"Chattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sudden alarm, bound away; and then come back again, step by step—fascinated by this mysterious thing there in the darkness. For three mortal hours that creature pranced and cavorted about Thyrsis, while he waited with chattering teeth; then in the end it took a sudden fright, and went bounding away ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a group with a street-organ, generally played by Le Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton nightcap on his head. Two men carried lanterns. We followed in procession, laughing and chattering like a pack ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... though they were in a cherry orchard on the loveliest morning of the year. The happy would still be happy though St Swithin's Day were streaming in floods down the window-panes. Who does not know what it is to be happy watching the rain-drops racing down the glass and hearing the gutter chattering like a hedgeful of sparrows or tinkling like a bell? Who is there, on the other hand, who has not found, and been perplexed to find, the world going on its way in full song and bloom on a day that has seemed to him to darken all human ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... that day, you know, just what I had set my heart on," pursued Elsie, shaking her curls about, and chattering in her careless, graceful way. "I said I loved you like a sister, and I should die if I was separated from you. That ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... n'ont aucun genie (Lettre a d'Alembert, note xx.). Every one who can see through a sham must have found this to be the case. One need only watch the way they behave at a concert, the opera, or the play; the childish simplicity, for instance, with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be more appropriate to substitute taceat mulier in theatro for taceat mulier ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... coming out to give a welcome to the chattering group, appeared rather puzzled as she counted heads in the twilight. Mr. Hobart enjoyed the surprise which he ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... I believe so, but it was the Lord's-Prayer backwards then. Pray, what was that you were chattering about Imperiousness? ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... or Fog under Hedges, among Mole-Hills; or under the Roots of Trees, &c. Various and uncertain are their Haunts. And tho some by the Eye, by distinguishing their Colour from the ground, others by the Ear, by hearing the Cock call earnestly the Hen, and the Hens answering, and chattering with Joy at meeting, do find Partridge; yet the best, easiest and safest way of finding them is (as you do the Pheasant) by the Call or Pipe; applying your Notes seasonable, as before prescribed, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... measured language and an imposing seriousness of aspect." The bishop represents him as vain and irritable, but distinguished by good feeling and principle. Another officer was Ponson, described as five feet six inches high, lively and animated in excess, volatile, noisy, and chattering l'outrance. "He was hardy," says the bishop, "and patient to admiration of labor and want of rest." And of this last quality the following wonderful illustration is given: "A continued watching of five days and nights together, when the rebels were growing desperate for prey and mischief, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... force of Bright Sun with joy, and the stern silence was relaxed. There was much chattering and laughing, much asking and answering of questions, and soon Indian women and Indian boys, with little bows and arrows, came over the bluffs, and joining the great mounted ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... least, not for me. The boys can bring them sometimes. I think they like boys best. But I have a dear little field-mouse who brings me her babies to look at now and then, just to show me how they are growing. There, now, we go on chattering, when I know you ought to rest awhile, and unpack and stow away. It takes quite a bit of planning for two persons to fit into a tent. By and by, when you are all settled, would you like to go out on the water? Hurrah! we'll come for you. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... woodpecker with a yellow crest ran nimbly up and down the tree-trunks for some time and then flitted away with a party of chickadees and nut-hatches. Occasionally a Clarke's crow soared about overhead or clung in any position to the swaying end of a pine branch, chattering and screaming. Flocks of cross-bills, with wavy flight and plaintive calls, flew to a small mineral lick near by, where they scraped the clay ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... strong and sturdy, and she was able to accompany him in all his rambles, while, when he was at work at home preparing fishing lines, making boats, or otherwise amusing himself, she was content to sit hours quietly beside him, chattering incessantly, and quite content with an occasional brief answer to the questions. When he was studying, she too would work at her lessons; and however much she might be puzzled over these, she would never disturb him by asking him questions when ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... that it was Marie Ivanovna. Of course she was hot and tired and had slept, last night, but little. The car, watched by an inquisitive but strangely apathetic crowd of peasants, snorted its way down the little streets, the green trees blowing and the starlings chattering. In a moment the starlings and our two selves seemed to have the whole dead little town ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... fond of is—if only the tumbling of the ship will let you have it; so take this powder into that mouth of yours which you opened so wide when you were conversing with us as we went sailing past you, and then stop your present chattering and take all the sleep that you ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... patting the cow, and chattering to it, as if no such thing as a gray rubber elephant had ever existed. ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... of almond-trees Came three girls chattering of their sweethearts three. And lo! Mercutio, with Byronic ease, Out of his philosophic eye cast all A mere flowered twig of thought, whereat— Three hearts fell still as when an air dies out And Venus ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... sat down, and for some time they were too tired even to notice anything; but by-and-by they saw that under the tiles of the roof a number of swallows were sitting, chattering merrily to each other. Of course the swallows had no idea that the children understood their language, or they would not have talked so freely; but, as it was, they said ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... very self-conscious as they stood there on the dusty footpath amid the promenaders gay and gloomy, chattering and silent, who were taking the sun and the salt breeze. Despite her reason, she had a fear that numbers of people would perceive her to be newly affianced and remark upon the contrast between her girlishness and his maturity. But George Cannon was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... woodpeckers chattering overhead and the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below. What they said matters little. What they thought—which might have been interesting—did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house to come to California for ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... minutes, when the Indians gave the youth to understand that the journey westward was to be resumed. He was motioned to go forward, and was glad enough to obey, for his saturated clothes and his highly nervous condition set his teeth chattering and his body shaking as ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... sill of the window, poured out a stream of blasphemy from between his chattering teeth. Then the hubbub rose suddenly near at hand. The neighbourhood of the Louvre was populous with Huguenots, and into it now poured the excited Catholic citizens and soldiers. Soon the quay beneath the palace windows presented the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... come trooping in, packing the great throne room until it could hold no more. Everyone was chattering excitedly. ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... up the next morning, the farm looked as it always did, and the maids were chattering and making as much noise as usual in the wash-house. A little while after, the mistress's voice was heard up there, giving directions about the work. "I don't understand it," said Lasse, shaking his head. "Nothing but death can stop anything so suddenly. She must have a tremendous ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... been equal to the test. There were no social distinctions in her individual world. But one short year ago she had followed a hand-organ man and a monkey to a point safely distant from too-observant relatives and servants; there, beside the chattering monkey, she had sung and danced and scrambled for pennies and shaken a tambourine, and generally conducted herself ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... the campus, they passed countless girls hurrying from building to building. Every doorway seemed to blossom with a chattering group, a loitering pair, or an energetic single lady on pressing business bent. Bea met every glance with a look of bright friendliness in her eager eyes and lips ready to smile, no matter whether she had ever been introduced or not. But Lila's wild-flower face, in spite of its lovely tints and ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... you wearied of our tears. And then you danced with spangled feet, Leading Belshazzar's chattering court A-tinkling through the shadowy street. With mead they came, with chants of shame. DESIRE'S red flag before them flew. And Istar's music moved your mouth And Baal's deep shames ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... sailing-master's orders the body of the dead man was carried out on deck, sewed into a piece of sailcloth and heaved over the rail without more ado. Jeremy made his way to his bunk and told Bob the story between chattering teeth. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... tidy things up," said Aunt Jamesina plaintively, looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four laughing, chattering girls were surrounded. "You can talk just as well later on. Work first and then play used to be my motto ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Anaitis, he has decided, in spite of all that I could do, to derive Jurgen from jargon, indicating a confused chattering such as birds give forth at sunrise: thus ruthlessly does the Master Philologist convert me into a solar legend. So the affair is settled, and we must part, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... the significant aspects of the new France since the war was its taciturnity, its silence. Almost all faces were gravely preoccupied with the national task, and whatever their own small part in it might be, it was too serious a matter to encourage chattering, gesticulating, or disputing in ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... up to the mound, whereupon the animals became alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony-black necks and flat grey-capped heads, snarling chattering at me, glaring with ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... which will one day cease, Not in many a hungry wish told to the skies only, Not in cries, laughter, defiancies, thrown from me when alone far in the wilds, Not in husky pantings through clinch'd teeth, Not in sounded and resounded words, chattering words, echoes, dead words, Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep, Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day, Nor in the limbs and senses of my body that take you and dismiss you continually—not there, Not ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... bed; my teeth chattering with cold, and my heart throbbing to suffocation. An instant after I heard his step, and he walked up to the bed. His face was as pale as death, and he wore his travelling fur coat. I uttered a faint scream, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... snarling, and strained at their chains after these men, as the white-haired man landed with them. The three big fellows spoke to one another in odd guttural tones, and the man who had waited for us on the beach began chattering to them excitedly—a foreign language, as I fancied—as they laid hands on some bales piled near the stern. Somewhere I had heard such a voice before, and I could not think where. The white-haired man stood, holding in a tumult of six dogs, and bawling orders ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... very lovely from this point when the fog has blown off,' said Lord Mountclere faintly, for climbing and chattering at the same time had fairly taken away his breath. He leant against the masonry to rest himself. 'The air is clearing already; I fancy I saw a ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... said Blanche, through her chattering teeth. John tried to muffle her in the robe of goat-skin; but it was wet and worse than no covering. His soaked garments were placed about her; but she still shook with cold, until he became alarmed and held her in his arms, endeavoring ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... window, looked down at them, and saw Harry standing at Miss Hoyden's head, with docile Brownie's bridle on his left arm, and Bessie, with the fine end of her slender whip, teasing the dark fuzz of his hair. They made a pretty picture at the gate, laughing and chattering ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... outside the door and I went into the drawing-room, where I crouched before a blazing fire with chattering teeth and benumbed feet and hands. I was alone. Doria had taken a faint turn for the better that morning and Barbara had run down to Northlands for the day. It was just as well she had gone, I thought. I should have a few hours ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the three men who had conducted the search had finished, when the boxes of ammunition had been gathered in the hall, and the chattering sewing-girls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way to her dismantled room, passed through ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... down, struck a tall crag, bounded off, and fell upon a comparatively level plateau. The cylinder was then turned farther over, causing the lid to close, and the plunger was pulled in again. I remember how crisply cold was that one cubic foot of air that came back with the cylinder. My teeth had been chattering ever since I wakened, and I had been too excited to put ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... were standing inside the gate, with dripping garments and chattering teeth and white faces—D'Arcy, Lickford, Ramshaw, Cottle, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... was agitated, his countenance changed; he retained her hand amid the chattering tourists, too full of their criticisms and their egotistical commonplaces to notice what was passing. A sentimental ebullition seemed to be on the point of taking place. Their eyes met. The look of Edith was ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of this wood, a world of parrots were flying from branch to branch, only needing a careful education to speak the human language. For the moment, they were chattering with parrots of all colours, and grave cockatoos, who seemed to meditate upon some philosophical problem, whilst brilliant red lories passed like a piece of bunting carried away by the breeze, papuans, with the finest azure colours, and in all a variety of winged things ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... on the back porch on Thursday afternoon, chattering like magpies, when suddenly Neale O'Neil spied a splotch of brilliant ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... have. I have a quest, a search that never seems to end. I thought that I had finished it to-night, and singularly enough, in this very hotel. I can't go into the matter here with all this chattering mob of people about us, for the story is a sad one. But if ever you should chance to meet a grey lady with brown eyes and ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... intensely cold and wet. A shower of rain had frozen on deck during the night, and as it began to melt the water ran off in little sooty rills. Slowly, shivering figures came on deck, men in envelopes of fur, and oilskin capes and coats, with teeth chattering with cold, with wrinkled brows, and blue cold noses. And slowly lightened the clear eastern sky, and the crescent moon and stars disappeared one by one, and gradually the low pine-clad hills of Nova Scotia stood out in dark ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the more superstitious onlookers retreated in poor order, their teeth chattering. Their mammies had told them about the Voodoo Eye. They remembered the tales whispered in the slave quarters about people being prayed to death by these baleful creatures of ill omen! They weren't going ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... like your house, Mistress Eleanor Dallas; but, dear me, I can't stand here chattering. I must ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... in Crowheart once work actually began. The call for laborers brought a new and strange class of people to its streets—swarthy, chattering persons with long backs, and short legs, of frugal habits, yet, after all, leaving much silver in the town on the Saturday night which ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... for safe return at Blanc Sablon,—port of the white, white sand,—and by September 5 Cartier is {12} home in St. Malo, a rabble of grizzled sailor folk chattering a ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... doubtful that all should beware, And it can't be denied that a few such were there. Those cut-throats the Sparrows, that robber the Daw, Who was pluck'd for his open contempt of the law; The pilferer Cuckoo, whom all must despise, And the chattering Jay, who tells nothing but lies; While the green-mantled, light-hearted Love-birds, 'tis said, Had been sipping too much, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... conical bright part or root appeared at the middle part of the ball projecting directly from it, which, at a little distance from the ball, broke out suddenly into a wide brush of pale ramifications having a quivering motion, and being accompanied at the same time with a low dull chattering sound. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... presented an animated but none the less disorderly scene any evening during the season when a popular play was to be given. Women in the boxes talking away for dear life, beaux walking about the house, chattering, ogling and laughing, or even sitting on the stage while the performance was in progress,[A] and the orange girls running around to sell their wares and, not infrequently, their own ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Thursday, certainly, because it was well known in Seville that he arrived on that day. You must have remarked him because he talks English perfectly—though by-the-bye, these men would go on chattering before him about himself as though it were impossible that a Spaniard should know their language. They are ignorant of Spanish, and they cannot bring themselves to believe that any one should be better ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... decidedly out of tune with his surroundings that morning, and the beauty of the scene irritated rather than soothed him. In the garden a short distance from him, a voluble French party were chattering with great animation and a good deal of cackling laughter. He wondered what on earth they found to amuse them so persistently. He also wondered if a swim in that faultless blue would do anything to improve his temper, and decided with another wry grimace ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... then—was mad on card-playing at that time. And I was real worried about him. I knew he would get into a hole sooner or later, and I begged my surly Englishman to keep an eye on him. Oh, I was a fool! I was a brainless, chattering fool! And I'm not much better ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... what had happened the newcomers were chattering in the spacious halls below, tramping about the rooms, and giving orders in high, though apparently efficacious voices. Trunks rattled about the place, barefooted natives shuffled up and down the corridors and across the galleries, quick American heels clattered on the marble stairways; and all this ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... tracks of a Lion. He asked a man felling oaks in the forest if he had seen any marks of his footsteps or knew where his lair was. "I will," said the man, "at once show you the Lion himself." The Hunter, turning very pale and chattering with his teeth from fear, replied, "No, thank you. I did not ask that; it is his track only I am in search of, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... wagtail; The gangling jay to rail, The flecked pie to chatter Of the dolorous matter; The robin redbreast, He shall be the priest, The requiem mass to sing, Softly warbling, With help of the red sparrow, And the chattering swallow, This hearse for to hallow; The lark with his lung too, The chaffinch and the martinet also; . . . . The lusty chanting nightingale, The popinjay to tell her tale, That peepeth oft in the glass, Shall ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... hour in the wind, cold and ever colder in my poncho, while they let us in driblets into a barn and doled us out hay at high prices. I felt very cross against the good woman at whose table I now write, for not devising a quicker system—though she suffered from it too, for her teeth were chattering as she passed me through. But everything goes by; even while I shivered the wind dried my clothes; and I had cold feet for only a couple of hours, by which time I had dried out a pair of fresh stockings, and put them on with my dry boots. Since then I have ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... was almost due, and general good-bys were quickly said. Such a chattering as ensued, which kept up until the four chums climbed into the car that was to take them to the nearest city, where they would board the through train ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... a shrill cry, as from a child, followed by a confused outburst of cries, chattering, and, as it seemed to them, a barking ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... seasonable words to Pan Erh, she subsequently squatted in front of the side gate, whence she could see a number of servants, swelling out their chests, pushing out their stomachs, gesticulating with their hands and kicking their feet about, while they were seated at the main entrance chattering about ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... it would have puzzled a ventriloquist to have given imitations of them all. There was howling, and whining, and grunting, and growling, and low melancholy moaning as of some one in pain, and hissing, and chattering, and short, sharp intonations, as if it were the barking of dogs, and then a moment or two of deep silence, and again that chorus of human-like laughter, that in point of horror and hideous suggestions surpassed all ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the trained man-hunter Philip had measured his chances of winning. The Eskimos, first of all, would gather about their dead. After one or two formalities they would join in a chattering council, all of which meant precious time for them. The pursuit would be more or less cautious because of the bullet hole in the ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... the gods,' indeed! There and everywhere else you are looked upon as nothing but a nuisance. In the winter, too, while I feed at my ease on the fruit of my toil, what more common than to see your friends dying with cold, hunger, and fatigue? I lose my time now in talking to you. Chattering will fill neither my bin ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... Farther along, a very pale officer of the Northamptons, going out for the first time, stood with three ladies, keeping his end up very well. Three lieutenants going back from short leave, and lucky to get it, stood chattering, with red V's on the back of their tunics, and as he passed them Dennis saw that they belonged ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Heaven only knows what they talk about, but talk they do—in the throaty unintelligible Doric of the Clydeside, with an occasional Gallicism, like, "Allyman no bon!" or "Compree?" thrown in as a sop to foreign idiosyncracies. Madame and family respond, chattering French (or Flemish) at enormous speed. The amazing part of it all is that neither side appears to experience the slightest difficulty in understanding the other. One day Mr. Waddell, in the course of a friendly chat with his hostess of the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... London fog, this cold," he said, with chattering teeth. "I seem to feel it in my bones. How long will ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... answer. She is chattering downstairs with the concierge, for sure. So that is the way you observe your old master's birthday? You desert me even on the eve of Saint-Sylvestre! Alas! if I am to hear any kind wishes to-day, they must come up from ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... at work upon the landing-stage, turning the steel clamps and regulating the mechanism that controlled the apparatus. Dwarfed, apish creature, with tiny limbs, and chests that stood out like barrels, they bustled about, chattering in shrill voices that seemed like the piping ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... labour spent upon it, the discussion that raged around it, the decisions that were arrived at as to its course—all these things were now most pitifully pathetic to Catherine. As she watched Mark and Berrand, as she listened to them, she seemed to watch and listen to children, playing idly, chattering idly, on the edge of events that must stop their play, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... chattering teeth, "Santa Maria Vergine! I am so frightened. Oh, the poor, poor Queen! That was why she hath been so strange—she hath truly seen the vision. Poverina, it breaks one's heart! And he but a week away! So gay and debonair, and beautiful ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... sudden reverse of cold to which my motionless sleep subjected me, produced consequences that might easily have been foreseen: I awoke, in the dead of the might, and found myself seized with shivering fits, my teeth chattering, a sickness at my stomach, my head intolerably heavy, and my temples bruised with the blows I had received, and having a sensation as if they were ready to burst. To all this was added the stiffness that pervaded ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the road from the garden. Timothy trudged beside him, carrying the basket of greens in one hand, and the other locked in Jabe's huge paw; his eyes upturned and shining with pleasure, his lips moving as if he were chattering like a magpie. Lady Gay was just where you might have expected to find her, mounted on the towering height of Jabe's shoulder, one tiny hand grasping his weather-beaten straw hat, while with the other she whisked her willing steed with an alder switch which had evidently been cut for ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... an eyebrow at him, as if questioning his intention, at the instant the ivory ball began to sing its song of a single note. Abruptly it was chattering; in ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... turned away he lifted the cup to his chattering teeth. When he had drained it he threw a trembling glance round the room and at ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... waste this holy day in chattering!" cried Wicks. "Look here, when I sounded the well this morning there was two feet of water there against eight inches last night. What's wrong? I don't know; might be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. And then, there we are in for a thousand miles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man stare and wonder. But just to be that near to her for the moment pleased him. There was no jealousy for Fenn in Van Dorn's heart; there was only a dog-like infatuation that had swept him away from his reason and seated a fatuous, chattering, impotent, lecherous ape where his intellect should have been. And he knew he was a fool. He knew that he was stark mad. Yet what he did not know was that this madness was a culmination, not a pristine passion new born in his heart. For the maggot in his brain had eaten out a rotten ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... there are boys—and not unfrequently the most interesting—who, if fairly drawn, would appear frivolous, silly, conventional in public, even coarse, who yet might have very fine things behind, though rarely visible. Moreover, the natural, lively, chattering boys, whom it would be a temptation to try and draw, are not really the most interesting. They tend to develop into bores of the first water in later life. But the boy who develops into a fine man is often ungainly, shy, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have stood one of 'em at a time, but two I generally found overpowering, I used to cut and run; but, then, in their own vineyards may be they are endurable enough. They say marmosets in Senegambia are so pleasant as the day's long, jumping and chattering in the orange twigs; but transport 'em, one by one, over here into England, they turn into monkeys, some with tails, some without, and are obliged to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... made one final effort, and came down hard upon the middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until the last ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... all unstrung, his teeth chattering. He saw,—not the lamp, flickering in the draught from the broken window,—not Manetho, lying motionless with the smile frozen on his lips,—not Salome, prostrate across the body of him ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... it's fair," she faltered. "You girls keep chattering so I can't go to sleep, and the ten minutes are up ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... above description are eternally chattering about such topics, men who are really eminent in the fine arts never say a word on the subject. Goldsmith describes this matter well in his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... see, dear child, that I am trying to write a letter? How do you suppose I can do so while you stand chattering there at my elbow! You won't understand the books, but you are too obstinate for anything, and you had better take them and try. I don't expect to hear anything more about them," she added complacently, as she resumed her letter. Nor did she, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... grand people, taking their cue from the courtiers' boxes, affected a mighty contempt for the play, except when a naughty jade on the boards stepped high, or blew a kiss to some dandy among the noted folk. For aught I could make out, they did not come to hear, but to be heard; the ladies chattering and ogling; the gallants stalking from box to box and pit to gallery, waving their scented handkerchiefs, striking a pose where the greater part of the audience could see the flash of beringed fingers, or taking a pinch of snuff with a snap of the lid to call attention to its gold-work and ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... I questioned our agent, and how our agent ransacked his memory, when I stumbled, in due course, on such a discovery as this. If Heaven is responsible for women's chattering tongues, Heaven be praised! From Miss Blanchard to Miss Blanchard's maid; from Miss Blanchard's maid to Miss Blanchard's aunt's maid; from Miss Blanchard's aunt's maid, to the ugly housemaid; from the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... my son, I commend your pious observance..." The conjuror was going on, when a loud chattering behind warned him that an unpleasant crisis had arisen with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... him and food for horses and servants was the anxious problem that waited at the day's end. In many a lonely village not an ounce nor a grain of anything could be bought, and yet there might be standing around scores of white-garmented, stalwart Koreans, smoking yard-long pipes and chattering, chattering—ceaselessly chattering. Love, money, or force could not procure from them a ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... be confessed, however, that the certainty in question did little to enliven the gloom of that formidable evening. There was a noisy crowd about him in the room—noisy even with the accompaniment of the continual thunder-peals; lodgers and servants, chattering, shuffling, and bustling, and annoying him equally by making too light of the tempest and by vociferating their alarm. In the disorder, it was some time before a lamp was lighted, and the first thing he saw, as it was swung from the ceiling, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... may trust my eyes. I will stand by you with all the help I can, in both deed and counsel; and my own masterpiece will be none the worse for it." "But in the name of all that's holy," broke in Frederick here, "why are we chattering about who is to make the best masterpiece? Are we to have any contest about the matter?—the best masterpiece—to gain Rose! What are we thinking about? The very thought makes me giddy." "Marry, brother," cried ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the two little girls kept on chattering; and I fear my reader will say that they are not improved since last she heard anything ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... afternoon, as we were sitting idly chattering, a deafening noise began, and the whole ship shook. This was the first ice-pressure. Every one rushed on deck to look. The Fram behaved beautifully, as I had expected she would. On pushed the ice with steady pressure, but down under us it had to go, and we were slowly lifted up. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... come nearer to listen, and when the priest ceased, their faces grew dark and sullen, and their low mutterings were heard like the distant murmurings of a coming storm, while many a hand was clinched at the Jews, who were laughing and chattering ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... from other places. They have also parrots of sundry colours, as green, purple, and other mixt colours, and they are so numerous that the rice fields have to be watched to drive them away. These birds make a wonderful chattering, and are sold so low as a halfpenny each. There are many other kinds of birds different from ours, which every morning and evening make most sweet music, so that the country is like an earthly paradise, the trees, herbs, and flowers being in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... you!—Whither are you going? Whither are you being led? Are you at all aware? I very much fear that a great many of you are as blind and as ignorant of the road you are treading as were those soldiers of the king of Syria. You are going on headlong, chattering with one another, laughing and singing, in open order, very little discipline, and perfectly confident that you will come to no harm. Take care! Some day your eyes will be opened, and you will ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... branch, and chippered to her as she passed. But Mell saw none of these things. She was too anxious and unhappy to enjoy what on any other day would have been a great pleasure; and she passed the flowers, the berries, and the chattering squirrel unheeded by. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... trembling with cold, and with their teeth chattering, their faces and hands became of that pale violet colour generally seen on the lips of a corpse. Their eyes became full of water and the lids were red and inflamed. Philpot's and Harlow's boots were soon wet through, with the water they absorbed from the damp ground, and their feet ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to take up the search where they had left off, going through the shorter grass till they should reach the point where they had found the pigs. They were clumping along, chattering gaily, when Katy jumped and let out a yell that could have been heard ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... involuntarily, and looked in each other's eyes with a wild surmise, for a shock came which made the vessel quiver like a tuning-fork in every fibre; the very pannikins on the cabin floor rattled, and all the things in the pantry went like rapidly chattering teeth. It was not like an ordinary blow of the sea. The skipper rushed aft, hoping to get on deck through Ferrier's cabin, but he met a cataract of water which blinded him, and he came back saying, "I doubt her deck won't stand another like that. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... it would look like a schoolmaster; and if I were to write "young ladies," it would look like a schoolmistress; and worse than that, neither form of words would look familiar and natural, or in character with our snowy ride that tooth-chattering morning. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... caused such a burst of merriment that they were surprised, until, being told that it was the chattering of a tame parrot, they soon joined in the laugh, and went at once to make her acquaintance, and also ...
— Minnie's Pet Parrot • Madeline Leslie
... bone, his teeth chattering like castanets, the old man was stooping over the inanimate form on the ground when the two men came up. In answer to their startled questions, he merely said that he had seen the struggle from across the street, but had been too late to prevent ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... breakfasted by candlelight—a good old fashion, this, but rather forgotten lately—and Blake also turned out for early breakfast, as he wanted to get his drive to Tarrong over while the weather was cool. Of the women-folk, Ellen alone was up, boiling eggs, and making tea on a spirit-lamp; laughing and chattering meanwhile, and keeping them all amused; while outside in the frosty dawn, the stable boy shivered as he tightened the girths round the ribs of three very touchy horses. Poss and Binjie were each riding a station horse ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... forest, and after that, having eaten their food, the smaller children would lie down and sleep in the shade of hazel and snow-ball trees, while the ten-year-old boys would flock around me and ask me to tell them stories. I would satisfy their desire, chattering as eagerly as the children themselves, and often, in spite of the self-assurance of youth and the ridiculous pride which it takes in the miserable crumbs of worldly wisdom it possesses, I would feel like a twenty-year-old child in a ...
— The Shield • Various
... There were the cap and bells beside his bed, Around him rose the bare, discolored walls, Close by, the steeds were champing in their stalls, And in the corner, a revolting shape, Shivering and chattering sat the wretched ape. It was no dream; the world he loved so much Had turned to dust and ashes at ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... like to let them stay longer than a few seconds at each picture, and kept chattering the whole time, till at last they grew annoyed, and Aunt Anne told him they would do the rest by themselves. But it took some time to get rid of him, and then he went sulkily, complaining that they had not given him enough, though Barbara felt sure he ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... So he thought he'd better make the best he could of it, and he took the skin off the ox and started with it to the town to sell it. And as he was going along a magpie perched on the skin and began pecking at it, and all the time chattering, for it had been taught to talk. With that Donald put round his hand and caught the magpie and held it ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... responsibility for his crew that was helping the pilot to maintain a better control. But there was a white line around Lynwood's mouth, running up the line of his jaw. Caused by clenching his teeth too tightly? Clenched, to keep them from chattering? ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Tribolo shrugged up his shoulders and muttered: "Patience, patience," several times. Thereupon, without regarding the copious dinner which Sansovino had given me, I took the part of my comrade Tribolo, for he was in the right. All the while at table Sansovino had never stopped chattering about his great achievements, abusing Michel Agnolo and the rest of his fellow-sculptors, while he bragged and vaunted himself to the skies. This had so annoyed me that not a single mouthful which I ate had tasted well; but I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... be changed. And I knew that I would miss the easy German atmosphere of the place; the kindness they had shown me; the chattering, admiring Minna; the taffy-colored dachshund; the aborigines with their ill-smelling pipes and flappy slippers; the Wienerschnitzel; the crushed-looking wives and the masterful German husbands; the very darns in the table-cloths and the very ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos. "If Fred Vincy comes to-morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering: let him come ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... tiny kraal nestling sweetly among its fields of maize, an odd, savage counterpart to the country hamlet described in prim, melodious numbers by the gentle Goldsmith: the little naked children were playing merrily; the women sat in groups grinding their corn and chattering; the men worked in the fields or lounged idly about the hut doors. It was a charming scene. You felt that here, perhaps, one great mystery of life had been solved; for happiness was on every face, and the mere joy of living was a sufficient reason for existence. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... regretting the flood of folly which overwhelms the hopes we would fain have rested on some chance phrase. If my scholar rarely gives me cause for such prophecies, neither will he give me cause for such regrets, for he never says a useless word, and does not exhaust himself by chattering when he knows there is no one to listen to him. His ideas are few but precise, he knows nothing by rote but much by experience. If he reads our books worse than other children, he reads far better in the book of nature; his thoughts are not in his tongue but in his brain; ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... especially the people, the unending streams of lounging men, women, and children. Some, no doubt, were on business bent; but the majority appeared to me to take their walking very easily, and every one seemed to be chattering. My life since as a child I left England had all been spent in sparsely populated rural surroundings, and the noisy bustle of Sydney impressed me very much, as I imagine the Strand would impress a Dartmoor lad, born and bred, on his first visit ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... children of wretchedness— (I have unconsciously included every part of it) form a variety of uniform excellence. I hunger and thirst to read the poem complete. That is a capital line in your 6th no.: "this dark freeze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering Month"—they are exactly such epithets as Burns would have stumbled on, whose poem on the ploughd up daisy you seem to have had in mind. Your complaint that [of] your readers some thought there ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the rest, The fear of each, or valour, stands confess'd. No force, no firmness, the pale coward shows; He shifts his place: his colour comes and goes: A dropping sweat creeps cold on every part; Against his bosom beats his quivering heart; Terror and death in his wild eye-balls stare; With chattering teeth he stands, and stiffening hair, And looks a bloodless image of despair! Not so the brave—still dauntless, still the same, Unchanged his colour, and unmoved his frame: Composed his thought, determined is his eye, And fix'd his soul, to conquer or to die: If aught disturb ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... family parties, or make excursions to the neighbouring tea-houses. Thoroughly domestic in their tastes and habits, it is a pleasing sight to watch the family groups. Here a grand-dame is carefully assisted along by her son and daughter-in-law, preceded by chattering grandchildren in the gayest of dresses, tugging at extraordinary kites; or a father, in the doorway of his house, nurses one child, while the mother exhibits for the admiration of sympathizing friends another ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... flock together. The robin sings to his ruddy mate, And the chattering jays, in the winter weather, To prate and gossip will congregate; And the cawing crows on the autumn heather, Like evil omens, will flock together, In extra-session, for high debate; And the lass will slip ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... at them. They stopped while White Otter spoke harshly to it: "You laugh at us, fool-bird, because we are boys, but you shall see when we come back that we are warriors. We will have a scalp to taunt you with. Begone now, before I pierce you with an arrow, you chattering woman-bird." And the magpie fluttered ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering before the call of "time." The result of the fight was that, even if "Dizzy" was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever called, "Old clo'! Old clo'!" within his hearing. Of course ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... In a little time I had made up my mind that our last hour was come; the wind was getting higher, the short dangerous waves were more foamy, the boat was frequently on its beam, and the water came over the lee side in torrents. But still the wild lad at the helm held on, laughing and chattering, and occasionally yelling out part of the Miguelite air, 'Quando el Rey chegou,' {147b} the singing of ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... French to a chattering woman who has just run out of her door, and is standing near him tying a red Madras kerchief on her head as she prattles to a girl,—"madame, what ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... realized that it would remain with its least accessories in his mind one of those trivial, indelible photographs which last a lifetime. The smell of mignonette that spread in from the window-box through the turquoise-blue Venetian blinds; the chattering of the love-birds; the strains of a waltz of Waldteufel's floating up from a German band in the street below—they ran into a single sensation that was like the stab of cold steel. He sat staring blankly at the tattered ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... trembling violently; they heard the light, continuous chattering of her teeth. After her many hours under the merciless sun, this sudden change of temperature might bring on the fever against which they could not fight. They stripped off their shirts and wound them carefully around her shivering body. McTee lifted her in his arms and sat down with his ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... morning, when the birds were chattering noisily in the trees, he heard his name called. He went up to the bed. Mr. Carey was lying on his back, with his eyes looking at the ceiling; he did not turn them on Philip. Philip saw that sweat was on his forehead, and he took ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... tell. Yet the scattered tracks of mink and musk-rat beside the banks, of meadow-mice around the hay-stacks, of squirrels under the trees, of rabbits and partridges in the wood, show the warm life that is beating unseen, beneath fur or feathers, close beside us. The chicadees are chattering merrily in the upland grove, the blue-jays scream in the hemlock glade, the snow-bird mates the snow with its whiteness, and the robin contrasts with it his still ruddy breast. The weird and impenetrable crows, most talkative of birds and most uncommunicative, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... designing young person, and she immediately reminded him that she had an engagement to give him a tennis lesson every day. There was still time for a set before dinner. Also, far be it from her to be so forward as to call him Sam, or to annoy him with silly chattering. She was serious-minded, was Miss Westlake, and sweet and helpful; any man could see that; and she fairly adored business. It ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... great a chance in going as you do in staying," she said, with chattering teeth. "If—if it comes any higher, you'll swim ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... exceedingly ill-looking men, whose faces bespoke principally sensuality and self-conceit, and whose function was that of praising God, on the sole qualification of good bass and tenor voices, were coming chattering through the choir gates; and behind them a group of small boys were suddenly transforming themselves from angels into sinners, by tearing off their white surplices, and pinching and poking each other noisily as they passed us, with as little reverence ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... illuminated by it—when I suddenly started up, broad awake, with my hair on end and the sweat of terror literally streaming from my every pore, for I was feeling more thoroughly scared than I had ever before been, and I was trembling like a leaf, and my teeth were chattering; although at the moment I had not the slightest notion what it ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... From this point Finn looked down a densely-wooded mountain side, and out across a tolerably well-timbered plain to hills which stood nearly forty miles away. It would have made an eyrie for a king eagle. Finn had already slaked his thirst hurriedly a mile back, in a chattering, rock-bedded mountain streamlet. And now he was weary beyond all further endurance. He had been sick, and sore, and stiff, and sadly out of condition when he started; and he had been travelling now for six hours. A feeling of security had stolen over him since he reached the topmost ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... beheld when he entered his patient's room was indeed rather astonishing to him. As Mrs. Medlock opened the door he heard laughing and chattering. Colin was on his sofa in his dressing-gown and he was sitting up quite straight looking at a picture in one of the garden books and talking to the plain child who at that moment could scarcely be called plain at all because her face was so glowing ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... am much hurt," stammered Millicent, whose teeth were chattering, and the man floundering back a few paces, stooped over a dark object that struggled in the snow. She fancied that he fumbled at his belt, after which there was a horrible gurgle, and he returned rubbing his fingers suggestively ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the bird's need to whistle; and I, who am specially incompetent in this art, must content myself by chattering away to you on this bit of paper. All the way along I was thanking God that he had made me and the birds and everything just as they are and not otherwise; for although there was no sun, the air was so thrilled with robins and blackbirds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indeed spring, but the roses had not yet bloomed. The swallows were chattering in their nests under the eaves or flitting ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... stirred feebly; the figure of a woman, straight and gaunt under the hospital bedclothes. A tress of her hair had come uncoiled and looped itself across the pillow—reddish auburn hair, streaked with grey. She had been brought in, three nights ago, drenched, bedraggled, chattering in a high fever; a case of acute pneumonia. Her delirium had kept Tilda—who was preternaturally sharp for her nine years—awake and curious during the better part of two night-watches. Thereafter, for a day and a night and half a day, the patient had lain somnolent, breathing ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had made a picture which had taken in the Academicians, and had been hung in Burlington House as an original work by Crome. Most of his work was done before the students entered the galleries; he did very little after ten o'clock; he pottered round from easel to easel chattering; but he never imparted the least of his secrets. He knew how to evade questions, and after ten minutes' cross-examination he would say 'Good morning,' and leave the student no wiser than he was before. A legend was in circulation that to imitate Turner's ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... by slow marches over a parched and dreary country, and our conversation chiefly turned upon the Turcomans. Everyone vaunted his own courage; my master above the rest, his teeth actually chattering with apprehension, boasted of what he would do in case we were attacked. But when we in reality perceived a body of Turcomans coming down upon us, the scene instantly changed. Some ran away; others, and among ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... was over, the grown-ups had coffee in the study, while we younger ones ran into the garden and went chattering along the undulating paths with their carpet of yellow leaves. We talked about Woloda's riding a hunter and said what a shame it was that Lubotshka, could not run as fast as Katenka, and what fun it would be if we could see Grisha's chains, and so forth; but of the impending separation we ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... face and chattering teeth she turned and faced Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way to the room where she had heard sounds—she had seen Larry fleeing on the lake road as she came over ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Jules, his teeth chattering, his words broken and shredded by the cold from which he was suffering. Even the stalwart and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... Pausanias we are told that by the braying of an ass an equally dangerous plot was once discovered, and you also know from Livy, or from Becker's History of the World, that geese once saved the Capitol, and you must certainly know from Sallust that by the chattering of a loquacious putaine, the Lady Fulvia, the terrible conspiracy of Catiline came to light. But to return to the mutton aforesaid. I was listening to the law and rights of nations, in the lecture-room of the Herr ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in. And I tickle their ears and pull their tails And pat their heads and polish their scales; And they never attempt to flame or fly, Being quelled by me and my human eye. Then I pour them drink out of golden flagons, Drink for my two tame trusty dragons.... But John, Who's a terrible fellow for chattering on, John declares They are Teddy-bears; And the palace itself, he has often said, Is only the gardener's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... boy from the barber's shop opposite; he had been playing with a black kitten when the alarm came and he joined the fugitives just as he was, in his white tunic with the kitten in his arms and a comb stuck in his bushy hair. And there came a troop of old women, chattering and shuffling along and understanding no more about it all than I should have understood if I had not had my buffo, my ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... sensitive travellers. Fortunately such travellers do not often go to the wild regions of South America,—when they do, they soon become un-sensitive. When parrots assemble in a flock on the trees, they keep fluttering their wings with a tremulous motion, bending down their heads and chattering, young and old, without regard to each other or to harmony. Each seems bent on giving his own opinion in the loudest key, and pays no regard whatever to the opinions of others. There is ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... his teeth to prevent them chattering. The night air kissed him coldly, and the moon, white above the inky ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... chattering and clattering over there in the feast-hall," said Loki. "The greedy, silly Asa-folk seem to be very busy indeed, both with their teeth and their tongues. Tell me, now, good Elder, what they talk about while they sit over their ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... me. I have seen your smile when his head turned your way. It was the smile which runs before a promise. I know it; I have had that smile in my heart a long, long time—but it never reached my lips. Carmel, do you know why I am here?' I shook my head. Was it her teeth that were chattering or mine? 'I am here to end it all,' said she. 'With my hope gone, my heart laid waste, life has no prospect for me. I believe in God, and I know that my act is sinful; but I can no more live than can a tree ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... gamboled past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... him. He did not appear to recognize or even to see her. She spoke to him. He did not seem to hear. His face was scarlet, his lips were parched. She took his hand; it was burning; and still he was shivering, and his teeth were chattering as ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... on chattering thus to put off what she had really come to say. Her heart was beating so fast that its throbs could be seen under the embroidered front of the bodice which fitted her so smoothly. She wondered how Madame d'Argy would receive the suggestion she was ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... and others, how tenderly pink, and gray, and purplish of hue! What poly-tinted fancies underfoot in the moss! Strange visitants came from the north. Flocks of birds, southward bound, skimmed these alien skies. Sometimes they alighted on the tree-tops or along the banks of the torrent, chattering in great excitement, commenting ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... found the control area. He could hear the clatter of typing instruments, the click-click-click of the computers working out the orbits and trajectories for the scout-ships as they moved out from the orbit-ship or came back in. In another compartment he heard a dispatcher chattering his own special code-language into a microphone in a low-pitched voice. He passed another grill, and then stopped short as ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse |
