"Twitching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little Amabel appeared, slipping past Ellen silently. She stood watching her mother. She was vibrating from head to foot as if strung on wires. She was not crying, but she kept catching her breath audibly; her little hands were twitching in the folds of her frock; she winked rapidly, her lids obscuring and revealing her eyes until they seemed a series of blue sparks. She was no paler than usual—that was scarcely possible—but her skin ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was chiefly directed upon his companion, a fair-haired man, with a short moustache and beard. He had lost his hat. There was a red line of blood on his face from a wound in the forehead, and a twitching smile on his lips; but he ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... or they may roll restlessly from side to side. * * * The pupils are said to be enormously dilated. All the muscles of the body may become rigid, or may be thrown into convulsive movements. The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a twitching movement. The arms may be protruded, as if to avert some dreadful danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. * * * In other cases there is a sudden and uncontrollable tendency to headlong flight; and so strong is this that the boldest soldiers may be seized with a sudden ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in the distance, over which quivered the hot summer air. Here a herd of cattle stood knee-deep in the shallow water, lazily twitching their tails and snuffing at the stream. The birds were silent now in the glowing noon; only the reeds shivered and bowed. There, beside a lock with its big, battered timbers, the water poured green and translucent through a half-shut sluice. Now ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... intent to murder me." I paused, and fixed my eyes upon Mr. Moncton's face. The glitter of his bright orbs almost dazzled me. I thought, however, that his cheek paled for a moment, and that I could perceive a slight twitching movement about the muscles of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... with their neighbors in little groups. But this was a day of fall sunshine and drifting leaves. Miss Letty, standing at an upper window looking out on her pear tree, the leaves leathery brown, felt a twitching of the lips. She gazed farther over her domain, and it seemed to her that it had never been so pleasant before, so mellowed and softened by the last light of the year. She knew there were neighbors in the yard below, and could not bring herself to glance at them. A line ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the girl's face with a contented smile that seemed to speak intimately to him. He plunged into his business quickly, putting the case sympathetically before them. They listened without a word, the girl's face trembling and twitching slightly. Ruby had joined them, and Thornton interrupted his story, but Mrs. Ellwell motioned him to go ahead. While he was talking he hunted about for some bit of light to throw on the situation at the end. "He wants to go away, and it might be best, if we can find something for him. I ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... and white cattle fantastically marked. One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman in a play. A moment after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. The bank had given ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Writhing and twitching, feeling as though pierced by millions of red hot needles, they went down. A swarm of pipe-like bodies smothered them, and the fight ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... always mocking and impertinent in him. Jupillon's smile had the jovial expression imparted by a wicked mouth, a mouth that was almost cruel at the corners of the lips, which curled upward and were always twitching nervously. His face was pale with the pallor that nitric acid strong enough to eat copper gives to the complexion, and in his sharp, pert, bold features were mingled bravado, energy, recklessness, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... with the roll of the ship, and aided by the cook, I managed to slip into a rough woollen undershirt. On the instant my flesh was creeping and crawling from the harsh contact. He noticed my involuntary twitching and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... was to see him every night after the meetings of the Big Three reports that he found him with the left side of his face twitching. To collect his memory he would pass his hand several times wearily over his brow. The arduousness of the labor was not great enough to account for this. M. Clemenceau at nearly eighty stood the strain and an assassin's bullet as well. Mr. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... he saw nothing, as he stole from the place, his rugged face twitching a little, and ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... stood up erect. Her cheeks were pale, and she looked at her sweetheart with a clouded brow, while her lips were twitching. ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... all charged recklessly from the four sides; and I had to stand and fire, right, left, before, behind, emptying the gun once more ere they scattered and fled. I sensed her fingers twitching at my belt, extracting fresh cartridges. We sank, breathing hard. Her eyes were wide, and bluer than any deepest summer sea; her face aflame; her hair of purest gold—and upon her shoulder a challenging oriflamme of scarlet, staining a ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... strange in manner, he was thoroughly unaffected; in serious matters thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he confesses), terribly shy; diffident, not awkward in manner; with occasionally nervous, twitching motions that betrayed this infirmity. He dreaded the criticisms of servants far more than the observations of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to me, when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one morning, was "terrible." His speech was ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... father beheld the deathly face and motionless form, stern as he was, he was greatly shocked. His heavy tread caused a moan, and when he said "What, Perry, how now?" there was a painful shrinking and twitching, which the surgeon greeted as evidence of returning animation, but which made him almost drag the Major out of the room for ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to cut the bed in two, shining just on the hands, which were moving nervously, continually opening and closing. The fingers were twitching as though moved by some thought, as though trying to point out a meaning or idea, as though obeying the dictates of a will. The rest of the body lay motionless under the sheets. The angular frame showed not a single movement. The eyes ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to come and dine with me to-morrow,' continued the painter, accompanying his invitation with a smile, or rather a grin, for David's face was very much disfigured by a wen on his cheek, which also, by causing a twitching of the jaw, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... I do not know. Certainly there was noise enough, but then that half-hour always was noisy. The superintendent of that time had, when walking, a trick of grasping the lapel of his coat with his right hand, and twitching it when preoccupied. The following day, as he surveyed conditions, it seemed as if the lapel might come away; but he made us no speech, nor, as far as I know, was any notice taken of the affair. No real damage had been done, and the man would indeed have been hard-heartedly conscientious ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... silence. Each seemed to be measuring the other's strength. Of the two, Catherine was the more composed. Fenn's face was still white and strained. His lips were twitching, his manner nervous and jerky. He made a desperate effort to ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fell as if he were suffering some great emotion, and he stared at Rich wildly, his hand twitching and his lip quivering as he waited for her next speech, which seemed to crush him, as she asked ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... honor silently handed her the paper. Louisa seized it, but she trembled so violently that she was hardly able to decipher the characters. She at last read the slanderous article herself. Heart-rending groans escaped her, and a strange twitching and quivering distorted her features. "It is indeed true, I have been wickedly reviled!" she exclaimed, throwing the paper aside. "My enemies will rob me of the only thing remaining—my honor—my good name. They desire to expose me to the scorn ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... always speak with their mouths," said the parrot in a high voice, raising her eyebrows. "They talk with their ears, with their feet, with their tails—with everything. Sometimes they don't WANT to make a noise. Do you see now the way he's twitching up one side of ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... by the gallows-tree, The gallows-tree, the gallows-tree, (While the twitching body mocked the sun) Lifted to Heaven her broken heart ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... husband's room at ten o'clock the next morning to find Billy radiantly presiding over a loaded breakfast tray, and the invalid, pale and pasty, and with no particular interest in food evinced by the twitching muscles of his face, nevertheless neatly brushed and shaved, propped up in pillows, and making a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... metallic and explosive like a gong. Next moment we saw Belfast hanging over him. He was saying plaintively:—"Don't! Don't, Jimmy! Don't be like that. An angel couldn't put up with ye—sick as ye are." He looked round at us from Jimmy's bedside, his comical mouth twitching, and through tearful eyes; then he tried to put straight the disarranged blankets. The unceasing whisper of the sea filled the forecastle. Was James Wait frightened, or touched, or repentant? He lay on his back with a hand to ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... been spent in one constant struggle for the first necessities of life, for the daily meal and the nightly bed. He had seen his comrades of letters die of actual privation. From childhood he had known no happiness. The half blind gawky youth, with dirty linen and twitching limbs, had always, whether in the streets of Lichfield, the quadrangle of Pembroke, or the coffee-houses of London, been an object of mingled pity and amusement. With a proud and sensitive soul, every ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eyes and nervously-twitching fingers found himself pushed before the desk. He seemed at first embarrassed and half dazed. Brooks waited without any sign of impatience. When at last he spoke, it was without the slightest trace of ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... collapsed, Mrs. de Warrenne saw the twitching body of a large cobra with its head severed close to its neck. Its head had just protruded from under her foot and she had saved the unborn life for which she had fought so bravely by just keeping still.... She ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... fervently ejaculated Peggy, pointing toward the pallid face that lay surrounded with ashes. A convulsive twitching passed over the features, the lips trembled, the ashes over the breast heaved, and a low moaning sound, which might have come from the bottom of the canal, was heard. Again the moaning sound, and then the eyes opened, but ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... nervousness. If a firm, steady, yet gentle grasp is on the lines, the creature obeys in spite of himself. This same principle applies to children. If you cannot control yourself the children know it, and you may as well give up all idea of curbing them. The nervous twitching at the bit and the attempt to govern them by reason of your superior age or knowledge aggravates the evil. It is a mistake to forget that children are human beings, with sensitive feelings like our own, only not as hardened and used to the ways of this unsympathetic world as ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... not mean at Chautauqua what it does in Buffalo, or Albany, or a few other places, else Dr. Cuyler might have slipped from them before the necessary articles were all in array. It involved simply the twitching off of a white apron, the settling of a pretty sun hat—for the sun actually shone!—and the seizure of a waterproof, needed, if she found a seat, to protect her from the damp boards—needed ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... inspired me. I could see him better now as the lamp-light shone upon him. His features were peaky and sallow, and his little pointed beard was thready and ill-nourished. He pushed his face forward as he spoke and his lips and eyelids were continually twitching like a man with St. Vitus's dance. I could not help thinking that his strange, catchy little laugh was also a symptom of some nervous malady. The terror of his face lay in his eyes, however, steel gray, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... half-full, and already past her meridian, she filled the clear air with gentle light. Not a word broke our silence. Alan walked hurriedly, looking straight before him, his head upright, his lips twitching nervously, while every now and then a half-uttered moan escaped unconsciously from between them. At last I could bear it no longer, and burst forth with the first remark which occurred to me. We were passing a big, black, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... help in silence, and in silence they pursued their way. Nick looked at her no more, nor spoke. His lips were twitching a little, but he showed no other sign ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... yet circling in the waters, reaching out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old man's line—now parting—admitted of his pulling into the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... malicious little twitching of the eye, a touch of pride, of vengeance for the insolent glances turned upon ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... gaze, fevered face, burst impatiently forward, but advised or unadvised they still needed to obey the strict orders of the commander, who still repeated: "Trot! forward! trot!" You could see from the movement of the flags, how feverishly the soldiers' hands were twitching. In the end the trumpets sounded, flags descended and now they kicked themselves off towards the enemy. ...
— My First Battle • Adam Mickiewicz
... sculpin that it was like pulling up an open umbrella, and after I had thrown him into the hold to keep company with the flounder, our usual good luck seemed to desert us. It was one of the days when, in spite of twitching the line and using all the tricks we could think of, the cunners would either eat our bait or keep away altogether. Kate at last said we must starve unless we could catch the big flounder, and asked me to drop my hook down the hatchway; but it seemed ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... inch and glanced into the ward; Ivan Dmitritch in his night-cap and the doctor Andrey Yefimitch were sitting side by side on the bed. The madman was grimacing, twitching, and convulsively wrapping himself in his gown, while the doctor sat motionless with bowed head, and his face was red and look helpless and sorrowful. Hobotov shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and glanced at Nikita. Nikita shrugged his ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... moment it seemed to Jimmie Dale, as he watched, that Burton would hurl himself upon the other. White to the lips, the muscles of his face twitching, Burton clenched his fists and leaned over the table—and then, with sudden revulsion of emotion, he drew back once more, and once ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... longer had the mechanical memory of childhood in which dates and events are incrusted forever. Amid her other preoccupations the lesson would fly away in a moment, despite the pupil's apparent application, her long lashes concealing her eyes, her curls sweeping the page, and her rosy mouth twitching slightly at the corners as she repeated again and again: "Louis le Hutin, 1314-1316. Philippe V, le Long, 1316-1322—1322.—Oh! Grandmamma, I am lost. I shall never learn them." Thereupon Grandmamma would take a hand, help her to fix her attention, to store away some of those barbarous ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... backing out of the room with a pallid face, and twitching at the string of her apron. When she got to the bar she was ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... a small man, and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... been long disused. Mrs. Avenel sank down on the first chair on entering. Leonard drew his arm round her waist affectionately: "I fear that I have put you out sadly, my dear grandmother." Mrs. Avenel glided hastily from his arm, and her countenance worked much, every nerve in it twitching, as it were; then, placing her hand on his locks, she said with passion, "God bless you, my grandson," ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hiding behind some tall rushes, and his sharp little eyes were looking all about him, and his nose was twitching as he sniffed the air. He wished he might find a frog. But not one frog appeared. Fatty began to think that some other coon must have visited the creek just before him and caught them all. And then he forgot all ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... are your commands?" It was the innkeeper who spoke. His fingers were twitching about the hammer of his carbine. He nodded approvingly toward me. My assault upon the Prince had brought me again into ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... carpet formed an opposition party in the room. I believe in my heart that for every little household fairy that went out with the dear old things there came in a tribe of discontented brownies with the new ones. These little wretches were always twitching at the gowns of my wife and daughters, jogging their elbows, and suggesting odious comparisons between the smart new articles and what remained of the old ones. They disparaged my writing-table in the corner; they disparaged the old-fashioned ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... crucified. Having devoured my substance in riotous living, I was beginning to feel the first attacks of poverty, when I saw one of my companions in pleasure suddenly struck with a terrible disease. His knees could not sustain him; his twitching hands refused to obey him; his glazed eyes closed. Only horrible groans came from his breast. His mind, heavier than his body, slumbered. To punish him for having lived like a beast, God had changed him into a beast. The loss of my property had already inspired ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... little and her father went out, refusing, however, to allow her to accompany him. At the end of an hour he returned and flung himself heavily into his chair. He was in a state such as she had never witnessed before, violently excited, with glaring eyes and twitching hands. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... whole of June, prior to the festival of St. John, patients felt a disquietude and restlessness which they were unable to overcome. They were dejected, timid, and anxious; wandered about in an unsettled state, being tormented with twitching pains, which seized them suddenly in different parts, and eagerly expected the eve of St. John's day, in the confident hope that by dancing at the altars of this saint, or of St. Vitus (for in the Breisgau aid was equally sought from ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... and made no answer; but a curious observer might have detected an ominous twitching at his mouth, and perhaps an involuntary attraction of his right hand in the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... visit home, he brought with him a singularly feeling and suggestive bas-relief of a thin, faded old woman, sitting and sewing something pinned to her knee; while a full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently twitching her gown to call her attention to a butterfly he had caught. Steavens, impressed by the tender and delicate modeling of the thin, tired face, had asked him if it were his mother. He remembered the dull flush that had burned up ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... not even seem to hear. He played with lowered eyes and twitching mouth, and his hands shook perceptibly. The gambler's lust was ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... his eyes closed and his face twitching for violent emotion, and then of a sudden had a glare of gravity. "My friend, you're a dead failure! Be judged! Don't talk about 'swapping.' Don't talk about chances. Don't talk about fair starts and false starts. I'm at that point myself that I've a right to speak. It lies neither in one's ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... "Give your work," she says, "and your anxiety to others; trust me to add the cubits to your stature." If God is adding to our spiritual stature, unfolding the new nature within us, it is a mistake to keep twitching at the petals with our coarse fingers. We must seek to let the Creative Hand alone. "It is God which giveth the increase." Yet we never know how little we have learned of the fundamental principle of Christianity till we ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... Morphin might even be considered an abortive treatment, as nothing tends so much to inhibit this inflammation as the quietude of the heart caused by the absence of pain, the production of sleep and the prevention of restlessness, muscle twitching and muscle movements. The more quiet the patient is, the more quiet is ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... the watcher, was a grey-headed man, slack in the twist but limber in the joints—distinguished by a constant lowering of the eye and a spasmodic twitching of the corners of the mouth. He was active and nimble, and in moments of excitement much given to spitting Gaelic oaths like a wild-cat. But, spite his half-century of life, he was still the best and the most ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... first loaded his empty barrel, and then twitching Abiram by the sleeve, whispered, "You give 'em rum now. Plenty you make him strong, mine believe." His task was accomplished, and that the reward should immediately follow was with him a ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... see hands performing all sorts of odd tricks. The fingers are drumming, twitching, twirling, closing, opening, doing a multitude of motions which mean what? Nothing, do you say? Oh! no, indeed; not nothing but something. Fingers and hands which perform all these unnecessary motions are not being commanded by the thoughts, and ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... a step forward, his hand before him, his face twitching uncontrollably. The collie on the step awoke, and seeing ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... his slippers he loomed up in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude seen in the dusk vanished from his face. The hand that had been pointing at my breast fell, and by-and-by, coming a step nearer, he laid it gently on my shoulder. There were things, he said mournfully, that perhaps could never be told, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... incapable place-hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after publication. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the true welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only useless but positively pernicious. Now, most books are bad and ought to have remained unwritten. Consequently praise should be as rare as is now the case with blame, which is withheld ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to sing, or something," said Barrett, bending over to listen. The Teller swung his arm heavily over the side of the cot, the fingers never ceasing their painful twitching, and Gay leaned down and gently moved the cloths so that the white, scarred lips were free. They moved steadily; they seemed to be framing the semblance of an old ballad that Meredith knew; the whisper grew more distinct, and it became ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... gazing pensively, twitching the two pearls between her fingers. Tears gathered in her eyes. She met the reflection of her lover's eyes, and her tears brimmed over. She buried her face in her hands, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... covered with glistening spend which dripped off on to the floor; your Mother retained her position, as if too tired to get up, when to my surprise your aunt Gert, proceeded to kiss and suck her sister's reeking Cunt which was still all of a quiver, those now vermilion lips twitching as if still ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... with LATHER (see) at bedtime. Cover the well-lathered skin with a large, soft cloth, leaving the cloth and lather on all night, and covering over all with flannel in sufficient quantity to keep the patient warm. If the spasmodic twitching comes on, apply cold cloths repeatedly to the back of the neck for an hour in the morning. If this is felt too cold, apply for a ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... garden-indignation dwindled; laughter caught me by the throat and quenched the remainder. Evan, knowing nothing of the concatenation, but scenting something from the card, joined sympathetically. Glancing at father, I saw that his nose was twitching, and in a moment his shoulders began to shake and he led the general confession that followed. It seems that he arrived at the hospital really the day of the consultation, but found that the patient, in need of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... must cry aloud under the strain of this subtle torture. Why, he was her lover, her man, her child.... In thought, her arm shaped itself into a crook for his head to lie there; her fingers smoothed out the drawn perplexity of his brows; her kisses were cool as snow on his hot, twitching little mouth; her voice, hushed to a lullaby croon, promised him that nobody should hurt him, nobody, while she was there to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... fellow was handsome, hatefully so, but he was evidently stuck full of conceit, and as he let his eyes wander over the congregation assembled, with a bold and critical stare, making remarks to Maimie in an undertone which could be heard over the church, Ranald felt his fingers twitching. The young man was older than Ranald, but Ranald would have given a good deal for an opportunity to ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... blue-gray. His knees gave way under him and his coarse lips were twitching. His eyes ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... to me?" The words came with a gasp from Fentress' twitching lips. The judge looked at ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... growing bolder, barked louder and ventured as far as their cruppers, feigning to be about to bite them. They began to grow uneasy, and the nervous twitching of their skin, to get rid of the flies, became ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... till she had placed him beside her under the lime. Then he looked round him, a smile twitching his lip. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into silence, the muscles of his dark face twitching under the gnawing heart-pain; but after a time he conquered his feelings ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the officer said. "He was farther gone than you were; and his heart's action was altogether suspended, from the cold. His limbs are twitching now, and the doctor ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... old man, blowing his nose with his yellow pocket-handkerchief, and twitching his features into all manner of shapes, seemed determined to put aside the melancholy subject, and dilated on the earl ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was thirty years younger then; he was not a sage of sixty then. He continued to blush. He was raging. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to assert that his health was momentarily in peril. He glanced for an instant at Helen, and saw that her nostrils were twitching. Then he looked hurriedly away, and rose. The captain of the bowling club excusably assumed that James was at length going to attack the serious ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... possible along that crowded thoroughfare. I glanced from time to time at the women opposite, and was struck by the contrast in their behaviour. One sat quite still, her hands in her lap, her head bent, admirably self-contained; the other was restless and uneasy, unable to control a nervous twitching of the fingers. I wondered why the maid should seem more upset than her mistress, and decided finally that her uneasiness was merely lack of breeding. But the contrast ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... his orderly-room, seated himself at the table, and so confronted the young man, who stood humbly enough, though with his pale face twitching. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... walks, is curiously exhausting; and I am actually FORCED to go to bed at eight o'clock completely tired. I steadily gain in weight, and eat immensely, and am never oppressed with my food. I have lost the involuntary twitching of the muscle, and all the fainting feelings, etc—black spots before eyes, etc. Dr. Gully thinks he shall quite cure me in six or ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... was passing, and one day Madame Tyrannis herself began to call, but fitfully. Sometimes she stayed about the nest one minute, sometimes five minutes, but was restless; picking at the walls, twitching the leaves that hung too near, rearranging the lining, trying it this way and that, as if to see how it fitted her figure, and how she should like it when she was settled. First she tried sitting with face looking toward the bay; then she jerked herself around, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... into the cage. For a moment there was no perceptible change in the animal's actions. Then it stopped eating, sniffed at the strange odor, and commenced to twitch violently. This twitching continued for several minutes, when the creature started to revolve in circles, like a Japanese dancing-mouse. Finally it became subject to spasms, and, although the professor withdrew ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... war, Paddy whipped, Knockecroghery kicked; and Paddy, seemingly unconscious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... passed talking of the all-absorbing game. They were obsessed by it, and threw questions to each other, which elsewhere would have meant nothing, or some very different thing; but here no explanations were needed. "Doing any good?" asked a pallid young man with a twitching face, like that of a galvanized corpse, as he met a weary-eyed woman in mourning, whose bare hands glittered with rings. "No," she answered peevishly. "You never saw such tables—all running to intermittences. Nobody can do anything, except the old man who ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... indeed be he? Where was the martial air, the flashing eye, the warrior face which she had pictured? There, framed in the doorway, was a huge twisted old man, gaunt and puckered, with twitching hands and shuffling, purposeless feet. A cloud of fluffy white hair, a red-veined nose, two thick tufts of eyebrow and a pair of dimly questioning, watery blue eyes—these were what met her gaze. He leaned forward upon a stick, while his shoulders rose and fell with ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Archie, as a man gazes at some favourite dog whom he calls upon to perform a trick. But Archie had reached the end of his tether. The hand that had twiddled so often and so bravely lay inert beside his trouser-leg, twitching feebly. Archie was through. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... hands together bones would snap, and Haw-Haw Langley knew it. And yet nothing but a wild delight could have set that glitter in his little eyes, just as nothing but a palsy of terror could have set his limbs twitching so. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... silence that followed the figure on the chair straightened itself with a jerk, and gibbered at him, twitching spasmodically. The woman ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... with her arms thrown round Baron's neck, whispering sweet nothings into his twitching ear. If he did not understand the substance of her remarks, he realized the force of her affection, and kept rubbing his nose against her shoulder in a sort of caress, very gently catching her jersey with his ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... were twitching, and his beard was quivering ... but he was obviously trying to control himself ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the estates, an elderly man, whose face was twitching with anxiety, stepped forward with a ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... horse. Think what a horrible shock I had. I also was nervous and all broken up—the first time in my life that I remember being so. I couldn't cry as you did, and when off my balance kissing you was just as natural to me as—" Madge's mouth had been twitching, and now, in spite of herself, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... around to the other side of the brush pile and then he knew. There was Old Klaws the House Cat, his tail twitching and his round eyes ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... and very faithfully he performed it: he folded his arms across his chest, pulled a cocked hat over his eyes, and spoke very gruffly and sternly, in French—and heavens! what French! Tartaglia sat before his sovereign, all huddled up, with dejected tail, and eyes blinking and twitching in confusion, under the peak of his cap which was stuck on awry; from time to time when Napoleon raised his voice, Bernadotte rose on his hind paws. 'Fuori, traditore!' cried Napoleon at last, forgetting in the excess of his wrath that he had to sustain ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... some books under his arm, felt a peculiar twitching in the nerves, as he turned sharply upon the heavy-looking lad who had spoken the above words, with the prologue and epilogue formed of jeering laughs, which sounded something like the combinations placed there to ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... intended to be asked of this renowned batrachian was the making of a little broth. Another part of the skinned anatomy touched the iron rail below, and the anatomist observed that this casual contact produced a convulsive twitching of the dead reptile's legs. He groped about this fact for many years. He fancied he had discovered the principle of life. He made the phenomenon to hang upon the facts clustering about his own profession, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... General, twitching his moustache violently, "there it is again. You appear perfectly courteous—but that remark is cool contempt. I want you to understand," his tones louder, and gesticulations violent, "that you must take my strictures, tell the court that they must impose the sentence I direct, and ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... growled to himself, with a nervous twitching of the face. "I've no presence of mind. I see the right thing when it's too late, and when I've made myself appear a bounder. How many thousand times have I blundered in this way! A man like me ought to live alone—as I've a very fair ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... no attempt to answer. He was very tired. Kate continued her march up and down the room for some moments in silence, but he could see from the twitching of her face and the swinging of her arms that the storm was bound to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity—the awful, poignant pity—of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her. What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... my governess said we should do in such cases," said Mary quietly, though her face was twitching. "I never loved Miss Sharp before," she added with a ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... one to the other. The woman, who stood with one hand on a birch branch, was evidently struggling to regain her courage. Her lips were twitching and her pale blue eyes were very wide open. The man was shrinking back as far as possible in a manner which suggested physical fear; he had heard the dalesfolk say a savage devil, easily aroused, lurked in all the Thurstons, and the one before him looked distinctly dangerous ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the plexus of the money-market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... when she heard her father's step in the hall. She dared not go to meet him, and tell him what she had done all day, for fear of her mother's jealous annoyance. She heard him linger, as if awaiting her, or some sign of her; and she dared not stir; she saw by her mother's twitching lips, and changing colour, that she too was aware that her husband had returned. Presently he opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to come in. His face was gray and pale; he had ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... here. He's in England recovering from his wound. Gault is six feet tall and five feet of him legs. All day in that trench with a shell-wound in his thigh and arm. God! How he was suffering! But not a moan, his face twitching and trying to make the twitch into a smile, and telling us ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... would come upon him suddenly and set hot drenching waves of shame and remorse surging about his body—remorse unutterable that he ever hurt his Peggy so deeply. For they were tragic eyes. Beneath them her twitching mouth smiled bravely, but the mirth of her eyes was monstrous. It was the mirth of a beaten woman, of a woman who has known the last extreme of shame and misery and has learned to laugh at it. Even now ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... little table upon which the tray rested, and endeavored to eat. His usual appetite had departed with his identity; Mr. Lucas was a poor, twitching being of raw nerves and internal qualms. He emptied the coffee-pot, however, and smoked a cigarette which he found in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... appeal to the baron, who, as we know, pledged himself to protect the poor orphan, and should refuse to permit her to go just wherever she is bid?" As he spoke these words M. Perigord clutched the chair in which he sat as if to keep himself steady, whilst a nervous twitching seemed to ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... observed in other grown-up persons, that when tears are restrained with difficulty, as in reading a pathetic story, it is almost impossible to prevent the various muscles. which with young children are brought into strong action during their screaming-fits, from slightly twitching ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... their safety. When he ran up and down in his desperation, his skirts and theirs all fluttered together. Stephens, the lawyer, kept close to Sadie Adams, muttering mechanically, "Don't be alarmed, Miss Sadie. Don't be at all alarmed!" though his own limbs were twitching with agitation. Monsieur Fardet stamped about with a guttural rolling of r's, glancing angrily at his companions, as if they had in some way betrayed him, while the fat clergyman stood with his umbrella up, staring stolidly with big, frightened eyes at the camel-men. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... see the butt of a big pistol hanging from his belt in a holster he had made from the top of an old shoe, but he made no motion to reach for it. The fingers of his left hand were twitching, splayed out as if from fear, and his mouth was open showing his ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... Arkwright angrily, but with shifting eyes and with upper lip twitching guiltily. Then, satirically: "Oh, no; I'd not dare aspire to any woman YOU had ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Gaston's face might puzzle a keen reader of character as to whether it were native, or the result of years of well-fought battles. Once the will was off guard, a certain softness of the eyes, and a twitching of the mouth muscles came into play; but the will was rarely off ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... ran tiny rivulets, I had to change shoes and stockings twice. I was not conscious till afterward how funny it all was. I must have been a good deal like an excited duck, and Amelie like a hen with a duckling. When she was not twitching my sash straight, she was running about after me with dry shoes and stockings, and a chair, for fear "madame was getting too tired"; and when she was not doing that she was clapping my big garden hat on my head, for fear ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the project. He did this purely for the pleasure of talking about Jane herself; and he wondered time and time again whether he had not betrayed to Jane's brother the particular kind of interest he was developing in her. He felt that his beard offered but a slight concealment to the nervous twitching of his mouth, and that, despite the muffling of his heavy overcoat, the throbbings of his heart must be as perceptible to Truesdale as to himself. And when Truesdale presently made the ungrudging avowal that Jane was a pretty good sort of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... middle-aged aunts said she was impudent, but this did not mean impudent speech; it was Phil's silences that annoyed her aunts and sometimes embarrassed or dismayed other people. Her brown eye could be very steady and wholly respectful when, at the same time, there was a suspicious twitching of her thread-of-scarlet lips. The aunts were often outraged by her conduct. Individually and collectively they had endeavored to correct her grievous faults, and she had received their instructions meekly. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... nervously watching every movement with twitching lips, relaxed into a smile. "It's a good omen!" she said, half under her breath, then gave a startled glance around to see if any one had heard her speak at such ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hand, and the earnestness with which Dashall had been exercising his imaginary powers, on the other, had led our perambulators to the 39 foot of Blackfriar's Bridge, on their road to the King's Bench, without any particular circumstance exciting their attention; when Bob, suddenly twitching his Cousin by the arm, and directing his eye at the same time to a thin spare figure of a man, without hat or coat, who was rapidly passing towards Fleet market, enquired who it was, and what was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... two-forty heat, yet to twenty miles of steady trot without distress,—brown and sleek as you please, with the knowingest eyes, and intelligence expressed in the impatient stamp of the fore-foot, and good-humor in the twitching of the ear. Into the saddle and off, with the cheery breeze to bathe us in exhilaration, as it went humming around us laden with aromatic odors and mysterious whisperings of the pine-trees to the sea,—through the dew-diamonded grass of the little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... twitching Mary's hand, The bench had ample room for two, His first word made her understand The plowman's ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... muscular old man, from the west; sunburnt and swarthy; with a brown white hat on his knees, and a giant umbrella resting between his legs; who sat bolt upright in his chair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and twitching the hard lines about his mouth, as if he had made up his mind 'to fix' the President on what he had to say, and wouldn't bate him a grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six in height, with his hat on, and his hands under his coat-tails, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... how sallow he had grown in the past few months, and how he had fallen off in weight. He looked older, too; his cheeks had sunken in until they outlined his jaws sharply. He seemed far from well; a nervous twitching of his fingers betokened the strain he had been under. He was quite as immaculate as usual, however, quite as ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... from the Clover Farm kennels," he announced, with a slight twitching of his lips. "Do you think ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... sat twitching on his luxurious settee. We all remained silent, with our thoughts upon the new development which the mysterious business had taken. Holmes was the first to spring to ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the grey matter, which, instead of developing its force gradually, develops it all of a sudden because it is irritated. And as it has been shown conclusively that the disease can be manifested in such varied forms—vertigo, twitching of the muscles, sialorrhea, cephalalgia, fits of rage, and ferocious actions—which appear to be the equivalent of the typical seizure, individuals subject to these forms of neurosis should be classed as epileptics, even if they never ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... feet; his hand went out to the table to draw himself up; it found one of the heavy bronze book-ends; the fingers gripped it so that the tendons stood out like cords. She could see the faces of both men, Gratton's twitching and vindictive, King's immobile, looking at once calm and terribly stern. If there were two Glorias within her, one of them fled now; the other watched with quick bright eyes and gloried in the man who had come at her hour ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... swung off into the most derogatory comparisons, applications, insulting flagellations, that man ever stood up and listened to. His evident motive was to provoke Boyle to some hostile act, so that twitching right arm might have the excuse for dealing out the death which lay at its finger-ends. Every little while the torrent of abuse broke upon the demand, "What do I owe you?" like a rock in the channel, and then rushed on again without laying hold of the same epithet twice. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... to obey. The others went on with their work. Had Joseph not been so blinded by indignation against his private secretary, he might have seen how one of the others raised his head and glanced furtively around; how his face was pale, and his lips were twitching; and how his hand was so tremulous that he was scarcely able to hold his pen. No one observed it. The other secretaries were writing; the emperor, in his wrath, saw nothing ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked! It is well I know thee; it is well it was our word in the beginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment"—putting her hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice—"wait but a moment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... short, with his mouth open. For he had seen the boughs of his trees moving and twitching, and he had said to himself, "Them young varmint—at it again!" And he had come out at once, for the lads of the village had taught him in past seasons that plums want looking after. But when he saw the rainbow wings flutter ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... man sighed. He took no umbrage at his companion's brusquely-expressed estimation of himself. He was still watching the group at the other end of the room. His face was clouded, and a keen observer might have detected a curious twitching of his bronzed right cheek, just beneath the eye. His eyes followed the movement of a beautiful girl surrounded by a cluster of men, immaculately dressed, bronzed—and, for the most part, wholesome-looking. She was dark, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... pride of his life, was doing; and nobody wondered or reproved. Even the boy's Aunt Janey, who still looked so exactly as she used to in her elderly youth, had taken her mother's emeralds and seed-pearls out of their pink cotton-wool, and carried them with her own twitching hands to the future bride; and Fanny Beaufort, instead of looking disappointed at not receiving a "set" from a Paris jeweller, had exclaimed at their old-fashioned beauty, and declared that when she wore them she should ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... window, close the laboratory door, and you won't notice it in a little while," said Mr. Waldon, as he observed Joe's nose twitching. "I'm so used to it I don't mind, but you, coming ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... dog-sleep; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice; and about this time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me at different periods of my life—viz., a sort of twitching (I know not where, but apparently about the region of the stomach) which compelled me violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... too long beshadowed by the uxorious lover, should now return and shine. He summoned his valet, repaired the disorder of his appearance with elaborate care; and then, curled and scented and adorned, Prince Charming in every line, but with a twitching nostril, he set forth unattended for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devils traded a man off for a herd of swine. In this transaction the devils were the losers, the swine having immediately drowned themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have been almost universal and is not yet extinct. The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitching of those afflicted with cholera, were all seized as proof that the bodies of men were filled with vile and malignant spirits. Whoever endeavored to account for these things by natural causes; whoever endeavored to cure disease ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that my daughter shall curl her hair? She looks very graceful when her hair is curled, and I want it insisted upon,' I made a note of it with my pencil, and as I happened to glance at Miss W. the corners of her mouth were twitching, upon which I broke down and laughed. The mother bore it very good-naturedly, but went on. She wanted to know who would work some buttonholes in her daughter's dress that was not quite finished, etc., and it all ended in her inviting me to make ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... of having strokes, is he?" asked Diana, the dimpled corners of her mouth twitching. To Diana, Charlotta the Fourth was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... gripping his hand again. The coldness of it sent a chill into the staff-sergeant's heart. He rose and looked through the upper part of the window, so that the twitching in his throat was hidden from Kent. Then he went to ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... very quietly, but there was a watchfulness in his eye, a slight twitching of his nostril, which proved him to be not entirely at his ease. His elder ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... back in a corner seat of the carriage, panting, white-faced, exhausted. His clumsy boots, studded with nails, were wet, and his frayed black trousers were splashed with mud. In his eyes was the light of vivid fear, his delicate mouth was twitching still with excitement. In his ears there rang yet the angry cry of the guard, the shouting of porters, the excitement of that leap through the hastily-opened carriage door tingled yet in his veins. Before his eyes there was a mist. He was ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... intangible. I turned round instantaneously, feeling that the Albertus Magnus was at his hellish game again. With sudden horror I saw where the chuckle had come from. The statue had changed from the bronze-green to a fleshy-green. It was alive, and the great muscles were twitching and quivering. To my unutterable horror, I perceived it was not Albertus Magnus.... It was Ombos! His breath came in horrid little flutters, with seconds between each one, as if he had just come to life and was not ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... pressure; the effort to steady it, and the nervous effort not to press upon the machine, producing inevitably in the wrist aching weariness, and in the fingers every conceivable tendency to nervous twitching. Add to this the intense conviction of the foolish folk, half of them hysterical women, that their concentrated effort of will was, in combination with a mysterious supernatural agency, to move the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... not reply; an imperceptible twitching tightened her lips; then the young mouth relaxed, drooping a trifle at the corners. Lying there, so outwardly calm, her tired, faraway gaze fixed absently on him, she seemed on the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... with the eyes of a hungry wolf. A thousand pounds! That might be his for the asking, nay, for the taking. It would bind him to nothing. The miser's greed took possession of him as he looked. Slowly he raised his hand, twitching with excitement, and stretched it out towards the cheque, but, before his fingers touched it, Lady Bellamy, as though by accident, dropped her white palm ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... into the dying woman's mouth with a desperate hand. The next breath was drawn with a choking effort. The whole body stirred. The thin hand appeared, grasped the coverlet with distorting energy, and then lay almost still, twitching convulsively second by second. Still Maria tried wildly to pour more of the stimulant between the set teeth. When they parted, no breath came, and the fingers only moved once more, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... and saw a tawny beast with laid-back ears and twitching tail, stretched on a big limb a short distance above the ground, and right over the two children, who were innocently prattling away, and looking at the flowers ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... agent for a moment in contemptuous curiosity. Estermen was walking restlessly up and down the few feet of carpet, his fingers and the muscles of his face twitching. His words had come with difficulty, as though he had suddenly developed an impediment in his speech. His sallow complexion had become yellow. His carefully waxed moustache was drooping, a speck of saliva was issuing from ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on thy soul, no more of this!" cried the master-player, with quivering lips. "Ye will make me out no man, or else a fiend. I cannot let the fellow go—I will not let him go." His hands were twitching, and his face was pale, but his lips were set determinedly. "And, Tom, there's that within me will not abide even thy pestering. So come, no more of it! Upon my soul, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Holdernesse Hall. We were ushered through the magnificent Elizabethan doorway and into his Grace's study. There we found Mr. James Wilder, demure and courtly, but with some trace of that wild terror of the night before still lurking in his furtive eyes and in his twitching features. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle |
