"Nonchalant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to see if he couldn't arrange for him to "hang around and help a spell until somebody else was sent," the conversation with the superintendent over the long distance 'phone resulted more favorably for Brown than that nonchalant young gentleman had a reasonable ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in her nonchalant fashion again; her chin between her two hands now, and her head making little appreciative nods. "That's like condensed milk; a great deal in a little of it. I'll put the fig-leaves away ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. "I must be cautious," he told himself. "In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment." At the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... messenger. The messenger, taller, more powerful, it seemed, by the heightening and strengthening force of righteous wrath, faced the mightiest man in the kingdom. Har-hat, though a little surprised and puzzled, was none the less complacent, confident, nonchalant. Near the fan-bearer, but behind him, were the ministers, astonished and puzzled. But since the past days had been so filled with momentous events, they were ready to expect a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... papers back to the Count with a nonchalant air, as of a man who had quite made up his mind about them, saying in a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... TED. [Trying to seem nonchalant, although he is obviously trying to justify himself.] I dropped by to remind Kate about ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... never yet had I transgressed God's law, By looking on the man I had resigned, With any hidden feeling in my mind, Which she, his wife, my friend, might not have known He was but little altered. From his face The nonchalant and almost haughty grace, The lurking laughter waiting in his eyes, The years had stolen, leaving in their place A settled sadness, which was not despair, Nor was it gloom, nor weariness, nor care, But something like the vapour o'er the skies Of Indian summer, beautiful to see, But spoke ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... elapsed, then Leslie received a second communication too austere to be disregarded. She went to the president's office in considerable trepidation and emerged from it an hour later, her heavy features set in anger. Undertaking to assume her usual nonchalant pose, she had been brought with alarming suddenness to a wholesome respect for Doctor Matthews' dignity. She had also received a lecture on reckless driving which she was not likely ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... his eyes, and continued on his way to Miss Seymour. But Charlie, always alive to the possibilities of a new acquaintance, always eager to be first in the field, dropped his quest of the mama. With an air of nonchalant abstraction he went to stand in the neighborhood of the new arrival, conveniently at hand for an introduction. He saw then that there were two fine new birds; the light and size of the one had at first obscured the other, though she, too, had on a Paris dress and diamonds and a smile. But ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... over a dovecot; Tozer, with that wicked whisking little Jones, spins along as merrily as a May-day sweep; Miss Joy is the partner of the happy Fred Sparks; and even Miss Ranville is pleased, for the faultless Captain Grig is toe and heel with her. Beaumoris, with rather a nonchalant air, takes a turn with Miss Trotter, at which Lord Methuseleh's wrinkled chops quiver uneasily. See! how the big Baron de Bobwitz spins lightly, and gravely, and gracefully round; and lo! the Frenchman staggering under the weight of Miss Bunion, who ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... every one engaged in the conflict bore some token of its severity. I did not wait for the thunder-storm I foresaw: I rose with a nonchalant yaw n of ennui—marched out of the apartment, called a servant—demanded my own room—repaired to it, and immersed the internal faculties of my head in Mignet's History of the Revolution, while Bedos busied himself ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was carving indelible lines upon her face which was rapidly losing its delicate contour and bloom. Marion's pink and white beauty was at its zenith, and the social attentions she was beginning to receive only served to render her elder sister more than ever irritable and envious. Louis was his old nonchalant self, careless and listless, with an ever deepening expression of ennui which was pitiful in one so young. His European travels had not ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... we had passed through Chantilly, and on the way to Amiens we sped by forty or fifty ambulances. It was at the Cafe Gobert, in Amiens, that we got out of the automobile and had luncheon. That town was thronged with nonchalant women and blue-clad poilus. Following our refreshment, we continued our journey. We ran into soldiers and guns, aeroplanes, and more guns of all calibres; there must have been two miles of them in one batch that we passed on the way ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... the body lay across the threshold without a sign of life. The buzz of the roulette-wheel was resumed and the crap- dealer began his monotonous routine. Every eye was fixed on the nonchalant man at the bar, but the unconscious creature outside the threshold lay unheeded, for in these men's code it behooves the most humane to practise a certain aloofness in ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and nonchalant, evidently a little proud of her important position. She posed before Lane and pirouetted with fancy ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... York things, began to happen at once. To her, meditating, there entered Pugsy Maloney, the guardian of the gate of this shrine of Peace, a nonchalant youth of about fifteen, with a freckled, mask-like face, the expression of which never varied, bearing in his arms a cat. The cat was struggling violently, but he appeared quite unconscious of it. Its existence did not seem ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Musjid for morning prayer, and the nonchalant British officials began to straggle into the vacant Hall of the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... garden a while, maintaining a pretense of nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time, but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then, for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass, waiting quietly ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... Elsie in amazement, and went abruptly out. Returning a little later with shining face and wet, parted hair, as he asked at the desk for a book, he spread out a pair of very clean hands in a manner intended to be nonchalant. He was ready and eager to talk and very amusing. Before Elsie got through with him, she had assured him that she meant to read "Robinson Crusoe" within the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... the successful shook hands: Cary quiet and smiling, half dignified and half nonchalant; Rand with less control and certainty of himself. The one said with perfection the proper things, the other said them to the best of his ability. Young Fairfax Cary, standing by, twisting his riding-whip with angry fingers, curled his lip ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... me, and at the same time the sauce-dish was uncomfortably near my neck, and directly under my nose. This was too nonchalant, and my surprise was still greater when the servant, in an unnatural and gruff voice, said, "Do you want any of this stuff?" I looked up at the man, and recognized a twinkle in a familiar eye, and as the twinkle was accentuated by a powerful ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... shiny black sample-case that spanned his knees he sorted and re-sorted with infinite earnestness a large and varied consignment of "Ladies' Pink and Blue Ribbed Undervests." Surely no other man in the whole southward-bound Canadian train could have been at once so ingenuous and so nonchalant. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... her," said Polly, in a nonchalant tone, flinging up the sash of the bedroom window as she spoke, and ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... laid out alleys and boulevards instead of merely making ways, with the result that in spite of brilliant sky and burning sun, coolness and shadow are ever to be had. The Cannebire, with its blue sky, glowing foliage and gay, nonchalant, heterogeneous crowds, reminds me of the Rambla of Barcelona. Indeed, the two cities have many points of resemblance. Marseilles is greatly changed from the Marseilles I visited twenty-five years ago, to say nothing of Arthur Young's description of 1789. The only advantage ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... back, George," said Peter, with a nonchalant air. "Take the cob along quietly, and let her ladyship know directly you get in that I'm returning by Hewelscourt ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... was hard; he was the Blake of rare moments—the Blake roused from nonchalant good-nature into urgency of purpose. Max felt a doubt, a thin, wavering fear ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... —have taken literally the compliment paid to a certain beautiful customer by a renowned French dressmaker: "Un rien et madame est habillee!" They are coquettishly revealing their claims to the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his hand. Paris and his friend are in the most nonchalant of attitudes. They could not be more indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were they dandies judging the class for costermonger's donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The three most beautiful women in the world are squirming and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... bouncing their knapsacks, dragging lower down, up to the napes of their necks, where they rested under the very fringe of their bear-skin caps. A couple of officers, with swords drawn, walked up and down behind the ranks, but, though they were tall, fine fellows, and expressed in the nonchalant fulfilment of their part a high sense of boredom, they did not give the scene any such poignant interest as it had from the men in performing a duty, or indulging a privilege, by hopping into the air and bouncing their knapsacks up to their necks. After what seemed an unreasonable ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... proscribed all that he remembered, and those whom he had forgotten must come into some future proscription. Such a speech would seem incredible if put into the mouth of any other character it history; but it is in keeping with Sulla's passionless and nonchalant brutality. The ashes of Marius he ordered to be dug up and scattered in the Anio, the only unpractical act we ever read of him committing. Death was ordained for every one who should harbour or save a proscribed person, even his own brother, son, or parent. But he who killed a proscribed ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... figure suddenly relaxed; he leaned against a chair with a return of his habitual nonchalant air, and waved his ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... seemed to play the dandy more consummately than usual, as though he were reflecting that come what might he would go down as he had declared, with a smile on his face and a flawless coat on his back. I had never known him to be more amusing and nonchalant than in the half hour which followed his previous outburst. When we reached a flower-stand at the corner of the streets where our ways divided, he asked me to wait a minute, and, selecting a boutoniere and a beautiful white rose, he presented ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... surprise, all the cooks springing to attention and the very potatoes in the dixies trying to look as if they weren't doing anything wrong! The pleasing sensation of importance having passed off, it is then time for me to do something intelligent. It is easy enough to tap a camp-kettle with a nonchalant cane and commence the removal of the lid, but it is much more difficult to cope with the pieces of boiled beef with which I am then confronted. As a subject of conversation boiled beef is not, in my opinion, a success: there are only two things to ask about it—"Is it beef?" "Is it boiled?" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... brightened again. "Is Mr. Bickett in this country? " she asked, her voice carefully nonchalant. "I have not heard anything about him ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... away. Ida Mayhew sat near in an open window of the parlor, ostensibly reading a novel, but in reality observant of all that occurred. Both she and Van Berg had been amused by the fact that Stanton, usually so languid and nonchalant, had been for once thoroughly aroused. Between anger at his coachmen, alarm for the child, and interest in its preserver, he was quite shaken out of his wonted equanimity, which was composed equally of indolent good-nature, self-complacency, and a disposition to satirize the busy, earnest world around ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... mimic warfare across them, Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him. Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household, Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance, Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen; Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him, Coming behind his chair, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Fotheringham had seen, would have saved him a vast amount of trouble. But the messenger, too busy to notice his visitor, paid him no attention, and in a moment Bronson was puffing his cigar with a nonchalant air, that would disarm any suspicions which the messenger might have entertained, but he had none, as it was a common practice to send new men over his run, that he might ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... last. Jeffreys could see the boy pacing in a nonchalant way down the platform, evidently expecting anything ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Pretty, graceful, nonchalant, armored in a half smile, Ruth stood before her inquisitors. Bob never would have recognized this composed and unmoved girl as the anxious Ruth who had tried so hard ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... beautiful; beautiful always, but more so now in the pathos of her helplessness. Somewhat perfunctorily, because in his ignorance of women he thought that it would please her, and also because vaguely something human and elemental had suddenly roused his pulses, he relinquished his nonchalant attitude, and came a step ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Rufus. It was abundantly evident that he had not realised how near to open violence the young fisherman had been. His nonchalant explanation was plainly all-sufficing in his own opinion, and during the very marked silence that followed he displayed no faintest hint of anxiety or even interest as to the fashion of ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... of course, my dear Sir Hugh," replied the other, with a nonchalant air. "But if I were you I would not be in too great a hurry to make such a declaration. You may require a friend in the near ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... for cooking and serving dinner and washing up the dishes. If Helen had engaged Mrs. Finn, everything would be all right. She knew them and she would wait. Still, he didn't like putting anybody off—he was neither quite too poor nor quite too affluent to be nonchalant in ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... your introduction," said the Count quietly, and, bowing, he withdrew with the same nonchalant air as he had entered. Trust the devil to know when he ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... perfectly motionless, even to her fingers and eyelids. The Iron Duke standing at her left, bent, and trembled slightly—supporting with evident difficulty the ponderous sword of State. Prince Albert, sitting tall and soldier- like, in his handsome Field-Marshal's uniform, looked nonchalant and serene, but with a certain far-away expression in his eyes. The Earl of Derby held the crown on its gorgeous-cushion gracefully, like an accomplished waiter presenting a tray of ices. On a like occasion, some time ago, I hear the Duke of Argyle had the ill-luck to drop this crown from ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... undoubtedly was, writing and studying; nevertheless, he welcomed his visitor. The young man came in like an inhabitant of another world, as he was; in spotlessly neat attire, leisurely manner, and with his blue eyes sleepily nonchalant at the sight of all the stir of all the world. But they smiled at ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... of Burleigh Wentworth for forgery was one of the sensations of the season. A fashionable crowd went day after day to the stifling Court to watch its progress. The man himself, nonchalant, debonair, bore himself with the instinctive courage of his race, though whether his bearing would have been as confident had Percival Field not been at his back was a question asked by a good many. He was one of the best-known figures in society, a general favourite in sporting circles, and ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... remembered that just a year before he and his companion had seen in the Ludovisi gardens a wonderfully beautiful girl, strolling in the train of this conspicuous couple. He looked for her now, and in a moment she appeared, following her companions with the same nonchalant step as before, and leading her great snow-white poodle, decorated with motley ribbons. The elder lady offered the two young men a sufficiently gracious salute; the little old gentleman bowed and smiled with extreme alertness. The young girl, without casting a glance either at Roderick or at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... strangely at variance therewith. It was the expression of a cat when it crouches to spring upon a mouse. I have seen that look bent upon my betrothed. I have caught it directed at myself. There was a restlessness, too, which gave the lie to his nonchalant manner. I could see that he forced himself to remain still. His fingers were always busy with ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Orgreave gave a curt nod, and departed, in nonchalant good-humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any farther would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality. And Edwin nodded with equal curtness and made off slowly into the maze of Bursley. The thought in his heart was: "I'm on my own, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... acted like magic to silence the bandits, to check movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed careless and nonchalant. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... with whom he had tramped the deck of the Dunottar Castle, nor yet the friend of his early days in Cape Town, nor yet again the blithe companion of his last tedious hours of convalescence. This girl was altogether admirable; but a bit awe-inspiring withal. He watched the nonchalant ease with which she provided a white-haired veteran of many wars and many orders with a cup of steaming tea, and then sat and chatted with him while he drank it. He felt himself a bashful boy, as he watched her, and, like any other bashful boy, he fell to ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... had not the faintest idea of yielding to another. Miss Wildmere was delighted. The game was in her own hands. She could play these two men off against each other, and take her choice. Mr. Arnault was made to feel that he was not de trop, and, as usual, he was nonchalant, serene, and evidently meant to stay. Therefore Graydon took his leave, and was permitted to carry away the impression that his departure ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... about this epoch [when "neither physical nor moral consumption of any kind prevented him from attending freely to his labours as well as to his pleasures"], slender, and in a nonchalant attitude, gentlemanlike in the highest degree: the forehead superb, the hands of a rare distinction, the eyes small, the nose prominent, but the mouth of an exquisite fineness and gently closed, as if to keep back a melody that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Nell," he said, in a nonchalant tone, "but I'm afraid I must. How long have you been ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... I found that the nonchalant and care-free attitude of the average British officer was really a mask and simulated to keep his mind off the whole beastly business: this great big dirty job which white people ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... an hour later when Atlantic and Pacific were brought in by an officer, very dirty and dishevelled, but gay and irresponsible as larks, nonchalant, amiable, and unrepentant. As Rhoda had prophesied, there had been no difficulty in finding them; and as everybody had prophesied, once found there had not been a second's delay in delivery. Moved ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... deck to answer our hail, and invited us aboard. I played the sailor and the man, fending off the skiff so that it would not mar the yacht's white paint, dropping the skiff astern on a long painter, and making the painter fast with two nonchalant half-hitches. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... stage resembled pandemonium rather than the schoolroom of Miss Minchen's Select Seminary, which was to be the scene of the first act. The committee were tired and, to speak frankly, cross, with the exception of Madeline, who was provokingly cool and nonchalant, though she had worked harder than any one else. The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... pursuit of a girl who was able to twist him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he were a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant impertinence, had picked and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of satisfaction in his eye which is ever the ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time! They both ate hot toast, with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied, worried, and outwardly nonchalant. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... her appear taller than she was. She immediately gave the impression of power and reserve force. You felt this in her quick, elastic step, saw it in her decided though not abrupt movements, and heard it in her tone. Even the nonchalant Mr. Gregory could not ignore her in his customary polite manner, though quiet refinement and peculiar unobtrusiveness seemed her characteristics. She won attention, not because she sought it, nor on the ground of eccentricities, but because of her intense vitality. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... smile which was a sickly attempt to register nonchalant poise. "What do you hear ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... Mark left. There had been a time when the first move for departure was as trying as the ordeal of entrance, but he had got beyond that. Tonight he felt that he did it in quite an easy nonchalant way, the ladies, true to a gracious tradition, trailing after him into the hall. It was there that an unexpected blow fell; Chrystie, the enfant terrible, delivered it. Gliding about to the hummed refrain ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... rough, shapeless coat, yet with a certain expensive, fashionable air about the rest of his dress, who stood leaning against the chimney-piece in a nonchalant attitude, was her eldest cousin, Elliot Lyddell. The other, a great contrast in appearance, small, slender, and pale, with near-sighted spectacles over his weak, light grey eyes, dressed with scrupulous precision and quietness, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... they abandoned all their pretence of nonchalant confidence and did not talk at all. Of course, they knew Florette would come in her own good time, but the stifling atmosphere of that musty hole and the thought of what ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... gently. He got up and looked down at her, aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the dimples on her cheeks—seeing the fascination of her person in the night of the gulf as if in the blaze of noonday. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled with the excitement of admiring awe and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... nonchalantly playing his nonchalant music. Therese, who for eight days had been running to churches and museums in the company of Madame Marmet, was thinking of the annoyance which her companion caused her by discovering in the faces of the old painters resemblances to persons ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the opera, Signorina Zampieri was called for loudly. At the request of the manager, she came forward, and with polite indifference bowed in reply to the applause. Signora Buonatti was forgotten! The people were amazed at the nonchalant manner of the young favorite, who actually received a burst of enthusiasm, such as rarely had greeted any singer, with such coolness-who and what was this slender, youthful being, that was neither awed by their sternness, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... curiously affected, he could not tell why. There was something in the dawn's delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... finished, which I uttered in an easy and nonchalant tone of voice, as if reciting something that everybody knew, his lordship stood on his feet again, staring at me like a man thunderstruck. This gave me the opportunity of exercising that politeness ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... affectionately linked arms with her relation and, with the nonchalant rudeness that was in those days almost a badge of caste, dragged her off to a cool and dusky corner of the panelled reception-hall to acquaint her with the adulterated facts responsible for ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... her hand so hard and said that, really the same nonchalant young man who had leaned out of the carriage window, gurgling with laughter? And what had made the difference? She buried her face in the heliotrope, whose perfume seemed the memory of his visit; then, going to the piano, began to play. She played Debussy, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had. I'm sure the girls of that time were nicer than they are nowadays,' he replied, calmly relapsing into his nonchalant attitude. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... touched he should at once attack. Hillyar kept his presence of mind admirably at this critical juncture, replying in an indifferent manner that he had no intention of allowing the Phoebe to fall on board the Essex—an assurance that was well enough, and, coupled with his nonchalant manner, served the purpose of keeping Porter in doubt as to whether a breach of neutrality had been intended. But the British frigate was unquestionably in a position where a seaman should not have placed her ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... seem pleased with the captain's nonchalant attitude toward the Breeze and its editorial. She tapped the ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he didn't often kiss her good-night. There had been a strange touch of excitement, of emotion, in his manner to-night. It was natural that she herself should be moved by Nancy Dampier's distress. But Gerald? Gerald, who was generally speaking rather nonchalant, and ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... The nonchalant "What do I know?"—"What does any one know?"—of this shrewd pagan spirit has nothing in it of the ache of pessimistic disillusion. It has never had any illusions. It has taken things as they appear, and life as it appears, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously nonchalant risings and sittings, and her perfunctory genuflexions, and thought what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in happier circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with his work that made him go up to it immediately ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... ludicrous haste. "I believe you. I'll be going now." With a nonchalant nod she turned the corner walking as fast as her long legs could carry her in the ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... in the wireless room placed the oak bars across the door, and tried to believe he was nonchalant and unafraid as he laid out extra clips of cartridges. But his eyes persisted in following the sinking sun, and he watched from within his cage the coming of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... her face level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new preoccupation, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... young man who had possessed himself of the rings left the house, for it was he who had descended the stairs and gone out into the street. He bent his steps to the nearest pawnshop on Eighth Avenue, and taking out one of the boxes, said in a nonchalant voice: ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... conducted it all just as he thought fit. This year Cabinet after Cabinet passed over, and no mention was ever made of the affairs of the East, till one day, at the end of a Cabinet, Palmerston, in the most easy nonchalant way imaginable, said that he thought it right to mention that he had been for a long time engaged in negotiation upon the principles agreed upon at the Cabinet at Windsor, and that he had drawn up a Treaty, with which it ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... sweet, placid, moonlight face, And slightly nonchalant, Which seems to claim a middle place Between one's love and aunt, Where childhood's star has left a ray In woman's sunniest sky, As morning dew and blushing day On ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... undergone a change. When in the presence of Barbara he had been confident, nonchalant. When he dismounted from his horse and walked toward Harlan there was about him an atmosphere that suggested carefulness. Before Haydon had taken half a dozen steps Harlan was aware that the man knew him—knew of ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... way of an invitation, led her to the quadrille. The contrast between these two couples, placed opposite to each other, was striking, and yet common enough in a mixed ballroom. Captain Kockney was desperately nonchalant, his partner full of airs and graces; their conversation was silly, ignorant, and conceited, beyond the reach of imagination—such things must be heard to be believed. Young Van Horne was clever, and appeared to less advantage in dancing than in most things. Elinor the reader ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... continued his journey alone, reaching his apartments a little before midnight. As he stepped out of the car a man strolled across the street. It was Beale's watcher. Van Heerden looked round with a smile, realizing the significance of this nonchalant figure, and passed through the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... was the nonchalant assent. "Why shouldn't they? You know, we're friends again now. I've organized them ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... request; an altogether unwise emotion. Better that he had remained at the window, and drawled out a nonchalant denial. But he was apt to be as earnestly genuine on the surface as he was in reality. It set Lady Hartledon wondering; and she resolved ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Liberals raged and stormed, called him "demented Bismarck," "Napoleon worshiper," "hollow braggart," "a country gentleman of moderate political training, inconsistent, nonchalant, insolent to a degree;—pray when did Bismarck ever express a ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Channing's custom, when he called at Storm, to bid her a nonchalant, not to say indifferent, farewell, and repair by devious ways to the ravine; where some moments later he welcomed a very different Jacqueline from the demure young person he had left—ardent, glowing, very eager to atone to him for the enforced restraint of the previous encounter. The coquette ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... either idleness or curiosity; for while they strive to find what there is of evil, they do not understand that others still believe in the good. Therefore, they are either so nonchalant that they stop their ears, or the noise of the rest of the world suddenly startles them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but a stage. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... after lighting up and before the drawing of blinds and curtains. Mr. Prohack had glimpses of enormous and magnificent interiors,—some right in the sky, some on the ground—with carved ceilings, rich candelabra, heavily framed pictures, mighty furniture, statuary, and superb and nonchalant menials engaged in the pleasant task of shutting away those interiors from the vulgar gaze. The spectacle continued furlong upon furlong, monotonously. There was no end to the succession of palaces of the wealthy. Then it would ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... with such anxiety in their faces that I felt it more than my own peril, Louison gave me a tender look out of her fine eyes, and the thought of it was a light to my soul in many an hour of darkness. She had seemed so cool, so nonchalant, I was surprised to feel the tremor in her nerves. I knew not words to say when Louise ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... anything you like about Nolla's, but leave mine where the man can pick them up readily, to-morrow, when I leave," returned Barbara, in a nonchalant manner. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... sweet, placid, moonlight face, And slightly nonchalant, Which seems to hold a middle place ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... antagonist crumple to the ground. The Frenchman was too experienced a marksman not to know that he had scored a hit. Still Tarzan made no move to raise his pistol. De Coude fired once more, but the attitude of the ape-man—the utter indifference that was so apparent in every line of the nonchalant ease of his giant figure, and the even unruffled puffing of his cigarette—had disconcerted the best marksman in France. This time Tarzan did not start, but again De Coude ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rich"—the tone was still nonchalant—"the Haves against the Haven'ts. No nonsense left, by that time, about 'blood' and 'family.' Society will have dropped all those little trimmings and embroideries. We shall have come to the naked ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... collided with a dapper young man in a dinner jacket at that moment about to enter Therese's sitting-room. Pulling up short, he looked to see who it was who made so free of the house, and, simultaneously, the visitor wheeled round with an expression of nonchalant arrogance. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the habitual expression of the eyes kindly and sympathetic, but as he grew heated in talk, they sparkled like fire; the curves of the mouth bespoke an interesting mixture of finesse, grace, and geniality. His bearing was nonchalant enough, but there was naturally in the carriage of his head, especially when he talked with action, much dignity, energy, and nobleness. It seemed as if enthusiasm were the natural condition for his voice, for ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... had bought a little mirror of her own, which she propped up to suit herself. Miriam was near the window. Suddenly she heard the well-known click of the chain, and she saw Paul fling open the gate, push his bicycle into the yard. She saw him look at the house, and she shrank away. He walked in a nonchalant fashion, and his bicycle went with him as if it were a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... attracted; but she was interested. She saw beyond the ill-fitting frock-coat, and the absurd manner, thoroughly ill at ease, trying to assume easy, nonchalant man-of- the-world airs. "I'd never have thought of judging you except on your own ground," said she, "if you ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... around him: all were as before, the elder men, with thick moustaches and hair growing thin in places, with the cares of a future command already on the brow; those of his own age, easy-going and assuming nonchalant airs; and the youngest of all very spick and span and extremely correct. Just as of old the three brothers-in-law stood close together (two of them had in the meantime become fathers, and the wife of Keyl II., nee Moeller, was in an interesting ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of ninety-nine out of every hundred republican nationalists at this time. The aspirations it contains were proclaimed a fortnight later to the world by President Krueger himself in the boast that his Republic would "stagger humanity." They appeared in the nonchalant remarks made a few days later by Mr. Gregorowski, the Chief Justice of the Transvaal, in bidding farewell to Canon Farmer,[150] who was preparing to leave his cure at Pretoria in view of the ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... stretched prone upon the ground, blinking sleepily up at the sun and the cobalt sky, feeling my very hair grow, and health returning in warm, electric waves. I even dared to cross one leg over the other and to swing the pendant member with nonchalant air, first taking a cautious survey of the neighboring back windows to see if any one peeked. Doubtless they did, behind those ruffled curtains, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... of the boys, he immediately started to brushing himself off, as though the dust on his clothes bothered him more than any slight bruises he may have received in his ugly fall. Frank made up his mind when he saw this that the other was certainly nonchalant, or, as Frank himself expressed it, ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... said Basil, fluttering a cheque in the direction of the quite nonchalant officer. "Are you ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... therefore,' he said, endeavoring to assume a nonchalant air of indifference. 'Would you still win it back, Sergius? And the sesteria also? Well, there is that vineyard of yours on the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I simply had to, you know," remarked the nonchalant Jimsy, as the red-faced man found himself occupying a position not dissimilar ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... open and went through. Tog Lee Chang Chu was sitting at a desk, nonchalant and petitely beautiful as usual, comfortably seated in easy-chairs were two young men by their attire probably citizens of United Planets and ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to adopt the other's nonchalant tone. "Careless of us," he began—then stopped breathless to press his ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... sheer fall of twenty feet, turned and scrambled back to the promenade. He was cried and exclaimed over by the hysterical ladies, and scolded for a bittie fule by the sergeant. To this Bobby returned ostentatious yawns of boredom and nonchalant lollings, for it seemed a small matter to be so fashed about. At that a gentleman remarked, testily, to hide his own agitation, that dogs really had very little sense. The sergeant ordered Bobby to precede him through the postern, and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... until now,"—Sylvia's white cheeks gave the lie to her nonchalant tone,—"but father said he believed Nat would be good to me. I thought it very strange at the time, but he seemed much more certain that Nat would be kind than that you and Uncle ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... inaccessible heights, awesome and powerful, to be propitiated with humbleness and prayer; and the mere sight of him in her immediate neighbourhood brought her heart into her mouth. For once she lost her nonchalant demeanour, her free and easy speech, and stood nervously silent before him with hanging head and reddened cheeks. Fortunately for her she was dressed that day in a quiet and well-fitting frock of blue serge, and wore less than ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... this day. We're simply wild about you, Baroness. We were at your concert the other night." Maude, the lean and tawny, and Beatrice, the dark and pretty, had followed deftly in their mother's wake and were smiling, Maude with steely brightness, Beatrice with nonchalant ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... beautiful machine was an old farm wagon, and in front of that were four horses. On the seat of the wagon sat a nonchalant-looking farmer who seemed to take little interest in ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... helped and been jolly with. She looked to the right then, and met as many more faces of girls whom she knew, and who were members of the Wild Irish Girls' Society. Then very calmly she resumed her nonchalant attitude in the front row of the schoolgirls. Miss Ravenscroft meanwhile stood ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to her for the first time that there must be good material in a man who could come through in a contest with death, nonchalant. She would fetch him and have him here to meet Cutty, this rather forlorn Johnny Two-Hawks, with his unshaven face, his black eye, and his nonchalance. She would fetch him at once. It would save a good ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... smaller scale, represents allegorical subjects, some of which are treated in a curiously homely and practical manner, for instance, the figure of Adam holding the apple in his hand with a look as much as to say, "This is what has ruined me;" Eve, in the next compartment, looks somewhat nonchalant, rather a coquette than a penitent. In some of these Biblical scenes the figures are naively dressed in mediaeval garb, but many of them have great beauty and pathos. The under-pieces of the seats, cornices, and sides are decorated with all kinds of drolleries, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and lit a cigarette in his old, nonchalant manner. He was dressed in the seedy frockcoat of the book merchant, but the rest of that individual lay in a pile of white hair and old books upon the table. Holmes looked even thinner and keener than of old, but there was a dead-white tinge in his aquiline face ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... In the nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelors up-stairs he smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three Mexican /vaqueros/, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the following business-like epistle to the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... or in the clutch of a broad disgust, I could not tell. Perhaps it was both. Very suddenly he wheeled upon Kennedy. His voice became low and vibrant with feeling. Here was none of the steeled self-control of Manton, the deceptive outer mask which Werner used to cover his thoughts, the nonchalant, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Thomasson entered. He treated the strangers to a distant bow, and, without looking at them, took his seat with a nonchalant ease, becoming a man who travelled with viscountesses, and was at home in the best company. The table had his first hungry glance. He espied roast and cold, a pair of smoking ducklings just set on, a dish of trout, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... he slowed up, put on a nonchalant air, and strolling in, looked about for Castile soap. There it was, the same kind, displayed in a box and looking just ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser |
