"Shuffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... estimate. When the door was closed the prisoner lay with his head leaning against it, and for a time the silence was intense. By and by he found that by turning his head so that his ear was placed against the panel of the door, he heard distinctly the footfalls outside, and even a shuffling sound near him, which seemed to indicate that a man was on guard at the other side of the oak. Presently some one approached, and in spite of the low tones used, Wilhelm not only heard what was being said, but recognised the voice of von ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... Then Desdemona came shuffling down the slope with reassuring little whines of response to her son's growling. And to these there came Finn, a trifle winded, and bearing traces of blood and fur about his bearded gray muzzle. So ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... above came a heavy thud, as if someone had fallen on the floor above us, followed by a suppressed shuffling of feet and a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... bit of ecarte," said Ladislas, shuffling the cards. "You see, Countess, I am very fond of cards. Why? Because card-games are symbolic. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the more truly we shall estimate ourselves. The world says, 'Self-reliance is the conquering virtue'; Jesus says to us, 'Self-distrust is the condition of all victory.' And that does not mean any mere shuffling off of responsibility from our own shoulders, but it means looking the facts of our lives, and of our own characters, in the face. And if we will do that, however apparently easy may be our course, and however richly endowed in mind, body, or estate ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... There was a shuffling of many feet outside the door: the door opened, and several boys from St. Thomas' School-choir advanced and sang to Gellert some of his own hymns; and ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... heard the boys clambering down the stairs from the conning tower and called out, feebly, yet with sufficient strength to make himself heard above the sound of shuffling feet. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... homeward. The station agent was threading his way through his car report, and remained provokingly unconscious of Harris's presence at the ticket window. The farmer took no pains to conceal his impatience, coughing and shuffling obviously, but it was not until the last box-car had been duly recorded that the agent deigned to recognize ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... official welcome spoken, he began his discourse; but in a timid, shuffling manner so unlike his old self that still others whispered of his evident illness. Inside he burned with his purpose, but, with all his resolves, the presence of Brigham left him unnerved. He began by referring to their many adversities since the day ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Towsley had taken his ragged cap in his hand, fastened his torn jacket by its one button, and was shuffling carefully along the hall toward the front door. Miss Armacost espied him just ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... to which I have not added a word. We shall see soon how Madame de Maintenon kept her word to me, and if I am not right in owing her a grudge for this promise with a double meaning, with which it was her caprice to decoy me by her shuffling. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to bed. The shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar sound, Creeping along the brink of happy life, Revives their memory from ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... tamandua throughout most of its habitat rarely leaves the forest, and it is a helpless animal in the open plain. The two dogs ran ahead, followed by Colonel Rondon and Kermit, with me behind carrying the rifle. In a minute or two the hounds overtook the cantering, shuffling creature, and promptly began a fight with it; the combatants were so mixed up that I had to wait another minute or so before I could fire without risk of hitting a dog. We carried our prize back to the bank and hoisted it aboard the steamer. The sun was just about to set, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... composition metal reflectors, concentrated light upon the shelled spot, leaving the remainder of the room in variant shadow. The low murmur of suppressed conversation, accompanied by the unconscious shuffling of restless feet, sounded through the place. Becoming constantly more noticeable, an unpleasant, penetrating odor, of the unclean ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... I'm only shuffling the deck. Now for the deal! Awhile ago I came up into this state from the South and I bought the unorganized township that bounds this town on the north. It had gone begging for a buyer because it's mostly pond and water power. But ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... gone out, and sat there shuffling the cards and building them into various forms. She was thus employed when Overton again passed the window and entered the room ere she could conceal them. He observed her attempt to do so ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... that heavy silence, which was broken only by the quick breath of Adrian panting like some wild beast in a net, was heard the sound of heavy feet shuffling down the passage. Then Martin entered the room, and stood there gazing about him with his large blue eyes, that were like the eyes ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had something clasped tightly ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... come," Rochefoucauld answered, shuffling the cards. "If not 'tis Chicot's business, and he should attend to it. I'm ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... went up quickly, involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the yard towards ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... knew quite well that such matters did not settle themselves, but he seems to have imagined that all he had to do was to sit tight and that matters would have to come his way. The tricky and shuffling behavior to which he descended would be unbelievable of a man of his standing were there not an authentic record made by himself. The suspense finally became so intolerable that the Cabinet acted without consulting ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... Commonwealth' says 'she was found murdered (as all men said) by the crowner's inquest,' as if the verdict was not published, but was a mere matter of rumour—'as all men said.' Appleyard's behaviour need not detain us long, as he was such a shuffling knave that his statements, on either side, were just what he found expedient in varying circumstances. Dudley, after Amy's death, obtained for him various profitable billets; in 1564 he was made keeper of the Marshalsea, had a commission under ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... by the collar, and, executing a shuffling fandango of triumph, he pushed me ahead of him to the stable, where old white Peggy, the only horse left at ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... no notice beyond shuffling about a little and uttering a slight growl. The woman who held her put out an arm and drew back the child's hand reprovingly. The child paid no heed to this, but continued to stare. Then in another minute she again bent forward, and ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she was. She had her wish, too about Texas; for we found him waiting on the railroad platform, dressed in his best, to say good-bye. The friendly things she told him left him shuffling and repeating that it was a mistake to go, a big mistake; but when she said the butter was not good enough, his laugh cracked joyously up into the treble. The train's arrival brought quick sadness to her face, but she made ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... were the worst desertion:—renegadoes, Even shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie,[jx] Would scarcely join again the "reformadoes,"[530] Whom he forsook to fill the Laureate's sty; And honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes, Whether in Caledon or Italy, Should not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... without there was a shuffling step which Adah knew was Sam's, and remembering the conversation once held with him concerning that golden locket, whose original Sam was positive he had seen, Alice waited curious for his entrance. With hobbling steps the old man came in, scarcely ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... passed out she leaned over towards me. She had already rung a bell, and outside I could hear the shuffling footsteps of the old servant who ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... walked along the ridge of the canal between. The berries on the hedges were crimson and bright red, above the leaves. The glow of evening and the wheeling of the solitary pee-wit and the faint cry of the birds came to meet the shuffling noise of the pits, the dark, fuming stress of the town opposite, and they two walked the blue strip of water-way, the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... continued playing with a heap of gold before me, and on my putting a fistfull of sequins on a card it came out, and I went paroli and pair de paroli. I won again, and seeing that the bank was at a low ebb I stopped playing. Canano paid me, and told his cashier to get a thousand sequins, and as he was shuffling the cards I heard a cry of, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... know then, but I do know now, that such gait is invariably a characteristic of the constitution in which there is not the proper coordination of muscular effort. In the light of knowledge gained in later years, I can now see in that long, slouching, shuffling figure, in that tallow-colored face with the bloodless, loose lips and the wandering, mystic eyes of periwinkle blue—I can see in that girl-face framed by a trashy picture-hat, and in that girl-form wrapped in the old golf-cape, one of the earth's unfortunates; a congenital failure; ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... Let's go back," cried the man in an agitated whisper. "It's very horrid though. There's lots of 'em shuffling and scrambling about in the cracks and holes, staring at you with their wicked-looking eyes, and more 'n once I've seen 'em flapping their wings. I don't ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... any kind of gaming has even thus much to say for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense, passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different figures. Would not a man laugh ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Hand and pedal, Upward, downward, hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go: As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. Threads in single, threads in double; How they mingle, what a trouble! Every color, what profusion! Every motion, what confusion! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... The shuffling velvet tread of his riflemen fell on the bridge; and they passed, rifles at a trail, and fringes ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with the concussions they produced on the arborescent and deeply-shadowed aisles of the after midnight. He saw the town-hall clock pallidly illuminated above its tower. The low frame villa ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... day before, disciple of a holy man, today he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal procession, with a recognized place under the patronage of an old lady of charming manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads tied up native-fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... light grew, and the gas-lamps of Tyre beaconed with fading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant drowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, and only the silver bosom of his spouse, the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... that he did it purely to make the bear follow him, and show us some laugh, as he called it. As soon as the bear felt the blow, and saw him, he turns about, and comes after him, taking devilish long strides, and shuffling on at a strange rate, so as would have put a horse to a middling gallop: away runs Friday, and takes his course as if he run towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... a sudden roar came from inside the big tent, a commingling of the rough voices of men and the humming of wheels, the clinking of glasses and gold, the rattling of dice, the hoarse call of a dealer, the shuffling of feet—a roar pierced now and then by the shrill, vacant, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... in absolute silence as far as the vicinity of the dug-out was concerned, although three or four hundred yards away the desultory firing still continued. Three quarters of a minute: there was a shuffling sound from the subterranean retreat and the guttural voice of several Huns ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... dropping the log into place he may have made some little sound that reached the ears of the crazy man within the cabin. Max heard a shuffling of feet. Then the door was shaken, at first gently, and then with more and more violence, until the very walls of the cabin seemed to quiver under ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Gipsies, as to who they are; when they became regarded as a peculiar race of wandering, wastrel, ragamuffin vagabonds; the primary object they had in view in setting out upon their shuffling, skulking, sneaking, dark pilgrimage; whether they were driven at the point of the sword, or allured onwards by the love of gold, designing dark deeds of plunder, cruelty, and murder, or anxious to seek a haven of rest; the route ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... strange it was to see her in the dress of which Mrs. Sam Hurst had raved, and of which even the young Nonconformist vaguely divined the excellence, putting her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozer's greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffling old man, about whose social position no one could make the least mistake! He turned with them, with a sensation of thankfulness that it was in Grange Lane, Carlingford, where nobody knew him. As for ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... four minutes the old woman hobbled back, shuffling slippered feet along the tiled path between the gate and the low whitewashed house. Mademoiselle requested that ces Messieurs would give themselves the pain of walking into the garden. She would descend almost ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... questions to the prisoner, the shuffling of the jury, the calling over and swearing in of the witnesses, the reading of the charge began. The narrow-chested, pale-faced secretary, far too thin for his uniform, and with sticking plaster on his check, read it in a low, thick bass, rapidly like a sacristan, without raising or dropping ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to recover my sleep, I fell into so horrible a fit of shuddering and sickness that I believed the hour of my departure was come. The ship rolled heavily through the uneasy water, and at every lurch my heart sunk—I know not whither. I could hear the shuffling of steps overhead, and the dash of the waves against the ship's side, and the voice of the sailors at their posts. Little recked they of the comrade who ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... a halting figure came down the road which the moonlight had changed to a silver ribbon. They knew he was old for he was stooped and walked with the shuffling gait that comes from feebleness. His head was bent over his violin, and as he walked those unearthly sweet strains melted into the moonlight and became a part of the silver mist. Just as he reached a point opposite the house he must have stopped. A tree hid him from ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... him, and for the first and last time he touched lightly with his cold lips the forehead of her he loved so well. They mounted the steps, she leaning on his arm, and entered the rose-coloured boudoir where the marchioness was seated, impatiently shuffling the cards, while awaiting ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... and down they talked of professional beggars and what a problem they are to India, because they both happened as they turned to catch sight of Umra with the one eye, entering through the little gate in the wall and shuffling without modesty or a moment's hesitation to his favorite seat among the shrubs, whence ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the priests, and Pilate, suggest to us, I think, a threefold way in which conscience is perverted. Judas represents the agony of conscience, Pilate represents the shuffling sophistications of a half-awakened conscience, and those priests and people represent the torpor of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Pole to spare her, saying, from a child upwards, she never could understand being read aloud to; and I dropped the pack of cards, which I had been shuffling very audibly, and by this discreet movement I obliged Miss Pole to perceive that Preference was to have been the order of the evening, and to propose, rather unwillingly, that the pool should commence. The pleasant brightness that stole over the other two ladies' faces on this! Miss Matty had one ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... old lady, who was civil to my aunt and me, and, I recollect well, used to have us to tea at Cockenzie. Curious that I should long afterwards have an opportunity to pay back this attention to her son Robert. Once more, what a kind of shuffling of the hand dealt us at our nativity. There was Mrs. F. Cadell, and one or two young ladies, and some fine fat children. I should be a bastard to the time[385] did I not tell our fare. We had a tiled whiting,[386] a dish unknown elsewhere, so there is a bone for the gastronomers ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... intently. The sounds were of shuffling bodies, moving uncertainly, possibly fearful of contact with obstruction which might betray them. And he calculated they were approaching low down along the side walls, thus hoping to offer the least target possible. If they reached him the chances would be all against him. They ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and closing it behind them in the very nick of time; for as Phil released his hold upon the handle he heard the door leading from the kitchen to the refectory open, the hitherto subdued sounds of activity in the kitchen suddenly became greatly intensified, while voices and the sound of shuffling sandals on the stone floor of the refectory came through the door which ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... upon his face. His hands beat the ground like the shuffling wings of a wounded partridge. His fingers gripped the dust, spread convulsively, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... behavior upon that of the young girl whose place I had usurped, I placed my elbow on the box and looked out of the window. As I did so I heard a shuffling in the adjoining room, and knew that in another moment the doctor would again appear at the door to announce that he was ready for another patient. How could I evade the summons? The man behind me was a determined one. He was there for the purpose of opening the box, and would not be likely to ...
— The Bronze Hand - 1897 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... the cheque did not alter itself, one of the three must have done it, and nothing was left but to show that there had been an amount of shuffling, and—in short, nonsense—that might cast enough doubt on their evidence to make it ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its reality. They therefore overreacted to other judgments that Collins made, particularly to his attacks upon Christian revelation. These they denigrated as misleading, guileful, sinister, contrived, deceitful, insidious, shuffling, covert, subversive. What they objected to was, first, the way in which he reduced the demonstration of Christian revelation to only the "puzzling and perplexing" argument from prophecy, the casual ease with which he ignored or dismissed those other "clear" proofs derived from the miracles of ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... unwisdom that one may say we have no future there. Mr. —— and Mr. —— (as precious a pair of rascals as ever wrought upon the ignorance of a country) have disgusted all thoughtful men of whatever party; while the shuffling of our better men on the question of public honesty, their folly in allowing such people as Blaine and Conkling to taunt them into cheap hurlings back of defiance (as the silly Southern newspapers term it), their inconceivable mistake in permitting the stalwart ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... and do math at the third grade level — and that's not asking too much. Testing is the only way to identify and help students who are falling behind. This nation will not go back to the days of simply shuffling children along from grade to grade without them learning the basics. I refuse to give up on any child — and the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... I'll make haste and come down," cried Rodd, feeling guilty all over, and then trying to excuse himself by shuffling the blame on to the right shoulders. "It was uncle she asked," he muttered, as he ran round to the other side of the bed for the chair upon which he had hang his clothes when he ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... her hand on the girl's shoulder, and still stood silent and intent. They could hear the door open, hear the voices of the Captain and his man Ogden; and then there was a shuffling of feet in the hall and ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... home to go to must needs be out both late and early, sir," said he, arresting his shuffling steps, and looking up with that honest stolid air which had ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... his face, and the sudden silence that had fallen on him, were not lost on Pedgift Senior. "Bashwood will end badly," said the lawyer, shuffling his papers, and returning ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... on all sides, and nearly to the ceiling, with carved bookcases of walnut blackened with age to the colour of old mahogany. There were a number of massive tables in the room, upon which the light fell agreeably from high clerestory windows at each end of the apartment. Meschini himself was shuffling along in a pair of ancient leather slippers with a large volume under his arm, clad in very threadbare black clothes and wearing a dingy skullcap on his head. He was a man somewhat under the middle size, badly made, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... at the chuck-wagon at midnight, while Riley and Sam Pretty Cow were serving tin cups of black coffee to a shuffling, too-hilarious crowd, that Lance next approached Mary Hope. She was standing on the outskirts of a group composed mostly of women, quite alone so far as cavaliers were concerned, for the gawky youth had gone after coffee. She was looking toward the sagebrush ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... time every man within hearing, from oldest to youngest, would be wriggling and shuffling, as if through some magic piper's bewitchment; for even those who at first affected contemptuous indifference would be drawn into ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the first time Sara Lee had ever heard the quiet shuffling step of tired men, leaving their trenches under cover of darkness. Henri threw his military cape over her shoulders and she stood in the dark ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... servant could see no more; but there was a sound of struggling, renewed at intervals with silent but fearful energy. It was evident, however, that the parties were approaching the door, for he heard the solid oak sound twice or thrice, as the feet of the combatants, in shuffling hither and thither over the floor, struck upon it. After a slight pause he heard the door thrown open with such violence that the leaf seemed to strike the side-wall of the hall, for it was so dark without that this could only be surmised by the sound. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... for a moment, hesitating, helpless with dismay. Then he turned to go to the door. At the same instant, however, there came a knock upon it, and the girl went to open it. Jurgis heard the shuffling of feet, and then heard her give a cry; and the next moment she sprang back, and past him, her eyes shining white with terror, and bounded up the stairway, screaming at the top of her lungs: "Police! Police! ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... horseman, raised by his saddle to a great height above the humble level of the back that he bestrides, and using an awfully sharp bit, is able to lift the crest of his nag, and force him into a strangely fast shuffling walk, the orthodox pace for the journey. My comrade and I, using English saddles, could not easily keep our beasts up to this peculiar amble; besides, we thought it a bore to be followed by our attendants for a thousand miles, and we generally, therefore, did duty as the rearguard of our ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... reason to believe the sheep and oxen above Saul'; and there is a tone of almost contempt for the shuffling liar in his quiet question: 'What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' There was no answering that; so Saul shifts his ground without a blush or a moment's hesitation. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of mind, is not wanting on either side. Surely not on the Girondin side; where in fact the instinct of self-preservation, too prominently unfolded by circumstances, cuts almost a sorry figure; where also a certain finesse, to the length even of shuffling and shamming, now and then shews itself. They are men skilful in Advocate-fence. They have been called the Jesuits of the Revolution; (Dumouriez, Memoires, iii. 314.) but that is too hard a name. It must be owned likewise that this rude blustering ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... It's of no consequence." And turning abruptly, Davies went half sliding, half shuffling down the slippery slope, kicked the mud off his boots, and briefly nodding to the sergeant, said "Mount," hoisted himself into saddle, and led his little party silently away. One of the men ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... they could hear the shuffling impatience of the children anxious to be out in the open air, and the old woman enjoyed this state of things, doubling her maternal desire, and hindering her from doing anything to hasten its pleasure. At last the door opened. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself. So that is the way he had to finish his prayers—on his feet, shuffling and dancing a break-down. The angels saw, and smiled. But they took it to the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... it brought no immediate answer. Again I knocked; then feet came shuffling along the passage. I had aroused my sleepy wretch; doubtless he would come groaning (for Jonah might not curse save in the way of religion), and rubbing his eyes, to let me in. The door opened and Jonah ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... rapidly. A buzz of conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet, began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... all angles, up and down, on crest and in trough, till you fear it will end its struggles keel upwards, and send the mail-bags down among the mackerel. But the boatmen know their trade, and so do the dripping, top-booted seamen of the Lochiel. Amid much running and shuffling and casting of ropes and animated bandying of (I fear) strong expressions in Gaelic sung out upon the night, the ship's ladder is cast down and the boat tied thereto. In a few minutes the transfer of mails is over, the ladder up, and the small boat leaping back to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement- -and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... charged with rebuilding the edifice after the fire and refitted first the Grand Salle, to-day the famous Salle des Pas Perdus, crowded with the shuffling coming and going crowd of men and women whose business, or no business at all, brings them to this central point for the dissemination of legal gossip. It is a magnificent apartment, and, to no great extent, differs from what it was ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... imposing transport train, sets us thinking, by sheer force of contrast, of that dim and distant time seven months ago, when we wrestled perspiringly all through long and hot September days, on a dusty barrack square, with squad upon squad of dazed and refractory barbarians, who only ceased shuffling their feet in order to expectorate. And these are the self-same men! Never was there a more complete vindication of ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... himself at last?" asked Ferne, coldly, without moving from his place. The door opened, and old Humphrey, shuffling across the floor to the table, placed thereon a dish of cakes and a great tankard of sack, then as he turned away cast a backward glance upon his master's face. Arden noted the look, that there was in it fear, overmastering ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... and dug for hours. They could not tunnel straight on account of stones; but by the end of the night they were under the kitchen floor. Benjamin was on his back, scratching upwards. Peter's claws were worn down; he was outside the tunnel, shuffling sand away. He called out that it was morning—sunrise; and that the jays were making a noise ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... said to the Admiral, after the election was over, "Do you know, I had a mind to have stood myself; if I had, what would you have said?"—"That it was all a game of brag, and that, as you had the shuffling of the pack, there was no knowing what ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... names, waves of a steady stream, were announced by Arlington, just as in the days, that seemed remote, before she went to Moorsedge; only they were more numerous, and some of the titles had ascended a stage. There were great lords, there were many great ladies; and Lady Grace Halley shuffling amid them, like a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... screamed down the Dale; while the snow fell relentlessly; softly fingering the windows, blocking the doors, and piling deep against the walls. Inside the house there was a strange quiet; no sound save for hushed voices, and upstairs the shuffling of muffled feet. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... her if she fell, Celia took a tiny shuffling step forward, feeling supremely ridiculous. No one, however, of her audience was inclined to laugh. To Mme. Dauvray the whole business was as serious as the most solemn ceremonial. Adele was intent upon making her knots secure. Helene Vauquier was the well-bred servant ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... dark by this time, and another night must be passed on board. Some were complaining of the cold. Others were shuffling their feet to ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned—unmistakable sounds of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... was in sight; a great silence seemed to have stifled life itself. But as Koppy raised himself on a slight eminence in the centre of the clearing and made a gesture with his expressive hands, throngs of his followers crowded about him with no sound but shuffling feet. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... a great movement in the hall. The deputies poured out in a disorderly mob into the corridors, while the ushers passed the white metal urn along the tiers of seats. The corridors were full of the sound of shuffling feet, and of shouting and gesticulating people. Grave looking young men and excited old ones went passing by. The air was pierced with the sound of voices ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... as if to say, "So far will I swallow it" (Fig. 54), and then appeared to thrust the arrow, slowly and painfully, down his throat (Fig. 55) as far as indicated. While the arrows seemed still to be stuck in their throats, they danced a chassé, right and left, with short, shuffling steps. Then they withdrew the arrows, and held them up to view as before, with triumphant yelps, as if to say, "So far have I swallowed it." Sympathizers in the audience yelped in response. The next thing to be done was to apply the arrows. One of the dancers advanced ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... as well equipped as our fellows and they may have no advance supply-base; but they know how to campaign. South of us are multitudes who will take a bag of corn, a water-bottle, and a pair of straw sandals and go shuffling over the hill trails for forty or fifty miles a day. And don't think they won't fight. They will. In countries where boys of twelve and thirteen pack a gun and go off with their fathers in the army, they probably do not worry overmuch about ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... "He is shuffling again," she said to herself, angrily; "that was no answer to my question. Is it possible that he sees her? But no, what folly; if she is at Sutton, how can he ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... one," said the ostler admiringly. "Tony and I a-watched her and the dog a-driving him through the gates. With his bundle on his back, he was a-shuffling along, a-nigh on his all-fours; and the madam at his heels, with her head up in the air, and her eyes ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... I do not think it could have been later than the 20th. It had been four months since the day of arrival, a long, marvelous summer such as I would hardly know again. When I think of that time I shall always hear the ceaseless slippered, shuffling walk, and see the white figure with its rocking, rolling movement passing up and down the long gallery, with that preternaturally beautiful landscape behind, and I shall hear his deliberate speech—always deliberate, save at rare intervals; always ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Shuffling quietly along on his soft-padded feet, he came to a little house standing all by itself in the edge of the woods. All was quiet about it, except a curious sort of humming noise, which may have reminded him of bees and honey that he liked ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door with her ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... pack of cards, ripped off the covering, tossed aside the joker (though, really, I ought to have retained it!) and began shuffling the shiny pasteboards. I dare say that those around me sat up and took notice. It was by no means a common sight to see a man gravely shuffling a pack of cards in a public restaurant. Nobody interfered, doubtless because ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... tray is a round shallow tray, 40 centimeters in diameter and usually of plaited rattan strips with a rim of thicker rattan. It is held in both hands and by a series of shuffling motions, which are better seen than described, accompained[sic] by a peculiar movement of the thumb of the left hand, the chaff and the little broken fragments of rice are thrown off into another receptacle ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... longer felt the rocky soil underneath but something else which seemed like older, frozen snow; but still they pushed onward and marched fast and perseveringly. Whenever they made a halt everything was still, unspeakably still. When they resumed their march they heard the shuffling of their feet and nothing else; for the veils of heaven descended without a sound, and so abundantly that one might have seen the snow grow. The children themselves were covered with it so that they did not contrast with the general whiteness and would have lost each other from sight ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... her a letter or a washhand-basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the end of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees like a Court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather than heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the Court Gazette and the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and shuffling into the next room, he whispers, "Washington!" The girl is sent out to get refreshments. It is in vain that she seeks to sign or speak to the man who sits there so calmly before the fire, for her father is never out of sight or hearing. After Washington has finished ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... before the red orator had finished his harangue the war-drum began its fevered throb, the warriors, brandishing knife, club, hatchet, or gun, sprang half stripped into the swift-moving circle, and with shrill yells and weird contortions started the shuffling, squirming, snake-like evolutions of the war-dance. Faster, wilder went the drumbeats; fiercer, madder went the dance; and, unable to resist the impulse, Graham and Connell, secure in the belief that the Indians were utterly engrossed, crept cautiously ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... stood shuffling from one foot to another, his hands in his pockets, his little gray eyes looking everywhere but at the compassionate face turned to him from the carriage window. There was a curious ridiculous repetition in the child's attitude of Theo's assertion ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... same wife that he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his hobnailed footsteps, shuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards "fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village-green, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the advantage of Weedon Moore. Whatever she might be doing, she was not confused at seeing him. Her designs could be shouted on the housetops. But Moore gave him a foolishly cordial greeting mingled with a confused blotting of signatures and a hasty shuffling ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... a shuffling of feet, and a turning of heads; eyes looking into eyes, saying, "Ah, I told ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... A shuffling of feet was heard at the door, and a colourless, feeble old man was assisted into the room. It was Ghysbrecht Van Swieten. At sight of him Catherine shrieked, and threw her apron over her head, and Margaret shuddered violently, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... into, but no one could tell the reason why, for he had not paid any rent and was a good Land Leaguer. He was asked if he could account for it himself, and after some shuffling under promise of strict secrecy, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... saw Ellis, with his awkward gait, shuffling out from among the crowd; and, more especially, when he announced himself, in a hesitating tone, not only as the maker, but as the designer of the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... that I had completed my survey, a sound of shuffling footsteps was heard; and immediately afterwards there emerged from a passage underneath the staircase, a short, stout good-tempered-looking personage, dressed in a blouse and military trousers, with a cook's ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... night club of many lights and much high-pitched laughter, where he had come for an hour of forgetfulness and an execrable dinner, John Northwood was suddenly conscious that Fate had begun shuffling the cards of his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Then he picketed him for the night. Returning, he prepared a meal and ate heartily. Just as the light faded from the dusty windows, Chance, who was curled in a corner, rose and growled. Sundown strode to the door. The dog followed, sniffing along the crack. Presently Sundown heard the shuffling tread of a horse plodding through the sand. He swung open the door and stood peering into the dusk. He saw a horseman dismount and enter the gateway. Chance again bristled and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... and twenty-five ducats were offered; but immediately there came forward an old man, by name Beschadeddin, shapeless in his form and shuffling in his gait,—the aversion of every eye that rested on him. This old man came forward across the market-place, and offered ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... through her nose and said over her shoulder, even as she sailed on. "Besides being a Haer, I'm an M.D., captain. At the ludicrous sight of a man shuffling about in his shorts, ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... heard the scraping of Nathan's violin, the noise of shuffling feet and unconstrained laughter. These festive sounds came from the back veranda. She entered the dining-room, and from its obscurity looked out on a curious scene. The veranda was lighted by a lamp suspended from one of its pillars. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... into Beevor's room and fetched the documents he had mentioned—at least they would keep him occupied until it was time to go to his club and lunch. He had no sooner settled down to his calculations, however, when he heard a shuffling step on the landing, followed by a knock at Beevor's office-door. "More work for Beevor," he thought; "what luck the fellow has! I'd better go in and explain that he's just left town ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "all hunched up," or a shuffling gait, are owing partly to bad habits, or "slouchiness," but chiefly to weak muscles and a badly-fed nervous system, often due to a poor digestion and a weak circulation. If a child is not healthy and vigorous, then no amount of drilling or reminders to "sit straight" and ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... a line of women is formed, facing the line of men, and at a signal from the old Shaman the drums and the whistles on the terraces, with a great chorus of singers, set up a tumultuous noise, and with slow shuffling steps the line of men and the line of women move toward each other in a curious waving dance. When the lines approach so as to be not more than 10 or 12 feet apart, our party still being between them, they all change so as to dance backward ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... away, shuffling along like some great reptile, and then, with an effort, opened my eyes. I was in a large hut, and the only light in the hut came from a fire that burned in its centre, for it was night time. A Zulu woman, young and good-looking, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard |
