"Old lady" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... front of it stood a table with a great pot of flowering musk. The atmosphere was close; with the odour of the plant blended the musty air which comes from old and neglected furniture. Mrs. Grail, Gilbert Grail's mother, was an old lady with an unusual dislike for the upset of household cleaning, and as her son's prejudice, like that of most men, tended in the same direction, this sitting-room, which they used in common, had known little disturbance since they entered it a year and a half ago. Formerly they ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... too had terrified her by the most well-authenticated stories of the disappearance of this and that young man of the neighbourhood. The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary ideas in Yasha did not in the least reassure the old lady. 'For indeed ... if you come to that, he studies photography ... and that's quite enough for them to arrest him!' 'And behold, here was her darling Yasha back again, safe and sound. She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked hollow in the face; natural enough, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... at the gate, but the blue eyes gazed bewildered around. "This isn't the place. Aunt Ruth must have moved away." Well might she think so; the house was neatly painted, the yard fence repaired, and up and down the path all sorts of flowers were blooming. Just then Bessie descried a neatly dressed old lady tying ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... easily afford these luxuries, for thanks to the large sums received for her Life of Sir Richard, the Library Edition, &c., she was now in affluent circumstances. She won to herself and certainly deserved the character of "a dear old lady." In politics she was a "progressive Conservative," though what that meant neither she nor those about her had any clear notion. She dearly loved children—at a safe distance—and gave treats, by proxy, to all the Catholic schools in the neighbourhood. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... said Mr. Parmalee. "I always do the polite thing with your sex. My mother was a woman. She's down in Maine now, and can churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie. Oh! them squash pies of my old lady's require to be eat to be believed in; and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress. Here's the forage. Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... lies!" shouted Bruce, "but—oh, I know, now. There's a little farm in there. It's been vacant for—no, it hasn't, by jingoes! an old lady has been living there all Fall. I've seen her in town. Nanny Haskells, they call her. Cracky! come on, fellows, maybe the poor old soul has been ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... it over reflectively. "There ought to be someone for me," he said. "I am not hard to please. Any good, steady old lady who will give me a bite to eat, not swear at me or wear my clothes or drink while on ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... tired of her and traded her for another woman with the Pawnees, who, in turn, sold her to a Frenchman, a resident of St. Louis. It is said that some of the most respectable families of that city are descended from her, and fifty years ago there were many people living who remembered the old lady, and her pathetic story of trials and ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... 18. How did the old lady make a memorandum, and of what, at whist? Show that there were at least three times as many fiddles as harps in Muggleton at the time of the ball ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... settled in winter-quarters. The house stands about twenty yards back from the street, and is inhabited by two widows. The mother about seventy, and the daughter about fifty. The latter, however, has her home in the country, and comes to town occasionally. The old lady is deaf, and upon my first coming to take possession of my lodgings, she with great civility requested that I would never attempt to speak to her, for fear of injuring my lungs without being able to make her hear. I shall faithfully obey this injunction. The house is remarkably quiet, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... $1000 a year to a fashionable man, in a town like this. First and last, the excellent old lady, gave me about $5000, all of which confirms the idea, that, at the bottom, she intended me for her heir. What woman in her senses, would think of giving $5000 to a relative to whom she did not contemplate giving more? The thing is clear on its face, and I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... gray coat is trying to frighten the old lady and gentleman away from your coach, by telling them it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... discover. Helen I do not now see much. The changes in our life, you see, have been very great. I cannot bear to go to the house now. The associations are too much for me. Besides, Lloyd seems to have taken possession of the whole family. The old lady flatters and fondles him in a manner that makes my gorge rise. It is quite evident she wants him for her son-in-law, and more than evident that ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... The old lady speedily appeared with a huge piece of meat, which was soon roasting on the fire, its savory odor filling the apartment, and rendering our friends half frantic in their starving condition. It was quickly cooked; the Indian severed it into four equal portions with ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... regular critic is busy with a domestic funeral, his grandmother, or step-mother, or something, and it lay between the devil and me to take his place. Strange to say, the Chief chose me; but he was morose enough to say the old lady shouldn't have died, just when all the other papers in town were ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... with brass buttons, and some of them of little girls with mob-caps and mittens, and these little boys and girls were all either dead now, or elderly men and women, for they were the great-aunts and uncles; and over the mantelpiece hung a picture of a lovely old lady, with bright, soft brown hair and smiling eyes and lips, that looked as if they were just going to speak to the two strange little children who had come for their first visit to their mother's old home. Milly knew quite well that it was a picture of great-grandmamma. ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Banbury Cross, To see an old lady upon a white horse; Rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes, And so she ...
— Simple Simon - Silhouette Series • Anonymous
... Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma to come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and begged to be excused. So we stood up and the consul ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... had been in California with her brother since September, and the girls greatly missed the sprightly old lady. It was the first Christmas since they had entered High School that she had not been with them, and they were looking forward with great eagerness to her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Bishopsgate Street, found at her door a handsome sailor-lad begging for food. He had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours, he declared, and when plied with supper and questions by the kind-hearted but inquisitive old lady, he explained that he was an apprentice to the sea, and had run from his ship at Woolwich because of the mate's unduly basting him with a rope's-end. "What! you a 'prentice?" cried the landlady; and turning his face to the light, she subjected ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... five minutes before she recovered the use of her tongue, and that was a long time for her. Lady de la Poer meantime was helping her to dress, as readily as Josephine herself could have done, and brushing out the hair, which was still damp. Kate presently asked where the old lady was. ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conversation, but she was only so far removed as to prevent the necessity of her taking any part in it, or of appearing to hear what it might be awkward for her to hear, considering her intimacy with Sir Robert Percy. She began talking to an old lady about her late illness, of which she longed to hear from her own lips all the particulars; and whilst the old lady told her case, Mrs. Falconer, with eyes fixed upon her, and making, at proper intervals, all the appropriate changes ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... delightful friend, Emily Lawless, the author of Hurrish and Grania, and of some few poems that deserve, I think, a long life in English anthologies. She and her most racy, most entertaining mother, old Lady Cloncurry, were spending the winter at Valescure, and my young daughter and I found them a great resource. Lady Cloncurry, who was a member of an old Galway family, the Kirwans of Castle Hackett, seemed to ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... exhibiting in Boston his portrait of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. It was begun and nearly finished at Newport four or five years ago; but Mr. Elliott has not cared to complete it, for during the interval the "Grand Old Lady" has considerably changed in appearance. She is now more than ninety years old. When the sittings began, Mrs. Howe had just recovered from an illness, and could read or talk only for brief periods. Mostly she sat looking ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... canoe for ourselves, we offered to let him come with us. He was a well-bred young man, speaking one or two languages besides his own; and he presently informed us that he was going on a visit to a rich old lady at Tezcuco, whose name was Dona Maria Lopez, or something of the kind. When we drove away from the other end of the lake, towards Tezcuco, we took him as far as the road leading to the old lady's house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... are a queer sort! At this moment, when you are the most envied man in Paris, you sit here and brood. Perhaps your conscience is troubling you because you have neglected that invitation to drink chicory coffee with the old lady over ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... by-and-by they were taking a short cut through a carriage drive in Owl's Nest Park, as Oscar informed Inna. It was a pretty bowery walk, overarched with beeches and elms in all their autumn glory, and full of the clamour of rooks. Here they met an old lady in a wheel-chair, pushed by a page-boy—such a sweet sad-faced old lady was the occupant of the chair, with shining grey curls peeping out from beneath her black satin hood. She was wrapped in some sort of fur-lined cloak; and by her ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... rang out amidst the old lady's bad temper. Why, indeed, show one's sores to foreigners, whose visit is possibly prompted by hostile curiosity? One always ought to look beautiful; Rome should not be shown otherwise than in the garb ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to college, to fit myself to write poetry, and get rich, and pay the arrears. But Mrs. Hutch cut me short at the mention of college. She broke out with her old reproaches, and worked herself into a worse fury than I had ever witnessed before. I was all alone in the tempest, and a very old lady was sitting on a sofa, drinking tea; and the tidy on the back of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the more to gain her confidence. . . . However, this was a business transaction. He did not seize upon Mrs. Hardy's remark that the house seemed perfectly satisfactory; on the contrary, he insisted on showing other houses, which he quoted at such impossible figures that presently the old lady was in a feverish haste to make a deposit lest some other buyer should ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the place now 'Lil Culver's ranch.' She is held in a good deal of affection by the sportsmen who have come there from all over the country. She is now a little bit of an old lady, sprightly as a cricket, and very bright and well educated. She was from New England, once, and came away out here. She's a fine botanist and she used to have books and a lot of things. Lives there all alone in a little three-room log house right by the big spring. And she's the first woman ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... replied the marquis, "you must be already aware of the situation in which I find myself; you must know that, hurried away by a blind and ardent passion, I have betrayed the confidence of an old lady and violated the laws of hospitality by seducing her daughter in her own house; that matters have come to a crisis, and that this noble damsel, whom I Love to distraction, being pregnant, is on the point of losing her life and honour ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anything against Boston; and with such friends as the Percivals too. But it does seem mean that Mr. Green, if he really liked me, should decline speaking to me because my great-grandmother had a dark complexion. I never knew the old lady, though I dare say I should love her if I did know her. Madame used to say Rosabella inherited pride from our Spanish grandfather. I think I have some of it, too; and it makes me shy of being introduced to your stylish acquaintance, who might blame you if ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... crowd which by this time had collected, 'here is a policeman at last,' and at the same moment I felt Mr. Parsons' grasp relax. Pushing his way through the throng, he stepped into the middle of the road, stopped a passing hansom, entered it and was driven off. While the old lady intercepted the policeman, I seized the opportunity to get away, turning my steps towards Hyde Park, where I ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... of scrutinising his aunt, which he did as she poured out tea, he saw a very charming old lady, who was not exactly handsome, but was fresh-coloured and silvery-haired, and had a look of the most entire tranquillity and self-possession. She looked as if she had met and faced trouble at some bygone time; there were traces of sorrow about the brow and eyes, but it was a face ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out of the little rivulet once more into terra firma, "this won't do: I must find a shelter somewhere. Dear, dear, how the wet runs down me! I am for all the world like the famous dripping well in Derbyshire. What a beast of an umbrella! I'll never buy one again of an old lady: hang me ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to act as 'band.' Then she taught a small group of us to act 'Villikens and his Dinah,' which she read aloud behind the scenes, and 'Bluebeard,' made into a little play. My paternal grandmother, a straight-backed, severe looking old lady, was then visiting us. How my mother managed it I don't know, but Grandma, who abhorred theatricals, was soon reading 'Villikens' for us to practice, and she even consented to appear as one of Bluebeard's ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... you pretty near everything you want to know, I guess," replied the old lady. She had the drawl and twang and accent of rural New England. "I guess you've come here, like myself, jest to see the folks. A few here, like you and me, ar'n't in official life, but the most are, I guess. Nearly all the Cabinet ladies are here to- day and a good many Senators' ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Donegal," might have been quoted. "Irishmen," said the great draper, "will not wear Donegal tweed. But for England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not "part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "How much are you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary offerings of their constituencies, the trade would expire ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... shoulder to see. Another time it was a sprightly little, grizzled old woman, staring into a dazzling shop window in which was displayed a wonderful collection of fashionably impossible hats and gowns. She was dressed all in rusty black, was the little old lady, and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave her the oddest, most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black bonnet trembled with ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... office in a melancholy mood, for quarter day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children were growing out of their clothes. He had not proceeded far, when Mr Pickles's errand-boy came running after him, and said, "Sir, you didn't notice the old lady in our shop." ...
— The Magic Fishbone - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird, Aged 7 • Charles Dickens
... and afterwards at Brighton were among our youthful resorts; and my aunt remains in my memory as a gentle, kindly old lady, much afflicted by deafness. Mr. Garratt died in 1858, aged 77, and his wife at the same ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Lady Bellair was a great matchmaker. When, therefore, she was welcomed by the fair mistress of Ducie Bower, Lady Bellair was as genuine as she was profuse in her kind phrases. 'My sweet, sweet young friend,' she said, as Henrietta bowed her head and offered her lips to the little old lady, 'it is something to have such a friend as you. What old woman has such a sweet friend as I have! Now let me look at you. It does my heart good to see you. I feel younger. You are handsomer than ever, I declare you are. Why will you not come and stay with me, and let me ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... year 1856 or 1857 my grandmother took me to Rydal Mount, and that I can vividly recollect sitting on a footstool at Mrs. Wordsworth's feet. I see still the little room, with its plain furniture, the chair beside the fire, and the old lady in it. I can still recall the childish feeling that this was no common visit, and the house no common house—that a presence still haunted it. Instinctively the childish mind said to itself, "Remember!"—and ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old lady, with a quiet smile, "where can your wits be wandering? Our guest, to say the least of him, must belong to a Christian country; and how is it possible, then, that so well-bred a young man as he appears to be could dream of driving old people from their chairs? Take a seat, ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... there. How I wished it at Jericho. The old lady again repeated her thanks in the warmest manner, and I assisted her and her charming niece into the equipage. The young lady waved her hand and smiled, the powdered footman closed the door, and they drove off, leaving me spell-bound, rooted to the ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the tunnel, like a lighted thread going through a needle. It rumbled up to the station. There was a rattling of milk cans, empty ones being put on, full cans being put off, grumbling of Pat at the train hands, loud retorts of the train hands, the engine puffed and wheezed like a fat old lady going upstairs and stopping on every landing to rest. Then slamming of car doors, a whistle, the snort of the engine as it took up its way again out toward the rosy sky, its headlight weird like a sick candle against the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Harker went down to the Devonshire village, and introduced himself to George Jernam's aunt. The old lady was much altered since she had last welcomed a visitor to her pretty, cheerful cottage, and had listened with simple surprise and pleasure to her nephew Valentine's tales of the sea, and they had talked together ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... wonder if it will take Captain Heartsease four years to propose to me. Before he left Washington, nearly two years ago, he told everybody in the circle of my acquaintance, except me, that he was in love with me. I'll be an old lady in caps before our engagement commences. Poor, dear mother! The idea of a girl's waiting four years for a chance to say "Yes." It's been on the tip of my tongue so often, I'm afraid it'll pop out, at last, before he ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... dirty after digging up borders to go indoors, and was most relieved that they didn't invite her. She had a tray full of all sorts of things in the greenhouse—cakes and jam and potted meat. The old lady asked her ever so many questions, and it turned out that they knew some mutual ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... fashion of elderly spinsters, which to my mind might be gracefully resumed. It irked my father to think of the good lady's solitary Christmas at Bath, and he asked her to come to us. She travelled half-way in a post- chaise, and then was met by the carriage. A very nice old lady she was, with a meek, delicate babyish face, which could not be spoilt by the cap of the period, one of the most disfiguring articles of head gear ever devised, though nobody thought so then. She was full of kindness; ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the fair sex I was exceedingly shy, and my feelings were sometimes painful when I had to run the gauntlet through rows of well-dressed women, some looking as demure as a noddy at the masthead. I was now in my twenty-third year, and an agreeable—nay, an old lady, whose word was considered sacred—declared I was a charming young man. My life passed as monotonously as that of a clock in an old maid's sitting-room. My habits were too active to remain long in this state of listlessness. I was almost idle enough to ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... out. That's repartee, that is. With the accent on the rap, too. Never you mind; I think old 1812 and I will get on all right after this. It doesn't seem to bother him any, so I don't see why it should worry me. Nice motherly old lady, isn't she?" ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... liberty of reading into her words, that from the point of view of her marriage and also of her eagerness, which was quite a match for mine, this was a solution more prompt than could have been expected and more radical than waiting for the old lady to swallow the dose. I candidly admit indeed that at the time—for I heard from her repeatedly—I read some singular things into Gwendolen's words and some still more extraordinary ones into her silences. Pen in hand, ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... home, and only come back now and then to make sure that we are glad of having done so. In the lamp-broken obscurity of the second-class carriage I am aware still of a youthful exile being asked his destination, and then his derivation, by a gentle old lady in the seat opposite (she might have been Mother England in person), who, hearing that he was from America where the civil war was then very unpromising, could only say, comfortingly: "And very glad to be out of it, I dare say!" He must protest, but if he failed to convince, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Instead he said pleasantly, "Of course she's not, Mr. Bright. You may be sure I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't know it was in every way desirable. Mrs. Perch is a very old friend of mine and a very simple and kind old lady. There'll be only herself for Effie to meet. And she'll make ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... eye everywhere else, scanned it closely. What a curious paper-knife! he thought, and slyly tucked it back of a pile of plates. This must be kept track of; it may prove a veritable prize. But all his care went for naught. A curious old lady at his elbow had seen every action. 'What is it?' she asked, and the wooden wonder was brought to light. 'It's an old-fashioned wooden butter knife. I've seen 'em 'afore this. Don't you know in old times it wasn't everybody ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... but not bed-fast. Two of the pictures, that of an old bachelor and a Scotch lassie, a servant, were very good indeed. We also saw a picture of an old woman, a local celebrity, about a hundred years old, which was considered to be an excellent likeness, and showed the old lady's eyes so sunk in her head as to be scarcely visible. We considered that we had here found one of Nature's artists, who would probably have made a name for himself if given the advantages so many have who lack the ability, for he certainly possessed both the imaginative faculty and no small degree ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... an attorney, and I have heard very old people refer to him as "Lawyer Redin," and speak of the green baize bag which he always carried back and forth to his office, the forerunner of the present-day brief case, and I know an old lady who can remember him in his pew in Christ Church. He had five daughters and one son. The young man, Richard Wright Redin, soon after his graduation from Princeton, fell a victim to cholera, that terrible disease brought to George Town in its ships. It also carried ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... glad to see his "little misses" again, and to find them so glad to go home. Mrs. Worrett, however, did not discover that they were glad; no indeed! Elsie and John were much too polite for that. They thanked the old lady, and said good-by so prettily that, after they were gone, she told Mr. Worrett that it hadn't been a bit of trouble having them there, and she hoped they would come again; they enjoyed every thing so much; only it was a pity that Elsie looked so peaked. And at that very moment Elsie was sitting ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... curbs, that made the Quaker Hill man and the Quaker Hill sentiment what they are. And having done its work this code at the last tended to weaken the Meeting, as it had strengthened the public conscience. In talking recently with a sweet old lady past eighty, I asked her, "Did you ever hear anyone disowned in meeting?" "No," she never had, and "doubted if there had been many." Later, her daughter said, "Why, Grandmother, you married out of meeting yourself!" ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... mother and brother; as Cortes summoned all the neighbouring caciques to meet him at Coatzacualco, among whom they came, as they now governed their territory conjunctly, the second husband being dead. On seeing Donna Marina, the old lady and her son cried bitterly, being afraid of being put to death; but Marina assured them of her forgiveness, saying that she thanked GOD their intended injury had been the means of drawing her from the worship of idols to the true faith, and was happier in having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... me more than I can tell. This kind old lady, now eighty-two, had faith in me and feels that her faith was justified. Now, then, can I believe that life is meaningless,—that there is no plan, and that all man's efforts are foredoomed ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the Sabbath, and the last rays of the setting sun streamed through the branches of the trees that surrounded the spring, and tinged its waters with a rosy light. There sat the old lady, ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... colliery owners have risen from the workmen, and have (in some cases at least) retained their old manners and even their old dress. The other day Mrs. White, Horton's mother-in-law, had a violent sick headache, and, as we are all very fond of the kind old lady, we were trying to keep things as quiet as possible down-stairs. Suddenly there came a bang! bang! bang! at the knocker; and then in an instant another rattling series of knocks, as if a tethered donkey were trying to kick in the panel. After all our efforts for silence it was exasperating. I ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... not see that that affects the truth of the proposition,' said the old lady drily, and continued her narrative. 'The Jew who held the emerald had had many dealings with the Princess, and at last was offered a bribe of such magnitude, that he determined to give up the pledge. He committed the inconceivable ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had a visit from a very different sort of guest. That was an old lady—about a hundred and fifty, I used to fancy her— dressed in velvet full as costly, but how differently she wore it! She never took us on her lap—not she, indeed! We used to have to kneel and kiss her hand—and ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... those Cambridge men who remember him as an undergraduate remember him as serious, but full of high animal spirits and sense of fun; while everyone speaks of his charm and gaiety. "We were all in love with him," says one vivacious old lady, who belonged to the circle of connections and relatives that frequented 76, Sloane Street. But the letters of his early days at Cambridge hardly show that 'happiness of manner' which his grandfather attributed ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... granddaughters, Josephine, and Veronique. Veronique, having been pushed by Josephine, stumbled against Mr. Brand's knee, and would inevitably have fallen into the fireplace had he not caught her. Thereupon the little old lady, hurrying across the room, and looking very much inclined to box the ears of both Josephine and Veronique, most profusely apologized, in French, to monsieur. Monsieur replying in that tongue, said it was of no consequence whatever. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... old lady who could not bear to be told of deaths. 'Psha! Pshaw!' she would exclaim. 'Bring me no tales of funerals! Talk of births and of those who are likely to be blest with them! These are the joys which gladden old hearts and fill youthful ones with ecstasy! It is our own reproduction in children ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... broadly in obvious delight. "The old lady died in her sleep," she said, "and was found this morning dead in her bed. I was in here only yesterday, and she said—" I turned abruptly and went out again. All those gloating women, hovering round the poor body that was clothed ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Monday, were the dutchess of Douglas, an old lady, who talks broad Scotch with a paralytick voice, and is scarcely understood by her own countrymen; the lord chief baron, sir Adolphus Oughton, and many more. At supper there was such a conflux of company, that I could scarcely support the tumult. I have never been ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in earning a precarious livelihood ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Kearney, when the high price of her butter was complained of by the governor, stopped the supply. Mrs. Macquarie, curious to see this independent milk-seller, paid her a visit: when she entered, the old lady received her very graciously, and asked after the health of the Governor, and added, "how is the young Prince?" The story goes, that she received a valuable grant of land for this well-timed compliment. A bullock driver, who attended Mrs. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... "Old lady don't half like it," chuckled Stuart pere. "And no wonder, by George! If it was Charley I shouldn't like it myself. I must speak to Charley after dinner—there's this Lady Gwendoline. He's got to marry the upper-crust too. Lady Gwendoline Stuart wouldn't sound bad, by George! I'm ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... named Eggleston. I hear they sculp and paint for a living. Good-day, miss. I won't forget to tell the old lady you called." ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... college stamped on the binding, and near by was the faded photograph of a beautiful old Elizabethan house, with mouldering garden walls, and a moat brimming with water-lilies surrounding it. Hanging close by it, was another faded photograph, of a tall stately old lady, who, at a glance, I surmised must be the "King's" mother. As I looked at it, my eyes involuntarily sought the garden with its palms and its orange trees. Far indeed had the son of her heart wandered, like so many sons of stately English mothers, from that lilied moat and those ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... too dear. Such a one never contradicts you, but gains upon you, not by a fulsome way of commending you in broad terms, but liking whatever you propose or utter; at the same time is ready to beg your pardon, and gainsay you if you chance to speak ill of yourself. An old lady is very seldom without such a companion as this, who can recite the names of all her lovers, and the matches refused by her in the days when she minded such vanities—as she is pleased to call them, tho she so much approves the mention of them. It is to be noted, that a woman's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... cup of coffee the other day in the house of an old lady whose husband had been called out two years ago, a few days after the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands, and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They—well, they're sort of holy from now ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... his hat to the old lady, and she said, pointing to the castle, "Boy, that castle belongs to you. A wicked giant killed your father, and took it from your mother; try and win it back from the monster who now has it." As she ceased speaking she suddenly disappeared, ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... said she quickly, "to a room I've taken with a dear old lady in a funny little house among the trees. It's cheaper for me while I wait to file. I'll ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... forty-seven sang before Frederick the Great, who was charmed with the freshness of her voice. The couple lived until 1783, the one eighty-three, the other eighty-four years of age. Dr. Burney visited them when they were advanced in the seventies and found Faustina a sprightly, sensible old lady, with a delightful store of reminiscences, and her husband a communicative, rational old gentleman, quite free ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... of The Lawn (JENKINS) has "the ornament of alliteration," but beyond that there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why Mr. W. RILEY should have chosen it. Certainly in his story there is an old lady who spends more of the winter on a lawn than any old lady of my acquaintance could be induced to, even with rugs and a summer-house to make up for the comforts of the fireside; but Miss Barbara and her site really have not so much to do with the tale as its title seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... Armour,' to delight in this beautiful little interior of a Dutch house by Peter de Hoogh. Still you see the prepossession for light, but for more tempered rays and softer shadows. The sunshine is diffused by the yellow curtains throughout the room. The old lady need not fear its revelations, to be sure, for it is Holland—she knows that the whole house has been duly scrubbed with soap and water. Dust and dirt are banished. It is a cloudless day and dry under foot, otherwise the little ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... stepped up on the stoop they saw an old lady sitting in a rocking-chair, with a little table beside her, and some knitting in her lap. She had evidently fallen into a doze. Hanny stretched up on tiptoe. A great gray cat lay asleep also. There were some mats laid about the floor, two very old arm-chairs with fine ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... now felt the strength of that support which, from unreflecting fear rather than any reasonable motive, she had thrust aside! She looked around her, almost hoping to see him. But there was no one there ... no one except an old lady in black, standing beside ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... the dimmest recollection of the placid-faced lady who had died whilst he was at school; he had never associated in his mind this serene old lady, who had passed away only a few hours before her beloved husband, with the Annie for whom he had searched. It made him gasp—then he came to earth quickly as he realized that his success had come with the knowledge of his wife's financial ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the old lady, mightily pleased nevertheless. "I am old enough to have nursed your grandmother. And now can I do ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... a big, quiet, old-fashioned house where Grandmother Laurance and Mrs. DeLisle, my Aunt Winnifred, lived. I was a favourite with them, yet I could never overcome a certain awe of them both. Grandmother was a tall, dignified old lady with keen black eyes that seemed veritably to bore through one. She always wore stiffly-rustling gowns of rich silk made in the fashion of her youth. I suppose she must have changed her dress occasionally, but the impression on my mind was always the same, as she went trailing ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of literature, music, and pictures, and learned much that was worth knowing. But I came away unsatisfied, and rather dazed. On my way back—it was a singularly warm, clear evening in February—I turned in to see an old lady who lives near me. She was sitting wrapped up at her wide-open window, looking at the light that was still left in the south-west. I said, of course, that I hoped she would not take cold. 'Oh no,' ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... the windows are only used to admit light except one that is used to look out of and is inhabited by an old lady who sits all day and knits for her grandchildren. It must not be so bad, I think, to look out of the window upon life instead of always rushing off to catch a car that takes one into the ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... degree of insulation which is unbecoming a member of the human family. It may become brutish,—or it may amount to the ridiculous. In Paris, there was an old lady, of uncertain age, who lived in the apartment beneath mine. I think I never saw her but twice. She manifested her existence sometimes by complaining of the romping of the children overhead, who called her the "bonne femme." Why ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Madge Scarlet. I tell you, thirty thousand dollars ain't to be sneezed at, and I do need money—but of course I don't know a thing about who did it, of course not; but I can tell you one thing, old lady, Dyke Barrel is on the trail, and he is even ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... bearing with a bear to do it!" responded Mrs. Gratacap. "I don't mind it on my own account,—I am accustomed to all sorts of queer folks, but I suspected the old lady was up to something that would worry the poor dear, and, to be ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... on a man; yes, you do—ever so slightly. I noticed it when we were dancing together yesterday. And you dance standing up straight instead of bending over a little. Probably some old lady on the side-line once told you that you looked so dignified that way. But except with a very small girl it's much harder on the man, and he's the one ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... altogether account for her mental development at seventeen. Not without misgivings had the health-broken gardener and his wife consented to May's pursuit of the higher learning; but Sir Henry and the kind old Lady Shale seemed to think it the safer course, and evidently there was little chance of the girl's accepting any humble kind of employment: in one way or another she must depend for a livelihood upon her brains. At the time ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... at the shabby figure walking slowly on the path beside the road. They criticise the shabby shawl; they sneer at the slow step which is the inevitable result of hard work, the cares of maternity, and of age. So they flaunt past with an odour of perfume, and leave the 'old lady' to plod unrecognised. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... manners, the tone of my voice, my respectful but dignified politeness—which in no way resembled Mad. Taverneau's servile and obsequious eagerness to please, her humble deference being that of an inferior to a superior, whilst mine was nothing more than that due to an old lady from a young one—by these shades insignificant to the generality of people, but all revealing to an experienced eye, Mad. de Meilhan at once divined everything, that is to say, that I was her equal in rank, education and nobility ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... for this extraordinary prize?" she cried. "I'm sure that you could easily devise something which would gain the old lady's legacy." ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... long in these early childish stages, we went on the train, as it seemed to me, a long way across fields to Aunt Emma's. I didn't know she was Aunt Emma then for, indeed, I had never seen her before; but I remember arriving there at her pretty little cottage, and seeing a sweet old lady—barely sixty, I should say, but with smooth white hair,—who stood on the steps of the house and cried like a child, and held out her hands to me, and hugged me and kissed me. And it was there that I learned my first word. A great ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... stone," and of various shapes and sizes. Their original purpose is unknown. The perforation, or cup not perforated, is sometimes in the centre, in a few cases in "near the end." Mr. Graham Callander heard of a recent old lady in Roxburghshire, who kept one of these stones, of irregularly circular shape, behind the door for luck. {88} "It was always spoken of as a charm," though its ancient maker may have intended it for some ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... down in the chair, and commenced repeating verses of Huw Morus. All which I did in the presence of the stout old lady, the short, buxom, and bare-armed damsel, and of John Jones, the Calvinistic weaver of Llangollen, all of whom listened patiently and approvingly though the rain was pouring down upon them, and the branches of the trees and the tops of the tall nettles, agitated by the gusts ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... term "old woman" or "old lady." The latter has a pretty sound. We see the soft white curls, so like floss silk, the delicate white camel's-hair shawl, the soft lace and appropriate black satin gown, the pretty old-fashioned manner, and we see that this is a real lady. She may have ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... I'm glad to hear it. I was sorry when the other girl went. It always looked to me like Enid had her face set for China, but I haven't seen her for a good while,—not since before she went off to Michigan with the old lady." ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... for the summer; the owner, a very fat old lady, lived in the lodge, I in the great house; her husband was dead and so were all her children, she was left alone, very fat, the estate sold for debt, her furniture old and in good taste; all day long she reads letters which her husband and son had written to her. ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... proclaims that, if the body is slouching, the mind will slouch; but that, if the body is alert, the mind will be equally so. Another college student always walked to and fro in his room when preparing his history lesson. A fine old lady, in a work of fiction, explained her mental acumen by the single statement, "I never slouch." Every person must have observed many exemplifications of this theory in his own experience even if he has not reduced ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... because we are by no means so unintelligent in the matter of old women. There are some capital old women, it seems to me, in books written by men. And Raeburn has some, such as Mrs. Colin Campbell, of Park, or the anonymous "Old lady with a large cap," which are done in the same frank, perspicacious spirit as the very best of his men. He could look into their eyes without trouble; and he was not withheld, by any bashful sentimentalism, from recognising what he saw there and unsparingly ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mrs. Leigh to the shop. Heretofore her opposition had been consistently maintained; but now, early one morning, she walked in, a picture of an old lady, with a close-fitting bonnet over her silvery puffs, a black silk circular lined with gray squirrel, and an old-fashioned ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... by an old lady in gray satin and diamonds, who had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen gray eyes that seemed to take in everything they saw, with very little inclination to give much in return. But I did not notice the chaperon. I saw only the face that had haunted me for months, and in the excitement of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... I told the old lady who rented me my room that I could not pay her until I got work, and I gave her my blankets as security. There remained only the problem of food. This I solved by buying every day or so five cents' worth of stale bread, which I ate in my room, washing it down with pure spring water. A ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... well he might; And long as I can stir I'll dog him.—Yesterday, To serve me so, and knowing that he owes The best of all he has to me and mine. But 'tis all over now.—That good old Lady Has left a power of riches; and I say it, If there's a lawyer in the land, the knave ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... "Old Lady Lloyd" was rich and mean and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and two-thirds wrong. Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in reality she was pitifully poor—so poor that "Crooked Jack" Spencer, who dug her garden and chopped her wood for her, was opulent by contrast, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, "these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital—the bark has, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... reasoned the fine old lady, holding up the stocking by its handle to see how much longer it must be to reach the wearer's waist. "I'm afraid you're ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... saw, the girl bore the operation most stoically, until about two-thirds over, when she could stand it no longer, but screaming out in agony, applied her teeth and nails with such good effect to the thighs of the old lady who held her down, that the latter was compelled to release her grasp, and the poor girl got up, vowing she would not have another incision made. Of course all resistance would have been futile, or probably have only brought down a fearful chastisement upon her ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even "Fort Comme la Mort." To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie" relates the entire life history of a woman. I settled in the privacy of my own head that my book about the development of a young girl into a stout old lady must be the English "Une Vie." I have been accused of every fault except a lack of self-confidence, and in a few weeks I settled a further point, namely, that my book must "go one better" than "Une Vie," and that to this end it must be the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... had left in command, remained helpless in London. His boldest act was to send a force to Lincoln, which occupied the town, but failed to take the castle. This stronghold, under its hereditary warden, the valiant old lady, Nichola de Camville,[1] had already twice ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Julia Eliot!" said old Lady Hibbert, holding out both her hands. "And Mr. Salvin. What is going to happen to us, Mr. Salvin? With all my experience of English politics—My dear, I was thinking of your father last night—one of my oldest friends, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... How could she help it? The old lady had told every man, woman, and child who sat upon the piazza, how much she had suffered in the loss ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... ceased his raking of the glowing fire and every traveller sprang into his seat and looked toward the crowd of spectators importantly. This was a great moment for all interested. The little ones whose fathers were in the train began to call good-bye and wave their hands, and one old lady whose only son was going as one of the train assistants ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... I began, but her smile stopped me. It was as if she were amused at the utterances of an old lady shocked by the habits of the daughters of the day. It was the smile of a person who is confident of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... fierce old lady swept to the door, holding the culprit with her eyes. Harding, too, stepped up to Letty, who was standing now by the mantelpiece, with her back to the room. He took the hand hanging by her side, and folded it ostentatiously in ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to you, my dearest Franz; with Mamma I get on very well. The old lady quite touches me by her love and sympathetic insight. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... sunny cellar steps sits Mrs. Jerry Dustin, sorting onion sets and seed potatoes. She is a little, rounded old lady with silvery hair, the softest, smoothest, fairest of complexions, forget-me-not eyes and a smile that is as gladdening as a golden daffodil. Few people know that she has in her heart a longing to see the world, a longing so intense, a life-long wanderlust so great that had she been a man ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds |
