"Inopportune" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little is known of him. Letters found on his person prove his name to be W. Pfeiffer, and his residence Denver. His presence in Miss Moores house at a time so inopportune is unexplained. No such name is on the list of wedding guests, nor was he recognized as one of Miss Moore's friends either by Mr. Jeffrey or by such of her relatives and acquaintances as had the courage to enter the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... she would have to say to her aunts in her letter of farewell on leaving them would have to be thought out, too, so that no pursuit or inopportune prying into the truth ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Madrid newspapers made general comment upon the official explanation of the Maine's visit to Havana, and agreed in expressing the opinion that her visit is "inopportune and calculated to encourage the insurgents." It was announced that, "following Washington's example," the Spanish government will "instruct Spanish war-ships to visit a few ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... moreover, that my transportation could not supply me further than Harrisonburg, and if in penetrating the Blue Ridge I met with protracted resistance, a lack of supplies might compel me to abandon the attempt at a most inopportune time. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... huzza at some small performance with the bat burst from the multitude of relatives, and Randolph jumped wildly into the air to see what had happened. Sophy fetched up the sentence that had been already shaped; but she could not get it out. The occasion was, perhaps, an inopportune one. The contrast between her story and the display of fashion to which Randolph had grown to regard himself as akin would be fatal. She ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... timidity, he feared she would never say anything of the kind. Then, too, his conscientiousness stood in his way. Should he presume to take her to his poor house, even if she would come? No, no, he must not think of it; he must work and wait, and defer hope. This hour so opportune was also most inopportune,—such sorrow at home! He would not speak to-night,—O no, not to-night! And yet he could bear up against everything else, if she only cared for him! Such were his resolves, as she passed to and fro before him, trifling away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... to face the economic troubles of the government Jimenez disbanded part of the army and reduced military expenses. The moment was inopportune, for the implacable Haitians, who continued to consider Santo Domingo as Haitian territory in revolt, were preparing for another invasion. Soulouque, who had attained the presidency of the black republic, made a sudden incursion and marched victoriously as far as Azua. The Dominican government ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... Now you have really started on your wedding tour in the belief of all London, and all outside of London who take the Times; and all our world do take it. And now, if any rumor of this most inopportune disappearance of our bride should get out, why, it will never be believed! That is all! For has not the departure of the 'happy pair' been published in the Times? Yes, I am very glad of the news reporter's ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... house for the past week. My offers to take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma were continually taking place, and Ida seemed to be ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... with a vague feeling of irritation against this interruption, which seemed to her so inopportune, and in turning round she realized at once that her period of absorption must have lasted a good deal longer than she had had any idea of. She had walked straight across the marshes towards the little hillock on ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... A late train to Cairo caused us to arrive near midnight, an inopportune time for first impressions, but the memory of a former visit caused a pleasant anticipation of scenes to be revisited. A week, however, was too short a time in which to cover the ground, but by persistent effort on our ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... tongue was decidedly Hanoverian, with its repetitions, its catchwords—"That's quite another thing! That's quite another thing!"—its rattling indomitability, its loud indiscreetness. His speeches, made repeatedly at the most inopportune junctures, and filled pell-mell with all the fancies and furies that happened at the moment to be whisking about in his head, were the consternation of Ministers. He was one part blackguard, people said, and three parts buffoon; but those who knew him better could not help liking him—he meant ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... conversation; he let it transpire for Clementina's benefit that he had been to Los Gatos only on business, yet there was no opportunity for even a significant glance, and he had the added embarrassment of seeing that she exhibited no surprise nor seemed to attach the least importance to his inopportune visit. In a miserable indecision he allowed himself to be carried away by the high-flown hospitality of his Spanish hostess, and consented to stay to an early dinner. It was part of the infelicity of circumstance ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... polite urbanity, and girls would have kissed their playmates with gentle solemnity. They did their best to subdue little Alice, but that was impossible. The child would rush about the house at all unexpected and often inopportune seasons, like a furiously insane kitten and she would disarrange their collars too violently every evening when she ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... it, the curse of American social life, among a very considerable class of our people, is "perpendicular drinking''—that is, the pouring down of glass after glass of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of inopportune times, and largely under ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... brother was quite a blow. She felt the shame of it keenly, and some of the grief. To her, coming as it did just at a time when the company was being strengthened and she more importantly featured than ever, it was decidedly inopportune, for no one could help connecting her name ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... friends met him, except by accident. Ill-natured people say that was the reason she kept him so long. If one happened in while he was there, he was hustled into Anerton's study, and the husband mounted guard till the inopportune visitor had departed. Anerton, you know, was really much more ridiculous about it than his wife. Mary was too clever to lose her head, or at least to show she'd lost it—but Anerton couldn't conceal his pride in the conquest. I've seen Mary shiver when he spoke of Rendle as our poet. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... "at least I know he called it Stygian and Tartarean. But, as I was saying, he set Penkridge (who happened to be going round with the lists) to examine the cupboards, and see if by chance some inopportune rat had died there; and Penkridge, opening one of them where the floor was very rotten, and poking about with his foot, knocked a great piece of plaster off the great schoolroom ceiling, and was as nearly as possible putting his foot ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Mercury's racing gray and bearing the Mercury's silver insignia on his shoulder. The bend of his mouth was firmer, his dark-blue eyes had acquired the steady, all-embracing keenness of Gerard's—the gaze of all those men with whom the inopportune flicker of an eyelid may mean destruction. He was clothed with his virile youth as with a radiant garment, as he smiled across ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... gaily-coloured picture of King or Emperor, as the case might be; and with respect to the cash, not only was each willing to pay but to pay more than the other. Yet the Albanian is most mindful of tradition, and he is aware that his approach to the Slav in the Middle Ages was blocked by the inopportune arrival of the Turks; it is in the nature of man that the Albanian was more impressed by the brilliant young States of the early princes, with that barbarically sumptuous residence at Scutari (the Catholics of Scutari also being in the diocese of Antivari, which was under Serb domination) than, centuries ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... my own master for the rest of the day! Then with easier pace I went in search of some wild and desert spot in the forest, where there was nothing to show the hand of man, or to speak of servitude and domination; some refuge where I could fancy myself its discoverer, and where no inopportune third person came to interfere between nature and me. She seemed to spread out before my eyes a magnificence that was always new. The gold of the broom and the purple of the heather struck my eyes with a glorious splendour ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... were to be concentrated against the President, it became necessary just at this inopportune time to make good the terrible waste in the armies caused by expiration of terms of service and by the bloody campaigns of Grant and Sherman. Volunteering was substantially at an end, and a call for troops would have to be enforced by a draft. Inevitably ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... proper time, and the hay-making process be skilfully conducted, there will be but little difference, except in the amount of water, between the plants in their fresh and dry state; but owing to inopportune wet weather, and carelessness in manipulation, excellent herbage is not ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... dark And seeing you there, robed in that dazzling white Above these verdant gentlemen, I feel Like one that greets the gracious evening star Thro' a gap in a great wood. Is aught amiss? Why are you all so silent? Ah, my good, My brave Fitzwalter, I most fervently Trust I am not inopportune. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... irritable with all around her. In her anxiety to hear about Adam—what message he had sent and whether she could not go to see him—she had barely patience to listen to Mrs. Tucker's roundabout details and lugubrious lamentations, and, choosing a very inopportune moment, she broke out with, "What message has Adam sent, Mrs. Tucker? He's sent a message to me, I'm sure: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... this grand occasion, 533 voted for the definition (placet) and only two, one from Sicily, the other from the United States, voted against it (non placet). Fifty-five Bishops, who fully accepted the doctrine itself, but deemed its actual definition at that moment inopportune, simply absented themselves from this session. Finally, the Holy Father, in the exercise of his supreme authority, sanctioned the decision of the Council, and proclaimed officially, urbi et orbi the decrees and the canons ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... fully explained caused the attack to be fixed for the 23d; an inopportune delay, during which Americans were strengthening their still very imperfect defences. On the 23d the wind was unfavourable. On the 25th the Experiment, 50, arrived, crossed the bar, and, after taking in her guns ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... unfolded a long, small parcel; it contained a riding-whip. "I am afraid the moment is inopportune," he said; "and yet she will need it. Who knows ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... possibilities. The fitness might be due to numbers, as in a political election, or to tough fibre, as in a tropical climate. Of course a form of being that circumstances make impossible or hopelessly laborious had better dive under and cease for the moment to be; but the circumstances that render it inopportune do not render it essentially inferior. Circumstances have no power of that kind; and perhaps the worst incident in the popular acceptance of evolution has been a certain brutality thereby introduced into moral judgment, an abdication ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was conscious that his lack of response seemed both sullen and awkward, but he was for the moment tongue-tied. His habit of inopportune self-analysis had once more asserted itself. He could not understand the curious nature of his mistrust of this woman, nor could he understand the pleasure which her suggestion gave him. He wanted to refuse, and yet he was glad to be able to tell himself that he was, after all, but an ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again in IV. 303-309, offers his "inopportune tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean) influence." The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty does about the sconce ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... of a disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as ever against the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit of the state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the moment rendered the organization of such an army inopportune. A year earlier he would have strongly supported the plan. In fact, in opposition to Davis he had at that time, he said, urged an obligatory army which the States should be required to raise. The Confederate Administration, however, had defeated his ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Clay promptly acknowledged the ticket, and it was elected. Then followed the death of the President in office, the obnoxious vetoes of the newly installed President—Tyler—the division of the Whig party, the nomination of Mr. Clay at this late inopportune time and the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... quantity. Even upon a plate and carefully manipulated with a fork, it is given to erratic performances. When held between a thumb and forefinger, and bitten into, its possibilities are beyond conjecture. Miss Stetson appeared at a most inopportune moment (she usually did) and each girl rose to her feet, Beverly under the circumstances being the last to do so because she had no idea that Miss Stetson was anywhere near No. 10. Her tardy uprising brought about the inevitable result. Her teeth came together ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... far as the library door on his way to the station, when he suddenly remembered the news with which he was fraught when he entered the poor bishop's bedroom. He had found the moment so inopportune for any mundane tidings, that he had repressed the words which were on his tongue, and immediately afterwards all recollection of the circumstance was for the time banished by the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... North had, indeed, offered resolutions of conciliation. The measure amazed his own followers and was greeted by the Whigs with Homeric laughter. Offers of conciliation could scarcely have arrived in America at a more inopportune time,—the very moment almost when the battle of Lexington came like an alarm-bell in the night to waken men from the dream of peace. And the resolutions themselves had all the appearance of being a clever ruse designed to separate the Middle colonies from ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... brought out for me a certain impatience which I might otherwise have missed in those last words of hers. From Charley it brought out, I feel quite sure, the speech which (in some form) she had been expecting from him as her confederate in this unwelcome and inopportune interview with me, and which his less highly schooled perceptions had not suggested to him until ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... gate Russell met him. Eric felt the meeting inopportune; he was ashamed to meet his friend, ashamed to speak to him, envious of him, and jealous of his better reputation. He wanted to pass him by without notice, but Russell would not suffer this. He came up to him and took his arm affectionately. The slightest allusion to his late ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... whose contents he knew so well. "The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right in our pathway, and catching most of us,—all of us,—causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient opportunities, so that all human life is a jest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death; for I observe it never waits for us to accomplish anything: we may have the salvation of a country in hand, but we are none the less likely to die for that. So that, being a believer, on the whole, in the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prince from the Straits Settlements; priests without number from the northern counties; Scotch manufacturers; ladies wearied from the London season; artists, actors and authors, expected to do at inopportune times embarrassing things, and very many from Columbia, happy land, who go to Herridon as to Westminster—to ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Snelling were all detained in New York, it was Bob who brought the party home. In the meantime no opportunity had presented itself for broaching to the financier the subject of Willie's invention. The interval during the funeral rites was too inopportune, and Robert Morton had lacked both the inclination and the courage to break in upon such an occasion with an affair so sordid and unpleasant. He had hoped that during the return to the Cape some chance for a talk with the capitalist would ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... was never known; perhaps, with his strong arm round her, Nesta would have yielded then and there; but a most inopportune childish ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... point Mrs. Verne became deeply affected, and very much inclined to cry, but she thought such a course inopportune and availed farther provocation. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... he was not 'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a moustache. His uncle threshed him. 'She has a moustache, anyhow!' said this Galileo when ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... to draw up papers for a divorce?" said Mr. Middleton, gloomily. How was he going to get rid of this inopportune fellow? ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... upon your space due to the clash of opposing views of domestic politics is likely to be for the moment relaxed, you may, perhaps, not think it inopportune that attention should be recalled to a question of permanent international interest raised by the recent action of the Turkish Government in closing the Dardanelles to even ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... joyous word or two on her return. He had been able for the time being to forget all about Miss Forrest and the part he had been compelled to play in surrounding her with that web of evidence and suspicion, and now, at this most inopportune moment, here stood this gracious and graceful ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... taught to keep cool in moments of danger, and he realized that their lives depended entirely upon his handling of the great machine. They had descended below the level of the storm-cloud at a most inopportune moment. They were caught in the midst ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... not be inopportune to make a break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working intermittently at one ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... was infinitely rejoiced to find her entrance thus inopportune. "I only wished just to be sure it was not too ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... camouflaged her face in her furs and cried now and then. And occasionally Ilse Westgard tried the patience of the others by her healthy capacity for unfeigned laughter—sometimes during danger-laden and inopportune moments, and once in the shocking imminence ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... holding out her hand, "as I hope and mean to be—as I am your friend—promise that I will have no more to do with him than the barest courtesy demands. To tell you the truth, your coming this afternoon was a little inopportune. If you had been a single minute later, I honestly believe that he would have said ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to find that the natural affection, which a son should have for his father, had vanished with it. He had, on several occasions, made half-hearted attempts at a better understanding, but these attempts had unfortunately fallen on inopportune moments, when the old man was not particularly gracious toward the world in general, and latterly there had been silence between the two. The young man avoided his father as much as possible; he would not have remained at home, had it not been for his mother. Her steady, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... of recognition was thus thrust into the foreground of discussion at a most inopportune time. The Florida treaty had not yet been ratified, for reasons best known to His Majesty the King of Spain, and the new Spanish Minister, General Vives, had just arrived in the United States to ask for certain explanations. The Administration had every reason at this moment ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... dismay to find that far from attempting to assuage, he seemed determined, on the contrary, to irritate the wound. Well convinced by experience of the solidity of her virtue, he seized the present apparently inopportune occasion of testing it anew. Assuming great sternness of voice and manner, he told her it was easy to see that her virtue was only superficial, since she manifested so great a want of submission to God's will, and of faith in His providence, adding ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... at the McMurdochs' house, and as the object at present in view was that of a visit to her old home, from which the funeral of Sir Charles Abingdon was to take place on the morrow, Harley became suddenly conscious of the fact that his presence was inopportune. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the harbour without risking an attack. However, he permitted the judges of Hippo-Zarytus to admit three hundred soldiers. Then he departed to the Cape Grapes, and made a long circuit so as to hem in the Barbarians, an inopportune and even dangerous operation. His jealousy prevented him from relieving the Suffet; he arrested his spies, impeded him in all his plans, and compromised the success of the enterprise. At last Hamilcar wrote to the Great Council to rid himself of Hanno, and the latter returned to Carthage ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Party. Old Friends and New Friends. Gowing is a little annoying; but his friend, Mr. Stillbrook, turns out to be quite amusing. Inopportune arrival of Mr. Perkupp, but he is most kind and complimentary. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... crowned her folly by sending it to the King (Louis XIV.), with furious complaints against the Abbe for writing it without her knowledge, and for inflicting upon her such an atrocious injury as to mention this pretended marriage. Her letter and its enclosure reached the King at a very inopportune moment. Just before, he had received a letter, which, taken in connection with this of the Princesse des Ursins, struck a blow at her power of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... times came upon the Franck family. The rich pupils, who formed the young men's chief clientele, all left Paris, alarmed by the forebodings of the revolution of 1848. Just at this most inopportune moment, Cesar decided to marry. He had been in love for some time with a young actress, the daughter of a well-known tragedienne, Madame Desmousseaux, and did not hesitate to marry in the face of bad times and the opposition of his parents, who strongly objected ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... of Mrs. Bruce's profile, and her occasional smiles at him as she bent over her ugly work, not sufficient of an indemnity for his enforced silence, and chose to sneak over to the young people's side and enjoy himself too, as an inopportune and hearty guffaw from thence testified just at the wrong moment, when Mr. Webb had reached the culminating point of the Baroness' death, and was drawing tears from the ladies' eyes by the irresistible pathos of his voice,—why, Mrs. Upjohn owned in her heart ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... bringing a ship-load of money with him for the public treasury. If the laws were invalidated by the disregard of Bibulus and the signs of the sky, then the Cyprus mission had been invalid also, and Cato's fine performance void. Caesar's grand victories, the news of which was now coming in, made it inopportune to press the matter farther; and just then another subject rose, on which the optimates ran off like ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... another, how much more should we do so when asking for ourselves! And if persistence has such power with selfish men, how much more shall it avail with Him who slumbers not nor sleeps, and to whom we can never come at an inopportune moment, and who will give us because we are His friends, and He ours! The very ugliness of character ascribed to the owner of the loaves, selfish in his enjoyment of his bed, in his refusal to turn out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... feel sure he intended to make a short speech, as the multitude seemed to demand it. The President was bowing his acknowledgments to the large gathering, when someone, with that bad taste that always crops out at the most inopportune moment, yelled 'Hurrah for Cleveland.' A great many others, with bad taste, laughed. Harrison flushed to his temples, bowed ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... external distractions working to draw us away, one that we carry within, in our own vacillating wills and wayward hearts and treacherous affections and passions that usually lie dormant, but wake up sometimes at the most inopportune periods. Unless we keep a very tight hand upon ourselves, certainly these will rob us of this consciousness of being justified by faith which brings with it peace with God that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... account for myself, sir," was the stiff response. "I was summoned here to perform a wedding ceremony which your most inopportune arrival prevented. I am a man of peace, not of war, yet I cannot and ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... mothers say, "I try to visit school at least once each year." I wonder if they ever think of that one visit as an injustice to the teacher? Suppose that, as is quite probable, the visitor arrives at an inopportune moment, finding the children in the midst of work which won't "show off," or the air heavy with the echoes of a disciplinary encounter, or the children restless as the session draws to a close, or dull and listless from the heat of an unusually hot day. What the visitor needs ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... a psychological question, a matter of mental states. Feats of legal subtlety are inopportune, arithmetical exploits still more so. To emerge with the sum of 4s. 6-1/2d. as a minimum, by calculating on the basis of the mine's present earnings, from a conference which the miners and everybody else imagined ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... blockade was a legal and international question, and that upon the whole it had been considered by Her Majesty's Govt. as efficient, though doubtless many ships had been enabled to run it"; and "that at all events there could not be a more inopportune moment for mooting the question both of the recognition of the South and of the efficiency of the blockade. The time was gone by when such measures could, if ever, have been taken—for every mail brought news of expeditions from ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... and say yes? Why does an objectlessly lying devil make its inopportune entry into me? Through some misplaced and crooked false shame I answer, "Not at all! not at all! of course a few minutes one way or the other could not make much difference; I was only puzzled to know ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose thereof. In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there. How foolish and inopportune that mistletoe ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... PRIME MINISTER managed to get the House out of its hostile mood and to satisfy the majority, at any rate, that the measure was neither provocative nor inopportune, but a necessary precaution against the possibility that "direct action" on the part of extra-Parliamentary bodies might confront the country with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... officers commanding battalions had issued executive orders for the deployment, a well-sustained fire from the Boer trenches a few hundred yards away, at the foot of Magersfontein Hill, was suddenly poured into the serried ranks of the Highlanders. The brigade was thus assailed at a most inopportune moment, when in the act of changing from mass of quarter-columns into fighting formation, a manoeuvre which under the most favourable circumstances always requires time. To carry it out under the close range of magazine rifles was impossible. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... to relate how the deputy happened to appear at such an inopportune moment for Simon. The planter, after awaiting the return of Simon for over two hours, was informed by the saloon keeper to whom he appealed, that he had entrusted his money to Simon Suggs, and that his chances of ever seeing it again were poor indeed. ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... energy of the tribunes, notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius, and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If the people—out of respect for legality—took ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... suffered from the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the former's ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they were momentarily expecting her. All of ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... good for so short a time it wanted to prove by a shining example how it abhorred the lawlessness of its youth. At this inopportune moment Clanton gave himself up to be tried for ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... hand, but the moment was inopportune. My father had given his undivided attention to the shutters on the east windows. He walked swiftly over and drew them to, snapping a bolt to hold them in place. Then he turned and rubbed his hands together slowly, examining ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... Hereford, was now Duke of Lancaster. Richard, however, seized the lands which ought to have descended to him from his father. Every man who had property to lose felt that Lancaster's cause was his own. Richard at this inopportune moment took occasion to sail to Ireland. He had been there once before in 1394 in the vain hope of protecting the English colonists (see p. 265). His first expedition had been a miserable failure: his second expedition was cut short by bad news ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... watched by the anxious eye of William; until he thought (as it almost reached him, angrily muttering, with the subdued murmur of the flood, its disappointed expectations of a victim) that he was safe. But his self-gratulation, at this moment, was very inopportune; for, just as he uttered an exclamation of thankfulness at his supposed escape, the tree approached the broad and shallower part of the creek; when, suddenly throwing its upper end into the air with a convulsive leap, it threatened utter destruction to the two devoted and struggling objects in ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... than that of Pichegru; and those who were plotting the overthrow of the Consular Government knew that that measure could not be attempted with any chance of success without the assistance of Moreau. The moment was inopportune; but, being initiated in some secrets of the British Cabinet, they knew that the peace was but a truce, and they determined to profit by that truce to effect a reconciliation which might afterwards secure a community of interests. Moreau and Pichegru had not been friends ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing —"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... might recover him in time of need. While he stood deliberating where he should find a messenger, he saw Bradamante approach. That fair warrior had been parted from Rogero on their way to the abbey of Vallombrosa, by an inopportune adventure which had called the knight away. She was now returning to Montalban, having arranged with Rogero to join her there. To Bradamante, therefore, his fair cousin, Astolpho committed Rabican, and also the lance of gold, which would only be an incumbrance ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... returned to his seat. He was much agitated too, though doing all that was possible to conceal it. My inopportune arrival was evidently a great and unlooked-for vexation to him. He gave me the only look of passionate displeasure I have ever had from him, as he sat down again; ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... DEAR PUPIL:—Despite the fact that your manuscript score arrived at a time most inopportune, I having recently renounced all but my most pressing lessons to plunge myself entirely into an atmosphere of profound creation, I have conscientiously performed the task you imposed upon me. That this task proved very little worth while, I write ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... said quite low. Just at this moment Jimmy Anstice, with that exasperatingly inopportune way of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... lay beaten, drove him off the field and was all tenderness and devotion? She bobbed her head, hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might say. Just like females. They're riddles, not worth spelling. Then, drunk I'll get to-night, my pretty dear! the man muttered, soured by her inopportune staidness, as an opponent's bruisings could never ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... do so in Gladys's absence, but I dared not discontinue my visits entirely, for fear of Miss Darrell's remarks. To my surprise, I found her tete-a-tete with Uncle Max. She welcomed me with a great show of cordiality; but before I had been five minutes in the room I found out that my visit was inopportune, though Max seemed unfeignedly pleased to see me, and she had repeated his words in almost parrot-like fashion. 'Oh yes, I am so glad to see you, Miss Garston! it is so good of you to call when dear Gladys is away! Of course I know she is the attraction: we all ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... distinguished manner). I repeat that I am afraid to be most inopportune. I would rather not have heard, but since I have, it's my duty to say so. When I arrived I knocked several times, but I presume you could not have heard ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... at it!" cried the happy father, whose inveterate habit it was to address his wife and friends as if he had surprised them at an inopportune moment. Stealing up from behind, he lifted his daughter into the air, while a chorus of "Hello, old Nelson," hailed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... throat of the Caribbean extends a chain of islands which are really smoldering furnaces, with fires banked up, ever ready to break forth at some unexpected and inopportune moment. This group, commencing with Saba, near Porto Rico, and ending with Grenada, consists of ancient ash heaps, piled up in times past by volcanic action. For nearly one hundred years there has been not the slightest ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love,—there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... property? Could he have been there, then, by appointment, without the father's knowledge? Was this the common case of a clandestine assignation? Could the father have returned to the house unexpectedly, at an inopportune moment, and found his daughter there, closeted with a stranger—perhaps with a man who had already, for sufficient grounds, been forbidden the premises? Such things might be, in this world that we live in: he would be a bold man who would ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames. Her illness was one of those "to be continued" story kinds—better to-day, worse to-morrow—and she "took" to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune moments; and every time she "took" an indisposition she expected hubby to pull down the window curtains and go into mourning. But he, the hardhearted man, would continue to eat and smoke and sleep as though no volcanic lava were threatening to submerge ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection. And they would accompany their affability with all manner of inopportune memories of the wars in which France had been conquered. Everything in Germany—a monument, a railroad station, a simple dining-room device, instantly gave rise to glorious comparisons. "In France, you do not have this," "Of course, you never saw anything ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent merriment. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... ownership of the railways at its conventions of 1920 and 1921, President Gompers, who spoke against the Plan, was reelected and again reelected. And in obeying instructions to cooperate with brotherhood leaders, he found that they also thought it inopportune to press Plumb Plan legislation actively. So far as the railway men themselves are concerned, after the Railroad Labor Board set up under the Esch-Cummins act had begun to pass decisions actually affecting wages and working rules, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... they had all failed. It was not her fault, she had borne up as bravely as any woman could have done under the circumstances, had been as circumspect and guarded as it was possible to be, but from the moment of his inopportune arrival, some untoward event had occurred to thwart every project she had endeavered to carry ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... although they would have thrown a searchlight upon the sincerity with which Germany "passed on" the most important request of England and Russia for a little time to save the peace of Europe, and it strongly suggests the possibility that Count Berchtold's most inopportune absence in Ischl was to be the excuse for the gross discourtesy of refusing to give ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... keynote of Tasso's great epic, the Gerusalemme Liberata, many of the finest fictions of which were adopted with very little modification from the earlier work. His letter asking his father's permission to publish it came at a very inopportune moment. Bernardo was smarting just then under the disappointments connected with the reception of his own poem, the Amadigi. It produced little impression upon the general public; the copies which he distributed among the Italian ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... be inopportune to summarise here, Bienkowski's criterion for dating Roman busts, which is as follows: Augustan and Julio-Claudian epoch, head only rendered; Flavian, shoulders rendered but juncture of arms not indicated; the sculptors of Trajan's time included ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the naive tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sinkings of spirit, nameless and formless fears seemed to surround and haunt her. Once when she arose in the morning she felt an uncontrollable desire to cry, and frequently thereafter this feeling would seize upon her at the most inopportune times. Mrs. Gerhardt began to note her moods, and one afternoon she resolved to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Denisov had much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess—not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times: that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would again be unable to remember—yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the drawing room from ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... drawbacks in his opinion, however, were the slave-trade, and the power allowed the effete Portuguese of shutting up the country from all except a few convicts of their own nation. The time of his coming was inopportune; the disasters which, from inexperience, had befallen the Mission of the Universities, had a depressing effect on the minds of many at home, and rendered a new attempt unadvisable; though, had the Scotch perseverance and energy been introduced, it is highly ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... difficulty in applying the word simple to this. Nature must therefore triumph over art, not by its blind and brutal force as a dynamical power, but in virtue of its form as a moral magnitude; in a word, not as a want, but as an internal necessity. It must not be insufficiency, but the inopportune character of the latter that gives nature her victory; for insufficiency is only a want and a defect, and nothing that results from a want or defect could produce esteem. No doubt in the simplicity resulting ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... outside his answer was a safe one. Sharply the ashigaru repeated the fact of absence, and Sampei had no excuse not to leave. The excitement now was spreading to the front quarters of the yashiki. Fragments of talk showed him that his visit was most inopportune. Her ladyship had just died, and the household was in a buzz. When he would again speak to the gateman, the functionary's manner did not encourage it, Sampei took the hint of his cold unrecognizing eye and bowed in humble acknowledgment to all in going out the gate. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... and complicated. The system, as far as local practice and arrangements go, varies in almost every parish of England more or less; and, I repeat, it is almost impossible to deal with it successfully. We ought not to enter into the subject of the poor laws hastily, or at an inopportune period like the present. It will be better to wait till the country is restored to a state of complete prosperity, and then investigate the subject with a proper degree ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... evil-tempered monster, a self-righteous person, full of self- approbation—in fact you were the Beast of this pious Apocalypse. Your friend Dr. Lind was an embittered and scurrilous apothecary, "a bad old man." But enough of this inopportune brawler. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory" (Grant's "Memoirs"). A tactical success may be not only useless, but actually inopportune, if it is out of accord with the plans of the higher command. On the morning of June 18, 1815, Marshal Grouchy was in {8} pursuit of the Prussians whom Napoleon had defeated on June 16 at Ligny. Although urged "to march to the sound of the cannon" (at Waterloo), ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... however, he was not unwise enough to feel sure of the result. Were not all women, even the best of them, notoriously perverse? And there was always, conceivably, that inopportune third party, a preferred rival, to be counted with, who might have ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... that there may be no possible mistake in the interpretation of the gesture, he invariably accompanies it by the phrase: "What a fool I am!" All will admit that if a man really believed himself the author of his discovery, he takes a very inopportune time to declare his impotence and his stupidity so distinctly. But taking none too kindly his avowal which, moreover, is but the proclamation of an indisputable truth, let us rather say that this act of humility is forced ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... wealthy relations, who was soft in his manners and civil in his words, and never gave more trouble than was necessary. The period, too, would have been one of comparative prosperity to the Meager ladies,—but for that inopportune return of the head of the family,—as two other lodgers had been inclined to look out upon the dead wall, or else into the cheerful back-yard; which circumstance came to have some bearing upon our story, as Mrs. Meager had been driven by the press of her increased household ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question, the child ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Hissar, and the neighboring Lidjissy mines, which had been pioneered by the Genoese explorers, and were now being worked by a party of Englishmen. This divergence on to unbeaten paths was made at a very inopportune season; for the rainy spell set in, which lasted, with scarcely any intermission, for over a fortnight. At the base of Kosse Dagh, which stands upon the watershed between the two largest rivers of Asia Minor, the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... answered Basil, smiling. "I have long given up my official position, my dear Philip, and have been living in a deliberate retirement. I hope I do not come at an inopportune moment." ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... we are asking the question, "What is the Negro Teacher doing in the matter of uplifting his race?" In so brief a period of years it would seem to savor of arrogance to ask a question so seemingly fraught with significance, so inopportune and, too, about a people so recently freed from bondage that they have not yet had the time to grow a generation of teachers. It took England more than a generation to grow an Arnold at Rugby. It took France more than several generations to produce a Guizot, and Pestalozzi, whose ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... page after page with a perfect Witch's Sabbath of compositions, in which the oddest scrolls and throngs of genii blended with flowers, buds, and all sorts of emblems of love twined around initial letters or the picture of the person who had captured my heart at a time so inopportune. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... snappy girl, with dancing eyes, a continual smile, and as elusive as a drop of mercury. She just couldn't keep still, and she was always getting minor marks in deportment because her sense of fun was sure to bubble over at inopportune times. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... secret earlier. "It is just the jolly kind of thing I should have delighted in," wrote her Highness. "And then, if I had known, I should not have sent that unlucky telegram. It serves you right for not taking me into your confidence, and I am glad you had a fright. Think of it coming in at that inopportune moment, just as telegrams do at a play! But, Jennie, are you sure you told me everything? A letter came from London the day before yours arrived, and it bewildered me dreadfully at first. Don Stirling, whom I used to know at Washington (a conceited ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... I felt the plot breaking out on me, very much as the measles do, at a most inopportune time for everybody concerned, and my secretary, more wide-awake than you'd imagine by looking at him, urged me to coddle the muse while she was willing and not to put her off till an evil day, as frequently I am in the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... that she still bent over the lock, motionless, saw in hand. In the instant she made a mental review of her proceedings and satisfied herself that she had been guilty of no professional blunder. The inopportune appearance of Mr. Cragg must be attributed to a blind chance—to fate. So the first wave of humiliation that swept over her receded as she gathered her wits to combat ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... Quinto, re-opening the door he was closing, and putting his head back into the room, "here's the Marchese Ludovico wishes to speak to you." If the old man had not been a little bit out of humour with his adopted daughter he would probably have found some excuse for getting rid of the inopportune visitor. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Elizabeth Jones, of Salem, to canvass the State, lecturing and procuring names to petitions to the Legislature for equal legal and political rights for the women of the State. The time chosen for this work was inopportune for immediate success—the opening scenes of the rebellion alike absorbing the attention of the people and their Legislature. Women in goodly numbers came out to hear, but men of all classes waited in the streets, or congregated in public ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with which his position would enable him to secure a new base; and by the fact that as he would thus cover Washington, there would be little or no necessity for the authorities there to detach from his force at some inopportune moment for the protection of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... to be adopted by that Colony, which three years before had received responsible government, and Mr. J.A. Froude was sent out to press it upon the people. The choice did not prove a fortunate one, but even a more skilful emissary would probably have failed, for the moment was inopportune. The Cape people were not ready for so large and far-reaching a proposal. The Orange Free State was exasperated at the loss of Griqualand West. The Transvaal people, though, as we shall see presently, their republic was in sore straits, were averse to anything that could affect their independence. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and when in rich, resonant, uplifted voice Mark Twain sang out the words: 'I am the Begum of Bengal, a hundred and twenty-three days out from Canton,' there burst forth a great cheer from one end of the room to the other. It seemed an inopportune cheer, and for a moment it upset the orator: yet it was felicitous in opportuneness. Slowly, after a long pause, came the last two words—like that curious, detached and high note in which a great piece of music suddenly ends—'Homeward bound.' Again there was a cheer: but this time it was ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... was touched with compassion, but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was inopportune. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... the manifestly dishonest breach of official declarations on the Khilafat. With the knowledge that India was bleeding at heart, the Government of India should have told His Majesty's ministers that the moment was inopportune for sending the Prince. I venture to submit that it is adding insult to injury to bring the Prince and through his visit to steal honours and further prestige for a Government that deserves to be dismissed ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Milan, evacuated by the Austrians after the battle of Magenta, a position which he held with great ability. But, disapproving of the government's policy with regard to Garibaldi's Sicilian expedition and the occupation by Piedmont of the kingdom of Naples as inopportune, he resigned office. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... inopportune! I never dreamed she'd come— [CYNTHIA comes in veiled. As she walks quickly into the room, VIDA greets her languorously.] My dear Cynthia, you don't ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... the other, talking and laughing loudly, with the hoydenish manner peculiar to artists' daughters, with the studio jests, the familiarity of students, and knowing also better than anyone how to dismiss a creditor or blow up a tradesman impertinent enough to present his bill at an inopportune moment. ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... have a fashion of making like inopportune remarks when we are struggling to keep our hearts high. It seemed as though they were trying to break my spirit. My mother's white silence, my father's long prayer, James feverishly coming and going on that last morning—little things like these almost made me abandon my ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... such time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to "his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's inopportune absence—since quarterday we may suppose—is lost in gratulations over ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... all his wanderings, and which, he suddenly recollected, should "anything happen to him," held all the indications of a secret in his life without any explanation of it, and went over its contents. He was interrupted in the midst of this by a chance and inopportune visitor, no less than a younger brother, who pulled the papers about, and cried, "Hallo, what's this?" with the unjustifiable freedom of a near relation, bringing Dick's heart into his mouth, and furnishing him with a dreadful example of what might be, were a touch of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... this moment John, the man-servant, approached Mrs. Barton with a gravy-tureen, and also with a slight odour of the stable, which usually adhered to him through his in-door functions. John was rather nervous; and the Countess happening to speak to him at this inopportune moment, the tureen slipped and emptied itself on Mrs. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot |
