, while her husband sought alternately to soothe with fondness he no longer felt, or flatter with hopes which he knew to be groundless. To his father alone could he now ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... laziness! No wonder old Sampson won't keep you longer than the holidays if you're no smarter than that. Goodness, if I don't settle that boy!"—as the sound of fretful crying came ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now. Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been polished to the last syllable more than a week ago—these things had sapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... supervision. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to talk about. She has nothing to do but to lie in a steamer chair and to think of home. Most women break down under it very quickly; they lose appetite and flesh and grow fretful or melancholy. But to a woman who loves her home and is employed, provincial life here is a boon. Remember that for an expenditure of forty or fifty dollars a month the single woman can maintain an establishment ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... and it was with all his heart; a fair riddance! for there was no bearing the house with such an ill-natured wife:—her sister Polly was worth a thousand of her!—I am heartily sorry for their unhappiness. But could she think every body must bear with her, and her fretful ways?—They'll jangle on, I reckon, till they are better used to one another; and when he sees she can't help it, why he'll bear with her, as husbands generally do with ill-tempered wives; he'll try to make himself happy abroad, and leave her to quarrel with ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the closed pianoforte, and her music on the top—the songs he loved best; she had actually left Mendelssohn there to be seen—a very bait to awaken his passion. She thought she actually saw the fretful impatience with which he threw the music aside and walked to the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... I be sure?" I asked fretfully, for grief as often makes men fretful as illness. "I did not ask ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... sick-room swiftly and noiselessly, put the nun through a strict cross-examination with the fretful sharpness of a person disturbed in her night's rest. Then she went into the sitting-room where Philippus was on the point of pledging Paula in his second cup of wine, while she stood before him with dishevelled hair and robe ungirt. All this was an offence against ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... own; over anxious of the good opinion of others; bent upon getting the credit of industry, honesty, and prudence? all these are temptations of this world. Are we discontented with our lot, or are we over attached to it, and fretful and desponding when God recalls the good He has given? ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... miladi of her tryst and beg her to come out and see the star, but when she found her not only indifferent, but fretful, she refrained and was glad presently that she had this delicious secret to herself. But there was a great mystery. Sometimes the star was different. Instead of being golden, it was a pale blue, and then almost red. Was it that way ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... was fretful. It had even a touch of indignation as though the speaker charged her husband with the draughts. Mrs. Hooper was a woman between forty and fifty, small and plain, except for a pair of rather fine eyes, which, in her youth, while her cheeks were still pink, and the obstinate lines of her ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no returning sound of ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... an-angered, the blood rushed back to her heart, and she was whiter than a lamb at the shearing, and her lips like white threads. Then would the light shoot and spin in her eyes, and her nostrils suck in and out, like those of a fretful horse. And she was fierce after the manner of a man rather than of a maid. Moreo'er, she was full a year younger than the Lady Patience; but she looked it not; rather did her ladyship look full two years younger than Mistress Marian. And I loved them both, and tried as a Christian ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... in a letter-of-credit that my father earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... on the sons of Lir when they heard that, for they thought it the same as to be living people again, to be talking with their friends and their companions on Loch Dairbhreach, in comparison with going on the cold, fretful sea of the ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... insists on her suckling it herself. You ask my advice on this matter; and, to give it you frankly, I really think that Mr ——'s demand is unreasonable, as his wife's constitution is tender, and her temper fretful. A true philosopher would consider these circumstances; but a pedant is always throwing his system in your face, and applies it equally to all things, times and places, just like a taylor who would make a coat out of his own head, without any regard to ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... her with the manner of a fretful child. And presently, as she talked, the cloud lifted from his gray, haggard face, and he grew calm. Soon, when she made some smiling remark, he even smiled back at her with the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... out the sentence; in itself the fragment, sharply uttered, peevish and fretful, conveyed more than enough. "You wouldn't let him have what he wanted; so what's the use of making it any worse? He swallowed his disappointment; but if you're getting ready to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... withdrawing his eyes from the space above my head. "And why do we stay in it when there are such glorious paradises to go to? Hawaii now. If you really want divine laziness—sun and warmth and the absence of all fretful ambition—you should go to the South Seas. You can't get it anywhere else. I remember when I was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... Jones, in a fretful tone, when the children displayed their wealth before him, "I can get enough when I am over the mountains, if I have missed ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... will blab—it's the nature o' the beast—that stupid little much-divorced animal that married him—" he glared at two innocent young shoppers who were passing, "Gad, women are such sophisticated cows nowadays—" Spring always made him wretched, spring always made him fretful, spring always sent him off for the woods somewhere, any woods so long as it was woods. He pondered over whether he could get away Friday or would have to wait till Saturday morning, and eventually decided on Saturday, consulting a memorandum book scowlingly as he did so, jotting ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... opened her eyes wide and wider, looking round the room no longer in fear, but in a sort of wonder. Her gaze rested an instant on my face, she drew her arm from round my neck and rose to her feet, pushing away my arm. There she stood for a moment with a strange, fretful, ashamed look on her face. She tossed her head, flinging her hair back behind her shoulders. I had taken her hand and still held it; now ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... in a scallop effect on either side, and upon reaching the crest he fights with it and wrestles with it until he makes it stand erect in a feather-edged design. I can tell by his expression that he is pleased with this arrangement. He loves to send his victims forth into the world tufted like the fretful cockatoo. He likes to see surging waves of hair dash high on a stern and rockbound head. His sense of the artistic demands such ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... by fretful women, sweating under his burden, he was happy; he could not account for it and did not attempt to, but he knew it. He ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... not sure of sorrow; And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... you,—that from the Drachenfels and its six brother felsen, eastward, trending to the north, there runs and spreads a straggling company of gnarled and mysterious craglets, jutting and scowling above glens fringed by coppice, and fretful or musical with stream; the crags, in pious ages, mostly castled, for distantly or fancifully Christian purposes;—the glens, resonant of woodmen, or burrowed at the sides by miners, and invisibly tenanted farther, underground, by ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the situations very good: it amused me very well, and was exceedingly well acted. Glengall came to me afterwards to get criticisms on his play. I told him some of the faults, and he was not in the Sir Fretful line, but took it all very thankfully. At Roehampton on Sunday; Byng, Sir Robert Wilson, Sharpe,[16] and Luttrell. There is a joke of Luttrell's about Sharpe. He was a wholesale hatter formerly; having a dingy complexion, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, The knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porcupine." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... had cultivated so assiduously and achieved so successfully. Not a muscle of her face changed when she saw Jerrie, but she closed Maude's door quickly, and stepping into the hall, offered the tips of her fingers, as she said, in a fretful, rather than ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... so great and so merry that the little Brownlee girl, having tucked her fretful mother up in bed, stole out to the garden fence and watched the doings with all a child's wistful eyes. David Allan, who happened to drift out that way, found her there and they visited over the fence. It took David quite a while to tell her ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... whose black eyes fixed themselves on her mother in a momentary contentment; but, at the first movement, she began again her fretful ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... night, Miss Mattie was partially awake and inclined to be fretful. "The strength is gone out of my medicine," she grumbled, "and it ain't time to take more. I've got to set here and be deprived of my sleep until ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... the fretful comment of the adventurer. "I have too much at stake to be drowned like a rat in a trap! You must send me up first if it becomes ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... seemed a spell upon the Lewis family. Mrs. Lewis didn't say one cross or fretful word; indeed, she had no cause, for in Kitty's heart there was a strange, new feeling of love for her mother, of longing to please and give her comfort; and never was mother waited on with a more quiet care than ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... "A night of fretful passion may consume All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom; And one distempered hour of sordid fear Prints on thy brow the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... present day need of knowledge concerning a certain contagion of emotions. Strong feeling sometimes vibrates that which is hostile and selfish. One fretful, scolding woman can upset a neighborhood, to ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... been led out for her was a wiry, dapple-gray mare of impatient blood. I knew the correct thing to do, and while I feared that I could not perform the service successfully, I determined to try. So as she walked towards the fretful mare which a negro was with difficulty restraining, I stepped forward, doffed my hat, and with "Permit me, Miss Salome," I bent, and hollowed my hand for the reception of her foot. With the naturalness and grace of a queen she placed the sole upon my palm, and I lifted her to the spring ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... animal—the fruit of their labor would without doubt have been pronounced satisfactory; yet only in a visual sense could he have been called animal. So far as concerned temperament he was merely a fretful peri locked up in a cage of flowers—for how in the name of all creation had it been possible for Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie, sole proprietresses of this male machine, to make him ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of baffled hatred. Yes, ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... looked on all his associates as wretches of depraved taste and narrow notions. Their conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their behaviour brutal, their merriment bluntly sarcastick, and their seriousness gloomy and suspicious. They were totally ignorant of all that passes, or has lately passed, in the world; unable to discuss any question of religious, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... fretful contortion, and obeyed. So it went on all the morning, Ethel's eagerness checked by Miss Winter's dry manner, producing pettishness, till Ethel, in a state between self-reproach and a sense of injustice, went up to prepare for dinner, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was in a perpetual ferment, and no comforting spirit spoke quietness to his soul—no stout heart strengthened his—no lively intelligence animated his own to worthy doings. He was very cross and fretful, and knew himself to be so that particular evening—worried and in want of rest. What a chance, if perhaps he found Nettie, whose very provocations were somehow more interesting than other people's most agreeable and tranquillising ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... declared Flossie, who seemed bound to start a dispute. Perhaps she was so tired that she was fretful. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... taken on board the war-ship Bellerophon. Louis XVIII. was brought back to Paris. Napoleon, by the agreement of the allies, was conveyed to the island of St. Helena, where he remained, a fretful captive, until his death (May 5, 1821). Ney escaped, but was captured, condemned, and shot (Dec. 7, 1815). France engaged to pay a war indemnity of seven hundred million francs. Its boundaries ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... for weeks past had seen from a distance, though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to have any strong feeling on the subject as they trotted through the grove of palm-trees. Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was still fretful from the ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... busy all the morning with Barkins and Smith, going from one to the other, to sit with them and give them what news I could, both looking rather glum when I went away, for they were feverish and fretful from their wounds. But I promised to return soon with news of the men, who were all together in a cool, well-ventilated part of the 'tween-decks, seeming restful and patient, the doctor having been ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... do any more to-day," cried Bracy. "I can't bear it. You only make me fretful because I can't be ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... he was right to go. I could understand his doing that. He is not like us, and would have been fretful here, wanting that which I could not give him. He became worse from day to day, and was silent and morose. I am glad he went. But, mamma, for his sake I wish that this ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope
... properly and logically ordered, is neat, compact, clearly defined, and covers the whole ground. I desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome for the uses of this fretful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... father went: in the interval between the ceremony of our marriage and his departure, she had remained at home, occupying her old place by her father, and bed by her sister's side: he as kind as ever, but the women almost speechless among themselves; Aunt Lambert, for once, unkind and fretful in her temper; and little Hetty feverish and strange, and saying, "I wish we were gone. I wish we were gone." Though admitted to the house, and forgiven, I slunk away during those last days, and only saw my wife for ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... substitute for a heart because his son could not or would not play the superfine gentleman—on the paternal model, and then came the news of his death, when only thirty-six. What was a still greater shock to the lordly father, now deaf, gouty, fretful, and at outs with the world, his informant reported that she had been secretly married for several years to Young Hopeful, and was left penniless with two boys. Lord Chesterfield was above all things a practical philosopher, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... could do these things because he was a rare colt, stronger than ever colt before was at his age, and for a time the mare suffered his antics with a look of pleased toleration. But as he kept it up, and as she was getting her first real sustenance since the day of his coming, she at length became fretful and sounded a low warning. But this the colt did not heed. Instead he wheeled suddenly and plunged directly toward her, bunting her sharply. Nor did the single bunt satisfy him. Again and again he attacked her, plunging in and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... preacher," she said, with a flickering smile about her fretful lips; and she rose, brushing some lifeless strands of hair behind her ears, and pulling down her sleeves, which were rolled above ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... any danger?" asked little Liza in a fretful tone. She was standing with head averted from the bowl which was in her mother's hands, with ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... him saluted as the favorite of the emperor and the idol of the crowd, and thence had believed unbounded happiness must be his never-varying lot, would have been astonished to know how many things there were which rankled painfully in his heart, and, for the moment, made him discontented and fretful. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her marriage—that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two would meet, and she knew how it would be—an outward semblance, a superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time, though she was more devoted than ever to her sick sister, she was soft and bright to nobody else. She did not complain, but she thought that things had been very hard with her; and when people repine their troubles do not make them kinder, but the brave grow stern and the soft grow fretful. ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man in the world.' Cold as he was, and wretched as he declared himself to be, he was not wholly unsusceptible of attachments. He revered the memory of Hoyle, as he was himself an admirable and imperturbable whist-player, and he chuckled with delight at a fretful and impatient adversary. He adored King Herod for his massacre of the innocents; and if he hated one thing more than another, it was a child. However, he could hardly be said to hate anything in particular, because he disliked everything in general; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... take her too! I won't run any risks at all with her! It would be simply wicked to take such a small child into danger." But there was a fretful desperation in the tone, as of one long accustomed to ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The Hastings fishermen, for example, often say boco for plenty, and frap to strike; while in the Rye neighbourhood, where the Huguenots were strongest, such words as dishabil meaning untidy, undressed, and peter grievous (from petit-grief) meaning fretful, are still used. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave lord Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... our inability to keep up with the speed of the main party, but I pointed out that we could not expect to do the same as fresh men—the other eight had only put on the sledge harness for the first time on December 10: Scott agreed, but seemed worried and fretful. However that may be, we got into the lunch camp first of the three sledges, to have our short-lived triumph turned to disaster by a very poor show after the meal—Scott was much disappointed and ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... in, I think without much judgement, or the judgement I expected from him, and already they have evaded the necessity of bringing people into the Exchequer with their bills to be paid there. Sir G. Carteret is titched—[fretful, tetchy]—at this, yet resolves with me to make the best use we can of this Act for the King, but all our care, we think, will not render it as it should be. He did again here alone discourse with me about my Lord, and is ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of peace and of prayer," Dalaber had once said to Freda, describing the lodging to her. "You seem to feel it and to breathe it in the very air. However worn and anxious, fretful or irate, you are when you enter, a hush of peace descends upon your spirit, like the soft fluttering of the wings of a dove. Your burden falls away; you know not how. You go forth refreshed and strengthened in the inner man. Your ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... much everything costs. They are not able, therefore, to pay cheerfully for any future good. If it is not given to them at once they feel that they have a grievance. For friendly cooeperation they are not prepared. They must have their own way or they will not play the game. Their fretful complaints are like those of the children in the old-time market-places: "We have piped unto you and you have not danced, we have mourned unto you and you have ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... about seven miles from where we started, we found ourselves checked by precipitous rocks jutting into the stream, and were obliged once more to make preparations for crossing it. Instead of a deep and quiet reach, however, the Morumbidgee here expanded into a fretful rapid; but it was sufficiently shallow to admit of our taking the drays over, without the trouble of unloading them. There was still, however, some labour required in cutting down the banks, and the men were fully occupied until after ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... his face anxious, his voice fretful. "There can be no retreat for me, gentlemen. Though many that we depended upon are not here to join us, yet let us remember that Heaven is on our side, and that we are come to fight in the sacred cause of religion and a nation's ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini |
