"Girlish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imploring, the girl drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" she pleaded; then, as she saw the futility of words, with the old girlish motion her face dropped into her hands. "Oh, I knew it would mean this if I saw you!" she wailed. "You see for yourself we cannot be ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... a touch of hesitancy, the first sign of anything girlish which Max had seen in this strange creature, made her stop and turn her head away. And, the effort of speaking over, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... intellectual expression. Few persons perhaps would have recognized in her the fair and faulty girl whom we have depicted weeping bitterly over the fate of Sir Philip Hastings' elder brother, and over the terrible situation in which he left her. Her features had much changed: the girlish expression—the fresh bloom of youth was gone. The light graceful figure was lost; but the mind had changed as greatly as the person, though, like it, the heart yet retained some traces of the original. When first she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... but in truth Minnie Parable was five-and-thirty and far ways from being girlish in mind or body. Old for her age and one of they flat, dreary-minded females with a voice like the wind in a winter hedge, eyes without no more light in 'em than a rabbit's, and a moping, down-daunted manner that made the women shrug their shoulders and the ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... her baby in his arms would have refused it a resting-place. This belief tinged all his after-life and moulded his policy with regard to his girl's upbringing. If she was to be indeed his son as well as his daughter, she must from the first be accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways. This, in that she was an only child, was not a difficult matter to accomplish. Had she had brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would soon have found ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... breast of it, I am going to tell you something which will make you despise me more than you ever despised me yet. When I married you I did so from impulse. Don't mistake me. I liked you better than any other woman I had ever seen. I liked your pretty face, and your gentle, girlish ways. I knew that you were good, and would make an excellent wife. But I well knew that I had no such feeling towards you as a man should have towards the woman whom he intends to make the companion of his life—no such feeling, for instance, as I have for you at ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... the strong feelings that were glowing in the bosoms of both, had been so completely suppressed. But the smile, cold and embarrassed as it was, that each gave as she curtsied, had the sweet character of her childhood in it, and recalled to both the girlish and affectionate intercourse of their ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... these Martians were certainly beautiful as the daytime. Never had I seen such a perfect embodiment of grace and elegance as that boy as he stood there for a moment poised to the throw; the afternoon sunshine warm and strong on his bunched brown hair, a girlish flush of shyness on his handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would think better of it at the last moment! No! the initiate held his ground with tight-shut lips and retrospective ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... truly love you, Vjera," he answered. "Believe that all that there is to give you, I give, and that my all is not a little. I love you, child, in a way—ah, well, you have your girlish dreams of love, and it is right that you should have them and it would be very wrong to destroy them. But they shall not be destroyed by me, and surely not by any other man, while I live. I shall grow young again, I ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... again receiving it, she inquired with a girlish curiosity, "Is her name Edith, Mr. Colleton, of whom these features are ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... then," he added, as he saw the anxious look in his mother's face, and guessed that she shrank from having her own snowy pillow come in contact with the wet, limp figure he was depositing upon the lounge. It was a slight, girlish form, and the long brown hair, loosened from its confinement, fell in rich profusion over the pillow which 'Lina brought half reluctantly, eying askance the insensible object before her, and daintily holding back her dress lest it should ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... end Mark fixed upon a boy of his own age, one of the many sons of a Papuan missionary called Pomeroy who was glad to have found in Mr. Lidderdale a cheap and evangelical schoolmaster. Cyril Pomeroy was a blushful, girlish youth, clever at the routine of school work, but in other ways so much undeveloped as to give an impression of stupidity. The notion of pointing out to him the beauty and utility of the Catholic religion ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... small shadow crept into his face. Yet the shadow, small as it was, could not have been because of any flaw in his wife's appearance. Mrs. Willoughby was still young and fair to look upon, clear-eyed and almost girlish, her rounded, regular features set off picturesquely by her hat and its flowing purple plumes, even though both hat and plumes were extravagant in size. Willoughby must have known another ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... hair, the keen brightness of his face, the erect, and soldierly carriage of his person made him a striking figure. His wife, ten years his junior, was one of the most attractive women in Chicago. Her girlish beauty had refined under the blasts of adversity; years had not been unkind to her. In a way, she was the leader of a certain set, but her social ambitions were not content. There was a higher altitude in fashion's realm. Money, influence and perseverance ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... little boys, when they are young, Can go about in skirts, And wear upon their little backs Small broidered girlish shirts, Pray why cannot the little girls, When infants, have a chance To toddle on their little ways In little ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... begun to think battledore and balls too girlish an amusement. He preferred flying his eagle or mask-like kite, or playing at cards, verses, or lotteries. Sometimes he played a lively game with his father, in which the board is divided into squares and diagonals. ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... evidently belonged to that class of women who do not attain their full development until a later period. Her figure was almost too slender, her face almost too delicate and ethereal. There was about her a girlish look, an atmosphere of half-saintly maidenhood, which was not so much the expression of her real nature as the effect produced by her being at once very thin and very fresh. There was indeed nothing ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... was no secret about it; the gift had been chosen on the suggestion of Miss Heredith, who told Merrington the facts. What was unknown was the addition of the inscription, "Semper Fidelis," which must have been scratched on the brooch subsequently by the girl herself as a girlish vow of love and fidelity of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... together with many expressions of affection and interest. 'My dear Betsy, I love you for discarding the word Miss from your vocabulary,' so the packet begins, and it continues in the same strain of pleasant girlish chatter, alternating with the history of many bygone festivities, and stories of friends, neighbours, of beaux and partners; of the latter genus, and of Miss Aikin's efforts to make herself agreeable, here is a sample:—'I talked to him, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... he quickened his pace, for he had caught sight of a slim girlish figure hurrying along the path from Oaklea, and a graceful little hand waved him a greeting. It was Lloyd, coming home for the daily visit which she had never failed to make since her ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... handkerchief, partly to hide the play of his laughter, and partly to wipe away the perspiration which a great deal more laughing had already gathered on his forehead. He had a vein that showed prominently down its centre, and large, mobile, girlish blue eyes under good brows, an arched nose, and rather a long face and narrow chin. He had beautiful white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw that contracted very much toward the front. He was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the poor boy's sake than for myself, for as long as I live I can provide for him." She said this without the least display of emotion, and with the same mature air of also repressing any emotion on the part of Randolph. But for her size and girlish figure, but for the dripping tangles of her hair and her soft eyes, he would have believed he was talking ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... friendly sunshine smiled. And she would mark the opening skies, I saw no Heaven—but in her eyes. Young Love's first lesson is——the heart: For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles, When, from our little cares apart, And laughing at her girlish wiles, I'd throw me on her throbbing breast, And pour my spirit out in tears— There was no need to speak the rest— No need to quiet any fears Of her—who asked no reason why, But turned on ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... it possible?" she murmured, as she leaned back in a corner of the carriage, and thought of the many leaves in the book of her life which had been folded-down since she took farewell of these green glades in her girlish days. And as she sits, quietly thinking, while the little group round her are making the green aisles resound with their merry laughter, we fancy, as we glance at her face, that it is one we have seen before in this valley. The "stealthy day by day" has certainly done its work; ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... obeying Barber strictly; also she often pleaded conscience and duty in matters of this kind. And to Johnnie any consideration for Barber's wishes or opinions, except the little that was forced by fear of the strap, was silly, girlish, and terribly trying. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... going through the rest, Uncle,—you will not ask it. I think I did everything I could;—I threw away my books; I devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never, in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did now to win him from himself. I read to him, I sang to him, I filled the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me, might think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... scarcely achieved the popularity of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," the first romance originated by the active brain and singularly constructive power of Jane Porter, produced at an almost girlish age. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... at the General with his white hair, and Irene with her quaint little old lady's cap over her girlish face, and visualized for myself those two figures before me as they had appeared on the night of that escapade, I realized that the real romance of life is made by memory, and that for these two old friends to be able thus to ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Lettice Hollidew, now speaking in little, girlish rushes behind him, since her first appearance in a baby carriage, nineteen or twenty years back. He had watched her without particular interest, the daughter of the richest man in Greenstream, grow out of sturdy, barelegged childhood ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... live. We have tried having a cook, but the cook always steals. Mamma used to set me to watch her; that's the way I passed my jeunesse—my belle jeunesse. We are frightfully poor," the young girl went on, with the same strange frankness—a curious mixture of girlish grace and conscious cynicism. "Nous n'avons pas le sou. That's one of the reasons we don't go back to America; mamma says we can't afford ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... a low rocker by the window, with one foot upon a wobbly stool. A marvellous cover, of Aunt Hitty's making, which dated back to her frivolous and girlish days, was underneath. Nobody ever saw it, however, and the gaudy woollen roses blushed unseen. A white linen cover, severely plain, was put upon the footstool every Wednesday and every Saturday, year in and ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... ahead, to join Mrs. Poinsett, and Faith turned aside to her own party, but when they joked her on making a conquest of the titled lady she only smiled dreamily, and saw an eager face, filled with almost girlish life, begging for childish particulars about a modest place in far-away ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Pink bowed and had all the appearance of blushing—though you will have to ask Pink how he managed to create that optical illusion. "What did you want?" he asked in his soft, girlish voice, turning to Andy bashfully. But from the corner of his eye Pink saw that a little smile of remembrance had come to soften Miss Hallman's angry features, and that the other girl was smiling also. Pink hated that ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... in sobs. At first he thought the vision a dream, a delirium born from his long struggle; he could not conceive the possibility of such a presence in this lonely place, and staggering to his feet, gazed wildly, dumbly at the slender, gray clad figure, the almost girlish face under the shadowing dark hair, expecting the marvellous vision to vanish. Surely this could not be real! A woman, and such a woman as this here, and alone, of all places! He staggered from weakness, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... along the shining Mohawk, and still his eyelids would not close. In his waistcoat-pocket lay a bulky letter, the last of many in the same superscription—a prim, unformed, school-girlish hand—that had come to him during the last two years of his cadet life. Its predecessors, carefully wrapped and tied, were in the old trunk somewhere ahead among the baggage. In his hand again was the telegram that, reaching ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... that, with a deliciously girlish and confused gasp, Mrs. Cricklander had hastily quitted ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... pleasant chamber assigned to us, pervaded by an air of Quaker serenity and purity, was a large painting of the poet in his youth. This was the realization of my girlish dreams. There were the clustering curls, the brilliant dark eyes, the firm, resolute mouth. He looked like a youthful Bayard, 'without fear and without reproach,' ready to throw himself unflinchingly into the most stirring scenes of the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... did not await her womanhood. Like Marie de Medicis, she clung to all which appeared to link her to her distant home, and caused her to forget for a time that it was hers no longer; and under this impulse it was by no means surprising that she attached herself with girlish affection to the individuals by whom she had been followed in her splendid exile; but even as her predecessor had been compelled to forego the society of her native attendants, so was Anne of Austria in her turn deprived of the solace of their presence. With the exception of Dona ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... you speak as truly. You should be as much above false girlish petty scruples, as you will be and are above falsehood of another kind. You will never tell a man that you love ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... a very sad event occurred. 'Madame La Grandemain' had to announce the death of her 'sister:' the Prince, in a note to a pseudonymous correspondent, expresses his concern for 'poor Mademoiselle Luci.' And so this girl, with her girlish mystery and romance, passes into the darkness from which she had scarcely emerged, carrying our regrets, for indeed she is the most sympathetic, of the women who, in these melancholy years, helped or hindered Prince Charles. 'As long as I have a Bit of Bred,' Charles writes to an unknown adherent, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... hear the sound of sobbing as he passed the parlor. Mechanically he took and receipted for the dispatch. Slowly, absently he retraced his steps, listening to the strange sounds, a pleading, choking, girlish voice, soothing words in the gentle, loving woman's sweet tones, the occasional gruff monosyllables from the General himself. Strain reached the library again in something like a dream, finding Petty stalking up and down, tugging at his ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... above who has promised to take care of the orphan, but still, it would give me a pleasure to know, that when my mouldering body reposes in 'that bourne whence no traveler returns,' that the light of a pleasant home would shed its radiance on her girlish years. I fear to trust her to the world. I fear its buffetings—I fear its bitterness—I fear its selfishness!—I have keenly felt them all, and they bowed my strength of spirit almost to the dust!—they sullied my purity of purpose, and my love of God! Three years ago I took up my abode in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... full when the stir in the crowd, and the general looking in one direction, announced the arrival of a guest who excited unwonted attention. A young woman, who scarcely looked her full age of thirty, small, slender, very simply and elegantly dressed, with something still girlish in her small irregular features and complexion of northern brilliancy, was conducted along the gangway between the rows of chairs, and, as if she were the queen of the entertainment, solemnly installed by the side of the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... up at the fair, girlish face that gazed wistfully from the window. The unknown seemed very young—not more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. She wore a blue serge suit of rather coarse weave, but it was neat and becoming. Around the modest, sweet eyes were deep ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... blasphemy, and many an impure phrase sounded out the pollution of the hearts of these half-crazed creatures, as they toss'd down their liquor, and made the walls echo with their uproar. The first and foremost in recklessness was a girlish-faced, fair-hair'd fellow of twenty-two or three years. They called him Mike. He seem'd to be look'd upon by the others as a sort of prompter, from whom they were to take cue. And if the brazen wickedness evinced by him in a hundred freaks and remarks to his companions, during ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... she said at last, looking up into his face, where her head rested. She could not move because his arm held her girlish form to him ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... picture of the lad at the piano, there is something, for the period, girlish. He was indeed his mother's boy; and it was fortunate his mother was not altogether feminine. She gave her son a womanly delicacy in morals, to a man's taste - to his own taste in later life - too finely spun, and perhaps more elegant than healthful. She encouraged him besides ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and lonely evenings in a Japanese mission school, a young native teacher sought to while away the hours for a homesick exile. She was girlish and fair, with the soft voice and gentle, indescribable charm characteristic of the women of her race. Her tales were of the kindergarten, happenings in her life and the lives of others, and I have sought to ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... handsome, both in face and figure, and endowed with very uncommon abilities. She was several years older than myself, and an object of my unbounded school-girl heroine worship. A daughter of Kiallmark, the musical composer, was also eminent among us for her great beauty, and always seemed to my girlish fancy what Mary Queen of Scots must have looked like ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... tints. Mike saw a tall blonde girl, slight as a reed, so blonde that she was almost an albino, her figure in green gauze swaying. He saw a girl so brown that he thought of palms and cocoa-nuts; she passed him smiling, all her girlish soul awake in the enchantment of the dance. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... and "decent." Modeled after the usual riding costume, both coat and breeches were youthfully, rather than mannishly, tailored; and the narrow, vertical stripe of the dark gray material served to make her slenderness almost girlish. In short, what with her poet-style hair, her independent manner and direct speech, she was far more like a boy of twenty ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... men how noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter—all are hushed. What evil ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the kitchen, and the girl flew around, with enthusiasm, and snatched rag after rag from a tall something in the corner, and presently there stood the clay statue, life size—a graceful girlish creature, nude to the waist, and holding up a single garment with one hand the expression attempted being a modified scare—she was interrupted when about to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mistake here," she said, glancing scornfully at the slight, girlish figure leaning upon Rex Lyon's arm. "I do not recognize this person as a guest. If I mistake not, she is one of the hirelings ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... definitely and finally reject the suit of a highly amiable young man of fortune, who has for some time past paid his addresses to her, I think that we may consider ourselves fully justified in attributing the slightly equivocal nature of her answer to a pardonable girlish modesty and coyness, and that I shall not be premature in offering you my hearty congratulations on the successful issue of your suit—a-hem I—" And so saying, Mr. Coleman rose from his seat, and taking Lawless's unwilling hand in his own, shook ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... circle to share in the enjoyment of reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of Hawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself at the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted a composition which no man in his class could equal.... When the class was graduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having their profiles cut in paper, the only class ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... "Naughty!" And she would reply in baby language "Me vewy sowwy! Oo naughty too to hurt Lucia!" That was the utmost extent of their carnal familiarities, and with bright eyes fixed on the music they would break into peals of girlish laughter, until the beauty of the ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... girlish young man called Python, son of some Macedonian grandee, once by way of quizzing him asked a riddling question and invited him to show his acumen over it. 'I only see one thing, dear child,' he said, 'and that is, that ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... he tossed and turned from side to side upon his uneasy bed. But, toss and turn as he would, he could not undo his night's work. There remained nothing for him but to carry it out, and make the best of it; and he strove to deceive his conscience with the hope that Lucy Tempest, in her girlish innocence, had not understood his hinted allusions to her becoming his wife; that she had looked upon his snatched caresses as but trifling pastime, such as he might offer to a child. Most unjustifiable he now ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in these narrow quarters, ministered to by the old woman and at intervals hearing the same gentle girlish voice speaking outside, without, however, ever being able to see its owner. At last, after several days, two of the Highlanders who had first captured him returned, and by signs informed him that he must get ready to ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... called her eccentric. She was generous-hearted, easily moved to enthusiasm, tenacious of her opinions and prejudices. She had remained young of heart, and her fair, curling hair, her slight, active figure, and delicately-tinted skin, gave her sometimes an almost girlish look. Those who met her for the first time were always surprised to find that Mrs. Otway had a ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... who had most natural affinity with the antique of all these sculptors, as one may see from the shattered remains of the Fonte Gaia of Siena), the lady stretched out on the rose-garlanded bed of state in a corner of Lucca Cathedral, her feet upon her sleeping dog, her sweet, girlish head, with wavy plaits of hair encircled by a rose-wreathed, turban-like diadem, lying low on round cushions; the bed gently giving way beneath the beautiful, ample-bosomed body, round which the soft robe is chastely ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... telegram, arrived and the young husband took his bride in his arms, the girlish face was lifted, and the passionate gleam of the dilating brown eyes sent a strange thrill to the hearts of both father and son. Vowing to return very soon and claim her, the husband tore himself away, and as he vanished through a side door near the box, Minnie followed, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... her mother's shoulder as she spoke, and she gave way to a plentiful outpouring of girlish tears, to which the matron, of course, joined her own. "You mustn't think no more of him, Fanny," she said. "If he don't come to you, he's a horrid, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her in both of these, dear, and ever so many more. I think my favorite was Rigoletto. She was a beautiful, girlish Gilda, but that is years ago. You girls ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Mauki had a nice face. It was really a pretty face, viewed by any standard, and for a Melanesian it was a remarkably good-looking face. Its one fault was its lack of strength. It was softly effeminate, almost girlish. The features were small, regular, and delicate. The chin was weak, and the mouth was weak. There was no strength nor character in the jaws, forehead, and nose. In the eyes only could be caught any ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... an interest that she had begun to think if left to itself might wane. She was conscious that her cousin Julia, although impertinent and illogical, was right in considering her first epistolary advances to Corbin as a youthful convert's religious zeal. But now that her girlish enthusiasm was spent, and the revival itself had proved as fleeting an excitement as the old "Tournament of Love and Beauty," which it had supplanted, she preferred to believe that she enjoyed the fascinating ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fond feelings had no share; Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother; but no more; 'twas much, For brotherless she was save in the name Her girlish friendship had bestowed on him; Herself the solitary scion ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... middle age, and had given up the fight, and was fast becoming a very prim and very proper old lady, but Miss Sarah, being out of range, could still smile, and nod her head, and shake her curls, and laugh little, hollow, girlish laughs, and otherwise disport herself in a light and kittenish way, after the manner of her day and age. All of which betrayed not only her earnest desire to please, but her increasing anxiety to get in under matrimonial cover before one of Father Time's sharpshooters picked her off, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... party in Malo-les-Bains, where they had reassembled before coming to Fumes, and I had been puzzled by them. In the "flying column," as they called their convoy of ambulances, were several ladies very practically dressed in khaki coats and breeches, and very girlish in appearance and manners. They did not seem to me at first sight the type of woman to be useful on a battlefield or in a field-hospital. I should have expected them to faint at the sight of blood, and to swoon at the bursting of a shell. Some of them at ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... mother, she asked herself afterwards? Scarcely; there were several passengers who might have been the one. She felt almost bewildered when Aunt Alison turned from all, to hurry forward to greet a slight, girlish-looking figure—girlish in herself, though not in attire or bearing—who was gazing ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... had a certain air of breeding, but even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character of a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... accident together they were necessarily on some kind of speaking terms. Before Carthew had noticed Mr. Prohack, Mr. Prohack noticed that Carthew's attitude to Miss Winstock showed a certain tolerant condescension, while Miss Winstock's girlish gestures were of a subtly appealing nature. Then in an instant Carthew, the easy male tolerator of inaccurate but charming young women, disappeared from the window—disappeared indeed, entirely from the face of the earth—and a perfectly non-human, impassive automaton emerged from ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... soft girlish voice, with just a tremble of apprehensive nervousness, giving it a lilt like a ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... to view Mrs. Edith Woodman Burroughs' "Fountain of Youth," lovely in the girlish beauty of the central figure, and in the simplicity and the sincerity of the design as a whole. In some ways the figure reminded us of the celebrated painting by Ingres in the Louvre, "The Source," the nude girl bearing a jug on her ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... a coward. After his adventure in Balak, he feared neither man nor devil, and he insolently returned the black fellow's gaze. They stood about a buffet and drank coffee. The young woman—her outlines were girlish—did not touch anything; she turned her face in Pobloff's direction, so he fancied, and spoke at ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... said, while he fixed his sad and expressive eyes on hers, which, in her ecstasy of doubt, terror, and perplexity, she cast up towards him, "I have ever remarked that when others called thee girlish and wilful, there lay under that external semblance of youthful and self-willed folly deep feeling and strong sense. In this I will confide, trusting your own fate in your own hands for the space of twenty-four hours, without my interference ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... with her age, it is often remarked that she looks more like their sister than their mother. This is because she is in harmony with her age, and has not, therefore, put herself in rivalry with them; and harmony is the very keystone of beauty. Her hair may be streaked with white, the girlish firmness and transparency of her skin has gone, the pearly clearness of her eye is clouded, and the slender grace of line is lost, but for all that she is beautiful, and she is intrinsically young. What she has lost in outside material charm—in that mere beaute da diable of youth—she has ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... had a pair of the articles made, Of solid gold, gorgeously overlaid With every color of precious stone Which ever flashed in the Indian zone. She privately practised many a day Before she ventured from home at all; She had lost her girlish skill, and they say That she suffered many a fearful fall; But pride is stubborn, and she was bound On her golden stilts to go around, Three feet, at least, from the plebeian ground. 'Twas an exquisite day, In the month of May, That the stilts came out for a promenade; Their first entree Was ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... from one to the other of the three people her life seemed bound up with. Alec she loved but feared for, in her girlish wisdom. Murray she did not understand. Her mother she loved with a devotion redoubled since her father's murder. Moreover, she regarded her with ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... turning point in Charlotte's life. Intensely ambitious, she worked like a galley slave and soon mastered French so that she wrote it with ease and vigor. There is no question that she had a girlish love for her teacher, as passionate as it was brief, and that her whole outlook was broadened by this experience of a world so unlike the only one that she ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... three high notes, and descending at each couplet, in an almost imperceptible manner, into actual solemnity. The song keeps its dragging slowness; but the accompaniment, becoming more and more accentuated, is like the impetuous sound of a far-off hurricane. At the end, when these girlish voices, usually so soft, give out their hoarse and guttural notes, Chrysantheme's hands fly wildly and convulsively over the quivering strings. Both of them lower their heads, pout their underlips in the effort to bring out these astonishingly deep notes. And at these moments ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and demanded what was his will with her. No sooner had she spoken a second time than it was manifested to Miles with perfect clearness that she herself and none other was the woman he sought. Wherefore, in spite of her different dress and girlish mien, he said to her, 'Woman, how darest thou lie before the Lord ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... while Mary Taylor sat very quietly. It was like a breath of air from the real world, this hour's chat with a well-bred gentleman. She wondered how she had done her part—had she been too eager and school-girlish? Had she met this stately ceremony with enough breeding to show that she too was somebody? She pounced upon Miss Smith the minute ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to him quickly, with an impulsiveness that was almost girlish. "I have never told anyone else," she said. "I tell you because I know you are my friend and because I want you to understand. We ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... even as I write these chronicles, in the Medicean villa of Castello, and as at first she dared not keep her little son with her (the men of the Medici being banished from Florence), she confided him, still habited in girlish disguise, to the care of a community of nuns, who kept a seminary for the daughters of noble families. But at length, on the restoration of the Medici, he issued from that retreat, and is now being bred to the profession ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... plight I pressed on toward a light glimmering faintly through the blinding snow. It led me into the shelter of the porch to a small brown house, cut deeply beneath the low eaves, and protected at the sides by flanking bedrooms. My knock was answered by a girlish voice, and from the ensuing parley, through the closed door, I learned that she was the daughter of a Baptist exhorter, and that she was alone in the house, her brother being away at the village, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... had it gone?—he tossed at nights thinking of it. There came a time when he would gladly have exchanged Carrie's gossip for hers; and through her soft silence, as she sat beside him, he would hear suddenly, in memory, the echoes of her girlish voice, and make a quick movement towards her—only to check himself in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... repeat that experience if she could help it. She had saved the mother in the old days by just such a word. She would save the daughter in the same way. And the two were much alike—same slight, girlish figure; same blond hair and blue eyes; same expression, and the same impetuous, high-strung temperament. "If that child's own mother walked in this minute I couldn't tell 'em apart, they do favor one another so," old Margaret had told her mistress when she opened the door for the girl, ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger law. Catie, if she chose, could keep Scott's feet well in the limits of the beaten trails. It should be her duty to impress on Catie's girlish mind that the beaten trail was the only one for him to follow, the path of expediency as well as the path of holiness; that complete contentment and success lay ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... his hands in his pockets, and sauntered to the door. Reaching it, he glanced back for a moment at the eager, girlish face, unperturbed, inscrutable. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... pang would seize me That the years were floating on,) I would strive to paint her, altered, And the little baby gone: She no longer young and girlish, The child, standing by her knee, And her face, more pale and saddened With the ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... were standing there, gazing enraptured upon the scene, there was a burst of girlish laughter from the hotel. Then at least a dozen girls ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... years also changed her in the same manner? Her looking-glass did not show her any very great change. There was still the same girlish figure, which seemed twice as slender beside her husband's stoutness. Her hair was still fair, and she still blushed like a young girl to whom a stray look is enough to make the blood, that flows so easily, ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... Burroughs! Mr. Smith was scandalized. "O, vile and slanderous picture!" he exclaims. "When have I triumphed over ruined innocence? Was not Martha wedded, in her teens, to David Tomkius, who won her girlish love, and long enjoyed her affection as a wife? And ever since his death, she has lived a reputable widow!" Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling them to and fro with uncertain fingers, until, among the earlier ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smoked. The mother looked furtive in a bonnet, and the two daughters, with wide open eyes, examined the flirtations around them as a child examines a butterfly caught in a net. One of them blushed. But she did not turn away her eyes. Nor were her girlish ears inactive. Family life seemed suddenly to become dull to her. She wondered whether it were life at all. And the father still smoked domestically. He knew it all. That was the difference. And perhaps it was his ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... finely-formed, and showed at least an average amount of intellect; but from the nose downward the form and expression of the features were suggestive only of the animal,—a brutal, sensual, repelling look. Margery, who had looked for the great man from London with girlish curiosity, suddenly felt an unconquerable and causeless dislike to him swell up in her heart, a something which she could neither define nor account for, that made her wish to avoid sitting near him, and turn her eyes away whenever his were ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... dawn, felt that to do so would be absurd. After all, the men might merely have been chatting about the party, whose expedition was surely an adventurous and interesting one. It might make Mr. Bell think her a victim of girlish fancies if she went to him with the story, so Peggy decided to remain silent. Afterward ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... girl, laughing up into his eyes with a frank, warm admiration in hers that made Captain Jack's heart quicken a bit in its steady beat. He was a young man with a normal appreciation of his own worth. She, young, beautiful, unspoiled, in the innocence of her girlish heart was flinging at him the full tribute of a warm, generous admiration with every flash of her black eyes and every intonation of her voice. Small wonder if Captain Jack found her good to look at and to listen ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... A girlish voice like a silver bell Rang over the sparkling tide, "A race! a race!" She was under the trees by the river-side, Down from whose boughs dark shadows ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... the Great Spirit called him to the happy hunting grounds. Lydia had heard of this national honor which was the right and title of this frail little moccasined Indian woman with whom she was shaking hands, and the thought flashed rapidly through her girlish mind: "Suppose some one lady in England had the marvellous power of appointing who the member should be in the British House of Lords or Commons. Wouldn't Great Britain ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... the child knew no other resting-place than the old nurse's arms, the mother's seeming to be for ever closed to its helpless innocence. True, Sybilla kissed it once a day, when Elspie brought the little creature to her, and exacted, as a duty, the recognition which Mrs. Rothesay, girlish and yielding as she was, dared not refuse. Her husband's faithful retainer had over her an influence which could ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... sometimes an odd mixture of all three. Ordinarily there was a suspicion of hardness in her face but there was also upon occasions a kind of winsomeness, an unexpected peeping out of a personality which was like the wraith of the child which she once had been—a suggestion of girlish charm and spontaneity ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... all she wanted was a warm and comfortable corner to settle down into. Some masculine creature would be sure to begin to want her very soon. It was only to be hoped that youth and flightiness would not descend upon her—though three children might be supposed to form a barrier. But she had a girlish figure and her hair was reddish gold and curly and her full and not too small mouth was red and curly also. The first time she went to church in her little widow's bonnet with the reddish gold showing itself under the pathetic ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... straightened up and flushed, for the watchful crowd had seen the episode and was wild with enthusiasm. For ten minutes the people cheered the Queen without ceasing, and for the next few days they talked of little but the spontaneous, girlish action which had ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... about going past that open door, and partly afraid they might not notice her if she did. Back in her girlish thought was a secret suggestion that she was pushing at all the time with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few persons ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... music," thought Dick, as he closed the instrument, little guessing that a vein of sentiment in Uncle Ebeneezer's hard nature had impelled him to keep the prosaic melodeon forever sacred to the slender, girlish fingers that had last brought music from its ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... diversion would prove when he once fell into this train of black thoughts; but she could not refrain from essaying the hopeless task by holding up her apron of homespun cloth full of cotton rolls, pretty in their whiteness and roundness and softness, meantime coquettishly turning her still girlish head on one side, and saying: "Now, Mr. Browne, why don't you praise my cotton? Did you ever ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... paces of the fence, she stopped, threw back the flaps of her sun-bonnet, and said, "Good day to you!" Jacob was so amazed to see a bright, fresh, girlish face, that he stared at her with all his eyes, forgetting to drop his head. Indeed, he could not have done so, for his chin was propped upon the top rail of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... sister, Louise, stood there among them, and of all those girlish, blooming faces I thought hers the very handsomest. But she did not open her lips wide enough to satisfy me. I could not see that ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Merely a part of her social technique; a stunt, so to speak, which she'd found would make us weak males sit up and take notice. If I were you I'd clean forget the whole business; on the other hand there's the suspicion that you appealed to her strongly, a girlish fancy, perhaps, and she thought you were the sort of fellow that would be hit harder if she roused you to action. I tell you, Congdon, women are curious creatures. Just when you think you've got your hand on a pretty bird she flutters away and sings ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... wondered less than ever at finding himself there. Her complexion in this clear light seemed more beautiful than ever. Her rich golden-brown hair was waved becomingly over her forehead. Her eyebrows were silky and delicately straight, her mouth delightful. Her figure was girlish, but unusually dignified for ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as follows to Mrs Hurtle, finding great difficulty in the composition of a letter which should tell neither too little nor too much, and determined that she would be restrained by no mock modesty, by no girlish fear of declaring the truth about herself. The letter at last was stiff and hard, but it sufficed for ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Both beautiful girls, they caused a sensation all of their own. Carolina, a different type from the younger, had an austere loveliness denoting pride and birth, a brunette of the quality that has contributed so much to the fame of Southern women. Hope Georgia, more girlish, and a vivacious blonde, was the especial pet of her father, and usually succeeded in doing with him ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... her face as she jerked her head forward. They liked that. It savoured of the abandoned. She shook it back, and danced the encore without the fillet. With her scant chiffons whirling about her knees, her loose hair, her girlish body, she was the embodiment of young love, of its passion, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... book, enlarge their activities to the extent of playing mother to a little Indian girl. "Those who have read 'Dandelion Cottage' will need no urging to follow further...A lovable group of four real children, happily not perfect, but full of girlish plans and pranks...A delightful sense of humor."— Boston Transcript. THE GIRLS OF GARDENVILLE Illustrated by MARY WELLMAN. 12mo. $1.35 net. Interesting, amusing, and natural stories of a girls' club. "Will captivate as many adults as if it were ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... if one were to peel away the verandas and the exterior corridors from our vast watering-place hostelries, what an arid baldness of wall and of character would be left! All sentiment, all glowing memories, all the music of girlish footfalls, all echoes of laughter and banter and rollicking mirth, and tenderly uttered ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... woman—rather a tiresome person, a spinster with a curiously horse-like face and large teeth—sometimes stays for hours at a time and leaves us limp. Even gentle Mrs. Wilmot approaches, as nearly as it is possible for her to approach, unkindness in her comments on her. She has such playful, girlish manners, and an irritating way of giving vent to the most utter platitudes with the air of having just discovered a new truth. She has been with us this morning and mentioned that her father was four times removed from a peerage. I stifled a childish desire to ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... was a smooth day and to me a very happy one. Jane had been absent since noon. Her occupations were unquestioned, but when she joined us at the evening dinner it was good to see how her tired face brightened at Zura's girlish ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... her forehead. The painter had collected in his studio many pretty and fantastic things to use in his pictures,—velvets and gold embroidered cloaks, Oriental stuffs, laces, necklaces, and jewels. With these he loved to deck Saskia, heightening her girlish charms with the play ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... some one in a very nice frame of mind, and Peter thought he had never met such a wonderful combination of frankness, of confluence, and yet of a certain girlish shyness and timidity. Some one would tell him something, and then appeal to him, if he didn't think that was so? Peter generally thought it was. Some one did not drop her little touch of coquetry, for that was ingrain, as it is in most pretty ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Ain't I seen you making up to everything in pants that'd waste time and pay attention to your impert'nence? Ain't I seen you showing off your legs with them short skirts of yours, trying to make out like you was so girlish and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... with laughing; which was quite natural, for certainly it was a very funny idea—at that time—I mean, the idea of that gentle little creature, that wouldn't hurt a fly, and couldn't bear the sight of blood, and was so girlish and shrinking in all ways, rushing into battle with a gang of soldiers at her back. Poor thing, she sat there confused and ashamed to be so laughed at; and yet at that very minute there was something about to happen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
