"Gingham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the envelope gingerly in the wet thumb and finger that still grasped a bit of the gingham apron. She held it at arm's length, and squinted up her eyes, trying to read it without her glasses. It was some new kind of beggar, of course. She hated to touch these dirty envelopes, and this one looked old and worn. She stepped back to the parlor table ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... and white checked gingham apron of her aunt's, Mary Rose washed Mrs. Bracken's dishes. Mrs. Donovan had brought her up to the apartment and Mary Rose had looked curiously around the rather bare and empty halls. There was something in the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... my pay. I took the coal into the closet, but I do not know what I did with it. As I opened the door and stepped in, a tall skeleton got down off the nail and embraced me like a prodigal son. It fell on my neck and draped itself all over me. Its glittering phalanges entered the bosom of my gingham shirt and rested lightly on the pit of my stomach. I could feel the pelvis bone in the small of my back. The room was dark, but I did not light the gas. Whether it was the skeleton of a lady or gentleman, I never knew; but I thought, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... be made of plain white muslin, or some of the many styles that come for this purpose. If plain muslin is used, you can ornament them with hems an inch in width, in which insert a strip of gingham or chambray of the same color as your chintz. This will wash with the curtains without losing its color, or should it fade, it can easily ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a gingham apron, we girls think," she concluded, "and yet she can take off the gingham apron and stand up and address any kind of a meeting. I just can't tell you all that she's been to us ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was standing in the doorway of the barn. Mary-'Gusta noticed that she was not, as usual, garbed in gingham, but was arrayed ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that, for some reason. She had the illogical feeling that some one had been kind to her. She put her things away in the drawers, and even had the courage to lay out for herself the all-enveloping gingham apron, much shortened, which Mrs. O'Mara had loaned her till she and Peggy could run up some more. She supposed Francis would want her to start in with the cooking that night. So she put on her plainest dress and easiest shoes, and then, there ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... the doorway, the lace wrap hanging from her shoulders and showing the delicate blue of the negligee beneath—her face was like chalk but her eyes shone. "Yes," she said, "there's a pink gingham I want to wear to the barbecue to-morrow. There ought to be a hat to match. Did the hats ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the closet and was back in a moment with a pink checked gingham. It had a number of tiny ruffles on the skirt, and a little frill ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... sir!" said I. "I hope I am too good a subject for that. But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham small-clothes, why certainly! 'Tis my birthright as an Englishman. Where's Magna ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... both try to keep things the same there'd always be that eighteen-thousand-dollar difference between them when now there's nothing dividing them but a little low honeysuckle fence with a gate cut through it. And there would, of course. Nanny'd be on one side, cutting aprons out of nice new gingham, and Dell'd be on the other, cutting her aprons out of Jim's ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... brought up right there on Kettle. Everything about the house had the mark of a cultured taste, yet the cushioned chairs, the rugs, the soft-toned hangings were worn to shabbiness. And most mystifying of all was Miss Jerry herself, who had appeared at the supper table in a much faded but spotless gingham dress, black shoes and cotton stockings replacing the elkskins and woolen socks, very much a spirited little girl, with a fearlessness of expression that amused John Westley while at the same time he wondered if it could possibly be the training of the school ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... line!" said the teacher sternly. Then they stepped back, but the hands indicative of superior knowledge still waved, the coarse jacket-sleeves and the gingham apron-sleeves slipping back from ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... shop because it is so disorderly. Soap and sugar, tea and bloaters, starch and gingham, lead pencils and sausages, lie side by side cosily. Boxes of pins are kept on top of kegs of herrings. Tins of coffee are distributed impartially anywhere and everywhere, and the bacon sometimes reposes in a glass case ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they said in that seductive way in which a dry-goods clerk tells you that he has no checked gingham, and makes you think you are a fool that you asked for checked gingham; that you never should have asked, least of all, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... garments, including, perhaps, drill parkies for mild weather, or to pull on over the furs, when it rained or snowed, to keep out the water. As the weather grew more severe, heavy cloth or fur mittens were worn, and little calico and gingham waists and dresses were discarded ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... dainty and pink and white. Her rosy lips were just parted in a smile; the long, level beams of the setting sun, falling on her through the passion vine, lingered lovingly in her golden hair, and made a delicate tracery as of fine lace work, on her pink gingham gown. Such a pretty picture she made, rocking slowly backwards and forwards, thought her companion, but he dared not say so. And then too it was so hot and so still it was hardly wonderful they ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... your neck!" and as the bird continued, he opened the door. "Simmons! You freckled nigger! Bring me the apron." Then he stamped, and cursed the slowness of niggers. Simmons, however, came as fast as his old legs could carry him, bearing a blue gingham apron. This, thrown ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the delicate printer shrank from the idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the possibility of any personal contamination having occurred to a high-born damsel of the nineteenth century." Scott answered: "You would never have quarrelled with it had the thing happened to a girl in gingham—the silk petticoat can make little difference." "James reclaimed with double energy, and called Constable to the rescue; and, after some pause, the author very reluctantly consented to cancel and re-write about twenty-four pages, which was enough to obliterate, to a certain extent, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... girl on the ferry sitting with her mother takes from her small prim bag a set of doll clothes, and fondles them and smoothes them much like a pullet with her first chickens. The sight of those square, little, gingham dresses, trimmed with scraps of lace and silk and with awkward sleeves standing straight out, brought to me, on that Oakland ferry, all my childhood again, and I was cuddled close between the surface roots of a great elm and from the nearby lane came the sight and scent of ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... circumstances rarely disconcert. Then her imagination was not active. She did not pensively reflect that here was her once father-in-law, but she felt comfortable in the consciousness that Bessie had on a nice clean pink gingham frock and a crimped frill round her white throat, in which she looked as pretty as she could look. Bessie's light hair, threaded with gold, all crisp and wavy, and her pure bright complexion, gave her an air of health and freshness not to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... In her little blue-gingham morning dress, out of which her neck flowered white and ever beautiful of nape, Lilly crumbled up her biscuit, eyes miserably down, the red-hot pricklings which invariably accompanied these scenes flashing over her and a crowding in her throat as if she must tear it open ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to match the faithful Buckle, when there fell upon his quick ear the sound of a step. In the next instant he let go of the clothesline, sent the telephone book slipping from the chair at his feet, and plunged like a swimmer toward that loose ball of gingham under ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... caked boots, from steady hands to clear eyes which made her own eyes shy. And then Miriam Burrell, cool and poised Miriam, did what many another maid in a checkered apron has done in similar situations. She lifted that stiff gingham to hide her unutterable happiness. But before he could speak she found her voice; nor was it very steady, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... "I hardly knew you when you stepped off that train, but it seems like old times now, with you hustlin' around in that gingham." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... one must accept their insolence. Crossing the field I passed the farmer who must have felt considerable perturbation of soul this particular day, for he looked "worrited" and was mowing grass for his poor, thin cows, in a blue gingham smock and a bowler hat. The war is not more vital to anyone on earth than to him, for the soldiers have taken away his wagons and most of his hay for their bedding and they ruined the grass in the orchard where they ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... She was sent to school regularly, and had plenty to eat and wear, of a certain sort. Every Spring, Aunt Matilda made the year's supply of underclothing, using for the purpose coarse, unbleached muslin, thriftily purchased by the bolt. The brown alpaca and brown gingham, in which she and her grandmother and aunt had been dressed ever since she could remember, were also bought by the piece. The fashion of the garments had not changed, for one way of making a gown was held to be as good as another, and a great deal easier, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... everybody has rushed in pell-mell and put on the first thing, or the first two or three things, that came to hand. There is every conceivable type of clothing, but perhaps the larger number have wound up with something like a light bathing suit and a sort of gingham dressing-gown belted over it; and if one has less than this, why, then, as the Japanese say, "Shikata na gai" (All right; it can't be helped). In the shops and stores one passes a few men clad only in their own integrity and a loin-cloth, and both children and grown people dress with ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... be decorative in your garden in a large enveloping apron of gingham, if you are wise in choosing a colour which becomes you. One lover of flowers, who has an instinct for fitness and colour, may be seen on a Summer morning, trimming her porch-boxes in snowy white,—shoes and all,—over which she ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... melancholy young men, and filling all the city with the perfume of beauty's holocaust. At street corners too will stand great books in which weeping maidens will sign their names, swearing before high heaven, to wear nothing but gingham and bed-ticking for the dreary remainder of their lives. Such a day may well come, as it has often come before, and certainly will, if women persist in being so deliberately beautiful ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... back, almost snapping his head off, and there stands spectrally between them Mr. BUMSTEAD, who has but recently found his way out of the back-yard in Gospeler's Gulch, by removing at least two yards of picket fence from the wrong place, and wears upon his head a gingham sun-bonnet, which, in his hurried departure through the hall of the Gospeler's house, he has mistaken for his own hat. Sustaining himself against the fierce evening breeze by holding firmly to both shoulders of his nephew, this striking apparition ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... lesson she should discuss the kinds of material suitable for the aprons. The pupils should consider whether their aprons shall be white or coloured, and whether they shall be of muslin, cambric, or gingham. Each pupil will need from 1-1/2 to 2 yards of material, according to her size. The taller ones ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... from her of the picnic. Her curls danced as full of life and light as ever; the biscuit brown of her complexion glowed as smooth and clean; even from a distance Bobby could see the contrast of her black eyes; but on her head she wore a brown chip hat; her gown was of plain blue gingham; her slim straight legs were encased in heavy strong stockings. She looked like a healthy, lively little girl out for a good time; and the sight cheered Bobby's wavering courage as nothing else could. His vague ideas of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... everything!" faltered Miss Polly. "That evening an old woman came to the house and asked to see mamma,—oh, such a dreadful old woman! She hadn't any bonnet or coat or gloves,—just a red shawl on her head, and an old patched dress, and a gingham apron. And when James and Elise and everybody told her mamma was sick, she said she would see her anyhow. And she did. She pushed her way upstairs to mamma, and talked awfully,—said she was a poor honest woman, if she did sell apples on the corner; and she was raising her grandchild ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... watched the little flames shoot up. The door of the back stairs opened, and Hilda emerged, her arms behind her, buttoning up her long gingham apron as she came. He nodded to her gaily, and she twinkled at him out of her little blue eyes, set far ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... She soon knew how to cook the dinner and make the tea, and when Mrs. Kane was busy or had to go out, it was Hetty's delight to have everything ready for her return. To save her black frock from being spoiled by work she had learned to make herself a large gingham blouse, in which she felt free to do anything she pleased without ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... bloom, with never a weed in sight. The fowl cackled cheerily still, adding insult to injury, the pet sheep munched grass contentedly, and the canaries sang in their cages under the vines. Mrs. Bobby settled herself on the porch with a pan of peas in her neat gingham lap, and all ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was ready for the start. Except for the daintily embroidered ruffles of her white linen underskirt, that would show below her old gingham dress, little Elsie might have been taken for the sorriest beggar in town. The dress was faded and outgrown. The little shawl she had pinned over her shoulders had one corner burned out of it, and the edges of the hole were scorched and jagged. A faded silk muffler that ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... her and came to pull the tree out where she could see it, and, sure enough, there was a dust-pan tied on with a red tape, and a whisk-broom with another red tape, and a little sweeping-cap with a red bow, some gingham aprons and white aprons, and brown towels and red-and-white towels, and dust-cloths, all with red M's in their corners; and put at the top was a little book tied on the tree with a big red bow. Her mother took this down and handed it to her, and every one stood and ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... wore out as Josiah felt bodily, he was all animated in his mind about what a good time he was a goin' to have. He acted foolish, and I told him so. I wanted to wear my brown and black gingham, and a shaker; but Josiah insisted that I should wear a new lawn dress that he had brought me home as a present, and I had got just made up. So, jest to please him, I put it on, and my best bonnet. And that man, all I could ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... a hollow lined with willow trees she slipped and almost lost her footing, and in struggling to regain it she released her hold upon a well-filled gingham bag which she had hid beneath her coat and dropped it on the ground. She picked it up and hung it by the draw-string on her arm, but with this interruption of her headlong course there came a corresponding halt of purpose. So she turned aside and walked a few yards down the hollow, where ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody kneeling on the oilcloth ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... loss was a great privation, For one of her sex—whatever her station - And none the less that the dame had a turn For making all families one concern, And learning whatever there was to learn In the prattling, tattling village of Tringham - As, who wore silk? and who wore gingham? And what the Atkins's shop might bring 'em? How the Smiths contrived to live? and whether The fourteen Murphys all pigged together? The wages per week of the Weavers and Skinners, And what they boiled for their Sunday dinners? What plates the Bugsbys ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... and the faded blue jeans "britches" were rolled up over his round little knees and hitched up high under his arms by an improvised pair of calico "galluses" which were stretched tight over a clean but much patched gingham shirt. His feet and legs had been stripped in accordance with the time-ordered custom in Providence that bare feet could greet May Day, and his little, bare, pink toes curled up with protest against the roughness of even the dust-softened ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Gertie took the very largest umbrella in the stand—an enormous one. Its ribs were whalebone, its cover green gingham, and the handle ended in a knob nearly as large as a door-knob. But that umbrella was very highly valued by Uncle Ebenezer Stewardson, its owner, who carried it with him wherever he went, rain or shine. Uncle Ebenezer's grown nieces and nephews thought it very odd in him to carry such a queer-looking ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the porch. For a time he stood, listening, then quickly stepping down into the yard, he gazed toward the dairy house, into which, accompanied by a negro woman, had gone a slim girl, wearing a gingham sun-bonnet. The girl came out, carrying a jug, and hastened toward the yard gate. Tom heard the gate-latch click and then stepped quickly to the corner of the house; and when out of sight he almost ran to overtake the girl. She had reached the road, and she pretended to walk ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... many pictures that Courtland had to carry back with him to the seminary. Bonnie in the kitchen, with a long-sleeved, high-necked gingham apron on, frying doughnuts or baking waffles. Bonnie at the organ on Sunday in the little church in town, or sitting in a corner of the Sunday-school room surrounded by her seventeen boys, with her Bible open on her lap and in her face the light of heaven while the boys ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... man sat on the porch, smoking his pipe. Sam Dixon spoke to him as he passed around the house to get the horse his breakfast. Presently a woman, enveloped in gingham dress, and lost in a gingham sunbonnet, came out and stood in wonderment, looking at Tavia. She glared at her for a moment or two, and then, without speaking a word, entered the house again. This was not a very cordial welcome for Tavia, but she ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... were whisked from her mind as a gust whirls dead leaves away and shows the green grass beneath, newly growing. How it lifted her heart to see him. But she looked down, with a cold falling of gloom, at her blue gingham dress. That was not as she wished to appear. She could be in her riding costume, with the rather mannish blouse and loosely tied cravat, spurs on her boots and quirt in her hand as became the mistress and ruling force of a big ranch. Then she received sudden ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Words fail to describe the kind of speech Mr. Kenyon delivers. Sometimes one is doubtful as to the sex of the speaker, for he moans out his lamentations over "the dear old Church of England" exactly as one would imagine a sweet old lady with a gingham umbrella and a widow's cap to intone it. Meantime, the rest of the House is convulsed with laughter, so that there is the curious contrast of one man—Punch-like in complexion and face—reciting a dirge while the rest of the House are holding their universal sides with laughter. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... place where he saw Lily on a comfort under a big bloom-laden pear tree, his throat grew hard, his eyes dry and his feet heavy. Then the screen to the front door swung back as a smiling woman in a tidy gingham dress came through and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... mother, "running round bareheaded in all this damp. You know how much trouble you are when you are sick, too, and I think you ought to have more consideration for me, with all my care. Going to bed? Be sure and not forget to put the baby's gingham apron in ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... hair was dark and abundant, and she was wearing a gingham dress and a white apron. So much he noticed at this, their first meeting. Afterward he became aware that she was slender and that her age might perhaps be twenty-four or twenty-five. At that moment, of course, he did not notice anything except ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... necessary. Polly, when it was her turn, did not trust herself to look at the flaming yellow sheets of paper with the big staring letters across them, stuck up in the dirty store windows, or hung from the beams in among the kitchen utensils, or breadths of calico and gingham, wherever they ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... asleep. Next morning I remember looking out of the window just at daybreak and seeing a party of negroes mustered before being despatched to their respective labours. Two white overseers, dressed in broad-brimmed hats and gingham jackets, stood by with whips in their hands, giving directions to the slaves, and at the same time bestowing not a few lashes on their backs, if they did not at once comprehend what was said to them. Among them I caught ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... Brooks' Great Exhibition Prize Goat's-head Knitting Cord No. 16; and tapered indented Crochet Hook, No. 20. A yard of pink or blue ingrain gingham. ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... those who thought so had felt, and rightly, that it was a strange marriage. After the first few days, Austin spent every day at the farm, as usual, walking back to the little brick cottage for his noonday dinner, and leaving after the milking was done at night; and Sylvia, dressed in blue gingham, cooked and cleaned and sewed, and put her garden in shape for the winter. In spite of her year's training at Mrs. Gray's capable hands, she made mistakes; she burnt the grape jelly, and forgot to put the brown sugar into the sweet pickle, and ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them after marriage? If he reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, dowdy woman opposite, in a faded gingham wrapper, put on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, sparkling, bright little sayings and doings that used to make it impossible to look at or listen to anybody else when she was about. Such things are, sometimes, among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... tongues! but, my certie! I'd nearly left out the cook's charming and stately Burmese wife! She is the most decorative part of the show; with a yellow orchid in her black hair, coppery-brown lungy, green-jacket and pink scarf floating from her shoulders; she carries a black gingham umbrella in one hand, and in the other, of course, a big white cheroot, and behind her toddles her dog, liver and white, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... hair, clinging fondly, like underbrush round a rock, to the sides of his head, with a seedy-looking patch far under the chin to match, whose limp dickey droops pensively as if seeking to crawl bodily into the embrace of the plaid gingham which encircles his neck, and in whose nose is embodied that rare vermilion tint which artists so love to dwell upon;—this is the Hon. MICHAEL LADLE, brother of the late TIMOTHY, a Western Member of Congress, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... for nothin' but frivolin'; but Mother tells us how to crack the walnuts so's not to let 'em fly all over the room, an' so's not to be all jammed to pieces like the walnuts was down at the party at the Peasleys' last winter. An' now here comes Tryphena Foster, with her gingham gown an' muslin apron on; her folks have gone up to Amherst for Thanksgivin', an' Tryphena has come over to help our folks get dinner. She thinks a great deal o' Mother, 'cause Mother teaches her Sunday-school class an' says Tryphena oughter marry a missionary. There is bustle everywhere, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... sounded in the hall. She wore an all-enveloping gingham apron. "How did you like your surprise, father?" She came over to him and kissed the top of his head. "I'm getting dinner so that Gussie can go on with the attic. Everything's ready if you want to come in. I didn't want to dish up until you were at the table, so's everything ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... preparing. All the men of the place seemed to be afield; only women were in sight here and there at back doors, pinning freshly washed garments on lines, beating dust from rugs, or, seen through the windows, were bustling about the forenoon tasks set for patient household slaves in gingham. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... "I dribbled out gingham dresses, and hair-brushes, and pocket mirrors, and colored prints, and bottles of bay-rum. I never saw folks act happier. I bought up the claims. I scattered what was left of the goods among the crowd. I got on the empty boxes, and ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... the Cleverton in that plaid gingham!" thought Floretta, for she had seen the plain little ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... big gingham pinafore, that Cleena had also prepared, and with her little parcels under her arm, skipped away down the slope to the Joneses' cottage, where Gwendolyn was to meet and escort her to her ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... his neatly-dressed granddaughter more fully into the light before him. As it fell upon the graceful curves of her lissom figure, it was easy to perceive that she was wearing one of Madame BEAUMONT's celebrated Porcupine Quill Corsets, which lent a wonderful finish to a two-guinea tailor-made gingham cloth "Gem" costume, braided with best silk (horn buttons included), which showed off her young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... Her thoughts passed from herself to Kate with a feeling which was almost resentment. Her high-spirited, adventure-loving, handsome sister. What of her? It was terrible. So full of promise, so full of possibilities. Look at her. She was clad in a big gingham apron. No doubt her beautiful, artistic hands were all messed up with the stains of scrubbing out a Meeting House, which, in turn, right back to the miserable Indian days, had served the purposes ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... very minute when Phronsie was dotting the "i" in her name. Mrs. Higby came toiling up the stairs, holding her gingham gown well ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... shuffling a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a horrible old hag, wrinkled in face like a mummy, with only the stumps of teeth which had more the appearance of tusks. Her unkempt hair was matted and ugly wisps of it hung down over her bleary eyes. For clothes she wore an old-fashioned faded gingham wrapper and around her shoulders a dirty torn shawl. On her feet was a pair of man's shoes, many sizes too large, which had evidently been cast away as useless by some former owner, himself squalid. These she managed to keep ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... at Meg, who was looking very pretty in her gingham morning gown, with the little curls blowing about her forehead, and very womanly, as she sat sewing at her little worktable, full of tidy white rolls, so unconscious of the thought in her mother's mind as she sewed and sang, while her fingers flew and her ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... carried at the supply store amounted to something like $350,000 to $500,000. This stock consisted of general merchandise. It was to this store one went to buy coffee, sugar, soda, tobacco and bacon, calico, domestic, linsey, jeans, leather and gingham, officers' clothing, tin buckets, wooden tubs, coffee pots, iron "skillets-and leds," iron ovens, crowbars, shovels, plows, and harness. To this store the settlers came to buy molasses, quinine, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... idle. The dresses she had brought with her, dainty creations of foreign make, soon gave way to domestic productions of gingham and print. In these, the long brown hands neatly gloved, she struggled with a tiny garden, becoming in ratio as passed the weeks, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... porch stood an old woman clothed in a neat gingham dress and wearing a white apron and cap. Her pleasant face was wreathed in smiles as she turned it toward the laughing, chattering group that came up the path. Patsy spied her and rushed up to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... for the flannel for the Dorcas Society, and also for the gingham. I quite agree with you that it is nonsense their wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and irreligious nowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that they should not try and dress like the upper ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... his lunch at the other end of the car, for children always get hungry when traveling, and meals on the train are only served at certain hours. Two other little girls came into the compartment while Flossie and Nan were at lunch. The strange girls wore gingham aprons over their fine white dresses, to keep the car dust off their clothes, and they had paper caps on their heads like the favors worn at children's parties. Seeing there was no stool vacant the strangers darted out again in rather ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... between Bitumen and Exeter. Elizabeth found herself in a motley crowd of passengers. To her right sat a shabbily dressed mother with a sick baby in her arms; back of her was a plain little woman of middle age dressed in a gingham suit and rough straw hat; while before her sat two young women, perhaps a year or two older than herself. They talked loudly enough to attract the attention of those about them. Elizabeth learned that the larger was named Landis, and her ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... variety of opinions. They were unable to find a "boiled shirt" with an eighteen inch neck band or collar, so a blue gingham one was made to do service. The only coat broad enough across the shoulders was a "Prince Albert," in which Bishop had been married, and Harding admitted the combination was not exactly de rigeur. The trousers were woefully tight at the ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... of a hereafter, where the most orthodox are apt to stretch a point, finding no attraction whatever in the thing they are asked to believe. Mrs. Boyer, who would have regarded it as heterodox to substitute any other instrument for the harp of her expectation, tied on her gingham apron before Marie Jedlicka's mirror, and thought of Harmony and of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... left her bed at four o'clock; for seven hours she had cooked, washed dishes, made beds, swept, dusted, milked, churned, following the usual routine of a big family in the country. Then she had gone upstairs, dressed in clean gingham ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate of California cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in blue gingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and was making his way across the dusty, rut-scored street ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... doorway, and after a moment of inspection a man stepped out upon the hard-trodden earth of the dooryard. He was bootless and a great toe protruded from a hole in the point of his sock. He wore a faded hickory shirt, and the knees of his bleached-out overalls were patched with blue gingham. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... rest, evidently that of some upper servant. As Peggy and her four-footed companion drew near, a trim little old colored woman looked out of the door. She was immaculate in a black and white checked gingham, a large white apron and a white turban, suggestive of ante-bellum days. Instantly noting signs of distress upon her young mistress' face she hurried toward her, crying softly in her ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... and especially in dress and manners, the early distinctions between the sexes tend to produce mannishness on one side and effeminacy on the other. The girl's dress may be a little different in form, but why should the boy wear stout gingham or warm flannel, and she be clothed in fragile muslin, or expensive silk? Why should he be able to climb fences or leap ditches without risk to his clothes, and she be kept in perpetual bondage by her ribbons and her ruffles? Look at a boy's simple round straw or felt hat, with ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... put on one of Mother's gingham aprons and began to churn. "It is easy to churn," she said at first, but after a little her arms grew tired and the dasher grew heavy. She did not think of giving up, though, for she was churning to get her Grandmother's birthday butter, and the dasher seemed ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... gingham dress, and her first exclamation was: "Why, Jake! how nice you look. And so you know all ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... crouched at the foot of a tree was Kitty. She looked like nothing so much as a toad-stool, a bit of human fungus growth, at the foot of that gentle birch tree. Her knees drawn up, and bare feet hiding in her bedraggled gingham skirt, Kitty was truly ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... the little girl clinging to Peggy's hand. The child was pitifully emaciated, with drawn features and large, dark eyes that gazed about her bewilderedly. Her clothing was a red gingham dress that fitted her like a sack. She was shoeless and stockingless. Her brown hair, unkempt and ragged, hung in elf locks about her sad little face. Certainly, as regarded size and general appearance, her name, "The Wren," fitted ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... housemaid to distribute his three umbrellas in the following manner: the new silk umbrella was to be given to Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe; the old silk umbrella was to be handed to Mr. Goodworth, Mrs. Thorpe's father; and the heavy gingham was to be kept by Snoxell himself, for the special protection of "Master Zack," aged six years, and the only child of Mr. Thorpe. Furnished with these instructions, the page set forth on his way to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... bought you a green gingham shade And a silk purse brocaded with roses gold and blue, You'll learn to hold them proudly like colours on parade. No banker's wife in all the town ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... insisted Mary Jane. "Those are just rolls out of the scrap bag—I've seen them there. That's a piece of my rompers," she added, pointing to a roll of blue, "and that's my best pink gingham, and ...
— Mary Jane—Her Visit • Clara Ingram Judson
... fountains and grape-juice bottles. Think of sitting out on that bluff on a warm evening, watching the broad shimmer of the river slipping down from the sunset, and smoking a serene pipe while the local flappers walk in the coolness wearing crisp, swaying gingham dresses. That's the kind of town ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... scrap of old-fashioned gingham, and, having been carefully preserved, it is in as perfect a condition as when it was first made a hundred and twenty years ago; and shows that the same hand which painted so exquisitely with the pen could work ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Blue when he clapped eyes on the fresh gingham in which Peggy Lacey was fluttering over the kitchen floor (he would not deign to look in her gray eyes), the maid might have her letter an' her ring an' wed whom she pleased; an' as for tears at the weddin', they'd not fall from the eyes o' Dickie Blue, who would by that time, ecod, perhaps ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... a few steps away, so the sizzle of the batter as it expanded into generous disks on the smoking griddle did not interrupt the conversation. Mrs. Daggett, in her blue and white striped gingham, a pancake turner in one plump hand, smiled through the odorous blue haze like a tutelary goddess. Mr. Daggett, in his shirt-sleeves, his scant locks brushed carefully over his bald spot, gazed at her with placid satisfaction. He was thoroughly ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... brownish black bonnet, that had not improved from two three years' tholing of sun and wind; a thin rag of a grey duffle mantle was thrown over her shoulders, below which was a checked shortgown of gingham stripe, and a green glazed manco petticoat. Her shoon were terrible bauchles, and her grey worsted stockings, to hide the holes in them, were all dragooned down about her heels. On the whole, she was rather, I ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... the foot of the bed, carefully tucking her gingham apron close about her so that it might not come ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... before—and Mamie, her twenty-three-year-old daughter. They lived in a small two-story brick house in Cherry Street, near Fifteenth. Mrs. Calligan was not a very good dressmaker, not good enough, at least, for the Butler family to patronize in their present exalted state. Aileen went there occasionally for gingham house-dresses, underwear, pretty dressing-gowns, and alterations on some of her more important clothing which was made by a very superior modiste in Chestnut Street. She visited the house largely because she had gone to school with Mamie at St. Agatha's, when the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... automobile is now at the foot of the hill, and your hair is coming down, and he's going to catch you in an old, faded gingham. What am I going to do with such a mother?" sighed Jemima. "I don't believe you ever ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... smell. The ridges in the rattan with which his father had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry. The fine white head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Friday night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Red curls—some one's—somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls that rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Pretty perturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in a pink-silk stocking, peeping like a ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... like that, reining in his horse and looking at her campaign hat and the old gingham dress she wore. I wonder she didn't correct him for his profanity, but I allow for once she was scared stiff, and hadn't no answer ready. My! But she kind of shrunk in and looked a ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... her home in this place since Thursday morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly for her age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features, pleasant smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a black and white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon. It is feared she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering at large in a state of temporary mental alienation. Any information relating to the missing child will be gratefully received and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... morning calling at their home to see Judge Douglas I was ushered into the library, where she was engaged setting things to rights. My entrance took her by surprise. I had often seen her in full ballroom regalia and in becoming out-of-door costume, but as, in gingham gown and white apron, she turned, a little startled by my sudden appearance, smiles and blushes in spite of herself, I thought I had never seen any woman so beautiful before. She married again—the lover whom gossip said ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... superior complacency, quite unmindful, after the fashion of most critical travellers, of the hideous contrast of his own long shapeless nankeen duster, his stiff half-clerical brown straw hat, his wisp of gingham necktie, his dusty boots, his outrageous carpet-bag, and his straggling goat-like beard. A few looked at him in grave, discreet wonder. Whether they recognized in him the advent of a civilization that was destined to supplant their own ignorant, sensuous, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Andrews, Mrs. Mumbles could not avoid drawing a comparison between the three; and her daughter appeared to her like a blazing star between two sombre clouds, for Miss Seaton and Miss Andrews, who were both orphans, wore plain, dark gingham frocks and linen aprons. The third boarder was a little brother of Miss Seaton's, about a dozen years of age. Charlie was his name; a bright, intelligent boy, brimful ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... rattle of dishes coming from the smaller restaurants as one passes. At this hour these places are full of workmen in white and blue blouses, and young girls from the neighboring factories. They are all laughing and talking together. A big fellow in a blue gingham blouse attempts to kiss the little milliner opposite him at table; she evades him, and, screaming with laughter, picks up her skirts and darts out of the restaurant and down the street, the big fellow close on her dainty heels. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... paper bag, to which her two hands adhered stickily. She walked slowly upward, holding the eggs far in front of her like a votive offering to the culinary gods, unconscious of the betraying yellow streaks that beaded her blue gingham apron. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... slipped up on the word "receive," after all, putting the i before the e; and her stolid companion, catching her breath awesomely, slowly spelled it right and received the blue prize, pinned gracefully at the throat of her old brown gingham by the teacher's own soft, white fingers, while the school looked on admiringly and the blood rolled hotly up the back of her neck and spread over her face and forehead. Rosa, the beauty, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... spring without touchin' the ground! I'm a swinge-cat; but I warns you not to be misled by my looks! I'm a flyin' bison, an' deevastation rides upon my breath! Whoop! whoop! whoopee! I'm the Purple Blossom of Gingham Mountain, an' where is that son of thunder who'll try an' nip me in the bud! Whoop! whoopee! I'm yere to fight or drink with any sport; any one or both! Whoopee! Where is the stately stag to stamp his hoof or rap his antlers to my proclamations! Where is that boundin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said Hannah heartily, leaning on her broom. "You look awfully pretty this morning, Frieda, in that plaid gingham. Are you going off with Polly, as usual? I don't see you at all, it seems ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... pretty, well-dressed and no doubt was fascinating. Jeff remembered he was supposed to fall in love with her at first sight. Therefore he looked at her critically. She was all Mildred had promised, but Jeff found himself gazing over the head of his companion at a slender figure in blue gingham, disappearing over the hill. ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... delightful, splendid, and surprising! Little Jacob applauded till his hands were sore; Kit cried 'an-kor' at the end of everything, the three-act piece included; and Barbara's mother beat her umbrella on the floor, in her ecstasies, until it was nearly worn down to the gingham. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... had a kind, loving heart in her ample bosom. But I fancy there were times when she thought it rather hard that the daughter of a roving adventurer—as she considered him—like Blair Stanley should disport herself in silk dresses, while her own daughters must go clad in gingham and muslin—for those were the days when a feminine creature got one silk dress in her lifetime, ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... conglomeration of miscellaneous goods and articles lumbering the remainder of the floor. Picking my way through these, I reached the back part of the building, which I found partitioned off to form an office, wherein a number of men, some in gingham coats and some in their shirt sleeves, were busily at work writing letters or inscribing entries in ledgers and day books. At my entrance one of them glanced up and then came forward, asking what he could do for me. I stated my ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... believe, one of the main reasons of my Beloved's departure from that tenement. I cannot remember with any exactness when the departure occurred. I know it was after I had kissed my little friend in a garden-seat on a hot noontide, under a blue gingham umbrella, which we had opened over us as we sat, that passers through East Quarriers might not observe our marks of affection, forgetting that our screen must attract more attention than ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the deacon's Mary would ever have grown up such a fine woman?" said Aunty Gould, as she wiped her spectacles upon the corner of her new gingham apron. "The deacon himself ain't got much sperit in him, and as for Miss Gordon, I don't believe she ever whipped one of them children in her life. She always let 'em have their own way a great deal too much to suit me. Jest ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... hair, white satin slippers, and a pair of yellow gloves. The gloves and slippers were quite dirty, and the barege was old and darned; but the general effect was so very gorgeous, that the children, who were dressed for play, in gingham frocks and white aprons, were quite dazzled at the ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... next morning, Prudence, in a plain gingham house dress, with the addition of a red sweater jacket and cap for warmth, set out upon her secret ride. It was a magnificent morning, and Prudence sang for pure delight as she rode swiftly along the country roads. The country was simply irresistible. It ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... was walking up street, a few days since, I met two little girls who looked very much alike, and were nearly of the same age. They wore gingham sun-bonnets, which came far over their good-natured faces. Their calico dresses were neatly made. Their blue woollen stockings looked warm and comfortable, but their shoes ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... want to shut the door.... Ginevra, people may tell you you are very handsome in that ball-attire; but, in my eyes, you will never look so pretty as you did in the gingham gown and plain straw bonnet you wore when ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... flushed and she cast down her large, blue eyes in embarrassment, while a painful silence followed. She was evidently agitated by a deep emotion, for her breast heaved visibly beneath the worn merino shawl she wore over her faded gingham dress, and her hands trembled slightly as she folded ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... had had a fiercely contested water-fight, had breakfasted, tidied up, and most of its inmates scattered in quest of adventures, before the tired girls of Poco Tiempo gathered for the morning meal. Kitty and Debby, enveloped in capacious gingham aprons, and appearing somewhat flushed and ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... showed signs of strenuous usage. Clutched to her breast as she ran up to her mother's side was "Susan Jemima," her one beloved possession and her doll. Behind Virgie came Sally Ann, her playmate, a slim, barefooted mulatto girl whose faded, gingham dress hung partly in tatters, halfway between her knees and ankles. In one of Sally Ann's hands, carried like a sword, was a pointed stick; in the other, a long piece of blue wood-moss from which dangled ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... myself; then on the sofa I caught sight of a little gingham dress, folded and ready to be packed in the trunk. It had been a witness of our happy days. I took it ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... of her white shirt-waist, and turned in her collar, thereby producing an effect which Dick privately considered distractingly pretty. Dorothy was enveloped from head to foot in a voluminous blue gingham apron, and a dust cap, airily poised upon her smooth brown hair, completed a most becoming costume. Dick, having duly obtained permission, took off his coat and put on his hat, after which the library force was ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... a trim dark calico dress that made a different woman of her. Seated in a beaming circle within were the five children, each clad from top to toe in clean, fresh garments, from Tad down to the baby, who was crowing in Jennie's arms, radiant in a gay pink gingham. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... Stephen was coming in the afternoon, and it was almost five o'clock when we got cleared up, and I went up-stairs to change my dress. I thought 't wasn't any use to trim myself out in bows and ruffles now, so I just put on my brown gingham and a white linen collar; but Lurindy came and tied a pink ribbon at my throat, and fixed my hair herself, and looked ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... bottom of the sea, deliberately seated himself astride the shoulders of his manduck, and was borne to dry land with the care of one whose religion might forbid contact with water. He carried beneath one arm throughout the trip from the small boat a gingham umbrella, and under the other an Indian ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... take she-helping? Not a bit Too late for proud punctilio. No, this Queen Is not so lovely, of such royal mien, As hers who witched ACHILLES e'en in death. An elderly Amazon of shortish breath, With gingham huge and gig-lamps, though she hold That "Property" buckler broad and bossed with gold Is scarce a Siren—of the ancient style; More of Minerva's frown than Venus' smile! But then, eight hundred thousand!!! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... himself, and sent from time to time such articles as he felt were necessary for their welfare. Thus he writes a memorandum of articles sent in seventeen hundred and eighty by "Mr. Bean's Cartel to Miss Betsy Murray:—viz: Everlasting 4 yards; binding 1 piece, Nankeen 4-7/8 yards. Of Gingham 2 gown patterns; 2 pairs red shoes from A.E.C. for boys, Jack and Ralph, a parcel—to Mrs. Brigden, 1 pair silk shoes and some flowers—Arthur's Geographical Grammar,—Locke on Education,—5 children's books," etc. And in return ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... 'em, and how she used to worship her husband and how her hull life wuz ruined and the Whiskey Ring had done it, that and wimmen's helpless condition under the law and she cried and wep' and I did. And right while I wuz cryin' onto that gingham apron, she made me promise to carry them two errents of hern to the President and git 'em done for her ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... seemed wrong. I had a cold in the head from the sudden drop in the temperature, and I was arrayed in that drab old gingham wrapper which Dinkie had cut holes in with Struthers' scissors, for I hadn't cared much that morning when I dressed whether I looked like a totem-pole or a Stoney squaw. And the dregs of what I'd been through during the last two days were still sour in the bottom of my heart. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... barn lot and the house they were confronted by Aunt Cindy. She was an enormous black woman, dressed always in starched gingham and apron, with a red bandanna ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... downstairs again in five minutes, looking for Sally Winthrop. It seemed that Mrs. Halliday's chief concern now was about supper, and that Sally was out in the kitchen helping her. He found that out by walking in upon her and finding her in a blue gingham apron. Her cheeks turned very red and she ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Jack in charge, Waller and I went on board the brig. The master, a tall, thin, sallow man, with a pointed beard, no whiskers, and a hooked nose, with a huge cigar in his mouth, a straw hat on his head, loose nankeen trousers, and a gingham swallow-tailed coat, received us ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... for the particulars of this rupture, which neither of us had heard, when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the cabin. He had changed his dress, and, taking him altogether, was by no means an ill-looking fellow. His light blue gingham frock and snow-white trousers fitted him well; an elegant straw hat, very fine linen, and a diamond shirt-pin that must have cost the best part of a thousand dollars, contributed to give a sort of genteel planter-like air. His first care upon emerging from his state-room was to empty a glass ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Pearl in a pink and white checked gingham house dress, with her brown hair done up in the style known as a French roll, sewing at a machine in the front room, and at once Mr. Cowan, who was the dominant spirit of the party signalled to the others—"So far so good." Miss Watson, even though the hour was early, was up, dressed ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... me greatly to blame were I to raffle them at our next rummage sale? I feel sure they would fetch a good price. Only yesterday Miss Tabitha Gingham remarked to her sister, Miss Mary, "We had a good long sermon from the Rector this morning." I was passing behind their laurel hedge at the moment, and could not fail to overhear this meed of praise. Miss Tabitha is, I should explain, very hard to please, and if she thinks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... Corn was the principal grain food, and wild game supplied most of the meat. The wild animals furnished clothing as well as food; for the pioneers could not afford to pay from 15 to 25 cents a yard for calico, and from 25 to 75 cents for gingham.* Some persons indulged in homespun cloth for Sunday and festal occasions, but the common outside garments were made of dressed deerskins. Parley P. Pratt, in his autobiography, speaks of passing through a settlement where "some ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... uncle and aunt affectionately before she went upstairs, and now she looked around her little room rather wistfully, gazing at the simple trinkets and worn calico and gingham dresses, as if they were old friends. She was tempted at first to make a bundle of them, yet she knew very well that they would be of no use to ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... her guest. She was not stately and imposing in royally sumptuous blue velvet and ermine; nor yet was she cozy and homy in bronze-gold crepe de Chine and swan's-down. She was just herself in a pretty little morning house gown of blue gingham. She was minus the dust-cap and the ruffled apron, but she had a dab of flour on the left cheek, and a smutch of crock on her forehead. She had, too, a cut finger on her right hand, and a burned thumb on her left. But she was Billy—and being Billy, she ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... introduced to a beautiful, brilliant young lady, who sat in a wheel-chair like a queen on a throne in a room full of tasteful ornaments, flowers and birds. Now, I had come away just as I was, when Ernest called me, and that "was" means a very plain gingham dress wherein I had been darning stockings all the morning. I suppose a saint wouldn't have cared for that, but I did, and for a moment stood the picture of confusion, my hands full of oddly shaped parcels and my face ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... "She wanted a new gingham apron for herself; but that wa' n't bought, and all the money, as I have guessed sence, went into the handkerchief. And a purty one it was, too,—yaller-colored, with a red border, and an anchor worked in one corner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... shiver, she opened her saddle bags and drew out the dress she meant to wear—a dingy, earth-colored thing of gingham. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... perfectly and desperately sinful. Although she was almost persuaded that perhaps it did not take quite such bravado to be wicked in blue-spangled gauze and satin slippers as it did to lapse from the straight and narrow path in a gingham dress and ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... own man, a proprietor, an owner of land, furthering a successful enterprise. No one had helped him; he had followed no one's lead. He had struck out unaided for himself, and his success was due solely to his own intelligence, industry, and foresight. He squared his great shoulders till the blue gingham of his jumper all but cracked. Of late, his great blond beard had grown and the work in the sun had made his face very red. Under the visor of his cap—relic of his engineering days—his blue eyes twinkled with vast good-nature. He felt ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... together must and will destroy it. Suppose you are married to Cytherea herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic fever. If the tie between you is that of true and honest love, Cytherea will put on a gingham wrapper, and with her own sculptured hands wring out the flannels which shall relieve your pains; and she will be no true woman if she do not prefer to do this to employing any nurse that could be hired. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... nervously. "But I just can't live here any longer! I was the biggest fool to marry that man! I thought I was going to have a good home and plenty to eat and to wear. We do have enough to eat—and good enough, but, my! he hasn't bought me anything except one gingham apron since I came, and he growled over that! He's the limit for stinginess! When I was at the Home I used to say I'd rather live in an old kitchen if 't was mine, and now I've got the old kitchen I'd exchange back again in a jiffy! Do you s'pose ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... was baptized, and found entrance one day after two failures to penetrate to its very unattractive interior. We were lighted by stained-glass windows of geometrical pattern and a sort of calico or gingham effect in their coloring, to the tablet to Captain John Smith, whose life Pocahontas, in Virginia, with other ladies in diverse parts of the world, saved, that we might have one of the most delightful, if not one of the most credible, of autobiographies. He was of prime colonial interest, of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... are signs of that spread that I was promised at the bazaar," proclaimed Hippy Wingate cheerfully, as attired in a long gingham apron belonging to Nora's elder sister, he energetically stirred fudge in a chafing dish and insisted every other minute that Nora should try it to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... above, and something stirred fearfully in the shadow of the room. It was a small figure that crouched against the wall, listening and watching with the furtive terror of a newly captured coyote—the slight figure of a woman dressed as a child, with short gingham dress, and heelless slippers, and a bright ribbon holding back the limp, flaxen hair from ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... singing him one of her baby songs, or asking him strange questions of the great wide world that is so new to her; or perhaps he binds the wild flowers she has brought into a little nosegay for her new gingham dress, or—but we see it all, and so, too, does the soldier, and so does Nellie, and they hear the blackbird's twitter and the quail's shrill call and the cricket's faint echo, and all about them is the sweet, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... for Bubbles to give the message at the door of the inner room, since at that moment Barbara entered, her round arms bare to the elbow and her street dress completely hidden by a sort of blue gingham overall. Bubbles, whose presence was not required during working hours, at ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... mammas stepped back to enjoy the spectacle, which, I assure you, was an impressive one. Belinda sat with great dignity at the head, her hands genteelly holding a pink cambric pocket-handkerchief in her lap. Josephus, her cousin, took the foot, elegantly arrayed in a new suit of purple and green gingham, with his speaking countenance much obscured by a straw hat several sizes too large for him; while on either side sat guests of every size, complexion, and costume, producing a very gay and varied effect, as all were dressed with ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... contrary, looked all limp and forlorn. The gingham morning-gown she had not changed was huddled on her, and crumpled about her. Her neglected hair was pushed back from her little white face. Annie in her nurse's spotless apron and cap looked a hundred times trimmer, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... to this rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few words from foreign languages c is soft before other vowels, though in such cases it should always be written with ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Mrs. Bartlett's kind suggestion that she should rest a little while. She went immediately to the house, removed her hat, and returned completely enveloped in a big gingham apron that proved wonderfully becoming to her dark beauty—or was it that the homeless, hunted look had gone out of those ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... donned long gingham aprons and wiped the dishes when the meal was over, both talking with all their might, recalling the days of their childhood when they had had towels pinned around them and been allowed to dry the cups and pans; then suddenly jumping ahead and planning what they would do in ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... can anywhere read about. Then there have been umbrellas covered with large feathers that would shed rain like a "duck's back," and umbrellas with coverings of oil-cloth, of straw, of paper, of woollen stuffs, until now, nearly all umbrellas are covered either with silk, gingham, or alpaca. And this brings us to the manufacture of umbrellas in Philadelphia, where there are more made than in ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she had surreptitiously drawn ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Primmins, who ought to know London so well, knew nothing about it, and declared it was turned topsy-turvy, and all the streets had changed names. The new silk umbrella, left for five minutes unguarded in the hall, had been exchanged for an old gingham with three holes ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beautiful in her rusty black dress, what could I say of her now? She wore a gown of pink gingham, made after the fashion of the day, short-waisted and low in the neck, with a—finishing-off—of white muslin or lace, edged with a tucker. There was color in her cheeks, and added to this was the glow from the roses, and from the pink gown. When she smiled, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... happiness he was bestowing when he sent her that little horse. Many, many were the hours of enjoyment she had upon his back. Ellen went nowhere but upon the Brownie. Alice made her a riding-dress of dark gingham; and it was the admiration of the country to see her trotting or cantering by, all alone, and always looking happy. Ellen soon found that if the Brownie was to do her much good she must learn to saddle and bridle him herself. This was very awkward at ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... understand how the blunder had occurred, and he had mistaken "Noiraud" for a lion. The harridan believed he was making fun of her, and uttering energetical "Der Teufels!" fell upon our hero to bang him with the gingham. A little bewildered, Tartarin defended himself as best he could, warding off the blows with his rifle, streaming with perspiration, panting, jumping about, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... what she wholly desired, Sylvia put on Phebe's second best blue gingham gown for the preservation of which she added a white apron, and completing the whole with a pair of capacious shoes, went down to find her party and reveal the state of affairs. They were bestowed in the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... She was swinging her gingham sunbonnet, faded beyond any recognition of its pristine coloring, her small hand keeping tight hold of the strings. At every revolution it went swifter and swifter until it seemed a grayish sort of wheel whirling in the late ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... from his ledger at Amos Adams's mention of Lila's name. Coming forward, he saw her in her new dress, a bright gingham dress that reached so nearly to her shoe tops that Mr. Brotherton cried: "Well, look who's here—if it isn't Miss Van Dorn! And a great pleasure it is to see and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... up a spangled dress, admiringly. "Ain't dat beautiful!" She drew near the mirror, attempting to see the reflection of the tinsel and chiffon against her very ample background of gingham and avoirdupois. "You'd sure be a swell nigger wid dat on, Honey," she chuckled to herself. "Wouldn't dem deacons holler if ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo |
