"Skein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he says, in winding up that knotted skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives before his time,' as he takes that opportunity to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... twisted, and will wash; still, as you are never sure of getting the best, it is well to unwind your skeins, pour scalding water on the wools, and rinse them well in it, squeeze out the water, shake the wools thoroughly, and hang them up. When dry, cut the skein across where it is tied double, and with a bodkin and string, or with a long hair-pin, draw the crewel into its case. This case (see Fig. 1) is made by folding together a long piece of thin cotton cloth a foot wide, and running parallel lines across ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the ragging and the roses and the rum— Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze! Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum, And imitate ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... bird is not particular to the material, so that be of the nature of the strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approaching during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... splendid threads whose naturally ardent brightness was doubled in the sunshine. When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth and coruscated away from it in all directions. The sunshine, too, reflected not less golden and fiery rays from numerous clusters of spiral ringlets, which, divided upon Adrienne's forehead, fell over her cheeks, and in their ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... bright hair, rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of the pale brown that the sun knows how to waken in a shallow pool in a hill-stream, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... even to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... are more superstitious than any one else. Hanging to her neck by a skein of plaited horse-hair was the polished shell of a minute turtle—smaller ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... her greatest womanly perfection. Her skin was like velvet; a rich, clear, rosy snow, with the hot young blood glowing through it like the faint red tinge we sometimes see on the inner side of a white rose leaf. Her hair was a very light brown, almost golden, and fluffy, soft, and fine as a skein of Arras silk. She was of medium height, with a figure that Venus might have envied. Her feet and hands were small, and apparently made for the sole purpose of driving mankind distracted. In fact, that seemed to be the paramount object in her creation, for she had the world of men at her feet. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... that might have been, Of all the sorrow that his sword had wrought, Of Death that now drew near him: of the green Vales of Larissa, where, with such a queen, With such a love as now his spear had slain, He had been happy, who must wind the skein Of grievous wars, and ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... of scarlet, four ditto of crimson, four ditto of amber, four ditto of peach, three ditto of stone-colours, three ditto of blue, three ditto of blue greens, three ditto of yellow greens, and one skein of white embroidery silk or of ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... turned southwards at last, crossing the road again towards her own street, it seemed to her that the day even now was beginning to cloud over. Over the roofs of Kensington a haze was beginning to make itself visible, as impalpable as a skein of smoke; yet there it was. She felt a little languid, too. Perhaps she had walked too far. She would rest a little after lunch, if dearest Maud did not mind; for dearest Maud was to lunch with her, as was usual on Sundays when the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Greenwich fixed prices at that time at rates which seem purely arbitrary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus for spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins to the pound, the price was not to exceed sixpence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer work in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was the same per skein. Weaving plain flannel or tow or linen brought fivepence per yard; common worsted and linen, one penny a yard; and other ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said she. "Three yards more would finish, and now I shall have to go down to the village and buy a whole skein, just for that." ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... my soul, I cannot help wishing you had conducted yourself with more frankness and less mystery; and I am truly afraid your love of dexterity has been too much for your ingenuity, and that you have suffered matters to run into such a skein of confusion, as you yourself will ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... disentangle from the puzzled skein In which obscurity has wrapped them up, The threads of politic and shrewd design That ran through all his purposes, and charge His mind with meanings that he never ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... impossible to unravel completely the skein of difficulties in which the people are enmeshed, or to simplify the causes of the tangle. It is easy to blame a person's wretchedness on his individual misconduct and incompetency, to say, for example, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... exclaimed Mary jubilantly, "and a fluffy pompon on top! I can have it ready by day after to-morrow. I've been wondering what I could wear on my head. I simply can't keep a hat on when I ride fast! Here, Norman, be a dear duck of a brother and hold this skein while ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... loose separate strands between 4 and 5 feet long, tied together with string or bark cloth at two opposite points, so as to form a belt of between 2 feet and 2 feet 6 inches in length. For better description I would liken it to a skein of wool, as it looks when held on the hands of one person for the purpose of being wound off into a ball by someone else, but which, instead of being wound off, is tied up at the two points where it passes round ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... be mercerized either in the yarn, warp, skein, or in the piece, the first being more effective. The best and most satisfactory results are achieved when the material treated is made of fine long staple cotton, either Sea Island or Egyptian, the shorter cottons being relatively much less improved by the treatment. The ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... neighbors, that were so close just now, have learned to respect each other's personality. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school-girls who go into the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop-boy. In the village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in this pretty gossip. The ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... asked Lizzie Gordon, who was seated at the window winding up a ball of worsted, the skein of which was being held by Miss Puff, who was at that time ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... to have tied ourselves into such an extraordinary mental knot is what bewilders me," Hadria continued, "and still more, why it is that we all, by common consent, go on acting and talking as if the tangled skein ran smooth ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... advice to the young man. "There was, for a day or two—I won't deny it—a certain—er— tendency to what I may call nervousness in the City. Can we wonder at it, holding as we do so many—er—threads?" Mr Pamphlett held up his two hands, and spread them as though they contained a skein of wool to be unwound. "But the Chancellor of the Exchequer took steps. Opposed as I am in a general way to the present Government, I am free to admit that, at this juncture, the Chancellor of the Exchequer realised his responsibilities and—er—took steps. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... simplest and most at hand expedient was a dip in the universal indigo tub, which waited in every "back shed" of the Puritan homestead. One single dip in its black-looking depths and the skein of spun lamb's wool acquired a tint like the blue of the sky. Immersion of a day and night gave an indelible stain of a darker blue, and a week's repose at the bottom of the pot made the wool as dark in tint as the indigo itself. For ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... stop! Take it easy. It is all for your own good, you know. If you had only been prudent, and not stepped on your lame leg, you might have been spared this affliction. But, after all, it was not your fault—it was that foolish little mother of yours. She will remember now that a skein of hemp thread is not the thing to line her nest with. If she doesn't, you may tell her that it was I ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... semi-theatrical paper. It described with rollicking sarcasm, a gay "millionaire" party which had been given in Rector's private dining rooms. Among the ridiculed hosts were Van Cleft, Wellington Serral and Herbert De Cleyster! Here, in some elusive manner, ran the skein of truth which if followed would lead to the solution of mystery. He must carve out of this mass of pregnant clues the essentials upon which to act, as the sculptor chisels the marble of a huge block to expose the figure of his inspiration, encased ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... indeed their origin and starting point may be seen without such water as well as with it. But their ramifications, when under running water, cling and unite—just like flat or hemp carded for spinning—all into a skein, in a way which makes it impossible to trace in which muscles or by what ramification the nerves are distributed among those ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... twinkling lights denoted. He could almost hear the clatter round the tea-table, the witless jests of the youngsters, the careless laughter of the women, the trivial, merry nonsense that was weaving another hour of happiness into the golden skein of happy hours. Contemptible, of course! Vanity of vanities! But how infinitely precious is even such vanity as this to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... number of different elements; so that in the light it sends us the hues arising from distinct substances are blended into one beam. The first thing to be done is to get some way of splitting up a beam of light, so as to discover the components of which it is made. You might have a skein of silks of different hues tangled together, and this would be like the sunbeam as we receive it in its unsorted condition. How shall we untangle the light from the sun or a star? I will show you by a simple experiment. Here is a beam from the electric ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... unravel the tangled skein of cause and circumstance which surrounds the subject of the world-sweeping pandemic which masquerades under the misleading title of the "Spanish Influenza," the first and most important initial step must be a keen and careful sifting of the facts and forces, natural and artificial, which control ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... therefore did not, if we judge from this specimen, practice bleaching. There were, in some of the bandages near the selvage, some twenty or thirty blue threads; these were dyed by indigo, but the tint was not so deep nor so equal as the work of the modern dyers; the color had been given it in the skein. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from the crane was a pot ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... literary history of such a collection is difficult indeed, for it has drawn upon all civilizations and all literatures. But since Hammer-Purgstall and De Sacy began to unwind the skein, many additional turns have been given. The idea of the "frame" in general comes undoubtedly from India; and such stories as 'The Barber's Fifth Brother,' 'The Prince and the Afrit's Mistress,' have been "traced back to the Hitopadesa, Panchatantra, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... good sport we have made wt Spiny when we presented him the rose filled wt snuffe, dewil! willain! ye most be hooled,[271] ye most, etc. I'm sorry for your case, etc. Also that we made wt Dowy when on night in our Basseler[272] year at night after the examination we put out the candles, I skein[273] brist him til he farted; then he brought Mr. Hew on us, he crieng, Douglas, Doug.; Lauder L., my hat amang you. Russel lay like a mart[274] in the midst of the stair; ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... first washed in a solution of potash, and then with water, and after drying dipped them in the acids. The acid mixture used consisted of 3 parts by weight of sulphuric to 1 part of nitric acid, and were prepared some time before use. The cotton was dipped one skein at a time, stirred for a few minutes, pressed out, steeped, and excess of acid removed by washing with water, then with dilute potash, and finally with water. Von Lenk's process was used in England at Faversham (Messrs Hall's ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... raised abundantly throughout the islands. It is spun and sold in the skein to the Chinese and other nations, who come to get it. Cloth of different patterns is also woven from it, and the natives also trade that. Other cloths, called medrinaques, are woven from ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... and the days of Priscilla the spinner!" Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden, 885 Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest, Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning, Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden: "Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives, Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands. 890 Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting; Then who knows ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... surpass Mr. Crawford in the construction of a complicated plot and the skilful unravelling of the tangled skein."—Chicago Record-Herald. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... ado, and I set off for the castle, troubled for my unreadiness in woman nature, the most puzzling, calling, captivating skein in all the universe, because it holds, behind the silken veil of its treasure-house, the eternal mystery of creation, that something divine which is ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... have lacked now to set in worse snarl my already tangled skein of evil fortune! Out of all the thousand ways in which we several actors in this human comedy might have gone without crossing each other's paths, why should Fate have chosen the only one to bring ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... sursidi. Site sido, situacio. Sitting (of assembly) kunsido. Situation situacio, sido. Situation (post) oficio. Six ses. Sixteen dek-ses. Sixty sesdek. Size grandeco. Size (of a book) formato. Size glueto. Skate gliti. Skates glitiloj. Skein fadenaro. Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin hauxto. Skin (animal) felo. Skin senfeligi. Skinner felisto. Skip ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sifting softly through the leafless trees, and answering to the faint sighing of the autumn wind. Morris enjoyed it very much, and but for the green glasses he still wore would have looked and appeared like his former self as he sat in his armchair, now holding the skein of yarn which Aunt Betsy wound, now talking with the deacon of the probable exchange of all the prisoners, a theme which quickened Helen's pulse and sent the blood to her pale cheeks, and again standing by Katy as she played his favorite airs, his rich bass voice mingling with hers and Helen's, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... sixpence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations 'enabling him or her to know themselves.' Through all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, 'growing lads of five feet ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... out of the wreckage, he will save it for you, without fee and without reward—for my sake. He, too, is a solicitor, but an honest one, as many still are, thank God; and it is a solicitor whose aid will be most useful to you in the unravelling of this tangled skein." ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... lost herself in wonderment and in thoughts which, in her woman's brain, were tangled like a skein of thread. ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... Eastbound departed slowly into that distance whence I had come. I stared after it as it went its way to the far shores of civilization. It grew small in the unending gulf of space, until all sign of its presence was gone save a faint skein of smoke against the evening sky. And now my lost trunk came back into my thoughts, and Medicine Bow seemed a lonely spot. A sort of ship had left me marooned in a foreign ocean; the Pullman was comfortably steaming home to port, while I—how was I to find Judge Henry's ranch? Where in this ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... my good fortune willed, I came upon Ippolito de' Medici, seated with all the familiarity of an accepted lover by the side of Fenice. It was true that the young couple were chaperoned by my sister, and that Ippolito, who was holding a skein which she was winding, was leaning forward in rapt attention listening to some merry story which Giulia was relating; but, instead of congratulating myself that Fenice had now a protectress who was devoted to my interest, I was filled with rage to see Ippolito thus received ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... they had come to a ledge of rock three feet high and had to leap their horses one by one up this ledge, and the enemy might have attacked them at any moment. And this incident was typical of what his life had been for the last few years. It had been a skein of adventure, and now his wife was his adventure. Flowers stood in pretty vases on his table in the summer-time and around the room were his books, and on the table his pens and paper. The dining-room was always a little surprise, so profusely was the table covered with silver. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... erect. The latent heroism in her awoke. All her thoughts grew clear and bright. The tangled skein of her perplexed and troubled winter unwound suddenly. This, then, was the way. It was better so. God had provided himself a lamb ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... cleaned. Next it travels through a small, round hole something like the eye of a needle so that any knots or rough places can be detected. If the threads are found to be strong and without flaws two to half a dozen of them are put together in a loose skein and they are twisted in a doubling machine. Afterward the thread is polished, cleaned, and run off on spools or bobbins. That is the road Mother's spools of cotton have to travel before they get to her. How seldom we think of this or are grateful ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... to them. Failure of a subnormal to meet this criterion may lead him to break common conventions, and to appear disrespectful, sulky, stubborn, or in some other way queer and exceptional. He is likely to be misunderstood, because he so easily misunderstands others. The skein of human motives is too complex for his ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... the two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are animals (and so they are natural): (2) human beings are neither natural ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... adopted in this country for specifying the size of silk is based on the weight in drams (avoirdupois) of a skein containing 1000 yards. A skein, thus weighing 5 drams, is technically called 5-dram silk. The number of yards of 1-dram silk to a pound must accordingly be 256000. The formulas for figuring the amount of silk required for a piece of cloth are ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... attaches said, at the Cafe Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... laughed the little lady. "Come here my Gonerilla, and hold my skein for me. Signor Graziano is going to charm us with one ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... Now for the random way in which chance weaves her skein. Mr. Moore went out of the Department and left the office of Counselor vacant, an office, up to that time, so little known that the public, if it gave the matter any thought, believed its occupant was the legal adviser of the Department, while, as a matter ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... lines of this sad letter were almost illegible in their faintness and irregularity; and the tangled skein of light scratches that stood proxy for a signature could never have been deciphered by ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... at this moment is hidden from us by a band of clouds, that stretches, right above our head, from one end of the sky to the other, like a long skein of white wool. It is alone in the blue void, and seems to make more peaceful, and even a little mysterious, the wonderful light of the fields we traverse—these fields intoxicated with life and vibrant with the music of birds; while, by contrast, the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... through its means, that they pelted him with stones and had nearly killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or skein of an equal thickness. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... gesture to show that the matter was beyond his comprehension, and ascended the steps of the hotel. Jennings, deep in thought, walked away, wondering how he was to disentangle the skein which Fate had placed ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... boldness of masculinity. (See e.g., Neugebauer, "Beobachtungen aus dem Gebiete des Scheinzwittertumes," Jahrbuch fuer Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Jahrgang iv, 1902, esp. p. 92.) At the same time this is only one thread in the tangled skein with which we are here concerned. The mass of facts which meets us when we turn to the study of modesty in women cannot be dismissed as a group of artificially-imposed customs. They gain rather than lose in importance if we have to realize that the organic sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... when I say it was application—yes, application, with hard, earnest study as a relative concomitant, which solved the problem. This was the beginning, an auspicious one, you must admit, because, having unraveled the chief skein of difficulty, it seemed to imbue us with increased confidence, and study we did, with intense fervor and earnestness. Thus it continued. Not a careless and desultory endeavor, but one of energetic ...
— Silver Links • Various
... not to be answered. Had he known at the moment how deeply the two of them were to be enmeshed in the skein of Europe's destiny he would have risen and faced the anger of his host, or, risking detection, incontinently fled. But Marishka's hand clasped his own, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... against her cheek for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her kindred?—yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?—yes, that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her self-disgust, and ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail! Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou! Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away! thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant, Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st! I tell thee, I, that ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... evidently by the shop people, to "Miss Coventry, Dangerfield Hall"? How my fingers trembled as I untied the thread and unfolded the paper; after all, it was nothing but a packet of worsteds! To be sure, I hadn't ordered any worsteds, but there might possibly be a note to explain; so I shook every skein carefully, and turned the covering inside out, that the document, if there should be one, might not escape my vigilance. How could my presentiments deceive me? Of course there was a note—after all, where was the harm? Captain ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... innumerable beams of every hue in intimate association. Every shade of red, of yellow, of blue, and of green, can be found in a sunbeam. The magician's wand, with which we strike the sunbeam and sort the tangled skein into perfect order, is the simple instrument known as the glass prism. We have represented this instrument in its simplest form in the adjoining figure (Fig. 17). It is a piece of pure and homogeneous glass in the shape of a wedge. When a ray of light from the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the Boer side of the case. It would, indeed, have been wiser on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr and other Bond leaders to have forgotten the past and given a friendly hand to the one man capable of unravelling the tangled skein of affairs. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... Burgundy?' And as Sir Giles replied to each inquiry in turn, and told all he could of political matters, she exclaimed: 'Ah! that is better than the hearing whether the black hen hath laid an egg, or the skein of yellow silk matches. I am weary, O! I am weary. Moreover, young Hal, I know as matters are that could I see George Nevil face to face I could do somewhat with him, and I laid my plans to obtain ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the literary world, he was regarded by superior persons as a writer of "shockers," he had a large and increasing public who were fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote, and who held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they came to the denouement ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... strangely of good and bad, truth and falsehood, that it requires the most delicate touch to unravel the tangled skein of our natures and find the ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... scarcely had one mysterious event been straightened out from the tangled skein, when another, even more baffling, crowded on ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... been lying to Your Honor. He has said that the British are helpless. He brought Your Honor a report from Palestine that was a skein of falsehood hung up on little pegs of truth. He told you the British are not able to defend themselves, he knowing better; for he is one of those men who say always what the hearer ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... agricultural directions, to preserve the peace, to keep her fences in order, to attend to the sick, to rule her household and her spirit, to dispose of her harvest, and to bring either end of the thread out of the tangled skein of her affairs. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... opening his eyes was, "I am in the land of the lions!" And—well, why should we not say it?—at the idea that lions were nigh hereabouts, within a couple of steps, almost at hand's reach, and that he would have to disentangle a snarled skein with them, ugh! a deadly chill struck him, and he dived intrepidly under ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... light thing. It had mingled with his heart's blood, with the very essence of all his being. No death, no annihilation was possible for it. It was a part of himself, woven unchangeably into his life in a glowing skein, the brilliant colors of which could never fade. He looked into the future, golden with the light of such a love, and he saw a vision of perfect happiness, of joy beyond all expression, of deep, calm content, surpassing ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expressed a ready acquiescence in the desire to utilise his services. Nor was the effect of such a notable introduction lost on Mr. Winter, whose earlier knowledge of the barrister's remarkable achievements in unravelling the tangled skein of criminal investigation was now supplemented by a certain amount of awe for a man who commanded the confidence of ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... orbit—no variation in its seasons—and yet imagine that the Arch-ordainer will hold back the tides He has sent from their unseen source, at our miserable bidding? Shall we think that our prayers can avert a doom woven with the skein of events? To change a particle of our fate, might change the destiny of millions! Shall the link forsake the chain, and yet the chain be unbroken? Away, then, with our vague repinings, and our blind demands. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she went and sat down on the floor before an easy-chair, through a rent in the old covering of which the hair was escaping, and drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of worsted, she set to work to mend it. For three days past she had been waiting for an hour's time to do this piece ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... which one may wander away, and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, this gardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinite possibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, "I wish you would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me, when you are in town." Time was, I used to accept such a commission with alacrity and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked one of his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... out of the room to put on her things, upsetting as she did so, the work-box with which she had been masquerading, and quite unconscious of it. Winnington, smiling to himself, stooped to pick up the reels and skeins of silk. One, a skein of pink silk with which she had been working, he held in his hand a moment, and, suddenly, put in his pocket. After which he drifted absently to the hearthrug, and stood waiting for her, hat in hand. He was thinking of that moment in the wintry dawn when he had read her letter. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mercy repeated the words, she tore off Julian's hands the last few lengths of wool left, and threw the imperfectly wound skein back into the basket. "Does that mean," she resumed, abruptly, "that you ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... axes and crowbars— Now they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... have interrupted me. Ah! there, you have tangled my hair. How provoking you are! It will take me an hour to put it right. You are not satisfied with being a prodigy of impiety, but you must also tangle my hair. Come, hold out your hands and take this skein of wool. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me," said Pleydell. "But we must have some news from the land of Egypt, if possible. Oh, if I had but hold of the slightest thread of this complicated skein, you should see how I would unravel it!—I would work the truth out of your Bohemian, as the French call them, better than a Monitoire, or a Plainte de Tournelle; I know how to manage a ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... silk the whirling spoles reveal, If smiling Fortune turn the giddy wheel; But if sweet Love with baby-fingers twines, 130 And wets with dewy lips the lengthening lines, Skein after skein celestial tints unfold, And all the silken tissue shines ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... of bright Broadway, you of the chorus, Who sing in the hope of forgetting your pain: I turn to a sister of Sainted Cecilia, A white bird escaping the earth's tangled skein:— The music of God is her innermost brooding, The whispering angels her ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt, but she wasna ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... murmur of the human heart drifted in and out of McLean's hearing; fragments of home talk, tendernesses, economies, intimate first names, and dinner hours, and whether it was joy or sadness, it was in common; the world seemed knit in a single skein of home ties. Two or three came by whose purses must have been slender, and whose purchases were humble and chosen after much nice adjustment; and when one plain man dropped a word about both ends meeting, and the ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... jades. They delight in playing ill-natured pranks upon us. Not content with spinning and measuring and cutting the threads of our lives to suit themselves, they must also tangle the skein, causing us to cut ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... a ball of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness, transformed into a crafty trader with all ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... thy skin as silken skein, Soft as woman's hair thy mane, Tender are thine eyes and true; All thy hoofs like ivory shine, Polished bright; O, life of mine, Leap and ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... and her quiet, pale face. She was one of those women who are never afraid of the light. Her face was of that strange, self-contained nature, colorless, apparently, yet capable of strange and rapid changes. Just now the last glow of sunlight seemed to have found a skein of gold in her hair, a queer gleam of light in her eyes. She stood there looking at the man whom she ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ails thee?" said Cleopatra, smiling her slow smile. "Has the golden skein of stars got tangled, my astronomer? or dost thou plan some new feat of magic? Say what is it that thou dost so poorly grace our feast? Nay, now, did I not know, having made inquiry, that things so low as we poor women are ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... there," Maria replied, in her sweet, decisive little pipe. A fresh wave of color swept over her face and neck, and she selected with great care a thread from a skein of linen floss. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I have been set to do,' thought the girl, who was a good spinner. But when she began she found that the skein tangled ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... to live innocently, and were it only for your sake, shall never stop searching for the thread of life in its ravelled skein.' ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... chances for humor, particularly the funny story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial. But do not spin a whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and threadbare "And that reminds me." An anecdote without bearing may be funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable. There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to the heart ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... good sense in this reasoning that all three girls were impressed and began to regret that Uncle John had called Fogerty to untangle the skein. But it was now too late for such repentance and, after all, they were curious to discover who their ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... "store" of Truman and Jenkins. This was an establishment at the foot of the hill, where it hung out its sign, in company with several others of the same character, which professed to supply all the wants of the community. Here everything was to be had from a gallon of molasses to a skein of thread, or a quintal of codfish, to a pound of nails. On one side, as you entered, were ranges of shelves, protected by a counter, on which were exposed rolls of flannels of divers colors, and calico and broadcloth, and other "dry goods," while a showcase on the counter contained combs, and tooth-brushes, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... they had left, we took to the caravel Nina, to which from another headland there was coming another little almadia, with a man who came to barter a skein of cotton. And some of the sailors threw themselves into the sea, because he did not wish to enter the caravel, and took him. And I, who was on the stern of the ship, and saw it all, sent for him and gave him a red cap and some little green glass beads which I put on his arm, ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... ago some women of the Fabian Society, deeply stirred by the tremendous social import of this movement, banded themselves together to unravel the tangled skein of women's economic subjection and to discover how its knots were tied. The first step was to get women to speak out, to analyse their own difficulties and hindrances as matters boldly to be faced. Whatever the truth may turn out to be with regard to natural ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... the letter promised by Brentano in his note of mystery. This time she confided in Laurel her scheme for unraveling the tangled skein in the web of dishonor that had been woven about the ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... their own journey been identified with it, that now they were almost as eager and excited over the last stages of the journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new, unknown and untried. They hardly could wait to resume their following out of the last entangled skein of the great narrative. ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... of better things; and I say once more I like not the thoughts of the close quarters they intend for us. An' you will not run for it yourself, at least help a poor fellow, whose ideas are like a skein of tangled ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... over again; and the more she read it, the more was she confused by the mixture of the first and third person; the substitution of the 'i' for the 'T. I.;' and the transition from the 'I. T.' to the 'You.' The writing looked like a skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded into a perfect square, with the direction squeezed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was pleasingly ornamented ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... seemed to him to pass the limits of the human. He knew there were heroic women; but he had not supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such sang-froid. Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket for another skein of silk. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... his royal antagonist in the industrious subtlety with which he began to form a thousand combinations. Swift, secret, incapable of fatigue, this powerful and patient intellect sped to and fro, disentangling the perplexed skein where all had seemed so hopelessly confused, and gradually unfolding broad schemes of a symmetrical and regenerated polity. He had high correspondents and higher hopes in England. He was already secretly or openly in league with half the sovereigns of Germany. The Huguenots of France looked ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Cleveland's letter may serve as a picture of the one; a glance at almost any paper will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, like a new Messiah, to take upon itself our frailties and play for us the part that should be played by our own virtues. For that, in few words, is the case. We ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her." Strange, when I come to think of it! It seems to me that I do not want another like Aniela, or a better one either,—I want her. I say it seems to me; for it is a feeling without any definite shape. I carry within me something like an entangled skein; I weary myself, and yet am not able to reduce it to any kind of order. In spite of all my self-knowledge, I cannot quite make out what it is that makes me feel sad. Is it because I find I love her, or is it because I feel I could love her ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to me the first threads of what became in after-days a strange and varied skein of humanity. There was the Thames upon a holiday. Now I look back to it, I ask, Ubi sunt? (Where are they all?) Joshua Cooper, as good and earnest a Rom as ever lived, in his grave, with more than one of those who made my acquaintance by hurrahing for me. Some in America, some wandering wide. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... is delighted, and we are both in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any, and had no night-sweat. She is now busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept all night. We have now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... interest the reader, but rather in the successive steps whereby his analytic observer is enabled to solve a problem that might well be dismist as beyond human elucidation. Attention is centered on the unraveling of the tangled skein rather than on the knot itself. The emotion aroused is not mere surprize, it is recognition of the unsuspected capabilities of the human brain; it is not a wondering curiosity as to an airless mechanism, but a heightening admiration for the analytic acumen capable of working out an acceptable ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... whereupon the young man said, 'This is not the wife for me.'" In another house he sees a damsel who leaves not the dough which sticks to the platter; and he says, "This is the wife for me." Another young man offers to successive maidens a skein of tangled silk to wind. The first says, "I can't;" the second tries, and gives up; the third makes a quick job of it with her scissors; the fourth spends hours in patiently, untangling, and is chosen. Now, what shows the state ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... a loose skein of threads, And tangled emotions, vague and dim; And sacrificing what he loved He lost the dearest ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when thing's get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,—girls who have ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... frame; notably, the "Choice of the Betrothed," the "Taking of Kurstrin," and the "Burial of the Cat by the Mice." Near the window sat an old woman in a mantilla, her head wrapped in a handkerchief. She was winding a skein of thread held on the separated hands of a little old man, blind of one eye, who was ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... Blake looking slightly irritated as she wound a ball of white yarn from a skein that Docia was holding between ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... continued knitting, I could see that her eyes were directed to that part of my person, and fixed upon the increasing distention of my trousers. In a few minutes she gave me a skein of worsted to hold, and desired me to kneel in front of her, so as to bring my hands down to the level of the low chair ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... given some startling proofs of his energy or of his penetration! But, after all, what had he accomplished? Was the mystery solved? Was his success more than problematical? When one thread is drawn out, the skein is not untangled. This night would undoubtedly decide his future as a detective, so he swore that if he could not conquer his vanity, he would, at least, compel himself to conceal it. Hence, it was in a very modest tone that he said to his companion: "We have done all that we can do outside, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... dining-room where I could not hinder them nor see what only husbands are permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit in the dining-room and converse with Pimenovna, one of the poor relations. Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by me with a thimble, a skein of wool ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... But what I want to insist upon is this: The standard of conduct must be fixed for women. Our children want something settled, not everything left uncertain. Our morals (I do not mean our sexual morals only, but our whole ethical and social conduct) has become like a skein of wool that has been unraveled by a puppy. We want a firm broad way in which it is good and possible for all of us to walk without hurting one another, not the horrid scramble that to-day we ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... should have made the offer,' replied the old woman; and she added, holding out a skein of thread, 'Take this; one day you will be thankful for it, and when it becomes useless your ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... ordained of old, Held not the will of gods constrained, controlled, Helpless to us ward, and apart— Swifter than speech my heart Had poured its presage out! Now, fretting, chafing in the dark of doubt, 'Tis hopeless to unfold Truth, from fear's tangled skein; and, yearning to proclaim Its thought, my ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... thread is a promise of warmth and protection for years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed in colors symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the army or the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now all but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be wound in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, and the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... was not yet ready to admit. Worst of all, she had him convinced that he was a failure, a weakling and misfit, a sort of green fool who had asked for the moon and been properly punished for his temerity. And that was a skein even fairies would find hard ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... young? yes! and yet I have tangled among The fray'd warp and woof of this brief life of mine Other lives than my own. Could my death but untwine The vext skein... but it will not. Yes, Duke, young—so young! And I knew you not? yet I have done you a wrong Irreparable!... late, too late to repair. If I knew any means... but I know none!... I swear, If this broken fraction of time could extend Into infinite lives of atonement, no ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... went about distributing wool to spin for his master, a wool-monger. Love being thus, with the pleasant image of her beloved Pasquino, admitted into her soul, mightily did she yearn, albeit she hazarded no advance, and heaved a thousand sighs fiercer than fire with every skein of yarn that she wound upon her spindle, while she called to mind who he was that had given her that wool to spin. Pasquino on his part became, meanwhile, very anxious that his master's wool should be well spun, and most particularly ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... but I did hope I'd done him some good but felt dubersome about it. But knowin' I'd clung to Duty's apron strings I felt like leavin' the event. And when Miss Meechim come in I wuz settin' calm and serene in a big chair windin' some clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin' the skein. I'd brung along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to make ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... weave, but I cannot see Just how 'tis done, and it puzzles me. For you have no loom In your little room. No silken skein, no spinning-wheel, No bobbin ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... space, they may exhibit a Colour; as we see, that though a Slenderest Thrid of Dy'd Silk do's, whilst look'd on Single, seem almost quite Devoyd of Redness, (for instance) yet when numbers of these Thrids are brought together into one Skein, their Colour ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... did not perceive this when she trod so far in the fatal footsteps of her ancestress, Mary Stuart. She had none of her rash violence, but not a little of her spirit of romantic intrigue, and that feminine delight of having in hand a tangled skein, of which she held securely ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... "And it carried off the eggs too, I suppose?" "No; I have eggs." We resolved to sup on eggs. A fire of logs was kindled up stairs, and a table was extemporized out of some deals. In a quarter of an hour in came our supper,—black bread, fried eggs, and a skein of wine. We fell to; but, alack! what from the smut of the chimney and the dust of the pan, the eggs were done in the chiaro scuro style; the wine had so villanous a twang, that a few sips of it contented me; and the bread, black as it was, was the only thing ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... little skein of tangled floss they lie, (You always said they should have been a girl's.) The tears will come—you cannot quite tell why— They fall unheeded on that mass—his curls. Poor little silken skein, so dear to you. "'Twere better short," the wiser father said, "He's getting older now."—Alas, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... orange and rusty-coloured lichens; yet the whole place was admirably spick and span, free of litter. Many cats, as Dickie noted, meditated in sunny corners, or prowled in the open with truly official composure. Over all stretched a square of bluest sky, crossed by a skein of homeward-wending rooks. While above the roofs, on either side the archway, the high-lying lands of the park showed up, broken, here and there, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... subdued. He would lie reading on the sofa while Mary wrote, and often she turned from her manuscript to find him dozing. They took a few walks together, during which he rarely spoke, but seemed glad of her silent company. Once he called with her on Mrs. Farraday, and actually held an enormous skein of wool for the old lady while she, busily winding, told them anecdotes of her son James, and of her long dead husband. He made no effort to talk, seeming content to sit receptive under the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... a tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Caoilte saw them there side by side, and elbow by elbow, he made a cast of his spear, and it went through the three women, that they were like a skein of thread drawn together on the spear. And that is the way he made an end of the strange, unknown three. And that place got the name of the Valley of the ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... holding a skein of yarn for Aunt Lois; and she went on winding in silence, putting the ball through ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe |
