"Housemaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in "that door to the right." Eustace knocked, and entered into a bare little chamber about the size of a large housemaid's closet, furnished with a table, three chairs (one a basket easy), and a book-case, with a couple of dozen of law books, and some old volumes of reports, and a broad window-sill, in the exact centre of which lay the solitary ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... A housemaid advanced to the table, bearing in both red hands a long tray covered with a napkin. On the napkin lay, heaped in rich confusion, a great pile of spicy, ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... thing, she wanted to hold our hands and look into our faces and tell us how little we had changed for all our hardships; and on the way to the house she actually stopped to point out some alterations in the flower-borders. At last the drawing-room door and the smiling housemaid turning the handle and the unforgettable picture of a little girl, a little girl unlike anything we had imagined, starting bravely to trot across the room with the little speech that had been taught her. Half-way she came; I suppose our regards were ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Just as we are going to start, you must lose a stick or a coat. I'll offer to go back for it, and meet you at the side door; there is a staircase leading to the nursery close to it, down which I shall come with the baby after I have sent the housemaid who is guarding it to look for your stick. We shall be off and the baby on board before it is missed, for the girl is sure to stay gossiping with the other servants ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... parents owned a small vineyard two leagues out of Angouleme, on the road to Saintes. The Signols, like everybody else in the country, could not afford to keep their only child at home; so they meant her to go out to service, in country phrase. The art of clear-starching is a part of every country housemaid's training; and so great was Mme. Prieur's reputation, that the Signols sent Henriette to her as apprentice, and paid for their daughter's ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... me,' and Mrs. Claughton, taking the bedroom candle, rose and followed out on to the landing, and so into the adjacent drawing-room. She cannot remember opening the door, which the housemaid had locked outside, and she owns that this passage is dreamlike in her memory. Seeing that her candle was flickering out, she substituted for it a pink one taken from a chiffonier. The figure walked nearly ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... only a cook and one housemaid and a man of all work—all three newcomers, for Presbury insisted—most wisely—that none of the servants of the luxurious, wasteful days would be useful in the new circumstances. He was one of those small, orderly ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... to heart, it is none of your fault: don't take it to heart, dear Patty," said Betty, the housemaid, who was fond of Patty. "What could you do but go to your brother? Here, drink this water, and don't blame yourself at all about the matter. Mistress had a stroke sixteen months ago, afore ever you came into the house; and I dare say she'd have had ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... touch in Dr. Gurnet, a smiling willingness to look on private histories as of less importance than last year's newspapers. It was as if he airily explained to his patients that really they had better put any facts there were on the files, and let the housemaid use the rest for the kitchen fire; and he required very little on Winn's part. From a series of reluctant monosyllables he built up a picturesque and reliable structure of his new patient's life. They weren't by any means all physical questions. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... came to be said, there was a place vacant in the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in one, a bolster laid lengthwise, clad in a cap and night-gown; and when Ginevra Fanshawe's music-mistress came early, as usual, to give the morning lesson, that accomplished and promising young ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it," said Osborn nodding eagerly, "rubber gloves for wet work, and housemaid's gloves for dry, eh, dearest? You will always, won't you? You must let me buy you all the ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby, or the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error. Our appeal is to the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and interest. Now, sir, have you observed the English housemaid?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire. "Could the ashes have been preserved if Madeline had not given the matter her personal attention, but had trusted to a housemaid?" he thought. What further reflections this question inspired must be left to conjecture. He did ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... leaning over the bridge, gazed wistfully on the gloomy waters that rolled onward, caring not a minnow for the numerous charming young ladies who have thought proper to drown themselves in those merciless waves, thereby depriving many a good mistress of an excellent housemaid or an invaluable cook, and many a treacherous Phaon of letters beginning with "Parjured Villen," and ending with "Your affectionot but ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... got the colour of a barmaid, and a waist like Fanny's?' Fanny was the Morrison's housemaid, and was not slim. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it," she said, as though she answered his thought. "Proud! A little Friulana of these parts, a housemaid, we had masses for her till you took our priest away. One of your officers used to, to persecute her. Oh!" she cried, "why am I afraid even to name what she had to endure? He was always trying to get into her bedroom; you understand? And one day he caught hold of her so that she ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... almost have said that it was raining harder when the carriage drove up to the door. Jeanne was ready to step in when the baroness came downstairs, supported on one side by her husband and on the other by a tall housemaid, strong and strapping as a boy. She was a Norman woman of the country of Caux, who looked at least twenty, although she was but eighteen at the most. She was treated by the family as a second daughter, for she was ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the captain, "I have. Something like this: My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live anywhere now; ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... am likely to get," rattled on Beecot, deftly frying the sausages, after placing his visitor on the sofa. "The grub will soon be ready. I'm a first-class cook, bless you, old chap. Housemaid too. Clean, eh?" He waved the fork proudly round the ill-furnished room. "I'd dismiss ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... opportunity tarried. Mrs. Wilson was too often about the passages to make the expedition safe. On one occasion Cicely went to act scout, but found the housemaid sweeping the top landing, and had to beat ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... thing, you see, is to keep one's self out of reach of the housemaid's brush. (A pause.) If you're married you can't—always. (Smiling.) Don't you hate to be taken down ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... name— with gloomy indifference; with cold, sombre apartments that were terrible by night, and thickly covered with the accumulated dust of many years. An ancient butler remained who recalled the former times and masters, the former baronial pomp and splendour. The housemaid, who spoke no ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... found the cook and housemaid in the last row of all and was turning his eye-hole round ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... flash of white teeth against a babyish pink tongue. She was wearing a freshly washed bright blue dress, hanging loosely from her shoulders, and looked so prettily jolly, clean, capable, and curly-headed, that I immediately made her housemaid and Head of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... that winter with Virginia and the boys," answered Miss Allison. "I kept a record of some of their sorriest mishaps. Wait a minute until I speak to the housemaid, and I'll see if ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... been ever so willing, there was no more time just now. There was a knock at the door, and Sarah, the housemaid, presented herself. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of Christmas Eve that the china punch-bowl was broken. Mr. Skratdj had a warm dispute with Mrs. Skratdj as to whether it had been kept in a safe place; after which both had a brisk encounter with the housemaid, who did not know how it happened; and she, flouncing down the back passage, kicked Snap; who forthwith flew at the gardener as he was bringing in the horse-radish for the beef; who stepping backwards trode upon the cat; who spit and swore, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... duties is most surprising, and makes one wonder who in England did the necessary things of daily cottage life for them, for they appear to have done nothing for themselves hitherto. As for a woman knowing how to cook, that seems the very last accomplishment they acquire; a girl will come to you as a housemaid at 25 pounds per annum, and you will find that she literally does not know how to hold her broom, and has never handled a duster. When you ask a nurse her qualifications for the care of perhaps two or three young children, you may find, on close cross-examination, that she can recollect ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat scullion-maids, who assured me that, 'in the respectable families they had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.' One young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants' hall. I now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate enough to find a young ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... friends now, and two of them carriage-folks!) agree that we really must be spending seven hundred, or at all events, running into debt up to that figure; but the butcher and baker, who have gone into the matter with the housemaid, ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... were heavily draped with the sombre verdure of ivy, whose ambitious tendrils clambered to the cleft chimney-tops, and peered impertinently over the broad stone window-sills, whence the indignant housemaid remorselessly sheared them away as often ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Baton Rouge soon after dat and works as de housemaid. Us stay dere two year and I gits some little jobs and den I goes to work for de railroad in Sedalia, up in Missouri, and dere I works as section hand for de Katy railroad for twenty year. Den I gits through ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... * * * * "Young Lady Wanted, for few months, as Companion-Help (seaside); fare paid and 6d. week pocket-money; or would train Girl as Housemaid, same ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out, "Bless God! it's Mr. Utterson," ran forward as if to take ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... greatly delighted, however, with a Latin valentine which I prepared for her on the ensuing 14th of February, and caused to be delivered by the housemaid, in an envelope with an old stamp, and postmarks made with a pen and a penny. The design was very simple; a heart traced in outline from a peppermint lozenge of that shape, which came to me in an ounce of "mixed sweets" from the village shop. The said heart was painted red and below ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Woodward, the curate at Salthill, that it happened, sir: he was my benefactor through life. Always kind to me at the workhouse, where he was chaplain, he got me a situation, as soon as I was old enough, with a lady. I lived with her first as housemaid, and then as her personal attendant, till she died ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... upon going below, had called the housemaid and confided to her that, for good reasons, she had locked Violet in her room and she charged the maid not to let her out under ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil, furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron's proneness to attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once enlisted his good ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... before the National Gallery prior to parting I made some further inquiries regarding Armida, the black-eyed, good-looking housemaid whom he ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... education with the Earlscourt green grocer's daughter. It had led her to seek the society of her mother's class; and that class simply would not have her, because she was much poorer than the greengrocer, and, far from being able to afford a maid, could not afford even a housemaid, and had to scrape along at home with an illiberally treated general servant. Under such circumstances nothing could give her an air of being a genuine product of Largelady Park. And yet its tradition made her regard a marriage with anyone ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Misses Fezziwig, beaming and lovable. In came the six followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin the baker. In came the cook with her brother's particular friend the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... threw aside a black cloak to reveal a discreet and dignified arrangement of brown silk, and then embraced Ann Veronica with warmth. "So very clear and cold," she said. "I feared we might have a fog." The housemaid's presence acted as a useful restraint. Ann Veronica passed from her aunt to her father, and put her arms about him and kissed his cheek. "Dear old daddy!" she said, and was amazed to find herself shedding tears. She veiled her emotion by taking off his overcoat. "And this is Mr. Capes?" ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the later version of this Reading what was included in her first conversation on the doormat as to her requirements for supper enumerated after this fashion, "in tones expressive of faintness," to the housemaid: "I think, young woman, as I could peck a little bit of pickled salmon, with a little sprig of fennel and a sprinkling o' white pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat o' fredge butter and a mossel ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... arrived, and was still full of enthusiasm for scenery and sanitation. Also there was Princess —— surrounded by packing cases. Some months earlier she had visited our hospitals in Vrntze and she had asked if one of our V.A.D.'s could be sent to her as housemaid. Seeing her in the station, Jo involuntarily ran over in her mind, was she "sober, honest ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Flora, our housemaid, who is a character, has a great deal of dignity and influence among the other negroes, and takes the greatest care of us. She is most jealous for what she considers our interests, and moreover is quite an interpreter, though it is hard enough to understand ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... letter from Allenby." Allenby was the ex-sergeant. "He seems in a condition of trembling joy at the prospect of being our butler; and, what is more to the point, he says he has a niece whom he can recommend as a housemaid. So I have told him to instal her before we get to Homewood on Thursday. Hawkins has written a three-volume list of things he will require for the farm, but I haven't had time to study it yet. And Norah has had letters from nineteen registry-offices, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz's only recorded marriage had been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently, they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so operated on by the laws of South Dakota as ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... petty, sordid, but deadly troubles known only to the middle class. Without warrant, explanation, or excuse he introduces into their routine a sudden touch of magic; the tired City man, the acid foster-mother, the children (mercifully devoid of any priggishness), and the pre-eminently human housemaid and cook are transplanted for a moment into the age of the knights-errant. Thither also are transplanted their special friends and enemies, all retaining their modern identities and their current troubles, and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... the coachman has a world of small commissions to execute. Sometimes he delivers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or newspaper to the door of a public-house; and sometimes, with knowing leer and words of sly import, hands to some half-blushing, half-laughing housemaid an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the village, every one runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces, and blooming giggling girls. At the corners are assembled ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... aunt came down to breakfast and saw the lovely surprise. Amabel's world turned upside down and inside out suddenly and surprisingly, and there she was, in Coventry, and not even the housemaid would speak to her. Her great-uncle, whom she passed in the hall on her way to her own room, did indeed, as he smoothed his hat, murmur, 'Sent to Coventry, eh? Never mind, it'll soon be over,' and went off to the City banging the ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... out for a man-servant, a cook, housemaid, and a steady woman, as housekeeper—good characters, and undeniable reference. The housekeeper must be a somewhat superior person, as she will have to take charge of a young miss, and I do not want her spoiled ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... heads, or grains of gunpowder, were found scattered about the damp spots. All this mouldy forest was more than six months under constant observation, and during that period was held sacred from the disturbing influences of the housemaid's broom and duster. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... thought for a moment of a far-away housemaid who might still, if the local postman had not gone too far, be interested in his fate. On the other hand, he was, by temperament, economical of the truth. "Pennycuik," he ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... A housemaid now came forward with bed candles, to show Miss Carden to her room. Grace was going up, as a matter of course, when Jael, busy helping the footman with her boxes, called after her: ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... if a housemaid or a scullery maid tried to get into the steward's room and have her meals with us, she ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... an answer from the new housemaid was when he expressed his anxiety about the care of this room. He said that servants generally were very careless, and he hoped she would attend to things, and see that his papers were kept nicely in order. This, without glancing ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... smoked too heavily, and out of her solicitude for me has limited me to one cigar after dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for years I have found this a great hardship, and have therefore kept a reserve store, by arrangement with the housemaid, behind my tub. In self-defence I must also state that I seldom have recourse ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sweetmeats were kept, I always stole some. I used very often at night, when my aunts were gone out, and Mrs. Bridget also (for Mrs. Bridget generally went out when her mistress did to see some of her acquaintances in the town), to get up and go down into the kitchen, where I used to sit upon the housemaid's knee and eat toasted cheese and bread sopped in beer. Whenever my aunts found out any of my naughty tricks, they used to talk to me of my wickedness, and to tell me that if I went on in this manner I certainly should make God very angry. When I heard them ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... wonder too, very much. No one from this house, I am sure of that. Now that I think of it, though, Polly sings—Polly, the under housemaid; she has a pretty little bird-like voice, but nothing such as you describe. I'll ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... flutter among Frowenfeld's employes when he was asked for, and this time it was the more pronounced because he was sought by a housemaid from the upper floor. It was hard for these two or three young Ariels to keep their Creole feet to the ground when it was presently revealed to their sharp ears that the "prof-fis-or" was requested to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... as Leeds came down the wide, main stairs. He saw, under the porte-cochere, the trap ready to take him to the station, and into which the second man, with the help of the groom, was lifting his trunk. Here and there a housemaid was busy with duster and cloth. The machinery of the establishment was being set in running condition, and there was the accompanying disorder. The ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... and it is safe to say that in all the range of literature there are no other letters filled with such drivelling idiocy as these. Had they been written by some Cockney coachman to some sentimental housemaid, they should stand as the finest specimens of that grade of literature extant; but that they should have been written by one of the foremost literary men of his time is a marvel, and seems to show to what extremes of imbecility ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... at the door, a silence as of death was the sign of his welcome; but a tumult presently arose, and discipline was for a time suspended. I am afraid he had a slight feeling of condescension, as he returned the kind greeting of his old companions.—Raise a housemaid to be cook, and she will ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Kinloch, with ineffable scorn. "Lucy Ransom! I hope my son isn't low enough to dally with a housemaid, a scullion! If I had seen such a spectacle, I should have kept my mouth shut for shame. 'A guilty conscience needs no accuser'; but I am sorry you had not pride enough to keep your disgusting fooleries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... in the house, but not with the Marshal's cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants—for she had allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as Republican as he could be, pleased ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... I was determined against going away from my charge; I had rather have been his housemaid than have left him to Hester, and I must have looked like a stone as I got up, and left them to their talk while I went back ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... LIZA, a housemaid, not bad-looking, but very stout and snub-nosed; in a white dress, of which the bodice is short and ill-fitting. About her neck is a little red kerchief; her hair is ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... goddesses, I believed in them all quite seriously, and reconciled them to Christianity, which I believed in too after a fashion, as some greater philosophers have done—and went out one day with my pinafore full of little sticks (and a match from the housemaid's cupboard) to sacrifice to the blue-eyed Minerva who was my favourite goddess on the whole because she cared for Athens. As soon as I began to doubt about my goddesses, I fell into a vague sort of general ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... particularly well-disposed reader to appreciate the wit of Browning's retort upon his critics: "You are chimney-sweeps," he sings out in his great voice, "listen! I have invented several insulting nicknames for you. Decamp! or my housemaid will fling the slops in your faces." This may appear to some persons to be genial and clever. It certainly has none of the exquisite malignity of Pope's poisoned rapier. Perhaps it is a little dull; perhaps it ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... in her pride. "He couldn't be much more than He is. Why, He doctors half the poor people in Wandsworth. They all come to Him, whether it's toothache or bronchitis or the influenza, or a housemaid with a whitlow on her finger, and He prescribes for all. If all the doctors in Wandsworth died to-morrow some of us would ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... little amenable to the discipline he had hoped to exert in his family as the boys were. The elder had married, at fifteen years of age, a journeyman printer; and so, instead of filling the place of housemaid in some good family, as her father had fondly dreamed, she was cook, housemaid, and general servant to a man aware of his rights, and determined to maintain them, and nurse and mother (giving the more important function precedence) ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... heretofore, kept himself still less in time with the rhythm and racket of the movements called progress in the world without. For many months after his wife's decease the economy of his household remained as before; the cook, the housemaid, the parlour-maid, and the man out-of-doors performed their duties or left them undone, just as Nature prompted them—the vicar knew not which. It was then represented to him that his servants seemed to have nothing to do in his small family ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... shut her friends into their rooms to perform their toilette, hurried to her sister, to find her so entirely engrossed with her patient as absolutely to have forgotten the dinner party. No wonder! She had had to hunt up a housemaid to make up a bed for Lovedy in a little room within her own, and the undressing and bathing of the poor child had revealed injuries even in a more painful state than those which had been shown to Mr. Grey, shocking ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have at least a couple of nurses to help the poor, distracted mothers with the children, and, of course, there must be a second cook and another housemaid to make things comfortable," they went on. "We must try and think of some nice young girl, too, among our friends, who would give up her time to work with us. We're too old ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the housemaid, as she opened the door. "And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... as fast as he could leg it, an' there if he doesn't go and make his web in a corner of a great big gould pictur' frame. Well, there he sat, the poor fellow, but ne'er a fly at all come next or nigh him, an' by-an'-by in walks the housemaid wid her great big broom, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... was in no wise abnormal, and she galloped on Moses, her black pony, through the Herefordshire lanes, and offered pagan sacrifices to some imaginary Athene, "with a bundle of sticks from the kitchen fire and a match begged from an indulgent housemaid." In a letter to Richard Hengist Home, under date of October 5, 1843, in reply to a request of his for data for a biographical sketch of her for "The New Spirit of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the bunch, Steals pence for self, and beer for Punch. Look at that window, you may trace At every pane a laughing face. Yon graceful Girl and her smart Lover, And in the story just above her, The Housemaid, with her hair in papers, All finding Punch a cure for vapours. E'en the pale Dandy, fresh from France, Throws on the group an eye askance; Twirls his moustache, and seems to fear That some gay friend may catch him here. The Widowed wretch, who only fed, On bitter thoughts and ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... up and off to the kitchen. The hours passed on, and the vision of the night kept constantly recurring to my thoughts. After a while I heard the voices of two women in the entry. In one of them I recognized the housemaid. The other said to her, "Did you know Linda Brent's children was sold to the speculator yesterday. They say ole massa Flint was mighty glad to see 'em drove out of town; but they say they've come back agin. I 'spect it's all their daddy's doings. They say he's bought William ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... as she was, without the ceremony of putting on a bonnet. Though she did wear a mob-cap and a check apron, she looked what she was—a respectable servant in a respectable family; and the Boundaries so regarded her, as she passed through them, letter in hand. Martha, Lady Augusta's housemaid, answered the door, presenting a contrast to Judith. Martha wore a crinoline as big as her lady's, and a starched-out muslin gown over it, with flounces and frillings, for Martha was "dressed" for the day. Her arms, red and large, were displayed beneath her open sleeves, and something that looked ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... made an effort to escape, and was discovered before I had got free of the house. Confined again to my room, I contrived to write to Mary, and to slip my note into the willing hand of the housemaid who attended on me. Useless! The vigilance of my guardian was not to be evaded. The woman was suspected and followed, and the letter was taken from her. My father tore it up with his ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... clergyman, and it will be a help to her to have me at hand until she has settled down. It seemed a waste of good things to leave the house empty through all the lovely autumn months. This poor soul is delighted to come; we are delighted to have her; the cook and housemaid are—resigned to the change of mistress; more one ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were admitted by a housemaid who happened to be busy in the hall, and whose red cheeks and general breathlessness bore witness to the energy of the storm of preparation now sweeping through ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large attics opening into one another, which served as the lair of the Folly lads. There, while struggling, with Jock's assistance, to pull off his boots, Allen explained how he had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the long steps that scale the cliff, and approached the episcopal residence. The bell was plainly visible. He rang, and presently came a tidy little housemaid. He had meditated a form of words. It would be absurd to say "Is the Bishop in?" for he knew the Bishop WAS in. So he said "This is Mr. Gissing. I think the Bishop is ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... The tall housemaid—Rhoda they called her—stared at me as I re-entered, but Mrs Garnett gave me an approving glance; but it was baby who afforded me most satisfaction, for he screwed up his little rosebud of a mouth in the prettiest fashion and said, "Nur, nur," at the same time holding out his arms for ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... the room. That wildly-illuminated and open apartment stood in strange contrast with the rest of the house, where everything was dark, save in Mrs Hadwin's own chamber. The Curate proceeded on his way, after that moment's pause, with hasty and impatient steps. On the way up he encountered Sarah the housemaid, who stopped in the middle of the stairs to make a frightened little curtsy, and utter an alarmed "La!" of recognition and surprise. But Sarah turned round as soon as she had recovered herself, to say that her missis wanted very bad to see Mr Wentworth as soon as he came home; but she was gone ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... returning from a visit, brought a gift to each of her mother's colored servants. It was the "day out" for Lily, the housemaid, so Annette distributed her gifts, reserving ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of the British Army in South Africa has been compared to a housemaid searching for an escape of gas with a ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... served by a nice-looking housemaid and a page-boy, who had their work cut out for them in keeping every one supplied. For these ladies and gentlemen, whatever else may be said of them, had uncommonly ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... whether old John Willet, even then, would have thought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid, who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the old garrets,—shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of rendering their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These two females did afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his consternation ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the house, and I used to take a great dinner-bell to bed with me so that at least I might be able to make a noise if frightened in the night, though what good it would have been I don't know, as there was no one to hear. The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine, and we two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing. She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Paul was downstairs before either Ida or Miss Ludington. He was sitting on the piazza, which was connected with the sitting-room by low windows opening like doors, when he heard a scream, and Ellen, the housemaid, who had been busy in the sitting-room, ran out upon the piazza with a face ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... when her expectations are fulfilled (cats have some secret method of their own for telling time), she purrs approval of our punctuality. What she detests are noise, confusion, people who bustle in and out of rooms, and the unpardonable intrusions of the housemaid. On those unhappy days when I am driven from my desk by the iron determination of this maid to "clean up," my cat is as comfortless as I am. Companions in exile, we wander aimlessly to and fro, lamenting ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... disconcerting. His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs—to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... eyes and rush blindly at the chance of escape from domestic tyranny offered her by a marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the world except her uncle (who was at this time at sea) she went off one morning and was married to him; her only bridesmaid being the housemaid at her aunt's. The consequence was, that Frank and his wife went into lodgings, and Mrs. Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the warm-hearted housemaid; whom they accordingly took into their service. When Captain Wilson returned from his voyage, he was very cordial with the ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... itself that which is purely practical. The easiest and surest why of acquiring facts is to learn them in groups, in systems, and systematized knowledge is science. You can very often carry two facts fastened together more easily than one by itself, as a housemaid can carry two pails of water with a hoop more easily than one without it. You can remember a man's face, made up of many features, better than you can his nose or his mouth or his eye-brow. Scores of proverbs show you that you can remember two lines that rhyme better than one without ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mak' it marie, You t'ink he go leev on beeg flat An' bodder hese'f all de tam, night an' day, Wit' housemaid, an' cook, an' all dat? Not moche, ma dear frien', he tak' de maison, Cos' only nine dollar or ten, W'ere he leev lak blood rooster, an' save de l'argent, Wit' ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... had a bit o' black for my shoes now—with your clothes I could get me a housemaid's job easy," Her muffler covered the fact that she had no shirtwaist. Then she added encouragingly: "You'd better get a job quick. There's only one blanket on these beds and clothes run down using ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... is that between harm and injury, injury being wilful and unjust harm. The housemaid, who in arranging the room has burned your manuscript of "sugared sonnets," has done you no injury, for she meant none, but how vast the harm to the author and to mankind! Harm is visible in the effects: but injury only upon examination of the mind of the agent. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... her for trying to hang herself," said Charley, who saw the housemaid when she threw her out of an upper window, "and I hope she will have better luck ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... life-work consolidated the earl's liking for her. Never, in his memory, had he come across so sensible and charming a girl; and he had looked forward with a singular intensity to meeting her again. And now some too zealous housemaid, tidying up after the irritating manner of her species, had destroyed the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Lucy Barnes that stole sixpennyworth of calico. She is downstairs now. Would you know her if you saw her? She isn't the bright-faced baby she was when they sent her here to 'reform', and when Lieutenant Frere wanted a new housemaid from the Factory! Call for her!—call! do you hear? Ask any one of those beasts whom you lash and chain for Lucy Barnes. He'll tell you all about her—ay, and about many more—many more poor souls that are at the bidding of any drunken brute that has stolen a pound note to fee the Devil with! ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... to his bedroom to fetch his pipe. It was occupied by a housemaid, and he made a polite apology for ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... the house was reduced to that summerset condition usually known in domestic parlance as "upside down." Mr. Verdant Green personally superintended the packing of his goods; a performance which was only effected by the united strength of the establishment. Butler, Footman, Coachman, Lady's-maid, Housemaid, and Buttons were all pressed into the service; and the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... course of time as post-boys. Very good post-boys they were, too, till Hughie took to drinking and wenching and cards and other devil's tricks. Dan'l was always a steady sort: walked with a nice young woman that was under-housemaid up to the old Lord Bellarmine's at Castle Cannick, and was saving up to be married, when Hughie robbed ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though servants were mere machines, but to me they are human beings, and their presence hampers me. I know my guests have not heard the story before, and from one's own flesh and blood one expects a certain amount of sacrifice. But I feel so sorry for the housemaid who is waiting; she must have heard it a dozen times. I really cannot inflict ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the box, proved to be a young woman, in delicate health. On the evening when the prisoner had paid his visit to the lady, she was in that lady's service as housemaid. The day after, she had been permitted (by previous arrangement with her mistress) to take a week's holiday, and to go on a visit to her parents, in the west of Cornwall. While there, she had fallen ill, and had not been strong enough since to return to her employment. Having given this preliminary ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... great lyre's golden echoes rolled away! Forth tripped another claimant of the bay. Trim, tittivated, tintinnabulant, His bosom aped the true Parnassian pant, As may a housemaid's leathern bellows mock The rock—whelmed Titan's breathings. He no shock Of bard-like shagginess shook to the breeze. A modern Cambrian Minstrel hopes to please By undishevelled dandy-daintiness, Whether of lays or locks, of rhymes or dress. Some bards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... old-fashioned sofa had been prepared for Adela, and as soon as she was settled in it, our hostess proceeded to pour out the tea with a simplicity and grace which showed that she had been just as much a lady when carrying parcels for the dressmaker, and would have been a lady if she had been a housemaid. Such a women are rare in every circle, the best of every kind being rare. It is very disappointing to the imaginative youth when, coming up to London and going into society, he finds that so few of the men and women he meets, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... kind; I think the foolish people were possessed, For neither of them could I ever find, Although their porter afterwards confessed— But that's no matter, and the worst's behind, For little Juan o'er me threw, down stairs, A pail of housemaid's water unawares. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Mrs, Embury. Eunice, say nothing more. Leave it to me. And, first, Shane, you haven't enough evidence to arrest this lady. That dropper thing is no positive information against her. It might be the work of the servants—or some intruder. The story of that housemaid is not necessarily law and gospel. Remember, you'd get in pretty bad if you were to arrest Mrs, Sanford Embury falsely! And my influence with your superiors is not entirely negligible. You're doing your duty, all right, but don't overstep your ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... himself on every theme that interests mankind, except perhaps "housemaid's knee." He has written more letters to the newspapers than "Old Subscriber," "Fiat Justitia," "Indignant Reader" and "Veritas" combined. His opinions have carried much weight and directed attention into necessary lines; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... foreboding of ill, made my way down to Holly Lodge as soon as possible. It was with no surprise at all that I heard that the master was missing. In the very first of the morning, it seemed, or ever the earliest under-housemaid had begun to set man-traps on the stairs and along the passages, he must have quietly left the house. The servants were cheerful enough, nevertheless, and thought the master must only have "gone for a nice long walk,'' and so on, after the manner of their kind. Without ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... fate. As they entered the vessel, they felt convinced that a watery death had been substituted for the gibbet. Poor old Heinrich Dirckzoon, ex-burgomaster, pathetically rejected a couple of clean shirts which his careful wife had sent him by the hands of the housemaid. "Take them away; take them home again," said the rueful burgomaster; "I shall never need clean shirts again in this world." He entertained no doubt that it was the intention of his captors to scuttle the vessel as soon as they had put a little out to sea, and so to leave them to their fate. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the weather being very severe, Mischief was taken into the kitchen to live, and a happier dog than he could not be imagined, trotting about after the cook and housemaid from morning until night, chasing the cats, stealing towels and brushes—in fact, attending to all the mischief that came ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... formulas. Now may not all the honours and garters and thistles and O.M.'s and K.C.B.'s and all manner of gaudy sinecures be secure, only because they can't abolish anything? My servants sit at table in a certain order, and Mrs. Page's maid wouldn't yield her precedence to a mere housemaid for any mortal consideration—any more than a royal person of a certain rank would yield to one of a lower rank. A real democracy is as far off as doomsday. So you argue, till you remember that it is these same people who made human liberty possible—to a degree—and till you sit day after ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... in the morning Aaron had gone. Only on the floor were two packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's pockets. He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. The housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone come out of Jim's bedroom. But they had both thought it was Jim himself, for he was an ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... general rule, sir, the two maid-servants, Marie the housemaid and Louise the cook, and also Herve the butler; but Herve did not sleep in the chateau last night. He had asked the mistress's permission to go into the village, and she had given it to him on condition that he did not come ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... mean? She's only a servant. [Crying] I don't understand you, Olga. I've got a nurse, a wet-nurse, we've a cook, a housemaid... what do we want that old woman for as well? What good is ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... agriculturist, whether on a large or small scale; he is muscular and can endure both heat and cold, and so is, at any rate in the tropics, far and away a superior animal to the white labourer, whether for agricultural or mining work, as an artizan, or as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, as a cook, a housemaid or a washerwoman. He can learn any trade that a white man can teach him, from ship-building to watchmaking, and he does not drink and requires scarcely any holidays or Sundays, occasionally only a day to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... and naturally well-disposed toward Jack because he had saved Madge's life. This faithful creature, on the death of her young husband twenty years before, had entered Mrs. Foster's service; she practically managed Stephen Foster's establishment, assisted by a housemaid and by the daily ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... an harmonious note; but one gets accustomed to discord as to most other things. It was not the boom that was strange; it was the loud, unearthly chord it seemed to strike; the dread whiz which followed; which blanched faces, and sent the timid housemaid diving beneath the bed out of harm's way. Was it an earthquake?—the buildings shook. A fearful crash dissipated the notion. A fearful crash, indeed; but a material sound—a relief from its weird, unnerving prelude. Individuals ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... tea; he did everything so daintily, this Disagreeable Man. He put a handkerchief on the table, to serve for an afternoon tea-cloth, and a tiny vase of violets formed the centre-piece. He had no cups, but he polished up two tumblers, and no housemaid could have been more particular, about their glossiness. Then he boiled the water and made the tea. Once she offered to help him; but ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... the things we mention. If so, get the housemaid, or some other person whom he would not suspect, to ask him what he would like best for Christmas, and get that if it is within ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... Batterley, with a warning shake of his big head. "Thoroughly—thoroughly, Mr. Polke! No use just walking through the rooms, and seeing what any housemaid would see—the thing must be done properly. Your lordship," he continued, turning to the Earl, "knows that many houses in our Market-Place possess secret passages, double-staircases, and the like—Horbury's house is certainly one of those that do. It has, of course, been modernized. My memory ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... threw a swift glance over her shoulder, fearing her other guests, who were following, might have heard. "Hush, Jimmy," she said. "It sounds so bad. Never say that again, especially before the servants. The rector's housemaid is sister to my parlour-maid, and it would be sure to get round to him. Of course, I know you have been in wild places where there were no churches, and we understand, but others might not. And all our ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... knowing how it happened, was very rude to them, and gave them notice, a thing she repented of later, and the ladies let her go, noticing something wrong and very dissatisfied with her. Then she got a housemaid's place in a police-officer's house, but stayed there only three months, for the police officer, a man of fifty, began to torment her, and once, when he was in a specially enterprising mood, she fired up, called him "a fool ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... particularly when they take the form of old women). 'But, if you please, you mustn't call me pretty—because I am not. At least,' she added, for she prided herself upon her truthfulness, 'not exactly pretty. And I should hate to be always thinking about my looks, like poor Milly—she's our housemaid, you know—and I so often have to tell her that she did not make her ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the world news so it is with the minor events of ordinary life,—birth, death, marriage, accidents, crime. Let me give an illustration. Suppose that in a suburb of London a housemaid has endeavoured to poison her employer's family by putting a drug in the coffee. Now on our side of the water we should write that little incident up in a way to give it life, and put headings over it that would capture the reader's ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... Miss Crawford's accounts. She remembered so well the column of figures, and the doubtful hieroglyphic which might be an 8, but was quite as likely to be a 3. While she sat gazing at it and weighing probabilities in her mind the housemaid appeared, with an urgent request that she would go to Miss Crawford at once. Obeying the summons, she found the old lady looking at an unopened letter which lay on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... one in abundant measure, the song of the nightingale came in the lulls that occurred in one's busy life. One grew to connect it with coffee out on the lawn in some houses of surpassing comfort, where (years and years ago) one dressed for dinner, and a crinkly housemaid brought hot water to one's room. The song went on above the smug comfort of things, and the amusing conversation, and the smell of good cigars. Within, we saw some pleasant drawing-room, with lamps and a big table set with candles and cards, and we felt that ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... and daughters three, All drove in madcap hurry to the station, In fact, they might have tittered "Seven are we" Had they remembered the superb quotation; But Julia (housemaid) made some lamentation About some best back hair she'd left behind, But all was done to soothe her perturbation Till she became more quietly inclined; This nat'rally destroyed her usual peace ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... Field admitted. "I particularly mentioned the seals, in case any very zealous housemaid, imagining that somebody had been disfiguring the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... moment a young housemaid brings out a tray with a chocolate pot, wafers, and one cup and saucer and a lace-edged napkin. She places the tray on the table, moves a chair to it, looks at the tray thoughtfully, turns, starts toward the house—when GIBSON comes out. He ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... same afternoon, Florence met him with the information that father and mother had both gone out, and Mary the housemaid did not know what time ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... competency by commercial industry, retired from business, and devoted himself, heart and soul, to the cultivation and enjoyment of music. Every member of his little household was by degrees involved more or less in the same occupation, and even the housemaid could in time bear a part in a chorus, or decipher a melody of Schubert. One individual alone in the family seemed to resist this musical entrancement; this was a small spaniel, the sole specimen of the canine race in the mansion. Mr. S—— felt the impossibility ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... meantime Foote's Primitive Puppet-show, entitled the Handsome Housemaid, or Piety on Pattens, had been brought out at the Haymarket on the 15th of February. All the world, fashionable and unfashionable, had crowded to the theater. The street was thronged with equipages—the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... from a walk that evening, the King said, "Hullo, my dear! you have had a new knocker put on the door. Why, it's rather like our porter in the face! What has become of that boozy vagabond?" And the housemaid came and scrubbed his nose with sand-paper; and once, when the Princess Angelica's little sister was born, he was tied up in an old kid-glove; and, another night, some LARKING young men tried to wrench him off, and put him to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Forbes, and so's Jane Bond. Not that they would desert the ship; but there's others that be going to do so. I may mention that four maids and Jackson intend to give notice to-morrow. Ann Maine, the second housemaid, has gone to-night. Her father fetched her. Excuse me mentioning it, but Mrs. Forbes will give you the particulars ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... sat oddly on her small features, which had an air of neat symmetry somehow suggestive of being set in order every morning by the housemaid. Some one (there were rumors that it was her cousin) had once said that Paula Fetherel would have been very pretty if she hadn't looked so like a moral axiom ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... a motive for making friends with Mrs. Attwood," Magdalen went on. "She is a widow, with a large family of daughters. Her daughters are all in service. One of them is an under-housemaid in the service of Admiral Bartram, at St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. I found that out from Mrs. Attwood's master; and as soon as I arrived at the discovery, I privately determined to make Mrs. Attwood's acquaintance. Stranger still, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... clothes are made as princesses wear them, her baby's clothes like a young duke's, her house furnished like a lord's, and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook, scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, housemaid, and lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything in it is too fine,—not too fine to be pretty, not ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... so in no mood to criticise the mastication of others, I am sure that not half so many people would fall into love, nor be able to keep up the passionate illusion when fate had pushed them into it. For to watch people eat is, as a rule, to see them at the same disadvantage as the housemaid sees them when she calls them in the morning. Very few people can eat prettily. The majority "munch" in a most unbecoming fashion. For, say what you will, to eat may possibly be delightful, but it is certainly not a romantic ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... more. You broke that woman's heart. I don't suppose you know that she died last month. You never noticed it, eh? Her precious coachman is living like a lord on the money you and he took from her. Old Burkenday's housemaid has bought a little home in Edgewater—but not from her wages. The two jobs you now have on hand never will be pulled off. The girl in the Banker Watts case has been cornered and has confessed. She is ready to appear against you. McLennan's wife has had ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... are two sitting rooms, opening into a conservatory. There are six bedrooms, a dining-room, bath room, and housemaid's sink. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various |
