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More "Coy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfume pure, fame's crown of light, The latest murmur of departing day, Fond friendship's plaint, that melts at piteous sight, The mystic farewell of each hour at flight, The kiss which beauty grants with coy delay,— ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont—not in the famed valleys of Alp ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... you upon all occasions—masquerade, ball, or supper, Sir: you may perhaps wish to go out, as we say in the West, in coy.—happy to receive your commands at any time, prompt ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me and solicitously ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... catastrophe probably dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold-getters intent upon their several avocations. The streets were filled with the expanded figures of gayly dressed women, acknowledging with coy glances the respectful salutations of beaux as they gracefully raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings, a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu Museum. The brokers had gathered at their respective temples. The ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Secretary were exchanging clothes they heard the Mayor in the hallway arguing with a large German chambermaid in an earnest and fatherly manner, punctuated by coy screams ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... a fair maid And fresh as any flower, Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed To be his paramour. Harpalus and eke Corin Were herdmen, both yfere; And Phylida could twist and spin, And thereto sing full clear. But Phylida was all too coy For Harpalus to win; For Corin was her only joy, Who forced her not a pin. How often would she flowers twine, How often garlands make, Of cowslips and of columbine, And all for Corin's sake! But Corin, he had hawks to lure, And forced more the field; Of lovers' law he ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... hint, "Ah, do not take advantage of this situation, or the consequences may be terrible, and will certainly be delicious,"—the delicate and shy, yet lingering touch,—the twenty stitches where nine would be plenty,—the one coy, but tender glance at parting,—all this soft witchcraft beset Griffith Gaunt, and told on him; but not as yet in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... coy, my lass," said the old miller. "You'll not get a better offer, and Andrew has no time nor heart either for running about courting. What he wants is a good wife to cheer him up, and see to the poor ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this coy young lady's very power of resistance began to give way. She had now battled for months against her own heart: first for her mother; then, in a far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and purity; and of late ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... to dislike her thoroughly. She spoke with a slight French accent; and he did not know why she should, since she had been born and bred in the heart of England. He thought her smile affected, and the coy sprightliness of her manner irritated him. For two or three days he remained silent and hostile, but Miss Wilkinson apparently did not notice it. She was very affable. She addressed her conversation almost exclusively to him, and there was something flattering in the way she appealed ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Whereupon I straightway ran in thither, and was shocked and affrighted when I saw the sheriff himself standing in the corner with his arm round my child her neck; he, however, presently let her go, and said, "Aha, reverend Abraham, what a coy little fool you have for a daughter! I wanted to greet her with a kiss, as I always used to do, and she struggled and cried out as if I had been some young fellow who had stolen in upon her, whereas I might be her father twice over." As I answered naught, he went on to say that he had done it ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... beauty she to all appears * And, lovely coy she mocks all loveliness: And when he fronts her favour and her smile * A-morn, the sun of day in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus: "But y preceded by a vowel is never changed: as coy, coyly, gay, gayly."—Walker's Rhyming Dict., p.x. "Y preceded by a vowel is never changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc."—Ib., p viii. Walker's twelve "Orthographical Aphorisms," which Murray and others republish as their "Rules for Spelling," and which in stead of amending they ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... issuing from all, is none the less ever longing. But that, Wilfrid, is only a woman's thought. You find seductive fancies in the wreathing mists, the light embroidered veils which Nature dons like a coy maiden, in this atmosphere where she perfumes for her spousals the greenery of her tresses. You seek the naiad's form amid the gauzy vapors, and to your thinking my ears should listen only to the virile ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun—a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at—illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... true. Then he was pressing, and you were coy, until finally he extorted your definitive answer, which was—" Maria paused, and seemed to be intensely studying the looks of the other—Miss Henley smiled as she turned her placid, ingenuous features to her gaze, and continued ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... the irrepressible Hicks, as Coach Corridan warmed up to his vision, "you don't want much, Coach! Why don't you ask Ted Coy, the famous ex-Yale full-back, to give up his business and play the position for you? Maybe you can persuade Charlie Brickley, a fair sort of dropkicker, to quit coaching Hopkins, and kick a few goals for ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... woman, in our hour of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please; When pain and anguish wring thy brow, A ministering ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... "there will be a third attending us when we return, if thou hast been coy with the gentle Seti during his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... but she shines like the sun, With yellow hair and dreaming, wine-brown eyes. Thick crowd the doves for food. She gives ME none. She sees and will not see. Vain are my sighs. One slow, reluctant stroke. Aha! she turns, Gestures and smiles, with coy ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... to employ him to lie a-bed all day and hatch turkey's eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which began in wanton mirth, and ended in bloodshed, made men more coy than they had formerly been, of making the fiery little hero the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... no other figure could be mistaken for hers. By all the gods ever worshipped here, she is the loveliest woman I ever saw, but as coy as a maid of fifteen. The fact that she secludes herself so rigidly only stimulates curiosity, and I have sworn a solemn oath to make her acquaintance; for it is something novel in my experience to have my overtures ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... matters, doubtless from a conviction that the conduct of Napoleon must before long bring both Russia and Austria into the field. Meanwhile, he withheld subsidies which would have helped them to arm for an almost inevitable struggle.[685] We need not therefore trace the course of these coy advances until they led to definite overtures. Here as always Pitt showed a dignified reserve and a cautious regard for British finances, which refute the stories officially circulated at Paris as to his lavishly bribing ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Published, in one gigantic sneeze... But here's a neighbor on my right, An Eager Ass, considered bright; Asker of questions.... How he'll stand, With earnest air and fidgy hand, After this hour, telling you He sat all night and burrowed through Your book.... Oh, you'll be coy and he Will simulate precosity, And pedants both, you'll smile and smirk, And leer, and hasten ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that spoke it, would be but little set by; for what greater matter is there in "I will in no wise cast out," if another stood by that could receive them? But here appears the glory of Christ, that none but he can save. And here appears his love, that though none can save but he, yet he is not coy in saving. "But him that comes to me," says he, "I will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... limbs, And like a streak of lightning reached the waves:— Wherein his thwarted speed appeared more awful As, brought within the scope of comprehension, Its progress and its purpose could be gauged. Spluttering Amyntas rose, Hipparchus near him Who cried 'Why coy of kisses, lovely lad? I ne'er would harm thee; art thou not ashamed To treat thy conquest thus?' He shouted partly to drown the sea's noise, chiefly The nearing Delphis to disarm. His voice lost its assurance ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of all the most virulent social corruption in our civilization; dowagers turn out to be the fluffy and painted keepers of brothels; the misses sink into grinning hussies, who are branded on the cheeks and forehead with the ineradicable mark of shame; and the warm and coy pages, whom at the worst he might have supposed to be imprudent or improvident girls, stare at him with the deathly-cold implacability of the commonest street-walkers—those in fact who glory in their shame, and whose very contact is vile to anything with a spark of healthy ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... sleep or relaxation after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sausage balloons, either. Since our planes brought down those six in flames the day before the attack the others have been very coy." ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... figure, particularly the latter, which they consider as the life and spirit of the poetry. I had a proof of this in an attempt which I made to impose a pantun of my own composing on the natives as a work of their countrymen. The subject was a dialogue between a lover and a rich coy mistress: the expressions were proper to the occasion, and in some degree characteristic. It passed with several, but an old lady who was a more discerning critic than the others remarked that it was "katta katta saja"—mere conversation; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a wild cry, would join the dancers, his for ever. But the god is not unscrupulous. He would fain win her by gentle and fair means, even by wedlock. That chaplet of seven stars is his bridal offering. Why should not she accept it? Why should she be coy of his desire? It is true that he drinks. But in time, may be, a wife might be able to wean him from the wine-skin, and from the low company he affects. That will be for time to show. And, meanwhile, how brilliant a match! Not even Pasiphae, her mother, ever contemplated ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... modest semblance oft Meet a guerdon, coy and soft, And timid lovers sometimes find Reward both merciful and kind: Yet to the lips prefer the feet Seems to my mind a ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... temples where Nature pays homage in the courts of the Divine Architect, I dismiss all modes of conveyance, and with well-nailed shoes, rough clothes, a staff, and a lunch, I take the kingdom by force. When once in, I am royally entertained; for though coy and apparently hard to woo, Nature is a most delightful companion when ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... in gleeful joy, In songbirds trill, in flowerlets coy, Shall we, also, voices raise, Sing our gentle ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... very joy and wantonness to kiss the fragrant reeds that grow upon the rivers' banks, yet of such limpid transparency that one's form could be seen in their liquid depths as if reflected in a mirror. These were surrounded by long silken lashes—now drooping in coy modesty, anon rising in youthful gaiety and disclosing the laughing eyes but just before concealed beneath them. Eyebrows like the willow leaf; cheeks of snowy whiteness, yet tinged with the gentlest colouring of the rose; teeth like pearls ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... song, darling! Sing by the sunset's glow; Now while the shadows are long, darling; Now while the lights are low; Something so chaste and so coy, darling! Something that melts the chest; Milder than even Molloy, darling! Better ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... lover's interview? Who dares to snatch the first coy love words from a maiden's lips, and give them to a world grown old in love making, and appraising each tender word by its ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to betray the secret reason which Martha had not yet discovered. After the strong words he had taken from her, she owed him a kindness, he thought; if she would only allow the impression that the matter was still undecided—that more time (which a coy young maiden might reasonably demand) had been granted! On the other hand, he feared that her clear, firm integrity of character would be repelled by the nature of his motive. He was beginning to feel, greatly to his own surprise, a ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... unexplained, Woke in her what she oft had feigned. And when his arm stole near her waist, As startled maidens blush with chaste Sweet fear at love's advances, so She blushed from brow to breast of snow. Strange, new emotions, fraught with joy And pain commingled, made her coy; But when he would have clasped her neck With gems that might a queen bedeck And offered gold, her lips grew white With sudden anger at the sight Of what had been her god for years. She flung them from her. Then such ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as she'd got to them lines that the Boss began taking a good look at her. I saw him gazin' into her eyes like he'd taken out a search warrant. Don't know as I could blame him much, either. She was a top liner. Wasn't anything coy or kittenish about her. She stood up and gave him as good as he sent. Next I see him make the only fool play but one that I ever knew the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... would live longer; while the extravagant life of the reef, appealing to him in fine colours and strange shapes, would avert his thoughts from paltry and mean amusements and over-exciting pleasures. The pomp of the world he would find personated by coral polyps; its vanities by coy and painted fish; its artfulness represented by crabs that think and plan; its scavenging performed by ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... clouds with crystal light, And with their hues reflected streaking bright Her radiant bow, bids all her Warblers sing; The Lark, shrill caroling on soaring wing; The lonely Thrush, in brake, with blossoms white, That tunes his pipe so loud; while, from the sight Coy bending their dropt heads, young Cowslips fling Rich perfume o'er the fields.—It is the prime Of Hours that Beauty robes:—yet all they gild, Cheer, and delight in this their fragrant time, For thy dear sake, to me less pleasure yield Than, veil'd in sleet, and rain, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... ancient song Was wont to flout her swain, I prithee be not always coy, But turn your face again. My heart is true, and it will rue, That ever you should doubt me, So sweet, be kind, and change your mind, And don't for ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... you care?—you who were so coy, and who, when you knew my heart was hungering for you, would ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Brigade, under General Cayley. On the way I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was the Newfoundlanders' first day in the trenches and they were very pleased with themselves. They could not understand why they were not allowed to sally forth at once and do the Turks in. The presence of these men from ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... part of Jefferson county I built a chimney for a man named —— M'Coy; he had forty-seven laboring hands. Near where I was at work, M'Coy had ordered one of his slaves to set a post for a gate. When he came to look at it, he said the slave had not set it in the right place; and ordered him to strip, and lie ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... swung and pivoted gently like a ship at sea straining at its anchor in the first, fresh breezes of a gathering storm. For a moment it seemed to hesitate like a coy maiden on the verge of some unknown threshold. Then, abruptly, she climaxed her voyage and plunged directly toward the waiting Sun some twenty million miles below, carrying with her only her dead cargo; ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... here to no purpose. There is a certain coy nymph, 'Health' by name, who is reported in these parts—her I am charged to seek. Where she hides 'twere hard to say; whether on the hill-side, golden with bracken, or in the spray of the sea, or on the bluff headland, or by the breezy links—in all these I seek her. Sometimes I ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... had been restless. Her coy ways and her reticence had finally annoyed the man; stopping suddenly, he stood up ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... extravagances. If the experience of the reader has led him through the hallowed mystery of the first kiss of love, he needs not another's fancy to revive the beatific vision. If not, why, thousands of coy and blushing damsels, equally in the dark, are waiting, from whom he may select one to assist him in solving the mystery. Besides, it is not always wise to penetrate the secrets of the heart, even in a novel; for there is a sacredness about ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... regulate the proceedings of this particular night at the Green Dragon. The pipes charged, and those of the guests who smoked, well fixed behind them, celestial Harmony was invoked through the slowly curling clouds. In Britain the Goddess is coy. She demands pressure to appear, and great gulps of ale. Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children, but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement. Precedence again disturbed the minds of the company. At last the red-faced young farmer led ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... spirit of industry, once driven forth, returns with coy steps. I wrote for perhaps an hour, and then throwing down my halting pen I looked about the room, seeking distraction. A Chippendale book-case stood against the wall and I strolled over to it. The key was in the lock, and ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... with roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and ear-rings. Some of the Indian dances are very pretty; but one thing is noticeable, at least in all that I have seen. The man makes all the advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a smile or a gesture; he stoops, and pretends to be fishing, making motions as if he were drawing her in with a line; he dances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It sounded ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... which shelters thee! Oh, could mine but acquire that livery Of countless charms thy mind and body show so! Or him, now famous grown—thou mad'st him grow so— Thy knight, in some dread combat could I see! Oh, could I be released from Amadis By exercise of such coy chastity As led thee gentle Quixote to dismiss! Then would my heavy sorrow turn to joy; None would I envy, all would envy me, And happiness ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... everything. Even Pearl had her own ideas, as was once shown in a confidence when they were alone in Stephen's bedroom after helping her to finish her dressing, just as Stephen herself had at a similar age helped her Uncle Gilbert. After some coy leading up to the subject of pretty dresses, the child putting her little mouth to the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... yo'd be such a woman when yo'd come to be one as my een had never looked upon, and this year, ever sin' I saw yo' i' the kitchen corner sitting crouching behind my uncle, I as good as swore I'd have yo' for wife, or never wed at all. And it was not long ere yo' knowed it, for all yo' were so coy, and now yo' have the face—no, yo' have not the face—come, my darling, what is it?' for she was crying; and on his turning her wet blushing face towards him the better to look at it, she suddenly hid it in his breast. He lulled and soothed her in his arms, as if ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Did coy Marcella own a Soul As beauteous as her Eyes, Her Judgment wou'd her Sence controul, And teach her how to prize. But Providence, that form'd the fair In such a charming Skin, Their outside made its only care, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... what he styled his horrible youth, of the years which she—the Dilecta—had tarnished. Too opportune to be sincere, this condemnation of his first liaison cannot but be regarded as an incense of flattery offered to the coy goddess ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a minute or two sizing him up. And that brought me back to his chin—back to that big, oozing cut. I had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told me how ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome flirtings from side ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... battle-field, and sent detachments in pursuit of Stewart. A victory was claimed by both parties. Washington seemed to consider it as such for Greene. "Fortune," he said, in a letter to him, "must have been coy indeed, had she not yielded at last to so persevering a pursuer as you have been." Yet there was no victory in the case. The advantage evidently lay with the Americans. The contest had been a most sanguinary one. The loss of the Americans in killed, wounded, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... which kept the cold from her heart, her waist round as a young oak and all fresh and clean and pretty, like the first frost, green and tender as an April bud; in fact, she resembled all that is prettiest in the world. She had eyes of a modest and virtuous blue, with a look more coy than that of the Virgin, for she was less forward, never having had ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... a bargen Marcellis, nor all France, shall yeild the like. Tis such a deynty peece of purity Such a coy thinge that[53] hee unto whose lott She shall hereafter fall may boast himself To bee a happy husband. For our trade Shees out at that: neather promises, rewards, Example or Intreaty, fayre, fowle meanes, Gaine present or the hope of future ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... next cat, yellow Danny, the most amiable and friendly pussy that ever walked on four paws. He took Danny to his heart at once: they used to lie in the sun together with Danny's head on the dog's big paws, and I sometimes used to meet them walking as coy as lovers, side by side, up one of the garden walks. When I could not help laughing at their sentimental and conscious air, they would turn aside into the bushes for shelter. They respected each other's suppers, and ate together on ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... southward with a new sense of misgiving. Danger was mysteriously coy, and she didn't know how to court it. True, there was still time enough, but the debut was not encouraging. When she had gone forth from Judson Flack's she had felt sure that adventure lay in wait for her, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... soopernatural beins vatsohever. All I shall 'ave ze honour of showing you will be perform by simple Sloight of 'and, or Ledger-dee-Mang! (He invites any member of the Audience to step up and assist him, but the spectators remain coy.) I see zat I 'ave not to-night so larsh an orjence to select from as usual, still I 'ope——(Here one of the obvious Confederates slouches up, and joins him on the platform. ) Ah, zat is goot! I am vair moch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Joy," The measured tread and sway Of "Fancy-Lad" and "Maiden Coy," Reached Jenny as she lay Beside her spouse; till springtide blood Seemed scouring through her like a flood ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... woman with a low voice; the sister was too florid and loud for my fancy. We played at whist, and in the intervals between the games we tested Jerry's wine. He has a singularly good selection. The florid nymph was reserved and coy at first, but as the wine mounted she rather astonished me by her choice of expletives. The merry one had become business-like, and that sweet smile was gone. As I looked at him I gradually understood that I had once more made a fool of myself, and I vowed that ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... next two reigns is far too wide a subject to be entered upon here. Grave or gay, satirical or idyllic, coy or wanton, there is scarcely a poet of note or obscurity who did not contribute his share. Nowhere is a rarer note of pastoral to be found ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... mastered it, and went on to the distressful strokes his youth had suffered, and then to Desdemona's coy hint: ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... upon this spot, And a small arbour, made for rural joy; 'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot, A place of love for damsels that are coy. 60 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... animals, however, the females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male bee, and especially of the males of the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... fire, Miss Thornhill read a magazine in the indolent fashion so much affected at Baldpate Inn during the heated term; while the mayor of Reuton chatted amiably with the ponderously coy Mrs. Norton. Into this circle burst the envoys to the hermitage, flushed, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "Nay, by'r Lady, nay!" and a few more coy shifts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the most striking ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... anything which is necessary to the health and well-being of any other group, is bound to be pursued, wooed, bribed, paid. The monopolistic class, or sex, in turn, learns to withhold, to barter, to become "uncertain, coy and hard to please," to enhance and raise the price of her commodity, even though the economic basis of the transaction be utterly concealed or disguised. All this is exactly as natural and inevitable as ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... seemed to overwhelm him for a moment. Certainly of late Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, being in a very bad temper with herself, ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... who was dressed in a Moire antique bath-towel and was eating walnuts, met coy Aunt Priscilla in a Khaki tea-gown playing with her Noah's Ark, when he would much rather have met Madame Tussaud. They met at South Hampton. What he thought was, "Here's this woman again," but he merely said, "That's a very chic costume of yours." ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... your father told me that I might have it" He paused, as though expecting an answer. But she had not yet quite made up her mind. Had she known her mind, she would have answered him frankly. She was quite resolved as to that. If she could once bring herself to give him her hand, she would not coy it for a moment. "I will be your wife, Larry." That was the form on which she had determined, should she find herself able to yield. But she had not brought herself to it as yet. "If you can take me, Mary, you will,—well,—save ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... all day long; To her wakening sense the first sweet warning Of daylight come is the cheerful song To the hum of the wheel in the early morning. Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy. On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; In neat white pinafore, pleased and coy, She reaches a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... had long since been lost to the man's, as with bent head she listened intently, for the first time amazed at what she had been to a man whose ideals were of the highest and his ways beyond reproach. A coy upward lift of the proudly carried head—a mere glance of transient reply—too brief for the man to read—might have meant, "Have not I too been careful ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... also a Nonne, a Prioresse, That of her smyling was ful simple and coy; Hir grettest ooth was ne but by seynt Loy; And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful wel she song the service divyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely; And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... dear, never." She shook a coy finger at him. "You dear old tightie," she cooed, "you don't realize what a closed car means to a woman." She turned to Shirley. "How an open car does ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... appointed commissioners to visit the Arkansas territory accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws. This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John Bell. See the different reports of the commissioners, and their journal, in the documents of congress, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... willing to embrace, to take a green gown, with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Edyl. 27. to let their coats, &c., to play and dally, at such seasons, and to some, as they spy their advantage; and then coy, close again, so nice, so surly, so demure, you had much better tame a colt, catch or ride a wild horse, than get her favour, or win her love, not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom. [5125]Aretine's Lucretia was an excellent artisan in this kind, as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... having come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... are part of Jessie's charms, Which the bosom ever warms; But the charms by which I 'm stung, Come, O Jessie, from thy tongue! Jessie, be no longer coy; Let me taste a lover's joy; With your hand remove the dart, And heal the wound ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... exulting thought, than this surveys A muckworm's entrails, or a spider's fang. Next him a youth, with flowers and myrtles crown'd, 170 Attends that virgin form, and blushing kneels, With fondest gesture and a suppliant's tongue, To win her coy regard: adieu, for him, The dull engagements of the bustling world! Adieu the sick impertinence of praise! And hope, and action! for with her alone, By streams and shades, to steal these sighing hours, Is all ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... whatever dare Thy groom, of coy rebuff beware, Lest he to find elsewhither fare. O Hymen Hymenaeus ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably low intellectual ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... your soft warm cap and your overcoat, You think you can safely meet him. The harsh old fellow will have to look sharp, Or the coy little man ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... never went aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum somewheres in the manifest," said Tom Platt, playing up to the lead. "He used to bum araound the c'mission houses to Boston lookin' fer the Lord to make him captain of a tow-boat on his merits. Sam Coy, up to Atlantic Avenoo, give him his board free fer a year or more ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... "three black Graces," as they have been termed by one of the most pleasant companions of our time, Law and Physic hastened to do homage to Lord Etherington, represented by Mr. Meiklewham and Dr. Quackleben; while Divinity, as favourable, though more coy, in the person of the Reverend Mr. Simon Chatterly, stood on tiptoe to offer any service ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was Fancy: Love gazed, and his eager eye shone With a lustre of feeling, deep, fervent, and sweet; And he thought it were better to give up his throne For a place, on his knees, at the coy ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... is prone to be coy, if not fickle, the manual part of transplanting should always be properly done. The plants should always be taken up with as little loss of roots as possible, be kept exposed to the air as short a time as possible, and ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ears, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... virtues would not suit in the presence of one whose favourite task it was to laugh his so-called virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance—a shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... but is quickly learned, and is designed to express only the simplest ideas. The powerful influence of the Company introduced it everywhere, and it was found of indispensable utility. Ardent Oregonians are said to woo their coy maidens in its unpronounceable gutturals. The white man is called "Boston" in this tongue, because the first whites whom the Oregon Indians met came in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... she woll not lin; And a great pleasure she hath specially now of late To get poor me now and then by the pate; For she is an angry piece of flesh, and soon displeased, Quickly moved, but not lightly appeased. We use to call her at home Dame Coy, A pretty gingerly piece, God save her and St Loy! As dainty and nice as an halfpenny-worth of silver spoons, But vengeable melancholy in the afternoons. She useth for her bodily health and safeguard To chide daily ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... hands. It was a touching sight, and of a human interest larger than any London characteristic. So, in a little different sort, was the rapture of a couple behind a tree on whom a friend of mine came suddenly in St. James's Park at the very moment when the eager he was pressing the coy she to be his. My friend, who had not the courage of an ever-present literary mission, fled abashed from the place, and I think he was right; but surely it was no harm to overhear the affianced of a 'bus-driver talking tender nothings to him all the way from Knightsbridge to Kensington, bending over ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... species, is just one mark of our extraordinary specialisation, one stamp and token of our high supremacy. The brutes do not so pick and choose, though even there, as Darwin has shown, selection plays a large part (for the very butterflies are coy, and must be wooed and won). It is only in the human race itself that selection descends into such minute, such subtle, such indefinable discriminations. Why should a universal and common impulse have in our case these special limits? Why should we be by nature so fastidious ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... ere long. I think I'll have you painted as chaste Diana, descended from the sky, despite her coldness, to lavish sweet kisses on Endymion. You shall take your place among those other goddesses, who were as coy and hard to please at first as yourself, and who are far greater ladies, my dear, than you ever will be. Your fall is at hand, and you must learn, as your betters have done before you, that there's no withstanding ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Harneysed wel, and scharp as poynt of spere; A Cristofre{24} on his brest of silver schene. An horn he bar, the bawdrik was of grene; A forster was he sothly, as I gesse. Ther was also a Nonne, a PRIORESSE, That of hire smylyng was ful symple and coy; Hire grettest ooth ne was but by seynt Loy{25}; And sche was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful wel sche sang the servis divyne, Entuned in hire nose ful semly; And Frensch sche spak ful faire and fetysly, After the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... world and many who were not of it—could see just how he had been living. The article which accompanied the pictures told how he had followed Jennie from Cleveland to Chicago, how she had been coy and distant and that he had to court her a long time to win her consent. This was to explain their living together on the North Side. Lester realized that this was an asinine attempt to sugar-coat the true story and it made him angry. Still he preferred to have it that way rather than in ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... "Dafne" for private presentation at the palace of the Corsi. Rinuccini was the first of a long and usually incompetent lineage of librettists. The music was written by Peri and Caccini. It was appropriate that they should have chosen the love affairs of the first musician Orpheus and the coy Daphne, seeing what a vast amount of love-making, pretended and real, the school of opera has handed down upon the world. Reissman has reckoned it out that twenty thousand lovers are joined or are parted every night in the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... his sword for a space, but finding that weapon coy and unwilling to leave its sheath, he raised his helmet gracefully and respectfully to the General. His manner was ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... just three sorts of 'em. There's Snorters—the goers, you know—the sort that go rampaging round, looking for insults, and naturally finding them; and then there's fools; and they're mostly screeching when they're not smirking—the uncertain-coy-and-hard-to-please variety, you know," he chuckled, "and then," he added seriously, "there's the right sort, the sort you tell things to. They're A1 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... "I cannot deceive myself; I cannot deceive God's animals. See the little birds, how coy they be; I feed and feed them, and long for their friendship, yet will they never come within, nor take my hand, by lighting on't. For why? No Paul, no Benedict, no Hugh of Lincoln, no Columba, no Guthlac bides in this cell. Hunted doe flieth ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... into those eyes; read that blush now. She looks coy, not reluctant. She bends before him—adorned as for love, by all her native graces. Air seems brightened by her bloom. No more the Outlaw-Child of Ignominy and Fraud, but the Starry Daughter of POETRY AND ART! Lo, where they glide ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... driven from the kitchen-door, beats a coy retreat, with long reaches of her foot, upon the yielding surface. The matronly hens saunter out at a little lifting of the storm, and eye curiously, with heads half turned, their sinking steps, and then fall back, with a quiet cluck of satisfaction, to the wholesome gravel ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... star boarder, and as such made free with Mrs. Meagher's little private parlor. A fire always burned there on cool evenings, and moreover, he escaped the ragtime that nightly filled the community room where the piano was, the interminable arguments anent the European war, and the coy advances of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... apparent immobility is drawing the iron towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... tower; But yet love, who subtle is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will get ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... matter's not so far gone As you suppose: Two words t' a bargain: That may be done, and time enough, When you have given downright proof; And yet 'tis no fantastic pique 545 I have to love, nor coy dislike: 'Tis no implicit, nice aversion T' your conversation, mein, or person, But a just fear, lest you should prove False and perfidious in love:, 550 For if I thought you could be true, I could love ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... for all your simple ways. Mind, I don't say you haven't done well for yourself, you have—a deal better than you deserve. But don't ever say you couldn't help it to me again! For if you do, I'll trounce you for it, do you hear? None of your coy airs for me! I won't put up with 'em. You'll behave yourself as long as you're in this house, or I'll ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... help it—not if I stand right in his way," said Mrs. Thomas, with a coy glance from ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... working. Then all of a sudden the transplendent sun sailed from its clouds and poured upon him its genial beams. He had at last found the golden Chersonese. His pockets, so long cobwebbed, now bulged with money. Publishers, who had been coy, now fought for him. All the world—or nearly all—sang his praises. [502] Lastly came the K.C.M.G., an honour that was conferred upon him owing in large measure to the noble persistency of the Standard newspaper, which in season and out of season "recalled ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... wooer. It is an exceedingly interesting and amusing sight to see a couple of males paying their addresses to a coy and coquettish female; the apparent shyness of the suitors as they sidle up to her and as quickly retreat again, the shy glances given as one peeps from behind a limb watching the other—playing bo-peep—seem very human, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... been nearer death ten times.' He uttered his inmost thoughts out of pity:—All this he had awaited. The King's Highness by the report of his painters, his ambassadors, his spies—they were all in the pay of Cromwell—had awaited a lady of modest demeanour, a coy habit, and a great and placid fairness. 'I had warned the Almains at Rochester to attire her against our coming. But she slobbered with ecstasy and slipped sideways, aiming at a courtesy. Therefore the King was hot with new ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... longing, maids are coy And bid their wooers wait; Though eager for united joy In love, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadnor's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... love reserved, coy and discreet women much more than blunt, shrewd and boisterous. Falsehood, false hair, false curls, false forms, false bosoms, false colors, false cheeks, and all that is false, men naturally dislike, for in themselves they are a poor foundation on which to form family ties, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... lectures upon the beauties and advantages of a modest, yet alluring reserve, were cut up into familiar and much-prized quotations among her disciples, and were acted upon the more willingly for the prestige that surrounded her exploits as high priestess of Hymen. But Rosa had been too coy to Alfred's evident devotion—almost repellent at seasons. Had these rebuffs not alternated with attacks of remorse, during which the exceeding gentleness of her demeanor gradually pried the crushed hopes of her adorer out of the slough, and cleansed their drooping plumes of mud, the courtship ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... trifled, toiled, and feasted, far apart From churls, who, wondered what our friendship meant; And in that coy retirement heart to heart Drew closer, and our natures ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... you preach last Sunday," she said, glowing with interest. He began to look coy. Then her voice changed to something colder than the wind. "The most lamentable sairmon I ever listened to. Neither lairning nor inspiration. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the world over, whether it glows beneath the broad-cloth and spotless linen of a civilised gentleman, or under the deerskin coat of a savage. And its expression, we suspect, is somewhat similar everywhere. The coy repulse of pretended displeasure came as naturally from our plump little arctic heroine as it could have done from the most civilised flirt, and was treated with well-simulated contrition by our arctic giant, as they walked ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... the races, the bull-fight, a merienda, or to climb the greased pole, catch the greased pig by its tail as it ran, or exhibit skill in horsemanship. Chonita, at times an imperious coquette, at others, indifferent, perverse, or coy, was La Favorita without appeal, and the girls alternately worshipped her—she was abstractedly kind to them—or heartily wished her back in Santa Barbara. Estenega rarely attended the socialities, being closeted with Alvarado and Castro most of the time, and when ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to thee I owe, More than others here will know; Thou hast cheered my weary days, With thy coy and winsome ways. When my heart has been most sad, Smile of thine has made me glad; In return, I wish for thee, Health and sweet felicity. May thy future days be blest, With all things the world deems best. If perchance the day should come, Thou does leave thy childhood's home; Bound ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... that one mocking note of yesterday, which seemed to challenge me to find her a second time. In the end I was vexed, and resolved to be even with her by not visiting the wood for some time. A display of indifference on my part would, I hoped, result in making her less coy in ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... picturesqueness of its position and the naive grace of its environs will please you no less. The country immediately surrounding it is ravishing; the hedges are full of flowers, honeysuckles, roses, box, and many enchanting plants. It is like an English garden, designed by some great architect. This rich, coy nature, so untrodden, with all the grace of a bunch of violets or a lily of the valley in the glade of a forest, is framed by an African desert banked by the ocean,—a desert without a tree, an ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... be at your own risk, then," answered Chief Coy, with a rather pleased grin, for he had followed the fortunes of Gridley H.S. on the football gridiron, and well enough he ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... mistress to the young, But to her ancient servants coy and hard), Him at that age her favourites rank'd among, When she her best-loved Pompey ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... before, and if the way is open she will not object. Of course girls are coy about ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... degree to see her bustling about, preparing for the wedding as if it would take place as a matter of course. Mrs. Whately's affectionate smiles and encouraging words were even harder to endure. That good lady acted as if Miss Lou were a timid and coy maiden, who merely needed heartening and reassuring in order to face a brief ordeal, and then all would be well. Her cousin gallantly lifted her hand to his lips and then rode away with part of his men, saying cheerfully, "I'll ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the table. Faraday received a coy bow from Mrs. Peck, who had given her hair an extra bleaching for this occasion, till her pinched and powdered little face looked out from under an orange-colored thatch; Mrs. Wheatley was there too, with a suggestion of large white shoulders shining ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... like Royalty in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied, extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone, A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy, Yet in thy place for subtle thought's employ The golden magic clung, a light that shone And filled me with thy joy. Before me like a mist that streamed and fell All names and shapes of antique beauty passed In garlanded procession with ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... anxious curiosity regarding the increase of railway fares, but when invited to "name the day" Mr. BONAR LAW remained coy. Suggestions for postponements in the interests of this or that class of holiday-maker finally goaded him into asking sarcastically, "Why not until after Christmas?" Whereupon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... all the coy graces of a maid receiving a long-expected proposal. She cast her eyes discreetly down, toyed at the rocker edge with ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... this suggestion, promptly became as coy as a partridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained Scottish and canny. He became more shrewdly magnanimous, however, after we'd had a bit of talk by ourselves. "Weel, I'll tak' the woman, rather than see her frettin' hersel' to death!" ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... "Girls are uncommon coy critters," said he, with a grave smile in his eyes. He handed back the child, and once more was absorbed in ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... tell their mothers. She wondered if Wollaston would ask leave to walk home with her. She had seen a boy step out of a waiting file at the vestry door to a blushing girl, and had seen the girl, with a coy readiness, slip her hand into the waiting crook of his arm, and walk off, and she had wondered when such bliss would come to her. It never had. She wondered if the pink gingham might bring it to pass ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... world! Their ears To one demand alone are coy; They will not give us love and tears, They bring us light and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... independent young lady," remarked Walderhurst, with a lighter manner than usual. "You ought to say something deprecatory or—a little coy, perhaps." ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shy, he responded: "Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben, looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... She will be sick, well, sullen, Merry, coy, over-joy'd, and seem to dye All in one half hour, to make an asse of him: I make no doubt she will be drunk too damnably, And in her drink will ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... said: "Everyone will grant that in photoplay writing 'The Idea's the thing.' The script of the beginner, carrying a brand-new idea, will find acceptance where the most technical technique in the world, disguising a revamped story, will fail to coax the coy check ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... in estimation, Never was any less presuming seen! It shrinks, so modestly, from observation! And hides behind all sorts of evergreen;— Like a coy Maid, design'd for filthy Man, Peeping, at his approach, behind ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... did not seem to know what it came to buy or cared what it purchased so long as it could engage Mavis in a few moments' conversation. She soon got to know this type at a glance, and gave it short shrift. Others at "Dawes'" were not so coy. Many of the customers she got to know by sight, owing to their repeated visits. One of these she disliked from the first; later experience of her only intensified this impression. She was a tall, fine woman, well, if a trifle over-dressed; ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... an imperative knock at the side door of the Hender farmhouse, just after dark. The young school-mistress had come home late, because she had stopped all the way along to give people the news of her afternoon's experience. Marilla was not coy and speechless any longer, but sat by the kitchen stove telling her eager grandmother everything she could remember ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent portion of the dramatic structure ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... while by Mr. Miller's alliterative erotics. And they are erotics! In one place he writes, "Beautiful art thou, O Broom! on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath"; and throughout he buds and blossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and coy toyings and modest blushes, and bowers and meads. He always adds, "Wonderful boy!" to Chatterton's name as if it were a university degree (W.B.), and he invariably refers to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton as the Bard of Paradise—though Bard of the Bottomless ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the tents of those besotted people, till thou hast become a partaker in their follies. How could I dream that he would have made scruples about a few years' youth or age, when the advantages of the match were so evident? And thou knowest, there would have been no moving yonder coy wench to be so frank as this coming Countess here, who hangs on our arms as dead a weight as a wool pack. I loved the lad too, and would have done him a kindness: to wed him to this old woman was to make his ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... your portrait shall figure in one of those oval frames ere long. I think I'll have you painted as chaste Diana, descended from the sky, despite her coldness, to lavish sweet kisses on Endymion. You shall take your place among those other goddesses, who were as coy and hard to please at first as yourself, and who are far greater ladies, my dear, than you ever will be. Your fall is at hand, and you must learn, as your betters have done before you, that there's no withstanding the will of a Vallombreuse. 'Frango ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... by a glimpse she caught of a restless fawn, glancing in the distance across the avenue, as he silently changed the tree under which he slept?—Then the gentle breeze would enter her window, laden with sweet scents of which he had just been rifling the coy flowers beneath, in their dewy repose, tended and petted during the day by her own delicate hand!—Beautiful moon!—cold and chaste in thy skyey palace, studded with brilliant and innumerable gems, and shedding down thy rich and tender radiance upon this lovely seclusion—was there upon ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... 730 The herds would over-multitude their lords; The sea o'erfraught would swell, and the unsought diamonds Would so emblaze the forehead of the deep, And so bestud with stars, that they below Would grow inured to light, and come at last To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows. List, lady; be not coy, and be not cozened With that same vaunted name, Virginity. Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded, But must be current; and the good thereof 740 Consists in mutual and partaken bliss, Unsavoury in the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... attractions of a very different class: fine-featured, dark-eyed, coal-black-haired and tall; as she stood—her right hand holding the rude torch over her head, while the left gathered the folds of a long cloak under her bosom, with her eyes of coy expectation and merry amazement—she seemed more the ideal of a robber's daughter in some old romance, than a menial in a moorland farm-house. I attempted to salute her, but she held me at bay with her hand. "Hech, lad! ye're no ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct will ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lord of Passion, must lend his hand." "But," he proceeds, "the god is coy; he has little liking for the breasts of kings. He is more likely to be found in the cottage of the ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... cool air stirs in the trees above, exorcising all mournful spirits. The harvest moon is rising and the white light lies sleeping, dreaming, on trees and cliff and river. On such a night pleading Pan wooed his coy nymph with the promise: ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us; as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a cosset. We go to ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... thirst for drink than she for this good turn. 92 Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: 'O! pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy: 'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96 ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... banker, attentively. He had foreseen that if he showed himself ready to help Karpathy out of his financial difficulties, the latter would at once grow coy. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... and uncivill usage in her, grew very distastefull to Anastasio, and so unsufferable, that after a long time of fruitlesse service, requited still with nothing but coy disdaine; desperate resolutions entred into his brain, and often he was minded to kill himselfe. But better thoughts supplanting those furious passions, he abstained from any such violent act; and governed by more manly consideration, determined, that as shee hated him, he ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... visible acknowledgment. All of her character was visible, well-developed as her body: her timidity showed itself in the unceasing dropping of her eyelid; her arch simplicity in the pouting lips; a coy reserve—well, that everywhere, to the very rosette on her retreating slipper; and her patriotism was quite palpable in the color of her Balmoral. She ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... romantick maid, Whether by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... space suit, anchored to its outer plates, directed a plastic hose which stretched out impossibly far and clamped to one drone with a magnetic grapple. He maneuvered it to the hull and made it fast. He captured a second, which was worked delicately within reach by coy ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... breathed even into inanimate objects by the imagination of Slavic girls and youths. A Servian youth contracts a regular league of friendship and brotherhood with a bramble-bush, in order to induce it to catch his coy love's clothes, when she flees before his kisses. Even the stars and planets sympathize with human beings, and live in constant intercourse with them and their affairs. Stars become messengers; a proud maiden boasts to be more beautiful than the sun; the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... facilemque, "Give me the beauty that is not too coy," is the Alpha and Omega of his personal creed. How should it have been otherwise? Knowing woman chiefly, as he obviously did, only in the ranks of the demi-monde, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after the first heyday of his youth was past, as worth the pain its owner's caprices ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... fragrant reeds that grow upon the rivers' banks, yet of such limpid transparency that one's form could be seen in their liquid depths as if reflected in a mirror. These were surrounded by long silken lashes—now drooping in coy modesty, anon rising in youthful gaiety and disclosing the laughing eyes but just before concealed beneath them. Eyebrows like the willow leaf; cheeks of snowy whiteness, yet tinged with the gentlest colouring of the rose; teeth like pearls of the finest water were seen peeping from ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... rebirth; sun and moon are everywhere types of warm and tender feelings; love is the converter of a winter of discontent into a glorious summer. In all love poems the wooer would fain embrace the wooed. And if she prove coy, he will tell of the menial parts he would be ready to perform, to continue unrebuked in her vicinity. Anacreon's lover (xx) would be water in which the maid should bathe, and the Egyptian sighs, "Were I ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty thousand Swedish soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812, when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April twelfth the alliance between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice between ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... introduced, but he had eyes only for Betsy. She gave him a coy look out of her china-blue eyes. Tilda smiled shyly at Sally. Both of the Johnston girls wore pretty linsey-woolsey dresses under their shawls and neat moccasins on their feet. Sally, looking down at her own soiled dress and bare ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... very bitter to Mary Wells, for she was in the very act of making a conquest. Young Drake, a very small farmer and tenant of Sir Charles, had fallen in love with her, and she liked him and had resolved he should marry her, with which view she was playing the tender but coy maiden very prettily. But Drake, though young and very much in love, was advised by his mother, and evidently resolved to go the old-fashioned way—keep company a year, and know the girl ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... of Rumford in her had their joy, She showed herself courteous, but never too coy, And at their commandment still she would be, So fair and ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... repoodiate hall hassistance from hany spirrids or soopernatural beins vatsohever. All I shall 'ave ze honour of showing you will be perform by simple Sloight of 'and, or Ledger-dee-Mang! (He invites any member of the Audience to step up and assist him, but the spectators remain coy.) I see zat I 'ave not to-night so larsh an orjence to select from as usual, still I 'ope——(Here one of the obvious Confederates slouches up, and joins him on the platform. ) Ah, zat is goot! I am vair moch oblige to you, Sare. (The Confederate grins sheepishly.) Led ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... and deliciously fragrant. In the swampy hollows were yellow marsh marigolds and blue forget-me-nots; on the drier soil of the rising bank the wild hyacinths were just shaking open their bells, and heartsease here and there lifted coy heads to ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made,— When pain and anguish wring the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied, extracted solace from the depressed ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... and was feeling fanciful and sentimental, which means, of course, I was thinking about you. And then I imagined this whole scene—only a little different; I in this dress, and you at my feet, worshipping me and calling me all sorts of sweet names. And I was coy and held back!" ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... that from morning to night and Sunday to Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough affections: and the bright eyes, and the winding arms so often trellised over his tremendous form, and the coy tricks and laughter that had cheered so many tired hours. He may have been much of a brute, but he felt that, after all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and pigs. Before he could translate his thoughts into words or acts a shrewd-looking, curly-haired stonemason, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... right a street turned off from the road, and saying in a low tone, "This way," she led Diodoros, to his surprise, into the shadow. His heart beat high. Did she, whose coy and maidenly austerity before and after the intoxication of the dance had vouchsafed him hardly a kind look or a clasp of the hand-did she even yearn for some tender embrace alone and in darkness? Did the quiet, modest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... what it came to buy or cared what it purchased so long as it could engage Mavis in a few moments' conversation. She soon got to know this type at a glance, and gave it short shrift. Others at "Dawes'" were not so coy. Many of the customers she got to know by sight, owing to their repeated visits. One of these she disliked from the first; later experience of her only intensified this impression. She was a tall, fine woman, well, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... proved so amusing that Kirkwood, chuckling, forbore to resent the manner of its delivery, and, abandoning until a more favorable time the chase of the coy sovereign purse, extracted from one trouser pocket half a handful of large ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... profit nor published for fame. Fame is a coy goddess that rarely bestows her favors on him who seeks her—a phantom that many pursue and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... she threw herself in my arms then and there. No, no! She demurred. All young girls, it seems, demur under the circumstances; but she was adorable, coy and tender in turns, pouting and coaxing, and playing like a kitten till she had taken the papers from me and, with a woman's natural curiosity, had turned the English letters over and over, even though she could not ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had not been altogether successful in the chase. The necessary wolf had been coy, and they, perforce, had to compromise with his poor relation, the coyote—a poor relation, indeed, whose shabby coat, thinned by the process of summer shedding, made it an unworthy souvenir to Miss Colebrooke. But it was not the lack of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... never." She shook a coy finger at him. "You dear old tightie," she cooed, "you don't realize what a closed car means to a woman." She turned to Shirley. "How an open car does blow ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun—a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at—illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked sky became a clear expanse, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... indolently sit, And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd joy, It had not moved your wonder to have seen An eunuch fly from an enamour'd queen: How would it please, should she in English speak, And could Hippolitus reply in Greek! But he, a stranger ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,— Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... hand. "All right, fellows! Just a minute, please! We've got a guest with us this evening, an honoured guest, fellows. Those of you who know football history know his name as well as you know the names of Heffelfinger and DeWitt and Coy and Brickley and—and many others in the Football Hall of Fame! I know you want to hear from him and I hope he will be willing to say a few words." Childers glanced at Doctor Proctor and the latter, smiling, shook his head energetically. "He says he will be glad to, fellows," continued ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... swelled her song With maiden coy caprice In a labyrinth of throbs, 120 Pauses, cadences; Clear-noted as a dropping brook, Soft-noted like the bees, Wild-noted as the shivering wind Forlorn through forest trees: Love-noted like the wood-pigeon Who hides herself for love, Yet cannot keep her secret safe, But ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... long since been lost to the man's, as with bent head she listened intently, for the first time amazed at what she had been to a man whose ideals were of the highest and his ways beyond reproach. A coy upward lift of the proudly carried head—a mere glance of transient reply—too brief for the man to read—might have meant, "Have not I too been ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... babies and could rarely pass one in a perambulator without wanting to kiss it and know all its little history. To have a baby of her very own was a prospect so full of allurement, that she offered no coy objections when Meredith wanted the marriage fixed at the earliest possible date. Indeed, her calm was the despair of her girl friends who envied her openly. Wasn't she "terribly" in love with him? Wasn't she just "thrilled to death" with excitement at the prospect ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Gavin scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron. The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's amusement all these proved a genuine ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the concerns of men, prying into their plans, and arresting their execution. By my soul, I had not thought you so ready or so apt; but how do you reconcile it to your notions of propriety to be abroad at an hour which is something late for a coy damsel? Munro, you must look to these rare doings, or they will work you some difficulty in time ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... year, ever sin' I saw yo' i' the kitchen corner sitting crouching behind my uncle, I as good as swore I'd have yo' for wife, or never wed at all. And it was not long ere yo' knowed it, for all yo' were so coy, and now yo' have the face—no, yo' have not the face—come, my darling, what is it?' for she was crying; and on his turning her wet blushing face towards him the better to look at it, she suddenly ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a few good jokes, but is mostly elaboration. Opus 8 is a fiery romanza appassionata. Opus 9 is a Scherzo-Caprice. This is probably his best work. It is dedicated to Liszt, and though extremely brilliant, is full of meaning. It has an interlude of tender romance. "Coy Maiden" is a graceful thing, but hardly deserves the punishment of so horrible a name. "A Gypsy Dance" is too long, but it is of good material. It has an interesting metre, three-quarter time with the first note dotted. There is a good effect gained by sustaining certain notes over ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... ascribed. If we attend, however, to the whole animal creation, if we consider it attentively wherever it falls under our observation, it will discover to us, that in the female there is a greater degree of delicacy or coy reserve than in the male. Is not this a proof, that, through the wide extent of creation, the seeds of delicacy are more liberally bestowed upon females ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... it does. What! do you think I am so dull of ear That I can mark no changes in the tones That reach me? Once I liked not girlish pride And that coy quiet, chary of reply, That held me distant: now the sweetest lips Open to entertain me—fairest hands Are proffered me ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Ganimede [Rosalind's page-name], what mad cattell you women be, whose hearts sometimes are made of adamant that will touch with no impression, and sometimes of waxe that is fit for everie forme; they delight to be courted and then they glorie to seeme coy, and when they are most desired, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... tried to make up to the prettiest ones, and offered them trinkets, pretty boxes of soap, beads, and small mirrors (so dear to the heart of the Indian girl), but the young maids were coy enough; it seemed to me they cared more for men of ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... and enjoyed things—the coy tremble of the tiller and the backwash of air from the dingy mainsail, and, with a somewhat chastened rapture, the lunch which Davies brought up to me ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... anew To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... O'Hana, in which the maiden was coy and willing, the lover circumspect and eager, or at least thought he was, those around the pair were soon well informed; that is, with the exception of the most interested—O'Iwa and Kwaiba. The marked neglect ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, That of her smyling was ful simple and coy; Hir grettest ooth was ne but by seynt Loy; And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful wel she song the service divyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely; And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... not expecting to meet him, and the lover had had an opportunity of speaking his mind freely. She also had spoken hers freely. She would not engage herself to him without her father's consent. With that consent she would do so,—oh, so willingly! She did not coy her love. He might be certain that she would give herself to no one else. Her heart was entirely his. But she had pledged herself to her father, and on no consideration would she break that pledge. She went on to say that after what had passed she ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... reason all her passions sway; Easy in company, in private gay; Coy to a fop, to the deserving free; Still constant to herself, and just to me. She should a soul have for great actions fit; Prudence and wisdom to direct her wit; Courage to look bold danger in the face, Not fear, but only to be proud or base; Quick to advise, by an emergence ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them, and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!" Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... slumbering earth with gentler breezes. And soon, where she had passed, the crocus reared its yellow head, anemones, scarlet, blue and purple, tossed from her lap, sang the glories of spring in their tender harmonies of hue, coy violet and sweet-smelling nardosmia waved their incense on her altars, and the hellebore sprouted by ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum somewheres in the manifest," said Tom Platt, playing up to the lead. "He used to bum araound the c'mission houses to Boston lookin' fer the Lord to make him captain of a tow-boat on his merits. Sam Coy, up to Atlantic Avenoo, give him his board free fer a year or more on ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... West, the first of April last a servant man, named Willis M'Coy, a small short fellow, his right eye looks red; he had on when he went away, a blue jacket and a striped flannel jacket under it, a pair of trowsers, and under them a pair of cloth breeches, too long for him, and were ripped at the knee; he had two shirts on, one ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... rhyming couplet was not more displeasing to Milton's ear than the continued emphatic bark of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he was to the heavy-armed processional manner of scholarly Renaissance prose, he felt it an indignity to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting style; to be girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who makes sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were confiscate." Later on in the Apology he returns to this grievance, and describes ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Fortune (that easy mistress to the young, But to her ancient servants coy and hard), Him at that age her favourites rank'd among, When she her best-loved ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... beneath his shoulders broad: She, as a veil, down to the slender waist Her unadorned golden tresses wore Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied Subjection, but required with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best received, Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed; Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame Of nature's works, honour dishonourable, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... in a bright blue blanket and red breech clout, with an extra quantity of paint and feathers, attended by a train of half-naked warriors and nobles. A horse was in waiting to receive the princess, who was mounted behind one of the clerks, and thus conveyed, coy but compliant, to the fortress. Here she was received with devout, though decent joy, by ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the Spring sweet breeze Came thronging round me, soft and coy, Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees, And laughing Echo leapt ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... thy thoughts, low vassals to thy state'— 'No more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, I will not hear thee: Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate, Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee; That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee Unto the base bed of some rascal groom, To be thy partner ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly quarrelled with a young girl whom Lord Rochester admired. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... gentry in the nearest counties, to attend a great ball at Elmwood. The old house would be filled from garret to cellar, and the hospitable homes of nearby friends would open to take in the overflow of guests. Dames and maidens coy, clad in the quaint and picturesque colonial costume, with powdered hair and patches, in richly brocaded gowns and satin slippers, made stately courtesy to gay dandies and jovial squires arrayed in coats of many colors, broidered vests, knee breeches ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... to observe his own motions and gestures mimicked, and wakens to the conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious, vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself, and more coy in coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the phenomenon can be manifested; the sun must be near to the horizon, (which, of itself, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... source of every joy. He envied not, he never thought of kings; Nor from those appetites sustain'd annoy, That chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy; Nor Fate his calm and humble hopes beguiled; He mourn'd no recreant friend, nor mistress coy, For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smiled, And her alone he loved, and loved her ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... surmeti. Cover (roof) tegi. Cover kovrilo. Covet avidi. Covetousness avideco. Covey kovitaro. Cow bovino. Coward malkuragxulo. Cowardice malkuragxeco. Cowherd bovgardisto. Cow shed bovinejo. Cowl kapucxo. Cowslip verprimolo. Coxcomb dando. Coy rezerva. Coyness rezerveco. Cozen trompi. Crab kankro. Crack (split) fendi. Crack (noise) kraki. Crackle kraketi. Cradle lulilo. Craft ruzo. Craft (vessel) sxipeto. Crafty, to be ruzi. Crafty ruza. Cram (of food) supersatigi. Cram plenegigi. Cramp (metal) krampo. Crane ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... again from under his brow, sidles along the table, with far less of ease than he had worn when he came whistling through the hall,—sidles nearer and nearer, till she, with a coy approach that seems to be full of doubt, meets him with a little furtive hand-shake. Then he, retiring a step, leans with one elbow on the friendly table, eying her curiously, and more boldly when he discovers that her look is downcast, and that she seems to be warming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... with a coy, sidelong look from her mild blue eyes, and then, at last, she shut the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... who had been informed by Alice that if he deserted her for a single moment that evening or the next he need never bring his friend there again, sat outside on the porch and close by the window, smoking incessantly and smiling to himself at the clever tactics of his charming but coy sister. When the concert was ended he observed, "If there's one song in the house that you have not sung, Alice, I wish you would sing it. I hate to have ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... flow'r be seen, Rememb'ring still its former height, Shuns the sweet leaves, and blossoms green; And, recollecting its own light, Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express The greater heaven in an heaven less, In how coy a figure wound, Every way it turns away: So the world excluding round, Yet receiving in the day. Dark beneath, but bright above; Here disdaining, there in love, How loose and easy hence to go; How girt and ready to ascend: Moving but on a point below, It all about does upward bend. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... he kept her, In his hands her life did lie; Cupid's bands did tie them faster By the liking of an eye. In his courteous company was all her joy, To favour him in anything she was not coy. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... and are most tractable and coming, apt, yielding, and willing to embrace, to take a green gown, with that shepherdess in Theocritus, Edyl. 27. to let their coats, &c., to play and dally, at such seasons, and to some, as they spy their advantage; and then coy, close again, so nice, so surly, so demure, you had much better tame a colt, catch or ride a wild horse, than get her favour, or win her love, not a look, not a smile, not a kiss for a kingdom. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a small adventure which was very surprising to me on this journey; passing this plain country, we came to an open piece of ground where a neighbouring gentleman had at a great expense laid out a proper piece of land for a decoy, or duck-coy, as some call it. The works were but newly done, the planting young, the ponds very large and well made; but the proper places for shelter of the fowl not covered, the trees not being grown, and men were still at work improving and enlarging and planting on the adjoining heath ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... passion should touch you, that I might the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... the frenzy of worship, and, with a wild cry, would join the dancers, his for ever. But the god is not unscrupulous. He would fain win her by gentle and fair means, even by wedlock. That chaplet of seven stars is his bridal offering. Why should not she accept it? Why should she be coy of his desire? It is true that he drinks. But in time, may be, a wife might be able to wean him from the wine-skin, and from the low company he affects. That will be for time to show. And, meanwhile, how brilliant a match! Not even Pasiphae, her mother, ever contemplated ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... sunshine, reflected back from our selves! O ye haunts endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest, setting life's trite things to Music! Here nature and fortune concurred alike,—equal in birth and pretensions, similar in ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, that they seem scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... it perhaps preserves for us some details of what took place at the accession of Genghis. It is well known that the Mongol Khan affected a coy resistance when asked to become chief. The letter runs thus: "You conspired to kill me, yet from the beginning did I tell the sons of Bartam Bahadur (i.e., his grandfather), as well as Satcha ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... bright, with coy smiles forever dissolving in tears; and then May in full blossom and beauty giving promise of ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... must confess, there was one bold with me too, Some coy thing would say rude, but 'tis no matter, I was to pay a Waiting womans ransom, And I have don't, and I would pay't again, Were I ta'n ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... take example by the chatrynge pye. Whiche doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper or ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... the mill; Past the vineyards shady; Where the sun shone on a rill Jewell'd like a lady. Proud the stream with lily-bud, Gay with glancing swallow; Swift its trillion-footed flood, Winding ways to follow. Coy and still when flying wheel Rested from its labour; Singing when it ground the meal Gay as lute or tabor. "Bouche-Mignonne" it called, when, red In the dawn were glowing, Eaves and mill-wheel, "leave thy bed, "Hark ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... red-bellied species, he says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with such violence as to be heard in still weather more than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has alarmed." He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival, or the brief and coy response of the female; for there are no ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... created by the blue hat. It was the last to come ashore. It lingered on the gunwale with an appealing turn manwards until a red arm was offered on one side, a black arm on the other, whereupon it hopped ashore with a coy wag to the right and to the left. It was not hard to see why the boatmen had christened ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores of the Hellespont—not in the famed ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful countenance would wonderfully ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear, with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lord let fly a peal of laughter. It had been a supper of copious wine, and the songs which rise from wine. Nature was excused ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perceive we are deluded both. For when I offered many gifts of Gold, And Jewels to entreat for love, She hath refused them with a coy disdain, Alledging that she could not see the Sun. The same conjectured I to be thy drift, That faining so she might be ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... a tower; But yet love, who subtle is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will get ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.' They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: 'No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.' 'But are you sure,' said Ursula, 'that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?' Hero replied: 'So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... now begun to withdraw from town and go out into the country, but in their retirement to the sylvan shades they were accompanied sometimes, indeed, by Milton's "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty," but quite as frequently by Shenstone's nymph, "coy Elegance," who ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... out to his eager heart, Erik determined to go himself to England, but incognito, disguised as the servant of some foreign lord. Thus he would see and conquer the coy maiden queen. The warnings and expostulations of his friends failed to move him from this romantic project, but at length it reached the king's ears, and he strictly forbade the wild-goose project as hazardous and undignified. Erik, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... drawing-room song, darling! Sing by the sunset's glow; Now while the shadows are long, darling; Now while the lights are low; Something so chaste and so coy, darling! Something that melts the chest; Milder than even Molloy, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... Madison. "Why, you go down there like a whole parade and a gorgeous pageant rolled into one, in feathers and paint and diamond boulders in your ears—and you come out of it in a gingham apron and coy sunbonnet as ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... gives command—the inferior powers obey— The crippled artist [Footnote: Vulcan.] moulds the tempered clay: A maid's coy image rose at Jove's behest; Minerva clasped the zone, diffused too vest; Adored Persuasion and the Graces young Her tapered limbs with golden jewels hung; Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours A garland ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... it were best That this language you addressed Unto him who nightly came Down here from this balcony;— 'Tis enough for me to show All your lightness that I know, That less coy and cold to me Your pretended honour prove. If I am disdained, displaced, 'Tis another suits your taste, Not that ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and showed two or three water-coloured drawings of the graceful little head and piquant features. Edgar criticised, and promised a lesson; and the sitter, nothing loth, though rather coy, was caught. She blushed and smiled, and took exception at little personalities, and laughed her forgiveness, going through a play of countenance very perplexing to the pupil, but much relished by the master, as he called up the pout and smile ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kitchen. Whereupon I straightway ran in thither, and was shocked and affrighted when I saw the sheriff himself standing in the corner with his arm round my child her neck; he, however, presently let her go, and said, "Aha, reverend Abraham, what a coy little fool you have for a daughter! I wanted to greet her with a kiss, as I always used to do, and she struggled and cried out as if I had been some young fellow who had stolen in upon her, whereas I ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... has bent me down. To you, Paolo, I could look, however, Were my hump made a mountain. Bless him, God! Pour everlasting bounties on his head! Make Croesus jealous of his treasury, Achilles of his arms, Endymion Of his fresh beauties,—though the coy one lay, Blushing beneath Diana's earliest kiss, On grassy Latmos; and may every good, Beyond man's sight, though in the ken of heaven, Round his fair fortune to a perfect end! O, you have dried the sorrow of my eyes; My heart is beating with a lighter pulse; ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... gardening, is unrivalled. They have studied Nature intently, and discovered an exquisite sense of her beautiful forms and harmonious combinations. Those charms which, in other countries, she lavishes in wild solitudes, are here assembled round the haunts of domestic life. They seem to have caught her coy and furtive graces, and spread them, like witchery, about ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... office fire, Miss Thornhill read a magazine in the indolent fashion so much affected at Baldpate Inn during the heated term; while the mayor of Reuton chatted amiably with the ponderously coy Mrs. Norton. Into this circle burst the envoys to the hermitage, flushed, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... that we can do at present," Prescott concluded, will be to notify Lawyer Ripley or Chief Coy that we've seen ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... Song, from some far Land To the kind Reader The New Amadis When the Fox dies, his Skin counts The Heathrose Blindman's Buff Christel The Coy One The Convert Preservation The Muses' Son Found Like and Like Reciprocal Invitation to the Dance Self-Deceit Declaration of War Lover in all Shapes The Goldsmith's Apprentice Answers in a Game of Questions Different Emotions on the same Spot Who'll ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the end Buck's pertinacity was rewarded; for the wolf, finding that no harm was intended, finally sniffed noses with him. Then they became friendly, and played about in the nervous, half-coy way with which fierce beasts belie their fierceness. After some time of this the wolf started off at an easy lope in a manner that plainly showed he was going somewhere. He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... Coy as he grows fond, she meets him With a modest show; Shaming truth with truthful seeming, While ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Always changing, yet still the same. 'Twill show you the trees, or the clouds, or yourself, or the stars; and it's so clear and so dark, and so sunny, and—so cold. It tells everything, and yet nothing. It's so pure, and so playful, and so tuneful, and so coy, yet so mysterious and fatal. I sometimes think, Miss Lilias, I've seen this river spirit; and she's ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... who durst with fingering bold assay To touch the softness of her tender skin, She looked as coy, as if she list not play, And made as things of worth were hard to win; Yet tempered so her deignful looks alway, That outward scorn showed store of grace within: Thus with false hope their longing hearts she fired, For hardest gotten things ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... their follies. How could I dream that he would have made scruples about a few years' youth or age, when the advantages of the match were so evident? And thou knowest, there would have been no moving yonder coy wench to be so frank as this coming Countess here, who hangs on our arms as dead a weight as a wool pack. I loved the lad too, and would have done him a kindness: to wed him to this old woman was to make his fortune, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... "She is still coy," said the young Spaniard, telling Ulrich to wait at the narrow door, which opened upon the balcony. "There sits the angel! Just look! I gave her the pomegranate blossom in her magnificent hair—did you ever see more beautiful tresses? Take notice! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is like to break in twain: * Till when these coy denials ah! till when? O thou who fliest me sans fault of mine, * Gazelles are wont at times prove tame to men: Absence, aversion, distance and disdain, * How shall young lover all these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... proud, and responded coldly to his advances. He did not care what harm came to Ralegh, upon whom, as Mr. Gardiner says, he knew the Spaniards would fall wherever they found him. Meanwhile he hoped to warm his coy allies by letting loose upon the Spanish Main their and his inveterate aversion. Ralegh was a convenient firebrand to show Spain the harm England, if an enemy, could do. He was a scapegoat to immolate in proof of all England was prepared to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... joy, In songbirds trill, in flowerlets coy, Shall we, also, voices raise, Sing our ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... taken this pretty pet lamb To dwell in his stately fold, To fetter it fast with a jeweled chain, And cage it with bars of gold; But this coy little lamb loved its freedom, Not so free was she, though, to be true, But, oh, the dainty and shy little lamb Well her ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... anything to say?" she asked coyly; though her eyes, as they fixed mine, were not coy, but eager; and I felt, eerily, that she was wondering whether the millions, of which she'd heard, were in English pounds ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a shake of the eyeglass, to shift and sidle again, as if distinctly excited by the subject. But it was as if his very excitement made the poor gentleman a trifle coy. "Are there no nice ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... drawing the iron towards it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed pre-occupation in the end to be attained."[313] In the examples we have studied of the courtships of birds we saw that it is by no means a universal law that the male is eager and the female coy. I need only recall the instance noted by Darwin[314] in which a wild duck forced her love on a male pintail, and such cases, as is well known, are frequent. High-bred bitches will show sudden passions for low-bred ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... 4 Then be not coy, but use your time, And, whilst ye may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... be no longer cold, no longer coy, dear Margaret—here in the sweet evening, among these pleasant shades, love, alone, has supremacy. Here, in the words of one ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... accord, they turned to a dove-like maiden mild, With a seraph's purity of look, and soft graces of a child; "Speak out, speak out now, sweet shy Clare, we anxious wait for thee, Coy, gentle one! fear not to say what thy heart's ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... maiden, who in ancient song Was wont to flout her swain, I prithee be not always coy, But turn your face again. My heart is true, and it will rue, That ever you should doubt me, So sweet, be kind, and change your mind, And don't for ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... with their hues reflected streaking bright Her radiant bow, bids all her Warblers sing; The Lark, shrill caroling on soaring wing; The lonely Thrush, in brake, with blossoms white, That tunes his pipe so loud; while, from the sight Coy bending their dropt heads, young Cowslips fling Rich perfume o'er the fields.—It is the prime Of Hours that Beauty robes:—yet all they gild, Cheer, and delight in this their fragrant time, For thy dear sake, to me less pleasure yield Than, veil'd in sleet, and rain, and hoary rime, Dim ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... doubt whatever that this moose, at least, had come to what he thought was the call of a mate. Moonlight is deceptive beyond a few feet; so when the low grunt sounded in the shadow of the great rock he was sure he had found the coy creature at last, and broke out of his concealment resolved to keep her in sight and not to let her get away again. That is why he swam after us. Had he been investigating some new sound or possible danger, he would never have left the land, where alone ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... radiant scene Swell'd his exulting thought, than this surveys A muckworm's entrails, or a spider's fang. Next him a youth, with flowers and myrtles crown'd, 170 Attends that virgin form, and blushing kneels, With fondest gesture and a suppliant's tongue, To win her coy regard: adieu, for him, The dull engagements of the bustling world! Adieu the sick impertinence of praise! And hope, and action! for with her alone, By streams and shades, to steal these sighing hours, Is all he asks, and all that ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the white squares of the plaid turn outward? and where should she put the coral? and would it be becoming after all? A pretty, girlish sight, and you may laugh at it if you choose; but there was a prettier woman's tenderness underlying it, just as a strain of fine, coy sadness will wind through a mazourka or a waltz. For who would see the poor little hat to-morrow at church? and would he like it? and when he came to-morrow night,—for of course he would come to-morrow night,—would he ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... No. Coy Conveyancing would not come to Mr. Grewgious. She was wooed, not won, and they went their several ways. But an Arbitration being blown towards him by some unaccountable wind, and he gaining great ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... that he has no companion in that part of the world, no Sir Charles Sedleys, nor Buckinghams, and what is still worse, even deprived of the happiness of a mistress, for, the women there, he says, are so coy, and so narrowly watched by their relations, that there is no possibility of accomplishing an intrigue. He mentions, however, one Monsieur Hoffman, who married a French lady, with whom he was very great, and after the calamitous accident of Mr. Hoffman's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... pure and bashful middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to the utmost—all along the line, as ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... have we her approval? Nay, never blush, nor hide your face. Well, well, maidens will be coy; 'tis a delicate subject. But there, she nods consent. Now, off with you; and mind, the beaten ones must not be cross with the judge; I will not have the poor lad harmed. The prize of beauty can ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... word had Kitty for me that evening, but for her father such clinging, coaxing, wheedling ways, and for the Jook such coy, sparkling, artfully-accidental glances, such shy turns of the little head, such dainty capricious airs, that it was delicious to watch her. Koenigin and I sat in a dark corner for the express purpose ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... he looked upon as given to him above Adam was the power of attraction, by which he could supplant him with others and rob him of their affection; so that, though he was no more charmed by Eve's rare beauty than he was won by her coy modesty, no sooner did he see that Adam's affection was turned toward her than he coveted her love and desired to boast of it as being his own. With this object in view, he began by enlisting Eve's sympathies with his forlorn position, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and mourning ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such the Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned many forms of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes, filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, running on before him gathering flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough image; newly-married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened; matronly Dots, still ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Light mixed with shadow. Love met the maid again, Dreaming through the meadow. "Not so coy," urged the boy; "List in time to love and reason." "By and by," she mused reply; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent portion of the dramatic structure of the play. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... stop it?" She watched his face, her manner coy and yielding. "Nat," she said in a softer voice, "if you like me as well as ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... ourselves in support. Meanwhile our job was to dig new trenches out in front as jumping off places for the attack. They were successfully completed, but when the enemy saw them he paid his usual attention to them and as a result 2nd-Lt. Chatterton (C Coy.) was badly wounded, and eventually lost a leg. He was an extremely popular figure both with officers and men being known to everyone as "Joe," and his absence was keenly felt, for he had gone out originally with ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... the Sissy Boy Who acts so womanly and coy. His head's as soft as new-made butter; His aim in life is just to flutter; Yet he goes along with unconcern And marries a woman with money ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... all very true. Then he was pressing, and you were coy, until finally he extorted your definitive answer, which was—" Maria paused, and seemed to be intensely studying the looks of the other—Miss Henley smiled as she turned her placid, ingenuous features to her gaze, and continued the ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... getting some money for the Charles were spoiled through Mr. Waith's perverseness, which did so vex me that I could not sleep at night. But I wrote a letter to him to send to-morrow morning for him to take my money for me, and so with good words I thought to coy ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... effect of this chill history could never be undone. The wise—and they included all his social world and many who were not of it—could see just how he had been living. The article which accompanied the pictures told how he had followed Jennie from Cleveland to Chicago, how she had been coy and distant and that he had to court her a long time to win her consent. This was to explain their living together on the North Side. Lester realized that this was an asinine attempt to sugar-coat the true story and it made him angry. Still he preferred to have it that way ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... in agony-columns; there were futile attempts made to pacify the Court of Chancery. All the Beresfords came up to town, except Nan, who remained to look after the Brighton house. The chief difficulty of the moment was to discover the whereabouts of Mr. John Hanbury. That gentleman was coy; and wanted to find out something of what was likely to happen to him if he emerged from his hiding-place. At last it was conveyed to him that he was only making matters worse; then he wrote from certain furnished apartments in a house on ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... from Beaufort to Ladies' Island, I found myself, with delight, on the actual trail of a song. One of the oarsmen, a brisk young fellow, not a soldier, on being asked for his theory of the matter, dropped out a coy confession. "Some good sperituals," he said, "are start jess out o' curiosity. I been a-raise ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... rawhide, half walking and half flying, his wings spread out, 'cree-ing' to himself about bulldogs and their ways; next come Bobby, still sputtering and swearing, and behind ambled Thomas at a lively wriggle, a coy, large smile ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... due to the artist to say that his wildness that morning was not the result only of despair at the obvious indifference with which Nita regarded him. It was the combination of that wretched condition with a heroic resolve to forsake the coy maiden and return to his first love— his beloved art—that excited him; and the idea of renewing his devotion to her in dangerous circumstances was rather congenial to his savage state of mind. It may be here remarked that Mr Slingsby, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... thereof), Gives back to thee in sanctities of flower; And holy odours do her bosom invest, That sweeter grows for being prest: Though dear recoil, the tremorous nurse of joy, From thine embrace still startles coy, Till Phosphor lead, at thy returning hour, The laughing ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... up a bit husky in evenin' dress. Talk about elbow dimples! And I was wishin' she'd forgot to do her hair that antique way, all piled up on her head, with a few coy ringlets over one ear. But she'd landscaped her facial scenery artistic, and she sure does know how to roll them ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... and after her and overtook her at the end of Hosier lane in Smithfield, and without standing in the street desired her to follow me, and I led her into a little blind alehouse within the walls, and there she and I alone fell to talk and baiser la and toker su mammailles, but she mighty coy, and I hope modest.... I did give her in a paper 20s., and we did agree para meet again in the Hall at Westminster on Monday next; and so giving me great hopes by her carriage that she continues modest and honest, we did there part, she going home and I to Mrs. Turner's, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Coy, sweet maid, I love so well, Fair Estelle. How much I love thee tongue can't tell, Sweet Estelle. But I love thee—love thee true— More than violets love the dew, More than roses love the sun— Do I love ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... not coy, but use your lungs, And while ye may, cry "Waiter!" For having held just now your tongues, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... the papoose's wail, and stilled the squaw's low-crooning lilt. No longer shimmers starlight from eyes of savage maids Worshippers of the fire and sun, poor dwellers of the caves— The sisters of the deer and lo, shy startled fawns of Aztec race Or coy ancestral dams of moon-eyed Toltec doe. Now Verde witches bathe in Montezuma's well And over its crystal waters ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... clerking. She was unquestionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed she was as pretty as girls are made. With all her small-town limitations she was bright as a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct and, withal, coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed her it was as a shop-keeper. Something she said kept turning over in his brain and he realized next morning, as he was shaving, that her reply had been ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... long, there short, afloat the duckweed lies; But caught at last, we seize the longed-for prize. The maiden modest, virtuous, coy, is found; Strike every lute, and joyous welcome sound. Ours now, the duckweed from the stream we bear, And cook to use with other viands rare. He has the maiden, modest, virtuous, bright; Let bells and drums proclaim ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... leave Flossie, the belle of the village, waiting at the gate any time a burlesque three-sheet shows up on the side of the blacksmith shop. And right down front, with their feet on the base drum, handing out the coy glances before the first curtain is ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... in a spasm of longing—if she could get those thousand francs! But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a thousand francs she could ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... in England, Amy. It seems to require our deeper-tinted skies to produce them. Ah, there comes his mate. You can tell her by the lighter blue of her plumage, and the tinge of brown on her head and back. She is a cold, coy beauty, even as a wife; but how gallant is her azure-coated beau! Flirt away, my little chap, and make the most of your courting and honeymoon. You will soon have family cares enough to discourage anybody but a bluebird;" and the doctor looked at his favorites with an exulting ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Rue du Doyenne, could know nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to the utmost—all along the line, as the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming... falling behind the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... age, whose spirit of romance is not yet quenched, who are content to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and people of to-day ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... she shot them; the vivacious and intelligent daughter of Massachusetts, all sensitive, modest, and graceful; the placid belle of Pennsylvania, whose fair complexion drew upon her all admiration; the bright-eyed Buckeye, with face so oval, than whom none was more coy, nor ever shot a glance or stole a heart so well; the rustic daughter of Down East, who affected great contempt for all superior people, and declared the queen not a whit better than anybody else; the buxom Green-mountain ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... wouldn't. And I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April. And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... everywhere, in all countries; and the more ardently and eagerly he sought it, the less was he able to find it. Pleasure was the first modest, coy woman who cruelly shunned him, and the more he pursued her, the more coldly did she seem to ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... by a secret, but a pow'rful Art, } Winds up the Spring of Life, and do's impart } Fresh Vital Heat to the transported Heart, } I'd have her Reason, and her Passions sway, Easy in Company, in private Gay. Coy to a Fop, to the deserving free, Still Constant to her self, and Just to me. A soul she shou'd have for great Actions fit, Prudence, and Wisdom to direct her Wit. Courage to look bold danger in the Face, No Fear, but only to ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... speak, in connection with what he styled his horrible youth, of the years which she—the Dilecta—had tarnished. Too opportune to be sincere, this condemnation of his first liaison cannot but be regarded as an incense of flattery offered to the coy goddess ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... 8 is a fiery romanza appassionata. Opus 9 is a Scherzo-Caprice. This is probably his best work. It is dedicated to Liszt, and though extremely brilliant, is full of meaning. It has an interlude of tender romance. "Coy Maiden" is a graceful thing, but hardly deserves the punishment of so horrible a name. "A Gypsy Dance" is too long, but it is of good material. It has an interesting metre, three-quarter time with the first note dotted. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... this is courtly now, this is sweete, this plaine, this is familiar, but by the Court of France, our peevish dames are so proud, so precise, so coy, so disdainfull, and so subtill, as the Pomonian Serpent, mort dieu the Puncke of Babylon was never ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... worship. We chase the illusive glitter of fashion as though it was a crown of glory, and could impart dignity and peace to its wearer. We hunt after pleasure as though it could be found by searching. Pleasure comes of itself. It must never be wooed. She is a coy maid, and ever eludes her flattering followers. She will come and abide with us when we use wisely the world and its good things. But we must put things to their true use, else pleasure will keep away. Oh, how much might we enjoy life ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... for he had learned to draw his sword, wave it dramatically over his head, cheer for a few seconds in monkey talk, then break and dash to the rear. "Paterno" was an easy candidate for second honors. He gave a giddy dance and looked coy. ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... let Anna have six little girls here to supper to-night: Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler, and Alice Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grandfather thinks those kinds are contageous or outrageous ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... never had time called but once. He caught a couple of punts with his one good arm and every other punt he attempted to catch and muffed he saved the ball from the other side by falling on it. In the same game, a peculiar thing happened to me. I tackled Ted Coy about fifteen minutes before the end of the game, and until I awoke hours later, lying in a drawing-room car, pulling into the Grand Central Station, my mind was a blank. Yet I am told the last fifteen minutes of the game I played well, especially when ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... cried he, to that worthy, who peeped in at that moment; "you are right, it is better to plow away upon canvas blindfold, as our grandfathers—no, grandmothers—used, than to kill ourselves toiling after such coy ladies as ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... That, of course, she could not tell her mother. There are some things too sacred for little girls to tell their mothers. She wondered if Wollaston would ask leave to walk home with her. She had seen a boy step out of a waiting file at the vestry door to a blushing girl, and had seen the girl, with a coy readiness, slip her hand into the waiting crook of his arm, and walk off, and she had wondered when such bliss would come to her. It never had. She wondered if the pink gingham might bring it to pass to-night. The pink ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "Nay, by'r Lady, nay!" and a few more coy shifts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... deter, discourage; browbeat, bully; threaten &c. 909. Adj. fearing &c. v.; frightened &c. v.; in fear, in a fright &c. n.; haunted with the fear of &c. n.; afeard[obs3]. afraid, fearful; timid, timorous; nervous, diffident, coy, faint- hearted, tremulous, shaky, afraid of one's shadow, apprehensive, restless, fidgety; more frightened than hurt. aghast; awe-stricken, horror-stricken, terror-stricken, panic- stricken, awestruck, awe-stricken, horror-struck; frightened to death, white as a sheet; pale, pale as a ghost, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unpuritanic days lovers keep late hours; and as I listened to the wooing of fair Brooklyn by the eloquent son[1] of New York I thought we might be here till papa turned out the gas. Brooklyn is a New England maiden and a trifle coy, and it may take even more than an hour's pleading and persuasive wooing to win her. [Applause.] You ask me, sir, to turn our thoughts back from these considerations of pressing and immediate problems, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to be coy, if not fickle, the manual part of transplanting should always be properly done. The plants should always be taken up with as little loss of roots as possible, be kept exposed to the air as short ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... the fact that spring had at last made her coy and reluctant debut, there had been a sharp change in the weather and winter again held the center of the stage. Regardful of this fact, Tatsu had built a roaring fire in the library to cheer Hayden's home-coming. The flames crackled ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... part of Jessie's charms, Which the bosom ever warms; But the charms by which I 'm stung, Come, O Jessie, from thy tongue! Jessie, be no longer coy; Let me taste a lover's joy; With your hand remove the dart, And heal the wound ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... while? Thy sunk eyes glisten through eclipsing fears, Fill'd, like Cassandra's, with prophetic tears: With such a visage, withering, woe-begone, Shrinks the pale poet from the damning dun. Come, let us teach each others tears to flow, Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe, When the coy muse puts on coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... Danae, in a tower; But yet love, who subtle is, Crept to that, and came to this: Be ye lock'd up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides: Or those babies in your eyes, In their crystal nurseries; Notwithstanding love will win, Or else force a passage in; And as coy be as you can. Gifts will get ye, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... in her, grew very distastefull to Anastasio, and so unsufferable, that after a long time of fruitlesse service, requited still with nothing but coy disdaine; desperate resolutions entred into his brain, and often he was minded to kill himselfe. But better thoughts supplanting those furious passions, he abstained from any such violent act; and governed by more manly consideration, determined, that as shee hated ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... no use my pretending or being coy, Cally. Oh, I'd dearly love to have it. I've been wondering what on earth I'd do for a nice suit this year.... Why, it's like ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that tawny shell, Stained by thy tears and hollowed by thy sighs, Recalls thee still to mind—dost thou regard, From some tumultuous covert of this woodland, Thy whilom sphere and palace? Nun of the skies, In coy virginity of pulse, thy hands Repelled me when I sought to win thy lair, Fraternal, with no thoughts but humorous ones; And in thy chill revulsion, through thy skies, At my advance thy crystal home would fade, A ghost, a shadow, a film, a papery dream. Thou and thy moon were one. ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... and put it on, covered Ermine well, made up the fire, and took her seat on the form, just outside the screen, while Ermine tried to sleep. But sleep was coy, and would not visit the girl's eyes. Her state of mind was strangely quiescent and acquiescent in all that was done to her or for her. Perhaps extreme weakness had a share in this; but she felt as if sorrow and ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed into the clearing where the village was, the curs slunk away ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... recovering wits. In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... needless adjuncts—these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these expensive preparations, these many devices and arrangements that imply trouble and raise expectation? Who that has lived thirty years in the world has not discovered that Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued, but must be caught unawares? An air from a street-piano, heard while at work, will often gratify more than the choicest music played at a concert by the most accomplished ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.' They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: 'No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.' 'But are you sure,' said Ursula, 'that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?' Hero replied: 'So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... such other adornments as they are able to collect. Here in this arena the courting is done, the male bird chasing his mate up and down, bowing his pretty head and playing the agreeable generally, while she indulges in all manner of airs and graces, pretends to be very coy, and acts the coquette to perfection. But her lover's devotion conquers at last, and in due time the fair flirt surrenders, yields up her liberty and settles down as a dutiful wife and loving mother, bringing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... young lady," remarked Walderhurst, with a lighter manner than usual. "You ought to say something deprecatory or—a little coy, perhaps." ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sense; And love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy? With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became Another's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... adventurous, chivalrous, and bright blue Norman blood. To such purpose do the gay young Vikings of the world of quack pour in (when the weather and the time of year invite), equipped with red boots and plumes of purple velvet, to enchant the coy lady ducks in soft water, and eclipse the familiar and too legal drake. For a while they revel in the change of scene, the luxury of unsalted mud and scarcely rippled water, and the sweetness and culture of tame dilly-ducks, to whom their brilliant bravery, as well as an air ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... however, from the delicate prettiness of her refined face with its soft gray shadows, or the dark gentle eyes, whose blue-veined lids were just then wrinkled into coquettishly mischievous lines by the strong light. She was taller and thinner than Kate, and had at times a certain shy, coy sinuosity of movement which gave her a more virginal suggestion than her unmarried sister. For Miss Kate, from her earliest youth, had been distinguished by that matronly sedateness of voice and step, and completeness of figure, which indicates some members of the gallinaceous ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... go to the dining-room; and as I stepped out to have a look down the street for Hamilton, I heard Colonel Adderly's last fling—"Pretty rascals, you gentlemen adventurers are, so shy and coy about law courts." ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do; Fear the fierceness of the boy: The chaste Moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circled round about with spies, Never dreaming loose desires, Doting at the altar ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin?— 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids To watch their own repose? 25 Will they, when morning's beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave?— 30 Ianthe doth not sleep The ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in Maxim's so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... tremendous catastrophe probably dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold-getters intent upon their several avocations. The streets were filled with the expanded figures of gayly dressed women, acknowledging with coy glances the respectful salutations of beaux as they gracefully raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings, a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu Museum. The brokers had gathered at their respective temples. The shopmen were exhibiting their goods. The idlers, or 'Bummers,'—a ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... service she did, for it was a 'she', reader as the sequel will prove. About eighteen months before, the troopers had visited Hinchinbrook Island, to recover stolen property, and in one of the native camps had found an exceedingly pretty gin of some fourteen summers. The personal charms of this coy nymph of the forest had proved too much for the susceptible heart of Ferdinand, who, regarding her as his lawful prize, had borne her, irate and struggling, to the boat, from whence she was in due course transported to the police camp (mounted on ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... is a soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... it felt raw and chill after the close, stifling atmosphere of the midshipman's berth. It was very dark, for it was only just past the date of the new moon, and the thin silver sickle—which was all that the coy orb then showed of herself—had set some hours before; moreover, there was a thin veil of mist or sea fog hanging upon the surface of the water, through which only a few of the brighter stars could be faintly distinguished near the zenith. There ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... was ornamented chiefly by hand-tinted photographs from the yoshiwaras of Nagasaki, of simpering, coy geishas. Souvenirs of their trade, glittering fans, nicked teacups, flimsy sandals, adorned the available shelf room. Cigars as brawny and black as if their maker had striven to emulate the captain's own bulk were scattered among papers on ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... trots with a jog, jog, jog, And a jog, jog, jog; and a jog, jog, jog. And the old road makes a little jog, jog, jog, To the west, jog, jog; and the north, jog, jog. While the farmer drinks some cider from his jug, jug, jug, From his coy jug, jug; from his joy jug, jug. Till he accumulates a little jag, jag, jag, And he jigs, jigs, jigs, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... delight, so that she cannot contain herself; and leaning on the arm of an attendant, in a graceful attitude, remains slightly smiling, in such a manner that no description can express her beauty. The guards become fascinated and remain immoveable. With trembling frame and coy of heart she ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... which asked only sleep or relaxation after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sausage balloons, either. Since our planes brought down those six in flames the day before the attack the others have been very coy." ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... refuses to go. Gawayne is assailed by terrible temptations. The thought of the Green Chapel, fortunately, helps him to overcome them, and the first, second, and third night his fair friend finds him equally coy. She kisses him once, twice, thrice, and jeers at him for forgetting each day what she had taught him on the previous one, namely, to kiss. When the hunter returns in the evening, Gawayne gives him the kisses he has received in exchange for the spoils of the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, sisters, of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may some gentle muse With lucky words favour my destined urn, And, as he passes, turn And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud: For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek, smooth, head, And kiss thy fair, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... enough in all conscience in Adrian's eyes, there was little doubt. With sombre heart he failed not to mark every point of this all-human grace, but to him goddess-like beauty, the triumph and glory of youth. The coy, dainty poise of the adorable foot—pointed so—and treading the ground with the softness of a kitten at play; the maddening curve of her waist, which a sacque, depending from an exquisite nape, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... off into the shadow of the room. She was trembling, and as she leaned toward him she was very different from the coy girl who had so long held him aloof. He took her ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... allies! Now I think of it, they have always been my oppressors! I abandon them, and now let you and me swear an eternal friendship!" Such a proposition, from such a quarter, Sir, was not likely to be long withstood. The other party was a little coy, but, upon the whole, nothing loath. After proper hesitation, and a little decorous blushing, it owned the soft impeachment, admitted an equally sudden sympathetic impulse on its own side; and, since few words are wanted where hearts are already known, the honorable ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a-bed all day and hatch turkey's eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which began in wanton mirth, and ended in bloodshed, made men more coy than they had formerly been, of making the fiery little hero the subject of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of Shakespeare, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... this pursuit of O'Hana, in which the maiden was coy and willing, the lover circumspect and eager, or at least thought he was, those around the pair were soon well informed; that is, with the exception of the most interested—O'Iwa and Kwaiba. The marked neglect which now ensued O'Iwa took in wifely fashion; ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... love for a grown-up daughter is the most dangerous of all infatuations. I apologize for mentioning my own pale, coy, mistrustful fancy in ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though I 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that I 'd b'en able ter draw yer ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... new appellation, to me the most desirable in the world, which was Freeman, and at the dances I gave my Georgia superfine blue clothes made no indifferent appearance, as I thought. Some of the sable females, who formerly stood aloof, now began to relax and appear less coy; but my heart was still fixed on London, where I hoped to be ere long. So that my worthy captain and his owner, my late master, finding that the bent of my mind was towards London, said to me, 'We hope you won't leave us, but that you will still be with the vessels.' Here ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... with their soft, silvery light, brilliant as another moon; sometimes they stand afar off in the distant skies, and deign not to approach our steady-going earth, which pursues its regular course day by day, and year by year. Then, after a few days' coy inspection of our planet from different points of view, they fly to other remote parts of the universe, and do not condescend to show themselves again for a hundred years or so. Such is the erratic conduct of a heavenly ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... which I then felt my first real passion. I thought I had loved before, but no, it was only a dream; the dream of the village schoolboy, who saw heaven in the bright eyes of his coy class-mate; or perhaps at the family picnic, in some romantic dell, had tasted the rosy ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced her ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... weird stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It sounded rather cheek, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... me, my darling, whom I despaired of ever seeing again—she came shy and coy, I thought, but love was shining from ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... situation until men began to fall, from volleys poured into them from the flanks. Major Johns went in the direction from which the fire was coming, thinking that some of our own troops were firing on them through mistake. He was made prisoner. Adjutant M'Coy was ordered to report the condition of things to General Mead. On reaching the open ground, he saw the battle flags of nine rebel regiments on the flank and rear. He at once reported to the colonel. Orders ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... Sunday," she said, glowing with interest. He began to look coy. Then her voice changed to something colder than the wind. "The most lamentable sairmon I ever listened to. Neither lairning nor inspiration. And ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... am hot and fiery, And my bloud beats alarms through my body, And fancie high. You of my guard retire, And let me hear no noise about the lodging But musick and sweet ayres, now fetch your Daughter, And bid the coy wench put on all her beauties, All her enticements, out-blush damask Roses, And dim the breaking East with her bright Crystals. I am ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... ardent wooer. It is an exceedingly interesting and amusing sight to see a couple of males paying their addresses to a coy and coquettish female; the apparent shyness of the suitors as they sidle up to her and as quickly retreat again, the shy glances given as one peeps from behind a limb watching the other—playing bo-peep—seem very human, and "I have seen," says an observer, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... St. George will be interested in the advertisement of this sale," she suggested, with a coy emphasis which made Doctor Taylor want to smother the well-meaning ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and stars. Apple of my eye, did I say?—I'd give the apples of my eyes to make sauce for the cockles of your heart. Mrs. Fay, darling, don't be coy. Ha! I have you fast!" and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... between them," saith a proverb, traced back to Confucius. O ye days of still sunshine, reflected back from our selves! O ye haunts endeared evermore by a look, tone, or smile, or rapt silence, when more and more with each hour unfolded before me that nature, so tenderly coy, so cheerful though serious, so attuned by simple cares to affection, yet so filled, from soft musings and solitude, with a poetry that gave grace to duties the homeliest, setting life's trite things to Music! Here nature ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dowagers turn out to be the fluffy and painted keepers of brothels; the misses sink into grinning hussies, who are branded on the cheeks and forehead with the ineradicable mark of shame; and the warm and coy pages, whom at the worst he might have supposed to be imprudent or improvident girls, stare at him with the deathly-cold implacability of the commonest street-walkers—those in fact who glory in their shame, and whose very contact is vile to anything with a spark of healthy ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... love: when scorn is bought with groans; coy looks, With heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... the curious in quaint and graceful invention. {14} Another book—the "Under the Window" of Miss Kate Greenaway—comes within the same category. Since Stothard, no one has given us such a clear-eyed, soft-faced, happy-hearted childhood; or so poetically "apprehended" the coy reticences, the simplicities, and the small solemnities of little people. Added to this, the old-world costume in which she usually elects to clothe her characters, lends an arch piquancy of contrast ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... should I repine, Since all the roving birds are mine? The thrush and linnet in the vale, The sweet sequester'd nightingale, The bulfinch, wren, and wood-lark, all Obey my summons when I call: O! could I form some cunning snare To catch the coy, coquetting fair, In Cupid's filmy web so fine, The pretty girls should all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... human dog. I used to think I was the Village Rubber—but not any more. They have made me look like thirty cents not once, but a dozen times. I can gaze into the dim, hazy distance and see where every one of these coy, clever fellows is going to get it, and get it good, and I am glad of it. My ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... that brought me back to his chin—back to that big, oozing cut. I had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told me ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... gone to roam, The franklin's maid she bides at home; But she is cold, and coy, and staid, And who may win the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The engagement neared its close, and on the day before that of the wedding, the man, slow minded, loving intensely, procured the marriage licence. The woman read the document, and with the last coy flutter before surrender told him that she would not ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... brought herself to my bosom, round whom Cupid, often running hither thither, gleamed lustrous-white in saffron-tinted tunic. Still although she is not content with Catullus alone, we will suffer the rare frailties of our coy lady, lest we may be too greatly unbearable, after the manner of fools. Often even Juno, greatest of heaven-dwellers, boiled with flaring wrath at her husband's default, wotting the host of frailties of all-wishful Jove. Yet 'tis not meet to match men with the gods, * * * * bear up the ungrateful ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... in our hours of ease uncertain, coy, and hard to please,'" he murmured. "Come, sit down, stranger; 'Sit down an' share a soldier's couch, a soldier's fare.' Not as I'm a sojer," he hastened to explain, "but thet's how it is in ther book. Say, old woman, kint ye kinder sker up some coffee fer we uns—leastwise ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... still carrying on the jest, with a coy, coquettish air, (14) replied: Yes; only please do not bother me at present. I have other things to ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... few coy mermaids," laughed Jack; "but then our friend here wouldn't find it quite so easy to climb to the top of a palmetto as to ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... I found your good father planning for your wife, Paul, that evening when I interrupted you! Are you of the same coy mind still? It did not look like it a ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... next came, I observed a feverish excitement in her manner, which assured me, even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview, that her heart had been touched by her lover's attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the usual happy way, with kisses and marriage, "I shall never marry!" finishing the exclamation ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... though expecting an answer. But she had not yet quite made up her mind. Had she known her mind, she would have answered him frankly. She was quite resolved as to that. If she could once bring herself to give him her hand, she would not coy it for a moment. "I will be your wife, Larry." That was the form on which she had determined, should she find herself able to yield. But she had not brought herself to it as yet. "If you can take me, Mary, you will,—well,—save me from lifelong ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... want to know if La Belle Ariola"—he waved his hand towards a poster which showed chiefly a toreador hat, a pair of flashing eyes, and a whirl of white draperies—"is engaged or no to the Prince of Sardinia. I find the maiden coy, not to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... further compensation in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning up of a lamp at an upper casement where the jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake shoved at you by the old man, through a crack in ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... "Ministering Angels," ye Who yet are mobile as the breeze, Have you alone the right to be "Uncertain, coy and hard to please?" Our Ministerial Angels (GEORGE and kind)— Aren't they allowed, poor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... stars, or like the rising sun, Forth from my burning heart the words shall run. Far, far be envy, far be jealous fear, With discord dark and drear, And all the choir that is of love the foe.— The season had returned when soft winds blow, The season friendly to young lovers coy, Which bids them clothe their joy In divers garbs and many a masked disguise. Then I to track the game 'neath April skies Went forth in raiment strange apparelled, And by kind fate was led Unto the spot where stayed my soul's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... morning to the day, O' th' sudden Roscius breaks in a bright ray: Gods with your favour, I've presum'd to see A mortal fairer then a deitie. With looks and hands a satyre courts the boy, Who draws back his unwilling cheek as coy. Although of marble hewn, whom move not they? The boy ev'n seems to weep, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... he requests me to ride, sending his link-boys to bring out all the farnoozes to supplement fair Luna's coy and inefficient beams; and after the performance, the old gentleman promises to send me round a dish of pillau. In due time the promised pillau comes round, an ample dish, sufficient to satisfy even my present ravenous appetite, and after this he sends round ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sorrows were many of these apparently happy creatures weighed down? Even the noble brow of the goddess Diana was not so unruffled as Homer describes it, her countenance expressed care and unrest, and in her great black eyes there glowed such fire as had never shone in the orbs of the coy goddess. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... doing so incurred much misrepresentation, and perhaps no little ill-will, in the cause of truth and humanity, claim for them some distinction in a work on Demonology. The pursuers of exact science to its coy retreats, were sure to be the first to discover that the most remarkable phenomena in Nature are regulated by certain fixed laws, and cannot rationally be referred to supernatural agency, the sufficing cause ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... to stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other things which grated harshly ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Nonne, a Prioresse, That of her smyling was ful simple and coy; Hir grettest ooth was ne but by seynt Loy; And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. Ful wel she song the service divyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely; And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frensh ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... fain would have taken this pretty pet lamb To dwell in his stately fold, To fetter it fast with a jeweled chain, And cage it with bars of gold; But this coy little lamb loved its freedom, Not so free was she, though, to be true, But, oh, the dainty and shy little lamb Well her master's voice ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... "Won't play!" arose from some of the girls. Others maintained a coy silence. Eventually the whole company joined; that is, all save John. He saw no fun in such pastime. What was the use of kneeling on a pillow and kissing, for example, homely Ella Black? Other boys might, if they wished. There was but one divinity worthy of his homage, and he would ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during sermon time. If I were in his place, I'd ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... other hand, with the rarest exceptions, is less eager than the male. As the illustrious Hunter (20. 'Essays and Observations,' edited by Owen, vol. i. 1861, p. 194.) long ago observed, she generally "requires to be courted;" she is coy, and may often be seen endeavouring for a long time to escape from the male. Every observer of the habits of animals will be able to call to mind instances of this kind. It is shewn by various facts, given ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... example by the chatrynge pye. Whiche doth hyr nest and byrdes also betraye By hyr grete chatterynge, clamoure dyn and crye Ryght so these folys theyr owne foly bewraye. But touchynge wymen of them I wyll nought say They can nat speke, but ar as coy and styll As the horle wynde or clapper or ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; Hire gretest othe n'as but by seint Eloy: And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. Ful wel she sange the service divine Entuned in hire nose ful swetely; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... devotion, and having accordingly made his vows to Venus, he found himself divinely restored the very first night after his oblations and sacrifices. Now women are to blame to entertain us with that disdainful, coy, and angry countenance, which extinguishes our vigour, as it kindles our desire; which made the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras—[Theano, the lady in question was the wife, not the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras.]— say, "That the woman who goes to bed to a man, must put off her modesty with her ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... reflected a sheen of glorious splendor; when, conscious of her immense wealth in coal, minerals, and fisheries, her delightful climate and geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed and governed from England's Downing Street, "with all its red tape circumlocution," "Tile Barncal," incapacity, and "how-not-to-do-it" ability that attached to that venerable institution, its ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... our page with any unseemly extravagances. If the experience of the reader has led him through the hallowed mystery of the first kiss of love, he needs not another's fancy to revive the beatific vision. If not, why, thousands of coy and blushing damsels, equally in the dark, are waiting, from whom he may select one to assist him in solving the mystery. Besides, it is not always wise to penetrate the secrets of the heart, even in a novel; for there is ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... sidewall of the Shed. In shape, its upper part was like the top half of a loaf of bread. In motion, here, it rested on some sort of wheeled vehicle, and it was reared up like an indignant caterpillar, and a blue-white flame squirted out of its tail, with coy and frolicsome flirtings ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... as are Marvell's lines to his Coy Mistress, I have not the heart to omit them, so eminently characteristic are they of his ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... though it were just as glad as we are! Can't you feel that the trees feel just as we do about things? The leaves haven't all come out yet, some of them are holding themselves within themselves in a coy little way they have—although intending all the time to come out just as fast as ever they can. And it's that glorious, unspoiled green—the kind nature uses to make painters feel foolish. Oh, nature's having much fun ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... as a maiden I ought to be coy, and say that I would prefer to wait; but, dearest love, sorrow and trouble have banished all that. You will not love me less because I tell you that I count the minutes till ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... father said the same words to you. There can only be one language for an emotion so powerful. Wise or foolish, Jane understood what I said, and in words equally sweet and foolish she gave me her promise. Oh, mother, it was not altogether the words! It was the little tremors and coy unfoldings and sweet agitations of love revealing itself—it wakened in Jane's heart like a wandering rose. And I saw this awakening of the woman, mother, and it was a ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and loving song, We'll chase the lagging hours along, And if {I find } the maiden coy, we find I'll } murmur forth decorous ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... lament thy downfall? Thy ruin could never be meditated by any who meant well to English liberty. No modern lyceum will ever equal thy glory: whether in soft pastorals thou didst sing the flames of pampered apprentices and coy cook maids; or mournful ditties of departing lovers; or if to Maeonian strains thou raisedst thy voice, to record the stratagems, the arduous exploits, and the nocturnal scalade of needy heroes, ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... soldier? Will you not take care of your bread! Is vanity your principle of action? Will you not guard those mighty blessings, your epaulets and feathers! Are you impelled by a love of glory or a love of power? And can you forget that these coy mistresses are only to be won by ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in red-browed finches And all birds of scanty inches. Willie wagtail is a pleasant bird, and coy. All the babblers, chats and wrens, Tits and robins, and their hens, Are my very special ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest words are, both, kindly coy in ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Go, shove the dim mist from the mountain's brow, Chase the white fog, which floods the vale below; 455 Melt the thick snows, that linger on the lands, And catch the hailstones in your little hands; Guard the coy blossom from the pelting shower, And dash the rimy spangles from the bower; From each chill leaf the silvery drops repel, 460 And close the timorous floret's ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... his owne bondmaide, The faire Ixione captiv'd from Troy: 490 But th'other was with Thetis love assaid, Great Nereus his daughter and his ioy. On this side them there is a yongman layd, Their match in glorie, mightie, fierce, and coy, That from th'Argolick ships, with furious yre, 495 Bett back the furie ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... to deeds of pith, where courage, tried In Reason's court, is amply justified: Or, fond of knowledge, and averse to strife, Shouldst thou prefer the calmer walk of life; Shouldst thou, by pale and sickly study led, Pursue coy Science to the fountain-head; Virtue thy guide, and public good thy end, Should every thought to our improvement tend, 40 To curb the passions, to enlarge the mind, Purge the sick Weal, and humanise mankind; Rage in her eye, and malice in her breast, Redoubled Horror grining on her crest, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... my dear Harry, we must all be prepared for trials in this rugged world, but then, according to my experience, we are the better for them in the end. If the lady is obdurate or coy, or if her friends throw obstacles in the way, or if want of means exist, we must try to win her by greater attention, or sometimes by pretended indifference, or we must set to work to overcome the obstacles, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... turned away, and stared again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Paul Riesling, and Paul was supposed to be in Akron, selling tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and giggling. Babbitt felt that he had encountered something involved and harmful. Paul was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who is telling ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... as he intended she should, and blushed a visible acknowledgment. All of her character was visible, well-developed as her body: her timidity showed itself in the unceasing dropping of her eyelid; her arch simplicity in the pouting lips; a coy reserve—well, that everywhere, to the very rosette on her retreating slipper; and her patriotism was quite palpable in the color of her Balmoral. She ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant, hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The daughter bore one of those ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... talked, Gavin scratched gratingly on the tree trunk, and gazed up in ostentatious admiration at the coy Simon Cameron. The Persian, like all his kind, was foolishly open to admiration. Brice's look, his crooning voice, his entertaining fashion of scratching the tree for the cat's amusement all these proved a genuine lure. Down the tree started Simon Cameron, moving ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... of production, I would rate the northern varieties as follows from highest to lowest: Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, Niblack, Kentucky, Warwick, Posey, Coy, Tissue, Johnson. Perhaps a little broader classification and grouping should be made. In my judgment, the Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, and Niblack compose one group which may be depended upon for fairly satisfactory production. The Kentucky, Warwick, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... from James West, the first of April last a servant man, named Willis M'Coy, a small short fellow, his right eye looks red; he had on when he went away, a blue jacket and a striped flannel jacket under it, a pair of trowsers, and under them a pair of cloth breeches, too long for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... Jane's room; this last, you understand, Might be convenient should you e'er require, If ill, an early cup of tea, or fire. Is Jane the pretty housemaid? I reply, She is, you sly boy, but she's coy and shy. Harry, I thought you'd known me better to—— All right, old boy, I was but joking you. Harry now left. When dressed for dinner I Resolved tube numbered one at once to try, I blew the whistle, from the other end Hallo, was quickly answered by my friend. I'm waiting to go down, will you ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... gone, Mr. Sheridan very gallantly attempted a set of verses. But the Muse was not to be wooed to-night, and stayed obstinately coy. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... I'd heard from Mr. Caspian—and it seems he knows about Kidd's Pines, dear Miss Patty's beautiful place which is her own in spite of all misfortunes." She stopped and giggled a little; then went on in a coy tone, with an arch glance at her tall protege. "I had to confess that I could never believe he was an American. But now I have to. He knows too much about America not to have lived here. He says he used to keep ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... producing his Punch work was often irksome to him in the extreme, and many a time would he put Mark Lemon off—now, because he was so well in the swim with his novel then in hand that he begged hard to be let off, and again, because the Muse was coy and would not on any account be wooed. On one occasion he wrote explaining with what weariness he had been battening rhymes for three hours in his head, and could get nothing out: "I must beg you to excuse me," he ingeniously added, "for I've worked just as much for you as though ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... trenches held by the 88th Brigade, under General Cayley. On the way I was taken up to "Gibraltar" observation post to get a bird's-eye view of the line. Besides my old friends of the 29th Division I saw some of the new boys, especially the 1st Newfoundland Battalion under Colonel Burton, and the 2/1st Coy. of the London Regiment. This was the Newfoundlanders' first day in the trenches and they were very pleased with themselves. They could not understand why they were not allowed to sally forth at once and do the Turks in. The presence of these men from our oldest colony adds to the extraordinary ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... "Come then, coy Zephyr, waft my feathered bait Over this rippling shallow's tiny wave To yonder pool, whose calmer eddies lave Some Triton's ambush, where he lies in wait To catch my skipping fly; there drop it lightly: A ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... clusters with a purple hue. Shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly Lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy Pholoe, or even Chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the Gnidian Gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful countenance would wonderfully ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... reserved, coy and discreet women much more than blunt, shrewd and boisterous. Falsehood, false hair, false curls, false forms, false bosoms, false colors, false cheeks, and all that is false, men naturally dislike, for in themselves they are a poor foundation ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... stope out my stove polish ore and sell it for enough to go on with the development. I tried that, but capital seemed coy. Others had been there before me and capital bade me soak my head and said other things which grated harshly on my ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... a drawing-room song, darling! Sing by the sunset's glow; Now while the shadows are long, darling; Now while the lights are low; Something so chaste and so coy, darling! Something that melts the chest; Milder than even Molloy, darling! Better than ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... continued oracularly, "there will be a third attending us when we return, if thou hast been coy with the gentle Seti during his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and glanced again at Messrs Beit's list. It had escaped his notice that A Bad Un to Beat was in its third three-volume edition. It was a great thing, at all events, to know in what direction to aim, if he wished to succeed. If he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win the approval of the coy and retiring Miranda of Smart Society; that modest maiden might in his praise interrupt her task of disinterested advertisement, her philanthropic counsels to "go to Jumper's, and mind you ask for Mr. C. Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue paper ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... she could get those thousand francs! But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a syllable of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet, invented a great offer made for him by a director of a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a thousand francs she could never take for ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... flowers, which is very eloquent—a philosophy that is instructive. Nature appears to have made them as emblems of women. The timid snow-drop, the modest violet, the languid primrose, the coy lily, the flaunting tulip, the smart marigold, the lowly blushing daisy, the proud foxglove, the deadly nightshade, the sleepy poppy, and the sweet solitary eglantine, are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... and bright, with coy smiles forever dissolving in tears; and then May in full blossom and beauty ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... door: and Marvel, not seeing his friend, addressed himself, as soon as he had breath, to his mistress.—The lady's manner changed, and Wright had an opportunity of seeing and admiring her powers of acting. To Marvel, she was coy and disdainful. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the little white hands more tightly in his own, and whispered sweet words to her that brought a bright flush to her face and a love light to her eyes. She drooped her head with the coy, pretty shyness of a bird, listening to words that seemed to her all poetry ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... as her person was not very likely to attract many admirers, which, however, she was resolved to have, she was far from being coy when an occasion offered: she did not so much as make any terms: she was violent in her resentments, as well as in her attachments, which had exposed her to some inconveniences; and she had very indiscreetly quarrelled with a young girl whom Lord Rochester ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... beautiful Snuff he ever put to his Nose. He bought a Pound of it, for which De Suaso charged him at the moderate rate of Four Guineas; and desires to know his Lodging, that he may send his Friends to buy some of this Incomparable Mixture. The Artful Rogue then affects the Coy, says that his Stock of the Snuff is very low, and by degrees raises his price to Eleven Pistoles a Pound, until the English in Brussels have been half-poisoned with his filthy Remnant; when there comes upon the scene a certain Mr. Dubiggin, a rich ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... at a party, and, being introduced by a mutual friend, was fascinated by his manly bearing and intelligent, racy conversation. And he, as his blood tingled at coy cupid's whisperings, soliloquized: "She is the most intelligent and charming girl I ever saw." They met several times at parties during the winter, and he became marked in his attentions, which she did not discourage. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Cassandra's, with prophetic tears: With such a visage, withering, woe-begone, Shrinks the pale poet from the damning dun. Come, let us teach each others tears to flow, Like fasting bards, in fellowship of woe, When the coy muse puts on coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To endless sleep, with Della Cruscan ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent with her ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... that she cannot contain herself; and leaning on the arm of an attendant, in a graceful attitude, remains slightly smiling, in such a manner that no description can express her beauty. The guards become fascinated and remain immoveable. With trembling frame and coy of heart she finally ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... swells thy glorious lot; For thee Edina culls her evening sweets, And showers their odours on thy candid sheets, Whose Hue and Fragrance to thy work adhere— This scents its pages, and that gilds its rear. [75] Lo! blushing Itch, coy nymph, enamoured grown, Forsakes the rest, and cleaves to thee alone, And, too unjust to other Pictish men, Enjoys thy person, and inspires ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... to the shores of the Atlantic: the 840 feet plain, at the mouth of the Santa Cruz, is seen extending horizontally far to the south; and I am informed by the Officers of the Survey, that bending round the head of Coy Inlet (sixty-five miles southward), it trends inland. Outliers of apparently the same height are seen forty miles farther south, inland of the river Gallegos; and a plain comes down to Cape Gregory (thirty-five miles southward), in the Strait of Magellan, which was estimated at between eight hundred ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... Whether by nodding towers you tread; Or haunt the desart's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb; Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide; Or, starting from your half-year's sleep, From Hecla view the thawing deep; Or, at the purple dawn of day, Tadnor's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... head, and the straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,— Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... In silence I took a deep delicious bite, nimbly chased the coy filling around a corner with my tongue, devoured every bit down to the last crumb and licked the stickiness off my fingers. Then I investigated the interior of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... position and the naive grace of its environs will please you no less. The country immediately surrounding it is ravishing; the hedges are full of flowers, honeysuckles, roses, box, and many enchanting plants. It is like an English garden, designed by some great architect. This rich, coy nature, so untrodden, with all the grace of a bunch of violets or a lily of the valley in the glade of a forest, is framed by an African desert banked by the ocean,—a desert without a tree, an herb, a bird; where, on sunny ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Maxim's so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were red with the rich, warm blood ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... at present its popularity is only a little less than that of roses and daffodils, but when we trust to seeds as a means of reproducing the best of windflowers instead of buying dried roots from the shops, then, and then only, will "coy anemone" become a garden queen. A. coronaria, if treated as an annual, furnishes glowing blossoms from October until June, after which A. dichotoma and A. japonica in all its forms—white and rosy—carry on the supply and complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... the history of Rebekah's courtship, and then prayed over it, and over his own wooing. Madam Rogers and Madam Leverett much congratulated him, and his daughter Judith visited her prospective stepmother. But alas! the lady was coy and averse to ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is not the best worth dishing. But yonder are the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Flossie, the belle of the village, waiting at the gate any time a burlesque three-sheet shows up on the side of the blacksmith shop. And right down front, with their feet on the base drum, handing out the coy glances before the first curtain is a foot ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... I talk of my Mr. Jones just as if we were married, because it all comes easier to me in that way. You will see that I absolutely believe in you and I expect that you shall absolutely believe in me. Send you a kiss! Of course I do; I am not at all coy of my favours. You ask Mahomet also as to what he thinks of the strength of my right arm. I examined his face so minutely when I had to fall into his arms on the stage, and there I saw the round mark of my fist, and the swelling all round it. And I thought ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... enchanted. This was not Miss Fleckring, the companion and household help of Mrs. Maldon, but a nymph, a fay, the universal symbol of his highest desire.... He would have been happy to kiss the glinting steel buckle, so feminine, so provocative, so coy. The tight rounded line of the waist, every bend of the fingers, the fall of the eye-lashes—all were exquisite and precious to him after the harsh, unsatisfying, desolating masculinity of Horrocleave's. This was the divine reward of Horrocleave's, the sole reason of Horrocleave's. Horrocleave's ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... At most balls it is customary for the ladies to be seated first at the refreshment-table, where the most substantial articles of diet are boiled ham with sugar frosting, cakes flavored with the native lime, and lemon soda. Like the coy nun in Chaucer's "Prologue," she who is most elegant will take care not to spill the food upon her lap, eat with the fingers, or spit out the bones. At wedding feasts the gentlemen are given ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... agony-columns; there were futile attempts made to pacify the Court of Chancery. All the Beresfords came up to town, except Nan, who remained to look after the Brighton house. The chief difficulty of the moment was to discover the whereabouts of Mr. John Hanbury. That gentleman was coy; and wanted to find out something of what was likely to happen to him if he emerged from his hiding-place. At last it was conveyed to him that he was only making matters worse; then he wrote from certain furnished ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... little bunches carelessly and impartially over the rest of his features; he was dressed in a very big old frock coat and a long cylindrical top hat, which he had kept on; he was very much bent, and he carried a rush basket from which protruded coy intimations of the lettuces and onions he had brought to grace the occasion. He hobbled into the room, resisting the efforts of Johnson to divest him of his various encumbrances, halted and surveyed the company with an expression ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... "because she's been on a bat and supped somewhere until the coy and rosy dawn chased her homeward. And your pretty paragon, Miss West, was ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of that scene attunes my soul to song, awaking any muse from the silence in which she has long slumbered. But the voice of the coy maiden is less melodious than of yore: she shies me for my neglect: and despite the gentlest courting, refusing to breathe her divine spirit over a scene worthy of a sweeter strain. And this scene lay not upon the classic shores ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... she said. Why should she hesitate, and play the coy girl, and pretend to any doubts in her mind which did not exist there? She did love him, and had so told herself with much earnestness. To him, while his words had been doubtful while he had simply played at making love to her, she had ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... up. And that brought me back to his chin—back to that big, oozing cut. I had been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn't know myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how he had me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So I followed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... is curving o'er her creamy cheek, Her bosom swells with all a lover's joy, When love receives a message that the coy Young love-god made a strong and true heart speak From far-off lands; and like a mountain-peak That loses in one avalanche its cloy Of ice and snow, so doth her breast employ Its hidden store of blushes; and they wreak Destruction, as they crush my aching heart,— Destruction, ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.' They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said: 'No, truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.' 'But are you sure,' said Ursula, 'that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?' Hero replied: 'So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... what they think—- Only know they eat and drink, And on all that lies about With a quiet heart look out, Each after its kind, stately or coy, Solemn like man, gamesome like boy, Glad with its ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... she for this good turn. 92 Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: 'O! pity,' 'gan she cry, 'flint-hearted boy: 'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? 96 ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... shun the bed of the wicked. She is a wanton mistress, and will cuddle where her fancy chances, careless whether vice or virtue is her bedfellow; coy when most eagerly supplicated, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... thoughts, low vassals to thy state' — 'No more,' quoth he; 'by heaven, I will not hear thee: Yield to my love; if not, enforced hate, Instead of love's coy touch, shall rudely tear thee; That done, despitefully I mean to bear thee Unto the base bed of some rascal groom, To be thy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... readers and are knowing and knowledgeable. Those who drift away from country life are for the most part men who hustle after the coy damsel fortune by searching for minerals, and just as many who have succeeded in that arduous passion settle quietly on the land. Each may and does desire amendments to and amelioration in his lot. There is still left to all the healthy impulse of achievement, the desire ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sigh awakes; and tremors play, Coy in her leafy trees, and falt'ring creep Across the daisy lawn and whisper, "Well-a-day," Soft, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... in the flowery region just above the Colonel's head. A perplexed balloonist was at one and the same time suppressing an outburst of hysterical laughter, and encouraging coy soil-theories to evolve themselves from the ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... sport, hope-sharer; while, occasionally, a premonitory, prophetic pang of rapture out of the coming eternities of bliss would thrill through us. I had even a fancy that there would be no interchange of words, no lessening of the coy distance of space and manner, during this first interview. 'It is to last so long! so long!' Again, I fancied that we might sit there only weeping, as we looked and loved. 'So long! so long!' Tender, dewy eyes wandering naively, innocently, over each feature of face and form—inquiry, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the style of a carte blanche, I received fresh kisses of compliment from them all, in approval of my docility and good nature. Now I was "a sweet girl... I came into things with a good grace... I was not affectedly coy... I should be the pride of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... don't keer. They don't raise they chillen, they drags 'em up. God knows if dat Daisy was mine, I'd throw her down and put a hundred lashes on her back wid a plow-line. Here she come in de store Sat'day night (acts coy and coquettish, burlesques Daisy's walk) a wringing and ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... come to my knowledge, I deem it my duty to call a special meeting of the shareholders of 'The Island Navigation Coy.,' to consider circumstances in connection with the purchase of Mr. Joseph Pillin's fleet. And I give you notice that at this meeting your conduct ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... wait for? "Ah! woman's strength is in passivity," Fastidio says, shaking his wise, wise head, And withering me with a disdainful stare. Nay! woman's strength is in developing, In virtuous ways, all that is best in her. No superstitious waiting then be mine! No fancy that in coy, alluring arts, Rather than action, modest and sincere, Woman most worthily performs her part. Here am I twenty-five, and all alone In the wide world; yet having won the right, By my own effort, to hew out my lot, And create ties to cheer this arid ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Should the white squares of the plaid turn outward? and where should she put the coral? and would it be becoming after all? A pretty, girlish sight, and you may laugh at it if you choose; but there was a prettier woman's tenderness underlying it, just as a strain of fine, coy sadness will wind through a mazourka or a waltz. For who would see the poor little hat to-morrow at church? and would he like it? and when he came to-morrow night,—for of course he would come to-morrow night,—would ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... gunwale into the boat. And presently I was aware that violence had succeeded where patience had failed. Polly sat in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her—she was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... compensation he looked upon as given to him above Adam was the power of attraction, by which he could supplant him with others and rob him of their affection; so that, though he was no more charmed by Eve's rare beauty than he was won by her coy modesty, no sooner did he see that Adam's affection was turned toward her than he coveted her love and desired to boast of it as being his own. With this object in view, he began by enlisting Eve's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... ago, in that heroic time When I, a coy and modest youth, was shot Out on this dust-heap of careers and crime To try and ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... maidens—the tender, the hard, The coy and the clinging—in legions; But none has contrived to inflict on the bard A jolt in the cardiac regions; Must I turn for assistance to science or art, Or put my predicament meekly To "Mona" who handles affairs of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... facetious fiddle's repartee: Our home-spun authors must forsake the field, And Shakspeare to the soft Scarletti yield. 10 To your new taste the poet of this day Was by a friend advised to form his play. Had Valentini, musically coy, Shunn'd Phaedra's arms, and scorn'd the proffer'd joy, It had not moved your wonder to have seen An eunuch fly from an enamour'd queen: How would it please, should she in English speak, And could Hippolitus reply ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... smoke till we came to Strasburg, where I got some caporal." The man's mind is full, very likely, of the great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the vast works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to show itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud of tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however, and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying. The thoughts and experience of ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me the beauty that is not too coy," is the Alpha and Omega of his personal creed. How should it have been otherwise? Knowing woman chiefly, as he obviously did, only in the ranks of the demi-monde, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after the first heyday of his youth was past, as worth the pain its owner's ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... said, covering him with a coy glance, "an' it 's rale 'shamed I am to hev b'en talkin' ter ye ez I hev. It looks as though I 'd b'en doin' the coortin'. I did n't drame that I 'd b'en able ter draw yer ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... strength, was to employ him to lie a-bed all day and hatch turkey's eggs. The least allusion to this rumour used to drive him well-nigh frantic, and the fatal termination of his duel with young Crofts, which began in wanton mirth, and ended in bloodshed, made men more coy than they had formerly been, of making the fiery little hero the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid, a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the females at first withdraw from the males; they are coy, and have to be sought out, and sometimes held by force. This tracking and grasping of the females by the males has given rise to many different characters in the latter, as, for instance, the larger eyes of the male bee, and especially of the males of the Ephemerids ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... upon, and this year, ever sin' I saw yo' i' the kitchen corner sitting crouching behind my uncle, I as good as swore I'd have yo' for wife, or never wed at all. And it was not long ere yo' knowed it, for all yo' were so coy, and now yo' have the face—no, yo' have not the face—come, my darling, what is it?' for she was crying; and on his turning her wet blushing face towards him the better to look at it, she suddenly hid it in his breast. He lulled and soothed her in his arms, as if she had been a weeping child and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... twenty-five candy-pulls and taffy-bakes in that town that winter. John Rose says, in the Connecticut Valley, where he came from, it was missionary barrels; and I heard of a place where it was cold coffee. In Harmouth it's improving your mind. And so," added Coy, "we run to reading-clubs, and we all go fierce, winter after winter, to see who'll get the 'severest.' There's a set outside of the faculty that descends to charades and music and inconceivably ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... very best— where the profits are to come from with a bill of fare like that passes my powers of arithmetic, and so I point out to her. I hope it is appreciated—yes, I do hope that, Mr. Lovegrove"—there the speaker became extremely coy and playful. "A little bird sometimes seems to twitter to me that it is. And yet I am sure I don't know. The members of your sex are very misleading, Mr. Lovegrove. Do not perjure yourself now. You cannot take me in. And a certain gentleman is very close, you know, and stand-offish. It ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... lines to his Coy Mistress, I have not the heart to omit them, so eminently characteristic are they of his style ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... there in "I will in no wise cast out," if another stood by that could receive them? But here appears the glory of Christ, that none but he can save. And here appears his love, that though none can save but he, yet he is not coy in saving. "But him that comes to me," says he, "I will in no wise ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... they had been married almost fifteen years. She had bewitched him. Her big eyes, that gleamed like dark velvet in her white face, played the fool with him. He could not be angry with her, although she often tried him sorely. And, all things considered, wasn't it rather nice of her that she was so coy and reserved? The owner of [Pg 19] Starydwor had, in the course of his life, come across enough women who had thrown themselves at his head. He could not even credit Hanusia, his first wife, with ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... convenience, and I suppose that ought to be totted up to his credit, since it's because he's got the good taste to resemble me.... Consider his thoughtfulness in providing me this cab! What'd I've done without it? To tell the truth I was quite at a loss to frame it up, how to win your coy consent to this giddy elopement, back there in the hall. But dear kind Mis-ter Maitland, bless his innocent heart! fixes it all up for me.... And so," concluded the criminal with ironic relish,—"and so ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... other book" which caused so much scandal, forty years ago, may not yet be generally accepted, and though Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally, under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the scientific tempter; and many a coy divine, while "crying I will ne'er consent," has consented to the proposals of that scientific criticism which ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... palls the sense; And love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy? With fitful glimmer burnt my flame, And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... greater number of the party had been murdered off, things went on pretty smoothly, till one M'Coy, who had been employed in a distillery in Scotland, tried an experiment with the tea-root, and succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... in each. The instruction of Congress on this important point is much to be desired. For my part I think a temporary stipulation of that sort might be expedient. They mean to court us and in my opinion we should avoid being either too forward or too coy. I have no faith in any Court in Europe, but it would be improper to discover that sentiment. There are circumstances which induce me to believe, that Spain is turning her eyes to England for a ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... groves a chequer'd scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day; As some coy nymph her lover's fond address, Nor quite indulges nor can ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... afternoon had been a miserable one. Rachel was coy and sweet, yet cunningly bold. I felt indignant at my father for forcing her company on me, and I resented the circumstance that made me a victim to injustice. I detested the beautiful creature beside me for her assumption of authority over my actions, and above all, I longed with an aching, starved ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... young oak and all fresh and clean and pretty, like the first frost, green and tender as an April bud; in fact, she resembled all that is prettiest in the world. She had eyes of a modest and virtuous blue, with a look more coy than that of the Virgin, for she was less forward, never having had ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... as a maid, but her conversation is pleasing and she has a most cheery grin. She reads the works of Florence Barclay, and doesn't care for music-halls—'low I call them, Miss.' I asked her if she were fond of music, and she said, 'Oh yes, Miss,' and then with a coy glance, 'I ply the mandoline.' I think she is about fifty, and not at all good-looking, so she will be a much more comfortable person in the house than Julie, who would ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... The dance goes on; hearts are beating, wit is flashing, eyes encounter eyes with the leveled lances of their beams, merriment and joy and sudden bright surprises thrill the breast, voices are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear is bending with a venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there deceived, yonder takes prisoners and here surrenders. The very air seems to breathe, to sigh, to laugh, while the musicians, with disheveled ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... wonder. Fleeces of irregular shape, but a mile long and two miles wide, slowly lifted themselves from a horizontal position to a vertical one, thus converting themselves from blankets into curtains. Yet behind and through them,—as a coy beauty half reveals, half conceals, her charms,—so the walls and buttes, the pinnacles and buttresses, took on a new and delicate beauty, a subtleness of charm and refinement that only such a veiling could produce. Every moment the panorama changed. This was veiled completely, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... "dog-bane," others searched among the knotted roots for the little nut-like tuber that clings to the root of the flag, while others brought to the pot wild parsnips, and the dried stalks of the prairie pusley. A coy little maiden, whom many a hunter had wooed but failed to win, had in her sweet little brown hands a tangle of winter-green, and maiden-hair. Then came striding along the young hunters, with the dogs. Each dog selected ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... I started with a handicap, since Jane had heard my declaration to Mary, and I had to undo all that before I could do anything else. Try the same thing yourself with a spirited girl, naturally laughter-loving and coy, if you think it a simple, easy undertaking. I began to fear I should need another antidote long before I heard her sweet soul-satisfying "yes." I do not believe, however, I could have found in the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... s'il vous plaira d'envoyer v^{re} filz vers moy, il sera le bien venu. Son traittement rendra tesmoinage de l'estime que je fais de vostre amitie. De vous envoyer des nouvelles, ce seroyt d'envoyer Noctuas Athenas. Tout est coy icy. La mort de Concini a rendu la France heureuse. Mais l'Italie est en danger d'estre exposee a la tirannie d'Espagne. Je vous baise les mains, et suis, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... could not have been induced to surrender." Nevertheless, a treaty was at last made, without the direct intervention of the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains to treat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jackets interchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressed Englishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential part of the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by the suspicious Maroons. Gen. Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself that ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and sweeties, to an extent greater than it had entered into their small imaginations to conceive as possible. At first we had great difficulty in making them come near us. They were like a lot of wild young colts, very inquisitive, but very coy and not to be cajoled easily. The children were nine in all—five boys and two girls belonging to Mr and Mrs Rollings, and two to Ernest. I never saw a finer lot of children than the young Rollings, the boys were hardy, robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to say to you. You blush like a maiden over the acknowledgment. I am half inclined to believe you are the girl in the case, and your partner in love some great, strapping fellow on whose bosom you intend to pillow your coy head. So it is Daisy, eh? And last night it came to you? Tell me how ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Covetousness avideco. Covey kovitaro. Cow bovino. Coward malkuragxulo. Cowardice malkuragxeco. Cowherd bovgardisto. Cow shed bovinejo. Cowl kapucxo. Cowslip verprimolo. Coxcomb dando. Coy rezerva. Coyness rezerveco. Cozen trompi. Crab kankro. Crack (split) fendi. Crack (noise) kraki. Crackle kraketi. Cradle lulilo. Craft ruzo. Craft (vessel) sxipeto. Crafty, to be ruzi. Crafty ruza. Cram (of food) supersatigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Amy. It seems to require our deeper-tinted skies to produce them. Ah, there comes his mate. You can tell her by the lighter blue of her plumage, and the tinge of brown on her head and back. She is a cold, coy beauty, even as a wife; but how gallant is her azure-coated beau! Flirt away, my little chap, and make the most of your courting and honeymoon. You will soon have family cares enough to discourage anybody but a bluebird;" and the doctor looked at his favorites with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... happened entirely by accident. It had occurred through a misunderstanding during a game of consequences in a country house. She was terribly literal. Having taken some joke of his seriously, she had sent him a touchingly coy letter saying she was overwhelmed at his offer (feeling she was hardly worthy to be his wife) and must think it over. He did not like to hurt her feelings by explaining, and when she relented and accepted ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April. And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted John M. will have relented toward his gifted ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... who "stoops to folly"—nor woman who in our hour of ease is uncertain, coy, and hard to please. But Woman, the weekly Woman who is doing uncommonly well and in her fifty-third number, gave the week before Christmas, her idea of a Christmas dinner, and, but for "sweetbread cutlets," a very good and simple ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... production, I would rate the northern varieties as follows from highest to lowest: Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, Niblack, Kentucky, Warwick, Posey, Coy, Tissue, Johnson. Perhaps a little broader classification and grouping should be made. In my judgment, the Major, Greenriver, Busseron, Indiana, and Niblack compose one group which may be depended upon for fairly satisfactory production. The Kentucky, Warwick, Posey, Coy, Tissue, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... he intended she should, and blushed a visible acknowledgment. All of her character was visible, well-developed as her body: her timidity showed itself in the unceasing dropping of her eyelid; her arch simplicity in the pouting lips; a coy reserve—well, that everywhere, to the very rosette on her retreating slipper; and her patriotism was quite palpable in the color of her Balmoral. She rode Squire ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with such violence as to be heard in still weather more than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has alarmed." He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival, or the brief and coy response of the female; for there are no insects in these ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... mine, if I should other deem, Nor can coy Fortune contrary allow. But, my Anselmo, loth I am to say, I must estrange that friendship. Misconstrue not; 'tis from the realm, not thee: Though lands part bodies, hearts keep company. Thou know'st that I imparted often have Private relations ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... wealth of light and air, With leaf and bud and blossom everywhere, Let all bright tokens affluent combine, And round the bridal pair in splendor shine; Let sweethearts coy and lovers fond and true On this glad day their tender vows renew, And all in wedlock's bond rejoice as they Whom God hath ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... charm'd A tumult to his heart, and a new life Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife, 530 But for her comforting! unhappy sight, But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can write Of these first minutes? The unchariest muse To embracements warm as theirs makes coy excuse. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... bunching together and telling each other things in low tones, while not seeming to look at Hetty and her dupes, at which all would giggle in the most venemous manner. Daisy Estelle left the bunch once and made a coy bid for the notice of Mr. D. by snatching his cap and running merrily off with it about six feet. If there was any one in the world—except Hetty—could make a man hate the idea of riding pants for women, she was it. I could see the cold, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... pine oil snake prose parch wild moil baste those starch mild coil haste froze larch tile foil taste force lark slide soil paste porch stark glide toil bunch broth prism spent boy hunch cloth sixth fence coy lunch froth stint hence hoy punch moth smith pence joy plump botch whist thence toy stump stock ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... when sweet Susan, coy but smart, Safe landed him, and Cupid's dart Went through his breast as through a cheese, And pierced his heart with perfect ease, He—well, I'll not the words impart He said ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... finally a scurrying splash as the iron messenger swept along the surface of the water and sank, falling short by about a hundred yards. At the same moment the heavy sweeps were laid in; the schooner's sails were trimmed as if by magic to the coy breeze; her head paid off; and as she swept gracefully round upon a course which would enable her to intercept the Aurora, a tiny ball went soaring aloft to her main-topmast-head and, breaking abroad as it reached the truck, a square black ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... person has been known to express an opinion to the effect that a naughty word would be quite luxurious. The lovers whom we love kiss when they meet or part, they talk plainly—unless the girls play the natural and delightful trick of being coy—and they behave in a manner which human beings understand. Supposing that the duke uses a language which ordinary dukes do not affect save in moments of extreme emotion, it is not tiresome, and, at the worst, it satisfies a convention which has not done very much harm. Now on what logical ground ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... always knew you were crafty, for all your simple ways. Mind, I don't say you haven't done well for yourself, you have—a deal better than you deserve. But don't ever say you couldn't help it to me again! For if you do, I'll trounce you for it, do you hear? None of your coy airs for me! I won't put up with 'em. You'll behave yourself as long as you're in this house, or I'll know ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
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