"Tidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that 'appened to a young fellow I knew named Alf Simms. Being an orphan 'e was brought up by his uncle, George Hatchard, a widowed man of about sixty. Alf used to go to sea off and on, but more off than on, his uncle 'aving quite a tidy bit of 'ouse property, and it being understood that Alf was to have it arter he 'ad gone. His uncle used to like to 'ave him at 'ome, and Alf didn't like work, so it ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... concealed under some marsh brush, young Levin pushed off to his vessel, made her tidy by a few changes, pulled up the jib, and brought her in to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... best brown silk dress, with a lace collar and cuff set contributed the Christmas before by her Aunt Kate from Ontario, and at her waist, one of the doctor's roses. The others had been brought over by Mary, and were in a glass jar on the tidy desk, where they attracted much attention and speculation as to where they had come from. They seemed to redeem the bare school-room from utter dreariness, and Pearl found herself repeating the phrase in the doctor's letter, "Like a rose in ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... was neat and tidy, white-washed of course. I was not inside; I did not like to go; those who were said it was very clean and neat. A room with a few ornaments, a table and some chairs, and a kitchen with its dresser and table, and a few chairs and stools. The rent was L14 6s. The tenant stated that he objected ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... factory hands are, as you well know, neat, tidy, and well dressed girls. As soon as they turn off from the stream of their fellow-workers, as they leave the mills, it is hardly possible to tell whether they are factory girls, shop girls, servants, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... had made the downstairs chamber all tidy and comfortable for the patient. She had contributed a window shade and dimity curtains; Susan a braided rug and a chair cushion. The chamber (the one in which Caleb's mother had died) opened from the kitchen ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... money has been once so intended; suppose it kept its destination. About L500 would put up a tidy little industrial school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some of our little —th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't make orphans of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don't ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Arthur boldly, to a tidy old lady, sitting in her green verandah. 'Nous sommes des etrangers—I'd like to ask her what it's all about,' he whispered confidentially to Robert; 'but I'm out of my ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... tidy drop in my time," said Mr. Ponders, completing the operation and corking the medicine bottle. He held it towards Rosalie, paused in his mysteriously deliberative way, and then suddenly handed it to her. "And a tidy fair drop for Miss Keggs at that," he added. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... early the young fisherman went out in his pretty boat, the "Fanny Jenkins," for his day's toil and adventure, leaving his cheerful little wife at her work—spinning, sewing, or caring for the child; and every night, when he returned tired and hungry, as fishermen often are, and found a tidy home, a smiling wife, a crowing baby and a hearty meal awaiting him, he thought and said, that he was just the happiest O'Neill ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... seen the fairies dancing in the air And dashing off behind the stars to tidy up their hair? I have, I ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... care to stay at my place. The missus ain't the easiest one in the world tuh get along with, but soon as she sees what a likely chap yuh be I know she'll like yuh, same as I do. Try it awhile, lad, until yuh kin make your mind up. My Joe used tuh make a tidy lot of money trappin' animals in the swamp for ther skins, huntin' turkles like them terrapin they pay sech a big price fur, an' actin' as guide fur the shooters as come down along the coast after ducks and snipe and bay birds. ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... against the right side. He was labored with; he bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next summer would find that picturesque road bristling with barbed wire on both sides. It will be as ugly as man can make it, but it will be "tidy" (New England's shibboleth), for no sweet green thing will grow up beside it. Nature doesn't ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... bolt of lissom lath; Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle, Led the lorn traveller up the path Through clean-clipt rows of box and myrtle; And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray, Upon the parlor steps collected, Wagged all their tails, and seemed to say, "Our ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... arm over the whole business; an' I'm thinkin' there'll be 'tubes' a plenty for all the pictures master'll ever paint. In a fine heap, though, an' that must be your job, Master Hal, come to-morrow, to put them all tidy, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... arrears. But Mrs. Hutch cut me short at the mention of college. She broke out with her old reproaches, and worked herself into a worse fury than I had ever witnessed before. I was all alone in the tempest, and a very old lady was sitting on a sofa, drinking tea; and the tidy on the back of the sofa was ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... are remarkably tidy in the matter of floors. They even remove their shoes at the doorway. A Japanese student in New York was continually distressed by the dirty hallways of the building in which he lived. In the autumn, the janitor placed a notice at the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... and so shrill, that it awakened her at once. Up she started; and when she saw the Three Bears on one side of the bed, she tumbled herself out at the other, and ran to the window. Now the window was open, because the Bears, like good, tidy Bears, as they were, always opened their bed-chamber window when they got up in the morning. Out the little old Woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... presently reappeared with a lady with whom he had exchanged a dozen hurried words. They seemed to refer to him and Susy; but Clarence was too much preoccupied with the fact that the lady was pretty, that her clothes were neat and thoroughly clean, that her hair was tidy and not rumpled, and that, although she wore an apron, it was as clean as her gown, and even had ribbons on it, to listen to what was said. And when she ran eagerly forward, and with a fascinating smile ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... with cotton wool hever since I comed to Ireland. But this here Honor McBride has a mighty pretty vice, if you don't take exceptions to a little nationality; nor she if not so smoke-dried: she's really a nice, tidy-looking like girl considering. I've taken tea with the family often, and they live quite snug for Hirish. I'll assure you, ma'am, quite bettermost people for Hibernians, as ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... tried to get into conversation with the old ladies, who were wandering in and out of a small sitting-room. But one of them was very deaf, and the other seemed to be a foreigner. She discovered from a moderately tidy maid, by the name of Martha, who seemed a sort of factotum, that there were other ladies in their rooms, too much ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... roared the big fellow threateningly. "You've got a lass there as I likes the looks on; pull up, d'ye hear! Look at the shape of 'er!" quoth he, pointing out Diana to his companions. "A tidy piece—eh, my ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... tellin' av us last night, he was, that they'll soon be losin' their job. He says, says he, she's again' an honest man makin' a livin', she is. Why, there's me own naice's husband, Tim Mathews, ain't he an ahlderman, rayspicted an' looked up to? Ain't he layin' by a tidy little fortin' for Mary, just by aldermannin', when he's dead an' gone?' 'How is that, Mary?' I asked. 'He doesn't get much of a salary as alderman, does he? How can he support his six children and lay up a fortune?' 'Oh, well, ma'am, it ain't the salary as does it,' ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... three days; she never tramped for miles over mountains or spent whole days catching glasen off the rocks. The country she had lived in had been different, too—a red-roofed village, where every cottage had a garden neat and trim, and all the children had rosy cheeks and tidy yellow hair. But on their mother's bad days, when she remembered another past, they would creep to her door, and listen with troubled faces to her wild talk of sins and punishment, and hear her praying for forgiveness and death. Their love for their mother was a ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... me that living might be pretty in such places. All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down at Fort Warren, that you see ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... right, my girl, quite right! What I wanted to say was only this, that I have put by a tidy penny out of what I have made by working at this new ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... fellow was a very tidy villain; as a pair, Vlacho and he would be hard to beat—in England, at all events. About Neopalia I had learned to reserve my opinion. Such were my reflections as I turned to resume my interrupted crawl to safety. But in an instant I ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Vell now! that's vot I calls wery tidy vork! Bob and a tanner for seven doors ain't none so dusty, blow me! Summat better this 'ere than orkin' "'All the new and popilar songs of the day for a penny!" Vot miserable vork that vos to be sure! I vos allays a cryin' about the streets, "Here y' are—one 'undered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... ain't no use for you-alls to stop here. The Injuns have got this section combed out clean. You couldn't get enough plumes around here to pay for your bacon. Now, I knows of a tidy little island 'bout twelve miles south of here where there's stacks of the birds. If you start right now you'll hit it before them pesky varmints of redskins find it. I'm telling you in pay for that tobacco. Max Hilliard ain't the kind of man to take nothing ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and partly to draw the women and children in. How else could she establish any relations between herself and them, or get any permanent hold or access? She had "turned it all over in her mind," she said; "and a tidy little shop with fair, easy prices, was the very thing, and a part of just what she ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... followed his removal to Frau Spritzkrapfen's tidy home. There had been a slight rain in the early night, and the footways were yet bright and moist in patches that the slanting morning rays were slowly coaxing away. Ronald Wyde, having set his favorite ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... familiar in the house of the Thrales at Streatham. There was much company. Mrs. Thrale had a taste for literary guests and literary guests had, on their part, a taste for her good dinners. Johnson was the lion-in-chief. There was Dr. Johnson's room always at his disposal; and a tidy wig kept for his special use, because his own was apt to be singed up the middle by close contact with the candle, which he put, being short-sighted, between his eyes and a book. Mrs. Thrale had skill in languages, read Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... guess you to heft over one twenty-eight or thirty at the outside. I'll have the box filled in with spruce boughs and a lot of nice bunch-grass, and put some comforts over that, and you'll be all snug and tidy. You won't starve, either, not while there's ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Everything was tidy. The tent had been pitched as well as ever, with the door facing down the sastrugi, the bamboos with a good spread, the tent itself taut and shipshape. There was no snow inside the inner lining. There were some loose pannikins from the cooker, the ordinary tent ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... here! I'll tell you, sir. A big fellow with a broad grey hat and feathers, and all long hair and ragged lace, spurred at me, and, if I hadn't been tidy sharpish, he'd have rode me down. Hit at me, too, he did, with his sword, and caught me on the shoulder, but it didn't cut through the leather; and, 'fore he could get another cut at me, I give him a wipe on ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... wouldn't hurt a hair of her head, for all her bouncings and flinging of pots and kettles when she is in a temper. It is the basement tries her, poor soul. She says she has never been used to it. Her first husband was in the tin trade, and they had a tidy little shop ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... no good," said Syme. "He will never get anything out of that old heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets went through Bull's hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill a tidy number of them." ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... serious—no, I won't say serious—conventional. But you're very stupid; we all of us can be, and must be sometimes. You asked me just now what I thought of your friend—well, I'll tell you. He is as different from you as possible. He has his thoughts, no doubt, but he prefers to be very tidy. He takes refuge in the things you throw overboard. He's not at all my sort, and he's not yours either, in a way. Goodness knows what will happen to either of us, but he'll be Captain Langton to the end of his days. I envy that sort ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... was very busy in Benjamin's home washing and dressing to go to Shule. The mother was getting the living-room clean and tidy for ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... The attraction must have been one of contrast, for whereas Jack was black and grubby, and had only week-day clothes—which were ragged at that—Phoebe was fair, and exquisitely clean, and quite terribly tidy. Her mother was the neatest woman in the parish. It was she who was wont to say to her trembling handmaid, "I hope I can black a grate without blacking myself." But little Phoebe promised so far to out-do her mother, that it seemed doubtful if she could "black herself" ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... doesn't make him less stand-offish. He may be in the business, but he's not of it. I doubt myself whether even old Cramphorn would venture to invite him to dinner, and if he did, I'd bet a tidy sum that the Honourable ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... they are apt to handle them carelessly)—that the children were dying by the dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next day in recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was caught before the clock got through striking.] At the foot of "the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (Credat Hahnemannus,) and to have grown round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... behave themselves (which is sometimes a trifle irksome) they never hear an unkind word. They grow in grace, partly because they return as many of these favors as is possible at their age. They water the plants, clean the bird's cage and fill the seed cups and bath; they keep the room as tidy as possible to make the janitor's work easier; they brush up the floor after their own muddy feet; the older ones help the younger and the strong look after the weak. The conditions are almost ideal; why should they not ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the expression on his face when he saw her hands red from hot dish-water, and she would not allow him to help her. The boast she had made to him of her housekeeping abilities had not been an idle one. She prepared the meals and kept the cottage tidy, and went about other duties in a manner that showed she was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... about her. Save for her boy, she was all alone on the hillside, and around her brooded a curious stillness. At the cemetery, too, on the hilltop, she had not met anybody that day, not even the old woman who usually watered the flowers and kept the graves tidy, and with whom Bertha used often to have a chat. Bertha felt that somehow a considerable time had elapsed since she had started on her walk, and that it was long since she ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... of his seemingly unbeatable hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, there was a sudden smashing of glassware in the smoking room and a flurry of arms ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a trim little old woman, not near so tall as her visitor; very wrinkled, but fresh-skinned, and with a quick grey eye. Her dress was a common working dress of some dark stuff; coarse, but tidy and nice-looking; her cap white and plain; she sat in her arm-chair, setting her little feet to the fire, and her fingers merrily clicking her needles together; a very comfortable vision. The kitchen and its furniture were as ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... by one door, Pierre came in by the other, bringing more wood for the fire, and then proceeding to make the disordered room as tidy as he could. All the company now gathered round the cheerful blaze that was roaring up the chimney and sending out a warm glow that was an irresistible attraction in the chill of the early morning. Isabelle knelt down and stretched out the rosy palms of her ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... tidy and there's plenty in the pantry," said Felicity, who could face anything undauntedly with ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had passed out of hearing, Jane Duncannon in a neat brown dress with a little round brown ribboned hat set trimly on her rippley hair, and a little round basket on her arm covered daintily with a white napkin, was nipping out her tidy front gate between the sunflowers and asters and tripping down Maple street as if it had been on her mind to go ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... who had been away the afternoon and evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... that—a bigger man than the squire at Elmwood, or at Leigh I can tell you. Only I would give all that bare mountain and bog, full of wild, Popish, red-haired kernes for twenty yards in a tidy street at Bristol, with decent godly folk around me. Murdering or being murdered, I have marvelled more than once whether the men of Israel were as sick of it in Canaan as I was at Drogheda, but the cry ever was, 'Be not slack in the work.' But I will bring you Jephthah's letter. He ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wife, "that your Bridget is worth teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has good recommendations from excellent families, whose ideas of good bread it appears differ from ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, she will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... left the warm, living thing and was too much alone. This time he came through Prairie and Calumet Avenues. Here, on the asphalt pavements, the broughams and hansoms rolled noiselessly to and fro among the opulent houses with tidy front grass plots and shining steps. The avenues were alive with afternoon callers. At several points there were long lines of carriages, attending a reception, or ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... an old-fashioned house in a northern suburb of London, a girl of fourteen was kneeling on the floor, turning out the contents of the bottom cupboards of a big bookcase. Her method of doing so was hardly tidy; she just tossed the miscellaneous assortment of articles down anywhere, till presently she was surrounded by a mixed-up jumble of books, papers, paint-boxes, music, chalks, pencils, foreign stamps, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... and brought a newspaper; for even in her excitement she was scrupulously tidy. She laid it on the table in front of the abbe, rather awkwardly with her left hand, and then, holding her right over the newspaper, she suddenly opened it, and let fall a little heap of stones and soil. Some of the stones had a singular ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... whole settlement is surrounded by stockades. At the further end of the town stands the convict prison, distinguished by its tower, and the Governor's house, which, though built of wood, is the most pretentious-looking edifice in the place. There is a nice little church close by, and some tidy-looking barracks. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... the principal had gone to bed, without having uttered one word as to his health. George had announced that he should tidy the sacred desk before departing. When he had done that he wrote a letter, in pencil. "It's the least I can do," he said to ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... said Smith. "I don't know what she weighs in at. But she's got a tidy gait. The Rambler—that's her name—don't take the dust of anything afloat. This is my first trip on her. I'm taking a squint along this coast just to get an idea of the countries where the rubber and red pepper and revolutions come from. I had ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed!—your friend Rickeybockey said he was never more comfortable in his life—quite enjoyed sitting there. And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he is, when he pleases) ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... he slept in the box-stall once inhabited by the prize stallion, Caleb the Second, now deceased, and you would have been surprised to see what a tidy place he made of it by tacking up two or three anatomical pictures from the Police Gazette, and putting in a folding bed,—or, more strictly speaking, a bed that could be folded. It consisted of three discarded horse ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... was the subject of a discourse a few days ago at the Royal Institution. The lecturer, Professor Meymott Tidy, began by directing attention to the derivation of the word "toxicology," the science of poisons. The Greek word [Greek: toxon] signified primarily that specially oriental weapon which we call a bow, but the word in the earliest authors ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... the lodge by this time, and I was shown a tidy little room leading out of the one Ralph was occupying, in which I assured Sir George that Carr would be perfectly comfortable, much to the courteous old gentleman's relief, though I could see that he was evidently annoyed ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... door opened as there appeared in answer to the buzzer a very alert, very smiling, and very tidy office girl. Emma McChesney had tried office boys, and found ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... hair cannot, without some application, be kept tidy, then a little castor oil, scented, might, by means of an old tooth-brush, be used to smooth it; castor oil is, for the purpose, one of the most simple and harmless of dressings; but, as I said before, the hair's own natural oil cannot be ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... was in love; all the regiment knew it, he was so very palpably and completely in love. Over his bed in his tidy quarters hung the photograph of a young lady who was known to be the young lady; which, when the regiment, individually and collectively, happened to see it, left no doubt in its mind as to their ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... said the neat little woman, making a charming gesture with her little heart-shaped head, about which she had tied a snow-white three-cornered piece of linen to give herself a tidy and almost nunlike appearance—"oh yes, I like that! A devil of a girl.... Well, you'll find out what sort of a girl I am if you ever get into my hands! I'd take charge of the cooking as well—nobody ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... similarly with the excavations themselves: century under century, each also represented by little more than foot-prints, bases of gone columns, foundations of rough edifices. Among these neatly-dug-out layers of nothingness, these tidy heaps of chips with so few things, stand out the few old column- and temple-ends which Piranesi ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... not a tidy nor a punctual man. In his library the spirit of order contended against fearful odds. For Brodrick lived in his library, the long, book-lined, up-stairs room that ran half the length of the house on the north side. But even there, violate as he would his own ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... my life do I remember going into the dining-room to dinner without first meeting grandmamma in the drawing-room, when a glance would show her if my face and hands had been freshly washed and my hair brushed and my dress tidy, and upstairs again would I be sent in a twinkling if any of ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... had made her Lamb nice and tidy, and she was going downstairs, Mirabell was, to see what Uncle Tim was doing, when Arnold came back from Dick's house with the toy fire engine and the wooden puzzle the sailor had made ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... more than twenty years. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. The ground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... said Bob, pointing to these men. "Pretty tidy looking lot, aren't they? I brought them along as a sort of guard of honour for Marion. They're not really the least necessary; but I thought you and she might be pleased ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... hills, facing south and west. It is upon an elevation, and therefore enjoys a view of the sea, and, inland, of the spires of The Hague. The garden is an old one, and there are quiet nooks in it where the trees have grown to a quite respectable stature. Holland is so essentially a tidy country that nothing old or moss-grown is tolerated. One wonders where all the rubbish of the centuries has been hidden; for all the ruins have been decently cleared away and cities that teem with historical interest ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... gave no trouble and kept his cell tidy, he scaled it down a couple of years. Nobody looked for him to come back to Tullington after he got loose. They all had it doped out that he'd salted away that hundred and fifty thousand somewhere, and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... and see," said Marcia. "Come with me, Pertinax. Then we must tidy the bed and make haste and summon the officers of the praetorian guard. Let them hear Galen say ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... the captain, "why! he is rolling in money! You've done a tidy little job for yourself, may gel, and your old ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... comfort, too, to be without housemaids to tidy up your papers in the smoking-room and shut your windows in the evening! How healthful to sleep in a room in which the windows have been wide open night and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... deeds in Heaven's Record Office, and she was given four white tablets on which her deeds were inscribed; and the rat tablet Towy took from her. "Faith and hope are tidy heifers," he said, "but a stallion is charity. Priceless Beybile ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... at once went down to the village, and got a woman to scrub the cottage from top to bottom, and put everything tidy. The furniture went with the house, and had been provided by the squire. Mrs. Ellison went over it, and ordered a few more things to be sent down from the house to make it more comfortable for a married couple and, driving over to Lewes, ordered a carpet, curtains, and a few other ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... very uncouth and unpicturesque fashion. A pair of old, worn, beaver gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, with plenty of whalebone sticking through the bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him; and, being disposed in a very tidy and careful manner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, whoever he was, had no intention of going ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the subject of every man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to take him if he offered, and to put the school-teacher out and have a real parlor again, but to keep Mr. Reynolds, he being tidy and ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... their small household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself is no longer the chair it once was as ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... kitchen, and began the work of putting the house in order. How nicely she did it! like the perfection of a nurse, which she was. No dust, no noise, no bustle; still as a mouse, but watchful as a cat, the alert old woman went round the room and made all tidy and all clean and fresh. Very likely Juanita would change the flowers in a little vase which stood on the mantelpiece or the table, before she felt that everything was as it ought ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... stained-glass panels to the doors—he beheld the coming degradation of his country. He saw them, like great armies of white or red ants, creeping over the land, devouring all that was beautiful in it, or ancient, or redolent of grandeur. Bit by bit, street by street, the ignoble, the tidy, the pettiness of the parlour, was gaining upon splendour and renown, and the anticipation of the change cast a foreboding sadness over the beauty of his own ancestral home. It tainted even his unuttered pride in his son, who had been at Eton without expulsion, and served ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... a prim, tidy town, and after taking a look at the fine statue of the Maid, and laughing at some funny little soldiers drumming wildly in the Place, our ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... disturbed her was the comfort and arrangement of everything. Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house. And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly or disciplined. She had ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... the house struck Katherine first. Peter was not great at housework, while the half-breed, Simon, who lived with them, helped with the trapping in winter, and did a little of all sorts of work, was rather less clean and tidy in his ways than even Peter. The sight of the dusty, ill-kept room irritated Katherine. Last night's supper dishes still littered the table, and had probably served for breakfast dishes as well. What ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... wanting clothes yet awhile," she answered with a smile. "I'm coming back shortly to tidy you up," and Vane cursed under his breath as she left ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Barton the Reverend Cecil had strayed into Betty's room, now no longer boudoir and bedchamber, but just a room, swept, dusted, tidy, with the horrible tidiness of a room that is not used. There were squares of bright yellow on the dull drab of the wall-paper, marking the old hanging places of the photographs and pictures that Betty had taken to Paris. He opened the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... a tenant estate anything beyond the mere comfortable wants of the family occupying it, and to furnish the room necessary for the accommodation of the crops, stock, and farm furniture, in the barns and other out-buildings—all in a cheap, tidy, yet ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... suggested the first difficulty. They were always in the habit of taking that meal, and indeed every other, in the kitchen. It saved time, trouble, and fire, besides leaving the parlor always tidy for callers, chiefly pupils' parents, and preventing these latter from discovering that the three orphan daughters of Henry Leaf, Esq., solicitor, and sisters of Henry Leaf, Junior, Esq., also solicitor, but whose sole mission in life seemed to have been to spend every thing, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... after becoming an inmate of the house, my pumps were suffered to remain, untouched, where I had first happened to throw them. I remembered, however, that after awhile I had missed them from their accustomed place; but the matter gave me no concern, supposing that Tinor—like any other tidy housewife, having come across them in some of her domestic occupations—had pitched the useless things out of the house. But ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... "There's a tidy few. But it's nothin' like Montana. You ought ter get Rifle-Eye Bill to tell you of the old days o' the sheep an' cattle war. The debates were considerable fervent an' plenty frequent, an' a Winchester or two made it seem emphatic a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Laura had thoughts of tearing off her hat and jacket and declaring that she felt too ill to go out. But at last, when she was almost sick with suspense, Mary put her tidy head ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... retainer, Ahuna. She stole the key from Kanau one night, and made Ahuna go and steal her father's bones out of the Mausoleum. I know. And he must have been a giant. She kept him in one of her big jars. One day, when I was a tidy size of a lad, and curious to know if Kaaukuu was as big as tradition had him, I fished his intact lower jaw out of the jar, and the wrappings, and tried it on. I stuck my head right through it, and it rested around ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... divines, that they were vassals to or in close alliance with the infernals, as there is too much reason to believe was the case with their North British sisterhood.[45] The common nursery story cannot be forgotten, how, shortly after the death of what is called a nice tidy housewife, the Elfin band was shocked to see that a person of different character, with whom the widower had filled his deserted arms, instead of the nicely arranged little loaf of the whitest bread, and a basin of sweet cream, duly placed for their refreshment by the deceased, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... shipwreck, but the details had been scanty and unsatisfactory, and the soul of the town throbbed with curiosity to know what had really happened to her. For the first few hours of her return Mrs. Cliff was in a state of heavenly ecstasy. Everything was so tidy, everything was so clean, every face beamed with such genial amity, her native air was so intoxicating, that she seemed to be in a sort of paradise. But when her friends and neighbors began to ask questions, she felt ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... at once, Kathleen," she said. "I really can't put up with this sort of thing any longer. I want to get into my room; I want to tidy myself. I am going to ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig. Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be unnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic birds and tropic blossoms. Tropic birds look like staring toys out of a toy-shop. Tropic flowers simply look like artificial flowers, like things cut ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... House, and I felt sorry to leave it, in proportion to the uncertainty of our meeting with better accommodation for a long time. The Ocmulgee (the Indian name of a river in Georgia, and the cognomen of our steamboat) was a tiny, tidy little vessel, the exceeding small ladies' cabin of which we, fortunately, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... beautiful and breakable. Dusk-white face; little tidy nose and mouth; dark hair and eyes like the minnows swimming under the green water. But Jerrold's face was strong; and he had funny eyes that made you keep looking at him. They were blue. Not tiresomely blue, blue all the time, like his mother's, but secretly and surprisingly ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... Spaniard. They wouldn't want to go into action with a lot of bales and cases hamperin' their movements; but now that they've got everything snugly stowed under hatches, they're comin' down to try conclusions with us; and if they really mean business we've a very tidy little ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... cleaning out while the Cat was gone, and made the house tidy; but the greedy Cat ate ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... of the elections. Just opposite this sitting room of the King, or on the next floor, is the sitting room of the Queen, covered chairs, clean curtains, nice carpets, books on the table, canary birds at the window, everything tidy, neat and beautiful, and according to your programme the occupants of this room will so demoralize the occupants of the other as to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... talked such nonsense if you had had the grace to have any of your own," says I. And with that I into the bedroom and shut the door, and left him out there in his shirt. My sister and I soon got everything arranged, for there was no time to lose. And before morning I had all made tidy, and your poor mother lying as sweet a corpse as ever angel saw. And no one could say a word against her. And it's my belief that that villain made her believe somehow or other that she was as good as married ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians. These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America, perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... and I've picked up some tidy odds against our friend Carwell. I'm taking his end, and I think ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... on my 'oss in a minnit, and I rides off and fetches him, for sure enough he was there; and though Simmons' missis wasn't to say over her troubles, she spoke up from behind the curtain of red blanket she had put up in her tidy little hut, and bade old Tomkins go with me. May God bless her and hers for that same, say I! Well, ma'am, when Tomkins come back with me and saw the poor fellow (he was fair shoutin' with the pain in his legs by then), ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... table for dressings, and some oddments of chairs, including two carved oak dining-room chairs. Round the front steps is a barricade of sandbags against snipers' bullets. The officer's room above the cellars was quite nice and tidy, furnished from the ruined houses, and with a vase of daffodils! He had been told the day before to allow no one up the staircase, because snipers were on the look-out for the top windows, and if it were seen to be used as an observing station it might ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... terms of service to become independent farmers; thus they ceased to be recognizable as a distinct class of society. Nevertheless the common statement that no traces of the "mean white" are to be found in New England is perhaps somewhat too sweeping. Interspersed among those respectable and tidy mountain villages, once full of such vigorous life, one sometimes comes upon little isolated groups of wretched hovels whose local reputation is sufficiently indicated by such terse epithets as "Hardscrabble" or "Hell-huddle." Their denizens ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... thought I should never see anything but the lengthening of an endless bill on my landlady's face—my sole planet. I was resigned till I heard my friend "to-lool!" this morning. He kindled recollection. But, this is a tidy Port, and that was a delectable sort of young lady that you were riding with when we parted last! She laughs like the true metal. I suppose you know it 's the identical damsel I met the day before, and owe it to for my run on the downs—I 've a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... see the wheel jerk then, miss? That tug to sta'bo'd is the only fault I find with this here schooner. She's a right tidy craft, and Cap'n Tunis is a good judge of sailing ships, as his father was ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... shore—there the water babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or foul), but leave the sea anemones and the crabs to clear away everything till the good, tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the water babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor shells and sea cucumbers and golden combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man's dirt is cleared away. And that, I suppose, is ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... troublesome, he was ordered home that he might have the benefit of a more temperate climate to assist his recovery, and he accordingly took passage for London in a tidy little barque, the Lilian, Don Manuel and his daughter, with old Dolores, all of whom had gone on to Sierra Leone with us, also engaging berths in the same vessel. The survivors from the Daphne being also ordered home to stand their trial for the loss of that vessel, I thought I could ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... always imagined Frances did not know of her mother's efforts to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... boy, like his ma's folks," she continued, when he had enumerated their gifts. "I am glad fer him that his pa and his stepmother was so scrimpin'. David, would you b'lieve it, in that great big house of the Forbeses thar wa'n't never a tidy on a chair, and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his stepmother died fust, so he got all ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... on't; but you had na come home then. No! I put on my merino, as was turned last winter, and my white shawl, and did my hair pretty tidy; it did well enough. Well, but as I was saying, I went at seven. I couldn't see to read my music, but I took th' paper in wi' me, to ha' something to do wi' my fingers. Th' folks' heads danced, as I stood as right afore 'em all as if I'd been going ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Deer, an old tidy wench, of fifty, pretty well bent by rheumatism, and so square in the lower half of her figure, and so spare in the upper, that she appeared to have been carved out of her own hips: "why, as to dat, he ain't good-looking to ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... she'd found it was a lie—I never knew she'd turned away because she was—she'd found out it wasn't true; and I've been a hard man all the time because I didn't know. Now, I'd like to put things straight, just tidy up a bit. I'm no sort of a hand at making things smooth, but maybe you won't feel us strangers now, and we'll ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... very clean and tidy, and that confirmed him in his conjecture, as he was curious to verify its truth, he went into the three rooms which opened into one another. The bedroom, came first; next there came a kind of a drawing-room, and then a dining-room, which evidently ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... this!" exclaimed my father, when he had read the letter. "How does Tom come to be out of funds at this time of year? He's been at work all winter at high wages and he ought to have saved up quite a tidy sum—in fact, he was counting on doing so. What's the matter, I wonder? Did he tell you ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... his niece to reserve his sister's evacuations. His niece replied that Helene was so scrupulously tidy that such vessels were never left about, but were taken away at once to be emptied and cleaned. "I revised my opinion of the woman after she had gone,'' added the witness. "I thought ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless girl, the daughter of her whose forgiving kiss had comforted her in many sleepless hours. So there was a warm greeting between the tidy old woman and the blooming young work-girl; and then Alice ventured to ask if she would come in and take her tea ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tidy—tidy. I was just thinking about some of our chaps aboard the Naughtylass, growling and grumbling at her for being an unlucky ship, and no fighting to be had. They wouldn't find fault if they was ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... to him one afternoon to find that his wife had so far unbent as to tidy up the parlour. Ornaments had been dusted and polished and the carpet swept. She had even altered the position of the furniture. The table had been pushed against the wall, and the easy- chair, with ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... chattering, and primped and fussed in Maxine's neat and austere little bedroom. They used Maxine's powder and dropped it about on the tidy dresser and the floor. They brushed away only what had settled on the front of their dresses. They forgot to switch off the electric light, leaving Maxine to do it, thriftily, between serving courses. Every penny counted. Every penny ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... square glass tank—a tiny fountain in the centre of which it pleased him to set playing—and later carefully examining the ferns and other pot-plants in search of green-fly, scale, or blight. But to-day the innocent routine of his life was rudely broken up. He had no heart for his accustomed tidy potterings, but lingered aimlessly, fingering the gold watch-chain strained across the convex surface of his waistcoat, sand looking pitifully enough between the lace curtains out on to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... on her cane as she answered the knock on the front door when we visited her home. "Come in," she invited, and led the way through her scrupulously tidy house to the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the next day, I repaired to the bright and tidy little cottage, and there I had my reward. Standing near the house a little in the shadow of a good sized evergreen-tree, which I had ordered transplanted bodily from the woods into the little yard, I beheld Sylvia approaching, and with ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... at the funny face he made and then she smiled in her most motherly fashion. "Then it's a good thing I forgot and left it on last night," she said, "and don't you worry, I can perk it up and make it look real tidy." ...
— Mary Jane—Her Visit • Clara Ingram Judson
... passage, being careful he should not detect it, for fear of his contempt. Then I minutely examined my clothes and thought that everything looked old, worn and threadbare. I had let myself get too slovenly. My uniform, perhaps, was tidy, but I could not go out to dinner in my uniform. The worst of it was that on the knee of my trousers was a big yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain would deprive me of nine-tenths of my ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky |
