"Truant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and plunged into hot water. Between four and five he was sent to school, his parents thinking to keep him out of mischief of this kind. But he had not the least interest in school knowledge, and constantly played truant; and when he did come to school he brought with him all kinds of horrid insects, reptiles, and birds. One morning during prayers a jackdaw began to caw, and as the bird was traced to the ownership of Thomas Edward, he was dismissed from the school in great disgrace. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... with her. He played truant whenever he could, for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself—who did not wish to learn, only to find out—when there were so many worthy lads thirsting for ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... host's polite attention, together with the letter-writing pretence, passed away the afternoon—the longest afternoon he had ever spent; and of weariness he had had his share. Lunch was lingering in the dining-room, left there for the truant Mr Hickson; but of the children or Ruth there was no sign. He ventured on a distant ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to that, I can say nothing," said Jenkin, "I have always served duly and truly; I have no heart to play truant, and cheat my master of his time as well ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... suspension of hostilities; when pop went a third gun, followed as before with a yell. After this, for nearly two hours nothing occurred worthy of comment, save some straggling shouts from the hillside, sounding like the halloos of a parcel of truant boys who had lost ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... was stereotyped. Within a few hours it was despatched to another firm of publishers, taken at random from the advertisement columns of the Times. An hour or two afterwards Alfred arrived, with no label around his neck, but a veritable truant. Of the two he was the more self-possessed as he greeted ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... change it? I'm distress'd. From home I must play truant, lest I meet my brother. My father too, perhaps, is come ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... their offers of service. The next day she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,—a person in a large way of business,—and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, "Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which you will be liberally remunerated. A friend of mine wishes to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night young Cupid lost his way, And came to me to find it. He'd been a truant all the day, But didn't ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen to him ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... had correctly observed her governess. Miss Minerva's heavy eyebrows lowered; her lips were pale; her head was held angrily erect, "Carmina!" she said sharply, "you shouldn't encourage that child." She turned round, in search of the truant pupil. Incurably stupid at her lessons, Zo's mind had its gleams of intelligence, in a state of liberty. One of those gleams had shone propitiously, and had lighted her out ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... gather wild flowers, and to pick up smooth little pebbles which had been washed clean by the rain, while Robert walked on reading his book. At last, John, calling after his brother, said, "I do not see what is the use of going to school this fine morning; let us play truant." ...
— Child's New Story Book; - Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks • Anonymous
... day wet and rainy, though not uniformly so. No temptation, however, to play truant; so this will make some amends for a blank day yesterday. I am far in advance of the press, but it is necessary if I go to Drumlanrig on Wednesday as I intend, and to Lochore next week, which I also meditate. This will be no great interruption, however, if I can keep the Canongate ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... quit the churchyard at once for some place where he was not likely to be seen; he had never played truant before, and for the next hour or two was thoroughly miserable as he slunk about the premises of a neighboring farm, and finally took refuge in a shed, and began to consider his position. He would ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... SPECTATOR, I am a Lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty Pleasure in Learning. I have been at the Latin School four Years. I don't know I ever play'd [truant, [1]] or neglected any Task my Master set me in my Life. I think on what I read in School as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half, to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... mother that her other sons shall comfort her old age, For I was aye a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. For my father was a soldier, and, even when a child, My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild; And when he died, and left us to divide ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... school kept by two very nice rather young Quaker ladies in Walnut Street. It was just opposite a very quaint old-fashioned collection of many little dwellings in one (modelled after the Fuggerei of Augsburg?) known as the Quaker Almshouse. One morning I played truant, and became so fearfully weary and bored lounging about, that I longed for the society of school, and never stayed from study any more. Here I was learning to read, and I can remember "The History of Little Jack," and discussing with a comrade the question ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... verra nicht o' the Latin prose I cam up to speak aboot the college, and ye thocht Geordie hed been playing truant." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are de Soyecourts, you ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... disappeared from all the southerly slopes, and the wind was toward the Camp, so that the sounds he hated came dulled and hushed to his ear, Amberley ventured a few rods down the hillside in search of a missing calf. The truant was a pretty, white-nosed creature, a special pet of his master's, with great brown, confiding eyes, and ample ears, and Amberley had named him Simon. Not a usual name for a calf, as Simon was well aware, but somehow it gave the lonely man a peculiar ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... boy's impetuosity he wished to rush on and meet the truant pilgrim from the sea, but Hermione held him back. She could not bear to lose that sweet sound, the foot-fall on the stones, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the provision for the school population of the country is, in places, fearfully inadequate. In our large cities, if the truant and labor laws were properly enforced, the lack of school provision would be still more apparent. In New York City alone more than 100,000 children are attending school ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... any moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly assume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures of the theatre could tempt him, and he remained in a state of limpness until the natural buoyancy of his spirits asserted itself. What a life! How ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of fact, I was alone in the world, dependent upon my own resources for whatever little truant ray of sunshine I might get from the golden flood that illuminated the world outside me, and forced by rigid, arbitrary circumstances to train my growing convictions into many a hazardous channel, left to myself to grope among the dawning ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... fight was mainly for decent schoolhouses, for playgrounds, and for a truant school to keep the boys out of jail. If I was not competent to argue over the curriculum with a professor of pedagogy, I could tell, at least, if a schoolroom was so jammed that to let me pass into the next room the children in the front seat had to rise and stand; or if there ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... foreign accent, was startled by a heavy hand which descended with full weight on his shoulder, while the discordant voice of Peter Peebles, who had at length broke loose from the well-meaning Quaker, exclaimed in the ear of his truant counsel—'Aha, lad! I think ye are catched—An' so ye are turned chamber-counsel, are ye? And ye have drawn up wi' clients in scarfs and hoods? But bide a wee, billie, and see if I dinna sort ye when my petition and complaint comes ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... peeping under people's elbows, trying not to annoy others and yet to make a thorough hunt in a short time so as not to keep the others waiting. Then in the music room, or East Parlor, as it is often called, she found the truant, gazing with rapt eyes at the quaint old harpsichord which had ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... orbit with certainty, and the planet disappeared in the sun's rays. Gauss published an approximate ephemeris of probable positions when the planet should emerge from the sun's light. There was an exciting hunt, and on December 31st (the day before its birthday) De Zach captured the truant, and Piazzi ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... Such kindness is not to be forgotten during life."—"The Inkyo[u] an hotoke; Iemon Dono and O'Hana are the husband and wife not present?" The question came from some one in the room. "O'Hana San is very ill. Her state is serious. Iemon does not leave her." Akiyama answered for the truant ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... first waywardness of a child is in truancy from school, which, if it cannot be handled by the teacher, is turned over to the local truant officer. In many cases the truant officer is appointed because of his availability for such work rather than his special competency, and the enforcement of the truancy law is handled in a most perfunctory ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... I played truant. I was in a restless state. I remember how I felt as if it were yesterday. Nothing seemed real, except my father and mother. I thought about them all the time. I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't study. I couldn't bear to sit at a desk. I picked up some ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... unaccounted for, I suppose any one is at liberty to sport a few conjectures on the subject. May not, for instance, the practice of burning the "holly boy" have its origin in some of those rustic incantations described by Theocritus as the means of recalling a truant lover, or of warming a cold ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... raised above the ground, Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair; But still her jealous hair Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze. She, born and nursed in heaven for angels' praise, No sooner saw this wrong, than back she drew, With hand of purest hue, Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien. Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen, So sweet a soul of love she cast on mine, That scarce can I divine How then I 'scaped from burning utterly. These are the first fair signs of love to be, That bound my heart with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... duty of the principal to reduce the enrolment per schoolhouse to the lowest point. Therefore, when a zealous Sunday-school teacher finds that one of her little charges has gone to work under age, the offices of the city's solitary factory inspector being out of the question, she hunts up a truant officer, who takes the child before a magistrate, who, in view of the want of school accommodations, promptly discharges the truant. Behind our local municipal administration lies our whole system of capitalistic production, calling for cheap ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... be realised, as the truant emerged from the thicket and entered upon an open plain clothed with low heath,—the Erica vestila, loaded ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... had also been inherited by him. In manner he was neither so austere and taciturn as his father, nor so gentle and amiable as his mother. He was by no means a scholar, and only the strong hand of his father had kept him as a boy in fear of the penalties incurred by the truant. Courage and resolution were his ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... folk behint them, and twal o'clock chappit?" Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that "They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... through the gaily-crowded streets was sweet to him as a lazy truant ramble in the woods during church-time. Everything that he looked at delighted him—the richness of shop-windows, showing all the expensive useless goods that no sensible person ever wants; the liveries worn by pampered servants standing at carriage wheels; the glossy ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... decorations, the grandees on the platform, and conspicuous among them the squire's slouching frame and striking head, side by side with a white and radiant Lady Helen—the outer success, the inner revolt and pain—and the constant seeking of his truant eyes for a face that hid itself as much as possible in dark corners, but was in truth the one thing sharply present to him—these were the sort of impressions that remained with Elsmere afterwards of this last ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a spur of this hill, lo! the lake; and not far from the foot of a tree, behold! our truant brother. Beside him was Dash, and not a great way off, tied to a dwarf algaroba tree, stood the mule. Dugald was sitting on the ground, with his gun over his arm, gazing up into ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... we have gone abroad in the middle of October, and returned for Christmas and the New Year," she finished, "but we have made up our minds to remain in England this year. Why, here comes the truant, and it ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... counted, they say, Rather a bad stick anyway, Splintered all over with dodges and tricks, Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six"; I, the truant, saucy and bold, The one black sheep in my father's fold, "Once on a time," as the stories say, Went over the hill on a winter's day— Over the hill to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... next moment the little questioner had squeezed her way through a slightly open door, and was toddling down the broad stone stairs and across a landing to Hetty's room. The room-door was open, so the truant went in. A bed with the bed-clothes all tossed about, a half worn-out slipper on the floor, a very untidy dressing-table met her eyes, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... to his garden and his thoughts. How fresh and sweet and welcoming the garden looked on that calm, lovely summer day! How brightly the morning dewdrops twinkled on the leaves, like a sprinkling of liquid diamonds! Every flower seemed to greet him with silent laughter: "Aha, you've been playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here? Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... admired its crisp thickness. To her maiden fancy something of his strong virility had escaped even to this wayward little lock of hair. She had wondered then how the Senorita Valdes could keep from loving this splendid fellow if he cared for her. All the more she wondered now, for her truant heart was going out to him with the swift ardent passion of her race. It was as a sort of god she looked upon him, as a hero of romance far above her humble hopes. She found herself longing for chances ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... will, but accident and necessity made me a truant from my promise. I was to have left Merton, in Surrey, at half-past eight on Tuesday morning with a Mr. Hall, who would have driven me in his chaise to town by ten; but having walked an unusual distance ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely—elders, juveniles, and all—from beginning ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there," said George, self-defensively. "I played moocher," he continued,—by which he meant truant,—"and then they whopped I, and a went home to mother, and she kept un at home, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... minds of their authors. Similarly, the richest pages of Byron's work—from the date of The Curse of Minerva to that of the "Isles of Greece"—are brightened by lights and adorned by allusions due to his training, imperfect as it was, on the slopes of Harrow, and the associations fostered during his truant years by the sluggish stream of his "Injusta noverca." At her, however, he continued to rail as late as the publication of Beppo, in the 75th and 76th stanzas of which we find ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... beautiful face, on which the man at her side gazed with open admiration. The close-fitting cap, with its bright red bow, indicated that the girl had not yet reached her eighteenth year. Here and there peeped out little truant locks of the glossy black hair, whose richness and abundance the close covering could not entirely conceal or fetter. The broad, intellectual brow; the delicate, pencilled lashes, from the shadow of which shone forth lustrous black eyes that flashed with intelligence and spirit; the arched ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... To scratch and write Upon a three-legged stool; Nor mourn the joys Of truant boys Who stay away ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... playin' truant maybe. A' mind gettin' ma paiks for birdnestin' masel. I'll wager ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... I am very glad to see you: good euen Sir. But what in faith make you from Wittemberge? Hor. A truant ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... repented her harshness and had set herself to make amends. The sparkle came back to Celia's eyes and the lilt to her voice. The children who had been models of deportment while the cold lasted, developed a frisky unruliness, resulting in Malcolm's playing truant and Algie's coming home with a black eye, trophy of his first fight. Persis was too thankful over being able to raise every window in the house and have the sweet spring air flooding in upon her, to take these enormities very much to heart. Indeed, she was almost too busy to deal with the culprits ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... nest again," and that suffices Cio-Cio-San. But when Sharpless comes with a letter to break the news that his friend is coming back with an American wife, he loses courage to perform his mission at the contemplation of the little woman's faith in the truant. Does he know when the robins nest in America? In Japan they had nested three times since Pinkerton went away. The consul quails at that and damns his friend as a scoundrel. Now Goro, who knows Butterfly's pecuniary plight, brings Yamadori to her. ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dim— Maria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and wo—in good and ill— Mother of God, be with me still! When the Hours flew brightly by And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... complicated facts the schoolmaster has to deal. In Macaulay's time he used to be guided by his 'common-sense,' and to intellectualise the whole process. The unfortunate boys who acted upon an ancient impulse to fidget, to play truant, to chase cats, or to mimic their teacher, were asked, with repeated threats of punishment,'why' they had done so. They, being ignorant of their own evolutionary history, were forced to invent some far-fetched lie, and were punished for that as well. The trained schoolmaster of to-day takes ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... his wife soon called his thoughts back to misery. Health had wandered away, and the smiling truant strayed so long, that hope of her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... in Smithfield, where he hath a shop—I suppose, a booth. Presently after dinner to the office, and there set close to my business and did a great deal before night, and am resolved to stand to it, having been a truant too long. At night to Sir W. Batten's to consider some things about our prizes, and then to other talk, and among other things he tells me that he hears for certain that Sir W. Coventry hath resigned to the King his place of Commissioner ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... did I play truant from Parkhurst, and that transgression was attended with consequences so tragical that to this day its memory is as vivid and impressive as if the event I am about to record had happened only last week, instead of a quarter of a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... could she be except next door?" mademoiselle questioned; "and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard nothing of her, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... uniformity in type have held the bad boy to a path which, in view of his character, seems singularly narrow. In book after book he indulges in the same practical jokes upon parents, teachers, and all those in authority; brags, fibs, fights, plays truant, learns to swear and smoke, with the same devices and consequences; suffers from the same agonies of shyness, the same indifference to the female sex, the same awkward inclination toward particular little girls. For the most part, thanks to ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... garden open; but Honor was well round the corner, and running fast towards the cricket field. Vivian was very much disturbed and distressed. She scarcely knew what she ought to do. She ventured a little way into the grounds, but not a trace of any truant was to be seen, so she thought it useless to search far. One of the girls must have gone out; on that point she ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... from that town Felix was suddenly missed, and a brief colloquy elicited the melancholy fact that the boy had been left behind at Potsdam. The tutor thereupon turned back in one of the carriages, whilst the rest proceeded to the next stopping-place. In the course of an hour he returned with the truant seated by his side, dusty and footsore, but otherwise as fresh as when he had started. He had, it appeared, strayed from the party at Potsdam, and returned to the starting-place in time to see the carriages disappearing in the distance enveloped in a cloud of dust. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... fair have caught Some fresher fancy's gleam; My truant accents find, unsought, The old ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... worked his way to New York and back again to Chicago before he was quite fourteen years old, skilfully escaping the truant officers as well as the police and special railroad detectives. He told his story with great pride, but always modestly admitted that he could never have done it if his father had not been a locomotive engineer so that he had played ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... ye, where be these truant lords? There be some of ye who can reply; aye, and by good St. Edward, reply ye shall. Gloucester, my lord of Gloucester, stand forth, I say," he continued, the thunderstorm drawing to that climax which made many tremble, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... "A faithless truant to the classic page, Long have I loved to catch the simple chime Of minstrel-harps, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the present period of anxiety in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of the matter was that Jose and Patch, who had gone a-hunting, had not returned when the party had left for Bell Hammer. It was possible that, during their absence, the dogs had come back, and Anthony did not like to think that truant Patch might be wandering around the house, seeking admission in vain. Consequently, after the car had been noiselessly bestowed—out of consideration for their employers' rest, the four had alighted ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... true reason down in the record book. And there it will stay always. My nice little boy was a truant-player. And we shall all be so ashamed. What will your father say? And he was so afraid last night ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... he and Mrs. Dolman invited her to their house, where she was found by Mr. Linley, on his arrival in pursuit of her. After a few words of private explanation from Sheridan, which had the effect of reconciling him to his truant daughter, Mr. Linley insisted upon her returning with him immediately to England, in order to fulfil some engagements which he had entered into on her account; and a promise being given that, as soon as these engagements ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of a report of Benny's short interview with Grayson, had Benny thought to give it, but he had, on reaching home, promptly feigned headache, and gone to bed; so such of the boys as did not determine to play truant, and so postpone the evil day, thought bitterly of the morrow as they dispersed ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Moore Robert Burns Byron Goderich Kelvin Niagara Falls Autumn A Sunset Farewell By the Lake The Teacher Grace Darling The Indian Lines on the North-West Rebellion Louis Riel Ye Patriot Sons of Canada A Hero's Decision John and Jane The Truant Boy A Swain to his Sweetheart The Fisherman's Wife The Diamond and the Pebble Temptation Slander Woman Sympathy Love and Wine. How Nature's Beauties Should be Viewed To a Canary The School-Taught Youth A Dream A Snow Storm To Nova Scotia ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... 'bound for me for the L500, which I stand in danger to the Widow Smith for.' At last the wind became more accommodating. Ralegh, whom carping gouty Anthony Bacon pretended to suspect of having contributed to the delay from underhand motives, collected the truant ships and seamen. On June 1, 1596, the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... husband and wife have their separate acquaintance, and pursue their separate amusements, undisturbed by domestic squabbles: when they meet in the evening, it is with perfect good humour, and in general, perfect good breeding.—When an English wife plays truant, she soon becomes abandoned: it is not so with the French; they preserve appearances and proper decorum, because they are seldom attached to any particular man. While they are at their toilet, they receive the visits of their male acquaintance, and he must be a man of uncommon discernment, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a night in his father's office and discovered there a murdered man. This was a true incident. The man had been stabbed that afternoon and carried into the house to die. Sam and John Briggs had been playing truant all day and knew nothing of the matter. Sam thought the office safer than his home, where his mother was probably sitting up for him. He climbed in by a window and lay down on the lounge, but did not sleep. Presently he noticed what appeared to be an unusual shape ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with the unsubstantial pageantry of a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... came a message from the schoolmaster that the boy was absent too often. The message was repeated. Ditte could not understand it. She had a long talk with the boy, and got out of him that he often played truant. He made a pretense of going to school, hung about anywhere all day long, and only returned home when school-time was over. She said nothing of this to Lars Peter—it would only ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... had written her husband of the conduct of their truant son, as Harry had wished, and had in reply received his full forgiveness for the boy. Captain Grosvenor had written that he much regretted not having taken Harry along with him, "for," said he, "a second thought would have ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who had reported noticing one of the Briarcroft boarders in Mansfield Road on several successive evenings could give no account of the truant's personal appearance. It had been dusk at the time, and they had only seen a girl in a sailor hat with a blue-and-white striped band hurrying rapidly past, as if anxious to escape observation. They thought she had dark hair, and that she must be about fourteen or fifteen ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... this, how often are saints found playing truant, and lurking like thieves in one hole or other. Now, in the guilt of backsliding by the power of this, and then in filth by the power of that corruption (Jer 2:26). Yea, and when found in such decayings, and under such revoltings ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... deserve it! I have been nothing but a truant and a vagabond. I have never obeyed anyone and I have always done as I pleased. If I were only like so many others and had studied and worked and stayed with my poor old father, I should not find myself here now, in this field and in the darkness, taking the place of a farmer's watchdog. Oh, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... like a truant's escapade for Jane Dardenne; it was a delightful and unexpected holiday, and as she was an actress at heart, she played her part seriously, and threw herself into her character, and enjoyed herself more than she ever enjoyed herself in her most ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that slept in Covent Garden Market or on doorsteps. Been sleeping out six months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only some gooseberries and cherries, i.e., bad ones that had been thrown away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he returned home on leaving Feltham because he could'nt find her ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... full-orbed moon shed her soft refulgence over the unrivalled scene, and gave it a silvery lustre which sweetly harmonized with the silence of the night. The clock's iron tongue, in a neighboring belfry, proclaimed the hour of twelve, as the truant and unfaithful husband seated himself by the side of his devoted and loving wife, and inquired if she ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... dough-balls. Makers of rice-wine, said Heywood; as he strode along explaining, he threw off his surly fit. The brilliant sunlight, the breeze stirring toward them from a background of drooping bamboos, the gabble of coolies, the faint aroma of the fermenting no-me cakes, began, after all, to give a truant sense of holiday. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... and proved himself a law-breaker, just as Ben Lindsey was when he inaugurated the juvenile court and waived the entire established legal procedure, even to the omission of swearing his witnesses, and believed in the little truant even though he lied. Froebel told the little other-mothers to come to school anyway and bring the babies ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... a very small school, for many boys were away helping to collect the sheep for the schooner, which was coming in, and some were playing truant. The sheep were carted down to the shore and the men were ready for embarking, when the ship moved out, and so all their labour was again in vain. The sea was "making up," and to-night is stormy. It is rather late in the year for a ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... "telling tales." From that time, she began to obtain influence over all, more or less, according to their different characters; and as she insensibly gained their affection, her own interest in them was increasing. But one day, at the children's dinner, the small truant of the stable-yard, in a little demonstrative gush, said, putting his hand in hers, "I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." Whereupon, the mother exclaimed, before all the children, "Love the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... begun. You must all come in, and bow 'way down to the ground, and say, 'O, respected teacher, grant us knowledge.' They are very polite in India.—All but Prudy, she may stay behind and play truant." ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... is not Pelichus at all, but Talos the Cretan, the son of Minos? He was of bronze, and used to walk all round the island. Or if only he were made of wood instead of bronze, he might quite well be one of Daedalus's ingenious mechanisms—you say he plays truant from his pedestal just like them—and not the work of Demetrius at all.' 'Take care, Tychiades; you will be sorry for this some day. I have not forgotten what happened to the thief who stole his monthly pennies.' 'The ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... hedge and called to him, asking if he had brought a ball with him, for they had lost theirs. He threw his ball to him. But aren't you coming to play with us? Not to-day, Joseph answered. I'm on my way to school. Well, to-morrow? Not to-morrow. I may not play truant from learning, Joseph answered sententiously, walking away, leaving his former playmates staring after him without a word in their mouths. But by the next day they had recovered their speech and cried out: the fishmonger's son is going by to his lessons ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... unwilling to perform, but let no one think that he is therefore in love with idleness; he turns to something which is more agreeable to his inclination, and doubtless more suited to his nature; but he is not in love with idleness. A boy may play the truant from school because he dislikes books and study; but, depend upon it, he intends doing something the while—to go fishing, or perhaps to take a walk; and who knows but that from such excursions both his mind and body may derive more benefit than from books and school? Many ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... to start early enough, he would walk there with his little daughter, her hand tucked within his arm. With her he was never savage, and rarely irritable; on these walks his mood would be playful and jocose, and they would incite each other to play the truant from office and school, and pretend they were off on a ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... but the apologies of the boatmen saved the young men the unpleasantness of blows, and, elated at his success, Frank handed Lizzie into the truant boat and paddled out into the stream. When he had got out of earshot and out of the notice of the boat-house he rested on his oars. "Did you see me ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick's arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, 'Let me go; ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man was angry with them for playing truant. He said slowly, "N—no. She didn't exactly send us; but I don't think she'll mind our having come if we get back in time for supper. Mamma never forbid our going mumming, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... have come back to us, truant?" she said, laughing. "And now that you have returned, we shall keep you prisoner. We won't let him run away again, will ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up. The master of the house was an ambitious gentleman just knighted, who, perceiving the state of their hearts, harshly dismissed the homeless governess, and rated ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... into action, and quick as a flash the truant lines recurred to her, and to the great chagrin of her rival in the wings, she went on with her part ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... long day, and all to myself. What do you think of Harry playing truant?'" (Here we may imagine, what they call in France, or what they used to call, when men dared to speak or citizens to hear, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... joy!) our singer For his truant string Feels with disconcerted finger, 45 What does cricket else but fling Fiery heart forth, sound the note Wanted by ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... before the gods Thou didst proclaim? Alas! Death will not come, Except at his appointed time to men, And therefore for a little I shall live, Whom thou hast lived to leave. Nay, 't is a jest! Ah, Truant, Runaway, enough thou play'st! Come forth, my Lord!—I am afraid! Come forth! Linger not, for I see—I spy thee there; Thou art within yon thicket! Why not speak One word, Nishadha? Nala, cruel Prince! Thou know'st me, lone, and comest ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... 'Where is this truant husband of thine, my lady?' asked the marquis, as soon as Dr. Bayly had said grace. 'Know you whether he eats at all, or when, or where? It is now three days since he has filled his place at thy side, yet is he in the castle. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... said was of no moment;—but they had met as lovers, and any of the family who had allowed themselves to imagine that even yet the match might be broken, now unconsciously abandoned that hope. "Was he always such a truant, Lady Fawn?"—Lizzie asked, when it seemed to her that no one ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... age of ten her life was sketchy. A passionate scramble for food, beatings, tears, slumber, a swift transition from one childish ailment to another that kept her forever out of reach of the truant officer. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Sunday silks had ceased in the corridor outside, she caught up a book and a cushion, and, creeping down by the side stairs, set gaily out across the sunlit lawn, with the deliciously guilty thrill of a truant little boy who has run ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Hail, truant with song-troubled breast— Thou welcome and bewildering guest! Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note Brings Spring into a poet's throat,— Flute, feathered joy! thy painted ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... intemperate language; and though it is maliciously said that some of the younger members speak more for the galleries than the house, and though some gallant individual may occasionally step up stairs to restore a truant handkerchief or boa to the fair owner, the distractions caused by their presence are very inconsiderable, and the arrangements for their comfort are a great reflection upon the miserable latticed hole to which lady listeners are condemned in the English House of Commons. I must ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in all places and at all times. Most likely you will carry it many a day and never give it a single look, but, even so, a book in the hand is always a companionable reminder of that happier world of fancy, which, alas! most of us can only visit by playing truant from the real world. As some men wear boutonnieres, so a reader carries a book, and sometimes, when he is feeling the need of beauty, or the solace of a friend, he opens it, and finds both. Probably he will ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... thing," said Gunson, as we drew near our resting-place; and I believe now he said it to try and cheer me on. "Perhaps while we have been away the truant may have returned." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... their privileges, he was far from intending to permit their interference with his own interests;[318] and so thoroughly did he enslave the mind of the young King, that while Louis, like a schoolboy who had played truant, and who was resolved to enjoy his new-found liberty to the uttermost, was constantly changing his place of abode, and visiting in turn St. Germain, Fontainebleau, Villers-Cotterets, and Monceaux, without one care save the mere amusement ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... one friend always reappears, A good ghost, not to be forsaken; Whereat she laughs and has no fears Of what a ghost may reawaken, But welcomes, while she wears and mends The poor relation's odds and ends, Her truant from a tomb of years— Her power of youth so ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... morning, David was afraid to go to school, apprehending the severe punishment he might get from the master. He therefore left home as usual, but played truant, hiding himself in the woods all day. He did the same the next morning, and so continued for several days. At last the master sent word to John Crockett, inquiring why his son David no longer came to school. The boy was called to an account, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front. They did not converse—they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament. They simply peered. They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case. From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... years! It was a long, long time; and never a word from the truant since the day she had left the village. Martha had waited, at first impatiently, then anxiously, and finally with a pathetic hopefulness that was more than half assumed. It was she who had insisted that Tony must go to the office every day, and during those long years, every evening, rain or shine, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... Cyprus' heavenly queen, Thus Helen's brethren, stars of brightest sheen, Guide thee! May the Sire of wind Each truant gale, save only Zephyr, bind! So do thou, fair ship, that ow'st Virgil, thy precious freight, to Attic coast, Safe restore thy loan and whole, And save from death the partner of my soul! Oak and brass of triple fold Encompass'd sure that heart, which ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... that instead of taking advantage of such questioning to give vent to his displeasure he would smile contentedly and stroke his chin, once so round, but then so peaked, and those who thought that the Court apothecary would diminish his legacy to his truant son, learned to know better, for the old man bequeathed in an elaborate will, the whole of his valuable possessions to Melchior, leaving only to the widow Vorkel, who had served him faithfully as housekeeper ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the corner Sits greeting on a stool, And sair the laddie rues Playing truant frae the school; Then ye'll learn frae silly Sandy, Wha's gotten sic a fright, To do naething through the day That may gar ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... the invisible world there is one class which lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years, namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment, but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently to each ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... allowed or approved a pretext for doing what would be opposed or condemned; a tricky schoolboy makes a pretense of doing an errand which he does not do, or he makes the actual doing of an errand a pretext for playing truant. A ruse is something (especially something slight or petty) employed to blind or deceive so as to mask an ulterior design, and enable a person to gain some end that he would not be allowed to approach directly. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... directions, of Kinney and the young man with the real hat-band. Both were excited and disturbed. At the sight of the young man, Stumps turned appealingly to the golden-rod girl. He groaned aloud, and his expression was that of a boy who had been caught playing truant. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and I should also punish thee for tearing ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... of Bethany was set in order three days before the expected arrival of Passover guests. Followed by Eli, who was girt about with a long towel, Martha made a last survey of the large and well furnished living-room, looking for a truant speck of dust. She paused for a moment at a table containing writing materials and bade the servant wipe it carefully and place it, with a case of scrolls, at one end of the wide, latticed window-couch, for here on the comfortable cushions ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... lies the home of school-boy life, With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, And, scarred by many a truant knife, Our old initials on the wall; Here rest—their keen vibrations mute— The shout of voices known so well, The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, The chiding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence she seemed to suit the house she lived in—one of those large ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... a-bloom once more. The lilac buds are bursting with the joy of the new spring. A veil of silver-gray floats over Moose Hillock. The idle brook, like a truant boy, dances in the sunshine, singing to itself as it leaps from ledge ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared, How oft, my slice of pocket store consumed, Still hungering penniless and far from home, I fed on scarlet hips and stony ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... with such affability as denoted approbation and delight, and gently chided him as a thoughtless truant, but carefully avoided the confession of a mutual flame; because she discerned, in the midst of all his tenderness, a levity of pride which she durst not venture to trust with such a declaration. Perhaps ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with the American is to educate children. This is carried to the extent of making it an offense not to send those above a certain age to school, while State or town officers, called "truant police," are on the alert to arrest all such children who are not in school. The following was told me by a Government official in Washington, who had obtained it from a well-known literary man who witnessed the incident. The literary man was invited to visit a Boston school of the lower ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... shadows—proceeding, as they did, from objects that he had looked upon as the friends of his youth, before life had opened to him the dark and blotted pages of suffering and sorrow. There, dimly shining to the right below him, was the transparent river in which he had taken many a truant plunge, and a little further on he could see without difficulty the white cascade tumbling down the precipice, and mark its dim scintillations, that looked, under the light of the moon, like masses of shivered ice, were it not that such a notion was ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... got up in the morning. So naughty, frightened little Goldilocks jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall, or ran into the wood and was lost there, or found her way out of the wood and got whipped for being a bad girl and playing truant, no one can say. But the Three Bears never saw anything ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... one and then at the other of her truant charges. Then—'Well?' she almost screamed, 'is ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... am not free— And it may be Life is too tight around my shins; For, unlike you, I can't break through A truant where the blue begins. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... ever truant daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting is this interval ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... sweet laughter became audible among the trees. His heart beat fast; he advanced a few steps and stopped. In a moment more the nymph of the island appeared, in her white robe, ascending the cliff in pursuit of her truant bird. She saw the strange man, and suddenly stood still; struck motionless by the amazing discovery that had burst upon her. The Captain approached, smiling and holding out his hand. She never moved; she ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... announcement had been swallowed up in a hum of truant inattention, and as the heralded speaker made his appearance upon the platform Claire Robson, leaning forward, said ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... tutor was found for him; but it is to be feared that he was by no means an industrious scholar. Indeed, we hear of such dreadful things as playing truant, so that when a day was fixed for an examination by learned men as to how the Heir-to-Empire was getting on with his studies, "at the master moment it was found that the scholar, having attired himself for ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... busy talking about water turtles with Frank, noticed this, and struck out with his willow branch to bring the truant back, but it was too late; the boat had got beyond his reach, and was now floating swiftly down the middle of the stream with ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her son's mysterious love is a very bad ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Her pride would not allow her to admit that she was glad to see him, relieved to be overtaken like a truant from school. And Bill did not seem to expect a reply. He slung his rifle into the crook ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... plot, a plot!" Will our own party mind me not? So qualified to swear and lie, Will they not trust me for a spy? Dear Mullinix, your good advice I beg; you see the case is nice: O! were I equal in renown, Like thee to please this thankless town! Or blest with such engaging parts To win the truant schoolboys' hearts! Thy virtues meet their just reward, Attended by the sable guard. Charm'd by thy voice, the 'prentice drops The snow-ball destined at thy chops; Thy graceful steps, and colonel's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... When the truant waggons came up we marched on a few miles, following the road, which is just a hard track across the veldt, and bivouacked for the night, the out-spanned waggons ranged in rows in a rough square, as far as I could see, but it was very dark, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... him from writing home till he had secured himself a position in which he could maintain himself. When he did communicate with Thursley, it was through Mehetabel, because Simon had forbidden any allusion to the truant boy, and Mrs. Verstage was not herself much of a scholar, and did not desire unnecessarily to anger her husband by having letters in his handwriting come ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... run off before I arrived," said the Count, laughing boisterously. "Played truant, the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... how to write. I should never learn then! I must stop where I was! How I longed now for the wasted time, for the classes when I played truant to go birds'-nesting, or to slide on the Saar! The books which I was used to find so wearisome, so heavy to carry—my grammar, my history—now seemed to me old friends whom I was very sorry to part with. The same ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood |
