"Stair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... going through all his pockets, finally finding a piece of dirty yellow paper and talking from it as if most laboriously gathered and learned notes. But the paper was only for show. Father Burke saw him get out of the cab, he got on to the stair landing and then saw G.K.'s yellow paper on the ground. He had delivered his whole course with hardly a single note—occasionally looked through material for a quarter of an hour or so before speaking." All thought him a great entertainer as well as an ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... were established with their telephones at the foot of the stone stair outside the cellar door, and into this cramped 'exchange' ran the telephone wires from the companies in the trenches and from the Brigade Headquarters a mile or two back. Every word that the signallers spoke was ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... struck the stair rail within a few inches of the baby's head. But the frightened girl hurried on, and in a few seconds was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... meeting him on the stair, was so affected at his appearance, that she screamed aloud, and betook herself to flight; while he, cursing her with greet bitterness, rushed into the apartment to the doctor, who, instead of receiving him with cordial embraces, and congratulating him upon his deliverance, gave evident ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... lowest stair, and then another; it was evident we could not hold out much longer, but the knowledge had no effect on our courage. As Felix said, we could die but once. On the landing at the top of the stairs were two rooms, but our numbers were not strong enough to garrison them both. There ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... true his heart, sae smooth his speech. His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair— And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... crossing him—we saw that. He got up from his deathbed and Thomas helped him out into the hall and up the stair. I walked behind with the candle. Oh, Master, I'll never forget it—the awful shadows and the storm wind wailing outside, and father's gasping breath. But we got him to Margaret's room and he stood before her, trembling, with his white hairs falling about ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in and sit until she came back, but stood at the foot of the stair on the sidewalk. The time of waiting seemed long, but I suppose ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... was by a cellar-stair lighted by a small lamp with a sputtering wick darkening the chimney with smoke; having safely reached the bottom, he turned to the left in the darkness; here and there, at an angle, a floating wick threw a ruddy light on the circuit which he made in alternate light and shade, till at last he had ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... stud at the stair And bade the dhrums to thump; and he Did thus evince to that Black Prince The ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... the remark; but before going there a ramble was taken over the chief part of the castle, to which Don Hernan had not yet been introduced. There was a private entrance to the highest floor of the tower; but as that led through the lady's apartments, they had to descend to mount the more public stair. That was, however, narrow and winding, and somewhat inconvenient; at the foot ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... murmured, stooping suddenly over him. Poor boy, indeed! He knew it all now. He asked no questions. He needed to ask none; but he hid his face in the pillow, and sobbed as if his heart would break. At length Lilias' footstep was heard on the stair, and he hushed his sobs to listen. She came up step by step, slowly and wearily; for the watching and anxiety of the last few days and nights were beginning to ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... in the court—it was blood-curdling to us, as every sound these days is full of terror and possibilities. But it turned out to be only the cry of the sentry. There had been promiscuous shooting along the railroad in the village and all our brave soldiers tumbled out of bed, fell down the stair-case one after the other, buckling on swords as they went. It is the greatest wonder to me that we were not all shot on the spot when we stood there staring up, as one very young lieutenant descended three steps at a time with a revolver ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... his feet again. "Yes—tomorrow. Now I must go to bed. Good night." And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. "Well, if I don't know who she was in love with, I ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... his words, sae smooth his speech, His breath's like caller air! His very foot has music in't, As he comes up the stair. And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy with the thought,— In ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... could say, but it was well to be there in good time, we were told, so we went with the hotel bus. A little porter woman was there with my 70-pound bag before I even knew "things were ready"; and she said she did not roll it down the five flights from my room. She carried it every stair step of the way. Her husband was in the war, and she had five children and it required more than a few sous in the week for five children, the eldest fourteen. I agreed ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... school work to those who can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit and said the step wasn't as high as the moon, after all. So I patted him ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... me his sword. He told me that there was another officer in the same house who was afraid to venture out, and entreated that I would go in for him. I, accordingly, followed him up to the landing-place of a dark stair, and, while he was calling to his friend, by name, to come down, "as there was an English officer present who would protect him," a violent screaming broke through a door at my elbow. I pushed it open, and found ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... in their own fat, well ballasted astern; and not need such swimming for life. "What a laggard notion," thinks his Majesty; "notion in ten pair of breeches, so to speak!" This stirring up of the Dutch, which lasts year on year, and almost beats Lord Stair, Lord Carteret, and our chief Artists, is itself a thing like few! One of his Britannic Majesty's great difficulties;—insuperable he never could admit it to be. "Surely you are a Sea-Power, ye valiant ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... turn from nature to grace, and that by which we turn from the imperfections of a state of grace to glory. But this turning and turning still, displeases some much. They say it makes them giddy; but I say, Nothing like this to make a man steady. A straight stair is like the ladder that leads to the gallows. They are turning stairs that lead to the heavenly mansion. Stay not at their foot; but go up them, and up them, and up them, till you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... they crossed the hardwood floors, echoed in the empty house. After pausing to contemplate a Millet on the stair landing, they came at last to the huge, silent gallery, where the soft but adequate light fell upon many masterpieces, ancient and modern. And it was here, while gazing at the Corots and Bonheurs, Lawrences, Romneys, Copleys, and Halses, that Hodder's sense of their owner's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Anderson, and the seven little tow-headed Meads, stair-stepping down the years, played with the third generation here as we used to play in the years gone by. Bill is president of the bank on the corner where the old Whately store stood and is a share-holder in several ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the light: Making fast foes in sooth, but feeble friends. But what cared he, who had read of ladies' love, And how young Launcelot gained his Guenovere,— A foundling, too, or of uncertain strain? And when one morning, coming from the bath, He crossed the Princess on the palace-stair, And kissed her there in her sweet disarray, Nor met the death he dreamed of in her eyes, He knew himself a hero of old romance,— Not seconding, but surpassing, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... disarmed, I closed the shutter, changed my linen in the dark, and drew on my gloves over a pair of hands that decidedly needed the disguise. The lateness of the hour alarmed me, and I fled down the stair in three jumps. At the bottom I met my musical waiter, still tranquilly singing, and armed with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... eat, for some years, and then to die—it was so trivial and so material. But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me. And everything appears beautiful. London Bridge, King William Street, Abchurch Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the almanacs and the shining desks, it has all become glorified, tinged with a golden haze. I am stronger: I step out briskly and breathe more deeply. And I am a better man too. God knows there ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... suitable color for the stair-carpet. The best way to fasten this is by a recent invisible contrivance which goes underneath the material. Brass rods are ornamental, rather too much so, and carpet tacks are provoking, both in putting down and taking up ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... imagined success, to insist upon their neighbours' acceptance of their distorted shadows of 'the plan of salvation' as the truth of him in whom is no darkness, and the one condition of their acceptance with him. They delay setting their foot on the stair which alone can lead them to the house of wisdom, until they shall have determined the material and mode of its construction. For the sake of knowing, they postpone that which alone can enable them to know, and substitute for the true understanding ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... upon the stair and looked down; but Leonora, too, had heard, and ran out upon the balcony, then down the steps, throwing herself into the Count's arms, mistaking him for Manrico. Manrico, still hidden by the shadows, witnessed this, and becoming enraged at the sight, believing Leonora faithless, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... poor fellow as the wheel was pushed so suddenly aside that he had to spring out of its way, while its mistress whirled past him and up the clumsy stair leading to her nook in the loft of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... his arm again. The house was a large, very old building of yellowish stone, worm-eaten by age, with two little square towers at the sides. Everything about it was shabby or worn out. Some bars were wanting in the stair-rails as well as in the balconies; the ceilings of the rooms were discoloured, the partition walls cracked, the plaster in holes; the looking-glasses, so much thought of in bygone days, were so covered with dust that they ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... She always crept out of her mother's room on these occasions, for the sight of tears distressed and excited Mrs. Underwood; and the poor child, quite unable, in her hysterical condition, to drag herself alone up that steep stair, had no alternative but to sit, on what Mr. Audley called her stool of repentance, outside the door, till she had sobbed herself into exhaustion and calm—or till either Sibby scolded her, or he ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reason to fear that the rumors of the events of the morning would arouse against them the strong hate and fear of the Pharisees. It may be that they were startled by every passing footfall, and every movement on the stair, as when the two returned from Emmaus to tell how Jesus had been made known unto them in the breaking of bread. Then, suddenly, without announcement or preparation, the figure of their beloved ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... and Mr Sparks tripping over it, fell violently to the ground. He sprang up and gave chase, of course, but he might as well have followed a will-o'-the-wisp. The young scamps, doubling like hares, took refuge in a dark recess under a stair with which they were well acquainted, and from that position they watched their enemy. They heard him go growling past; knew, a moment or two later, from the disappointed tone of the growl, that he had found the opening at the other end ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... intrepid fidelity had been balked, and she found that her own safety was provided for by means which made it impossible to aid a poor fellow creature who had just invoked her name, the generous-hearted creature was overcome by anguish of mind, and sank down on the stair, where she lay, unconscious of all that succeeded, until she found herself raised in the arms of a mob who had entered the house. And how came they to have entered? In a way characteristically dreadful. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... a manly step on the stair, she started and turned pale, expecting nothing short of an armed messenger of the law. She never was in this danger for a single minute, but conscience made a coward ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... giving directions for the search, hints being constantly supplied to him by the cook as to what transpired within. The butler, David Bate, went to fetch his master's cup, and of course found the room empty. As he came to the foot of the back-stair, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Johnson, who it seems, upon a little recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and eager to shew himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the stair-case in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand, and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... left—a check book, concealed from the interested eye of his too maternal landlady by sticking it under the stair carpet. This he retrieved. It showed a balance of two hundred dollars. There was ten dollars in the cash register in the office, for Ben Sittka. The garage would, with the mortgage deducted, be worth nearly two thousand. This ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... up, and, seeing nobody, they rushed up, some by one stair, and some by the other; but it was dark; there were but few of the moon's rays that pierced the gloom of that place, and those who first reached the place which we have named, were seized ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... vain search for the lost Dickie, and when everybody was asleep, Edred got up and dressed. He put his bedroom candle and matches in his pocket, crept down-stairs and out of the house and up to Beale's. It was a slow and nervous business. More than once on the staircase he thought he heard a stair creak behind him, and again and again as he went along the road he fancied he heard a soft footstep pad-padding behind him, but of course when he looked round he could see no one was there. So presently he decided ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... was saved, for just as we reached the bottom stair there was a slight jingling of keys, and the landlady came up through the floor with a big lunch-basket. She pushed the basket into my hands and showering us with Lombardy French pushed us out of the door, and away we went into the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... are heard climbing up the stair, and Ingrid's name is called. The door opens, and two flushed and breathless messengers stand on the threshold. "We've brung you a birfday present," they cry; "it's a book, and we made it all our own se'ves, and all the chilluns ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... at the foot of the stair and led her to the dining-room. Another surprise! The room was not only large, pleasant, and airy, overlooking a beautiful garden, but it was neat and tidy, and the table was spotless, with fine damask, delicate china, and ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... head. Alas! my friend was gone ere I'd the power T' explain the contretemps of that sad hour. To get away was now my only thought, But then this all-important step was fraught With seen and unseen dangers everywhere, Suppose I met Miss Gradient on the stair, Or Jane—for this I candidly confess I did not the required aplomb possess. Besides I dreaded now to rouse the house; No, I would dress, then wait, still as a mouse, For early dawn, a note to Harry write, Which would my wronged position soon make right. Yes, I would go before the ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... was in advance, saw the last stair before him and stuck his head above the rocky sides of the stairway. Then he halted, ducked down and began to back up, so that he nearly fell with the buggy onto ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... prison-house, Of all she list, strange or magnificent: How, ever, where she will'd, her spirit went; Whether to faint Elysium, or where Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair Wind into Thetis' bower by many a pearly stair; Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine, Stretch'd out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine; 210 Or where in Pluto's gardens palatine Mulciber's columns gleam in far piazzian line. And sometimes into cities she would send Her dream, with feast and rioting to blend; And ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the door for this purpose, but before she could draw the bell, her motions were arrested by sounds from within. The staircase was opposite the door. Two persons were now discovered descending the stair. They lifted between them a heavy mass, which was presently discerned to be a coffin. Shocked by this discovery, and trembling, she ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of the entire process. There are few things more disappointing than to have received a message to deliver and spent a laborious and happy week in composition, and yet on Sunday, as you descend the pulpit stair, to know that you have missed the mark. This, however, is far from an infrequent occurrence. The same sermon may even be a success on one occasion, and on another a partial ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... who is always exposed to them. He gives the impression of the hunted and the hunter more vividly than any writer of modern times. When he is opening a safe, you hear, in spite of yourself, the stealthy step upon the stair. If he watches for a pal at the street end, you share his anxiety lest that pal should be intercepted by the watchful detective. And he produces his effects without parade or ornament. He tells his story with a studied plainness, and by ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... mice first heard the ticking of the clock they were inclined to be frightened, and huddled close together upon the bottom stair. ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... slight, persistent fear of seeing these wounded whom I cannot help. It is not very active, it has left off visualizing the horror of bloody bandages and mangled bodies. But it's there; it waits for me in every corridor and at the turn of every stair, and it ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... carefully one before the other, and to his enchantment found that this procedure was carrying him magically up the stairs. The Colonel, like a drowning man, clutched feebly for the straw of the great stair-rail—and missed it. He would have gone under, but that Aaron's hand gripped his arm. So, orientating once more like a fragile tendril, he reached again for the banister rail, and got it. After which, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... purchases reached from the depth of the street gutters to the top of the seventh floor, but the flocks of goats climbed the winding steps with their customary agility in order to be milked at the various stair landings. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... asked whether he had forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from her; for, if he did not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never remind him of it, and to-night should be his last chance of a reconciliation. Thus she meditated, sitting on a stair, and presently heard Richard's voice below in the hall, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reserved for the royal family a guard commonly stood. He had moved a few feet from his post, however, and was watching the stage through the half-open door of a private loge. His rifle, with its fixed bayonet, leaned against the stair-rail. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... so did you. I was so glad you got that poor man's horse. You were not angry then?" They had now passed across the hall, and were on the bottom stair. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... no further, but he thought more deeply still. All the way from the Teknik to the house where he lodged he was thinking. As he climbed the stair to his attic ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... to forgive, as you will some day confess. You will thank and forgive me for what I have done." A fit of coughing caused him to lean against the stair rail, a paroxysm of pain crossing his face as he sought to temper ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... came and a noise of hard breathing. At the same moment a door opened somewhere above my head, and a faint glow came down the stairs. Presently with a great rumble a heavy man came rolling past me, butting with his head at the stair-side. He came to anchor on a landing below me, and finding his feet plunged downwards as if the devil were at his heels. He left behind him a short Highland knife, which I picked up and ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... visit to the "Constitutionnel" was in the day-time, and I caught the editor as he was looking over some of his proofs. Their curious appearance led me to ask how they were struck off, and, in order to satisfy me, he led the way up a dark stair, from which we entered upon the composing-rooms of the premises. These, in appearance, were like all other composing-rooms that I had seen; the forms, and cases for the type, were similar to those in London; the men themselves ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... always do. As my uncle, I could scarce resist you. But, short of throwing me down the stair, I do not see how you can avoid giving me half an hour ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cotton stuff was hanging from a forgotten bolt; above, some tinware was eaten with rust; a scale had crushed in the floor and lay broken on the earth beneath; and a ledger, its leaves a single, sodden film of grey, was still open on a counter. A precarious stair mounted to the flooring above, and Millie Stope made her way upward, ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cut which had nearly dissevered the thumb. This necessitated a delay, and the padre went down with him to the dispensary. "While you are waiting," he said, "perhaps you would like to go up into the pavilion, where you can look over the Maremma to the sea. Go up that stair," and he pointed to the end of a corridor, "to the first landing, then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... not think she was told of the child's disappearance, but my father went to and fro with the face and voice of a distracted man; and I well remember the look with which he climbed a narrow outside stair leading only to a rain-water cistern, with the miserable apprehension that his child might have clambered up and fallen into it. The neighborhood was stirred with sympathy for the agony of the poor father, and pitying gossip spreading the news through the thronged market-place, where ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... army wagons, Cape carts and ambulances graze wheels. Every hour or two a fresh edition of the 'Star' is published; public excitement climbing these bulletins, like steps on a stair. We sit a half-dozen women in the parlour at Heath's Hotel. Two sisters weep silently in a corner. Their father is manager of the 'George and May'; a battle has been fought there a couple of hours ago. No later news has come to them. A physician, with a huge red-cross badge around ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... though themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent food and appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and feelings thus roused there must needs be a disappointment felt; like that of leaping in the dark from the last step of a stair-case, when we had prepared our muscles for a leap of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... be significant in some houses when a young man is expected every evening. Iris blushed, and said that perhaps he was not coming. But he was, and his step was on the stair ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... Sheep to her child, "My dear Ruth, Such precipitate haste is uncouth. When you come down a stair Use more caution and care, And restrain this wild impulse ...
— A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals • J. G. Francis
... wooden edifice, consisting of two stories. In each story were two rooms, separated by an entry, or middle passage, with which they communicated by opposite doors. The passage, on the lower story, had doors at the two ends, and a stair-case. Windows answered to the doors on the upper story. Annexed to this, on the eastern side, were wings, divided, in like manner, into an upper and lower room; one of them comprized a kitchen, and chamber above it for the servant, and communicated, on both stories, with the parlour adjoining ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... and me together, As she left the attic, there, 30 By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... more than ever before, that her aunts were preparing some religious trap for her. They were very quiet about it; they did not urge her or bully her, but the subtle, silent influence went on so that the very stair-carpet, the very scuttles that held the coal, became secret messengers to hale her into the chapel and shut her in there for ever. After her first visit there the chapel became a nightmare to her—because, at once, she had felt its power. She had known—she ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... have felt distress at the idea that she was disturbing Mr. Tryan when he required rest; but now her need was too great for that: she could feel nothing but a sense of coming relief, when she heard his step on the stair and saw ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... advise you to put faith in the true report of those who have daily experience of their mistress's excellent virtue, as they have of the sun's shining, and of the earth's bringing forth fruit, and not in the tattle of a few cowardly back-stair rogues, who wish to curry favor with the Guises. Come, we will say no more. Walk round with us by Appledore, and then ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... change, and the princess wakes up a little, and looks about her. Then she tumbles off her chair and runs out of the door, not the same door the nurse went out of, but one which opened at the foot of a curious old stair of worm-eaten oak, which looked as if never anyone had set foot upon it. She had once before been up six steps, and that was sufficient reason, in such a day, for trying to find out what was at the ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... nodded, then rolled her jacket into a pillow, lay down before the door and immediately fell asleep. It had been a night of ghastly suspense. Another operator was already running up the stair to her relief. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... antic toys so funnily bestruck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In love's dear chain, so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat the boy! There ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... stair, a bride most fair, And some one takes my hand. I am numb and cold, but the lie is told, I smile and my lord is bland. But oh! for a sight of my rover wild, Who wanders abroad in ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... functionary to permit my carrying my hat with me to the drawing-room, a species of caution on my part—as he esteemed it—savouring much of distrust. This point however, I carried, and followed him up a very ill-lighted stair to the drawing-room; here I was announced by some faint resemblance to my real name, but sufficiently near to bring my friend Tom at once to meet me, who immediately congratulated me on my fortune in coming off so well, for that the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... broken rhythm which seemed always to die away short of fulfillment. A haunting thing of mystery and glamour, such mystery and glamour as had irradiated his long and wonderful night. He heard the door open and then her light footsteps on the stair outside. Hot-eyed and disheveled, he rose, staggering a little at first as he hurried to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... desultory. Dickie, whose imagination had been a good deal occupied by his soldier uncle, wanted to study him, and Gertrude was never steady when Aubrey was near. Presently it was discovered that the door to the tower stair was open. The ascent of the tower was a feat performed two or three times in a lifetime at Stoneborough. Harry had once beguiled Ethel and Mary up, but Gertrude had never gone, and was crazy to go, as was likewise Dickie. Moreover, Aubrey and Gertrude insisted that it ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crushing each other, and pushing and pulling with all their might, and getting the trunk tight and fast in all kinds of impossible angles, and to pass them was out of the question; for which sufficient reason, Mr Swiveller followed slowly behind, entering a new protest on every stair against the house of Mr Sampson Brass being thus ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the Home convinced me that the regulations of the house, the work of the sisters, and the devotion to duty that characterize the mother-houses in Germany rule also in this home in the New World. The imposing entrance hall with the great stair-way, the floor and stairs of white marble, the wide halls and spacious reception-rooms and offices seemed at first almost incongruous surroundings for the modest active deaconesses, some of whom were busy in the hospital wards, others hanging clothes on the line, and ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... doorway, through which she burst, screaming. The child, borne forward by our combined weight, tottered and fell almost across the threshold of this room, where a flight of stairs, lit by a dingy lamp, led up into obscure darkness. On the third stair under the lamp I caught a momentary vision of a dirty, half-naked boy standing with a drawn dirk in his hand, and with that, my foot catching against Meliar-Ann's body, I pitched past, head foremost, into ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you say," replied Franz, taking up his candle and leading the way out into the hail and down the winding stair. They crossed the lower corridor, mounted another staircase and entered a large, handsomely furnished room, half studio, half library. The wall was covered with pictures and sketches, several easels stood ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... window directly on that corner. The hall must run through the house crosswise, with the stairs on the west side of the house. As there is nothing to be seen in this direction except the white walls and green blinds of the parsonage, the windows on the stair-landing shall have stained glass. The dining-room will be at the north side of the hall, with plenty of eastern windows, and behind that the kitchen with windows at opposite sides. But you wouldn't understand the beauty of my ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... going to the stair door.] Very well. 'Tis best that I should go. I might say something ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... with a little flutter of a laugh. "My French heel caught on the stair; it was torn away. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... be some curious stirs, Unless my fancy greatly errs, At restaurants and theatres When our distinctive turn-out Lines up with all the others there, And we look out with quite an air And order the commissionaire Kindly to put the little stair That hangs behind the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... the pleasure of peeping down the little dark stair as Archie and his Jenny met in the doorway, and she walked demurely in their rear, wondering whether other eyes saw as much as she did in the manner in which Jenny hung on his arm. She left them to their dewy walk in the Rectory garden to the last minute at which breakfast could be swallowed, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over to demand its repetition; and one of my first attempts at a work of art was to scrabble his initials with my fingers, in red paint, on the house-door. One day, when playing all alone at the stair-foot—for the inmates of the house had gone out—something extraordinary had caught my eye on the landing-place above; and looking up, there stood John Feddes—for I somehow instinctively divined that it was none other than he—in the form of a large, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... rising in terraces behind it and alongside it, where she had spent the years from nine to fourteen, and where, if she were set down blindfold, now, at twenty-one, she could have found her way to every room and door and cupboard and stair with ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a while longer, and at last their patience was rewarded. They heard a step on the stair and ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... Don't touch me!" She had endured his presence till she could bear it no longer, and the thought of Dic sitting with Sukey had so wrought upon her that her self-control was exhausted. Williams walked back to the fireplace, and Rita, opening the stair door, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... and his wife. Velasquez stands on the left of the picture, behind the Infanta, painting, with his canvas turned back toward us as we look into the room. The black figure of an attendant has passed out of the apartment and is going up a stair against a clear white wall. The skilful way in which you are led into the picture is astonishing, and the whole thing is quite by itself as a piece of painting. There is no attempt at anything subtile or even delicate in the treatment, speaking from the point of view of a result achieved by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... of Joseph II. The square in the town is large, and has a striking appearance, owing to the picturesque and varied forms of the houses and public buildings of which it is formed. From the summit of the great steeple, to which you are conducted by a stair of 353 steps, there is a magnificent view over the adjacent country to a great distance. It is for the most part green, owing to the immense quantity of land under pasturage, and clothed in every direction with extensive woods. At a considerable ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... at the end of the iron lane I see the sunset's glare, And the red bars lie across the sky Like steps of a wondrous stair. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... he inspected the window, opened it, and looked out. With simian agility, laughing with joy at his discovery, he sprang over the embrasure and disappeared, seeking with feet and hands the irregularities of the rubble-work, the deep, stair-like sockets left by the stones when they had fallen loose from the mortar. Febrer looked out and saw him picking up his hat and waving it with a triumphant expression. Then the boy ran around the base of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fairer and daintier than them all, and there, too, was I. And behold how demurely she courtesied and smiled behind her ivory fan! With what a grace I took a pinch of snuff! With what an air I ogled and bowed with hand on heart! Then, somehow, it seemed we were alone, she on the top stair, I on the lower. And standing thus I raised my arms to her with an appealing gesture. Her eyes looked down into mine, the patch quivered at the corner of her scarlet mouth, and there beside it was the dimple. Beneath her petticoat I saw her foot ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... she could hardly undo the private fastening of Miss Mohun's garden, and she began to dash down the cliff steps. Just at the turn, where the stair-way was narrowest, Lance heard her exclaim, and saw that she had met face to face no ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fields, and the cattle and sheep on which they fed on feast days. A fine square tower (still remaining) arose over the bridge, and alone gave access by its stately portals to the hallowed precincts; it was three stories high, the janitor lived and slept therein; a winding stair conducted to the turreted roof and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... true his heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And shall I see his face again? And shall I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm like ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... my friend heard the back-door open gently; a foot ascended the stair, a key grated in the door of the room close at hand: the father glided through the dark into that chamber behind ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the nose, Though "there wasn't the least provocation." And they cursed and they throttled, they gouged, and they swore, And they battered and bled, and they tumbled and tore, And they fetched the police, and they rolled down the stair, Did these blue-blooded dwellers in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... I shall ever with grateful pleasure remember—the reception I got when I had the honour of waiting on you at Stair. I am little acquainted with politeness, but I know a good deal of benevolence of temper and goodness of heart. Surely did those in exalted stations know how happy they could make some classes of their inferiors by condescension ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... rested. Blessed Paul began making a duck- house; she let him be; the duck-house fell down, and she had to set her hand to it. He was then to make a drinking-place for the pigs; she let him be again - he made a stair by which the pigs will probably escape this evening, and she was near weeping. Impossible to blame the indefatigable fellow; energy is too rare and goodwill too noble a thing to discourage; but it's trying ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson |
