"Uncarpeted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made one final effort, and came down hard upon the middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... to his uncle's bedroom; a room austere in its simplicity, with bare white-washed walls and uncarpeted floor. No one could have hidden a sheet of paper in that room, thought the detective, as he gazed round it, after he had looked, with a feeling akin to guilt, on the features of the dead peer. He had not known ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... amusing me by the peculiar manner in which his long legs clung to the ladder, and then wobbled about on the rolling deck until he attained the protection of the companion-way. A half dozen broad, uncarpeted steps led down into the after cabin, which was plain and practically without furniture, except for a bare table suspended from the upper beams and a few chairs securely resting in chocks. The deck was bare, but had been thoroughly ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... purchased this house—a large, square room on the ground floor, with curtained windows opening upon the balcony, and upon the old apple-tree. It is singularly favorable for music, for it contains no heavy furniture, and the floor is uncarpeted. We had intended to remove all the pictures from the walls, that they might not deaden the sound of the music, but we could not resist an exquisite "Mary in the Desert," purchased by uncle in Florence, in 1851; so this painting is now hung ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... had settled to a dismal drizzle unrelieved by lightning or by thunder that the five occupants of the room were suddenly startled by a strange pattering sound from the floor below. It was as the questioning fall of a child's feet upon the uncarpeted boards in the room beneath them. Frozen to silent rigidity, the five sat straining every faculty to catch the minutest sound from the black void where the dead man lay, and as they listened there ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it, however slightly. Placing her ear to the panel, she could hear him tearing up papers of some sort, and a brighter and quivering ray of light coming from the threshold an instant later, implied that he was burning them. By the slight noise of his footsteps on the uncarpeted floor, she at length imagined that he was approaching the door. She flitted upstairs again and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that I remonstrated, and frequently, against the terrific noise they made every morning at seven o'clock when they clamped across the uncarpeted hall and down the stairs. But although they would tiptoe for a day they would forget again, and I finally resigned myself. I also did my share in training them to wait on a guest in her room! Not one when I arrived had anything more than a theoretical idea ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Miss Vi doing belated chamberwork upstairs sounded like six on an ore-wagon as she walked up and down the uncarpeted hall. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Prince Krapotkine, who lives at Harrow, in the suburbs of London. A friend of his, Mr. Lieneff, escorted us there. We found the prince, his wife, and child in very humble quarters; uncarpeted floors, books and papers on pine shelves, wooden chairs, and the bare necessaries of life—nothing more. They indulge in no luxuries, but devote all they can spare to the publication of liberal opinions to be scattered ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... he turned about, and walked across the lobby, at about the same leisurely pace at which she was ascending, and entered a room, into which she followed him. It was an uncarpeted and unfurnished chamber. An open trunk lay upon the floor empty, and beside it the coil of rope; but except herself there her. Perhaps, when she was able to think it over, it was a relief to was no ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the two cottages. With Hillyer and Smythe silently following, she ran to the cottage, and through the open door. There she found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room, furnished only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a faded and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze rested on it, and a lump rose in her throat. But she resolutely turned away, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... McKay at the time the formidable troop of North-Westers swept through the settlements. The old man was seated in the hall, parlour, drawing-room—or whatever you choose to call it—of Ben Nevis House. It was an uncarpeted, unpainted, unadorned room with pine plank flooring, plank walls, a plank ceiling, a plank table, and a set of plank chairs. Ornament was dispensed with in the hall of Ben Nevis House; for although Elspie would fain ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the house, I glanced hastily up and down the road. There was another cab at the east end of the street, but I could not discern if it were approaching me or stationary. I opened the front door quickly and admitted my companion, then preceded her up the uncarpeted stairs to my little apartment on the top floor. I was the only tenant in the house, and therefore there would be no cause ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... upland lawn" had not been a habit of his past life; but the cool fresh air, the spicy perfumes which it wafted to him, and the brightness and verdure of the whole landscape, proved now more inviting than his pillow; and dressing himself hastily, he descended the clean but rude and uncarpeted stairs as gently as possible, lest he should arouse Miss Grahame from her slumbers. He found the front door open, showing that he was not the first of the household to go abroad that day. As he stepped out upon the ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... to pension the man who first put fly-leaves in a book. Fortunately, my maid isn't with me much, and the man in the yard can't see my front window because of the tree. So I have only to listen to the guard in the next room. He is always walking up and down, and when he reaches the uncarpeted space near the door I know he is at the end and ready to turn back. For that one second I can chance throwing this letter out into the street. I shall load it with a cut-glass ball I found on my desk. It is a beautiful little paper-weight, but its beauty won't ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... from his recumbent position at the sound of the opening of the door. He watched Fenn with dull, incurious eyes as the latter crossed the uncarpeted floor of the bare wooden shed, threw off his overcoat, and advanced towards the side ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only implied it in saying something else—the broken slats, the dirty windows, the uncarpeted floor, the universal untidiness, whispered in the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... stone corridors that opened through Gothic windows on a courtyard, in which statues of German super- people stared with blind eyes, there was nothing now but bald military neatness and economy. Hurrying up an uncarpeted stone stairway (Grim seemed to be a speed-demon once his mind was set) we followed a corridor around two sides of the square, past dozens of closed doors bearing department names, to the Administrator's ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... presented the appearance from the opposite side of the table of having hastily risen to work in his nightgown. A glass with a thin sediment of sugar and lemon-peel remaining in it stood near his elbow. Suddenly a black shadow fell on the staring, uncarpeted hall. It was that of a stranger who had just entered from the noiseless dust of the deserted road. The Colonel cast a rapid glance at his sword-cane, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that was a proverb in Greenfield, conquered at last, and Hitty became conscious, to find herself in a chamber whose plastered walls were crumbling away with dampness and festooned with cobwebs, while the uncarpeted floor was checkered with green stains of mildew, and the very old four-post bedstead on which she lay was fringed around the rickety tester with rags of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted, and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... did not observe him, for she was bending tenderly over the white, wrinkled face, which lay upon the small, scanty pillow. John thought "how small and scanty they were," while he almost shuddered at the sound of his footsteps upon the uncarpeted floor. Everything was dreary and comfortless, and his conscience reproached him that his old father should die so poor, when he counted ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared standing at the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... door banged. Followed quick steps on the steep, uncarpeted stairs, and a knock on the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... was in a retired part of the house, not often visited by the boys. Here the uproar of their voices, and their noisy tread as they rushed up and down the uncarpeted staircases, could not be heard. Here thick curtains hung before the doors, which were of some beautifully grained wood (or painted to look like it), and gilded round the panels. Thick carpets lined the passages, rich paper covered ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... canoe, quite unharmed, was lifted from the water and all made snug, Shad silently followed up the path and into the door of the darkened cabin, where Bob lighted a candle, displaying a large square room, the uncarpeted floor scoured to immaculate whiteness, as were also the home-made wooden chairs, a chest of drawers, ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... the stairs themselves continually twisting round like a person trying to look over his shoulder. Going up, the floors above were found to have a very irregular surface, rising to ridges, sinking into valleys; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable vermiculations. Every window replied by a clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed every bustling movement, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... from the rings over the lintel—by the hand, no doubt, of the poor wretch as he had been haled to execution—since, save for a missing cord, the furniture of the room was undisturbed. The room beyond was bare, uncarpeted, and furnished like a workshop. A solitary lamp burned low on a bracket, over a table littered with tools, and in the middle of the room stood a brazier, the coals in it yet glowing, with five or sick steel-handled ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... amid the Lagunes of Venice. After an hour and a half's riding, we reached Leghorn, where I took up my abode at Thomson's hotel, so well and so favourably known to English travellers. After my long sojourn in Italian albergi, whose uncarpeted floors, and chinky windows and doors, are but ill fitted to resist the winds and cold of winter, I sat down in "Thomson's,"—furnished as it is with all the comforts of an English inn,—with a feeling of home-comfort such as I have ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... side. Trenta looked up sharply. His countenance suddenly fell; a purple flush covered it from chin to forehead, penetrating even the very roots of his snowy hair. His cane dropped with a loud thud, and rolled away along the uncarpeted floor. He thrust both his hands into his pockets, and stood motionless, with his eyes wide open, like ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... and the landings were grey stone, uncarpeted, for this was the cheapest block of flats in the road. Oh, money, money! ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... inattentive, unlistening. She was not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door, whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sat David Ross. He looked up at the panting intruder, only ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... glanced at her significantly. She held her skirts closely together and passed through it without looking at him. She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs. Here, however, upon the landing, she awaited him ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my ring and knock were answered, so long that I had my finger on the bell again. But at that moment I heard footsteps walking somewhat uncertainly along an uncarpeted floor within. Still the door remained closed; but at a long narrow window, which was the duplicate of another on the opposite side of the door, I saw for an instant that a face was pressed against the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... followed Philip to the bare, uncarpeted platform that was to serve as altar. The girl saw to her dismay that there was no piano, not even a harmonium to assist her singing. Brother Bates acted as master of ceremonies. The peddler was evidently a man of great importance in the community, its ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the patriot heard the ring of gold in the coffers of his country, Not sent forth to bankruptcy, for the flowery silks of France; While the listening christian caught the strong harmonies of a peaceful Land, Giving praise to Jehovah. Lo! at the winter evening In these uncarpeted dwellings, what a world of comfort! Large hickory logs send a dancing flame up the ample chimney, Tinging with ruddy gleam, every face around the broad hearth-stone. King and patriarch, in the midst, sitteth the true-hearted farmer. At his side, the wife with her ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... story of Prometheus's boon to mankind, and supported on either end by caryatides in the shape of vestal virgins bearing flaming brands in their hands. Overhead the ceiling showed great patches of bare lath, where the plaster had fallen away, and the uncarpeted floor was strewn with bread-crumbs and marked by a trail of coal-siftings from the stove to a closet-door from which the fire was replenished. The door to the closet was gone, and in its recess a pair of trousers hung ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the six followed meekly in her wake. She led them to her private sala, a bare cold room, even in summer. It was uncarpeted; a few religious prints were on the whitewashed walls; there were eight chairs, and a table covered with books and papers. The six shivered. To be invited to this room meant the greatest of honours or a lecture precursory ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... of May, Nor all the clustering joys of June: Uncarpeted the bare earth lay, Unhung ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... crossing a landing moved down a long hall, at the further end of which was her bedroom. The hall was uncarpeted, but the tennis shoes she wore made no sound, nor did the door of her bedroom when she ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... me, now," smiled Patty to herself, as she led the way up the uncarpeted stairs, with Microby Dandeline's cow-hide boots clattering noisily ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... always one of license," she said, leading the way along an uncarpeted entry to a door at the end, from which, by a couple of steps, they went down into a square room; round three sides of which, ran a shelf, on which stood rows of wash-bowls and pitchers. Above were hooks for towels. Katy perceived that this ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... from street vendors. It had once soared as high as autographs, and a promising beginning of three signatures were already pasted into the remaining leaves of an exercise-book. Whatever the collection might be, it lived in heaps on the uncarpeted floor; and when Betty had a tidy fit, was covered with a crochet antimacassar which had known better days, and had grown ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Jasmine, but a smothered exclamation from some one else; a heavy tread on the uncarpeted boards, and Dove, his face red, his shoes off, and something which looked like a screw-driver in his hands, came up and bent over ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... ground I saw two winged shadows side by side, And all the world's spring passion stifled me. Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might, No lonely place where thou hast never trod, No desert thou hast left uncarpeted With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet. In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens while they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy grace, I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes; But never ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... Holborn, within a door or two of the Bull-and-Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens, for the contents. I was only struck at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening as the strongest instance I had seen of English ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... open the door of a back room about twelve feet square, furnished in the plainest manner, uncarpeted, except for a strip that was laid, like a rug, ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... and the number of stove-pipes that came from below and entered them; or the skylights that were thy only means of illumination save the window at "the Parson's" end, which looked out on the pleasant fields and the houses beyond; or the plain, uncarpeted floor, the washstands by the chimneys and the clothing ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... "shake hands" with the owners of six names. Then he had a chance to intimate quietly to Shearer that he wanted a word with him alone. The riverman rose silently and led the way up the straight, uncarpeted stairs, along a narrow, uncarpeted hall, to a square, uncarpeted bedroom. The walls and ceiling of this apartment were of unpainted planed pine. It contained a cheap bureau, one chair, and a bed and washstand to match the bureau. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... and went up the path to the house. As he drew near the door he could hear his mother's chair. Ann Edwards, crippled as she was, managed, through some strange manipulation of muscles, to move herself in her rocking-chair all about the house. Now the jerking scrape of the rockers on the uncarpeted floor sounded loud. When Jerome opened the door he saw his mother hitching herself rapidly back and forth in a fashion she had when excited. He had seen her do so before, a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the sound of steps coming quickly down the uncarpeted corridor, and Vere entered, followed, but not closely, by the Marchesino. Vere went up at once to her mother, without ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... office, his footsteps making no sound upon the soft carpet. He waited twenty minutes and, hearing no sound, closed his watch and dabbed at his forehead with the handkerchief which he drew from his sleeve. Turning the knob, he stepped out upon the uncarpeted floor. The sound of his footsteps upon the hardwood seemed to reverberate through the whole building. He walked a few steps on tiptoe, and then decided that in case anyone should see him, the tiptoeing would look furtive. So he walked to the foot ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... Up a long uncarpeted flight of stairs, and into a large lofty room on the second storey, Thord led the way for his newly-found disciples to follow. It was very dark, and they had to feel the steps as they went, their guide offering neither explanation nor apology for the Cimmerian shades of gloom. Stumbling ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in a feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... uncarpeted study of La Lorraine a new book was planned and begun. For the story's setting the author's mind turned to the far-away, new home-country, and early frontier life in Connecticut. There he brought the transatlantic Puritan ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... the Spider opened the door and, closely followed by Ravenslee, stepped into a dimly-lit passage thick with the blue vapour of cigars and cigarettes. It was a long, narrow corridor, bare and uncarpeted, seeming to run the length of the building; on one hand was a row of dingy windows and on the other were several doors, from behind which came the sound of many voices that talked and sang and swore together, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... the lawn toward the building—saw it ascend the steps; then a projection of the wall concealed it. There was a noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard quick, heavy footsteps along the passage—heard them ascend the stairs—heard them on the uncarpeted floor of the chamber ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... some cases seats of "Nouveau Art" design on the landings. In such houses you are always met on the threshold by printed requests to wipe your feet and shut the door gently. They don't tell you to do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the police will know the reason why. There is always an uncarpeted back staircase for servants and tradespeople, and for the tenants who inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the tenants belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid children to play in the Hof, and command people not to loiter or to make any noise ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls, the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory, a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Oh, those uncarpeted, twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grown up and gone away," do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet of children still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sober grown-ups? ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... hasty glance about—not as dreadful as she had anticipated. Untidy beyond words, bare, dreary, cheerless, but not repulsively dirty. She stole softly through the lower part of the house, and then with a beating heart went up the uncarpeted stairs. At the head was an open door that showed her all she expected and feared to find. The sun streamed in at the dusty, uncurtained window over the motionless body of Caleb Kimball, who lay in a strange, deep sleep, unconscious, on the bed. His hair was raven black against ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ... I have had some curious experiences of a similar nature; one was in an uncarpeted room, the house being deserted at that time. I stood still, planning certain things and humming softly to myself. Presently, a shadowy something caught my eye, and I discovered a little mouse, very young evidently, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... light step on the uncarpeted stair; went on making up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... galleries, of the British Museum, and of so charming a place as Hampton Court, open to everybody. In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... villa of a statesman. The rooms were large, high, and dignified, but the bareness of life, under the new conditions, was a great trial to the boy. He had a certain luxuriousness of temperament, not in matters of meat and drink, but in the surroundings and apparatus of life. The bare, uncurtained, uncarpeted rooms, the big dormitory with its cubicles, the stone-flagged passages, all appeared to him mean and sordid. His schoolmaster was a man of real force of character, a tall stately personage, with a great enthusiasm for literature, a fine converser and teacher, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... relatively small dining-room, bed-room, and study, which had been devised by subdividing one of the huge galleries of former days. In addition, the passage gave access to his Eminence's private chapel, a bare, uncarpeted, chairless room, where there was nothing beyond the painted, wooden altar, and the hard, cold tiles on which to kneel ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the foot of the uncarpeted stairs. "Mister Rodriguez!" he called. His voice echoed up past the cobwebbed landing and seemed to go wandering aloft among unclean mysteries to the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... arduous beyond any which she has yet engaged in. She enumerated the many rooms that were in the house: those that were covered with carpets, the margins whereof had to be beeswaxed: those others, only partially covered with rugs, which had to be entirely waxed: the upper rooms were uncarpeted and unrugged, and had, therefore, to be scrubbed: the basement, consisting of two red-flagged kitchens and a scullery, had also to be scoured out. The lady was very particular about the scouring of wainscotings and doors. The upper ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... without more words, his firm, even tread sounding down the uncarpeted stairs until the door of his own studio was heard to close after him. Mrs. Greyson stood before her clay wondering, and then, sinking into a chair, sat so long absorbed in thought that the short daylight faded about her and she was forced to give up further work that day. Replacing the wet cloth ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... was the angry retort; and taking no notice of his visitor's proffered hand, the man stamped his foot impatiently on the uncarpeted floor. "No one ever comes to see me about anything else but business. And I don't want them to," he added with a grim chuckle. "Well, let us get it done. My time is valuable, ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... was not luxuriously lodged. Four rooms sufficed him—to wit, the said ante-chamber, bare and uncarpeted, and furnished with three painted wooden box benches; a comfortable study lined throughout with shelves and lockers, furnished with half-a-dozen large chairs and a single writing-table, whereon stood ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... done so, and was standing on the uncarpeted stairs, when his quick ear caught the sound of Deacon's footsteps receding over the gravel around to ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... the tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the 'No Smoking' sign and entering the front door of Mrs. Grubb's house, on the corner, would have turned off the narrow uncarpeted hall into the principal room, and, if he were an observing person, would have been somewhat puzzled by its appearance. There were seven or eight long benches on one side, yet it had not the slightest resemblance to a ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the dingy kitchen. All seemed quiet upstairs. Silvey bolted the basement door that they might not be pursued from that quarter, and Sid, as they returned to the hallway, cut off the avenue of escape to the street. John led the way up the winding, uncarpeted stairs. Silvey followed close at his heels and DuPree ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was bare, except for a table on which a kitchen lamp was burning, and two chairs with heavy automobile coats and rugs and veils thrown upon them. The stairway was uncarpeted, and the dust lay thick under the banisters. At the door of the back room on the second floor the Baron paused and knocked softly. A low voice answered, and he went in, beckoning the ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... but, though she had wrapped a shawl around her lower limbs, her feet were freezing on the uncarpeted stone floor. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of us stole up the uncarpeted attic stair. It was unknown territory to us, having been forbidden from the first by Mrs. Handsomebody, and all we had ever seen from the hall below was a cramped passage, guarded by three closed doors. Time and time again we had ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... loft under the roof, and the roof slanted so rapidly that it was possible to stand upright only in one part of the room. There was in one corner a truckle bed, which Agnes could hardly believe her father slept in, and in the midst of the uncarpeted floor stood the type-writing machine, the working of which the Major at once explained to Agnes. He told her how much he had already earned, and entered into a calculation of the number of hours he would have to work before he could ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over. Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French windows were uncurtained, and the inside shutters folded back, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... and returned holding high a lighted torch—a grey-haired woman with traces of past comeliness, overlaid now by an air of worry, almost of fear. But her manner showed only a defiant pride as she led us up the uncarpeted stairs, past old portraits sagging and rotting in their frames, through bleak corridors, where the windows were patched and the plastered walls discoloured by fungus. Once only she halted. "It will be a long way to your ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sub-cellar, so that the monster building is really eight stories in height. There is no attempt at outward display, the fine effect of the edifice being due to its vast size and its symmetry. The interior is as simple. The floors are uncarpeted, the shelves are plain, as are the counters and the customers' seats. The centre of the building is occupied by a large rotunda extending from the ground floor to the roof. All the upper floors are open around this rotunda. Two flights of massive stairs lead to the upper floors, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the disused distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the bowl of holly with its scarlet berries, and throwing pale gleams of color on the polished panels of the old mahogany wardrobe on the opposite wall. For a moment he watched the play of fire and candle, then got up and began to walk backward and forward the length of the uncarpeted floor. Writing was a poor weapon with which to win a woman's heart. Rather would he tell her of his love, ask her to be his wife, and, if she would marry him, compel her to say when; but he could not come as quickly as he could ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... like this to stay in, Uncle Billy," replied the boy, looking around on the four bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and the rude furniture of the room, all bright and glowing now in the light ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... understood as a mispronunciation of "gallery." "Going up into Galilee" I interpreted into clattering up the uncarpeted stairs in the meeting-house porch, as the boys did, with their squeaking brogans, looking as restless as imprisoned monkeys after they had got into those conspicuous seats, where they behaved as if they thought nobody could see their pranks. I did not think it could be at ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... broad staircase, and nothing but worn-out oil-cloth on the floor. I had only time to take in a vague general impression, before the little girl conducted me to a room on the ground-floor. That too was uncarpeted and barely furnished; but the light was low, and I could see nothing distinctly, except the face of the child looking wistfully at ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... of the old House of Commons—before the fire of 1834—in a letter to his sister dated in the summer of 1831. "I have left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs," he wrote, "and repaired to the smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables covered with green baize and writing materials. On a full night it is generally thronged towards twelve o'clock with smokers. It is then a perfect cloud of fume. There have I seen (tell it not to the West Indians), Buxton blowing fire out of his mouth. My father will not believe ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... the door of an anteroom behind his office. The apartment was unfurnished except for one or two chairs. In the middle of the uncarpeted floor was a long wooden box from which the lid had ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Manchester-square, Brian Luttrell was packing a box, with the few scanty possessions that he called his own. He had little light to see by, for the slender, tallow candle burnt with a very uncertain flame: the glare of the gas lamps in the street gave almost a better light. The floor was uncarpeted, the furniture scanty and poor: the fire in the grate smouldered miserably, and languished for want of fuel. But there was a contented look on Brian's face. He even whistled and hummed to himself as he packed his box, and though the tune broke ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the top of a very lofty stair, and there, right under the slates, were a couple of empty, dusty little rooms, uncarpeted and uncurtained, into which he led me. I had thought of a great office with shining tables and rows of clerks, such as I was used to, and I dare say I stared rather straight at the two deal chairs and one little table, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... were not of absolute necessity. Feather beds had gone, curtains had gone; and all those several smaller elegancies which it is difficult, and would be tedious, to enumerate here. Seated at a breakfast-table, in an uncarpeted parlor, was the clergyman himself, surrounded by his interesting but afflicted family. His hair, which, until within the last twelve months, had been an iron gray, was now nearly white, and his chin was sunk in a manner that had not, until recently, been usual with him. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... through the hall and pierced the cracks about the door; then Thekla's footsteps returned; they echoed over the uncarpeted boards. ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... uncovered deal the left wall is a dresser and a plate-rack above it containing a few pots. The dresser has also one or two utensils upon it. A blackened kettle rests on the top of the cooking-range, but the room contains only the barest necessities. The floor is uncarpeted. There are no window curtains, but a yard of cheap muslin is fastened across the window, not coming, however, high enough to prevent a passer-by from looking in, should he wish to do so. On the floor, near the fire, is a battered black tin trunk, the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... extremity of pain he heeded naught of this, and his blinded eyes could not see the bare rafters overhead, the filthy uncarpeted floor, the few broken chairs and rude board seats, or the little unpainted pine table with its bit of flickering, flaming tallow candle, stuck in an ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... all the business of a swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the steps into the inn. They heard him go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... guest from the front, and you will have lunch with Louis and me. Madame Barre is also gone for the day. Will you see our house?" She led him through the low door into a living room, unpainted, uncarpeted, light and airy. There were coloured war posters on the clean board walls, brass shell cases full of wild flowers and garden flowers, canvas camp-chairs, a shelf of books, a table covered by a white silk shawl ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... served rather to reveal than dispel the surrounding darkness. The light, as it were, hollowed a gulf out of the tremendous gloom and made the house tenfold more ghostly than before. The footsteps of Denzil and Berwin sounding on the bare boards—for the hall was uncarpeted—waked hollow echoes, and when they paused the silence which ensued seemed almost menacing. The grim reputation of the mansion, its gloom and silence, appealed powerfully to the latent superstition of Lucian. How much more nearly, then, would ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... he began to reproach himself that he had not made the place more his home. Though the grounds and shrubberies were neat and trim enough, there was a neglected look about the house itself. When he entered, his footsteps rung hollow on the uncarpeted floors. Chintz covered the furniture; muslin smothered the chandeliers; everything seemed to be locked up and put away. And this comely woman of sixty or so who came forward to meet him—a smiling, gracious dame, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... chattered on and Barnabas listened until the day declined to evening; until Barnabas began to hearken for Peterby's returning footstep on the uncarpeted stair outside. Even in the act of lighting the candles his ears were acutely on the stretch, and thus he gradually became aware of another sound, soft and dull, yet continuous, a sound difficult to ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... at once, and found my way into a bare waiting-room, hung with a few maps, and with uncarpeted floor. The minutes dragged along slowly. I hated the thought of dismissal, I rebelled against it almost fiercely. I had done my duty, I had told the truth, there was nothing against me save this obstinate and quixotic loyalty of the Duke to an old family friend. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uncarpeted passages," he says; "such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected together between the four walls of the ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... in the European style, except that the floors were uncarpeted, and were composed of polished boards. Everywhere were signs that the proprietor was a prosperous and wealthy man. Mr. Thompson had only one son, a lad of about the same age as Charles Hardy. To his care Mrs. Thompson now assigned the boys, while she conducted Mrs. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... fuss, keeping an eye on the clock meanwhile. The boys wore the air of dogs who see their master coming to untie them; they jumped and quivered, making the benches squeak and rattle, and shifted their feet about on the uncarpeted floor, producing sounds of the kind most trying to a nervous teacher. A general expectation prevailed. Luckily, Miss Fitch was not nervous. She had that best of all gifts for teaching,—calmness; and she understood her pupils ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a prize ox, a county paper chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig, for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse of Ipswich.' ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie |
