"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as he had seen son John. ''Twill be rather untidy, you know, owing to my having no womenfolks in the house; and my man David is a poor dunder-headed feller for getting up a feast. Poor chap! his sight is bad, that's true, and he's very good at making the beds, and oiling the legs of the chairs and other ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... very unattractive—seeing to it that they performed distasteful "fatigues," giving them heavy packs to carry when we marched, and allowing them nothing that could be construed as a delicacy—I soon reformed the few men that were chronically shiftless or untidy or late. When not in cantonments the trouble with putting men under arrest is that too often it only means that they lead an easier life than their comrades, and it takes some ingenuity to correct this situation. Whenever it was in any way possible an offender was ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... to ask 'im more about it, but just then Mrs. Pearce came in with a pair of Alf's socks that he 'ad been untidy enough to leave in the middle of the floor instead of chucking 'em under the bed. She was so unpleasant about it that, if it hadn't ha' been for the thought of wot was going to 'appen on Tuesday, Alf couldn't ha' ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... be in the least peculiar, but, on the contrary, a very normal woman. She had always used tapers; she could remember the period when every one used tapers. In her view tapers were far more genteel and less dangerous than the untidy, flaring spill, which she abhorred as a vulgarity. As for matches, frankly it would not have occurred to her to waste a match when fire was available. In the matter of her sharp insistence on drawn blinds at night, domestic privacy seemed to be ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... parcels, his face flushed, his legs knocking against one another, but it was here, at H——, that, for the first time, I positively began to like him. By the evening when we were assembled in the station again as I looked at him standing, waiting for directions, smiling, hot, untidy and awkward, I knew that I liked ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... organization of comfort, and his utter indifference to aesthetic beauty, had the fullest scope. By universal consent admitted to be the finest bathroom in the Five Towns, it typified the whole house. He was disappointed on this occasion to see no untidy trace in it of the children's ablution; some transgression of the supreme domestic law that the bathroom must always be free and immaculate when father wanted it would have suited his gathering humour. As he washed his hands and cleansed his well-trimmed nails with a nail-brush ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... father—such a good father. He was gold. The mother was also gold, but she was cross. One got a smack from her sometimes, a dig in the ribs, or a twist of an ear. She does not like to have the house untidy. She does not allow the children to play "fathers and mothers." She forbids Abramtzig to pick up the pieces of cardboard that have fallen to the floor, and Moshetzig to steal the paste from his father, and Dvairke to make bread of ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... the family is liable to be in negligee. The Spanish women, in loose, morning gowns, or blouses, and in flapping slippers, present a rather slovenly appearance during morning hours; also the children, in their "union" suits, split tip the back, impress the stranger as untidy. During the noon siesta everybody goes to sleep, to come to life late in the afternoon. At eight o'clock the chandelier is lighted and the evening meal is served. This is a very formal dinner, consisting of innumerable courses of the same thing cooked in different ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... up four flights of naked oaken stairs, fairly swept, in a plain, flat-fronted house. The door of the home was opened by a dark, untidy, dishevelled, uncapped, fat girl, with a full apron, dazzling white and rectangularly creased, that had obviously just been taken out of a drawer. Familiarly and amicably smiling, she led him into a small, modest drawing-room where were Lois and her ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... a by-street; and after a slow walk of about a quarter of a mile—for the old man was still in considerable pain, and was much shaken—they arrived at a low but not untidy-looking cottage, with a little ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... concealed under a heavy veil, but the man seemed to recognize her at once, for he started up and gave a muttered execration as he caught sight of his untidy ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Committee to arrange for the Summer Camp of the In-Wrong Married Women whirled through the untidy Suburbs in a next year's Motor Car, and Loretta was nowhere except right up on the front ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... tidy, orderly, trim, clean, cleanly; tasteful, trim, finished, artistic, nice, excellent, adroit; dainty; spruce; dapper, natty. Antonyms: dowdy, slovenly, slatternly, untidy, tawdry, gaudy, frowzy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Christmas Eve, and the one narrow main street of a small country town was ablaze. Extra lights were glowing in all the little shops; yet all this illumination served only to make more apparent the untidy condition of the six-by-nine window panes, as well as the goods therein. Men and women were hastening homeward with well-filled baskets which they had provided for the festive morrow. All the ragged, dirty urchins of the village were gathered ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... came up from the lower kitchen at the summons. She was young, rather pretty, and with a pleasant countenance, but unwashed, uncombed, untidy; no wonder Margery's nicety had shrunk from introducing her into her spotless upper kitchen. The unfailing Irish cloak was drawn about her, the hood brought over her head, and on the head and shoulders the snow lay white, not ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... in his place, small, freckled, and untidy, it is true, but a gentlemanly host welcoming his mother's guest, stood ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... same," she interrupted, "this is a very untidy conversation. I didn't come in here to talk, but to borrow a copy of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... much in appearance as in mind. The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but a part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide humanity. Pitt was ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... had gone on his errand, and I found myself alone in the room, I am fain to confess that I fell very low in my spirits. M. d'Agen's travelling equipment lay about the apartment, but failed to give any but an untidy air to its roomy bareness. The light was beginning to wane, the sun was gone. Outside, the ringing of bells and the distant muttering of guns, with the tumult of sounds which rose from the crowded street, seemed to tell ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... wonder, La Boulaye permitted himself to be led up the crazy stairs to a most untidy room above, which evidently did duty as the Captain's parlour. A heavy brass lamp, hanging from the ceiling, a few untrustworthy chairs and a deal table, stained and unclean, were the only articles of furniture. But in almost every corner there were untidy heaps of garments Of ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... to let it stand naturally, just as the curl will make it. Don't you do any of that nasty, untidy snarling, Elnora," cautioned Margaret. "Wash it this way every two weeks while you are in school, shake it out, and dry it. Then part it in the middle and turn a front quarter on each side from your ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... judge by the account which he modestly renders in The Land of Open Doors (WELLS, GARDNER). With headquarters at Edmonton he rides and drives or swims (when the floods are out or the bridges down) across this untidy country from shack to shack, holding odd little services in dormitories and kitchens, and evidently making friends with the rough pioneer folk, railway men and small farmers, of his assorted acquaintance. The discouragements of such a task must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... recourse had to tiles imported from China or slates of copper-bronze. In the better class of house, the roof-boards were held in place by girders, but humble folks used logs of timber, or stones, to prevent wind-stripping, and these weights imparted an untidy, rude ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not the sort who say tempestuous good-byes, but their silence was like the silence of the open grave. There were many sad-faced women, wheeling go-carts, with children holding to their skirts crying loudly for "Daddy." There were tired, untidy women, overrun by circumstances, with that look about them which the Scotch call "through-other." There were many brave little boys and girls standing by their mothers, trying hard not to cry; there were many babies held up to the car-window to kiss a big brother or a ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... Nantes. The Hastings fishermen, for example, often say boco for plenty, and frap to strike; while in the Rye neighbourhood, where the Huguenots were strongest, such words as dishabil meaning untidy, undressed, and peter grievous (from petit-grief) meaning fretful, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the house door quietly and shut it after them. There was no garden; the neighbourhood of Mr. Piperson's was all scratched up by fowls. They slipped away hand in hand across an untidy field to ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... the grass, silence the noon and murder flies. See the basting undip the chart, see the way the kinds are best seen from the rest, from that and untidy. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... soberly, but Sally laughed, for she knew who the untidy girl was who had left the cups sticky. Then she turned up her cuffs, and with a sigh of satisfaction began to stir about her kitchen, having little raptures now and then over the "sweet rolling pin," the "darling dish-tub," ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the oars, and followed by my sensible parson with the bag, made for the untidy wharf through the silent village. The blue boat was not hard to discover in the pale, ghostly light; the bay was hardly rippled; it was to be another hot, sticky day. My companion begged the privilege of ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... water-supply, and thus the wells and pumps were superseded. Before the Local Board came into being about half a century ago, piles of timber were allowed to lie in Eastgate, and generally one may imagine the rather untidy quaintness so strongly characteristic of the engravings that illustrate country scenes ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... were to shake the dust of that station from our feet, and how ridiculous it seemed to us that such dirty untidy folk could exist in the present day, to whom "Cleanliness is next to godliness" ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Universelle" (sole source of my knowledge of the renowned Cujacius) that his usual manner of study was to spread himself on his belly on the floor. He did not sit down, he lay down; and the "Biographie Universelle" has (for so grave a work) an amusing pic- ture of the short, fat, untidy scholar dragging himself a plat ventre across his room, from one pile of books to the other. The house in which these singular gym- nastics took place, and which is now the headquarters of the gendarmerie, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Switzerland, where people used to go to eat chocolate and see mountains, and where they now go to make proposals of peace. I believe she made some, but nobody listened much, so she came away disappointed and fiercely determined to do good somewhere or know the reason why! She's a stout, wildly untidy woman whose mouse-coloured hair is always coming down, though it's freely dotted with irrelevant tortoise-shell combs; and whose elaborate clothes look somehow insecure, the way scree does on the side of a mountain. Her ideas leap out of her brain like rabbits out of holes, and then ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... untidy bit of land," he said, "and I can't clear it. 'Tisn't mine; but no one heeds the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... The Road was thick with its varied traffic, omnibuses, trams, vans, carts, trolleys, cyclists, motors, and a marvelling crowd—loafers, women, nurse-maids, shopping women, children, venturesome hobble-dehoys—gathered behind his gingerly moving feet. The hoardings were untidy everywhere with the tattered election paper. A babblement of voices surged about him. One sees the customers and shopmen crowding in the doorways of the shops, the faces that came and went at the windows, the little street boys running ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... one figure clearly still. He is tall and thin, with a white peaked face of which the long inquisitive nose is the outstanding feature. His hair is lank and uncared for; his russet smock, tied in at the waist, wants brushing; his untidy cross-gartered hose shows up the meagerness of his legs. No knightly figure this, yet I look upon him very tenderly. For it is Roger Scurvilegs on his way to the ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... gnomes, toiled and caused to toil too eagerly. What would one think of a housekeeper so intent upon saving that she could waste no time on beauty or cleanliness? How many who would storm if they came home to an untidy house, feel no shadow of uneasiness that they have all day been defiling the house of the Father, nor at night lifted hand to cleanse it! Such men regard him as a fool, whose joy a foul river can poison; yet, as soon as they have by pollution gathered and saved their god, they make ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... student. The fact is significant that a large majority of our collegians pass their term of four years, vacations excepted, in practical seclusion. They are gathered in large numbers in dingy and untidy caravanseries, where the youthful spirit is unchecked by the usual obligations to respect private property and individual quiet. President Porter, in his work on The American Colleges, endeavors to prove that the dormitory system is, upon the whole, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... and cheese, and half an apple pudding. Also a great jug of cider and another of milk, and several half-full glasses, and no end of dirty plates, knives, and forks. All were scattered about the table in the most untidy fashion, just as the servants had risen from their supper, without ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... No untidy church, home, or school expresses Christ—for Christ represents perfection in cleanliness and order. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" we are told. Cleanliness shows the spiritual, the God, but ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... fowls at once. Pigs may wait till you have time to put up a regular stye, and to have grown potatoes enough to feed them. Two fat and well-tended pigs are worth half a dozen half-starved wretches. Such neglected brutes make a place look very untidy, and their existence will be a burden to themselves, and an ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... us sit on the loggia, where it is cool. I am afraid the room is very untidy," he added, with the air of a hostess who apologizes for a stray thread on the drawing-room carpet. Miss Abbott picked her way to the chair. He sat near her, astride the parapet, with one foot in the loggia and the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... first and most obvious were tea-parties, the usual rewards to school-children, and often made very tedious affairs by the enormous quantity of talk inflicted on them. However, Mr Wilson managed better. To the first, many of the boys came dirty and untidy; the second shewed a great improvement; the third, one still greater; until now, most of the factory-boys assemble to chapel, and other places where they ought to be decent, in plain suits of black, which give them a neat and even gentlemanlike appearance: yes, though the word ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... About half-way through his speech he was interrupted by the approach of a whirlwind. There was a sound of feet on the stone passage, something crashed against the door, and in rolled Ferrers in a most untidy blue suit, a soft collar, an immense woollen waistcoat, and three books under his arm. These he slammed on the table, in company ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... procured the time sheets of half a dozen modern schools, and found, as I expected, that they might all have been my old school: there was no real difference. I may mention, too, that I have visited modern schools, and observed that there is a tendency to hang printed pictures in an untidy and soulless manner on the walls, and occasionally to display on the mantel-shelf a deplorable glass case containing certain objects which might possibly, if placed in the hands of the pupils, give ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... swallowed his sobs as best he could and proceeded to open his box. No sooner were the tiny people free than they began to run eagerly about the table, eating the crumbs of oaten bread and the grains of sugar which the untidy giantess had scattered. Small as the little courtiers were, their jewels and robes glistened and made a fine show; and the giantess leaned upon her elbows and watched them with delight, declaring them the prettiest little ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... pipe. "Oh, I suppose it'll have to do," he grudged, around the stem. He had gray hair and an untidy mustache, and nothing was ever quite good enough to satisfy him. "I could have made it a little closer. Need three microjumps, now, and I'll have to cut the last one pretty fine. Now don't bother me." He began punching buttons for data ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... what else to blame for Dick's untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias and Martinezes of ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... of a gentleman, but travel-stained and untidy; he was sitting alone at one of the little tables, with head bowed down upon his breast; before him stood glasses and a crystal decanter half filled with brandy. Geoffrey started with surprise, and would have turned ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... mother had left the house for her first situation, and then, breakfasting slowly, she had just time to reach Miss Jubb's by nine. She did not like Miss Jubb, who was a thin-faced and fussy person who always wore a grey pinafore and felt that her untidy grey hair looked as though it might hint a sorrow rather than betray advancing years. Miss Jubb was full of the futile vanity of the elderly spinster, her mouth full of pins, and her head full of paper patterns. She lived with her mother on two floors of an old house, and one of the downstairs ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... it, they could hear squeals that were not pleasant to hear, and that made them quicken their pace, to run around the house-place, and plunge almost into the face of an untidy woman who hurried ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... little shops on the ground floor, and of little murky gateways leading to the habitations above. Beside the gateway of No. 11 was a small workman's drinking shop, sometimes called in Paris a zinc on account of the polished zinc bar which is its principal feature. Untidy, slouching people ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand in the heart of a valley ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... some of this dirt, and such germs as it may contain, to lodge in the little chink under the free edge of the nail, between it and the rounded end of the finger. It is of great importance that this nail chink should be kept clean, not only because it looks both ugly and untidy to have the ends of your fingers "in mourning," with black bands across them, but also because the germs lodged under your nails may get onto your food the next time that you eat, and set up irritation ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... appearance. She was of middle height, not more; slender; her head well set upon her shoulders. This was her own room; the schoolroom of her girlhood, the sitting-room she had been allowed to call her own since then. Books, work, music, a drawing-easel, and various other items, presenting a rather untidy collection, met the eye. This morning it was particularly untidy. The charts covered the table; one of them lay on the carpet; and a pot of mignonette had been overturned inside the open window scattering some of the mould. She was very busy; the open sleeves ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... earlier in the evening, Grandma Padgett observed the pig-headed man's pavilion, and this she also explored with Zene. A crowd was making the canvas stifling, and the pig-headed man's performances were being varied by an untidy woman who screamed and played on a portable bellows which had ivory keys, after explaining that Fairy Carrie, the Wonderful Musical Child, had been taken suddenly ill and could appear ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... empty. Abyedok lay on his belly and coughed, shaking all over his small body. The rest of the dark, silent figures sat and lay around in all sorts of positions, and their tatters made them look like untidy animals, created by some strange, uncouth deity to ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... these untidy bricks overlook is now given up to stalls and is the centre of the cheap clothing district. Looking diagonally across it from the church one sees the great walls of the courtyard of what is now the Riccardi ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... to the roll-call. Never had he been absent since his first day at school, and Miss Bailey was full of uneasiness. Nathan Spiderwitz, Morris's friend and ally, was also missing, but at half-past nine he arrived entirely breathless and shockingly untidy. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... linen, which had been in a sad condition—Miss Anna's powers being rather intellectual than practical. And through it all she kept a natural daintiness and refinement, was never clumsy, or loud, or untidy. She came and went so lightly—and always bringing with her the impression of something hidden and fragrant, a happiness within, that gave a dancing grace and perfume to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... She didn't want her hair to look pretty—she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her untidy head. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, while Maggie's flushed cheeks began to pale and her lips to tremble ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... render the round hat, with the straight-projecting brim, less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it, at one time, with a deep ruff of ribands, or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another, they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again, they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse—they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas were. They wielded enormous fans, nearly two feet long; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... what it said in bold letters that sprawled across its surface in an untidy fashion. The execution of the thing was as bad ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... eyes faded away, and he saw only the inner vision of Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Riviere aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... seen any shops or people in his life before. At last he arrived at the Corner, and, turning into the Park, spent a quarter of an hour watching the riders in Rotten Row; then he crossed to the Marble Arch, passing a vast array of gorgeous flowers in full bloom, listened wonderingly to an untidy orator demolishing Christianity for the benefit of a little knot of errand-boys and nursemaids, took another omnibus along Oxford Street to the Circus, and, after an enchanting walk down Regent ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... "You shockingly untidy man!" she said severely. "Carry my trunk into my room, quick. I am going to put on an old dress, and make you help me clean up first thing. Tired?—after lounging on soft cushions—when I tramped miles of muddy streets carrying ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... declared, almost passionately. "You've never seen my rooms or my drunken father. I can tell you what they're like, though. They're ugly, they're tawdry, they're untidy, when I've any work to do, they're scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us—we're always behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a constant hideousness crawling ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slabber[obs3]. Adj. dirty, filthy, grimy; unclean, impure; soiled &c. v.; not to be handled with kid gloves; dusty, snuffy[obs3], smutty, sooty, smoky; thick, turbid, dreggy; slimy; mussy [U.S.]. slovenly, untidy, messy, uncleanly. [of people] unkempt, sluttish, dowdy, draggle-tailed; uncombed. unscoured[obs3], unswept[obs3], unwiped[obs3], unwashed, unstrained, unpurified[obs3]; squalid; lutose[obs3], slammocky[obs3], slummocky[obs3], sozzly[obs3]. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... flowers, making wreaths for me, and then looking at me, and sometimes comparing my hair or eyes with Lottie's; and his look of vexation if my face was dirty or my pinafore torn, often comes back to me even now when I feel untidy in any way. ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... themselves their own mother gave instructions that they were to do everything that I told them, and not to tear their clothes or make themselves untidy. These directions, even to myself, at the time, appeared contradictory. But I said nothing. And out into the wilds the four ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... Genoa; the Italy of 1844; Dickens charmed with its untidy picturesqueness; he is idle for a few weeks; his palace at Genoa; he sets to work upon "The Chimes"; gets passionately interested in the little book; travels through Italy to read it to his friends in London; ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... duration of a dinner. Or he would have a sudden tempestuous outbreak in which chairs would collapse and door panels be kicked in and violent expletives would resound through the hall. In all, Morris was the central figure, impatient, boisterous, with his thick-set figure, unkempt hair, and untidy clothing, but with the keenest appreciation and sympathy for any manifestation of beauty in literature or in art. But this idyll was short-lived. Ill-health in the Burne-Jones family was followed by an illness which befell Morris himself; and the demand of the growing business ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... dinner with his wife, little daughter, and sister-in-law. The first impression of an uninitiated traveller would be of poverty. The large bare kitchen was unswept and untidy; the family dishes—soup, vegetables, olives, good white bread, wine—were placed on the table without cloth or table-cover. As will be seen, these hard-working, frugal people were rich; in England they would have servants to wait upon them, fine furniture, and wear fashionable clothes. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... distinct trades. On the ground floor he sold second-hand books; in the cellar he bought jewels and gave money on the same to needy people. In the shop, pale youths, untidy, abstracted old men, spectacled girls, and all varieties of the pundit caste were to be seen poring over ancient volumes or exchanging words with the proprietor. But to the cellar came fast young men, aged spendthrifts, women of no reputation ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... an untidy room. She banged-to the door, and standing by it for a moment, drew the bolt. Thus she had secured herself against intrusion. She then flung herself on the bed, put her two arms under her head, and gazed out of the window. Her heart was beating wildly; ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... in to tea, and Mrs. Larkins, exuberantly genial in a floriferous but dingy flannel dressing gown, appeared to confirm that. He brought in his bicycle and put it in the narrow, empty passage, and everyone crowded into a small untidy kitchen, whose table had been hastily cleared of the debris of the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... took a good long look at the old man. There was no mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just what a scholar's should be,—old, not untidy, a little shiny at the elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had moulded itself to a broad, noble head, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one twin on her lap, and the other on a chair by her side, and a larger child was in the corner by the fire, looking heavy and ill, while others of different ages lounged about listlessly. She was not untidy, but very pale, and she spoke in a meek, subdued way, as if the ills of life were so heavy on her that she had no spirit even to complain. She thanked them for their gifts but languidly, and did not visibly brighten when told that her husband ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... untidy-looking women opened doors and peered out at her as she went by; but no one else spoke to her. Guided by the sound of the groans, which came at regular intervals like long breaths, she went up a second flight ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... interval elapsed before the door was opened by a marvellously untidy servant girl who had apparently been interrupted in the act of black-leading her face. Partly opening the door, she stared at us agape, pushing back wisps of hair from her eyes and with every movement daubing more of some mysterious black substance ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... clutched a frantic foot, with a power which could not be broken away from. A jerk and a remorseless dragging over the carpet and Robin was out of the protecting darkness and in the gas light again, lying tumbled and in an untidy, torn little heap on the nursery floor. Andrews was panting, but she did not loose her hold as she scrambled, without a rag of professional dignity, to ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Wilson is an untidy, slovenly woman; and though your mother charged me to look after her sick baby, she did not tell me to furnish new clothes for the ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... this we had an official visit from one of those laundry critics, called "Medical Inspectors." As there were no sheets or counterpanes to look after, he turned his attention to a heap of dry rubbish in the vestibule, which gave the place an untidy appearance, as seen from the street. To remove this eyesore he had one of my nurses hunt up a wheel-barrow, and two shovels—shovels were accessible by this time—and ordered him and another to wheel that rubbish ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... is a space of six dimensions, and as soon as we realise this we see that there is plenty of room for all the particulars for which we want to find positions. In order to realise this we have only to return for a moment from the polished space of physics to the rough and untidy space of our immediate sensible experience. The space of one man's sensible objects is a three-dimensional space. It does not appear probable that two men ever both perceive at the same time any one sensible object; when they are said to see the same thing ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... back, he locked the door again behind him. He bustled about the room as if preparing to move. He had little to pack; a few shabby clothes were thrown into a small trunk, a pile of letters and papers were hastily torn up and pitched into the untidy grate. All this while he muttered to himself as if to keep himself in company. He said: "I had to take the other shoot—he hadn't the sand to help—I couldn't tell him any more. . . . I wonder if she will ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... could see only her back, and yet as I carried my eye from the dainty boot which rested on the lowest step to the small gloved hand on the railing, to the small black hat with its blue wings airily poised, I found myself making comparisons between this daintiness and the untidy loveliness of Gladys Todd. I was almost angry with Gladys Todd because she did not dress with such simplicity, not knowing that all her wardrobe cost hardly as much as this unobtrusive gown, this ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... young creature, compact of large, soft, gracious curves and swaying movements—with her nimbus of pale golden hair, and curiously floating, undulating walk, rather reminding one of a stray goddess. Always untidy with hooks lacking at important junctures, and the trimmings of her hats usually pinned on with a casualness that occasionally resulted in their deserting the hat altogether, she could still never be other than delightful and ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the timbers are rotting away, and the house is awaiting Vainly its new supports,—that place we may know is ill governed. Since if not from above work order and cleanliness downward, Easily grows the citizen used to untidy postponement; Just as the beggar grows likewise used to his ragged apparel. Therefore I wished that our Hermann might early set out on some travels; That he at least might behold the cities of Strasburg and Frankfort, Friendly Mannheim, too, that is ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Most of my uncles, on the other hand were ardent patriots. When any public misfortune occurred, such, for instance, as the treason of Dumouriez, my uncles allowed their beards to grow and went about with long faces, flowing cravats, and untidy garments. My grandmother would at these times indulge in delicate but rather risky satire. "My dear Tanneguy, what is the matter with you? Has any trouble befallen us? Has anything happened to Cousin Amelie? Is my Aunt Augustine's asthma worse?"—"No, cousin, the Republic ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... tramping to him across this untidy carpeting and directed his attention to the broken windows in the town house and in other ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... little things that sometimes disgust the invalid with what is put before him. There is a tidy and an untidy way of serving most dishes, too; for instance, in serving a poached egg, have it piping hot and on the toast; not cold, part on the toast and part on the saucer, with the ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... kind of married hermit, on the edge of Windsor Forest, and could hardly be separated, even for a week's holiday, from his beloved Spectator. His output of work was enormous and incessant, and was throughout critical and didactic. The style was pre-eminently characteristic of the man—tangled, untidy, ungraceful, disfigured by "trailing relatives" and accumulated epithets; and yet all the time conveying the sense of some real and even profound thought that strove to express itself intelligibly. As the style, so the substance. "The Spectator," wrote ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... thought, word and deed that looks (and, I am assured by equally innocent victims, is) positively deadly. The friend "frits and flutters" about in a distinctly casual, not to say polygamous, mood, but has one sacred place in his untidy heart in which the wife is enshrined. He can manage to sustain life so long as he may come to triangular tea on Thursdays. But the faithful husband ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... of the monastic virtues. At various spots about the cemetery, were erected obelisks and crosses of different dates, while against the walls of the church and cloister were affixed, in motley and untidy confusion, unnumbered tablets and other memorials of the dead. The suppression of this cemetery, just at the commencement of the Revolution, was a real benefit to the capital; and when the contents of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... occupied with their quarrels that Mary had not time to learn how to do things—nicely?" Mr. Carlyle's eyes glanced sadly about the untidy room and then ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the little heap of rubbish with his stick and spread it out on the hearth. It certainly looked unpromising enough, being just such a rubbish heap as may be swept up in any untidy room during a move. But Thorndyke went through it systematically, examining each item attentively, even to the local tradesmen's bills and empty paper bags, before laying them aside. Another rake of his stick scattered ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... spreading vines and the thickly standing stalks of last year's weeds, was even less inviting. Edith had never seen the country in winter, and the gardens of her experience were full of green, beautiful life. The orchard looked not only gaunt and bare, but very untidy. The previous year had been most abundant in fruit, and the trees were left to bear at will. Therefore many of the limbs were wholly or partly broken off, and lay scattered where they fell, or still hung by a little of the woody ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... I don't wonder you can't find your things in such an untidy desk!" remarked Miss White. "You must stay after four o'clock and put your books in order. Be quick, girls! Ada is waiting. Are you ready? Then ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... aside, and two youths in evening-dress emerged, supporting between them the dishevelled singer, who was miserably drunk, and whose hat almost completely obscured his right eye. They were followed by three girls with untidy hair, whose flushed, rouged faces had been made grotesque by clumsy ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... to be untidy; hanging probably in straight, black locks over her forehead, and her frock will look as if it had been pitchforked on to her, and requires only the insubordination of one pin to leave her ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... creature moving about in worlds not recognised. She was slim and small, fair-haired, honey-coloured, her eyes wells of blue. I used to see her standing at the door of the shop, amid baskets of green stuff, crimsoned rhubarb, pyramided dates, and what not. I never saw her dirty or untidy, nor heard her speak, nor saw her laugh. She stood or leaned at the lintel, watching I know not what, but certainly not anything really there, as we say. She appeared to be looking through objects rather than at them. I can describe it no otherwise than that I, or another, crossed ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... He folded his arms and paced up and down in his cheerless, untidy room. Father Goriot waited till the student's back was turned, and seized the opportunity to go to the chimney-piece and set upon it a little red morocco case with Rastignac's arms stamped in gold on ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to his family why she takes the bread ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he, "because I saw you are from Ohio and I thought you might know some people for whom I once worked." Looking across the way at the poorly kept home with its untidy surroundings, where pigs, chickens, dogs, pet crows and children alike had access to both parlor and kitchen, we doubted whether the man could be located, for whom he ever had worked. We learned that he had business that brought him from the fertile valleys of Ohio to his mountain home. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... ushered into a sitting-room—a man's apartment, untidy, reeking of cigarette smoke and stale air. There were photographs and souvenirs of women everywhere. The windows were fast-closed and the curtains half-drawn. The man who stood upon the hearthrug was of ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood by his right elbow, and a perfect continent of tobacco smoke lay between us, wafted towards the door by the draught from an open window. He had littered the hearth with matches and tobacco ash, being the most untidy smoker I had ever met; and save for his frequent rappings out of his pipe bowl and perpetual striking of matches, he had shown no sign of activity for the past hour. Collarless and wearing an old tweed jacket, he had spent the evening, as he had ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... spite of his polished courtesy, there was that about Dr. Damar Greefe which I did not and could not like. The voice was the voice of a gentleman, but the face was a mask—a mask of Anubis; and seated there in that strange untidy apartment, amid varied relics of the past and obscure experiments possibly designed to pry into the future, whilst thunder boomed high over the Bell House, I determined to withhold from Dr. Damar ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the errand entrusted to him, and over the habits and the career of the first-named tenant on the list there followed a solemn conference. At its close, William, with a "Much obliged, Jimmy," sallied forth to the house he had passed on his way, and knocked sharply at the door. A girl, untidy, unwashed, with a face that might have been pretty if the coating of dirt upon it were removed, appeared at the bay window of the ground floor. William knew the girl and she knew William. Unabashed, he endured her calm scrutiny, banking on his belief that she would never "tumble" ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... me two young students entered the waiting-room. They looked dirty from head to foot, mud-bespattered, untidy, and exhausted with travelling. One of them, a fair boy with a charming profile, seemed absent-minded or depressed. He sat down in a corner, took off his cap, and hid his face in his hands. His companion bought his ticket ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... drew the ramrod from his musket; then, rushing up to Terence, who was the nearest to him, administered to him a shower of blows that changed the color of his shirt from an untidy white to the darker hue ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the room; it no longer seemed the same place to her. Beth's cheerful chatter had already driven away the evil spirit of dejection, and taken the old lady out of herself. Untidy child! She had left her work on the floor, her scissors on the bed, disarranged the window-curtain, and upset a chair. If she would not do any more unpicking when she returned, she must be made to put things ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Edmond Greisse was over at Colmar—Edmond Greisse, the lad whose untidy appearance at the supper-table at the Lion d'Or had called down the rebuke of Marie Bromar. He had been sent over on some business by his employer, and had come to get his supper and bed at Madame Faragon's ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... not in the living-room, which was a large, untidy place that also served as an office. There was a great, flat desk in one corner, and lying on it—among some dusty papers, reports and stock books—was a six-gun, with its belt and holster, a silver watch, a knife, and other odds and ends. These were the property of poor Buck Milton, waiting ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... into the streets of the town. The day was fine, and the sun shone brightly. There was a considerable crowd of people to receive us; ugly women with bright parasols, loafers and ragamuffins, fat burghers too heavy to ride at the front, and a long line of untidy, white-helmeted policemen—'zarps' as they were called—who looked like broken-down constabulary. Someone opened—unlocked, that is, the point—the door of the railway carriage and told us to come out; and out we came—a very ragged and tattered group of officers—and waited under the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... lustre, but it became unnaturally bright, prominent, and too large for her wan face. The soft brown locks which she had once loved to brush back, scorning, as she would boast to herself, to care that they should be seen were now sparse enough and all untidy and unclean. It was matter of little thought now whether they were seen or no. Whether he could be made fit to go into his pulpit—whether they might be fed—those four innocents—and their backs kept from the cold wind—that was now ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... scramble of equipment in the room as though it were an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus could be functional and still be so untidy. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... then and took her place at the table; she looked a little pale and untidy, and her eyes were red as if she had been secretly crying. More than one girl glanced at her and wondered what was the matter. When breakfast was over Kitty went up to Florence, slipped her hand through her arm, and pulled her out into ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... emerged from the hut. She was not altogether untidy, but of course showed that she lived far from civilization. She bowed to the party, then called to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... by a servant in an untidy frock. Mutton! The smell of mutton—there it was, just as the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... share. The cook, though she was overwhelmed with work, had made some cakes for breakfast, such us Elinor liked. "Most like as we'll never have her no more—to mind," she said. The gardener sent up an untidy bundle of white flowers. And Mrs. Dennistoun came herself to pour out the tea. "As if I had been ill, or had turned into a baby again," Elinor said. But there was not much said. Mary Tatham was there for one thing, and for another and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... look at you. I like to hear you sing. But I don't like your ways. Take this little box, and put your rubbish inside where I can't see it. Come out when you want to sing; but let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior. Keep to the box, and don't make the garden untidy.'" ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... ill-adapted for eavesdroppers. The windows looked upon a wide stretch of lawn upon which even a bird could scarcely have lingered unnoticed. The light that filtered in through green sun-blinds was cool and restful. An untidy writing-table and a sofa strewn with cushions in disorderly attitudes testified to the fact that Nick had appropriated this room for his own particular den. There was also a sun-bonnet tossed upon a chair which seemed to indicate that Olga at least did not regard his ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees. Your protegee has already half set the convent, the village, the Episcopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, because nobody could make out whether or not she had been christened. The question was a grave one, for it appears (as your ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... of the goddess is found hanging upside down. One morning when the head of the family comes out of his bed-room and the youngsters go in to make the room tidy, as they call it, (though they generally make the room more untidy and finally leave it to the servants) they find the famous family picture hanging literally topsyturvy (that is with head downwards) and they at once sound the alarm. Then they all know that the head of the family is doomed and ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... misery and his anguish. He had scarcely tasted food since morning, much to the distress of Alphonse. He looked a mere wreck of his former self—haggard and unshaven, with hard lines around his weary eyes. He had not changed his clothes, and they were wrinkled and untidy. Across the polished floor was a perceptible track, worn by hours of restless striding to and fro. Now, after waiting impatiently for Victor Nevill, and wondering why he did not come, Jack had tried to nerve himself to the task that he dreaded, that preyed incessantly ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... translated into a veritable hell, from the utter strangeness of the atmosphere which his thoughts seemed to gasp in. William had never come fully into the atmosphere of his own sin before, but now he had, and somehow the untidy pots and kettles on the hearth made it more real. He was conscious as he sat there of very little pity for the girl in the other room, of very little love for her, and also of very little love or pity for himself; he felt nothing but a kind of horror. He saw suddenly the alien side ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fox-terriers; they did not visibly depart; they were there, one looked away, they were gone. In the bedroom which they shared, the door well locked, they threw oft all restraints, conventions, pretences, and discussed the world, and their own world, with terrible candour. This sacred and untidy apartment, where many of the habits of childhood still lingered, was a retreat, a sanctuary from the law, and the fastness had been ingeniously secured against surprise by the peculiar position of the bedstead in front ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... when shaving," he explained, "and the wound persists in bleeding. It has an untidy appearance, and a drop of blood ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... person, but very different in character, one being manly, and the other, if not exactly effeminate, something like it. As for Fadette, she, though never exactly like the other girl of the saying "horrid," but only (and with very considerable excuses) naughty and untidy and rude, becomes "so very, very good when she is good" as to awake slight recalcitrances in those who have acquired the questionable knowledge of good and evil in actual life. But one does not want to cavil. It is a pretty book, and when the not exactly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... braced against the wall continued his close and anxious inspection. After a time he turned away and, passing behind the boxes, made his way into the wings. Bassett's curiosity was aroused, especially when, shortly after, Gregory reappeared, bringing with him a small man in an untidy suit who was probably, Bassett surmised, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... once superb frock coat clung the scent of forbidden beverages. On one such day he appeared with an untidy sprouting of beard, accompanied ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... to pack the broken carvings, and get the estimates, and pay the printer's bill, and after that there wasn't a halfpenny left. There the things are, as I said before. We have nowhere else to put them—nobody in the new town cares about accommodating us—we're in a lost corner—and this is an untidy vestry—and who's to help it?—that's what I ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... faded rose, that seemed to have blown too soon. Her breasts were sunken, her hair untidy like that of a neglected child, and her ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... expect that the printers would worry over my bad musical writing, that is rendered even more indistinct by my numerous erasures and corrections—and for this reason I recommended Herr Carl Gotze of Weimar by way of help; he is very quick at deciphering my untidy manuscripts. But of the best copyists it may be said "Better none," to use Beethoven's words in pronouncing his ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... very rough and untidy. There is a sort of counter on the right with shelves, holding many bottles and jugs, just seen above it. Empty barrels stand near the counter. At back, a little to left of counter, there is a door into the open air, then, more ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... interior, and came back to usher him into the drawing-room. The flat was expensively furnished, but very untidy. He at once perceived, however, that the "former" Mr. Okasaki was not romancing when he boasted of his artistic tastes. The Japanese articles in the room were gems of faience ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... existence together, and a more prosperous community of colored people it would be hard to find. They own several thousand acres of land, and are in every way ahead of their white neighbors. The school house of the latter was a poor tumble-down affair and the children were untidy, while the school house of the former was a neat, painted and well-kept building, crowded in school hours with bright, enthusiastic children—clean and polite. The teacher was from Talladega College and has taught here for five years. His school is pronounced the best in the region for ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... rises a three-storied building as high as the gate of the bazaar. It has a pretty upper verandah, the roof of which is supported on transverse sets of three wooden columns each, except the outer corner roof-supports, which are square and of bricks. In front is an artistic but most untidy conglomeration of awnings to protect from the sun pedlars, merchants and people enjoying their kalians, or a thimbleful ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Confirmation, there were serious talks about her character. The Vicar, whose classes she attended, was mostly concerned with doctrines, and Mrs. Marston with what one might call a list of ideal vices and temptations which pupils must guard themselves against. Miss Arundel talked to her about her untidy exercise books, her unpunctuality, her loud voice in the corridor, and her round shoulders, and explained very properly that inattention in these comparatively small matters showed a general want of ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... silently, and kept the bathroom door closed as he bathed and shaved. She was asleep again as he stole out, one arm flung loosely on the counterpane, her hair untidy on the pillow. He kissed a lock of it, and let himself quietly ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... about in his unnecessary hurry, barking his shins, bruising his knuckles, and breaking most things that were breakable,—but caring nothing for his sufferings either in body or in purse so that he was not reminded of his awkwardness by his wife. An untidy man he was, who spilt his soup on his waistcoat and slobbered with his tea, whose fingers were apt to be ink-stained, and who had a grievous habit of mislaying papers that were most material to him. He would bellow to the servants to have his things found for him, and would then scold ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of Dexter's favourite hunting-grounds. Here he could be quite alone, and do pretty well as he liked. Peter the groom never noticed his goings-out and comings-in, and there was no one to find fault with him for being untidy. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... said Juliet, as she left the remains of the spoilt articles where they lay, and came up to the room. She was a strange-looking child, with brows knitted above her deep-set eyes, with a dark, pale skin, and dark untidy hair. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... Leonard's—the hamlet where he has placed the residence of his David Deans. His fellow-student, pale and emaciated from recent {p.158} sickness, was seated on a stone bench by the door, looking out for his coming, and introduced him into a not untidy cabin, where the old man, divested of his professional garb, was directing the last vibrations of a leg of mutton that hung by a hempen cord before the fire. The mutton was excellent—so were the potatoes and whiskey; and Scott returned home from an entertaining ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... was above the level of the flooring he could see the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail that held him was the gross, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the middle and a tower at each angle. One of its frontages forms the side of a forecourt flanked by grandiose outbuildings—estate offices, stables, and a great frescoed ballroom. Elsewhere round the house was a very untidy flower garden, which half the old women of the little town spent, so it seemed to me, most of their days in weeding—herein reviving my recollections of Dartington Hall and Denbury. Indeed, throughout my whole ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... therefore, erroneous. That these differences are original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is, therefore, a natural division of labor between them ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... fleeting second the boy's eyes looked away beyond Jean—untidy, attentive, comprehending—beyond the neutral-tinted walls and the shabby carpet of the Hotel Railleux, seeing in vision the things that were to come. Then, with his swift impulsiveness, he flung his dream from him. What mattered the future? What mattered the past? He was ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... London girls of the lower orders,—the kind of prettiness which ultimately loses itself in fat and chronic perspiration. Her complexion already began to show a tendency to muddiness, and when her lips parted, they showed decay of teeth. In dress she was untidy; her hair exhibited a futile attempt at elaborate arrangement; she ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... who was measuring potatoes, showed no great interest on hearing what his callers wanted. Summoning his wife to mind the shop, he led Viner and Felpham round to the yard and opened the door of the shed. This was as untidy as the yard, and filled with a similar collection of boxes, baskets and crates. In one corner lay a bundle of empty potato sacks—the greengrocer ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... stained and torn brim, covered his sun-burnt visage; a leather belt bound his dark sack to his body, and gave support to a pistol and hunting-knife, invariably carried by the brigands of the mountains. His black beard, thick and untidy, concealed a portion of his face; but there could be no doubt that his dark glance was fixed upon the stranger who ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... her white canvas all crimson from a last expiring gleam of the afterglow; for I could see that her sails were tattered and torn, with the ragged ends blowing out loose from the boltropes in the most untidy fashion, unkempt, uncared for! ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... offered him the only chair in the room, and took her place on the edge of the bed, which showed a clean but much-worn patchwork quilt. Charley slept on the bed, and she on a shake-down in the corner. The room was not untidy, though the walls and floor were not clean; indeed there were not in it articles enough to make it ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin; who wears a short beard or rarely shaves—I don't know which. I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... straight, vigorous body sharp against the glow inside. "Here's Mr. Howat Penny," she called over her shoulder. "Is everything off the table? There's not much," she turned to him, "but the end of the pork barrel." A meagre fire was burning in the large, untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty but for some dull ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer |
