"Dawdle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... on Monday, and returned here yesterday; go away to- morrow. It has been a dreadfully idle life all day long, facendo niente, incessant gossip and dawdle, poor, unprofitable talk, and no rational employment. Brougham was here a little while ago for a week. He, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Anglesey form a discontented triumvirate, and are knit together by the common bond of a sense of ill-usage and ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... treatment than this. In Ireland he was an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... was home from school by four o'clock for at half-past three her room was dismissed and it never took her more than half an hour to say good-by to her numerous new friends and dawdle home. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... geologist?—you may pick up leaves and chip rocks wherever you please, the live-long day. Are you a valetudinarian?—you may physic yourself by Nature's own simple prescription, walking in fresh air. Are you dilatory and irresolute?—you may dawdle to your heart's content; you may change all your plans a dozen times in a dozen hours; you may tell "Boots" at the inn to call you at six o'clock, may fall asleep again (ecstatic sensation!) five minutes after he has knocked ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... still deep in thought when the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for the last half hour, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend "Corven" in large letters showed that they ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the doctor, "I will send a steward to help you to dress—you will need a little assistance, with the ship cutting these wild capers—and if you do not dawdle too long over your toilet you will be just in good time for dinner. There goes the first bell," he added, as the strident clamour suddenly pealed out from somewhere on the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... show you—she knows all the trails. Yes, indeed, she'd be delighted, I'm sure.... Oh, any time you prefer. Don't let her dawdle along, though; she's such a strange child—sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... difference remarkable on this particular Sunday, October 19, was, that whereas my husband was dreadfully punctual, and with military precision as the clock struck we had to be in our places at the table at half-past seven, he seemed to dawdle about the room putting things away. He said to me, 'You had better go in to table'; and I answered, 'No, darling, I will wait for you'; and we went in together. He dined well, but sparingly; he laughed, talked, and joked. We discussed our future plans ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... just tell you he has been gone over two hours, delivering an order that should not have taken him more than fifteen minutes at the most? No good boy would dawdle so about his business. ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals. For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. There is no help for it; your best chance will be to get by her as fast as ever you can, for if you dawdle about her rock while you are putting on your armour, she may catch you with a second cast of her six heads, and snap up another half dozen of your men; so drive your ship past her at full speed, and roar out lustily ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Faithful Ayah didn't dawdle over her food. She returned, sat down on the floor beside little Fay's cot and started ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... a well-known fact that in the world of to-day time is an essential factor in the race for success. No young man can afford to dawdle for four long years in acquiring a so-called "higher" education. Three-fourths of that time is, if anything, more than sufficient in which to attain all the graces and culture that the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... period seem homespun and most of the romancers a little tawdry. His method is the mosaicist's, working self-consciously in fine materials. Movement with him never leaps nor flows; in fact, it seems to dawdle when, too often, he forgets to be vigilant in the interests of simplicity; it is languid with scrupulous hesitations and accumulations. As to his pictures, they come from a Kentucky glorified. When he says that ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... wait long for Ali Baba, Mujrim, and the camels, for they had not been fools enough to dawdle, with a hundred and fifty balked freebooters within rifle-shot, whose resilient pride was likely to breed anger. You can't lead camels any more than horses as fast as you can ride them; unless stampeded they tow loggily; but the fact that two or three dozen mounted Arabs ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... word, the brigade swung into the broad road and it marched. It did not dawdle along. It marched, and it marched fast. It actually seemed to Harry after the first mile that it was running, running toward ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... been more years than he could remember since this young American had taken a real holiday except for an occasional fishing trip on the Gunnison or into Wyoming. He had lived a life of activity. Now for the first time he learned how to be lazy. To dawdle indolently on one of the broad porches, while Miss Yuste sat beside him and busied herself over some needlework, was a sensuous delight that filled him with content. He felt that he would like to bask there in the warm sunshine forever. After all, why should ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... After I left Richmond, whence I last wrote to you, I went to Bedford, where I was for five weeks: then returned to spend Christmas at Richmond: and now dawdle here hoping to get some accursed lawyers to raise me some money on what remains of my reversion. This they can do, and will do, in time: but, as usual, find it their interest to delay ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of the ship, where she liked best to be. But I proposed ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... afore you hurry up your cakes much further, I've got jest two words to say to ye. Don't cut it too fat, or you'll flummux by the way, an' leave nuthin' but a grease-spot. Don't dawdle round doin' nuthin' but stuffin' yerself to kill. Don't act like a gonus,—don't hanker arter the flesh-pots. Wake up, peel your eyes, an' do suthin' for a dyspeptic world, for sufferin' sinners, for yerself. Allers stick close to Natur' an' hyg'ene. Drop yer nonsense, an' come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Tom; "that's some of uncle's fidgetiness; but he will be sure to dawdle at the last. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to do. That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... mother was greater. There she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. She discovered, indeed, that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets of the native ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... dawdle with your worthless companions if you desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But understand. Don't write to me for a cent. Not ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... what we're all going to do, some Thursday. We're going to the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you know, and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the fishing fleet come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... was accustomed to seek her own room, and see how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know as to some folks that the more they ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... evening Baby will go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the profits of petty larceny are declining; he will be taught to regret the increasing infirmities ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... started off briskly into the woodland road, striding along with the splendid swing of the healthy Englishwoman who has not been trained to dawdle. Her walking-skirt gave free play to her limbs; she was far past the well-known "line in the road" before she paused to take a full breath and to recapitulate. Her heart beat faster and the sudden glow in her cheek was not from the exercise. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... women dawdle through the day, superintending their domestic work, look after their children's and their own toilette, tend the fire, attend to the cooking, and smoke consumedly. The idle sit with the men at the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... behave badly at table if left to their own devices. Even though they may commit no serious offenses, such as making a mess of their food or themselves, or talking with their mouths full, all children love to crumb bread, flop this way and that in their chairs, knock spoons and forks together, dawdle over their food, feed animals—if any are allowed in the room—or become restless ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the fops while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... flesh," he responded. "This was a grand chance for you. Ah, ha! The business riled your stomach a little, but nonsense! that will soon pass off. But we must not dawdle here; someone may come ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... wood-cuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the sound of footsteps broke the silence and the lavatory was filled with hurrying men. Their stay in the room was short, however, as Joe had known it would be. Men leaving for home do not dawdle ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... kingdom, is of some note and importance, and all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; till I have letters, remember me kindly to all, but to the dear children in particular. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks—to obtain ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... six, and the boy, more mindful of his own tea than his neighbour's ailments, slips on his jacket and goes home. The last customers dawdle out with a grunt intended for a salutation. Mrs. Mason is softly heard to snore. And all the while Annie Mason- -all the colour vanished from her wholesome face—stands with her hands clutching her dress, gazing down ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... needed than now: I am near Ujiji, but the slaves who paddle are tired, and no wonder; they keep up a roaring song all through their work, night and day. I expect to get medicine, food, and milk at Ujiji, but dawdle and do nothing. I have a good appetite, and sleep well; these are the favourable symptoms; but am dreadfully thin, bowels irregular, and I have no medicine. Sputa increases; hope to hold out to Ujiji. Cough worse. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... of emotion, whether of grief or gladness, is felt to be out of place in a dream-being, whose sole reality is its unreality. Their personal unimportance to the Universe, and remoteness from the Market-place of Life allow them to dawdle. Their experiences have no sharp edges, no abrupt precipices, no divisive gulfs, no defined beginnings and endings. The book of their sojourn in this world has neither chapters nor headings; the page runs on without ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and manifold discomforts of our night ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... fast," said Constance smiling. "Well, we will dawdle over our fish. I never thought of his coming," she went on, watching Yvonne as she deftly laid another place beside Frances. "This must be one of the week-ends he promised. I wonder why ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to discriminate. There was ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... are no "evenings out." The first sign of eve is the signal for dispersion homewards, and it is only from the safe shelter of his own room that the winter patient ventures to gaze on the perilous glories of the sunset. The evenings are in fact a dawdle indoors as the day has been a dawdle out, a little music, a little reading of the quiet order, a little chat, a little letter-writing, and an ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... excitable, man. When I ask you a question, or give an order, take it deliberately, and dawdle off to see ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... disliked his unpleasant behaviour to women. If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult of inane compliments. He was always dawdling after "the sex," which was one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate. Passion does not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was. Passion may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is earnest ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Grosse was not unwilling to dawdle under the shade of an old wall with Mrs. Delaport Green that ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the quarrels, the mooning ways, the healthy pessimism which was the motive power of the Euler family, as it is that of all respectable persons, and made their life a foretaste of purgatory. That a woman who did nothing but dawdle about all the blessed day should take upon herself to defy them with her calm insolence, while they bore their suffering in silence like galley-slaves,—and that people should approve of her into the bargain—that was beyond the limit, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... we will let you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a long ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop without reading his homily,—pass by a folio in twenty grenadier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... think, more lazy every day), over very hilly country to Alicante, a seaport town very strongly protected by a castle on a great rock, armed with guns of brass and iron, so that the pirates dare never venture near. And here I fully thought we were to dawdle away another week at the least, this being a very populous and lively city, promising much entertainment. For Moll, when not playing herself, was mad to see others play, and she did really govern, with her subtle wiles and winning smiles, more than her father, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... to dawdle in, to lie and dream away a whole afternoon, watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birds which seemed to fill every corner of the sky. Indeed, I was already debating in my mind ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the rest of us will do what we can to help Jim. Breakfast will be all ready by the time you return, so don't dawdle on the way, will ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing theatricalities into motion only at the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... of times long passed, but certainly we found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the Captain, 'but it seems to me the Frenchman is inclined to dawdle. Don't you think that if we went over it might hurry him ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... this class, and that there is trouble in store in the near future. The so-called unemployed are mostly utter loafers, who will not give a good day's work for a fair day's wage. They refuse to work for less than eight shillings a day, and many of them if offered work at that price only dawdle about for a few ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... peak her smile . . . Strange I Should dawdle near her grace admiringly, When love alarmed and challenged sympathy, Announced in chills of creeping fear Danger surely ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... bathe, George. Why do you dawdle talking? Bring them back to tea. Bring back some milk, cakes, honey. The change will do you good. George has been working very hard at his office. I ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... you want Frank, you'd better tell him not to dawdle over Annette's gate half an hour," began Jack, who could not resist teasing his dignified brother about one of the few foolish things he ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... difficulties under which he labored. More than once he had been held up by Doctor Carmack to the other boys at Scranton High as a rebuke for their laziness. If a fellow who had so much to contend with could always appear so satisfied, and manage to get along as well as he did, they ought to be ashamed to dawdle, and waste time when they had all their ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... missionaries I know, speak the vernacular wretchedly. But I do emphasize the fact that proficiency here is of prime importance and I would also add that it should be the first work of a missionary after entering his field. To dawdle with the language the first year, is, generally speaking, to fail in acquiring it ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... quick farewell! Listen, I will not live Less lovely, nor this cruel beauty lose, And I perforce grow kind: I'll not survive The deep delicious poison of a smile Nor mortal music of the sighing bosom That slowly overcomes the fainting brain. It shall not dawdle downward to the grave; I'll pass upon the instant of perfection. No woman shall behold Poppaea fade: ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... in the final possession. He had heard of Sir Launcelot's extravagance, by which he was in some measure infected, and he dropped an insinuation, that he could eclipse his rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they could hardly exist asunder. Davy was an artful sycophant, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order half-a-crown's worth of soup for the poor. I shouldn't miss it much, out of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... She was always so terribly sleepy at seven o'clock, and so positive that she could whisk through her dressing in ten minutes, and that it was quite unnecessary to get up so soon: even when the others mercilessly pulled the bed-clothes from her, and pointed to their watches, she would dawdle instead of "whisking," and spend much superfluous time over manicure or dabbing on cucumber cream to improve her complexion. She was so innocent about her little vanities, and conducted them with such child-like complacency, that the girls ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... opening upon him all the tenderness of her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion, and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul—still louder, that I may be further relieved ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that there has been a debate as to whether they should take a little rest down on Aarre Water. There are certainly many old ones who know the place again, and plenty of the young are tender-winged, and would fain sit on the water and dawdle away a ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... real government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede: a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... called Joel across the table, "and don't dawdle so. We're going to make a double ripper, four yards long, to go down that hill there." He laid down his spoon to point out the window at ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... and she is devotedly fond of her children, in their future. She may be seen gazing in their faces by the hour; but the picture that is before her mind's eye is the fulfilment of their present promise. An ordinary woman would dawdle away her time in admiring their soft eyes, and curly hair, and full warm cheeks; but the woman of the world sees the bud grown into the expanded flower, and the small cradle is metamorphosed into ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... hot fog the fulgid sun looks down Upon a stagnant earth where listless men Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat, Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, — It seems to me somehow that God himself Scans with a close reproach what I have done, Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears, And fathoms my ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... declared that young person gaily, "as the reward of virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to the theater ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... came jealousy of my love for my baby. I feared lest it should make me—nay, was making me—neglect my husband. The fear first arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of my doll, when suddenly I became aware that never once since her arrival had I sat with my husband in his study. A pang of dismay shot through me. "Is this to be a wife?" I said to myself,—"to play with a live love like a dead doll, and forget her husband!" ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... in the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence, hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins in the green aisles of the garden. But mostly the old couple just pretended to do their chores, and sat on the porch and watched the clouds go by and the frogs flop into ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... "How you dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides yourself? Where ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking—like part of it, or like a good cop. The ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... called an incorrigible dawdle, and made humble confession of the same, offering to do all in her power to make up for the morning's laziness. But what would ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "You waste and dawdle away twenty or thirty minutes, when you ought to be doing your work. What do you mean?" Mr. Pole stood up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... humbler sort loves to dawdle along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Presently he reaches that bridge—the jewellers' bridge. He thinks ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... very truth was a young country, offering a wide field to all who sought work, adventure, achievement. Her thoughts ran on exultantly. She was rich, she was free, she was young, she was strong; why dawdle and dream among the fiords of Norway? Why scale Swiss mountains? Let that come later, when she had earned a playtime. In the first vigorous years of her youth, let her go out to the sunny land that was her home and give it of her best. Let her go north and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn should ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... moved hastily away. There were some bargaining at the markets for withered or decaying vegetables, and others purchasing, at a diminished price, stale bread from dirty bakeries, and many a one loitering along in his filth and squalor, with no object nor aim save to dawdle away the time that hung too wearily upon him. It was a sad and loathsome sight, so near the gorgeous thoroughfare of this mighty city, to see the pitiable objects of unmitigated want; but there they were, and in all that teeming mass but two ministering spirits were visible, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... it into her pretty, capricious head to pay a call. In this latter line the Scholar had a decided pull. Education had taught him taste; necessity, handiness; and by aid of the two he transformed his rude dwelling into something approaching the rooms in which he used to dawdle away the happy hours, time ago. It was partly drawing-room, partly curiosity-shop. Cups, saucers, and spoons appeared as if by magicians' call, and one blazing afternoon the news flashed round the diamond-pits that Miss Musgrave was "taking afternoon ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the ladies may spend their days on deck, for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... While you dawdle, the life blood is being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it is a woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don't realize it. I'm praying to God that ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... not dawdle over his supper. In a quarter of an hour he had finished it, and was building up the fire again. Then he stretched himself beside the trio in the rude bunk, drawing one thin blanket over him. Neal, who lay on his right, was conscious of some prickings ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... what the night before, at eight o'clock, her hour to go, had made her hang back and dawdle. She did last things or pretended to do them; to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she was ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving a bundle on the field; where food is ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... can't keep thinking and thinking any longer; I must do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... she was very obedient and industrious, and exerted herself to please Mother Holle, for she thought of the gold she should get in return. The next day, however, she began to dawdle over her work, and the third day she was more idle still; then she began to lie in bed in the mornings and refused to get up. Worse still, she neglected to make the old woman's bed properly, and forgot to ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into words and ask for his comrades' ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... with your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking at folk. Go ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... immediately entered upon their guard duties as unobtrusively as possible. If Hervey's family noticed at all they would scarcely attach any importance to the arrival of cars and the discharging of passengers who seemed to have nothing to do except dawdle on the sidewalks. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... and ME, dear, had nothing else to do. That was love as I know it; not Seth's sneaking rages, and Uncle Ben's sneaking fooleries, and Masters's sneaking conceit, but only love. And knowing that, I let Seth rage, and Uncle Ben dawdle, and Masters trifle—and for what? To keep them from me and my boy. They were satisfied, and ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... want to hire a detective," Dick replied enigmatically, "but I'd like about one minute's talk with Mr. Colquitt, and I mean to have it. Don't let us dawdle on the ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... if you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle. Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a single ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... stuff and deceived me by an unscrupulously worded advertisement, now, no longer interested, she asked airily if further effort were essential. Who wouldnt be indignant? And to cap it all she suddenly ejaculated, "Can't dawdle around here all day" and after snatching up a handful of the scythings, she left, rolling her large body from side to side, galloping her untidy hair up and down over her neck as she took rapid ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got to be somewhere before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its kind, it is really a very fine school—very exclusive; riding masters, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... mind. And now, in Janet's bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was still brushing ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... application of scientific economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... never dawdle. Be either in harness or out of harness avowedly. Special importance is to be given to painting this year. Pictures are to be first painted in monochrome, in raw umber and white. Read one thing at a time in one language. All ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem to have the smallest capability of appreciating ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... figures is an entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either talent ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... longer serve Satan by striking or pinching; the little feet will not kick or stamp, nor drag and dawdle, when they ought to run briskly on some errand; the little lips will not pout; the little tongue will not move to say a naughty thing. All the little members will leave off serving Satan, and find something to do for ...
— Morning Bells • Frances Ridley Havergal
... This suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness, or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet realization of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time enough ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... ready to let go of the ball he seemed inclined to dawdle over it. It wasn't going to be one of his snappiest—-any onlooker could judge that, at least, so ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... an idle life, and they want every one they see to stop and play with them. I don't want to be rude, but we are not going to dawdle about here; and as for this ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... at Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago, he told me, without a 'heller', and is now the owner of cattle and land and horses to a large amount. But then the Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the English drink. 'New wine' is a penny a glass (half a pint), enough to blow your head off, and 'Cape smoke' (brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the real calamity. If the Cape had the grape disease as badly as Madeira, it would be ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... not. I wouldn't be so mean as to fool you about such a thing. But mamma says you mustn't dawdle to-day. So hurry up and get those towels done. Sylvy is going to be awfully busy, so you'll have to help her, but we're going to clean the knives for you, and shell the peas. Bring them down to the little house; we're going down there. We might ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... thinking so intently about the matter that he began to dawdle. And if there was one thing that the Muley Cow didn't like it was to have to stand still while a slow milker puttered at his work. So she suddenly gave her tail a switch and brought the end of it across ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... of a set of leisurely country tradespeople, who if Theo had meant to carry his bride there must have postponed that happiness for a year or two—not much wonder, perhaps, since they were left by the young master to dawdle on their own way. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a good deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fiery furnace of Messrs. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If I were now standing there, I don't think I could face it. But then I was with the girl; I had to save her. Fire was behind us, racing after us; water lay in front. Once there and we were safe. It was not a time to dawdle or hesitate, I can ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... a little doubtful as to her power over the wild girls. There could not be any doubt that John Taylor was in earnest, and had been worked upon just at the right moment; but there was danger that the impression would not last. "And his wife in such a horrible whining dawdle!" said Ethel—"there will be no good to be done ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... that what he was doing was a thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thing that would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet he kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland's proposal ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... his watch—is afraid it must be seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want to be late for dinner. The young lady says:—"Well—I got it all out of a book." And her mother says:—"Now, please don't dawdle any more. Go the short way, and see for the carriage." Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they are hurrying to give him a bun, and is disillusioned. Mr. Pellew accompanies his ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... always the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in bed till ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... can do anything for them at any time," he said, dismally. "What is an hour on Sunday, set against all the rest of the time? They go from the school-room to the rum saloons, and dawdle away the rest of the day. Yesterday I met that young Colson going into one of the worst saloons on Dey Street. They are not to blame, either." This last in a fiercer tone, after a slight pause. "I don't blame them; they have nowhere ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... much as I ought to," he answered, "for the reason that I can't find any one I like to go with me. My mother and sisters go away to some watering-place every summer and stay there, and father sticks to business. I either dawdle around where the folks are summers, or stay in town and hate myself, if I can't find some one to go off on my yacht with me. The fact is, Miss Page," he added mournfully, "I have hard work to kill time. I can get a little party to run to Newport ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... taken him straight to his hotel, and he would have been spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it was with anathema maranatha. He groaned in spirit, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... no need for haste. She might depart at her leisure, and dawdle as much as she pleased on her homeward way. All she wanted was to be seated neat and trim in a carefully arranged room, ready to pour out Aunt Betsy's afternoon tea, when the cobs returned from Romsey. She put Lear back in his place, and strolled slowly ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... schools. Ah, many a young duke has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son; and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... no oath to dawdle around Europe indefinitely. I propose to return to New York and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... very much" ("Merci," Paklin thought to himself). "What is the time?" Solomin asked. "Five o'clock. We mustn't dawdle. You shall ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... York in May or June, dawdle along the route until we reach Southern California. Those who cannot take time to go to Hawaii, can railroad themselves back home, and we can sail leisurely across the Pacific to visit the Hawaiian Islands. There again, those who cannot go on to the Orient ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a gesture of impatience. "I can't dawdle here any longer! Either you or I, father." He pushed into the hall. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... "sneaking," is the same as O.N. slaeikja, "to lick"; a secondary meaning of O.N. slaeikja is "to sneak"; keeal, "kail," could come from O.N. kal or Gael. cal. It is probably from the latter. The word slaister, "to dawdle, to waste one's time," is not clear. The sb. slaisterer, "a slink, an untidy person," is also found. The ai indicates an original diphthong. It is probably the same as Norse sloeysa, sb. "an untidy person," as vb. "to be untidy, to be careless." Ster (slais ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... that," said Father Payne, "but my theory is this. You must know, first of all, what you are aiming at, and you must apply your discipline sensibly to that. There are certain things in us which we know to be sloppy—we lie in bed, we dawdle, we eat too much, we moon over our work. All that is obviously no good, and all sensible people try to pull themselves up. When you have found out what suits you, do it boldly; but the man who admires discipline for its own sake is a sort of hypochondriac—a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of old. On the night of January 12, eight days after leaving the Last Return Party, he writes: "At camping to-night every one was chilled and we guessed a cold snap, but to our surprise the actual temperature was higher than last night, when we could dawdle in the sun. It is most unaccountable why we should suddenly feel the cold in this manner: partly the exhaustion of the march, but partly some damp quality in the air, I think. Little Bowers is wonderful; in spite of my protest he would take sights after we ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard |
