"Uncommunicative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first case, and never startled her in the second, by appearing too suddenly at the bedside in the character of a stranger. Honour to whom honour is due (whether foreign or English)—and I give her privilege impartially to Mrs. Rubelle. She was remarkably uncommunicative about herself, and she was too quietly independent of all advice from experienced persons who understood the duties of a sick-room—but with these drawbacks, she was a good nurse, and she never gave either ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... school. They were pretty, attractive children, and Henry, the baby, was a sturdy toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam was the least promising of the flock. He remained delicate, and developed little beyond a tendency to pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative child that detested indoors and would run away if not watched—always in the direction of the river. He walked in his sleep, too, and often the rest of the household got up in the middle of the night ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... some further talk, but for so jovial a specimen he was surprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that I somehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"—in the most opprobrious sense—and he soon began to drowse, rousing himself once or twice to roll another cigarette, but finally dropping ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... by the company with somewhat gloomy interest. Nastasia was silent, and would not say what she thought about it. Gania was equally uncommunicative. The general seemed the most anxious of all, and decidedly uneasy. The present of pearls which he had prepared with so much joy in the morning had been accepted but coldly, and Nastasia had smiled rather disagreeably as she took it from him. Ferdishenko ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... uncommunicative, and spoke very little English. The only persons who had much to do with him were the storekeepers of whom he ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... asked questions like ony ither stranger,' answered the postilion, possessed, as it seemed, with the refractory and uncommunicative spirit which ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... she went from teepee to teepee. The Kakisas showed themselves awed by her condescension, but still they were uncommunicative. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... to repeat the exact language of the lover at the happy moment, are wont to transfix the sensitive aspirant for knowledge with lofty scorn. Mothers are accustomed to dissemble and say they "have forgotten." Men in general are uncommunicative, though occasionally some rare soul will expand under the influence of food and freely give more valuable information than can be extracted from an indefinite ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not require an introduction every time ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... very uncommunicative. All I heard was that the reason he didn't get my letters at Packworth was that he had told me, or thought he had told me, to address my letters to "T," and I had always addressed them to "J." But even had I addressed them correctly, he would only ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... gloomy and uncommunicative. At the breakfast table, when Brown glanced up from his plate, he several times caught the lightkeeper looking intently at him with the distrustful, half-suspicious gaze of the night before. Though quite aware of this scrutiny, he made no comment upon it until the meal ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I found Maximilian in conference with a stranger; a heavily-built, large-jawed, uncommunicative man. As I was about to withdraw my friend insisted that ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... dealt with him at some length. He was a peculiar man—of sixty-five about—iron gray, hard-faced, obstinate, and uncommunicative. He used to keep the ship loafing at sea for inscrutable reasons. Would come on deck at night sometimes, take some sail off her, God only knows why or wherefore, then go below, shut himself up in his cabin, and play on the violin for hours—till daybreak perhaps. In fact, he spent ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... him, her arms held folded over her head as a shield against expected blows. She was still sullen, uncommunicative, her head down. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... Lord Augustus?" Morton said that he did not know Lord Augustus and then answered sundry other questions of the same nature in the same uncommunicative way. Though he had once or twice almost fancied that he would like to proclaim aloud that the girl was engaged to him, yet he did not like to have the fact pumped out of him. And if she were such ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... to bench, shouting and hardly knowing what to do. Word was sent to the office, while the workers went to their buckets and washed themselves, silent and melancholy as a funeral procession. Their faces were uncommunicative. Did they perhaps foresee that those three blows were the signal for a terrible conflict? Or were they merely following their first angry impulse? They knew enough, at all events; it was stamped upon their faces that this was fate—the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... thread that held the sword of Damocles over the heads of the American people. Tension increased. "We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst," came one official view early in the crisis. The President became detached and uncommunicative. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... of his dirty fingers in his mouth, and looked stupid and uncommunicative. He glanced at the young officers around him, and then over ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... first attempt it almost came close to Lonnie. It did gather in the hidden, dead, still twitching, completely uncommunicative carcasses of the five men who actually relieved the vault of the Citizen's Bank of Berlin of its clutch of millions. It even identified the body of the rocopilot found floating in the Potomac a few days later ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... and dragon in his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his expense account, leaned against the bar and attempted to engage the barkeeper in conversation, asking leading questions about business in general and Mr. Einstein of the New York Store in particular; but Black Tex, in spite of his position, was uncommunicative. Immediately after the arrival of the train the little man who had called him down had returned to the barroom and immersed himself in those wearisome magazines which a lunger had left about the place, and, far from being impressed with his sinister expression, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... about restraining her was all calculated; he knew that restraint would produce nothing but utter alienation. Just so far as she allowed him, he shared her studies, her few pleasures, her thoughts; but she was essentially solitary and uncommunicative. No person, as was said long ago, could judge him,—because his task was not merely difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A nature like Elsie's had necessarily to be studied by itself, and to be followed in its laws where it could not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... off heel, and I sympathize with you because of your prickly-heat. But it's all in the day's work and you'll survive. In the meantime, however, I suggest that you compose your restless New England soul in patience, old man, and enjoy with our uncommunicative Cahuilla friend and myself the glories of a sunrise on the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... expected that a man who had fought his way to the fore in eastern Tennessee during those controversial years would possess the characteristics of a diplomat. Even his friends found him uncommunicative, too often defiant and violent in controversy, irritating in manners, indiscreet, and lacking flexibility in the management of men. The messages which he wrote as President were dignified and judicious, and his addresses were not lacking in power, but he was prone to indulge in unseemly repartee ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... her seat, shrinking from all these demonstrations, for she knew that her husband was unworthy of them. The carriages disappeared in the distance, and then—sad, suspicious, uncommunicative—the men went off to draw their last dividend and go about their work. They fought desperately against their own distrust. In the proportion that they doubted the proprietor they were ready to defend him; but there was not a man of them ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... back towards them, and his shoulders looked uncommunicative and slightly obstinate. Hester's face was sullen. Emily thought it sweet of her to care so much, and turned upon her ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gone out to meet that man, it's a scandal!" thought Madeleine wrathfully, and could hardly bring herself to be civil when the girl returned—pale, wearied, and quite uncommunicative. But she was very touching in a mute, dignified way, all the evening, and Madeleine relented fast. And, as they sat in the fire-lit drawing-room, when the curtains were drawn, Delia suddenly brought a stool close to Lady Tonbridge's side, and, sitting at her feet, held up appealing ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... only uneasy one. Mr. Watson, hard-headed man of resource as he was, grew more and more dejected as he realized the impossibility of interesting the authorities in the case. The Sicilian officials were silent and uncommunicative; the Italians wholly indifferent. If strangers came to Taormina and got into difficulties, the government was in no way to blame. It was their duty to tolerate tourists, but those all too energetic foreigners ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... hope that the time was at hand when she must make some definite decision. In Europe her brief disappearance from the scene of her usual activities had mystified him and her return to her hotel, shabby and uncommunicative, had aroused a chagrin and an anxiety quite unusual to him; but he had sat and waited her pleasure, survived her turbulent moods and had found his patience at last rewarded by her silent acquiescence in his presence, and by an invitation ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... neither could Daisy get hold of any chain of reasoning by which she might know beforehand what would meet her mother's favour and what would not. The unconscious conclusion was, that reason had little to do with it; and the consequence, that without being untrue, Daisy had learned to be very uncommunicative about her thoughts, plans, or wishes. To her mother, that is; she was more free with her father, though the habit, once a habit, asserted itself everywhere. Perhaps, too, among causes, the example of her mother's own elegant manner of shewing truth only as one shews a fine picture,—in the ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... upon another emigrant, who had come through from Canada, and was not one jot less weary than myself. Nay, even in a natural state, as I found next morning when we scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, uncommunicative man. After trying him on different topics, it appears that the little German gentleman flounced into a temper, swore an oath or two, and departed from that car in quest of livelier society. Poor little gentleman! I suppose ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and certainly quite at their ease with regard ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Gibbon said, sullenly uncommunicative. Earnestly desiring his departure he had strolled with his visitor to the gate. To have him on Sunday as well as all the week was a little too much, he was saying to himself, aloud saying nothing. And at that moment ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... entertained. Yet it was forced into our minds even more by our leader's manner than by his words. Not one of us failed to comprehend its meaning, and it was characteristic that, while talkative Jack now said not a word, uncommunicative Henry burst into a brief fury of denunciation. I was startled by ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... my best," she said to Miss Garth; "I set an example of cheerfulness to my husband and my children—but I dread July." Norah's secret misgivings on her sister's account rendered her more than usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year advanced. Even Mr. Vanstone, when July drew nearer, lost something of his elasticity of spirit. He kept up appearances in his wife's presence—but on all other occasions there was now a perceptible shade of sadness in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... dismiss the subject from her mind until next day, when she was sitting alone with her daughter in the morning room up stairs. They were both working, but the conversation flagged, and Mrs. Beale, from wondering why Edith was so uncommunicative, found herself involuntarily repeating the bishop's observation: "That child is not right," and the question: "What is the matter with your face, dearest?" slipped from ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... herbs and the bright-colored berries of the Marzanita. These and his company he generally brought to the editor's office, late in the afternoon, often to that enterprising journalist's infinite weariness. Quiet and uncommunicative, he would sit there patiently watching him at his work until the hour for closing the office arrived, when he would as quietly depart. There was something so humble and unobtrusive in these visits, that the editor could ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... said to his young wife, "Nabby, let me have a beefsteak as quickly as possible." While he was eating it, a rap was heard on the window, and he rose at once from the unfinished meal and departed. He returned late, tired and uncommunicative. In the morning, there was found in his shoes, and scattered upon the floor, a quantity of tea. The inevitable inference from these circumstances is strengthened by evidence of a very different character. Near the close of Major Melvill's life, he gave, while dining with a few friends, some anecdotes ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... dreary waste which lay—which always lies—between dream and fulfilment. The glorious splash of patriotic fervour which launched us on our way has subsided; we have reached mid-channel; and the haven where we would be is still afar off. The brave future of which we dreamed in our dour and uncommunicative souls seems as remote as ever, and the present has settled ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... sugar duties, but that I did not like to ask what he did not seem to wish to tell, and that I did not obtain the smallest inkling of light as to his intentions in respect to that very matter now immediately pending. He observed it was a pity Sir R. Peel was so uncommunicative; but that after having been so long connected with him, he would certainly be very unwilling to do anything disagreeable to him; still, if I and others thought fit, he was ready to do what he could towards ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... source of much gossip and great speculation, of course, to the good people of Green Isle, as we shall style this gem of the Pacific, in order to thwart the myrmidons of the law! They found them so reserved and uncommunicative, however, on the subject of their personal affairs, that the most curious gossip in the settlement at last ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... voice echoed, with a lilt of girlish laughter running through the words. "You mean 'bribes,' don't you? For I assure you, dear cousin, it is the metallic clink of American gold, and nothing else, that lures your great men over the sea. As for my silence, ma belle, I have been uncommunicative because there really seemed nothing at all worth saying. I can't accustom myself to small-talk—I can't even listen to it patiently. I always feel a wild impulse to fly far, far away, where I can close my ears to it all and listen to my own thoughts. I'm sorry if I disappoint ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... each waiting for the other to speak. Finally she put some random question about his travelling-companion, a slow shy meditative youth whom he had once or twice brought down to Givre. She reflected that it was natural he should have given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his livelier acquaintances, and aloud she said: "I'm so glad Fred Rempson can go ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... double-berth which she shared with nobody. But it was less easy to find out whether she ever left it, and if so, at what time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and the stewardesses on the Lithuania were mature, experienced and uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he met a muffled Isabel Joy on the D deck. The ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... use the compass. And worse still, he has not the explorer's instinct. If he possessed this, he would somehow find his way himself,—a thing which occasionally happens when the reader has more than usual ability. Between the covers of those books, turning to him their uncommunicative backs, behind those labels—to him so unexpressive—there may be passages, whole chapters or more, that would give him entertainment, if ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... may be supposed to attend upon an accusation of murder. But, sensible of his own weakness, he is anxious at such times to withdraw into solitude: and his domestics in general know nothing of him, but the uncommunicative and haughty, but mild, dejection that accompanies every ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... a small boat gave Eliza a longed-for opportunity to discuss with him the questions which troubled her. He was uncommunicative at first, but she persisted in her attempt, drawing him out in the hope of showing him the error of his ways. At last she provoked him to a ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... should be desolated, as he undoubtedly was. The prospect of freedom, of release from a horrible and humiliating servitude—this prospect ought to have dazzled and uplifted him, in the safe, inviolable privacy of his own heart. But it did not... What a chump the doctor was, to be so uncommunicative! And he himself! ... By the way, he had not told Maggie. It was like her to manifest no immediate curiosity, to be content to wait... He supposed he must call at his aunt's, and even at Clara's. But what should he say when they asked him why he had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... did not altogether lose sight of him after our sea-journey to Marseilles was over. I found him a pleasant companion up to a certain point; but I always felt that there was a reserve about him. He was uncommunicative about his past life, and especially would never allude to anything connected with his travels or his residence in Italy, which, however, I could make out had been a long one. He spoke Italian well, and seemed familiar with ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... willed. He had been in Pontiac only a few days since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he had been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his movements, and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt his inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he might be left alone, Parpon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a surly, uncommunicative lout, resulted in my learning very little in addition to this. The young lady seemed about as usual, so far as he could see. She might 'ave been a bit nervous, impatient like, but he attributed that to her anxiety to make the train. Yes, she had a bag with her, but no other luggage. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... anticipated by a hostess, so looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid! those flows of soul, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... never spoke of me with that partiality he had previously felt. They repaired to London: her father was often absent, and often engaged with men whom she had never seen before; he was absorbed and uncommunicative, and she was still ignorant of the nature ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... herself closely housed, and saw no one whom she was not forced to see; only the meat-man and the fish-man could speak authoritatively concerning her appearance and behavior before folks. They reported the latter as dry, cold, and uncommunicative. Doubtless the bitter experiences of her life had wrought their due effect in that passionate heart; but probably it was as much a morbid sensitiveness as a hardened indifference that turned her from her kind. The village inquisitiveness that invades, also suffers ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... accordion, said, "Who's that now?" went to the window, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into the darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling had passed she fancied she heard the wash of ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... up quickly, pleased with this mark of confidence from his uncommunicative chief. He ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... uncommunicative, there roams through the country of gold a youth in black, at the head of a bold lawless gang of road-riders, who, from his unequaled daring, has won and rightly deserves the name—Deadwood Dick, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... talked with him. Whether it was that he was concealing something, or whether he was merely fearful that we might after all be United States Secret Service men, or whether it was simply a lack of command of English, he was uncommonly uncommunicative at first. He repeated sullenly the details of the disappearance of Guerrero, just as we had ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... more about it," she sighed, a quaint little air of childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows. "Do you know, Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of being. I have to guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,—that is," she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter had not told me a little something about it. Sometimes I think you are not nearly poet enough for the life you are living. Why, you ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen, but less easily shutting herself from ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... coincidence which thus reduced them once more to the temporary necessity of a Tate-a-Tate. Embarrassing as each felt the situation to be, there was, however, no avoiding it, and, after a recognition and a few forced attempts at conversation, they became, by mutual consent, silent and uncommunicative. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... more than this, she took a careful survey of the house whenever she was coming home from school or from play, lest she might come upon her distinguished relative unawares. She had asked her grandmother more than once to tell her about this mysterious kinswoman, but Mrs. Thacher proved strangely uncommunicative, fearing if she answered one easy question it might involve others ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... niece and the clever young visitor who saved appearances by coming ostensibly for both the ladies—Mrs. Penniman's convictions had passed into a riper and richer phase. There was to be no crudity in Mrs. Penniman's treatment of the situation; she had become as uncommunicative as Catherine herself. She was tasting of the sweets of concealment; she had taken up the line of mystery. "She would be enchanted to be able to prove to herself that she is persecuted," said the Doctor; and when at last he questioned her, he was sure ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... seemed totally oblivious. And when the clairvoyant milliner went into a trance and declared that a desperado was in their midst planning a raid on Crowheart the finger of suspicion pointed straight at the uncommunicative stranger, and the Iowa Notion Store ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... moment of our arrival at Mars itself, and especially after the battles began, the prisoner had resumed his savage and uncommunicative disposition, and had seemed continually to be expecting that we would fall victims to the prowess of his fellow beings, and that he would be released. How an outlaw, such as he evidently was, who had been caught ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... to flag. The headmaster had opened brightly enough, with a summary of the evidence which Mr. Downing had laid before him, but after that a massive silence had been the order of the day. There is nothing in this world quite so stolid and uncommunicative as a boy who has made up his mind to be stolid and uncommunicative; and the headmaster, as he sat and looked at Mike, who sat and looked past him at the bookshelves, felt awkward. It was a scene which needed either a dramatic interruption ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... charming lady went up to him at a soiree with a rose in her hand. "May I offer you my boutonniere?" said she, smiling. The mere fact of a question having been asked him suddenly put him instinctively upon his guard; an uncommunicative look spread over his face, and to her horror and his own subsequent amusement, he answered, "I should prefer to ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... all noticed that Peggy was silent, as well as uncommunicative. She fenced skilfully to evade direct answers to their questions, but she did not seem inclined to introduce new topics of conversation. And when Amy called her from the kitchen, where she and Ruth were getting supper, Peggy sat staring abstractedly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... slowly, and with emphasis. "Moreover, Beth Norvell is my stage name, but in part it is my true name also." Suddenly she paused and glanced aside at him. "I have spoken with unusual frankness to you this morning, Mr. Winston. Most people, I imagine, find me diffident and uncommunicative—perhaps I appear according to my varying moods. But I have been lonely, and in some way you have inspired my confidence and unlocked my life. I believe you to be a man worthy of trust, and because I thus believe I am now going to request you not to ask me any more. My past ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... could Daisy get hold of any chain of reasoning by which she might know beforehand what would meet her mother's favour and what would not. The unconscious conclusion was, that reason had little to do with it; and the consequence, that without being untrue, Daisy had learned to be very uncommunicative; about her thoughts, plans, or wishes. To her mother, that is; she was more free with her father, though the habit, once a habit, asserted itself everywhere. Perhaps, too, among causes, the example of her mother's own elegant manner of showing truth only as one shows a fine picture, ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mainsheet, and before you know it, he'd drop the peak. He fell overboard three times, and he couldn't swim. But he was always cheerful, never seasick, and he was the most willing man I ever knew. He was an uncommunicative soul. Never talked about himself. His history, so far as we were concerned, began the day he signed on the DUCHESS. Where he learned to shoot, the stars alone can tell. He was a Yankee—that much we knew from the twang in his speech. And that was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... not from the fact that his curiosity was large—it was perhaps less than that of any other man in the room—but for the reason that he chose to satisfy it at once. Morrow's personality was cold and bleak, inviting no close friendships or intimacies; uncommunicative to a degree that had impressed itself on his companions of the last few days and they looked up, mildly surprised ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to interrogate him in regard to a matter which had more or less interested me ever since the inquest; and that was, who was the Mr. Robbins who had called upon Eleanore the night of the murder? But Thomas was decidedly uncommunicative. He remembered such a person called, but could not describe his looks any further than to say that he was not ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... successful cures and extraordinary treatments, while the other, taller and more robust, although much younger, was Isagani, one of the poets, or at least rimesters, who that year came from the Ateneo, [6] a curious character, ordinarily quite taciturn and uncommunicative. The man talking with them was the rich Capitan Basilio, who was returning from a business ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... went in earnest, and the Settlement workers were left alone in their transformed parlor to consider the madness or merit of her little plan. Michael saw her at breakfast next morning but she was gayly uncommunicative as to her plans, and that night Mrs. Hills reported that her star boarder (who had the two best and biggest rooms, now, and a dressing-room and bath and her own telephone) had gone west for a month or so for ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Nancarrow had been cold and uncommunicative, and he knew that a cloud of reserve hung between them. He felt that his mother despised him. He felt sure, too, that she knew all that had taken place at Penwennack—that he was henceforth to be treated, in what he had regarded ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... for fifty years the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ever know, the motive principle he employed or the enginery he devised. While he was working at this survey, near the spot at which we stand, the Board of Award gave the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Geraldine, and that Felix had become so absorbed in the business that had brought him home, that he only sent in word that he was obliged to go into the town, and tea must not wait for him. Lance remained, but the burthen of two secrets rendered him uncommunicative, when Wilmet tried to understand the cause of Cherry's delay at St. Faith's; and Alda was curious about Vale Leston and Mrs. Fulbert, whom she had seen at Kensington Palace Gardens. It did not take much acumen to exclaim, 'Still no ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kolderup, since he had arrived at a decision, he had become very uncommunicative, especially to his nephew. The closed lips, and eyes half hidden beneath their lids, showed that there was some fixed idea in the head where generally floated the highest ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne |
