"Front door" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right angles, extending thirty feet toward the road. Although connected to the house by a shed roof, which acquired a double pitch and became a gable roof where the ell projected forward, it was, in effect, a separate building, with its own front door and its own door-path. Its floor-level was about four feet lower than that of the ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... seemed to get to our destination the further the houses were removed. The farm had an imposing appearance as we drove up to it. Mr. B——, who met us at the gate, was most anxious that on arrival we should be driven to the front door and not to the kitchen one, which, being the nearest, is the handiest. He, poor man, has given up his bed and dressing-room to us, and we ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... interested, for I had not before heard of such palatial things from the lips of people who had seen them with their own eyes. One detail, casually dropped, hit my imagination hard. In the wall, by the great front door, there was a round hole as big as a saucer—a British cannon-ball had made it, in the war of the Revolution. It was breath-taking; it made history real; history had never been real ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... father, Evan, and I were silent and ceremoniously polite, neither referring to the day's disasters, and I could see that the boys were regarding us with open-eyed wonder. When the meal was almost finished, the bell of the front door rang and Effie returned, bearing a large, ornamental basket, almost of the proportions of a hamper, with a card fastened conspicuously to the handle, upon which was printed "With apologies from Jupiter!" Inside was a daintily arranged assortment ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... shot was fired. There was no answering cheer. All was as silent as if there had never been a soul there for years, and after carefully scanning the window Hilary went up to the front door and battered it loudly with ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... will do," said Mrs. No-Tail. So she very quietly and carefully took it off the nail, and then she went softly out of the front door, and around to the side of the house to the rain-water barrel, where she filled the watering can. Then she came back with it ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... of her fortitude, Mrs. Bowmore's feeble reserves of endurance completely gave way. The poor lady turned faint and giddy. Amelia placed her on a chair in the hall, and told the cook to open the front door, and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... at the corner his wheels began skidding and he lost control. The car skewed off at a tangent, hurdled the moat, and tore a hole in the mud wall; and, as the occupants spilled sprawlingly through the gap, a front tire exploded with a loud report. The garrison took just one look out the front door, jumped to the conclusion that the Villa crowd had arrived and were shooting automobiles at them, and unanimously adjourned by the back way into the woods. Some of them did not get back until the shades of night had ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... a lad I served a term As office boy to an Attorney's firm; I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so successfullee, That now I am the Ruler of ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Springett opposite came out, looked at his shop window, and went in again. The children drifted past, eyeing the pink sticks of sweetstuff. Pickford's van swung down the street. A small boy twirled from a rope. Jacob turned away. Two minutes later he opened the front door, and walked off in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... a quick scraping of chairs within, and voices raised in excited outcry. Bud recoiled from the fall as fast as he might, and, springing down the hall, he made for the front door. By this time the plotters had emerged from the room and had seen Bud in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... now and then into a quagmire. It is vile walking in this park of Farmhill, and as the house is approached there is a barking of dogs. Oxen are seen grazing, and peacocks as well as turkeys heave in sight. The house itself is barred and barricaded in a remarkable manner. The front door is so strongly fastened that it is said not to have been opened for years. Massive bars of iron protect the windows, and the solitary servant visible is a species of shepherd or odd man, who comes slinking round the corner. No stranger gentlewoman's dwelling could be found ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... in the cool silence until the lights of the returning taxicabs and motor-cars became more frequent, until the stars crept into the sky and the yellow arc of the moon stole up over the tops of the houses. Presently they saw Sir Timothy's Rolls-Royce glide up to the front door below and Sir Timothy himself enter the house, followed by another man whose appearance was ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs toward it and each other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that they gazed upon the passer-by—yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front door; they also were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the deer by coats ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... office, and, putting the envelope that had been lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders, and locked the front door of the house behind him. It was well that the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively found the trail, for the night was very dark. At times he was warned only by the gurgling of water of little rivulets that descended the hill and crossed his path. