"Alertly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doubt you're right. Was that the bell?" she asked, breaking off and listening alertly. "For two days I've been looking for a cable from my nephew. I sent him one nearly three days ago, but there has been no reply. That's one thing that's ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the intruder what he meant for a shove, but which Randal took for a blow. The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-and-crop over the stocks. Burning with rage, the young villager rose alertly, and, flying at Randal, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... solitude which had weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter had slipped off the shore. But while the man on the island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the mind of the Capataz of the Cargadores turned alertly to the problem of future conduct. Nostromo's faculties, working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer straight, to keep a look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to pass, and to try to imagine what would happen tomorrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a matter of fact, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... to be sure,' the master-wheelwright exclaimed with instant conviction, rising alertly from his chair. 'Lord bless my soul,' he said, taking up his hat and stick, 'and we to have been married in six days! But Selina—you're right. You do belong to the child's father since he's alive. I'll try to make the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... greatly moved and he wondered where emotion might lead her. He was alertly watchful for any quick thrust that might find him off guard. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... man's fat flabby body crashed Frederick's strong fists. Tessibel stood looking on, her head bent forward alertly. One arm was clasped about her neck—excitement sparkling from the flushed face and panting lips. Once the throat sound that came when she was excited rolled ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... already champions with majestic names—champions of the South, the prairies, the Pacific coast. Some, younger and more eager than others, strained at their leashes, and looked about alertly at the passing show. Others, reserved veterans, gazed into space with the dignified abstraction of those who have travelled far and seen the world and tasted the vanity of ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... current past land out to sea. He started alertly with laughter and mockery, Loud at its height with the rapture of contest. For him the light focusses now to one vision, Shot through its beautiful heart with black terror, Terror from weakness, remorse and leave-taking. To his scared eye the day's bitter ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... other dogs off as they fell upon Batard. They drew back into a wider circle, squatting alertly on their haunches and licking their chops, the hair on every neck bristling ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... a moment, his companions alertly shifting from crack to crack, window to window, their rifles cracking at intervals. They appeared to him to act as if they had done nothing else all their lives but fight Indians from that shack, and he braced up a little at their ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Glancing alertly from side to side, the lad stood at his post in a fever of excitement. He strove to keep his hands from trembling. His knees seemed scarcely able to support ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was anxious to avoid being seen and quite willing to keep out of the conflict; but with no handcuffs and the back door of the saloon unguarded, Ross was aware that his guard must be incessant and alertly vigilant. "Where are the law-abiding citizens of the town?" he asked of Sifton, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the left one there was a little brown wart. When he was introduced to Charmian he sent her a glance which she interpreted as meaning, "What does this woman want of me?" It showed her how this man was bombarded, how instinctively ready he was to be alertly on the defensive if he judged ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... man stood watching, alertly, as swordsman might face swordsman with a blood feud lying on their blades. To Dane's eyes the Khatkan made no move. Yet the fire leaped high, as if freshly fed, and flames burst from the wood, flew into the air, ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... its appointed time the hall light in the Robson flat continued to burn dimly. Mrs. Robson, sleepless and a bit anxious, waited alertly for the sound of Claire's key in the door. The welcome click came finally, succeeded by the unmistakable slam of an automobile door and the sharp, quick note ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... also—that the Queen of England is intensely and alertly mental—alive to her finger tips, we should say in America. She has always been active. Her days are crowded. A different type of royal woman would be content to be the honoured head of the Queen's Guild. But she is in close ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Dr. Stanley, alertly observant of every change, believed it was the end; but, having relinquished his patient, knowing that he was absolutely helpless at this supreme moment, he made ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... front drawing-room so rife with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was Anna. From within it, more faintly now, came those sounds of a mason at work which had seemed to ring with the song. But the song had ceased. About the hall highly gilded officers conferred alertly in pairs or threes, more or less in the way of younger ones who smartly crossed from room to room. Here came Greenleaf! Seeking her? No, he would have passed unaware, but her ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... front of the adobe shack at Las Vegas camp. His face was serious and thoughtful, and his glance was fixed on the open door through which came the broken, indistinguishable murmur of Buck Stratton's voice. Once, thinking he heard an unusual sound, the youngster turned his head alertly and stared westward through the shadows. But a moment later his eyes flashed back to that narrow, black oblong, and he resumed his uneasy pondering as to what Buck ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank was that ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... or alertly, according to their several grades of repletion, Vogelstein attached himself to me almost affectionately. "Do stop in the cafe and talk to me," he urged. "It's queer, here are a lot of my customers, some of my artists, besides you literary chaps, and except Morrison, nobody wants to talk ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... watching for his game, or an Indian for his enemy, but with different, very different purpose, Tyrrel lay on his breast near the Buck-stane, his eye on the horse-road which winded down the valley, and his ear alertly awake to every sound which mingled with the passing breeze, or with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... wheels of her car, so that they might go up inclines, instead of pushing against the straight walls of mud they had thrown up. On these inclines he strewed the brush she had brought, halting to ask, with head alertly lifted from his stooped huddle in the mud, "Did you have to get ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... this came out. I took it for granted, however, that he who appeared to have hardly sufficient strength to support himself could not help me. This poor looking, feeble old man, however, took hold of me with one arm, and lifted me with a single jerk upon the horse so quick and so alertly that ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... from behind and at an angle, so that its course and ours made the sides of a V. Captain Rogers followed the course of the whale alertly, swinging the muzzle of the cannon with skill. Most of the crew were grouped behind him in ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... talked Sam sat watching the men's faces. They did not seem vile to him now as they had seemed that first evening in the hotel office. He began thinking of them silently and alertly at work all day long, surrounded by such influences as Ed and Bill, and the thought sweetened ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Greeby alertly. "You found the letter in Pine's tent when he was camping here as Hearne, and passed it to Silver so that he might ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... elderly men of affairs came to fetch his guests away. They entered the room while he was entertaining the baby with a whistled selection from his repertoire of flute music, and he broke off short as they regarded him from the doorway. The Jewess looked up alertly ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... in which these have been surmounted. Compact, plump, and active in figure, quick and subtle in its movements, the 'coon crouches in a flattened position along the limb of a tree, its broad, shallow head and pointed snout a little lifted, as it gazes alertly outward and downward. It sustains itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on the branch, the fore legs being spread apart, while the left hind leg is withdrawn inward, and enters smoothly into the contour of the furred side; the bushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and light bands, curving ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... once pointed to Heaven was also broken. Her figure was rather stiff, and so were her draperies, which fell in straight folds to her blocklike feet. Her right hand was raised high, and her left was held alertly away from her side and had unseparated fingers. She had seen a great procession of generations pass her pedestal, but she never saw Jay. Of course not, for Jay was not there. Only a column of thin watching ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... as "Jack" sprang alertly to the roof of the caboose. A moment later his voice echoed ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... served with coffee in the Turkish room, as it was called from its cushions and hangings of Indian and Egyptian stuffs. "What is the instance you've got up your sleeve?" He smoked with great energy, and cast his eyes alertly about as if to make sure that there was no chance of Wanhope's physically escaping him, from the corner of the divan, where he sat pretty well hemmed in by the rest of us, spreading in an ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... when it would not have been so; yet, at this moment, I cannot tell you how I longed to be rid of Dame Martin. I almost wished she would sprain one of those 'many-twinkling' ankles, which served her so alertly; and when, in the midst of her exuberant caprioling, I saw my former partner leaving the apartment, and with eyes, as I thought, turning towards me, this unwillingness to carry on the dance increased to such a point, that I was almost about to feign a ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes were slightly clouded to a look of apprehension, as they roved the room furtively. He made no answer to the Inspector's greeting for a few moments, but remained standing without movement, poised alertly as if sensing some concealed peril. Finally, however, his anxiety found expression in words. His tone was pregnant with alarm, though he strove ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... blanket, and, out of the gloom, the steady pounding of the surf came to her with ominous insistence. The chill of the foggy air was penetrating, and she wrapped a sweater about her almost without realizing that she had done so. Rags was on the seat beside her, ears alertly cocked. ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... he seldom ventured upon. He could not bear that vision long. No one could. That was the fearful implication which made him shrink. He, Robert Hollister, in the flush of manhood, with a body whose symmetry and vigor other men had envied, a mind that functioned alertly, a spirit as nearly indomitable as the spirit of man may be, was like a leper among his own kind; he had become a something that filled other men with pitying dismay when they looked at him, that made women avert their ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Ismail. Like the rest of his countrymen, he had a keen love for a story. And the love was the keener when he himself had the telling of it. He sat up alertly. "In that house lived an Englishman of high authority. He escaped when Delhi was seized by the faithful. He came back when Delhi was recaptured by the infidels. And there he sat with an English officer, at his window, every morning from eight ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... exalted baked potato, was one of decided relaxation. The look of affection in her eyes as she glanced at the author who had dragged her into this food situation rivaled the suddenly rooted admiration which beamed in the eyes of Mr. Dennis Farraday and which put Miss Hawtry alertly on watch, so much so that Mr. Godfrey Vandeford was privileged to lean back in his chair behind a mist of cigarette-smoke and let his ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... ring at the front door-bell. Letitia, wrought-up, nervously clutched my arm. For a moment a sort of paralysis seized me. Then, alertly as a young calf, I bounded toward the door, hope aroused, and expectation keen. It was rather dark in the outside hall, and I could not quite perceive the nature of our visitor. But I soon gladly realized that it was something feminine, and as I held the door open, a thin, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on wood and garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparative common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... sight. The attendant, sometimes called the hugger, places his left arm across the shoulder of the first dancer and walks beside and a step behind him, using his feather wand or snake whip to distract the attention of the snake. (See Figure 11.) Just behind this pair walks their gatherer, who is alertly ready to pick up the dropped snake, when it has been carried four times around the dance circle; ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... Phoebe turned alertly and closed the door. Then she soliloquized, "I don't see why there has to be doors on the inside of houses. I like to smell the good things all over the house, but then it's ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Springing alertly to an upright position, and coughing excessively, Mr. PENDRAGON was a shamefaced reproach to his whole sex, while the young lady used the edge of her right foot against a seam of the carpet with that extreme solicitude as to the result which is always so entirely deceiving to those who have ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... up Mr. McBride alertly. "Don't you do that! A man can't stand a woman tagging at his heels. He's got to have room, and ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... in silent amaze, her brain working alertly. She even watched her daughter don the immaculate white golf suit, and made ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... attention between what his uncle imparted and what he imbibed, had, by careful counting, discovered that the ninth mug invariably closed their evening lessons: so, without waiting for any further signal that such was now the case, he alertly bounced from his chair, and, snatching up a basket of big red apples that black daddy had just brought in and set on the hearth, began handing them round to the rest of the company with a great show of playing the polite ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... official board-room, the members at the table, and—as the one small spot of light and interest to me—Mr. Hewitt's white-bearded face, as an attendant opened the door to me, and the Mayor, looking up alertly, nodded across the room, and waved his hand ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... young people whirled around alertly, and Julia Cloud sat up with a wild attempt to bring her hair into subjection as she recognized her neighbor. The color flooded into her sweet face, but she rose ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... trees should be kept along the mowing, Tenney came. Jerry at once said he'd go in and get his dinner pail and Raven waited for Tenney. This was not the man of yesterday. He carried his axe and dinner pail. He walked alertly, as if his mind were on his day's work, and the pale face had quite lost its livid excitement. It was grave and even sad. Raven, seeing that, wondered if the fellow could feel remorse, and was conscious of a lift in the cloud of his ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... had left Ashton's cheeks, but his full lips were set in resolute lines. His gaze alertly took in the ground before his horse and at the same time the girl's graceful, swaying figure. Fortunately he knew enough to let his horse pick his own way. But such a way as it was! Had not the two animals been as ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... Louison as alertly awake as bird and beast stirring in the ruined splendors of old Shahjehanabad. Long before the anxious Justine Delande arose to deck herself furtively for her tryst with Alan Hawke, Berthe Louison knew that all her orders of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage ran between polished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviating droning note. He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Louis, those faculties on which he prided himself! To gain friends in the castle he bribed the household of the duke. As for himself he remained quiet and apparently easy and unsuspicious, while alertly watchful to avail himself of any opportunity to escape from the trap into which he had brought himself. During the two days that succeeded, the rage of Charles cooled somewhat. Louis had offered to swear a peace, to aid Charles in punishing ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... natural, which it was. Also as calling for no particular notice, except, as it were, for a certain graceful obliviousness on her part, modified by a possessive glance or two from her fearless black eyes—glances for which Stair watched more alertly than he had ever gazed into the night for the signal flashes from the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... who waited, when not directly addressed or concerned, in a sort of blank patience, suddenly started out of his daze, and following the captain too alertly up the gangway stairs drove his hat against the hatch—with a force that sent him back into ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... boy, this daughter of the Vikings. Though she was sixteen, her graceful body had retained most of the lines and slender curves of childhood; and she was long of limb and broad of shoulder. Her head was poised alertly above her strong young throat, and she was as straight as a fir-tree and as supple as a birch. A life out-of-doors had given to her skin a tone of warm brown, which, in a land that expected women to be lily-fair, was like a mask added ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? - Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do, But cannot answer his words addressed me ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... all right, thank you!" replied the man, rising alertly and limping to the sledge. "Only knocked the skin off ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... voice at his ear called him back to the realities of life. He sat up as alertly as if he ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... evidently caught March's ear, for he turned alertly and looked. It was one of the oddest experiences John Wollaston had ever had. The moment he met March's gaze, the whole infernal pattern, like an old-fashioned set-piece in fireworks, extinguished itself as suddenly as it had flared. There was something indescribable in this man's face that simply ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... every winter-housed thing, that stirred and woke the least needle of the tasselled pines, tore through her lips. A moment afterward, the beast left the arm, once white, now crimson, and looked up alertly. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... very old. Her hair was white and her lean face was wrinkled and leathery with time and storm and exposure to the winds of the hills. Still, old as she seemed to be, she walked alertly, with the swinging grace of the true mountain woman. She was very plainly dressed in a one-piece gown of dark calico. Her head was not covered at all, and the white hair took on a tinge of gold from the distant campfire. Her black eyes ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that the work was his, and that it would be performed as soon as he believed himself justified to act. Harlan and his friends were fully conversant with the feeling against them and had become a little more cautious, alertly ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... of William the Conqueror preparing to make France pay dearly for the jest of the French King anent his colossal bulk. He was a man in the prime of life, but he cannot possibly have weighed less than 400 pounds. Yet he moved about alertly, and he had driven over in a light wagon at full speed (the Norman horses are very strong) to congratulate his candidate on the issue of a fray in which he had borne his own part most manfully. M. Pierre de Witt had received 1,042 votes as ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... men charged, the original seven leading; the eleven recruits, less whole-hearted in the business, came less alertly in the rear. The charge of the assassins was abruptly arrested by Lagardere's bulwark, and over that bulwark the swords of the two defenders flashed and leaped, and before every thrust a man went down. It ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in conversation in order that he and Morton might not fall into argument, and with the further purpose of permitting her young people a little time for mutual explanation. She was glad when Weissmann came in, brisk as a boy, his keen eyes peering alertly through his horn-bowed glasses; he not merely proved a diversion, he completed her party. The great man was as animated as a cricket (this was his society manner), and upon being presented to Viola began ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... alertly, as if an extra special homecoming football game was in prospect. But they weren't given to real doubts, either. From their previous remarks it was clear that the asteroids, those fragments of an exploded and once populated world, orbiting out beyond Mars, would ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Blackfoot, escaped him; and if their leader began the day's work as a sorely wounded dog, it was certain that each dog behind him began it with one sore spot to occupy his mind withal. Inside of one minute he had the six of them standing alertly to attention in their respective places, waiting for their harness and itching to be off; not by reason of any sudden access of virtue or industry in them, but because the leader they had thought too sore and stiff to accomplish much ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... he sat alone on the edge of his bunk. The sun was pouring into the porthole; intermittently it flashed over him. Suddenly and alertly he got up, looked out, listened intently, then stepped back into the cabin and locked the door. Again he listened. There was no sound except the steady heart-beats of the great engines below. He sat down sidewise, took out ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... paused now and then to catch the floating strains, for their Princess was unspeakably dear to them, and her singing stirred them always to deep delight. Rushing Flame, the King's messenger, poised alertly at the palace gate in readiness to leap forth on any errand for his master, strained his ear, that he, too, might miss no note ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... Colonel de Damas has them mounted, in part, these Clermont men; young Cornet Remy dashes off with a few. But the Patriot Magistracy is out here at Clermont too; National Guards shrieking for ball-cartridges; and the Village 'illuminates itself;'—deft Patriots springing out of bed; alertly, in shirt or shift, striking a light; sticking up each his farthing candle, or penurious oil-cruise, till all glitters and glimmers; so deft are they! A camisado, or shirt-tumult, every where: stormbell set a-ringing; village-drum ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... doom. The beating of the waves against the boat's side came gently under the rasping, crunching complaint of timber against timber in combat. The schooner's sails flapped softly in the light breeze. Zeke, watching and listening alertly, despite bewilderment, heard the roaring commands of a man invisible, somewhere above him, and guessed that this must be the captain of the schooner. He saw the crew of The Bonita clambering one after another at speed, up the anchor ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... behind me (though not so far from where the trail ended), the big buck began his twilight wandering along the ridges, sniffing alertly at the vanishing scent of the man on his feeding ground. The best things that a hunter brings home are in his heart, not in his game bag; and a free deer meant another long glorious day following him through the October woods, making the tyro's mistakes, to be sure, but ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... cried a clear, well-toned voice behind them. He turned, half annoyed and half relieved, to meet a young lady in gray, stepping alertly from the doorway of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... girl at the same time she saw him. He had just rounded an outcropping of rock about ten miles from the East Coast Mausoleum. They were facing each other, poised defensively, eyes alertly on each other, about twenty feet apart. She was blond and lean with the conditioning of outdoor life, almost to the point of thinness. And although not really beautiful, she was attractive and young, probably not yet twenty. Her features were even and smooth, ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... and as the car turned into the famous thoroughfare both girls sat up alertly so as not to miss a single sight of interest. Carter slowed down as they approached a high iron fence, and at the first glimpse of the white mansion separated from the fence and street by a wide stretch of lawn, Libbie ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... by picking one's way between cities can one walk under, or as it were in, a pure sky. The horizon in Venice is thick and ochreous, and no one cares; the sky of Milan is defiled all round. In England I must choose a path alertly; and so does now and then a wary, fortunate, fastidious wind that has so found his exact, uncharted way, between this smoke and that, as to clear me a clean moonrise, and ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and Thurtell* is just now coming out upon the new drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality; yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end tomorrow, I should say "Will it?" I have not volition enough left to dot my i's, much less to comb my eyebrows; ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... far too alertly engaged with troubled thoughts of Phil Abingdon to be susceptible to the influence of those delicate etheric waves which he had come to recognize as the note of danger. Practically there had been no development whatever in the ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... balmy mornings, and sat with knitting or mending in one of the narrow aisles, to advise her gude-mon in small matters. Bobby trotted quietly about, sniffing at everything with the liveliest interest, head on this side or that, alertly. His business, learned in his first summer in Greyfriars, was to guard the nests of foolish skylarks, song-thrushes, redbreasts and wrens, that built low in lilac, laburnum, and flowering currant bushes, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... sense of evil things happening in the hostels was a deepening distress. It troubled her so much that she took the disagreeable step of asking Mrs. Pembrose to meet her at the Bloomsbury Hostel and talk out the expulsions. She found that lady alertly defensive, entrenched behind expert knowledge and pretension generally. Her little blue eyes seemed harder than ever, the metallic resonance in her voice more marked, the lisp stronger. "Of course, Lady Harman, if you were to have some practical experience of control——" and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... selfishness, that the working of his mind was not disturbed by the enormity of the crime he had committed; he saw now that, as events had turned out, he had acted unwisely in taking the jewels from their box; and, alertly and with something like calmness, he unlocked the safe, replaced the jewels in the box and left the safe door open; he was actually turning away, leaving the jewel-case in its place, when his cupidity got the better of him and he took up the case, hid it ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... fact that he held the words back only served to increase his ill-humor and make a worse outbreak possible. But, if Chad did not understand, Snowball did, and his black face grew suddenly grave as he sprang more alertly than ever at any word from his little master. Meanwhile, all unconscious, Chad fished on, catching perch after perch, but he could not keep his eyes on his cork while the little girl was so near, and more than once he was warned by a suppressed ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... before dawn the anchor was aweigh and the Royal James drifted ahead like a shadow, in between the outer islands where the fairway was wide and safe. Her gun-ports were open and every man was alertly at his station. It was a silent ship excepting when an officer passed an order along. Joe Hawkridge began to feel more sanguine of winning against odds. He had never seen such iron discipline as this in the bedlam aboard the Revenge. Stede Bonnet knew ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... must confess that its originality pleased me; my calmer reflections, however, show me that I was wrong. It is not for the nobles of the earth to copy the methods of socialists and anarchists. These men are a pest upon humanity, but they may have their good uses. They may help us to govern alertly, vigorously, always with our eyes and ears strained to catch the signs of the changing times. Monsieur le Duc, should you decide to take up your residence in this country I shall at all times be glad to receive you. But your future ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said Sister Soulsby, alertly, "I half believe that a good cuffing is what you really stand in need of. Now you stop all this nonsense, and lie quiet and keep still! ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... made Success his god, and was alertly ready to fetch and carry for the high priest in its temple, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde |
