"Wriggle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried Bremner with a sudden burst of animation that induced the creature to wriggle and dance on its hind legs for at least a minute, "you and I shall have a jolly night together on the ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... sit right straight down in that chair and read your poem over slowly, while I whip into my own clothes, and then we'll go along together. Fred can't come until a little later anyway. Sit still now, and don't wriggle around and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... burst into tears, and began to wriggle herself free from his arms. "Let me go," she demanded; "let me ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Peter with some nonsensical appeal when her heart was full and her voice a trifle unsteady. You could bury your head in Peter's little white sailor jacket just under his chin, at which he would dimple and gurgle and chuckle and wriggle, and when you withdrew your flushed face and presented it to the public gaze all the tears would have been wiped off ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it were, head and tail, a contest for upper place now began. One-Eye writhed like a hairy animal (this the swish-swishing). Being both slender and agile, he managed to wriggle out from beneath Big Tom, who instantly turned about and caught him, and once more laid upon him the whole of his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... eat his cake sometimes without bread, would bite in laughing, and laugh in biting. Oftentimes did he spit in the basin, and fart for fatness, piss against the sun, and hide himself in the water for fear of rain. He would strike out of the cold iron, be often in the dumps, and frig and wriggle it. He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch. He would pump one to draw somewhat out of him, by griping all would hold fast ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... flatten'd along the beam, scarce daring to breathe. But at length, when the man had pass'd below for the sixth time, I found heart to wriggle myself toward the doorway over which the gallows protruded. By slow degrees, and pausing whenever the fellow drew near, I crept close up to the wall: then, waiting the proper moment, cast my legs over, dangled for a second ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... someone else be blamed for what you have done," he said once to her. "I understand that you are not really a coward, Sarah—you have to fight an extra enemy called Fear. So when you do wrong and see a chance to escape blame and punishment and refuse to wriggle out, you are really braver than the girl who isn't afraid to say she did it. And every time you conquer Fear, Sarah, you've made the next conquest easier. You'll find that ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... sorts o' things as soon as they was paid off, with a view to saving. I knew one man as used to keep all but a shilling or two in a belt next to 'is skin so that he couldn't get at it easy, but it was all no good. He was always running short in the most inconvenient places. I've seen 'im wriggle for five minutes right off, with a tramcar conductor standing over 'im and the other people in the tram reading their papers with one eye and watching him ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in rushing into a clinch, and Tad found himself gripped in those arms of steel. Wriggle and twist as be would he could not free himself from their embrace. His adversary, on the other hand, found himself fully occupied in holding on to his slippery young antagonist, giving him neither time nor opportunity effectually to dispose ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... tube. But he either heard or guessed, he never could be sure which. Anyhow, he felt that we must get forward or perish. In desperation he sunk his teeth into the soft part of the inner side of the sole of my left foot. The pain made me give a convulsive wriggle and I scraped past the obstacle, tearing my hip ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the audience looked, they saw the panel slide back, and first of all Hamar's head, and then his body, wriggle ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... and dress a wriggle, add a pint of nearly milk, Smother with a pillow any sneeze; Baste with talcum powder and mark upon its back— "Don't forget that ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... put in Jake Brewer, grasping a large pickerel and thrusting his blade into its quivering body after removing the scales, "that it hurts her insides to see the critters wriggle under the knife. She air ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... getting back into her own corner with a happy little wriggle, all unconscious of Grandpapa's conspiracy with Mother Fisher in regard ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... I could mention who took part in this contention, And at first 'twas my intention, but at present I forbear; There's young Look-sharp, and Wriggle, who would make an angel giggle, And a young conceited Zeigel, who was seated near the door; If you could only see them, you'd laugh till you were sore, And ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... ma'am, you will never be able to cane if you hold it like that. You should hold it like this, Miss Phoebe, and give it a wriggle like that. ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... dry my things," and he began to wriggle out of his knitted blue guernsey. "Also," he said, following up a previous train of thought, "let me tell you there are devil-fish about here. One came up with one of our ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the solar plexus is a great nerve center which lies behind your stomach. I can't be accused of impropriety or untruth, because any book of science or medicine which deals with the nerve-system of the human body will show it to you quite plainly. So don't wriggle or try to look spiritual. Because, willy-nilly, you've got a solar plexus, dear reader, among other things. I'm writing a good sound science ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... between here and the fort, even though it be in the night, needs to wriggle along like a snake, else will one of Thayendanega's painted beauties lift ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... approvingly. "He speaks truly when he says that the air is thick with danger. When the blackness of night comes, then will come, also, those who make war from behind the trees of the forest. In the darkness, how is the young white and his friends to tell enemies from friends? The jackals will wriggle through and over the wall of trees like snakes through tall grass. After what they have seen, can my white friends expect mercy at ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... money-bag, down on your stomach," said the other, "and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us sooner than ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... tactics of the snake were wearing it down. Though the lizard seemed to have lost none of its spirit, the flesh was becoming weak. While it panted, its eyes twinkled with inane ferocity, and the snake, with that peculiar fearsome, gliding movement—neither wriggle nor squirm—typical of the species, slowly edged its victim under the shadow of a tussock. There both reposed, the snake calm in craft and design, the lizard waiting for the one chance of its life. Swallowing the lizard ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... he contrived to wriggle along until at the beginning of his junior year he was whisked away to the hospital with scarlet fever, after which, amid sage waggings of their heads, a group of doctors congregated about his bed. He was not to be alarmed, they said. His eyes were not permanently injured. Yet there ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... to the question of which of the alien objects presented to his choice it would cost him least to profess to handle. What he had already paid, a spectator would easily have gathered from the long, the suppressed wriggle that had ended in his falling back, was some sacrifice of his habit of not privately depreciating those to whom he was publicly civil. It was plain, however, that when he presently spoke his thought had taken a stretch. "I'm sure I've fully intended to be everything that's ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the buffalo wild to avenge to inflict an insult to wriggle he has failed in his duty he has been kept to his bed for the last two days I was careful ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... temple. But without paying the least homage to the image of the 'Lo' spirit, he simply kept his eyes fixed intently on it; for albeit made of clay, it actually seemed, nevertheless, to flutter as does a terror-stricken swan, and to wriggle as a dragon in motion. It looked like a lotus, peeping its head out of the green stream, or like the sun, pouring its rays upon the russet clouds in the early morn. Pao-yue's tears unwittingly trickled down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... arms while Mrs. Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on. When the curate exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band. But the actual access to the holy basin was more seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... his acquaintance he said: "She is a woman who has never had the first tadpole wriggle of an idea," adding, "She has a mind as clean and white and flat as a plate: there are no eminences in it." Lady Butcher tells of a picnic-party on Box Hill at which Meredith was one of the company. "After our picnic ... it came on to rain, and as we drearily trudged down the hill with ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... with demure "Good morning"; they would go to church and post themselves so that they could survey our pew, and Lord Charles—who possessed the power of moving at will the whole skin of the scalp—would wriggle his hair up and down till we were choking with laughter, to our own imminent risk. After a month of this Auntie was literally driven out of the pretty chateau, and took refuge in a girls' school, much to our disgust; but still she was not allowed to be ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... which can only be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different combinations it changes its shape and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... great wriggle as Andy involuntarily let go his hold of the young rascal. His ferret-like eyes twinkled and followed the glance of ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... best explanation I could think of. But it was not good enough for Diana. She attempted to push me farther back, and I resisted, trying to wriggle myself free and elude her; but she was on the alert, and too quick as well as too strong for ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... honestly and honorably intended to follow the same path; to keep smiles for those above him and harsh judgments for those below him; in short, like Alfred, to wriggle his way upward. But in the depths of his being his energies were working in another direction, and they continually thrust him back where he belonged. His conflict with the street-urchins stopped of itself, it was so aimless; ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to sacrifice?" Florence felt very uneasy. She tried to wriggle away from her companion, who held her arm ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... "French infantrymen's trousers. One cannot make out their coats, but their red trousers show as they wriggle forward on ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... tougher than rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large smile ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Bumper began to gnaw at the lining of the muff, and pretty soon got his whole body under it, and then he began to kick and wriggle to get out. He felt he was being smothered alive, and he squealed aloud. The lady finally rescued him, but not until she had torn away half the lining ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... This is only to be learned in courts, where clashing views, jarring opinions, and cordial hatreds, are softened and kept within decent bounds by politeness and manners. Frequent, observe, and learn courts. Are you free of that of St. Cloud? Are you often at Versailles? Insinuate and wriggle yourself into favor at those places. L'Abbe de la Ville, my old friend, will help you at the latter; your three ladies may establish you in the former. The good-breeding 'de la ville et de la cour' [of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... great disappointment to me," he said, trying to look disappointed, but his back would wriggle. "This chain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... however, for one instant. Up he went again. But, in fact, his best chance was in going up, for he was within four yards of the top when the mishap occurred. With a sigh of relief I saw him at last throw his arm over the verge and then wriggle his body upon the ledge. A few seconds later he was lying on his stomach, with his face over the edge, ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... that it was astounding. Lottie actually dropped her legs, gave a wriggle, and lay and stared. A new idea will stop a crying child when nothing else will. Also it was true that while Lottie disliked Miss Minchin, who was cross, and Miss Amelia, who was foolishly indulgent, she rather liked Sara, little as she knew her. She did not want to give up her grievance, but her ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... p.m. on the 2nd December the hole in the engine room bulkhead was cut completely. I climbed through it, followed by Bowers, the carpenter, and Teddy Nelson, and when we got into the hold there was just enough room to wriggle along to the pump-well over the coal. We tore down a couple of planks to get access to the shaft and then I went down to the bottom to find out how matters stood. Bowers came next with an electric torch, which ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Julia, when she had found her breath, and taken one quick look round as if to satisfy herself she was unobserved, suddenly cast herself down, in her turn, upon the damp earth, and inserting her head beneath the prickly barricade of the holly leaves, begin to crawl and wriggle forward until she had completely disappeared under it. What in the world could ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... deplorable habit of swearing aloud in German. But I will say, for a tinker, you put a very neat West Country whipping on that bit of broken harness. I've been admiring it. Didn't know they taught you that in the German navy—don't wriggle." ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... last swift wriggle the creeping figure was at the foot of the net which shrouded Jack. The latter looked down and saw that the man was literally covered from head to foot with masses of the swarming insects. Then, with wonderful dexterity, the newcomer jerked aside ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, 'the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles xxiv. We do not know who made the mistake, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... up at the face above her with such a winning smile that Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her with a quick hug and kiss. Lloyd gave a little wriggle of satisfaction. "I'm so glad you've come!" she cried, so completely won by Betty's artlessness that she forgot ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... would have a try, so he went to the edge of the water and spreading out his cloth on the weeds lay down on it so that his weight was distributed; in this position the weeds supported him and he managed to wriggle himself across on his ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... willin' to do that all right! If you're goin' to turn up your nose an' wriggle around that way, you won't have to take much trouble to get rid o' him. He don't need ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... stopped, when Bill found a black hole, something like a fox's earth, disappearing into the bowels of the ice. We looked at it: "Well, here goes!" he said, and put his head in, and disappeared. Bowers likewise. It was a longish way, but quite possible to wriggle along, and presently I found myself looking out of the other side with a deep gully below me, the rock face on one hand and the ice on the other. "Put your back against the ice and your feet against the rock and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... wriggle down under the blanket, and Lee leaned forward; "Are those your feet?" he demanded; "do you go that far ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Katharine drew her white skirts around his shoulders, and cossetted him as if he had been a baby. He tried to wriggle away from her on to the ground beyond, but this she sturdily prevented, and the late-rising moon cast its light just then upon a face, oddly set and determined for that ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Pierrot had not come, and she darted swiftly into the balsams back of the cabin, with Baree hung in the crook of her arm, like a sack filled at both ends and tied in the middle. He felt like that, too. But he still had no inclination to wriggle himself free. Nepeese ran with him until her arm ached. Then she stopped and put him down on his feet, holding to the end of the caribou-skin thong that was tied about his neck. She was prepared for any lunge he might make to escape. She expected that he would make an attempt, and ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... the highest, the darkest, and the dirtiest streets of Paris, was, and is, and probably will long be, the Rue St Denis. Beginning at the bank of the Seine, and running due north, it spins out its length like a tape-worm, with every now and then a gentle wriggle, right across the capital, till it reaches the furthest barrier, and thence has a kind of suburban tail prolonged into the wide, straight road, a league in length, that stretches to the town of Sainct-Denys-en-France. This was, from time immemorial, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Secret Service net is around the place, and no suspected person can get away?" muttered the submarine boy. "Well, that's it should be. I wonder if there are any more of this strange crew—men or women spies that don't happen to have suspected so far? If there are, I don't believe they'll wriggle through the meshes of old Uncle ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... himself staring down at a red smashed thing on the ground that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank torn to rags. He tried to grasp ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Alister out of his difficulties at once, by showing him how to put his two hands in the middle of his hammock and wriggle himself into it and roll his blankets round him in seaman-like fashion. But my neighbours only watched with delight when I first sent my hammock flying by trying to get in at the side as if it were a bed, and then ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... effort, for the wriggle he had given to his spine brought on a kind of vertigo, and he relapsed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the law now? Blenham would wriggle out, I suppose; or he would get a light sentence and trim that down to nothing with good behavior. No, Blenham, if you ever go to jail it will be somebody's else doing; not mine. Is it just jail for the man who shot down my old pardner in cold blood, just ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... suddenly let go, and the boat shot away, while Anders, throwing a handful of water after it, said, "Go off, bad boy, and don't come back; we can do without you." A roar of laughter burst forth. Some of the small boys and girls leaped into the air with delight, causing the tails of the latter to wriggle behind them. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... came from, or whether she had any brothers and sisters. They lived in Red Kill mostly, in the eastern part of the town of Roxbury, and also over on the edge of Greene County. I remember, when Grandfather used to tell stories of cruelty in the army, and of the hardships of the soldiers, she would wriggle and get very angry. All her children were large. They were as follows: Sukie, Ezekiel, Charles, Martin, Edmund, William, Thomas, Hannah, Abby, and Amy (my mother). Aunt Sukie was a short, chubby woman, always ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Clinton, with a short laugh. "Women, you'll find when you've been here long enough, have less to do with it than rain-water full of wriggle-tails, as they call those young animals that fill our cisterns in summer time, and the no less disagreeable—to one not a native here—muddy water from the river as a beverage. One is absolutely forced to 'tip the goblet red,' in order to have something ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the—But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... wriggle. "Cuckoo, you're laughing at me," she said. "I mean, have you come back to stay and cuckoo as usual and make my ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... I'm only looking about, To see you wriggle in and out, And drawing together your slimy rings, Instead of feet, like other things: So, little worm, don't slide and slip Into your hole, with such ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... explore some caves—dry at low water—on the opposite side. Some of these are wide, lofty, and well-lighted from without. We walk in and out and around them, as if in great, irregular, Gothic halls. Some are narrow and dark. Now, we crawl into them on hands and knees; now, we wriggle onward a few feet, serpent-like, flat on our bellies; now, we are suddenly able to stand upright in pitch darkness, hearing faint moaning sounds of pent-up winds, when we are silent, and long reverberations of our own voices, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... However we may wriggle in our skins and juggle with the chances of the future, I suspect that we shall have to pay the piper. We have without doubt, during the war, been living to a great extent on our capital. Our national income has gone up, out of capital, from twenty-two hundred to ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... simple-minded burglar or embezzler may blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a one has thrown up his hands—and with them silver service, bank notes and all—in horror at what the grand jury ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Visions of men being lathered and shaved, of women having their hair dressed or their hair searched, Sicilian fashion, of youths trying to curl upward scarcely born mustaches, of children being hastily attired in clothes which made them wriggle and squint, came to the eyes from houses in which privacy was not so much scorned as unthought of, utterly unknown. Turkeys strolled in and out among the toilet-makers. Pigs accompanied their mistresses from doorway ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's door. She opened it, and he stepped back with an apology when he saw that some ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... loss of the egg, burst into tears, when suddenly the pike came swimming ashore, holding the egg between its teeth. He took the egg, broke it, drew out the needle and broke off its little point. Then he attacked Koshchei, who struggled hard, but wriggle about as he might he had to die ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... sound that was like a great, gasping intake of breath, as men and women watched. Out toward the Patriarch, alone now, the Flopper began to wriggle and writhe his way along. God in Heaven have pity! What was this sight they looked upon—this poor, distorted, mangled thing that grovelled in the earth—that figure towering there in the sunlight with venerable white beard and hair, erect, symbolic of some strange, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... coals were spread over it. I kissed the dear red buttocks that were all covered with weals and looked like raw beef, but no blood had been drawn. We fanned her with our handkerchiefs, which she said was a delightful relief. In a very few minutes she began to wriggle her bottom in a state ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... gave a little wriggle of joy. "Like it? I just love it—it's like butterflies keeping house. Don't you wish everything was like that—pretty and gay, with all the lovers ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... smallest girl. She has to sit front 'cause she giggles so much. She has yellow curls and she ducks her head down and snickers right out this way when anything funny happens in school." And Bud proceeded to duck and wriggle in perfect imitation of the ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... thought, he put on a burst of speed, ran straight up to the leafy barrier, and dove right at it, head first as he used to "hit the center" for dear old Brighton. His maneuver did not carry him quite through, but he managed to wriggle on just in time to clear the way for Bob, ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... absolutely helpless; for now both their hands and their feet were lashed together so tightly and securely that it was quite impossible for them to move otherwise than to give an occasional feeble, impotent wriggle. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... worse,' he says. 'Th' throuble about divoorce is it always lets out iv th' bad bargain th' wan that made it bad. If I owned a half in a payin' business with ye, I'd niver let th' sun go down on a quarrel,' he says. 'But if ye had a bad mouth I'd go into coort an' wriggle out iv th' partnership because ye'ar a cantankerous old villain that no wan cud get on with,' he says. 'If people knew they cudden't get away fr'm each other they'd settle down to life, just as I detarmined to ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... If there is not, and especially if anything is there which he wishes to shun, a four hundred and fifty pounder cannot crash a hole large enough for you to push him through. By such a pitiful chink as that did his Infallible Highness wriggle himself out of the range of my guns, and pursue his line ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking off on ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... in sudden wrath. "Does he wriggle? Yes. Why? Because he suffers out of water. I've caught him to eat, and I owe it to him not to make him suffer any more than is necessary. What did that boy say ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... and making a tremendous commotion. I was much struck also by the singular appearance presented by certain diving birds having very long and snaky necks (the Plotus Anhinga). Occasionally a long serpentine form would suddenly wriggle itself to a height of a foot and a half above the glassy surface of the water, producing such a deceptive imitation of a snake that at first I had some difficulty in believing it to be the neck of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... refuge. Buffeted by the billows, he makes shift at last frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed youngster in British watering-places. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... moment," said my father. "Your chain is locked, I see:—but no matter,—I can loosen it so that you can wriggle through." By having cut the cords, around which the chain had been passed, he had relieved the tautness, and was now able to do what he promised. He then took off my boots, and, grasping me under the arms, drew me backward out of the loosened coils as I moved them downward with ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... then—why didn't you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you like, of course. Do you lease it from HIM?—this fellow, I mean," she added, nodding towards Lebedeff. "And why does he always wriggle so?" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... about the preparation of their evening meal with a plaintive quietness. Juno, too, seemed oppressed, for after a tentative wriggle of her stump of a tail she settled back on her haunches, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... said, though in tones little like any he was used to hearing from his own lips. But he would not dare look himself in the face again if he did not make at least a wriggle ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... was so small that Ben could barely get his head and shoulders through it. There was no possibility of his getting on his feet or his knees to make a leap. The only course that remained for him, therefore, was to expand the umbrella, hold on tight, and then wriggle out until he should lose his balance and fall head foremost! It was an awful position. Bold though the seaman was, and desperate the circumstances, his strong frame quivered when he gazed down and felt himself gradually toppling. The height he knew to be little short of sixty feet, but in ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... his short legs wide spread; he passed down a perch, alternately crouching and rising, either sideways or straight; he jerked his whole body one side and then the other, in a manner ludicrously suggestive of a wriggle; he sidled along his perch, holding his wings slightly out and quivering, then slowly raised them both straight up, and instantly dropped them, or held them half open, fluttering ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... sight. The leopard and Scroope were fighting each other. The leopard, standing on one hind leg, for the other was broken, seemed to be boxing Scroope, whilst Scroope was driving his big hunting knife into the brute's carcase. They went down, Scroope undermost, the leopard tearing at him. I gave a wriggle and came out of that mossy bed—I recall the sucking sound my body made as it ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... intolerable. Then the elephant had not been loaded "with brains," and his pack was as troublesome as the straw shoes of the Japanese horses. It was always slipping forward or backward, and as I was heavier than the Malay lad, I was always slipping down and trying to wriggle myself up on the great ridge which was the creature's backbone, and always failing, and the mahout was always stopping and pulling the rattan ropes which bound the whole arrangement together, but never succeeding ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... up the lower sash a little way; and through the opening thus made Reggie contrived to wriggle his slight, thin body. ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... which was not so tragical. A Hottentot was carried off by a lion during the night, wrapped up in his sheep-skin kaross, sleeping, as they usually do, with his face to the ground. As the lion trotted away with him, the fellow contrived to wriggle out of his kaross, and the lion went off ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... much more than a fat baby, Kintar[o] wielded a big axe, and could chop a snake to pieces before he had time to wriggle. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... mark on them, and at last, despairing of being able to wriggle away in good order, they rose to their feet and made a dash into ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... you know that? Well, then I HAVE got some news!" Miss Flora gave the satisfied little wriggle with which a born news-lover always prefaces her choicest bit of information. "Frank has sold his grocery stores—both ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... legs." Friend Elephant did as he was ordered. Friend Mouse-deer then instructed the Elephant as follows: "As soon as I begin to lick up the molasses on your back, bellow as loud as you can and make believe to be hurt, and writhe and wriggle this way and that." ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... conceited wriggle, what could be the merits of a country, where gentlemanly, gliding, thin-skinned creatures like himself were unable to move about without personal annoyance? Whereupon the amiable 'SOMETHING' made no scruple ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... stones. A good voyage had they made of it, he and his two brown, ragged boys. Large fish and small, pink fish, blue, yellow, orange, striped fish and mottled, wriggled together, and flapped their tails in the well of the little boat. There were even too many to lie there and wriggle. The bottom of the boat was well covered with them, and, if she had not shipped waves enough to keep them cool, the boy Battista had bailed a plenty on them. Father and son hurried on shore, and Battista on board began to fling the scaly fellows out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Here's Mr. Hayley, Doctor Paley, Arthur Murphy, Tommy Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, Ears regaling, bidders nailing, Ladies utter in a flutter— "Mister Smatter, how you chatter, Dear, how clever! well, I never Heard so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... bauble, fuel would be dear. A plague rot it, we must know how many farts go to an ounce. Would Priapus were here, as he used to be at the nocturnal festivals in Crete, that I might see him play backwards, and wriggle and shake to the purpose. Ay, ay, this is the world, and t'other is the country; may I never piss if this be not an antichthonian land, and our very antipodes. In Germany they pull down monasteries and unfrockify the monks; here they go quite kam, and act clean contrary ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered them by the barrels full and ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Burns gave a heave and a wriggle, and came up for air and a look around. He had been composing a monologue upon the subject of sand, and he had not noticed that strange voices were speaking on the other side of ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... revelled in darkness. And the myth has a great truth in it. The light of God's face slays evil, of whatsoever kind it is; and just as the unlovely, loathsome creatures that live in the dark and find themselves at ease there writhe and wriggle in torment, and die when their shelter is taken away and they are exposed to the light beating on their soft bodies, so the light of God's face turned upon evil things smites them into nothingness. Thus 'the secret of His countenance' is the shelter ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 'Dearest, you can wriggle on your tummy, if you like, so long as you get the fluid. We must have water. I can't fetch it. I'm ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... through the fingerling; it gave a final gasp and was still. Knitting his brows in almost comical vexation, he hastened to restore it to the stream, holding it by the tail and striving to impart a life-like wriggle to its limpness. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... the first stile, and, cutting off the corner, had been coolly awaiting my arrival. On the whole, I think that being in his grasp was almost preferable to the feeling that he was dogging my steps. His left hand gripped the collar of my jacket and flannel shirt, and instantly I began to wriggle, twisting my leg about his own in an attempt to bring him to the ground; but the man was of enormous strength, and, freeing himself, he shook me as a terrier shakes a rat, until I felt there was little breath left in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue went ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping—actually jumping, I!—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds—many thanks to them!—which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... who plainly saw that Ola was trying to wriggle out of his difficulty, but were anxious not to lose an exciting scene, screamed with laughter again; but this time at the bully's expense. The blood mounted to his head, and his anger got the better of his natural cowardice. Instead of sneaking off, as he had intended, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... do with it. Roger was right. The Slop is there and you've got to make allowances for it, and after all, why shouldn't Rachel show her baby to the girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and squeak and kick ... and Lord only knows what'll come out of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, large, healthy female of the working-class and set her ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... little about the paternity and maternity of eels, we know a great deal about their childhood and youth, or, to speak more eelishly, their grigginess and elverhood. The young grigs, when they do make their appearance, leave us in no doubt at all about their presence or their reality. They wriggle up weirs, walls, and floodgates; they force there way bodily through chinks and apertures; they find out every drain, pipe, or conduit in a given plane rectilinear figure; and when all other spots have been fully occupied, they take to dry land, like veritable snakes, and cut straight ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... particular observation to the corner which was nearest me. There I beheld the devils with pitchforks, tossing the damned up into the air that they might fall headlong on poisoned hatchets or barbed pikes, there to wriggle their bowels out. After a time the wretches would crawl in multitudes, one upon another, to the top of one of the burning crags, there to be broiled like mutton; from there they would be snatched afar, to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they would be ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was his horror when he perceived that here also the windows were covered with a fence of dry reeds and faggots, through which the hissing flames were already beginning to wriggle like fiery serpents—clouds of smoke were already coming through ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... work them down deep in the sand when the tide has just gone. With quick but steady movements, you make a series of deep "criss-crosses;" and when the fish is disturbed by the hooks you whip him smartly out, and put him in the basket before his magical wriggle has taken him deep into the sand again. The women stooping over the shining floor look like ghostly harvesters reaping invisible crops. They are very silent, and their steps are feline. Peggy worked out her day, and then she would go home and cut up the eels for the next day's ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... his conscience; he would be faithful to the traditions of his house and the memory of his father,—and so on, until the patience of Wellington and Peel was exhausted, and they told him he must sign the bill at once, or they would immediately resign. "The king could no longer wriggle off the hook," and surrendered. O'Connell was instantly re-elected, and took his seat in Parliament,—a position which he occupied for the rest of his life. George IV. was the last of the monarchs of England who attempted to rule by personal government. Henceforward the monarch's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Moreover, he frankly did not care for the story, and bluffly says, in the preface, that he respited Colonel Altamont almost at the foot of the gallows. Dickens took himself more in earnest, and, having so many pages to fill, conscientiously made Uriah Heap wind and wriggle through ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... do, by spells, and the Deep Woods people leaned back and looked out over the Wide Blue Water, and away out there saw Mr. Eagle swoop down and pick up something which looked at first like a shoe-string; then they saw it wriggle, and knew it was a small water-snake, which was going to be Mr. Eagle's dinner; and they talked about it and wondered how he ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... she cried. 'I won't let you speak. You've said it, a satellite, you're not going to wriggle out ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard work to wriggle through. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... that I ever got my clutches on that has got away after it, and the first one that I ever felt like lettin' go. Somehow or other my old gun didn't burn and wriggle when I sot my eyes on him, as it is used to doin' in such cases; and if it wasn't fur that red hide of hisn' I wouldn't believe he was one ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... wriggle past that contraction in the middle, I should be safe. And if I stuck fast midway! But the more I measured the width with my eye, the less the narrowing seemed to be. To be so slightly perceptible, it could hardly be enough to make much difference. Caution whispered that it might be enough ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... your neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... its beak through three inches of stout planking could withdraw without the loss of its sword. Mr. Buckland said that fish have no power of "backing," and expressed his belief that he could hold a swordfish by the beak; but then he admitted that the fish had considerable lateral power, and might so "wriggle its sword out of the hold." And so the insurance company will have to pay nearly L600 because an ill-tempered fish objected to be hooked and took its revenge by running full tilt against copper ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... done now? If the robber had had a knife in his pocket, Gum would have been a dead monkey in two seconds. But while he was unsuccessfully feeling for his knife, Gum suddenly came to, and with one violent wriggle shook itself free, and sprang on the highest shelf. The robber gave chase; then followed the most comical hunt you ever saw. The robber's face being now exposed (he had no idea that Donald had already ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... Thus, Tim, philosophers suppose, The world consists of puppet-shows; Where petulant conceited fellows Perform the part of Punchinelloes: So at this booth which we call Dublin, Tim, thou'rt the Punch to stir up trouble in: You wriggle, fidge, and make a rout, Put all your brother puppets out, Run on in a perpetual round, To tease, perplex, disturb, confound: Intrude with monkey grin and clatter To interrupt all serious matter; Are grown the nuisance of your clan, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle," thought the collegiate assessor. "This is indeed a pleasant surprise! Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... caught a glimpse of it. No wonder Elias's eyes snapped as he was hurried across the yard, and led back of the barn, where there was a space between the underpinning and the ground. By lying flat one could wriggle his way under the barn, and when once beneath, there was room ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... doll house for little Patience, for Christmas." Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... sea of fancy, Genius rises, And like the rare Leviathan surprises; But the small fry of scribblers!—tiny souls! They wriggle thro' the ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... to give up the little package, and Holmes, losing his patience, walked over to him and grabbed his left arm, while Tooter doggedly tried to wriggle out of his grasp. In a moment, Holmes, by a quick turn of his wrist, had forced the little package out of Tooter's hand, and it fell on the floor. Holmes immediately pounced on it, picked it up, and started to open it, but suddenly his ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... violently against me and, strangely enough, at the same moment passed his foot in front of mine. Of course I went sprawling into the road right in front of the lorry. The horses came stamping and sliding straight on to me, and, before I could wriggle out of the way, the hoof of one of them smashed in my hat—that was a new one that I came home in—and half-stunned me. Then the near wheel struck my head, making a dirty little scalp wound, and pinned down my sleeve so that I couldn't pull away my arm, which ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... snakes would have filled a book, but when I saw this one I knew it was a bargain. It was the blamedest biggest snake that ever gave a wriggle, and the only reason its owners had not made a fortune was because it was never properly advertised. I used to know just how much he weighed and how long he was, but my brain got so tired figuring up the money we made out of him that I've had ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... sun should set,' he answered, and began to wriggle along so fast that the girl could ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... though trifling enough, too. The staff seemed to get up from the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes continued to wriggle. But, in my private opinion, old Philemon's eyesight had been playing him ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... fine silk edged with gold lace, after which she took off her trousers and seized my hand and led me up to the couch, saying, "There is no sin in a lawful put in." She lay down on the couch outspread upon her back; and, drawing me on to her breast, heaved a sigh and followed it up with a wriggle by way of being coy. Then she pulled up the shift above her breasts, and when I saw her in this pose, I could not withhold myself from thrusting it into her, after I had sucked her lips, whilst she whimpered and shammed shame and wept when no tears came, and then said she, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... away with caressing fingers. "I know. That's why I'd like to shoot him. But he's sure to be caught now, isn't he? They've got him in a trap. He'll never wriggle through with Fletcher Hill to outwit him. You said yourself that with him on the job the odds were ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... entered, and the door was then closed and locked. Sister Sarah must have been in a hurry that morning. Just as well as not I might have made my remark directly to my nun, but I did not. She walked quickly to the table, arranged her paper, opened her inkstand, and sat down. I fancied that I saw a wavy wriggle of impatience in her shawl. Perhaps she wanted to know the rest of that odd incident near Eza. It may have been that it was impatient interest which had impaired her rigidity the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... gave a tremendous wriggle with the whole body, which proved as ineffectual as it ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... fathoms of the line round his body. From the line having been kept tight, it was not so cleverly twisted as is often the case, and a blow on the tail quieted him before he had managed further to wriggle it round himself after he was out of the water. When the line was unwound, and the shark stretched out, he was a handsome-looking fish of a blue lead colour, about four feet long. Harry and David did not ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... together. Imagine Attica without you! Imagine going to bed alone, with no one to talk to about the events of the day! What does the horrid old money matter? We always have been poor, and we always shall be. As long as I can remember mother has been in despair about the bills; but we wriggle through somehow, and we shall go on wriggling. It's horrid of you to talk of going ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... felt himself fingering in his pocket for a dime, and heard himself say, "That's all right, I don't want the stuff. Take it in to that little chap in a striped suit, in the next car,—dirty little beggar, wriggled like an eel all day. This will probably make him wriggle all night. Never ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... incessantly and very objectionably," Molly says, thoughtfully. "I hate a man who sneezes publicly; and his sneeze is so unpleasant,—so exactly like that of a cat. A little wriggle of the entire body, and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton |
