"Latchkey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that was! What a nuisance it would be to move! He doubted very much if the people opposite knew how to cook steak. He let himself into the house with his latchkey, hung up his coat and hat in the hall—he was a most methodical old gentleman—and turned into his parlour. He expected the usual scene to meet his eyes, the fire burning brightly, a snowy cloth on the table, and Martha in the act of placing an appetising covered ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... street. In bewilderment and Blake-like wonder I stood and gazed at it on my doorstep. For what was I doing there; I, a wanderer, a pilgrim, a nomad of the desert, with no home save where the evening found me—what was my business on that doorstep; at what commonplace had the Moon caught me with a latchkey in ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... by an effort which left Rachel racked in every muscle and swaying giddily. But she could not have made much noise, for still there was no sign from the study. She scarcely paused to breathe. A latchkey closed the door behind her very softly; she was in the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... continuous fight upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the public. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the Examiner, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant pen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of the famous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, opposite the African Church," a key of which he wrote that it "has its charm," and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers than any other ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... very still about the house in the evening twilight. He pushed his hat back on his head and looked up at the clear blue sky, as if the keen breeze were pleasant to his temples. Then with a quick motion, as though recalling his thoughts, he turned and rang the bell. The latchkey of the householder ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... set forth with unction that Robert Browning was entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to her room to imprint ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... ground floor at the back of an addition to the house. What if she should hear the latchkey (it's old fashioned and hard to work), and what if she should come to the swing door at the end of the corridor where she'd see you with me? What would you say ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... roused her. The carriage had stopped and he had already descended. She got out last, and Carpenter drove away while John was still fumbling in his hip-pocket for the latchkey. The night was humid and very dark. Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel, and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten the door. A faint gleam from the hall-gas came through the leaded fanlight. This scarcely perceptible glow and the murmur of John's expletives ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... latchkey he let himself into the spacious, richly furnished, well-lighted reception hall, and, crossing this, went up the broad staircase, his steps noiseless on the heavy carpet. Below, faintly, he could hear ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... they quite honestly believed that that was the thing that he would prefer. Uncle Ivan tried to entertain him, but Bohun found him a bore, and with the ruthless intolerance of the very young, showed him so. The family did not put itself out to please him in any way. He had his room and his latchkey. There was always coffee in the morning, dinner at half-past six, and the samovar from half-past nine onwards. But the Markovitch family life was not turned from its normal ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... clean, and Cyril was just plunging into his great-coat to go and look for his parents—he, and not unjustly, called it looking for a needle in a bundle of hay—when the sound of father's latchkey in the front door sent every one bounding ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... I remarked before, was a sensible woman: "You had better get the people here to lend you a latchkey. I shall sleep with Dolly, and then you won't disturb me ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... and propitiated the chauffeur, took his lovely burden in his arms and staggered up the steps with the half regretful feeling of one who steps out of the country of adventure back to prosaic things. He found his latchkey, opened his door and drew Maudie into the hall. And on the landing half-way up the stairs stood his sister Edith, evidently the ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... guest into the vestibule as if he were ushering him into a temple. The stucco walls gleamed brightly; there was a carpet on the stairs, and colored glass in the windows. And when, on reaching the fifth story, the cashier opened the door with his latchkey, he repeated, with an air of delight: "You will see, you ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... is the latchkey to her room. She will receive you; she even told me that she would be pleased to have her friends visit her, for she spends entire ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... the young ones to seek a tree and a mate of their own. As if Thomas Newcome by poring over poems or pictures ever so much could read them with Clive's eyes!—as if by sitting mum over his wine, but watching till the lad came home with his latchkey (when the Colonel crept back to his own room in his stockings), by prodigal bounties, by stealthy affection, by any schemes or prayers, he could hope to remain first in his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for hours, as if he were incapable of fatigue. At one point of his speech he used the words: "Un heros comme Zola." There were some two hundred privileged spectators of the scene, all squeezed into a sort of pen at the extreme end of the court, and nearly everyone of them held a latchkey in readiness, so that he might whistle down it if the orator afforded any opportunity for derision. A shrill scream of sound rose as Labori uttered the words. He paused and faced squarely round upon his interrupters, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... house. It was eight minutes past ten when he reached it, standing as black and lightless as when he left it four hours ago, and, after paying off the chauffeur and dismissing the vehicle, he fumbled nervously for his latchkey, found it, unlocked the door, and went ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... house with his latchkey and climbed the stairs to his room. Divesting himself of coat and vest, he stepped before the mirror and shaved off his gray mustache. Next he produced a soft tennis shirt, which he exchanged for the linen one he had on, and an old bow tie took the place of ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... only a few hundred yards from where they had met, and they had now reached a postern which led into the grounds. Angelica opened it with a latchkey and then stood to let her aunt pass through ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... my father's object to appear in fear of them, because he was only awaiting an opportunity to lay plans for poor Elma's rescue from Finland. Therefore one evening Woodroffe called, and my father encountered him in the avenue, and admitted him with his own latchkey by one of the side doors of the castle, afterwards taking him up to the study. He knew that he had come to try and make terms for Oberg, therefore he saw that he must fly at once to Newcastle, where the Iris was lying, get ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... man was that completed being, who wore trousers that never bagged at the knees, neckties that never slipped below the collar button, who displayed a gold watch-chain across a fancy vest, from whose lower lip a cigarette was pendent, who possessed a latchkey and the right to read far into the night, and who shaved once a day. The sentimental complications had escaped him. Whatever attracted man to the frizzled, giggling, smirking, smiling bipeds in shirts ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... find her luggage in the hall when he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... but its habits are insular. There are men who become impatient and angry at the least discomfort when their habits are incommoded. In their idea of the next world they probably conjure up the ghosts of their slippers and dressing-gowns, and expect the latchkey that opens their lodging-house door on earth to fit their front door in the other world. As travellers they are a failure; for they have grown too accustomed to their mental easy-chairs, and in their intellectual nature love home comforts, which are of local ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... calmly up the steps of Vicky's home, and sadly put the latchkey in the door—for the last time. I felt as if I were performing funeral rites, and I entered and closed the door behind me, softly, as one does in the house ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... but one window, behind the yellow blind of which a light shone. She drew out her latchkey and at first fumbled at the opening with a shaking hand. Then she recalled her courage, found the latch at once, slipped in the key and ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... where I live, sir," said Mr. Bentley, opening the door with a latchkey and leading the way into a high room on the right, darkened and cool, and filled with superb, old-fashioned rosewood furniture. It was fitted up as a library, with tall shelves reaching almost ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had the privilege of free entry to the house, Fandor opened the front door of Juve's flat with the latchkey he possessed as a special favour, traversed the semi-darkness of the corridor and went ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Barry Raymond drew the latchkey out of the door and entered his small flat in Kensington just as the clock in the tiny hall ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... and rang. She had a theory that the possession of a latchkey by their mistress makes servants slow to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... pieces of silver. No cards, nor so much as a scrap of paper. Other than her purse, there is only a latchkey in her pocket, and a perfectly plain handkerchief. Her identification must ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... of the luncheon interval to bring her some flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese azaleas in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her bedroom. Then he had sat down on the divan with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... say that I had never even been out on it, but that would not be quite true. It has two uses for me, both equally romantic; I occasionally shake a duster from it, and when my husband returns late without his latchkey he wakes me up and I come out here ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... plate twinkled, a flagged, uneven pathway led up to the front door. So remote it lay from all traffic, so well screened by the shadow of the minster, that the inmates had not troubled to draw blind or curtain. Miss Netta, pausing while she fumbled for the latchkey, explained that her aunt had a fancy to keep the blinds up, so that when the minster was lit for evensong she might watch the warm, painted windows without moving ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the park in which the house would have stood if it had been a mansion. In a stride he walked from one end to the other of the path, which would have been a tree-lined, winding carriage-drive had the garden been a park. As he fumbled for his latchkey, he could see the beaming face of the representative of the respectful lower classes in the cellar-kitchen. The door yielded before him as before its rightful lord, and he passed into his sacred domestic privacy ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... turned toward Fifth Avenue, and by the time he was pacified, they had walked several blocks together, with nurse and Fanny sedately bringing up the rear. Then, at last, having reasoned him alike out of his temper and his generosity, Gabriella retraced her steps, and entering the house with her latchkey, ran quickly up the stairs to the closed door of Mrs. Fowler's room. As she raised her hand to knock the sound of her own name reached her, and almost involuntarily she hesitated ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... uneven pavement and the coachman snapped his whip, while we sat in opposite corners of the carriage, each pursuing his or her own lugubrious train of thought. But as we had mounted together the steps to Mr. Pfeifer's mansion, and I was applying her latchkey to the lock, she suddenly held out her hand to me, and I grasped it eagerly and ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... had gone to Nashville, intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... Suddenly a latchkey rattled uselessly in the lock of the front door; then came lusty knocks upon its stout panels, accompanied by the whirring of a bell somewhere ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... high, Carrie once more pinned on her hat. She ran downstairs. As she passed through the hall her mother was letting herself in with a latchkey. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... not too late. What is the time? It is only half-past ten. I am quite certain that Miss Keys is not in bed yet. Come, Flo, put on your hat; your mother won't mind. We will take the latchkey and let ourselves in. We will go to the hotel and return ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... ten o'clock when he dismissed the motor and entered the dingy little house with the latchkey provided by Pender. He found the hall gas turned low, and a fire in the study. Books and food had also been placed ready by the servant according to instructions. Coils of fog rushed in after him through the open door and filled the hall and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was in my room; I always carried my latchkey, so as not to have to disturb my good Jose. Nevertheless, he was waiting for me that night. My misfortunes of the 15th and 16th of November were not ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... grim, tender mouth under the ragged black moustache took a satirical twist at the corners, for nobody knew better than Owen Saxham, called of men in Gueldersdorp the "Dop Doctor," what a brazen lie it proclaimed. He heard the town-clock on the stad square strike five as he pulled out the latchkey from his pocket and let ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... with my latchkey. I looked. No telegram lay on the table; that I saw at a glance. Then Nannie appeared. ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... latchkey from the girl and the coin from Hawker, Flambeau let himself and his friend into the empty house and passed into the outer parlour. It was empty of all occupants but one. The man whom Father Brown had seen pass the tavern was standing against the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... to him. Slipping his latchkey into his pocket he went out of the house and closed the door softly. ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... and delicate voice quietly speak on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell silent by Sheila's—rapid, rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just come in, or were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the cumbersome door. It was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Mr. Ledbury," which made their appearance in "Bentley's Miscellany." We cannot advise those who would enjoy a hearty laugh to do better than refer to Leech's comical etchings of The Return of Hercules from a Fancy Ball (on a wet night, without his latchkey), and the Last Appearance of Mr. Rawkins in Public, in which the rencontre of Mr. Whittle and some of his female patients already referred to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... to give you a key, then," suggested the Princess, going. At the foot of the stairs, however, she paused to exchange a few words with Captain Sengoun in a low voice; and Neeland, returning with his latchkey, went over to where Rue stood by the lamplit table absently looking ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of those indescribably obliging women of all work, came every day to cook, clean and wait on us. Most of our meals were taken among our flower beds and raspberry bushes. The only drawback to enjoyment may at first sight appear unworthy of mention, but it was not so. We had no latchkey. Now as every-one of all work knows, they are constantly popping in and out of doors, one moment they are off to market, the next to warm up their husbands' soup, and so on and so on. As for ourselves, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the house and the little back room. By the use of his latchkey they had entered a palace huge and dark. Letty didn't know that people lived with so much space around them. Only a hall light burned in a many-colored oriental lamp, and in the half-gloom the rooms on each side of the entry were cavernous. There was not a servant, not ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... terribly in John's brain as he found his way home, stumbled up stairs, and boggled with the latchkey. All the way down, unheeded passersby had wondered at the crimson burden (he had not waited for a parcel to be made) hugged closely to the shabby black cutaway. The danger signal smote Miriam in the eyes as she rose to be kissed. Standing away from her, he placed the shrouded cross on the table ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... come..." said the apothecary vehemently, a providential idea darting through his mind. He went in, put on his frock-coat, felt in its pocket to assure himself that his latchkey was there, and also the American tomahawk, without which no Tarasconese whatsoever would risk himself in the streets after "taps." Then he called: "Pascalon!.. Pascalon!.." but not too loudly, for fear ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... two little know the danger you incurred when you decided to thrust your head into this hornet's nest. Now I will see you both off the premises and put out all the lights. I may mention in passing that I have a latchkey to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White |
