"Tittering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caused a diversion. We hailed it. We were in the humor to hail anything. The domestic hearth was most trying. We were bored to death. I sprang up and ran to the door, a little pastime to which I was growing accustomed. Three tittering young women, each wearing a hat in which roses, violets, poppies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, feathers and ribbons ran ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... year to-day, Christian brothers and sisters," said Mr. Thompson, with grim deliberation,—"one year to-day since my son came home from eating of wine-husks and spending of his substance on harlots." (The tittering suddenly ceased.) "Look at him now. Char-les Thompson, stand up." (Charles Thompson stood up.) "One year ago to-day,—and look ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and wise. —Charm'd at her touch the opening wall divides, And rocks of crystal form the polish'd sides; Through the bright arch the Loves and Graces tread, Innocuous thunders murmuring o'er their head; 60 Pair after pair, and tittering, as they pass, View their fair features in the walls of glass; Leave with impatient step the circling bourn, And hear behind the closing ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the Missing Link with her gamp. He gave no sign. She kicked him. He bore it meekly, crouching lower. There was some tittering in ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... her hand upon his arm she goes out to meet his visitors. They have come to crown the feast, and signalize the anniversary, by bringing their congratulations to the proprietor, and the beautiful lady who presides over his house. There is a great deal of awkwardness among the young men, and tittering and blushing among the young women, with side play of jest and coquetry, as they form themselves in a line, preparatory to something formal, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... mist. The First Gunkus, remembering how she had loved the mountain, brought her a little live Laugh. He had climbed the mountain and trapped it for her, and made her a little cage to take it home with. It was very funny to hear it tittering about inside. The rest of the Gunki had clubbed together and bought her a gold-headed tuning-fork, so that she might be sure their answers were in tune. The Snimmy's wife brought her three large onions, neatly hemmed and tied in a bouquet ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... head with all his native modesty, but the more open Sholto grew red in the face, hearing behind him the tittering and shoulder-shaking of the priests and lay servants in the Abbot's train, and being sure that they would inform their master as soon as he passed on concerning the true import of Master Laurence's song. He ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... notice the tittering of the pupils, he pointed to a seat by his side, and commenced what I considered a very formidable examination, with the view of eliciting the extent of my acquaintance with the writers of antiquity, which proved to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... hands we advanced on tiptoe trembling with expectation, our sticks grasped, and every now and then the pendent branches of some tree rustling in and sweeping our faces. And all the time, just in front, we could hear the hurried shaking of boughs, the fall of the pears, and tittering and whispering as the party seemed to be picking up ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... announced," said H. relating to this writer his first interview, "Jemmy Whiteley surveyed me from head to foot with a grinning drollery, that no words can describe; he spat out, according to custom, about a score of times, and after a tittering laugh was proceeding to speak, when he was suddenly called off." "Stay here," said he, "I'll be back in a minute or two." As he was leaving the room he stopped at the door—looked back at me again—pulled up his small clothes, and jeeringly tittered ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... playfulness was succeeded by equally sudden and grotesque bashfulness; now an eager intrepidity of wild enthusiasm, defying all decorum, and then a sour, severe reserve, full of angry and terrified suspicion of imaginary improprieties. Tittering shyness, all giggle-goggle and blush; stony and stolid stupidity, impenetrable to a ray of perception; awkward, angular postures and gestures, and jerking saltatory motions; Brobdingnag strides and straddles, and kittenish frolics and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... scarcely out of college, and the pretty girls in his school swayed his impressionable nature into many side issues, even when his mind was set upon the main track. Soon Jerome found himself of an evening in the midst of a class of tittering girls, who also had been fired with zeal for improvement and classical learning, who conjugated amo with foolish blushes and glances of sugared sweetness at himself and the teacher. Then ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... afraid of those words and that tune. At a mass-meeting, while in the midst of a voluble harangue, somebody in the back of the hall punctuated—an absurd statement, which otherwise might have passed unnoticed, by whistling the first bar of the song. Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... What could be thought of the sincerity of theologians who had never been weary of railing at Popery when Popery was comparatively harmless and helpless, and who now, when a time of real danger to the reformed faith had arrived, studiously avoided tittering one word which could give offence to a Jesuit? Their conduct was indeed easily explained. It was known that some of them had obtained pardons. It was suspected that others had obtained money. Their prototype might be found in that weak apostle who from fear denied the Master to whom ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a general tittering, accompanied with exclamations of "Lord, what a fright!" "It's enough to kill one with laughing to look at him!" "Did you ever see such a horrid creature in your life?" And soon after, one of them screamed out "O Lord, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to use the school moved the youngsters to tittering and made the little Scotchman squirm, for he ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She couldn't find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often been tittering when she "curcheyed" to Mr. Irwine; and these religious deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class of feminine characters with whom you may venture to "eat an egg, an ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... puts in a penny, blushing and tittering; a faint musical tinkle is heard from the case, and the little fairies begin to revolve in a solemn and mystic fashion; growing excitement of crowd. A pasteboard bower falls aside, revealing a small disc on which a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... tittering. One young man burst into a guffaw. Madame Zattiany was calmly eating her dinner. The tirade might have ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... passed by, stuck his thumbs into the corners of his vest, and humming a tune, and holding his head high, as if he were in the best of humours, strolled from one end of the large assembly room to the other, feigning ignorance of the fact that the whispering and tittering that resounded on every side was so much scorn and ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to the tragedy of a sheep's death by dropping the yellow opera cloak. While he was stooping to pick it up the violet velvet gown slid backward and Virginia had to steady it until he could regain position. The staring in the corner gave way to tittering—and no dying sheep had ever held its ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking with one of the housemaids ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... she jumps on his knee like a kitten ... a little white one ... and the pan-father and pan-mother look on and allow it.... They allow it ... and next day the Uhlan comes and offers her his hand.... That's how it is ... offers her his hand, he he!" Maximov ended, tittering. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... commands of the Queen, and as if the other were reluctant to speak for fear of being unable to command her laughter and that of her companions; for Sir Kenneth could only distinguish a sound as of suppressed tittering and merriment. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... revolutionnaire," answered the other cousin, tittering. Then he noticed that Mme. Rod was smiling at him. He ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... hen-party," he muttered to himself. "I'll get out of this—it's no place for a man—Lord deliver me from a mob like this, with their crazy tittering. There ought to be a way to stop these things. It's ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... tittering of the audience was making him angry. He held his eyes on Westby, who made a slow, grunting progress up three rungs and ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... and ran, but the missile had struck him under the chin, and his immaculate person was bespattered from shirt-collar to mouse-coloured spats with violet copying-ink. In this deplorable state he was forced to pass through the streets, a spectacle for tittering shop-girls and laughing tradesmen, that he might gain the seclusion of his single room, which lay somewhere in the back premises of the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... he in the perfumery business?" I asked innocently, my eyes ranging over the heterogeneous collection on the mantel. Henrietta took the remark as exceedingly funny, for she immediately fell into a paroxysm of tittering, choking over a mouthful of food before she could attain gravity ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... pulling the other ladies by their skirts, and amusing them with mimicry of the venerable coquettes before mentioned; so that while etiquette and ceremony were parading their ugliness in front of the throne, behind it, youth and beauty were tittering and enjoying the absurd pageant in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... endeavouring to hide his confusion as much and as ineffectually as the audience attempted to conceal their half-suppressed tittering, by coughing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Tittering came from the sides now, also some applause. The spectators had just begun to understand that Dick Prescott was ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... closed on the women, each of whom in her turn felt our pricks. One felt mine as if she meant to pull it off. On the second feeling, we got somehow mixed, a slight tittering of women began, some one hished, and the tittering ceased. Two hands touched me at the same time, but one withdrew directly she touched the other's hand. A card was put into my hand, afterwards another card touched me, and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... answer. I heard giggling and tittering breaking out all around the room, like rash on a baby with ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... his queer clothes, and reputation as a character, drew others toward him. He lilted heavily across the Paddock with a word to one, a nod to another, a wink for a third, talking all the time and breathing like a grampus, with a little crowd of tittering nondescripts swirling in his wake and ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... their faces for some time. But he was too good a politician to put much value on those human documents upraised to him. There were grins, subtle or humorous. There were a few scowls. One or two, tittering while they did it, urged the "War Eagle" on to fresh tirade. It was a mob that hardly knew its own mind, that was plain. But revolt was there. He felt it. It was one of those queer rebellions, starting with a joke for an excuse, but ready to settle into something serious. It was ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Armorer was in a raging hurry and urged his guide over the ground. Once they were delayed by a bundle of stuff in front of a door; and after Shuey had laboriously rolled the great roll away, he made a misstep and tumbled over, rolling it back, to a tittering accompaniment from the sewing-girls in the room. But he picked himself up in perfect good temper and kicked the roll ten yards. "Girls is silly things," said the philosopher Shuey, "but being born that way it ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... handkerchiefs into their mouths. Eric, having once given way, enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the lady made matters worse by her uneasy attempts to dislodge the unknown intruder, and discover the cause of the tittering, which she could not help hearing. At last all three began to laugh so violently that several heads were turned in their direction, and Dr. Rowlands' stern eye caught sight of their levity. He stopped short in his sermon, and for one instant transfixed them ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... young men with curling hair, a diamond cross, and smell of musk, might be permitted to come near her with enticing looks, but that she might stay as she was and die an old maid forever! This was the subject of Uncle Joseph's prayer, a prayer which set the little hired girl to tittering, and would have wrung a smile from Maddy herself had she not felt all the strange ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... stopped tittering at once. For a minute or two everybody marched on in silence. And then the cry, "Halt!" ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey
... King Robert's threats and cries and prayers, They thrust him from the hall and down the stairs; A group of tittering pages ran before, And as they opened wide the folding door, His heart failed, for he heard, with strange alarms, The boisterous laughter of the men-at-arms, And all the vaulted chamber roar and ring With the mock plaudits ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... exceptional strain of the Athanasian Creed, my roving fancy had settled upon the baker's wife as a fit object for a life-long devotion. Her riper charms had conquered a heart which none of her be-muslined, tittering juniors had been able to subdue; and that she was already wedded had never occurred to me as any bar to my affection. Edward's general demeanour, then, during morning service, was safe to convict him; but there was also a special test ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... began tittering harder than ever (hysterically, this time), holding up her arm as before—and filling out two or three wrinkles in the black sateen! And Gwendolyn, watching closely, saw that while the front face of her nurse was all a-grin, the ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... warbler's song may be varied by the individual singer from time to time. I heard one fine bird singing in the stereotyped form. As he sang a flicker flicked in the distance. Whereupon the pine warbler sang again, the same trill but with a tittering twang about it that just jocosely imitated the flicker. I saw no other warbler or other bird near enough to be the beneficiary of this joke. He did it just for himself, and his motions as he flew over to the next tree seemed a visible ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard |
