"Twopence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... latter part of it, we owe the beginning of that general system of the "petrified kidney" style of pavement which still lingers in places. Twopence-half-penny a bushel the material cost our forefathers! but what, in trials of patience and of temper, have they not cost the unlucky Roystonians who were destined to walk upon {114} them for so long and with so little hope of change? It was a cheap way of serving posterity, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... young lady gave him a pleasant smile, and handed him the bag; together they crossed the street, while the other commercials marched disconsolately behind. At the door of the hotel she took the bag from her cavalier, and there and then, in broad Australian daylight, rewarded him with twopence—a disaster which caused him to apply to his firm for transfer to some foreign country at once. She marched into the bar, where Dan, the landlord's son, was sweeping, while Mrs. Connellan, the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... only secret that Ramel jealously concealed, and which no more than two or three of his oldest friends knew anything about, and while he hesitated about spending twopence on himself, and went to the Institute and to the Chamber of Deputies outside an omnibus, Pepa led the happy life of a millionaire who is not frightened of the to-morrow, and brought up her son like a little prince, with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the city suffered considerably, owing to the food supplies being intercepted. One day a flight of larks came into the town, "which were", says Fuller, "as welcome as quails in the wilderness". The birds were so numerous that, notwithstanding the prevailing famine, they were sold for twopence a dozen. "Of this miraculous event", wrote Fuller, "I was not only an eye but ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... which was that, having invited the parson and his wife to dinner on Saturday, she could not break her engagement. Susie told her that as she would never see either of them again—for surely she would never again want to come to this place?—it was absurd to care twopence what they thought of her. What on earth did it matter if two inhabitants of the desert were offended or not offended once she was on the other side of the sea? And what did it matter at all how she ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... full of things that brought my dear mother's eyes out like a partan's. It was wonderful to see her so free with money, and she but a slip of a girl, paying the carrier man all that he asked and a whole twopence over, to which he had no claim. She made no more of drinking ginger-beer than we did of water, and she would have her sugar in her tea and butter with her bread just as ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when he was tormented by the yellow demon of jealousy, and at the same time endured hunger, Lilian Rosenberg was his solacing angel. Utterly regardless of appearances—she did not exaggerate when she said, "I am not conventional; I don't care twopence for Mrs. Grundy." She visited him in his garret, and she ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... pompously, and expanding their massy draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as they were swept at intervals by currents of air. At this moment we were provoked by the showman at our elbow renewing his vile iteration of "Twopence, gentlemen; no more than twopence for each;" and so on, until we left the place. The same complaint has been often made as to Westminster Abbey. Where the wrong lies, or where it commences, I know not. Certainly I nor any man can have a right to expect that the poor men who attended ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... heating canes of glass and pinching them from the end with pliers, which at the same time answer the purpose of a die. They are sold very cheaply, as low as twopence a gross, but it is scarcely possible for any English firm to compete ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... care twopence about the ballot," said Violet, as she put out her hand to Phineas. "Are we going to have a new iron ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... his fishing out three dineros from his trouser pocket and bestowing one on each of them—twopence-halfpenny or thereabouts is a godsend to a juvenile in San Ramon. "There, little fools!" he said. "Take the stranger's bag along and don't quarrel any more. There is nothing in this ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hard to conceive of the Apostle figuring as the hero of such a theme. It was the old tale retold, that to the life of every man there is a background,—that it is precisely in the unlikeliest cases that the background's darkest. What would that penny-plain- and-twopence-coloured bogey, the Nonconformist Conscience, make of such a story if it were blazoned through the land. Would Paul not ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... two pieces of the pen-holder and looked at them. He tried to restrain his sobs. He felt utterly miserable. And yet he could not tell why, for he knew quite well that he had bought the pen-holder during his last holidays at Blackstable for one and twopence. He did not know in the least what had made him invent that pathetic story, but he was quite as unhappy as though it had been true. The pious atmosphere of the vicarage and the religious tone of the school had made Philip's conscience very sensitive; he absorbed insensibly the feeling about ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... pair of large dark-gray eyes, that were cold and earnest. His manners had the ease of perfect confidence; and his talk and air were those of a person who might have known how to please, if it were worth the trouble, but who did not care twopence whether he pleased ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to skulk in still water with their emblematic daces. But the times now, my dear father, are so cold-blooded that you can't be too cold-blooded to prosper. What could Chillingly Mivers have been in an age when people cared twopence-halfpenny about their religious creeds, and their political parties deemed their cause was sacred and their leaders were heroes? Chillingly Mivers would not have found five subscribers to "The Londoner." But now "The Londoner" is the favourite organ of the intellectual ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a little more out of the common way than that? But, Harcourt, without joke, you need not trouble yourself. I did want you to see her; but I don't care twopence as to your liking her. I shall think much more of your wife liking her—if you ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... come to pass. A great American publishing firm had started an opposition house in Melbourne, and their "cuteness" was more than the "cuteness" of Meeson. Did Meeson's publish an edition of the works of any standard author at threepence per volume the opposition company brought out the same work at twopence-halfpenny; did Meeson's subsidise a newspaper to puff their undertakings, the opposition firm subsidised two to cry them down, and so on. And now the results of all this were becoming apparent: for the financial year just ended the Australian branch had barely earned a beggarly net ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... to go to visit their friends or to shop. In these, the fares are on the same system as on other railways: you pay for your ticket according to the distance you wish to go; but in the first one you paid twopence for all distances alike—twopence if you wanted to go right from the West End to the City, and twopence all the same if you were going to get out at the next station. Therefore some people nicknamed this railway ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Best Way Series of New Thought Books. Each 96 pages and cover, green silk cloth bound, printed on heavy egg-shell paper, size 5x7. Written by Sydney B. Flower. Price each, $1 postpaid to any part of the world; four shillings and twopence ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... information straight from the War Office?' 'I can,' said he. Then I threw myself on his bosom and bade him take me to her. That's how I became 33702 Private Phineas McPhail, A Company, 10th Wessex Rangers, at the remuneration of one shilling and twopence per diem." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones. I have known many a man pass for a miser, by saving a penny and wrangling for twopence, who was undoing himself at the same time by living above his income, and not attending to essential articles which were above his 'portee'. The sure characteristic of a sound and strong mind, is to find in everything those certain bounds, 'quos ultra citrave nequit consistere rectum'. These ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... III., Mary Tudor, and others, have become respectable monarchs, almost model monarchs, if you compare them with the popular English view of the present King of the Belgians, the ex-Sultan of Turkey, and the present Czar of Russia. It is realised that contemporary journalism gave a somewhat twopence coloured impression of Kings and Queens, who were only creatures of their age, less admirable expressions of the individualism of their time. And just as historical facts require readjustment by posterity, so our critical estimate of intellectual ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... beneath the flap of the tent; and followed, elate at having run his quarry to earth. A stout woman, seated at the entrance beside a drum on which she counted her change, thrust out an arm of no mean proportions to block his entrance, and demanded twopence, fee for admission. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dejection to the venerable source of our story, was then in the act of emerging from the Eastward into the Southward of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of Dover. He descended London's borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of the walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer's appetite; as, for example, one may find the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting the Shoreditch region, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... assigned for the alteration. It is, indeed, morally certain that persons who had money to remit must have made the same calculation which has been made by the directions of your Committee, and the result must have been equally clear to them,—which is, that, instead of realizing two shillings and twopence the rupee on their subscription, as they proposed, they could never hope to see more than one shilling and ninepence. This calculation probably shook the main pillar of the project of April. But, on the other hand, as the subscribers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... twopence," said Greg, jumping up to rush into the other room: "he's come about the black colt, ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... tell you that! For, if you won't mind me saying so, Poll, I think you've got one of the queerest sticks for a husband that ever walked this earth. Blows hot one day and cold the next, for all the world like the wind in spring. And without caring twopence whose corns 'e treads on."—Which, thought Polly, was but a sorry return on Tilly's part for Richard's hospitality. After all, it was his house she had been ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sending Christmas cards this year? Yes," said Blathers, "but not next year, or the year after that, as we shall be retrenching. They are quite modest trifles, yet at the mere sight of the envelope each recipient will, cheerfully, I hope, pay twopence towards the sinews of war. One hundred of these contributions will amount, I am told, to sixteen shillings and eightpence; not much, but it is my little offering to the country in her hour of need. This is the card I propose to send out in a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... up once again. . . . I saw a most lovely Sir Joshua at Christie's a week ago; it went far far above my means. There is an old hunting picture in Regent St. which I want him to look at. I think it is Morland; whom I don't care twopence for; the horses ill drawn; some good colour: the people English; good old England! I was at a party of modern wits last night that made me creep into myself, and wish myself away talking to any Suffolk old woman in her cottage, while the trees murmured without. The wickedness ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... district. For this accommodation the trader must pay a tax to the government of 1000 reis, or about three shillings per load carried. The trader is obliged to pay the carrier also the sum of 50 reis, or about twopence a day, for his sustenance. And as a day's journey is never more than from eight to ten miles, the expense which must be incurred for this compulsory labor is felt to be heavy by those who were accustomed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... pray to mine when I think time.' And, when he was desired by some to give thanks for his meat, he said, 'Take a sackful of prayers to the mill, and shill them, and grind them, and take your breakfast off them.' To others he said, 'I will give you a twopence, and [if ye] pray until a boll of meal and one stone of butter fall down from heaven through the house-rigging to you.' To others, when bread and cheese was given him, and was laid on the ground by him, he said, 'If I leave ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... being reckoned in Halifax currency of four dollars to the pound instead of five. The British Tommy Atkins of that and many a later day thought Canada a wonderful country for making money go a long way when he could buy a pot of beer for twopence and get back thirteen pence Halifax currency as change for his English shilling. Beef and ham ran from ninepence to a shilling a pound. Mutton was a little dearer. Salt butter was eightpence to one-and-threepence. Cheese was tenpence; potatoes from five to ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... a word before this Packet go, tho' my haste is very great. I received your two Newspapers (price only twopence); by the same Ship there came, and reached me some days later, a Letter from Mr. Everett enclosing the Cromwell portions of the same printed-matter, clipt out by scissors; written, it appeared, by Mr. Everett's nephew; some of whose remarks, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... better, at first," said I, "to call upon them in the name of about twopence a head. Then, when we get a nice little body of adherents to begin with, the other subjects will fall in, of their own accord, if we manage ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... no; she did not mean—" and, confused, she ran off to help Goody to lay the spotless tablecloth, Cis following to set the child at peace with herself, and unloose the tongue again into hopes that the lady liked conger pie; for father had bought a mighty conger for twopence, and Goody had made a goodly pie ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seem to care twopence about the domestic trouble of Mavis and Will. Her thoughts were engrossed by her ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... that over there!' said the grocer 'I gave an old woman some coffee for the book. If you like to give me twopence you ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... Certificate or offering Certificates as bonuses for good conduct or extra work. When one small employer that I heard of pays his men their War Bonus, he gets them, if they are willing, to place two sixpenny stamps on a stamp card, for which he deducts tenpence. The employees are thus given twopence for every shilling they save. When these cards bear stamps up to the value of 15/6 they are exchanged for ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... the purpose of preserving to the poor of St. Briavel's and Hewelfield, the right of cutting and carrying away wood from three thousand acres of coppice land, in Hudknolls and the Meends; and for which every housekeeper is assessed twopence, to buy the bread and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... upon an omnibus that my own personal acquaintanceship with him began. I was sitting behind two ladies when the conductor came up to collect fares. One of them handed him a sixpence telling him to take to Piccadilly Circus, which was twopence. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... who would give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or bread were asked for—Frank learned to beg very quickly—the kind of woman who would add twopence and tell him to be off, and the kind of woman who, after a pause and a slow scrutiny, would deliberately refuse to supply a glass of water. Then there was the atmosphere of the little towns to be learned—the intolerable weariness of pavements, and the patient ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... of your great acquaintances in public! And as for Lady Risborough's answer—"I don't care twopence about the Duchess, Hugh! and I haven't seen Ewen for six years,"—it had been merely humbug, for she had obediently followed her ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... REY said speculators could afford to pay the present rates of postage, and as the reduction would only benefit the townspeople, let matters remain unaltered. If he resided in a town and speculated he would be able to pay twopence. ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... brick, she lets me come into the drawing-room with her whenever I am tired, but I've only been in once yet because I like to watch the boys play best. I can bowl at cricket and bat too, and I give a boy called 'Gnat' twopence a game to do my runs for me. I'm collecting birds' eggs. There's a boy here who has got 250 of them. I mean to find a sea gull's nest, and then he'll swap twenty of his with me for one gull's, because he has never got one yet. There is a boy called 'Simple Simon,' he thinks I am a wonder ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... of your rare books, Mr. Bartle? Got something for twopence that you'll sell for ten guineas? You're one of the lucky ones, you ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... reason in that," said Dame Shoolbred; "though why you should put your reputation in risk for a creature that would find a lodging for a silver twopence and less matter is a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... going to answer, "So I would, for twopence—from his nose," when I checked myself and ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... and minstrels and jugglers thronged; and stringent laws were passed to prevent "improper and prohibited sports within the churchyard, as, for example, wrestling, football, handball under penalty of twopence forfeit." Here church ales were kept with much festivity, dancing, and merry-making; and here sometimes doles were distributed on the tombstones of parochial benefactors, and even bread and cheese scrambled for, according to the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... dwelt upon. From early morning until late at night I wandered about the streets or in the parks, where also I slept. I took every care of my scanty stock of money, but at last it came to an end. Once I held a horse for twopence, once I carried a heavy portmanteau from Charing Cross to Tottenham Court Road for a penny, and once a lady took pity on my condition and gave me threepence. Then I parted with my jacket, and lived on ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... heaven, methinks, too cheaply, and assign large revenues to minors incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run upon this topic of consolation till the very frequency induces a cheapness. Tickets for admission into paradise are sculptured out a penny a letter, twopence a syllable, etc. It is all a mystery; and the more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear), the more I flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the unerring judge, deems best, and be careless about the whimsies ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... be a source of permanent wealth. A gentleman of Cork one day borrowed a common rod and line from a Cornish miner in his employment, and caught fifty-seven mackerel from the jetty in Scull Bay before breakfast. Each of these mackerel was worth twopence in Cork market, thirty miles off. Yet the people round about, many of whom were short of food, were doing nothing to catch them, but expecting Providence to supply their wants. Providence, however, always likes ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... are ruined, but one must not forget the inestimable advantage to the shareholders of the public being able to get from Paddington to Chelsea in a tunnel for twopence. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... know, great fishes on great dishes still Produce great scandal, let alone the bill. Think too of angry uncles, friends grown rude, Nay, your own self with your own self at feud And longing for a rope to end your pain: But ropes cost twopence; so you long in vain. "O, talk," you say, "to Trausius: though severe, Such truths as these are just what HE should hear: But I have untold property, that brings A yearly sum, sufficient for three kings." Untold indeed! then can you not expend Your superflux on some diviner end? ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... sir," he said. "I don't care twopence for all the puppies that ever wore red coats, sir. My name is Nicholas Clam, Esq., No. 4, Waterloo Place, Wellington Road, Regent's Park, London; and I can shoot at a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... threepence. Trumpet for myself, twopence, that's fivepence. Ginger-nuts for Tony, twopence, and a mug with a Grenadier on for the Postman, fourpence, that's elevenpence. Shooting-gallery a penny, that's a shilling. Giddy-go-round, a penny, that's one and a penny. Treating Tony, one and ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Calvary, which had formerly proved a great source of profit. An ascetic, of great pretensions to sanctity, took up his abode many years ago in this retreat, carrying on a thriving trade, every boat that passed contributing twopence, for which consideration the hermit rung a bell, to announce their arrival at the bridge of Mantes, giving notice to the town, in order to facilitate the transfer of baggage or passengers. This tax or tribute the hermit was not himself at the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... Tyburn. At last, as they were going to be locked up; Pray, says the woman, with a faint voice, Can't you give me something like a poker? Why, yes, says one of the fellows belonging to the gaol, if you'll give me twopence, I'll bring you one of the old bars that was taken out of the window when these new ones were put in. The woman gave him the halfpence, he delivered the bar, and the keepers having locked them up, barred and bolted the doors, and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a screaming farce.... I sometimes get my family on my nerves, when I go there straight from Covent Garden and its slum babies, and see them spending and squandering and being irresponsible and dissolute and not caring twopence for the way two-thirds of the world live. There was Wycombe to-night, with a long story to tell me about his debts and his amours (he's going to be co-respondent in a divorce case directly), and Chloe, as hard as nails ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... resolved not to be cast off, seized him and clung to him. This was the movement that excited the derision of Wickens's boy in the adjacent gravel pit. Trefusis was glad of the interruption; and, when he gave the boy twopence and bade him begone, half hoped that he would insist on remaining. But though an obdurate boy on most occasions, he proved complaisant on this, and withdrew to the high road, where he made over one of his pennies to a phantom gambler, and tossed with him ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... "I don't like to say it, but, of course, you know there are many people who will tell you that Ashe doesn't care twopence what his wife does so long as she is nice to him, and he can read his books and carry on his ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... public being gathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and none of the soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that concourse of people was (it being a week-day); and being told that one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a lad twopence to hold his horse, saying he was resolved to hear the tinker prate; and so he went into the church to hear him. But God met him there by His ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... was admirable, in conversation, for neglecting everything not essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny can have no 'grounds' for anything—for any indignation, I mean, or for any revenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they've been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she hasn't had the gumption to keep back an inch or two to stand on. She can do ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... persons, the leading company, which has created the British trade, having its headquarters at La Teste. The wholesale price of oysters at Arcachon is from a sovereign to forty shillings a thousand, according to size. In the long street they sell retail at from twopence to eightpence a dozen, thus realising what seems to-day the hopeless dream of the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... called it. Every roadside cottage was, in fact, Tommy's tavern. The thrifty French peasant women kept open house for soldiers. They served us with delicious coffee and thick slices of French bread, for the very reasonable sum of twopence. They were always friendly and hospitable, and the men, in turn, treated them with courteous and kindly respect. Tommy was a great favorite with the French children. They climbed on his lap and rifled his pockets; ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... statement. The CHANCELLOR'S not very tremendous Preference proposals were denounced by Sir DONALD MACLEAN as inevitably leading to the taxation of food and to quarrels with foreign countries. Colonel AMERY, on the other hand, waxed dithyrambic in their praise, and declared that by taking twopence off Colonial tea the Government were not only consecrating the policy of Imperial Preference, but were "putting the coping-stone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... have any particular acquaintance with a useful trade, so much the better; if you have not, and can do so, learn one before you go—carpentry, boat-building, blacksmithing, tinkering, cobbling; it will help you through wonderfully. It doesn't matter twopence how you go out, whether saloon, intermediate, or steerage, so far as your future prospects are concerned. If you can compass the means, go saloon—the extra comfort on a long voyage is well worth the extra price; ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... one came in for his measure, and then another. A wife came in for a pair of red worsted boots for her bairn, but would not take them for they had not blue fringes. A bareheaded lassie, hoping to be handsel, threw down twopence, and asked tape at three yards for a halfpenny. The minister sent an old black coat beneath his maid's arm, pinned up in a towl, to get docked in the tails down into a jacket; which I trust I did to his entire satisfaction, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... tambourine, the golden youth of Castel-le-Gachis turned from her coldly. Here and there a single halfpenny was forthcoming; the net result of a collection never exceeded half a franc; and the Maire himself, after seven different applications, had contributed exactly twopence. A certain chill began to settle upon the artists themselves; it seemed as if they were singing to slugs; Apollo himself might have lost heart with such an audience. The Berthelinis struggled against the impression; they put their back into their work, they sang loud and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were calling aestheticism and decadence. To him, literature was literature and art was art, and not puling sentiment, affected posturing, lilies and sunflowers. The National Observer was the housetop from which he shouted for all who passed to hear that it did not matter twopence what the dabbler wanted to express if he could not express it, if he had not the technique of his medium at his fingers' ends and under his perfect control. A man might indulge in noble and beautiful ideas, and if he ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... found his own shores devastated by a French fleet, whilst at the same time his hands were full with fresh difficulties from Scotland and Wales. In the summer of 1295, the city furnished the king with three ships, the cost being defrayed by a tax of twopence in the pound charged on chattels and merchandise. John le Breton, then warden, advanced the sum of L40, which the aldermen and six men of each ward undertook to repay.(323) In the following year (1296) the city agreed, after some little hesitation, to furnish ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... like a piece of tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though she was one of them, and the fact that she didn't care twopence about her house and called the servant Gladys "Glad-eyes," was disgraceful. Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her indifferent, tired voice, "I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a handkerchief if I've got one, will you?" And Glad-eyes, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... don't care. Grumps always said that I had no heart, and, so far as green fly are concerned, Grumps was certainly right. Now, just look at this lily. It is an auratum. I gave three-and-six (out of my own money) for that bulb last autumn, and now the bloom is not worth twopence, all through green fly. If I were a man I declare I should swear. Please swear for me, Philip. Go outside and do it, so that I mayn't have it on my conscience. But now for vengeance. Oh, I say, I forgot, you know, I suppose. I ought to be ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus: "Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence," etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will be seen, are of mongrel origin,—the French, perhaps, predominating."! He must be the gentleman who, during the Exhibition of 1851, wrote on his door, "No French spoken here." Dooe saltee and tray saltee differ ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in Dickens and Bulwer Lytton. Also his yellow beard and hair were more unkempt and leonine than when they appeared long afterwards, cut and pointed, on the lawns of Saffron Park. A long, lean, black cigar, bought in Soho for twopence, stood out from between his tightened teeth, and altogether he looked a very satisfactory specimen of the anarchists upon whom he had vowed a holy war. Perhaps this was why a policeman on the Embankment spoke to ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... providential judgments upon swearers, which had much impressed Bunyan. One was of a certain Dorothy Mately, a woman whose business was to wash rubbish at the Derby lead mines. Dorothy (it was in the year when Bunyan was first imprisoned), had stolen twopence from the coat of a boy who was working near her. When the boy taxed her with having robbed him, she wished the ground might swallow her up if she had ever touched his money. Presently after, some children who were watching ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl and went out of the shop to begin his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked along towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the corner of George's Street he met two friends of his and stopped to converse with them. He ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... his capital in the shortest possible space of time—let him come out, and fearlessly. Living is cheap enough as far as the essentials are concerned. Butcher meat, not surpassed in any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, is to be had at twopence per pound; the fine four pound loaf for sixpence halfpenny; brown sugar, fourpence; white, sixpence; candles, sixpence per pound; tea, the finest, three shillings the pound; fresh butter, one shilling and threepence per pound. Wild fowl in abundance. Vegetables are cheaper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... pleasant for Zoe. And for all I know, my brother-in-law means to turn up dutifully too. A little family event. It's extremely pleasant to think of. Delightful. A charming family party. We three against the world—and all that sort of thing. And what for. For a girl that doesn't care twopence ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dearness of the place; and that THE USUAL AND ACCUSTOMED WAGES are words without any force or meaning, when there are no such; but every man spunges and raps whatever he can get; and will haggle as long and struggle as hard to cheat his employer of twopence in a day's labor as an honest tradesman will to cheat his customers of the same sum in a yard of ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... famine for the extermination of this unfortunate people. Native mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and barbarous. The product of labour is, consequently, most diminutive, and its wages twopence a day, with a little food. The interest of money varies from 25 to 50 per cent. per annum, and this rate is frequently paid for the loan of bad seed that yields but little to either land ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... that Russians knew what passports were. Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such travellers as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... day!" which was often true, as haddocks were often caught at the risk of their husbands' lives. After the usual amount of higgling, the haddies were brought down to their proper market price, —sometimes a penny for a good haddock, or, when herrings were rife, a dozen herrings for twopence, crabs for a penny, and lobsters for threepence. For there were no railways then to convey the fish to England, and thus equalise the price for all ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... shoe was not forthcoming, the next morning Bill goes on the quarter-deck, and complains to the first lieutenant, as how he had lost Sall's shoe. 'Damn Sall's shoe,' said he, 'haven't I enough to look after without your wife's confounded shoes, which can't be worth twopence?' Well, Bill argues that his wife had only one shoe left, and that won't keep two feet dry, and begs the first lieutenant to order a search for it; but the first lieutenant turns away, and tells him to go to the devil, and all the men grin at Bill's making such a ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... go on like that you'll make me distracted with hunger,' said Blanche, a young person who at the seaside wanted twopence to buy buns directly after ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... really strikes me, dear Maud, that the subject may be worth a second thought. No, no, you won't refuse to hear me,' he said, observing me on the point of protesting. 'I am, of course, assuming that you are fancy free. I am assuming, too, that you don't care twopence about Dudley, and even that you fancy you dislike him. You know in that pleasant play, poor Sheridan—delightful fellow!—all our fine spirits are dead—he makes Mrs. Malaprop say there is nothing like beginning with a little ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... finnikin Adrian—how on earth could he have written this same epoch-making novel? Beyond doubt he was a clever fellow. He had obtained a First Class in the Law Tripos and had done well in his Bar examination. But after fourteen years or so he was making twopence halfpenny per annum at his profession. He made another three-farthings, say, by selling elegant verses to magazines. He dined out a great deal and spent much of his time at country houses, being a very popular and agreeable person. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... very root of me a kind of savage—a creature that hates fish-knives and finger-glasses and dressing for dinner—the things I have done all my life, and Arthur Delaine will go on doing all his. Also that I never want to see a museum again—at least, not for a long time; and that I don't care twopence whether Herculaneum is ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... several coloured plates, enthusiastic pencil-marking of a vanished somebody, and, besides, an early Victorian flavour of dust and a dim vision of a silent conversation in a sunlit flower garden—altogether I think very cheap at twopence. The fashion has changed altogether now. In these days we season our love-making with talk about heredity, philanthropy, and sanitation, and present one another with Fabian publications instead of wild flowers. But in the end, I fancy, the business comes ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... General, with a grimace which was really much less humorous than he meant it to be, and in a voice which was hardly as steady as he would have liked to have it—'upon my word, Irene, I'd give twopence to be in your shoes ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... afford to spend a penny or twopence upon vanity and worldliness went to see the performance. It was quite a fashionable gathering. The best society were by common consent allowed to take the best seats—very hard benches—the less ambitious crowded behind, with minds fully made up not to allow themselves ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... will excuse my clothes. You know, Lady Castlerich, that I'm very poor. Some years ago I lost my money, and since then I've been merely an expense. It is most humiliating to have to ask your wife for twopence ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... and deeply grieved in their privileges, as well as in their purses. Men may lose little in property by the act which takes away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to privileges. Even ancient indulgences, withdrawn without offence on the part of those who enjoyed such favors, operate as grievances. ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... provided for me, that I had always a superfluity, and I was enabled to relieve the necessities and fill the bellies of many poor Miserable Hungry creatures who otherwise must have starved; for 'twas the custom of the Crown only to allow their Captives a few Kreutzers, amounting to some twopence-farthing a day English, for their subsistence. The Oldest Prisoner in the Ward, whom they called Father of the Room, would on this Bare Pittance take tithe and toll, often in a most Extortionate manner. Then these Gaol birds ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... allowed into the country free of duty, they might as well bring them over as everything of that sort in Winnipeg is so fearfully dear I do not like buying anything there. We sent for some unbleached calico the other day, worth twopence-halfpenny; was charged twelve cents or sixpence a yard. Besides the four yards of calico there were ten of bed-ticking, also ten of American cloth; and the bill was six dollars seventy cents, nearly seven-and-twenty shillings. Everything is equally dear, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical "Open sesame!" every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... above all a great conscience." More perhaps than ever in her life before Maggie addressed her father at this moment with a shade of the absolute in her tone. She had never come so near telling him what he should take it from her to believe. "She has only twopence in the world—but that has nothing to do with it. Or rather indeed"—she quickly corrected herself—"it has everything. For she doesn't care. I never saw her do anything but laugh at her poverty. Her life has ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... provide a shelter for his head. A cottage, at ten pounds a year, would have served him better, and would have been equally commodious. He must needs send his children to some private 'academy' for education, getting only bad education and high charges for his pains; a village board-school at twopence a week would have offered undeniable advantages. He must wear the black coat and top-hat sacred to the clerking tribe; a tweed suit and cap are more comfortable, and half the price. At all points he is the slave of convention, and he pays a price for his convention ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... three years with the colours the men receive an allowance or pay of twopence halfpenny a day. Their service is not a contract but a public duty, and while performing it they are clothed, lodged, and fed by the State. When passed into the reserve they resume their normal civil occupation, except that for a year or two they are called up for a few weeks' training and manoeuvres ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... have lapsed but for the thing that happened when the waiter came up with the bill. My share of it was three and twopence, and I found myself with only ninepence in my pocket. I had to borrow half a crown, from Jevons. You mayn't see anything very dreadful in that. I didn't at the time, and there wasn't. The dreadful thing was that I forgot to ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... everything depends on the Fizzer's ingenuity. The odds are very uneven when this happens—a man's ingenuity against a man's life, and death playing with loaded dice. And every letter the Fizzer carries past that well costs the public just twopence. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... father could pass whole days happily with his books and the beautiful things he had collected in his travels; but he looked well after the people in the village, and insisted that the children should be sent to a little school, where they learned how to read and write and count for twopence a week. If the poor villagers were ill or unhappy, his wife used to visit them, and help them with advice as well as with money, and we may be quite sure that her little daughters often went with her on ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... turnstile gate; The orange-sellers cried "Fat and fine Seville oranges, sweet, like wine: Twopence apiece, all juice, all juice." The pea and the ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... what does not rest (literally, stop here)." Said the Gipsy, "Show me your money!" And he showed him a guinea, a sovereign, a half-sovereign, a half-guinea, a five-shilling piece, a half-crown, a two-shilling piece, a shilling, a sixpence, a fourpenny piece, a threepence, a twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing, a half-farthing. Said the Gipsy, "This is all bad money." "No," said the other man; "it is all good and sound. Toss it in your hand and hear it ring!" "Yes," replied the Gipsy. "You told me that only bad things keep ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... "I don't care twopence what you fellows think of me," said he, "and never did. I saw a lot of the Bishop," he went on, less aggressively, after ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and screaming in the front of her brood, and in the face of circumstances, succeeds, by her courage, in putting her enemy to flight; in like manner you will always, I think, find your wife (if that lady be good for twopence) shrill, eager, and ill-humored, before, and during a great family move of this nature. Well, the swindling hackney-coachmen are paid, the mother leading on her regiment of little ones, and supported by her auxiliary nurse-maids, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of all this, Radie—this particular version, I mean, of marriage, a-la-mode, they are preparing up there?' and he made a little dip of his cane towards Brandon Hall, over his shoulder. 'I really don't think Wylder cares twopence about her, or she about him,' and Stanley Lake laughed ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... course he is. I felt that when we got the guns up, only it warn't for me to give my 'pinion. Speaking in parabolas like, what I say is, that the t'other gun's worth twopence up there, but down here it 'll be worth a hundred pound or ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... do much more wonderful things than that—oh, ever so much,' said Anthea persuasively, 'if we only have our monkey. And here's twopence for yourself.' ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the idol of the great and good-natured American people. They sent him the kindest letters, they invited him to lecture, but ah! when his publishers' accounts came in, he found there "To American sales: six and twopence!" [Laughter.] Here is matter ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... don't look like that! She treated me abominably; and before I married you I had come not to care twopence about her." ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... column I am informed that some person or other, of whom I have never heard, has gone to Wiesbaden. The leading article is devoted to a eulogium of some football team, the special article asks, "Can we live on twopence a day?" You cannot imagine how unutterably turbid all this appears to me, out on the green Atlantic. It is Sunday, and so we rest; but yesterday afternoon I was out in one of the lifeboats, line-fishing for ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... and savage in her fur and feathers. Her sister stepped down from her third-class carriage as a queen from her throne, beckoned to Rye's one porter, and without a word pointed back into the compartment, from which he removed a handbag; whereat she graciously gave him twopence and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... same cod "pestered" the ships of Gosnold in 1602), but set to work with the quiet initiative which has distinguished New Englanders ever since, first to catch, then to barter, and finally to sell his wares to all the world. For cheap as all fish was—twopence for a twelve-pound cod, salmon less than a penny a pound, and shad, when it was finally considered fit to eat at all, at two fish for a penny—yet, when all the world is ready to buy and the supply is inexhaustible, tremendous profits are possible. The many fast days of the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... his pipe through the smoke. "Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence—a pot of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about myself. They are ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... had nodded, and, releasing Paul with a clumsy gesture of simulated affection, had sent him with twopence for a pint of beer to the public-house at the end of the street. He recalled how the man had winked his little bright eye at his mother before putting ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... sprang out of bed and went over to the window. The venetian blind was broken, hung fan-shaped over the upper pane... "That blind must be mended. I'll get the office boy to drop in and fix it on his way home to-morrow—he's a good hand at blinds. Give him twopence and he'll do it as well as a carpenter... Anna could do it herself if she was all right. So would I, for the matter of that, but I don't like to trust myself on rickety step-ladders." He looked up at the sky: it shone, strangely white, unflecked with cloud; he looked down at the row ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... over careful, and arter marking it "Private," twice in front and once on the back, I stuck it down so that it could be blown open a'most, and waited for the schooner to come back. Then I gave a van-boy twopence to 'and it to Mrs. Smithers, wot was sitting on the deck alone, and tell 'er it was a letter ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs |