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... the engine without breathing another prayer. On the morning of the accident his piety was in a state of unusual excitation. He begged his wife to "pray all that day"—which we presume she did, with intervals for refreshment; and he knelt down himself in the passage before opening his front door. When the accident happened he put the brake on and cried "Lord, save us," and according to the Christian World "it has since been stated by expert engineers that no train was ever before pulled up ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the deathly silence of the night—the wind had quieted in time to allow me the use of this faithful, overworked phrase—was broken by the tintinnabulation of the bell. This time I recognized it as the electric bell operated by a push-button upon the right side of my front door. To rise and rush to the door was the work of a moment. It always is. In another instant I had flung it wide. This operation was singularly easy, considering that it was but a narrow door, and width was the last thing it could ever be suspected of, however forcible the fling. However, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... are more than twenty carriages before the front door. Our coachman is driving round, and we will go out by the conservatory door ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the knocker of the front door, and Nan's hands went flying to her hair in soft inquiries; back to her ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... probably true enough. The great body of the old house, as it now stood, had been built in the time of Charles II., and there was the date in the brickwork still conspicuous on the wall looking into the court. The hall and front door as it now stood, very prominent but quite at the end of the house, had been erected in the reign of Queen Anne, and the modern drawing-rooms with the best bedrooms over them, projecting far out into the modern gardens, had been added by the present baronet's father. The ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... form of the letter H. The walls are several feet in thickness; in the centre is a saloon thirty feet in size; and surmounting each wing is a pavilion with balustrades, above which rise clusters of chimneys. The front door is reached by a broad flight of steps, and the grounds are handsome, and variegated by the bright foliage of oaks, cedars, and maple-trees. Here and there in the extensive lawn rises a slender and ghostly old Lombardy poplar—a tree once a great favorite in Virginia, but now seen ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... ten, having hung about her aunt's room, thinking that thus she would escape him for the present. She would wait till he was gone out, and then she would go down. She did wait; but she could not hear the front door, and then her aunt murmured something about Brooke's breakfast. She was told to go down, and she went. But when on the stairs she slunk back to her own room, and stood there for awhile, aimless, motionless, not knowing what to do. Then one of the girls came to her, and told her that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... would all have happened just as he planned it, could it have happened then and there. But the front door was closed and he had to wait a long time for the landlady's heavy answering tread. When she came at last it was from upstairs—he could tell by her breathing and a familiar creak—and a cold dead hand laid itself on his heart and squeezed the hope out of it. They had been talking ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... failures. Nothing is more amusing than his daughter's story of the great novelist, slipping out of the house one night, when he had asked several celebrities to meet Charlotte Bronte. The party was a terrible fiasco, and so he escaped, putting his finger to his lips as he opened the front door to warn his daughter that she must not reveal his flight. Charlotte's correspondence with her publisher is also full of pathos. It shows how keenly she felt her aloofness from the world, which she could ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... off to the back door together, and, Judy having opened it, Biddy sallied out, on her important and good-natured mission. It was still dark, though the morning was beginning to break, as she stood, panting, at the front door of the inn. She tried to get in at the back, but the yard gates were fastened; and Jack, the ostler, did not seem to be about yet. So she gave a timid, modest knock, with the iron knocker, on the front door. A pause, and then a second knock, a little louder; another ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... that sound must have been dreadfully unhappy about something; they all felt sure of that—and there was a grand rush to the front door ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... horses which drove up to his door in Holworthy at midday. Nearly the whole college assembled to see him off. He came out and took his seat in solitary state in the chariot. Some eight or ten of the class on horseback accompanied him as outriders. They drove into Boston to the front door of the Tremont House in great state. It was just at the time the Governor-General of Canada, I think Lord Elgin, was expected in Boston on a great occasion in the history of the city. The waiters and landlord ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... pondered, I knew I must go in. Lights, moving in the dormitory, announced that prayers were over, and the pupils going to bed. Another half-hour and all doors would be locked—all lights extinguished. The front door yet stood open, to admit into the heated house the coolness of the summer night; from the portress's cabinet close by shone a lamp, showing the long vestibule with the two-leaved drawing-room doors on one side, the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... angrily. "Yes, just as if you were about to run up somebody's carefully sanded steps to the front door." ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Miss Winifred, about six o'clock, before light,—that is, I was justly sure I heard the front door shut; but when I got there it was all right, except the outer door was unlocked, and that often happens when your father is at the Club. He do forget now ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... an hour later Mr. Cuppin pulled up near the long, ivy-covered house, and, alighting, I made my way within the iron gate and up the gravelled path to the front door, where I rang. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... front door is a Sergeant in field gray uniform. You mount a flight of marble steps, and saunter down a marble hall, half a block long. It is the reception hall. It is furnished with magnificent hand-carved, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a separate door opening from the Greshamsbury pew out into the Greshamsbury grounds, so that the family were not forced into unseemly community with the village multitude in going to and from their prayers; for the front door of the church led out into a road which had no connexion with the private path. It was not unusual with Frank and his father to go round, after the service, to the chief entrance, so that they might speak to their neighbours, and get rid of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... sharply. The fugitive had made a blunder. The importation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did not help him. She kept on towards the house, however, without the least trace of excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the front door again, walked quietly to the door of the inner room, glanced in, saw that her husband was absorbed in splicing a riata, and had evidently not missed her, and returned quietly to her dish-washing. With this singular difference: a few ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... quite a shock of surprise to see such a procession of folks coming out of the big house. Many came and stood in their front door-yards to view the unusual sight, for instance, of Louis with his arm linked in that of our old servant Teresa, and Paula herself on our father's arm, and the rest of us strung ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... hauteur for an air of mystery equally irritating to Sam, he stole up the steps of the porch, and, after a moment's manipulation of the knob of the big front door, contrived to operate the fastenings, ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... almost midnight when Nancy arrived at the tavern. She carried a key for the front door, and passed up through the deserted hallway to her room. A child's heavy breathing a few feet away told her that Katie Duncan was in dreamland. Jennie had left a lamp burning low on her table, and Nancy carried it over to the cot and looked at the little plump face of her latest adoption. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... transformed into an Inquiry Office and a Bureau for First Aid to the Injured. There was often a dense throng outside the front door, filling the street and reaching over into the park. Two Dutch boy scouts, capital fellows in khaki, volunteered their assistance in keeping order, and stood guard at the entrance giving out numbered tickets of admission ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... Presently the front door was noiselessly opened, and Edith's tall, lithe form, dressed in a white flowing dress, and with her blonde hair rolling loosely over her shoulders, appeared for an instant, and then again vanished. With one leap Halfdan sprang up the stairs and pushed ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... carrying the smaller children up to bed, a style of travel the little twins loved, there came a ring at the front door bell. Dinah, who ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... fed, and were allowed to see their friends; but she objected to evening visits, and required the back door to be locked and the key placed in her possession at nine o'clock every evening. If the front door was opened she could hear it from every part of her modest residence (and, being very nervous, she used often to fancy that it opened when it did not), while a wire for the use of the policeman connected the ground-floor with an alarm bell in her own room ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... looked towards the road, and so made a kind of front door to the kitchen which was within. The door-sill was raised a single step above the rough old grey stone which did duty before it; and sitting on the doorstep, in the shadow and sunlight which came through the elm branches and fell over her, this ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Trove went to board at the home of "the two old maids," a stone house on Jericho Road, with a front door rusting on idle hinges and blinds ever drawn. It was a hundred feet or more from the highway, and in summer there were flowers along the path from its little gate and vines climbing to the upper windows. In winter its garden was buried deep under ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... never think it," she protested. "You're needed right now. After a while will be too late. Why, I come a-past your old home in the rain last Wednesday, and I could 'a' cried to see the winders dark, and the grass all grown up to the front door. You come back whar you belong—" she had almost said "honey"—"and you'll find there is need a-plenty ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... wondered if it had not ramifications and passages unknown to her. It had. It was Mr. Pantin's dearest wish to come home boiling drunk with his hat smashed and his necktie hanging. He longed to kick the front door in and see his wife cower before him. The mental orgies in which he indulged while sitting placidly in the bow window automatically snapping his Romeo against the heel of his foot by a muscular contraction ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... front door in possession of strangers," said Clarence, more in reply to a sudden contemptuous glance from his wife than Starbottle's insinuation, "I entered the house through ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... forming itself in front of us. The rusted gates between the crumbling heraldic pillars were folded back, and my uncle flicked the mares impatiently as we flew up the weed-grown avenue, until he pulled them on their haunches before the time-blotched steps. The front door was open, and Boy Jim was waiting there to ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... elope," the doctor said to his wife, humorously. "But she won't elope with a mere man: she will go off with an idea and then come around to the front door to ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... to hear. Sharper ears might have served him better. He passed out by the street door. Narcisse stopped the auction by the noise he made coming downstairs after him. He had some trouble with the front door,—lost ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... bustling little wren flew to the top of the wall, about twenty feet above her front door, as it looked to me (it may have been ten times that). Over the edge she instantly disappeared, but in a few minutes returned to her occupation on the rock. Upon the earth beneath her sky parlor she seemed never to turn her eyes, and I began to fear that ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... be provided from curb to house. A man should be stationed at the curb to open carriage doors and call them when the guests leave, and another African Teas man should be in attendance at the front door to open it the moment a guest appears at the top step and to direct him ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... you to have sent me such a stock,—and the pansies I wanted. The flower of that lovely mauve and purple one is on the table by me now. One (only one) of your other roses died—the second Gloire near the front door—so when I saw it was hopeless I had that border "picked" up—a very rockery of rubbish came out—good stuff was put in, and one of the Souvenirs de Malmaison is now comfortably established there I hope. This wet weather ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... The front door closed with a bang, leaving Agnes discomfited on the mat. There was no denying that at times Margot was distinctly difficult in her dealings with her elder sister. She herself was aware of the fact, and repented ardently after each fresh offence, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... asking you that, or put the question another way. Will you go on as you've begun, and trust me farther, by letting me drive with you to your home, if necessary, in case of being followed? At worst, I'll need to beg no more than to stand inside your front door for a few minutes if we're watched, and—but I see that this time I have passed the limit. I'm expecting too much! How do you know but I may be a thief ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... because Wade was a great friend of some of his own relations, who had very generously, by gifts, loans, and good counsel, repeatedly helped him out of his difficulties. In course of time they arrived at the right farm, and while they were coming in by the front door, Wade and the others escaped by the back. Babb, Wichehalse's servant, and another of the party saw the men running, and fired, and Wade was shot through the body, so that he was disabled and taken prisoner. Wichehalse's servants also ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... I had made up my mind upon this point, a ketureen rattled up to the front door of the house, and in another moment Captain Annesley rushed headlong and unannounced into the room in which I was seated chatting with my kind and gentle hostess, and seizing my hand began to shake it as though ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... on the milkman before now, and I can open the front door if necessary," said she cheerfully. "Now run away upstairs, and I'll call you in plenty of time to get the tea ready. I don't suppose ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... the ends, and known as a ship carpenter's "dog." A struggle ensued, which resulted in the murder, the assassin striking his victim on the head nine times with terrible force. Then, rifling the safe of its valuable contents, he had gone stealthily down the stairs, had unfastened the front door, which had been carefully secured at half an hour after midnight, and, laying the "dog" down on the hall floor, had passed out into the street. His object in carrying the "dog" to the place where it was found by the police had been to be prepared to make sure of his escape by ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... reached home, she bolted the back door, but the front door she took off the hinges, and said, 'Frederick told me to lock the door, but surely it can nowhere be so safe if I take it with me.' So she took her time by the way; and when she overtook her husband she cried out, 'There, Frederick, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... lower entrance, Constance encountered the gaze of the strange man, whom, arriving at the front door, Nelly had not ventured to set down as a tramp, and whose clothes made her doubt the propriety of showing him the drawing-room. Being of Hibernian extraction, and not to be nonplussed, Nelly had adapted a happy medium, and seated the visitor in the largest hall chair, where ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... its wild and lonely situation, and from the entire dependence of the inhabitants upon their own resources. It was a partial clearing in the very heart of the forest. The house was built on the side of a hill, so steep that a high ladder was necessary to enter the front door, while the back one opened against the hill-side; at the foot of this sudden eminence ran a clear stream, whose bed had been deepened into a little reservoir, just opposite the house. A noble field of Indian corn stretched away into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... The front door bell pealed, and there sounded the rustle of Sadie's print skirt on the stairs. A man's voice murmured; Sadie answered, careless, "I'm sure I don't know. Wait. I'll ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... the church and had written a book on Scouting; a nameless Station-Master, whom they saw rarely when they accompanied Daddy to the London train; a Policeman, who walked endlessly up and down the muddy or dusty lanes, and came to the front door with a dirty little book in his big hands at Christmas-time; and a Tramp, who slept in barns and haystacks, and haunted the great London Road ever since they had once handed him a piece of Mrs. Horton's sticky ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Aunt Sarah was sitting up-stairs with the children, when the front door bell rang, and the servant came up and said: 'Mr. Robinson wants to see you, ma'am.' So aunt put on her best collar, and a little lace cap, and ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... of the hall was an archway, and going up a step and through this, the children found themselves in another little hall, with doors on two sides of it, and a staircase at the back, all completely cut off from the view from the front door. The stairs were so wide and shallow they tripped as they followed Miss Ashe up them. At the top they found themselves in a little gallery which ran all round with several doors ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... dangers of a draft, Sure Pop carefully closed the door after them, and stopped Bob from kicking a hole in the window at the head of the stairs. They knew which room it was—the farthest window from the front door—and flung themselves against the door so hard that it burst open and they fell headlong into the room. The little black-and-tan dog, barking more wildly than ever, had heard them coming and was dragging with all his might at something ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... this, Frederick was playing at the front door of the house, when a boy passing on the other side of the street, called out, "Hallo, Master Fred., have you put any more people's eyes out lately?" This was enough to make him angry. He immediately picked up a large stone, and chasing the boy some distance, threw it at him with all ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... chimney's stubborn central locality. The grand objection with her is, that it stands midway in the place where a fine entrance-hall ought to be. In truth, there is no hall whatever to the house—nothing but a sort of square landing-place, as you enter from the wide front door. A roomy enough landing-place, I admit, but not attaining to the dignity of a hall. Now, as the front door is precisely in the middle of the front of the house, inwards it faces the chimney. In fact, the opposite wall of the landing-place is formed solely by the ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... and put a shawl round him, and go out through the front door. There is some one standing there you ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... cramp in this leg had kept off five minutes longer," he said, "I would have reached that big hole, and then, if I could have climbed over the top of the rocks, I could have come down on the other side to the front door, and asked Maka to get me my clothes, so I would not have had to swim back ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... The big double front door was wide open, and straight through the big, wide hallway and at the entrance of the dining-room, a sword—a long cavalry sabre—hung with a jaunty gray cap on the wall. Under them stood a boy with his hands clasped behind him and his chin upraised. The lad could see the bullet-hole through the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... smartly-attired page. He either could not or made no attempt to inform me whether there was any one at home, but, leaving me alone in the dark hall, ran off down a still darker corridor. For a long time I waited in solitude in this gloomy place, out of which, in addition to the front door and the corridor, there only opened a door which at the moment was closed. Rather surprised at the dismal appearance of the house, I came to the conclusion that the reason was that its inmates were still abroad. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... a large square building, three stories high, with seven front windows to each of the upper stories, and three on each side of the large door on the ground floor. Eight stone steps of great width led up to the front door; but between the top step and the door there was a square flagged area of considerable space; and on the right hand, and on the left, two large whitewashed lions reclined on brick and mortar pedestals. An enormous range of kitchens, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... opened the front door of his house in Orange, closed it softly behind him, and stood looking about the hall as ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a good roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their places and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block of wood suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking low. They wondered whether there were anybody ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to think of something to say, but before the right thing occurred he heard Cameron's cheerful whistle cut off by the closing of the heavy front door. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... was closed, and in a few moments the old man came out at the front door. He carried the rifle on his shoulder, but Harley attributed the fact to his haste at the mention of ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... church it is still red and mossy and lichened. The cottages are oddly built to suit the sloping ground, for the road to the church rises on a hill, and necessitates different levels for foundations and stone pathways. One of the cottages has an outside staircase to its front door, for what reason ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dog of the Scroggses was somewhere else, gorging himself on another unfortunate, and I got to the front door all right. I rang the bell. Some one opened the door. It was Judge Scroggs. He looked at me as one might look at a bug which had wandered on to the table and was trying to climb ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... walking up the steps to his front door; they were so narrow; they creaked as though they were ready to fall down; and he was always afraid he would meet some blind people. An oculist lived on the first floor, and he had often seen sightless ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... oppose us, and now, setting spurs to our horses, we galloped over the private way, which ran along the side of a gentle hill until one end of the mansion came into view. It seemed likely there was no suspicion who we were, for a man digging in the garden, stood up and took off his cap to us. The front door looked like the Gothic entrance of a church, and I sprang from my horse and knocked loudly against the studded oak. An old man opened the door without any measure of caution, and I stepped inside. I asked him who he was, and he ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... moment he felt only the excitement of the adventure. Stuffing a piece of candle and a box of matches into his pocket, he crept downstairs more quietly than he had ever moved in his life before, and through the stone passage to the kitchen, for the front door, when opened, grated on the stone floor, and made a noise which could not fail to rouse the whole household. Everything, looked strange and uncanny in the dim light, but Paul was too anxious and eager ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... grandmother was something more than a mere expert in social craft, would have been woman of the world had not circumstances compressed her to its petty department of fashionable society. Before Craig had cleared the front door she was respecting him, even as she raged against him. Insolent, impudent, coarsely insulting—yes, all these. But very much a man, a masculine force; with weaknesses, it was true, and his full measure of the low-sprung's obsequious snobbishness; but, for all that, strong, persistent, concentrated, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... sat round the tea-table, talking gaily together, and then John left us, reluctantly enough; but he always made a point of going to the tan-yard for an hour or two, in my father's stead, every evening. Ursula let him out at the front door; this was her right, silently claimed, which nobody either jested at ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... spoiled his Christmas for him, albeit he dissembled to the uttermost, lest she should discover what he had done, and supposed himself to have learned. His mind was made up to keep watch for the priest that very night by his own front door. So to the lady he said:—"I have to go out to-night to sup and sleep; so thou wilt take care that the front door, and the mid-stair door, and the bedroom door are well locked; and for the rest thou mayst go to bed, at thine own time." "Well and good," replied ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... from the table in the hall, Max shouldered his fishing-rod, which he had left there behind the front door, ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... front door of the store, above which the owner had his quarters. After an interval, during which the foreman had pounded insistently with the butt of his revolver, an upper window opened and a voice demanded to ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... you an ash tray." I went into the kitchen and got one of the ash trays from the top shelf and brought it back into the living room. Just as I put it down on the arm of the couch next to His Grace, the buzzer announced that there was someone at the front door downstairs. ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... With an almost paralyzing premonition of disaster he ran as quickly as possible towards Park Crescent. The Marylebone Road was strewn with glass, and a policeman—every one else had taken shelter—was ringing and knocking at his front door to ascertain the damage and possible loss of life. Michael let both of them in with his latch-key. In the hall the butler was lying prone, stunned by a small statue which had been flung at him ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... ascended the bright bow of steps. As we entered the wide hall, my heart thumped so violently that I hurriedly buttoned my coat lest the little girl should hear the sound and turn indignantly to accuse, me of disturbing the peace. Then as the front door closed softly behind us, I stood blinking nervously in the dim green light which entered through the row of columns at the rear, beyond which I saw the curving stairway and the two miniature yew trees at its foot. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... will naturally be anxious to know how I am progressing with my enquiries; and it is also desirable that we should meet and confer together from time to time: therefore our meeting-place had better be here. But do not enter by the front door, as you did this evening, lest someone, knowing you by sight, and aware of your friendship for Don Hermoso—who, you must remember, is a suspected man— should see you, and the fact of our acquaintance thus become known. When you have occasion to call upon me—which I trust, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... rather took to me, and when on the coming of Lieutenant Pendleton I naturally tried to make myself scarce, the colonel took me into his study to show me the service pistol that they used in his day. And when finally I took my leave of him, on my way out (missing the front door and blundering into the parlor) I ran into the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... sleep there. It's straight on to the Juniper clump, the front door is." He laughed viciously, grimly. "Outside or inside, I'm on to the Juniper clump. Walk into the parlor?" he added, and drew open a rough-made door, so covered with green cedar boughs that it seemed of a piece with the surrounding ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... near. I opened it and saw that it was the entrance to a small dark lumber room. I pushed the old man in, turned the key in the lock, and ran downstairs. The wife was still unaccountably absent. I opened the front door, and trembling, exhausted, drenched in perspiration, found myself in the open air. Every nerve was shaken. At that terrible moment I was not in the least master of myself. My one desire was to fly from the hideous place. I had just ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... came and he presented himself at the Stillmans' house, and lifted the big iron knocker on the front door, its clang sounded loud enough to wake the dead, and his heart was going like a trip-hammer. Mary Stillman met him at the door, and her welcome was so cordial he couldn't understand it. He wasn't much used ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... and she determined to do this at the first opportunity. Now, however, she unselfishly forgot herself in her effort to alleviate her aunt's distress. With a strong sense of relief she heard Haldane go out, slamming the front door after him. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... little trepidation on this account that he rang the bell at the front door of Glenfield. A few minutes or an hour or two would settle the momentous question, and decide whether or not all the family, as well as Florry, would take passage in the Bellevite for ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... them choose to run the risk of loss, they deserve very little sympathy if the chance goes against them. Last year an unregistered letter containing a cheque was alleged to have been stolen in the post. It was found, however, to have been duly delivered by being pushed under the front door, and afterwards to have been torn in pieces by some puppies inside the house. The fragments were in the end discovered in the straw of the dog-kennel. Now, had the sender only spent 2d. in registering this letter, a receipt would have been ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... The front door opened, and Jean and her father came out. Derry's heart leaped as he heard her laugh. Then her clear voice, "Isn't it a wonderful night to walk, Daddy?" and her father's response, "Oh, ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and stood in front of the house. The shutters on the lower floor were closed, and the windows above were curtainless and begrimed with dust. A notice "To let," stared out from a board beside the front door, and the once cosy little front garden was ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being very rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma',' being so much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother' had got to be much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared Orlando Furioso, "suppose there ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... descended the last step of the great staircase, and drifted slowly across the hall in the direction of the front door. Jock, following, pressed a little too closely against her, and turning, Toni saw, the faithful little friend whom she was about to leave gazing at her with a human appeal ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes |
