"Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, in his fussy, dictatorial way, divesting himself of his heavy motor-coat, and preparing to act as cicerone. 'This place is thrown open once a week to the public; and although this isn't a visitors' day all sorts of people come to visit Bowshott on the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... fussy Flamingo, Who remarked to his family, "By jingo! I think I would go To that animal show, But they all talk such ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... music?" asked his mistress, knitting as she spoke. "He came from Germany; there's where you get the best singers. Some canaries won't sing before company and some won't sing alone; they are fussy,—I call it pernickitty. Why, I had one with a voice like a flute; but I happened to buy some new wall-paper, and she didn't like the looks of it, and after that she never ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... a magazine article just the kind of intellectual stimulus they need. What probably most wears on a clergyman's nerves are his pastoral duties, which do not consist simply in consoling people in great trials, but in listening to their fussy accounts of small ones. Nine-tenths of a minister's patients, like a doctor's, do not know what is the matter with them, and consult a physician largely because they take comfort in talking to ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... of K. (they now say Kitchener of Kaos) is a general colossal failure. But the prevailing opinion is that his raising of the new army has been good work but that he has failed with the task of procuring munitions. As for Churchill, he's too restless and erratic and dictatorial and fussy and he runs about too much. I talked with him at dinner last night at his mother's. He slips far down in his chair and swears and be-dams and by-Gods his assertions. But his energy does interest one. An impromptu meeting in the Stock Exchange to-day voted confidence in K. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Viola!" said the lad, in a tone of brotherly tolerance. "You are in no more danger—now—then if you were in bed. Though I admit it might have been rather fussy if we hadn't met you!" he added, with a ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... talk with his mother, he boarded a Key West steamer just as it was leaving its New York pier. He sat on the deck and watched busy ferry-boats in the river, fussy tugs and chug-chugging launches in the harbor, and the white-winged yachts and great ocean steamers in the lower bay. He looked back from the Narrows upon the receding city, to the east upon Coney Island with its pleasure palaces, and to the southwest upon the great curve of Sandy Hook. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... picture to finish, which he hoped to get ready in time to be a New Year's present, since Olga had insisted on Lucia's being done first. He had certainly secured an admirable likeness of her, and there was in it just all that his stippled, fussy representation of Lucia lacked. "Bleak December" and "Yellow Daffodils" and the rest of the series lacked it, too: for once he had done something in the doing of which he had forgotten himself. It was by no means a work of genius, for Georgie was not possessed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... me, namely, that they might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things—one who, moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for certain labours—once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... away the old man, not without some slight compunction. "But in my opinion she's too dark for such somber dresses. I've told her so a score of times." Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole bill and be done ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Soprano flirted. He gave her a ribbon and she promised to marry him. Just a bluff! And then he wanted his ribbon back, but she had already made it into garters, and when he tried to take them by force she boxed him smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no war at the time and anyway his "mother wouldn't let him"—the ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... "Don't worry your fussy old self," said Josephine cheerfully; "nobody really believes in me, but Judy never forgets. We'll put the wig with our own fair hands on Molly Seaton's head. Come on, Judy, and see if Cathy's ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... apparently too scared to run, with Teddy, like Fate, grimly at their heels, steadily "pointing" them off the premises. We were a little anxious, therefore, as to how Teddy would take our little terrier, with his fussy, youthful self-importance, and eternal restless poking into other folks' affairs. But Teddy, as we might have told ourselves, had had a long and varied experience of terriers, and had nothing to ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river. The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that the poetry of the future ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... they seem to think of it so. Once or twice, when I've paid calls with mamma, they were so fussy and show-off. You know ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... crushes"; they never pinned on their audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere. They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff; their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. Baxter, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... her hair a new way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of cherry coloured velvet across her forehead, but she was wearing the first ankle watch ever seen in Red Gap. I couldn't begin to tell you the fussy improvements them ladies had made in themselves—and all, mind you, for the passing child of Nature who had never paid a bill for 'em ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Vergennes in rendering aid to America, which Franklin would not believe, or could not see. Nor were the relations of Adams very pleasant with the veteran Franklin himself, whose merits he conceived to be exaggerated, and of whom it is generally believed he was envious. He was as fussy in business details as Franklin was easy and careless. He thought that Franklin lived too luxuriously and was too fond ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... annoyed. In her disgust with her father and her anxiety to attract David's notice, she had so entirely forgotten his religious delinquencies, that it seemed fussy and intrusive on Dora's part to make so much of them. She instinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a tone of proprietary interest. It was not Dora that was ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to have Pot Pool again for the evening. Again it was dull, with an incipient drizzle as we started out at six o'clock. The fish were now rising, at any rate, in my pool. At the very entrance to it, which was, in fact, the connecting run from The Rocks, I killed, after a fussy tussle and plenty of leaping out of the water, a grilse of 4 lb.; and we had barely rowed out into the stream when a fish of 6 lb. or 7 lb. leaped head and tail out of the water at my fly without touching it. The overcast character ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the novelist's characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each one growing from within and not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... methods he pursued in the management of the house were the outcome of a naturally malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exactly the same thing. And here, again, "The Logicians" seem to me to take much too humble a position. When they are putting the final touches to the grouping of their Proposition, just before the curtain goes up, and when the Copula——always a rather fussy 'heavy father', asks them "Am I to have the 'not', or will you tack it on to the Predicate?" they are much too ready to answer, like the subtle cab-driver, "Leave it to you, Sir!" The result seems to be, that the grasping Copula constantly gets a "not" that had better have been merged ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... hostility. Why, even that old man was a complication! Nay, he was the worst thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy being so fussy! Standing on her dignity when she'd give her soul for happiness! And then Alf being so ... What was Alf? Well, Alf was stupid. That was the word for Alf. He was stupid. As stupid as any stupid member of his immeasurably stupid ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... "duties" which the World's voices make so clamorous! It may be that our sense of their greatness and remoteness produces a certain "humility" in us, and a certain mood of "waiting on the Spirit," not altogether encouraging to what this age, in its fussy worship of energy, calls "our creative work." Well! There is a place doubtless for these energetic people, and their strenuous characters, and their "creative work." But I think there is a place also for those who cannot rush about the market-place, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the tea table. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... described as a mental quicksand. There is something in the atmosphere which makes the most industrious man contentedly idle. Here the nervous, irritable, fussy individual, who for years has never known what rest meant, and who has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman described as "innocuous desuetude." The balminess of the air, which is at once warm and invigorating ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... over the training and care of the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman—e.g. to a boy's pranks—causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... mean that, Dunny," I said firmly, continuing my dinner. It was a good dinner; we had consulted over each item from cocktails to liqueurs, and we are both distinctly fussy about food. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... apt to make when we get old and step out of the high road of life. He found out that his son did not appreciate his advice, and that Mrs. Tom cared still less for his frequent appearances. Indeed, he himself once saw her bounce out of the shop as he entered, exclaiming audibly, "Here's that fussy old man again." Tozer was an old man, it is true, but nobody (under eighty) cares to have the epithet flung in his teeth; and to be in the way is always unpleasant. He had self-command enough to say nothing about it, except in a very modified shape to his ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... call the notes of this bird sad; but it only seems so from our point of view; for he is a happy, fussy little bird, and I dare say that when he calls he is only saying 'peek-a-boo!' to his mate on the other ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... opinion) was laid before a young conveyancer, who, having much less business than Mr. Mortmain, would, it was thought, "look into the case fully," though receiving only one-third of the fee which had been paid to Mr. Mortmain. And Mr. FUSSY FRANKPLEDGE—that was his name—did "look into the case fully;" and in doing so, turned over two-thirds of his little library;—and also gleaned—by note and verbally—the opinions upon the subject of some half-dozen of his "learned friends;" to say nothing of the magnificent ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... to be a picnic. This word tickled one of the drunken officers so much, that suddenly he let his loose legs relapse and clapped his spurs into his animal, which reared horribly, and in the end sent him on the ground. I thought I should die of laughter. Then everybody became more and more fussy, because they were afraid of L——, but, fortunately, the general started off ahead, muttering to himself, and we rode after him like some procession. It seemed to me very absurd, and at that point I lost all confidence in the success of the expedition. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... redden, and Lisle, looking around at the sound of a footstep, saw Marple standing a pace or two away. He was a fussy, bustling man, and he ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... my dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave the boy to me a bit. Good ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... guess it who read all these trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, though this was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a modern progressive ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waistcoat with birds'-eye spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you have come, then. Got your ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and cream-tarts on which the expected visitor was to be regaled. Of course she kept on telling herself all the time what a foolish old woman she was, and how silly Mr Ogilvie would think her if he only knew of all her little fussy preparations; men who had knocked about the world hated to be fidgeted over and made much of, and no doubt it was quite natural they should. And then she went bustling off to impress on Martha the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... supposed there were doctors in Sunderland who would do her more good than I should. She doesn't seem to be able to understand why I should want to go. She says it's fussy." ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... to Boston and to school, where old acquaintances were renewed and new ones made. The Misses Cabot welcomed her with fussy and dignified condescension. Barbara Howe hugged and kissed her and vowed she had not seen a girl all summer who was half ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... amazingly. "I'm so glad," she said in a relieved tone. "I suppose I seem fussy, but now and then the problem of help gets to be a regular nightmare. Once or twice lately I've been afraid I was making a terrible mess of things, and might, after all, have to accept one of the offers I've had for the ranch. I should hate dreadfully ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... travelling on business, and was afraid she would be nervous. He had been very persistent on this point; but in whispered conversations she had persuaded him out of his objection. It was one of those pretty, fussy little houses; and it seemed to have taken her fancy. Added to which, according to her argument, it was just within their means, which none of the others were. Young Hepworth may have given the usual references, but if so they were never taken up. The house was sold on the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... so abominably pretty you wouldn't be so fussy. Most young ladies would consider the good-looking and only son of a millionaire absolutely perfect ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... fatuously on. "You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish—to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... power charily, however, or rather with principle. He quietly insisted on his rights; but as he granted hers without a word, and never irritated her by small, fussy exactions, good-breeding prevented any serious clashing of wills, and their married life had passed in comparative serenity. As time elapsed her will began, in many ways, to defer to his quieter and stronger will, and then, as if life ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... fact as this fussy little personage was on the ground, taking in his breakfast and giving out his song, he was a different bird when he got above it. Alighting on the wren's brush heap, for instance, he would bristle up, raising the feathers on head and neck, his red eyes ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... bear his weight—with many falls, of course—and then he began to scurry about on his feet. His usual style of progression at this period was to take from two to four abrupt, jerky strides, rather with the air of a fussy and corpulent old gentleman who had to catch a train, and then to subside in a confused lump, on chest and nose, with tail waggling angrily in mid-air. This was not so annoying to the grey pup as one might suppose, because, though generally in ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... sorely disappointed in her boy, and made remarks to the effect that if she had looked after his bringing up instead of entrusting him to an indulgent grandmother, affairs at this time would not be in their present state. Parents are apt to be fussy: they can not wait. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight—all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... is not so excusable. His fussy vanity is an inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride. His obtrusive affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and his mustaches brushing the peak. And by ten o'clock we were quit of Genoa; the last lean, blue-chinned official had left our decks; the last fruitseller had been beaten off with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from his boat; the last passenger had come aboard at the last moment—a fussy graybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatman over half a lira. But at length we were off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed, and Raffles and I leaned together over the rail, watching our shadows ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the bravery of the kingbirds to be sure that the end was not yet. Also, I longed to watch the restless pair whose ups and downs I had found so interesting. I should like to see the orchard oriole in the role of a father; a terribly fussy one he would be without doubt. Above all, I most desired to see the infant orioles, to know if they begin their quarrels in their narrow cradle, and if their first note is a scold. But the troubles of this courtship had, like the wars of Augustus and Arabella in a ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... homekeeping sisters and to their husbands also for that matter; and the fact that he could at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... printing of music is an expensive and fussy piece of work, too. It must be accurately done, and done by men who are experienced in that special kind of work. One misprint will cause a discord and throw the music out of sale. Of course if a song turns out to be popular, a small fortune is often reaped from it; ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... been standing before them with a composure which impressed Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little more erect, as he replied, with an ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... traveller. He felt he had indeed been "led" to this plain, brown-faced, broad-shouldered lady, when he remembered how nearly, after her curt nod from a distance had engaged him, he had responded to the blandishments of a fussy little woman, with many more bags and rugs, and a parrot cage, who was now doling French coppers out of the window of the next compartment. "Seven pence 'apenny of this stuff ain't much for carrying all that along, I DON'T think!" grumbled his mate; and Jane's young porter ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... save for one fact—at the Staatsbahnhof, at Vienna, just before our train left for Budapest, a queer, fussy little old man in brown entered and was given ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... that diverting piece "High Life below Stairs" seem almost flat. The simperings of these gentry, their airs and conceit, we may be sure, obtain now. Once coming out of a Theatre, at some fashionable performance, through a long lane of tall menials, one fussy aristocrat pushed one of them out of his way. The menial contemptuously pushed him back. The other in a rage said, "How dare you? Don't you know, I'm the Earl of —-" "Well," said the other coldly, "If you be a Hearl, can't you be'ave ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... good enough," said Mr. St. Clair, "you're too fussy about trifles, Isabel. Come, children, scurry off to bed, you'll get no beauty ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... Cowan idly lolled by this while the Wilbur twin sprawled in the scented grass at his feet. He well knew he should not be on the ground in his Sunday clothes. On the other hand, if the gypsies stole him they would not be so fussy as Winona about his clothes. None of them seemed to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... them, or giving an order, he repeats several times in succession, with a puzzled, far-away air: 'What's your name?... what, what's your name?' with extraordinary sharp emphasis on the first word, which gives the phrase a rather close resemblance to the call of a quail. He is very fussy and terribly close-fisted, but manages his land badly; he had chosen as overseer on his estate a retired quartermaster, a Little Russian, and a man of really exceptional stupidity. None of us, though, in the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky had bored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight. She seemed to be tired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face had not even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which one sees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of the presence of an unknown ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to say that Angela was as fussy as a hen with one chick was to speak but very mildly of her condition. She looked on it as the foundation of her fortunes, and, surely, she thought, no one had ever owned such a beautiful ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the fussy pomposity of the Queen's jubilee, the voice of the thinkers has not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... most important developments of the Salissa mystery would take place. He wanted to know what Steinwitz was doing, and whether Konrad Karl was still enjoying his spendthrift holiday in Paris. He would have liked to be in a position to watch the fussy activities of Sir Bartholomew Bland-Potterton. Later on I was able to tell him something, not of Steinwitz or Konrad Karl, but about Sir Bartholomew. It was impossible to live in London during the latter part of July without perpetually bumping against Bland-Potterton. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... stretch of rollicking, tumbling, buoyant waters between bank and bank, only one piece of river-craft could be seen. This pushed onward, cleaving through the little billows in the teeth of the morning breeze. It was a tiny naphtha launch—a horrid, fussy, smoking little thing, cutting through breeze and water, and diffusing a scent of oil and greased iron in the pure and radiant air. A white bird on the bank looked at it, and rose with a startled note of alarm, and a flight of lovely-salmon-coloured colleagues followed. The others merely looked ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... difficulties about that," he said. "It happens that David is very fussy about his guns, always cleans them himself, you know, and won't let another soul touch 'em. And though he keeps them in the gunroom like the rest of us, he's got his own particular glass-fronted cupboard which he keeps the key of himself. My uncle and I share one between us, and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... was a kindly little man, with an absurd fussy manner full of importance, as so many kindly little men have. Is it by some gentle providential dispensation that the physically insignificant are so often ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... were fighting and shouting for the possession of the best peep-hole to see through. On the spot where I had heard the cry for help from the burning room, on the spot where the panic-stricken servant had dropped on his knees, a fussy flock of poultry was now scrambling for the first choice of worms after the rain; and on the ground at my feet, where the door and its dreadful burden had been laid, a workman's dinner was waiting for him, tied up in a yellow ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of ugly dispositioned animals, who are always in a ferocious mood, just like certain ill-tempered human beings, who believe everything and everybody is trying to injure them. The common shrew, for example, is noisy, bold and fussy. He seems to delight in calling attention to himself by his grunty, squeaky voice. He advertises himself as a bad animal; and bad he is, for his terrible odour prevents other animals from coming near. Horses and mules are at times quite ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... any other human being, even the beloved brother Russell. No, no; she would never ask him for such a thing, that honorable, high-minded, hero-uncle, with his scorn for everything that was contemptible or mean; "fussy," Percy had called him, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... he used to speak of those who had been kind to him (such as his publisher, Mr. John Murray for instance) to show that no one could be more loyal or more grateful than he who has been depicted as the incarnation of all that is spiteful, fussy, and mean. There is no need for the world to be told here that the author of "Lavengro" is a delightful writer, and one who is more sure than most authors of his time to win that little span of life which writing men call "immortality." But if ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... A fussy devil, the room-clerk! He knew perfectly well that Archie found his room satisfactory. These chappies gassed on like this so as to try to make you feel that the management took a personal interest in ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... one was listening to Gadabout. Any further fussy complaining of this little craft was drowned by the Commodore reading aloud. He had bethought him of a book containing some chapters on Brandon that we had got from the manor-house. And reading made us hungry; and there were two apple ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... when I saw it; and though they were amusing, the beach was spoiled. The hotel rooms were close and hot; I missed all the dainty freedom and purity of my own home; the people I saw were, it seemed to me, entirely in keeping with the rooms; that is, they were stiff and fussy, not quiet and busy. They were busy after their own fashion, indeed; but it always seemed to me busy about nothing. The children I saw too did not attract me; and I fear I did not attract them. I was sober-hearted ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... join some acquaintances in Switzerland. Luckily her trustee and would-be lover, Bill Chester, proposed to come out and join the party there. That was something to look forward to, for Sylvia was very fond of him, though he sometimes made her angry by his fussy ways. Chester had not approved of her going to Paris by herself, and he would certainly have shaken his head had he known of ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over, and all the leaf butterflies in the world ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... auctioneer, sat with his clerk at the end of the table, arranging his papers and unrolling his map of the property. He was a fussy little man, and made a great pother because the map as soon as unrolled started to roll itself up again. He weighted one corner with the inkpot, and for a second weight reached out a hand for one of three hyacinth vases which decorated the centre ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is a sage, and understands the Great Way (tao)." On the other hand, only fifty years before this, when in 538 Ts'u, with Tsin's approval, first tried her hand at durbar work, the king was horrified to hear from a fussy chamberlain (evidently orthodox) that there were six different ways of receiving visitors according to their rank; so that Ts'u's ritual decorum could not have been of very long standing. The following ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... large English yachts adds quite a new feature to every grand regatta. Here again, however, the French navy led the way, and England follows somewhat tardily. The French fleet at the Cherbourg review, some years ago had a swarm of these fussy little creatures buzzing about the great anchored iron-clads. English steam-launches were built to carry each a gun, and so they are bluff and slow. Our Admiralty declined to allow a race between these and the French launches in Paris, else, no doubt, the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... dear, there you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit of. I often wish we were back in the quiet, times when dear old Hutton was rector, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac where—with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses because they can think of nothing else to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... a deep inhale.] Gee, they're fussy in this dump, ain't they? [She puffs, staring at the table top. MARTHY looks her over with a new penetrating interest, taking in every detail of her face. ANNA suddenly becomes conscious of this appraising stare—resentfully.] Ain't nothing wrong ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... a merry sound. None of the boys had a truly jovial look, nor was it to be expected of them. Tom was solemn as an owl, Harry fussy; Dan was grinning in a sickly sort of way, as was Dave Darrin. Greg Holmes, utterly silent, stood with his fists clenched, thinking how he would like to be able at this moment ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... know what to suggest in that case," smiled Lester. "The old gentleman oughtn't to be so fussy." ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... physical possession, the divine glow had paled about his brow. She had found him only a man, self-conscious, egotistic and domineering. He had many personal habits she did not like. He was overfastidious in his dress, and critical and fussy about her lack of order in housekeeping. He was finicky about his food. He hated tea, declaring the odour made him sick. She felt this a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the old fortune-teller. Now and then she heard voices and laughter, and it gave her such a lonely, left-out feeling that she could scarcely keep back the tears. She knew that the others thought she was fussy and overparticular, and that helped to make her ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Bolsheviks ... Did I tell ye that Miss Reston sent me a grand feather-boa—grey, in a present? I've aye had a notion o' a feather-boa, but I dinna ken how she kent that. And this is no' yin o' the skimpy kind; it's fine and fussy and soft ... Here, did the Lord send Miss Jean a present?... I doot he's aff for guid. Weel, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without these attributes," ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and reached the hammock in the garden where Cecily lay. She liked a hammock, and her father could not stand china figures and vases on it, so that it secured her where to lay her head. Gainsborough was very fussy over the news; a deeper but quieter excitement glowed in Cecily's eyes as, listening to Sloyd, she feigned to pay no heed. She had designs on the check. Beauty unadorned may mean several things; but moralists ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to grant a deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished complete and habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that the place should be both habitable and hospitable. They were right, they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had returned home some time after midnight, with the Wyllyses; but the next morning she rose with the chickens, and before the October sun, to pursue, as usual, her daily labours. It was truly surprising how much Patsey Hubbard found time to do in a single day, and that without being one of your fussy, utilitarian busy-bodies, whose activity is all physical, and who look upon half an hour passed in quiet thought, or innocent recreation, as so much time thrown away. Our friend Patsey's career, from childhood, had been one of humble industry, self-forgetfulness, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... while I was there. I thought he was going to be aggrieved, but he was not with ME. If it is not a snobbish thing to say, he is rather proud of his son's choice. He was a bit too fussy and outspoken, and dear Peter got the fidgets wondering what he would say next; but I did not mind. He talked about building us a house, but Peter whispered to me that that would take too long, and that already he had one in his eye (I know it—a lovely place, with the prettiest grounds, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... report," she said. "Regulations require that each post-mortem be reported promptly and that a record of the Lani concerned be posted in the death book together with all pertinent autopsy data. Man Blalok is very fussy about proper records." She drew one of the chairs to a spot beside the desk and sat down, crossed her ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... across the desk. Forrester, though he supposed some people might be fussy about it, could see no objection whatever to the term Aphrodisiacs. A wild thought dealing with Spheres of Influence strayed into his mind, ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that she was seducing him from his work, while she would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again. Without it there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great artist.... It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to physical things like food and clothes and to care for him. Sometimes he would forget everything except food and clothes, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... morning to have a look at a guard. He found our one and only T. B. Ponks doing sentry. "Turn out the guard," was the order. "Eh?" was the response. "Where is the guard?" asked the flushed suite. "A dunno," said T. B. The suite was inclined to be fussy, but our Brigadier is essentially human. "Where are the other lads?" he asked genially. "They 'm in theer," said T. B., pointing to the entrance with no particular enthusiasm. The Brigadier and his staff made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... at their dress," said Jennie; "they are to the full as fussy and particular about it as girls; they have as many fine, invisible points of fashion, and their fashions change quite as often; and they have just as many knick-knacks, with their studs and their sleeve-buttons and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "I was dreadfully fussy while I was a woolly lamb," said Dorothy, "for it didn't feel good, a bit. And I wasn't quite sure, you know, that I'd ever get to be ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... said Fisher, "but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... the Aldwych Theatre in London. The Deveral household consists of old Mrs. Deveral, her middle-aged children—Agnes who is efficient, Emily who is muddle-headed, and Henry who is fussy—and Judy Deveral, her granddaughter. Rodney Walter, Henry's agent, is making love to Judy, and she prefers him to the young and unsophisticated Bobbie Forrester, who also loves her. It is Judy's eighteenth birthday, and her relations feel that it is ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule the Frogs! But modern Frogdom, which had champions able, Had read old-AEsop's fable, And of King Stork's appearance far from ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... bowie-knives, and were only separated after JOHN had inflicted on THOMAS ten mortal wounds and received from him one less. It is generally admitted that nothing could have been fairer than the conduct of the police, who formed a cordon round the duellists, and thus prevented the fussy interference which has so often brought similar affairs to a premature termination. The two coffins are to be of polished walnut-wood, and will be provided by the Friendly Society to which the two deceased belonged, as a last ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent for a few hours longer than usual: 'A sight of you, Mr Harding, is good for sore eyes;' how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn't have dined, or couldn't have breakfasted, or couldn't have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... some men—small, fussy, finicking fellows, with whom nature has made the irreparable blunder of sex—who are as troublesome in their endless interference as the narrowest-minded and most meddling women of their acquaintance; but the feminine characteristics ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler in ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was now established in a comfortable basket in a corner of the scullery. There she lay, looking like a ball of ermine, with her two ten-days old kittens snuggling up close to her. Josephine was a nervous, fussy mother, but she was devoted to her master, and he could do with her ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... is," said Aunt Marjorie in her fussy tones. "Judy, I hope Hilda is not going to encourage you in silly sentimental talk of that kind. You say your heart aches with pleasure. Really, my dear, I have no patience to listen to you. I should like to know what a child like you knows about heart-aches—you, ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... precincts of your nunnery.'[18] But it was useless for any bishop to order Madame Eglentyne to give up her dogs, she could not even be parted from them on a pilgrimage, though they must have been a great nuisance in the inns, especially as she was so fussy about their food. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Crowther, returning to his grievance. '"Substitute some athletic pursuit involving less danger to the general public: something more conducive to the preserving of law and order,"' he quoted, bitterly, with a clever imitation of the fussy little Doctor's pompous manner. 'Fancy giving up hare-and-hounds for some "pursuit" like croquet, or ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... will, won't consent to set one aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... at it or, being scaremongers, rabidly approve it—considered it a great shame and a great pity that the poor old man should thus victimise those closing years of his life which should have been spent in that honourable retirement which is the right place for fussy old people of both sexes and all ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... few minutes, she thought, by running down to the corral where Frank would probably stop and unload the few sacks of grain he was bringing, before he drove up to the house. Frank was very methodical in a fussy, purposeless way, she had observed. Twice he had driven to Echo since her father had been hurt, and each time he had stopped at the corral on his way to the house. So she closed the screen door behind her, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... wusser dan night owls," said the old woman. "Ef you keeps on wid dis settin'-up-all-night bizness, I boun' some er you gwine turn inter one'r dese yer big, fussy owls wid yaller eyes styarin', jes' de way li'l Mars Kit doin' dis ve'y minnit, tryin' ter keep hisse'f awake. An' dat 'mines me uv a owl whar turnt hisse'f inter a man, an' ef a owl kin do dat, w'ats ter hinner one'r ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction." We can only praise either as it is "clothed in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise the one by getting too much of the other. Confounded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. When people all about us are doing things by their own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regulation and discipline and the wholesome restraint ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... only Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long, dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double bow-knot, with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn bonnet, and eyes like black glass beads shining through in the bows of her horn spectacles, and her hymn-book in her hand ready to lead the psalm. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the midst stood two ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had to admit that probably all these things were really good for me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good for me—and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge against the undertaker. Life became ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... mountains alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world. Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful, fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no variation, neither ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... enough, but yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, tenax propositi, able to make out a life for himself and abide in it—'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this titillation and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is more true—and I intend by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole energies in reducing to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... road, sits upon his box in repose; and that repose inspires me with confidence in him; but if he should be constantly on the look-out for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, and constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence in him, and wish I were in ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... thrills. Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. Once while we were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked the road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, waiting for his next cue. The lady in pink satin had made a little dugout for herself under the track, and ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in possession of a great shooting in Morayshire. He had several photographs of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... settlement into a centre of mercantile activity. Seven years ago I journeyed down the Yukon towards Siberia and a problematical Paris in a small crowded steamer, built of roughly hewn logs, and propelled by a fussy little engine of mediaeval construction. We then slept on planks, dined in our shirt-sleeves, and scrambled for meals which a respectable dog would have turned from in disgust. On the present occasion we embarked on board a floating palace, a huge stern-wheeler, as ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... as were their ancestors on both sides. My mother was uniformly religious, but not fussy about it. I have seen her intensely happy, but never heard her shout. Her religion was a deep, smooth, current without fluctuation. My father was religious more by spells, but still he never went to extremes, and could never "get religion" ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... crown. Just once the noble head was lowered—as that of an ancient Greek philosopher to an inquisitive child—and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took note of the fussy movements ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Fussy old duck," murmured the barkeeper as he let the flame he had ignited die out, flicking the blackened ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... obstacles had attended his intrusion into the castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs. Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while talking to George carrying on two other conversations on topics of the moment), and he was past the censors and free for one night only to add his presence to the chosen inside the walls of Belpher. His duties ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of his joy was such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles—never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility—almost fussy about it. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... finished doing this, she was ready to have the Gu'un Dzan (Manchu headdress) placed on and pinned through the knot with two large pins. Her Majesty always dressed her hair first and then washed her face. She was as fussy and particular as a young girl and would give it to the eunuch if he did not get it just to suit her. She had dozens of bottles of all kinds of perfume, also perfumed soap. When she had finished washing her face, she dried it on a soft towel ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the stuffy people Lili Estradina won't be bothered with, there are days when I never lay eyes on Paul, and barely have time to be waved and manicured; but, apart from that, Raymond's really much nicer and less fussy than he was." ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... which he expected to spend the evening with the Grays he found it not a little difficult to keep his mind upon his work with the Judge, and that gentleman seemed to him extraordinarily particular, even fussy, about having every fact brought to him painstakingly verified down to the smallest detail. When at last he was released, and he rushed home in his car to dress, he discovered that his spirits were dancing as he could not remember having felt them dance for a year. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... sound of steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning herself ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... bred in it. He remembered how the old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent a few hours longer than usual, "A sight of you, Mr. Harding, is good for sore eyes;" how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn't have dined, or couldn't have breakfasted, or couldn't have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over the old bishop's face whenever ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... China Cat," said her sister Angelina. "She is so white that the least speck shows on her. Real white cats are very fussy about keeping themselves clean, so I do not see why a white China Cat should not be treated the same way. You dust the Nodding Donkey, Geraldine, and ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the library in his uncle's house, he began to be comforted by his luxurious surroundings, the same bright fire burned that Honor loved to see and the easy chairs and soft rich carpet suggested satisfaction to the most discontented. A few minutes of fussy preparations and the gloomy twain were immersed in dry business. Apart from the monotonous scratching of their hurried pens there was but an occassional short remark uttered until the welcome sound of the tea-bell broke the spell of sullenness ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... nervous fussy little man. Russians are not cowards, but Andrey Vassilievitch lost his wife last year. He was very devoted to her—very. He is miserable without her, they say. Perhaps he has come to ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Street poured out incessantly upon the bridge seemed ripe and good in her eyes. A traffic of copious barges slumbered over the face of the river-barges either altogether stagnant or dreaming along in the wake of fussy tugs; and above circled, urbanely voracious, the London seagulls. She had never been there before at that hour, in that light, and it seemed to her as if she came to it all for the first time. And this great mellow place, this London, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and dropped a bundle of picks and shovels which he was carrying to the gunners, who had begun the emplacements; the boyish Major dismounted, subduing his excitement with a dignified frown; and for a while he was very fussy and very busy, aiding the battery captain in placing the guns ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... a visit from Diana. Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her side, even to this pere prodigue, obeyed the summons promptly, with the full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... a fussy little woman, her hostess of the night before, on her way down the room stopped and ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... M. Rotsartz{3}, is doing a drawing of me. I go to Lady Bagot's hospital, where he is laid up, and sit to him in the intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have known so far. Lady Bagot is never bustled or fussy, nor even "busy," and her staff are excellent men, with the "Mark of ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... general clerical servant of all work. Mr. Mearns is a calm, rather bilious- looking, elderly man. There is nothing bewitching in his appearance; he looks like what he is—a quietly-disposed, evenly-tempered, Methodist minister. He is neither fussy, nor conceited, nor fond of brandishing the sword of superiority. He goes about his work steadily, and is as patient in harness as out of it. He has northern blood in his veins which checks impulsiveness and everything approaching that solemn ferocity sometimes displayed in Methodist ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... She was profoundly indifferent to what happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part, and at which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes, and in puffed Jeffries, solicitous as a fussy old ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... what I call a finished product of a wife. I'll never do it in the world. I can get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer's hen-house week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I'm due to put the old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this year. I'm thinking of buying him a hen farm to save myself trouble. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional parent has been created in the schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... returns to the charge and pays his respects to each member of the "ten tribes" in turn. The author's offense is found to consist largely of ignorant meddling. The publisher is too often ignorant, fussy, unskilled, pedantic, shiftless, and money-seeking, willing to make books unsightly if their cheapness will sell them. The printer is the scapegoat, and many books are spoiled in spite of his efforts, while he gets all the blame. But he is apt to have ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... cedar tree, the Queen Mother was growing restless and fussy. She knew that the Workers were raising some young Queens, and she tried to get to the royal cells. She knew that if she could only do that, the young Queens would never live to come out. The Workers knew this, too, ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... rich and costly clothes. In truth, he was in early life a good deal of a dandy. His clothes were made in London; and from his long letters to his tailor we know that he was fussy about their quality and their fit. Even while away from home fighting Indians and making surveys, he did not neglect to write to London for "Silver Lace for a Hatt," "Ruffled Shirts;" "Waistcoat of superfine scarlet Cloth and gold {67} Lace," "Marble colored Silk Hose," "a fashionable ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell |
