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More "Fretful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rooked him in his linden cradle, Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 'Hush! the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... interval between the ceremony of our marriage and his departure, she had remained at home, occupying her old place by her father, and bed by her sister's side: he as kind as ever, but the women almost speechless among themselves; Aunt Lambert, for once, unkind and fretful in her temper; and little Hetty feverish and strange, and saying, "I wish we were gone. I wish we were gone." Though admitted to the house, and forgiven, I slunk away during those last days, and only saw my wife for a minute or two in the street, or with her family. She ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... if you can help me," she began, in the same old fretful, whining voice. "I know you don't want to see me again, nobody does, but I'm starving. I've been starving mostly ever since Tom was ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... hear that paradox of impossibilities—silence become vocal—must traverse the vast wastes of the prairie by night. As a mother quiets a fretful child, so the illimitable calm lulls tumultuous thoughts. The wind moving through empty solitudes comes with a sigh of unutterable loneliness. Unconsciously, men listen for some faint rustling from the gauzy, wavering streamers that fire northern skies. The ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... knoll, beside a rippling bay, When, suddenly, gliding through the silent air, A green-clad apparition, wrinkled, spare, Angry, and grieving, passed along the way Before me for a moment's space. The fay Was old and did not see me lying there. I grieved to see her sob in fretful mood, And often since I marvel in my mind What grievous heart-pang drove her from the wood To ease her heart away from her own kind. Strange, that these tiny, soulless beings should, Like us, be grieved and be ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... answered, "Yea, I will wrestle with thee in very deed" (Sharrkan looking on the while), the damsel cried, "Rise up for the fall an thou have spunk so to do." When the old woman heard this, she raged with exceeding rage, and her body hair stood on end like the bristles of a fretful hedgehog.[FN164] Then she sprang to her feet, whilst the damsel stood up to her, and said, "Now by the truth of the Messiah, I will not wrestle with thee unless I be naked, Mistress whore!"[FN165] So she loosed her petticoat trousers and, putting ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Medicine attested, grinning mirthlessly. "This here sheep business is plumb wearin' on a man. 'Specially," he added with a fretful note, "when you've got to handle 'em gentle. The things I'd like to do to them Dots is all ruled outa the game, seems like. Honest to grandma, a little gore would look better to me right now than a Dutch ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the boot, I followed my cousin into the car, and a few minutes later we were at the mouth of the Adour. Here we left Ping beside Pong, and proceeded to join three figures on the horizon, apparently absorbed in the temper of a fretful sea. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... exploring and appraising the treasures of the great half abandoned house, and watching her boy scamper over the June meadows or trot about the gardens on the poney his stepfather had given him. Paul, after Mrs. Heeny's departure, had grown fretful and restive, and Undine had found it more and more difficult to fit his small exacting personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life. He irritated her by pining for his Aunt Laura, his Marvell granny, and old Mr. Dagonet's funny ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... take his twin sister into the fields to search the brambles for stray hips, or locks of wool the sheep had not left there willingly; men and women even worse off had been there before them, and they came home at night, tired out and footsore, only to hear Zitza's fretful cry for food, and the constant chatter of Meister Hans, croaking for his own share ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... minor Prelude. (See Liszt's Chopin, new edition, pp. 273 and 274.)] The only compositions besides the Preludes which Chopin mentions in his letters from Majorca are the Ballade, Op, 38, the Scherzo, Op. 39, and the two Polonaises, Op. 40. The peevish, fretful, and fiercely-scornful Scherzo and the despairingly-melancholy second Polonaise (in C minor) are quite in keeping with the moods one imagines the composer to have been in at the time. Nor is there anything discrepant in the Ballade. But if the sadly-ailing composer really created, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... you are, and fault-finding will only make them the more unpleasant to all. Be careful what you say about those near you, as a thoughtless remark to a friend in too loud a tone may cause a real heartache. Many a weary mother has been pained by hearing complaints of a fretful child, whose crying most probably distresses her more than any one else. Instead of saying, "Why will people travel with babies?" remember that it is sometimes unavoidable, and do not disfigure your face by a frown at the disturbance, but try to do what you can to make the journey ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... cones upon them; 70 Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water. There the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, 75 Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" 80 Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my little owlet!" 85 Many things Nokomis taught him Of the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... still more absorbing and exciting. Even now his mind was in a perpetual ferment, and no comforting spirit spoke quietness to his soul—no stout heart strengthened his—no lively intelligence animated his own to worthy doings. He was very cross and fretful, and knew himself to be so that particular evening—worried and in want of rest. What a chance, if perhaps he found Nettie, whose very provocations were somehow more interesting than other people's ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Say, if she's fretful, I have bands Of pearl and gold to bind her hands; Tell her, if she struggle still, I have myrtle rods at will For to tame, though not ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... our case was quite different; but he was so ignorant of our manners and customs that he took everything by the wrong handle. He ended the conversation very abruptly and rudely, and referred me to the Queen. I found her Majesty in a fretful mood, and all I could get out of her was a promise to hear the chapter upon this affair, without whose consent—I had declared I could not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sleep. She did not hear the removal of Warrington's luggage at midnight, for it was stealthily done. Neither did she hear the fretful mutter of the bird as his master disturbed his slumbers. Nothing warned her that he intended to spend the night on board; that, having paid his bill early in the evening, her note might have lain in the key-box until the crack of doom, so far as he was likely ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... stretch of wet clover behind him—a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through the shadows, each going ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... fimbriated, hairy, ciliated, filamentous, hirsute; crinose^, crinite^; bushy, hispid, villous, pappous^, bearded, pilous^, shaggy, shagged; fringed, befringed^; setous^, setose^, setaceous; like quills upon the fretful porcupine [Hamlet]; rough as a nutmeg grater, rough as a bear. downy, velvety, flocculent, woolly; lanate^, lanated^; lanuginous^, lanuginose^; tomentose^; fluffy. Adv. against the grain. Phr. cabello luengo y corto el ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the intellect and the development of noble sentiments is as essential for the perfection of the one, as of the other, fretful, envious, malicious, ill humoured feelings must never be indulged by those who value their personal appearance, for the existence of these chronic maladies of the ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... of social London did not speak at all; and the bleak waters crowded toward them as in a fretful ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... His provisions were exhausted; he had eaten nothing since last night, and he felt excited and fretful. He said to himself: "If to-day my enemy is not delivered into my hands, I must go out into the open and seek him at all risks, at all costs." It was a dominant idea ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... fretful word, or sweet, The swift command, the wheedling undertone, His faith was fixed, his love was mine, alone, His heaven was here at my slow crippled feet: Oh, friend thrice-lost; oh, fond heart unassailed, Ye taught me trust when ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!' he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an apparent contradiction, in ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... to his last inch under the apex of the tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... early, to toss for hours and at last to drop into fretful, torturing dreams. The scream of a panther ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... She may learn from a distance to understand her mother better and her mother may more fully appreciate her daughter. Often it is far better that two people who constantly clash should learn apart to respect and honor one another than to live in a quarrelsome, fretful atmosphere which is bound to banish deep affection and respect as well. Some daughters cannot be their best at home and some mothers can never reveal their best selves in their daughters' presence. That such can be the case is most unfortunate and wrong. Away back ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... Daniel from napping. Nerves were a new acquisition of Serena's; at least she had never been conscious of them until recently. Now, however, they were becoming more and more in evidence. She was fretful and impatient of trifles, and the least contradiction or upset of her plans was likely to bring on fits of hysterical weeping. It was so in this case. Daniel, trotting for smelling salts and extra pillows and the hot water bottle, was not too calm himself. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... unnecessary rabble is helping to make everything horriblement cher. The price of things makes one's hair stand on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. I can assure you that le moindre petit diner coute les yeux de la tete. Poor Bobbie Lacklands had a tragic experience yesterday. He said he quite unthinkingly dropped into that most recherche of eating places, Fouquet's, for a snack. With only a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... is not those who suffered most and lost most, fought and bled, saw friend after friend fall, wept the dead and buried their hopes,—who are now bitter and dissatisfied, quarrelsome and fretful, growling and complaining; no, they are the peaceful, submissive, law-abiding, order-loving, of the country, ready to join hands with all good men in every good work, and prove themselves as brave and good in peace as they were ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... triumphantly, "you've no call to mind about that. That's only thrush, that is. Three of ourn had it, and did beautiful. She's bound to be a bit fretful, but she won't come to no harm, so long as you keep ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... my sermon. It is preached Against all fretful strife. Chafe not with anything that is, Nor cut it with thy knife. Ah! be not angry with the knot ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the present twisted up in curl-papers, a high colour in her cheeks, a small nose, a pair of little black eyes. The lower part of her face was large in proportion to the upper; her forehead was small and rather corrugated; she had a fretful though not an ill-natured expression of countenance; there was something in her whole appearance one felt inclined to be half provoked with and half amused at. The strangest point was her dress—a stuff petticoat ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... at it. He delivered the speech in an injured tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now. Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been polished to the last syllable more than a week ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... meant to tell miladi of her tryst and beg her to come out and see the star, but when she found her not only indifferent, but fretful, she refrained and was glad presently that she had this delicious secret to herself. But there was a great mystery. Sometimes the star was different. Instead of being golden, it was a pale blue, and then almost red. Was it that way in France, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... industry ought to be encouraged," she made answer gayly. She had been of some real service this afternoon, charmed away a fretful headache, and restored Mrs. Lawrence to a comfortable state of feeling, and was correspondingly light-hearted. Then, too, Fred had kept out of the way, and been gravely polite to her at the tea-table. She liked ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... said he, "your majesty to surround herself with a larger and more brilliant court. Two maids of honor are not sufficient for the queen-mother, for if by chance one were sick, and the other fretful, there would be no one to divert and amuse your majesty. I therefore propose that you have six instead of two ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... resemblance. One of the scraps of practical wisdom gained by hardened sufferers is, to keep from spying at horizons when they drop into a pleasant dingle. Such is the comfort of it, that we can dream, and lull our fears, and half think what we wish: and it is a heavenly truce with the fretful mind divided ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ortrud theme begins to writhe in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage of a fretful woman who cannot get her way—a woman driven mad by baseless jealousy—in fancy she sees the swan coming to lead Lohengrin away from her; with mournful and dreary effect a fragment of the swan theme sounds from ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Beauly accompanies Mr. Macallan to visit the invalid. The dying woman casts a strange look at both of them, and tells them to leave her. Mr. Macallan understands this as the fretful outbreak of a person in pain, and waits in the room to tell the nurse that the doctor is sent for. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... voyagers turned their eyes a new creation seemed to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled, like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil—the hardy oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm—while here and there the tulip tree reared its majestic head, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... civil to his mother, and was quite attentive to Fanny. She, however, did not seem to appreciate the compliment. It was now a fortnight since she had heard of her brother's death, and during the whole of that time she had been silent, unhappy, and fretful. Not a word more had been said to her about Lord Ballindine, nor had she, as yet, spoken about him to any one; but she had been thinking about little else, and had ascertained,—at least, so she thought,—that ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... of illness, nine months before, the natural irritability, or impatience of temper, had been diminishing. Dr Burton was by no means, as all his friends seemed to suppose, a fretful or unreasonable invalid. With but few exceptions he was gentle and grateful to his attendants, especially to his wife. He was perfectly aware of his own condition, though never directly told it. His friend Mr Belcombe, the clergyman of the Episcopal Chapel at Morningside, called ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the babies were fretful; children of Bubby's age complained that their shoes and clothes were too tight; somebody suggested going home. In vain the young people protested—an hour from that time the grounds were deserted; the lumber ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... evils worse than death," said Duncan, speaking hoarsely, and as if fretful at her importunity, "but which the presence of one who would die in your behalf ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... why should he be so fretful now? and knows I dote on him? to leave a poor dear so long without him, and then come home in an angry humour! ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... among whom Carrie Goldthwaite was the chief. Minnie Keane was a bright-eyed, curly-haired maiden of fifteen, wild as an antelope, and as full of fun and frolic as any one of her pet kittens. Their mother was an invalid, seldom able to leave her couch;—not a fretful invalid, you must understand, but a sweet, gentle, unselfish woman, who bore her pain and weakness without a murmur, so that those she loved might be spared pain on her account. Mr. Goldthwaite often said that Mrs. Keane's life was the best sermon he had ever come across; and ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... that I shall—I do already. You can't imagine what queer, fretful-looking lines were beginning to show themselves on George's brow. He would have looked old enough for a grandfather in a few years, if I had gone on trying to realize the hope he expressed, that I would abstain from ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... told you from the first there is no remedy. Our hopes are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful, fitful - who will have disappeared to-morrow, who knows? ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing Jan was just then impervious to any such comparatively subtle indication ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... and purged away. Were I not forbidden to tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold that would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; make thy eyes start; and make thy locks part like quills upon the fretful porcupine: but this eternal blazon must not be. If ever thou didst love thy father, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder." "Murder!" exclaimed Hamlet. "Murder," said the ghost, "most foul, as in the best it is." "Reveal it," gasped Hamlet, "that I may with swift wings sweep to my revenge." ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... they rose and came trembling to obey the summons. Clary gave one look, put her handkerchief quickly to her eyes, and then turned and softly covered the tools, lifted the boiling pot to the side of the grate, and took Dulcie's fretful, wondering child in her lap. She was not a fine lady now, but a woman in distress. Sam stood immoveable and uncertain, with a man's awkwardness, but a face ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the medicines prescribed, as they were sweet; and one day, while a draught of manna was being prepared, which she thought too long delayed, she showed every sign of impatience, and threw herself from side to side like a fretful child; at last, throwing off the covering, she seized her physician by the coat with so much obstinacy that he was compelled to yield. The instant she obtained possession of the eagerly coveted cup she manifested the greatest delight, and began to drink, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... trees, with magic touch of bat making the mizzle shimmer and the meadows gleam, and finally, with rare exuberance, breaking his precious colours overhead, to say the masque was over and bid the racing winds hustle away the fretful scenery and clear the stage of sky ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... but mortal; the prayers and agitation of Gerard first astounded, then touched him. He showed it in a curious way. He became peevish and fretful. "There, get up, do," said he. "I doubt whether anybody would say as many words for me. What ho, Daniel! go fetch the town clerk." And on that functionary entering from an adjoining room, "Here is a foolish lad fretting about yon girl. Can we stretch ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Harrenburn, hurrying with breathless haste to avert some catastrophe that was about to happen somewhere to some one; now, that he was intently painting a picture of the corpse of a beautiful young lady—terribly oppressed by nervousness, and a fretful sense of incapacity most injurious to the success of his labours—when suddenly, O horror! he beheld the body move, then rise, in a frightful and unnatural manner, stark upright, and with opened lips, but rigidly-clenched ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... Indeed we may go further than that, and say that he was very much the reverse. His mind was argumentative rather than impulsive, and in all matters he was readier to persuade than overcome. But his ordinary nature had been changed. It was quite new with him to be nervous and fretful but he was so at the present moment. He was deeply concerned in the circumstances around him, but yet had been allowed no voice in them. In this affair that was so peculiarly his own,—this of his promised bride, he was determined that no voice should be heard but his own; and now, contrary ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... only one, A puny and decrepid son; But day and night, Though fretful oft, and weak, and small, A loving child, he was her all— ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... had been more fretful than usual, she would close her eyes, and her mother would hear her say, in ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... did not turn out well. She was a fretful person, with a good face, a bad shape, a vacant mind, and a great deal of vanity. She had liked her husband a little as a lover, but when she saw that her marriage brought her nobody's envy, she fell into a long fit of the vapours. Eventually she made herself believe ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... The messengers set out at eleven o'clock at night, and Herkimer thought they would surely reach the fort by three in the morning. But he waited in vain the whole night through; no sound of cannonade disturbed the quiet air. As the hours crept by his officers became fretful and impatient; in the end they declared for an immediate advance, denouncing Herkimer as a faltering coward. At length the old man, sorely against his will, gave the order to march. The relief party streamed through the forest with disordered ranks. In the meantime Brant's Indians had not ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... floated on while the boom of the breakers grew ever nearer, companioned by his wild, fretful thoughts, till at length what he took to be a shark appeared quite close to him, and in the urgency of the moment he gave up wondering. It proved to be only a piece of wood, but later on a real shark did come, for he saw its back ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... desired; and now, enlivened by finding that his influence with her was unimpaired, and that her heart was yet her own, he ceased his exhortations, and turned the discourse to subjects more gay and general, judiciously cautious neither by tedious admonitions to disgust, nor by fretful solicitude to alarm her. He did not quit her till the evening was far advanced, and then, in returning to his own house, felt all his anxieties and disappointments recompensed by the comfort this long and satisfactory conversation had afforded him. While Cecilia, charmed with having ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... you going?" said her mother in a fretful tone. "I did think you'd sit quietly with me and learn your collect. If you are going out, it ought to be to church. I don't see what call you have to be going anywhere else on ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... flood of troubles, unequal in magnitude, but most trying to the high-spirited girl. Formal walks, silent meals, set manners, perpetual French, were a severe trial, but far worse was the companionship. Petty vanities, small disputes, fretful jealousies, insincere tricks, and sentimental secrets, seemed to Clara a great deal more contemptible than the ignorance, indolence, abrupt manners and boyish tastes which brought her into constant disgrace—and there seemed to be one perpetual chafing ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... known to none, not even to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,—not even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest upon, and was not rather stayed upon ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... stop the lad. She waved good-bye to him, thinking how sturdy and good looking he was, as he ran out of the front door. Kate was beginning to be worried when Adam had not returned toward dusk Sunday evening, and Polly was cross and fretful. Finally they saw him coming down the ravine bank, carrying his small bundle of sets. Kate felt a glow of relief; Polly ran to meet him. Kate watched as they met and saw Adam ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... amiable and blameless life, and was country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary, clergyman, and poet.[21] Such names are enough to recall a type which has not quite vanished, and which has gathered a new charm in more stirring and fretful times. These most excellent people, however, were not likely to be prominent in movements destined to break up the placid environment of their lives nor, in truth, to be sources ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... being caught by them and reproduced. To take one example among many, the pitch and intonation of the voice often impress more than the words. A nurse with a querulous tone has a restless nursery; she makes the high-spirited contradictory and the delicate fretful. In teaching, a high-pitched voice is exciting and wearing to children; certain cadences that end on a high note rouse opposition, a monotonous intonation wearies, deeper and more ample tones are quieting and reassuring, but if their solemnity becomes exaggerated they provoke a reaction. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... pining away, she fell into a slow decline. Her sufferings were greatly aggravated by Richard's harsh and cruel treatment of her. He was continually uttering expressions of impatience against her on account of her sickness and uselessness, and making fretful complaints of her various disagreeable qualities. Some of these sayings were reported to Anne, and also a rumor came to her ears one day, while she was at her toilet, that Richard was intending to put her to death. She was dreadfully alarmed at hearing this, and she immediately ran, ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... no doubt, with the harass of continual attention to her sister Alda, who, though subdued and improved in many important ways, was unavoidably fretful from ill- health, and disposed to be very miserable over her straitened means, and the future lot of her eight daughters, especially as the two of the most favourable age seemed to resign their immediate chances ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bay-of-Biscay "snorer," hove-to for a week off Cape Agul—has, while the clumsy brigantine rolled the masts loose in her, all but dismasted in a typhoon come astray from the China Sea, fed on moldy bread, and even moldier pork, with a fretful child to nurse, and an exacting mother to be pleased! Jane Emmett laughed at it. Bill had been there before her, and had done more on his way, and worse Bengal did not frighten her. Nor did the knowledge, when she reached it, that Bill was very likely still some hundreds of miles away. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... still standing. There! They were at work upon it now. He could hear the shaman grunt as he piled it on the sled. A child whimpered, and a woman soothed it with soft, crooning gutturals. Little Koo-tee, the old man thought, a fretful child, and not overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through the frozen tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did it matter? A few years at best, and as many an empty belly ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... battle," said Ganelon in fretful tones. "Thou art grown old and fearful. Thou talkest as a frightened child. Well thou knowest the pride of Roland, the strong, bold, great and boastful Roland, that God hath suffered so long upon ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... are inserted and drag on the perichondrium when movement occurs; swelling is most marked in the vicinity of the joint, and it may be added to by effusion into the synovial cavity. The baby, usually under six months, is noticed to be feverish and fretful and to cry when touched. The mother discovers that the pain is caused by moving a particular limb, usually the arm, as the humerus, radius, and ulna are the bones most commonly affected; the limb, moreover, hangs useless at the side as if ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... passed on he grew more fretful and impatient. Receiving no intelligence from England, he seemed to be anxious to return thither. He would drop expressions which led his visitors (generally government officers who called upon him in their rides) to believe ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... she did not notice much, being deeply interested just then in the early education of Fenelon, 2.10-1/4, who was a fretful infant and took up most of her time. When he had passed out of her immediate care and was cropping sweet alfalfa with the rest, she watched curiously the foundations sinking into the grass, the crowd of people who came one May morning to hear things said round a block of yellow sandstone, ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine: But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. Hamlet, Act i. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... hastily rising up I always salute my husband with water and a seat. I always keep the house and all household articles and the food that is to be taken well-ordered and clean. Carefully do I keep the rice, and serve the food at the proper time. I never indulge in angry and fretful speech, and never imitate women that are wicked. Keeping idleness at distance I always do what is agreeable. I never laugh except at a jest, and never stay for any length of time at the house-gate. I never stay long in places ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... out on the promontory, many a comely fold of wood on the mountain-side, beckons and allures his imagination day after day, and is yet as inaccessible to his feet as the clefts and gorges of the clouds. The sense of distance grows upon him wonderfully; and after some feverish efforts and the fretful uneasiness of the first few days, he falls contentedly in with the restrictions of his weakness. His narrow round becomes pleasant and familiar to him as the cell to a contented prisoner. Just as he has fallen already out of the mid race of active life, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affecting my head. I felt fretful, irritable. Why didn't somebody do something to help me? But what? My teeth chattered, a nervous chill shook me, and the bees buzzed at ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... long time the man sat smoking. Occasionally he turned his head to watch with keen eyes the fretful movements of a fly hovering above the water. Then a sudden dimple in the smooth surface of the stream arrested his attention. A few concentric ripples widened, travelled towards him, and were absorbed in the current. His lips curved into a little smile and he ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... to the mother that any inanimate object may be personified in this way and addressed as a living and intelligent being. Your child is sick, I will suppose, and is somewhat feverish and fretful. In adjusting his dress you prick him a little with a pin, and the pain and annoyance acting on his morbid sensibilities bring out expressions of irritation and ill-humor. Now you may, if you please, tell him that he must not be so impatient, that you did not mean to hurt ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... reason, said I, may be assigned for that: I thought myself in danger: I looked upon every one as my enemy; and it was impossible that I should not be fretful, uneasy, jealous. But when my dearest friend had taken from me the ground of my uneasiness, and made me quite happy, I should have been very blamable, if I had not shewn a satisfied and easy mind, and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... a real thing in the school-room and in the nursery; and children—left to their own devices—accept it with wonderful courage and sagacity. If we allow to their souls some noble and free expansion, they may be trusted to divert themselves from that fretful self-consciousness which the nurse calls naughtiness, and the doctor, nerves. A little wholesome neglect, a little discipline, plenty of play, and a fair chance to be glad and sorry as the hours swing by,—these things are not too much to grant to childhood. That careful coddling which deprives ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... about a week after. The little brown house was as still as a mouse, everybody abed and asleep. Suddenly Phronsie woke up with a fretful little cry. "I want a drink of water," she wailed, sitting straight in the ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... seemed to him, as he sat there within three yards of its granite base, like the impersonation of repose in the midst of turmoil; of peace surrounded by war; of calm and solid self-possession in the midst of fretful and raging instability. ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... waste, this much of merely necessary abstract must serve you,—that from the Drachenfels and its six brother felsen, eastward, trending to the north, there runs and spreads a straggling company of gnarled and mysterious craglets, jutting and scowling above glens fringed by coppice, and fretful or musical with stream; the crags, in pious ages, mostly castled, for distantly or fancifully Christian purposes;—the glens, resonant of woodmen, or burrowed at the sides by miners, and invisibly ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... soothed him. The brooding hills lulled his spirit as a crooning song lulls a fretful child. Mile after mile unrolled forgotten vistas. Something ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... hardest of all to be obliged to refuse subscriptions to the numerous charities in the town where his name had always stood conspicuously upon the liberal list. His temper, never his strongest point, suffered under the test, and he would come home from Grovebury in the evenings tired out, moody and fretful, and inclined to find fault ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... up the ravine came the murmuring I had heard below—a sobbing sound which at first affrighted and then soothed, for it could be nothing but the echo of the sea on the curving beach below; and in its comfort that lulled all ineffectual clamour, and eventually to fretful but frightful sleep. Always I awoke panting with thirst, stiff and strained, and with unmanly cries of fear and pain on my lips, while the chaste stars danced across the narrow slit as I strove to stem the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... remembered that the baby is the person of the greatest importance on these occasions, and the guests should give it a large share of attention and praise. The parents, however, must not make this duty too onerous to their guests by keeping a tired, fretful child on exhibition. It is better to send it at once to the care of the nurse as soon as the ceremony ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... one can doubt about. When first he saw St. Mark's, he threw up his arms in wonder, and then, clasping them round Wilson's neck (she was carrying him), he kissed her in an ecstasy of joy. And that was after a long day's journey, when most other children would have been tired and fretful. But the sense of the beautiful is certainly very strong in him, little darling. He can't say the word 'church' yet, but when he sees one he begins to chant. Oh, he's a true Florentine in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... anxious watchers were Mrs. Orban, with the fretful, feverish Becky in her arms, and Nesta and Eustace. But though they pressed forward and saw every man, woman, and child that landed, there was no comfort for them. Miss Chase and Peter had not come. There ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... about you. Whenever I came into your shop, I found you singing as cheerfully as a bird. But now you do not even smile; your brows have fallen half an inch lower than they were then. In fact, the whole expression of your face has changed. I will lay a wager that you have grown captious, fretful, and disposed to take trouble on interest. Every thing about you declares this. A year has changed you for the worse, and me for ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... weak and fretful, and does not like to exert himself, though he ought to be out a great deal, and kept from thinking of his little troubles. He cannot walk much yet, so I have a wheeled chair to push him in; and the paths are so hard, it will be easy to roll ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... her manner was one of languor and fine-ladyism, which she had cultivated so assiduously and achieved so successfully. Not a muscle of her face changed when she saw Jerrie, but she closed Maude's door quickly, and stepping into the hall, offered the tips of her fingers, as she said, in a fretful, rather than a ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... breaking his substitute for a heart because his son could not or would not play the superfine gentleman—on the paternal model, and then came the news of his death, when only thirty-six. What was a still greater shock to the lordly father, now deaf, gouty, fretful, and at outs with the world, his informant reported that she had been secretly married for several years to Young Hopeful, and was left penniless with two boys. Lord Chesterfield was above all things a ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... thought they would surely reach the fort by three in the morning. But he waited in vain the whole night through; no sound of cannonade disturbed the quiet air. As the hours crept by his officers became fretful and impatient; in the end they declared for an immediate advance, denouncing Herkimer as a faltering coward. At length the old man, sorely against his will, gave the order to march. The relief party streamed through the forest with disordered ranks. In the meantime ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... true, had some points of difficulty. Should the Christian name be printed in full or not, for instance; but it had none of the fatal fascination of the dedicatory page. I had, so to speak, to look abroad among the ranks of men, and make one of those fretful forgotten millions—immortal. It seemed a ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... ridiculous exhibitions that ever were seen on earth. However, they were taken out of the cupboard by some friends of theirs—friends, indeed! who care as much about them as I do for the sea-serpent; but who happened, at the moment, to find it necessary to play at soldiers, to amuse their fretful children, who didn't know what they wanted, and, what was worse, would have it—and so the Bulls got back to Rome. And at Rome they are any thing but safe to stay, as you'll find, my dear, one of these ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Star, panting with fury, and flinging the water at him with all her small might. "I wish it was sharp stones, instead of just water. I wish it was needles, and jagged rocks, and quills upon the fretful porkypine, so I do! How dare you say such things to me, Bob Peet? How dare you?" She paused, breathless, but with flashing eyes and burning cheeks; while Bob meekly mopped his face and head with a red cotton handkerchief, and shook the water from his ears, ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... mustang tossed his head impatiently, but his master ignored the animal's fretful desire to be off and dallied with tobacco and paper, fashioning a cigarette, lighting it, breathing thin smoke as his gray eyes squinted appraisingly ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... labouring at some Work too vast for us to perceive? Are our passions and desires mere whips and traces by the help of which we are driven? Any theory seems more hopeful than the thought that all our eager, fretful lives are but the turning of a useless prison crank. Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost. Beliefs for which men lived and died, proved ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... also, from Augusta, that he had been rambling about the grounds alone with Lucy Morris. At any exhibition of old ladies, held before a competent jury, Lady Fawn would have taken a prize on the score of good humour. No mother of daughters was ever less addicted to scold and to be fretful. But just now she was a little unhappy. Lizzie's visit had not been a success, and she looked forward to her son's marriage with almost unmixed dismay. Mrs. Hittaway had written daily, and in all Mrs. Hittaway's letters some addition was made to the evil ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... my lord, find them much more easy and tractable, than the squeamish, fretful, discontented wretches, with which other ministers have had to do. There is but one expence that will be requisite. It is uniform, and capable of an easy calculation. In any great and trying question, I was going to say debate, but debates, I am apt to think, would not be very frequent, or very ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... and pressing it with fervour between both hers, she exclaimed that she was glad to see him. Her uncle and aunt gave her the highest praise for her good behaviour, and assured her father that they had never during the whole time of her visit seen her once out of humour, or at all fretful upon any occasion. Mr. Placid said he was extremely happy to hear so good an account of his little girl, but that he had expected everything amiable from the sweetness of her disposition, adding, 'It ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... followed day in a dreadful monotony, and the girl visibly lost health and spirits. She changed a good deal, and both men noticed it. She lost her wonderful sweetness and evenness of temper and her bright smiles, and became fretful and irritable, discontented, and sharp in her replies. In the long winter mornings now she would not spring up in the early darkness as formerly, but try to fall asleep again after waking, and put her arm across Stephen and tell him there was no use of getting up, that ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... hand, the leg, and the whole body, may be employed to soothe and encourage. High-mettled or fretful horses, it is often necessary to soothe, and timid ones to encourage. A spirited animal is frequently impatient when first mounted, or, if a horse or a carriage pass him at a quick rate; and some horses ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... there's a pregnant phrase. Bravo! let me write it down; Hold it with a hopeful gaze, Gauge it with a fretful frown; Tune it to my lyric lyre . . . Ah! upon starvation's brink, How the words are dark and dire: It ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... ever, and yawns became painfully frequent. Every one's temper fell into an uncomfortable state of annoyance and irritation; Miss Morley, instead of her usual quiet, piteous way of reproving, was fretful; Caroline was sharp; Clara sometimes rude like the boys, sometimes cross with them; even Marian was now and then tormented into a loss of temper, when there was no obtaining the quiet which she, more than the others, needed in order to learn a lesson ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... what happens: everything seems against me. He is a kind old gentleman and he means well, but the tone in which he says "Hard lines!" whenever I miss an easy stroke irritates me. I feel I'd like to throw the balls at his head and fling the table out of window. I suppose it is that I am in a fretful state of mind, but the mere way in which he chalks his cue aggravates me. He carries his own chalk in his waistcoat pocket—as if our chalk wasn't good enough for him— and when he has finished chalking, he smooths the tip round with his ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... own mistake. He was glad to see Colin coming; it gave him an opportunity of escaping honorably from a conversation which had been very humiliating to him. He had a habit when annoyed of seeking the sea-beach. The chafing, complaining waves suited his fretful mood, and leaving the young men, he turned to the sea, taking the hillside with such mighty strides that Selwyn watched him with ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose—he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... much more honest the newspaper business is than diplomacy! The idea of returning any money never even occurred to me. The mere suggestion freezes my young blood and makes each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. Our motto in the service is, Get all you can, and keep all ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... was so hungry that he cried aloud. His grandmother told him to be quiet, but he cried the harder. She became vexed with him and cried out, "Ho, Kalopaling, come and take this fretful ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... in after dinner completed by TIM HEALY dashing in with intent to trip up Colonel. Domestic difficulties in the Party have not smoothed down TIM's natural truculence. With JOHN REDMOND sitting behind him and SAUNDERSON in front, a porcupine in fretful mood is a ball of spun silk compared ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... body, at other times some trouble of mind, often some disappointment, some humbling rebuke, or reproach, or the like. If we only bear these trials with patience when others are witnesses, or if we often speak of them, or are fretful under them, or if we bear patiently public affronts or great trials, yet sink under those which are trifling, and are sensible to small or secret injuries, it is evident that we have not attained to true purity ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... perceive, where a child is attacked by disease, that there has some change taken place; for either its skin will be dry and hot, its appetite gone; it is stupidly sleepy, or fretful or crying; it is thirsty, or pale and languid, or in some way betrays that something is wrong. When a child vomits, or has a diarrhoea, or is costive and feverish, it is owing to some derangement, and needs attention. But these various symptoms may continue for a day ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... excessively weak, nervous, cross, and fretful, night and day, that she takes all Anna's strength and time with her; and then the children are, like other little sons and daughters of Adam, full of all kinds of ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Some fretful tempers wince at every touch, You always do too little or too much; He shakes with cold; you stir the fire and strive To make a blaze; that's roasting him alive. Serve him with venison, and he chooses fish; With sole; ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... he turned upon the prisoner a large meaningless countenance, that was (like Bardolph's) "all whelks and bubuckles," the dullest might have been prepared for grief. Here was a stupid man, sleepy with the heat and fretful at the interruption, whom neither ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of business, the bleached men and kalsomined women declared, as they passed from the humor of contemplating Seth Craddock's return to fretful chafing against the restraint of the present hour. How did it come that one man could lord it over a whole town of free and independent Americans that way? Why didn't somebody take a shot at him? Why didn't they defy him, go and open the doors and let this thirsty, money-padded throng up ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... hesitated; then she turned to rush from the room, a flood of angry, bitter feelings surging through her heart, more at the insufferable tone and manner, than at what she was bidden to do. Only turned; and she was back by the side of the bed, and looking down into the fretful, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... raise her voice and cry, In that still hour between the night and day; I saw the answering tides, green robed and gray, Turn to her with a low contented sigh; Marching with silent feet they passed me by, For the white moon had taught them to obey, And scarce a wavelet broke in fretful spray, As they went forth ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... meet that crisis most fatal to wedded happiness, the discovery of the first deceit Captain Rothesay sat silent, with averted face; Sybilla was weeping—not that repentant shower which rains softness into a man's heart, but those fretful tears ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... quenching the lamp. Then he went with his quick silent tread upstairs and into Darcy's room. The latter was already in bed, but very wide-eyed and wakeful, and Frank with an amused smile of indulgence, as for a fretful child, sat down on the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... dream as these, For all that they have tracked disastrous seas, And winds that left their sails in flagging strips; Nothing disturbs them now, no stormy grips That once had hurt their sides, no crash or swell, Nor can the fretful harbour quite dispel This quiet that they learned on ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... went home at night, Miss Mattie was partially awake and inclined to be fretful. "The strength is gone out of my medicine," she grumbled, "and it ain't time to take more. I've got to set here and be deprived of my ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... hair above the lean young face. But for this, I should not have looked twice at him: long, spare, and stooping, a shabby figure, he crouched over a cup of coffee in a corner of the dingy restaurant, at fretful enmity with the world; typical, I should have said, of the furtive London nondescript. But that white hair startled me; it gleamed out, unnaturally cleanly in those not overclean surroundings, and although I had propped my book up against ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... continual motion from right to left, gave Bob a wipe in the eye with his tail, which by the velocity of the wearer was kept in full play like the pendulum of a clock, or the tail of Matthews in his admirable delineation of Sir Fretful Plagiary. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in the school-room and in the nursery; and children—left to their own devices—accept it with wonderful courage and sagacity. If we allow to their souls some noble and free expansion, they may be trusted to divert themselves from that fretful self-consciousness which the nurse calls naughtiness, and the doctor, nerves. A little wholesome neglect, a little discipline, plenty of play, and a fair chance to be glad and sorry as the hours swing by,—these things are not too much to grant to childhood. That careful coddling which ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... she always did when he became whimsical and fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... objects men pursue," Then Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who. A modest Monologue you here survey, Hissed from the theatre the "other day," As if Sir Fretful wrote "the slumberous" verse, And gave his son "the rubbish" to rehearse. "Yet at the thing you'd never be amazed," Knew you the rumpus which the Author raised; "Nor even here your smiles would be represt," Knew you these lines—the badness of the best, 10 "Flame! fire! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the student, "I did not send for you at this time of night from the idle fear or fretful caprice of an invalid. But when I saw you this morning, you dropped some hints which have haunted me ever since. Much that it befits the conscience and the soul to attend to without loss of time depends upon my full knowledge of my real state. If I understand you rightly, I may have but ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them said "Yes," and some of them said "No." The little drowsy man said nothing. The fretful invalid cried, "Go on!" The nervous juryman suddenly rose. His brethren all looked at him, inspired by the same fear of having got an orator among them. He was an essentially polite man; and he hastened ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... cried Miss Clairville, in fretful fear and mortification, "they would not sleep like that! They would know you were ill, dying, and they would keep watch and show affection. I always hated cats, and now I shall hate them ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and as she had never had the disease, her father did not like to send for her to come home. The children did not take to their aunt. It had been possible to get on when they were very ill, but when they began to be better they were peevish and fretful, and Aunt Livy could not please them, and nothing would do but Violet must come to them again. It did not seem possible that she could leave home, but David was to be spared as much as possible to help with the little ones, and so ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... is constant the child may be fretful and restless most of the time, being seemingly comfortable for only an hour ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... not well off, and I assured the doctor that I could manage. To me it was worth while going through the double work just to breathe the atmosphere of unselfishness that sweetened those two sick-rooms. The average invalid is not the patient sufferer people imagine. It is a fretful, querulous, self-pitying little world that we live in as a rule, and that we grow hard in. It gave me a new heart, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... was great sorrow on the sons of Lir when they heard that, for they thought it the same as to be living people again, to be talking with their friends and their companions on Loch Dairbhreach, in comparison with going on the cold, fretful sea of ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... delicate of constitution and his ailments made him passionate and fretful, though to the multitude he preserved a ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... Las Palmas were black, the house silent, when they arrived at their journey's end; Dolores was fretful, and her mistress ached in every bone. When Jose had helped his countrywoman into the house ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... "Some in a letter-of-credit that my father earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... kindly putting her arm around Ruth, "are kept all those angry words which children speak to each other and their friends; all their little fretful words when they are impatient, and which they will never wish to see again, but which, alas! will be given back to them at a ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... Go and play in the kitchen," grunted Punch. "Aunty Rosa lets you go there." Judy was cutting her second teeth and was fretful. She appealed to Aunty Rosa, who ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... caught sight of it did not recognize her, and snatched up his weapon as against an enemy. It was the Scar-Cheek who offered the first welcome in a jovial shout. "The hawk escaped from the cage! Well done, champion! Did you batter a way out with your mighty fists? Did you get fretful and slay the Englishman? Leave off your bashfulness and tell us your deeds of valor!" A score of hands were stretched forth to draw the boy into the circle; a score of horns were ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... ginger is an excellent thing to give to aged persons a couple of hours before dinner," It is remarkable to see how this treatment aids the digestion, especially in chronic cases. It may also be given to fretful children ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... career, though it has since, except with the few that still read it for its fine tone of pleasantry, fallen into oblivion. It was reserved for Sheridan to give vitality to this form of dramatic humor, and to invest even his satirical portraits —as in the instance of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which, it is well known, was designed for Cumberland—with a generic character, which, without weakening the particular resemblance, makes them representatives for ever of the whole class to which the original belonged. Bayes, on the contrary, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... her during the ensuing evening and even interfered with her slumbers during the night. This—most unusual occurrence—rendered her fretful. She reproached her tractable and distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too far. In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently she might assert the need of active exertion. She pointed out the fallacy of rushing to extremes; ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... where the river breeze blew across the garden, and watched placidly the palm-leaf fan which Mammy Riah waved before her face. The magnolia tree had flowered in great white blossoms, and the heavy perfume mingled in Virginia's thoughts with the yellow sunshine, the fretful clamour, and the hot dust of the city. When at the end of May a rain storm burst overhead and sent the wide white petals to the earth, it was almost a relief to see them go. But by the morrow new ones had opened, and the perfume she had sickened of ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... here made me uneasy, and almost fretful. Dr. Johnson was calm. I said, he was so from vanity. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it is from philosophy.' It pleased me to see that the Rambler could practise ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... broke off suddenly and glanced towards the door. "I must toddle down to Dolly now. She gets fretful if I'm out of her sight for long. I'll see you later on ... seven ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... might as well have gone to the river this evening for what good her abstinence has done her: the poverty of our strength to conquer faith and the immutability of its decrees fills her with consternation and a fretful desire for freedom. Yet above and beyond all these vain imaginings is a gladness and a pride that her power is strong enough to draw her lover to her side in spite ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... overloaded stomach, it will not be the refreshing sleep of health. When the stomach is filled beyond the proper medium, it induces a similar kind of heaviness to that arising from opiates and intoxicating liquors; and instead of awakening refreshed and lively, the child will be heavy and fretful. By the time that children begin to run about, the increase of their exercise will require an increase of nourishment: but those who overload them with food at any time, in hopes of strengthening them, are very much deceived. No prejudice is equally fatal to such numbers ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine: But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. Hamlet, Act i. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... word from the American consul. By this time the two prisoners were really in need of medical attention. Their contusions pained them severely. Kirk felt as if one or more of his ribs were broken, and his suffering, combined with hunger, prevented sleep. He became feverish and fretful, but his demands for communication with the outside world were calmly ignored, although he felt certain that his wishes were fully understood. When the morning had passed without his being arraigned for a hearing ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... slight response it found on Isabel's tongue. He disliked the slight purr of complacency in the Scottish speech. He disliked intensely the glib way in which Isabel spoke of their happiness and nearness. It made him recoil. He was fretful and beside himself like a child, he had almost a childish nostalgia to be included in the life circle. And at the same time he was a man, dark and powerful and infuriated by his own weakness. By some fatal flaw, he could not be by himself, he had to depend on the support of another. And this ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... order above themselves. But why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen? It is because, in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought to be separated from the strife of the world. The fretful collision with rivalship and angry tempers, insensibly modifies the demeanour of every man. But the British nobleman, intrenched in wealth, enjoys an immunity from this irritating discipline. He is able to act by proxy: and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... her tears dropped on the baby's face. The little Princess seemed annoyed by them. She put up her tiny hand and, with a fretful expression, brushed ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... her, and she found herself in the presence of a tall thin woman, who was lying full length on a sofa by the open window. Never was there a more peevish face than the invalid wore. Her brows were slightly drawn together, her lips had fretful curves; the pallor of great pain, of intense nervous suffering, dwelt on her brow. Frances went ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... one. Mamma and papa had tried all sorts of things to amuse and do her good; for she was their only little daughter, and they loved her very dearly. But nothing pleased her long; and she lounged about, pale and fretful, till Aunt Laura came. Daisy called her "Wee" when she was a baby, and couldn't talk plainly; and she still used the name because it suited the cheery ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... eleven years old; lank and gangling, and blest with a fretful voice and with far less discipline and manners than a three-month collie pup. His name was Cyril. Briefly, he was ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... passenger, discover to me a countenance as plain, withered, and fraught with the impress of evil passions, as that of the Lady in the Sacque, in Sir Walter's tale of the Tapestried Chamber. I never beheld so fretful and malignant-looking a being!—and the contrast which her visage afforded to that of my kind-hearted widow, which beamed with satisfaction and good-humour, was quite remarkable. This "lady," indeed, now appeared to have regained her native ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... pictures—one fair and bewitching, which lit up the student's face with its reflection, while the other, dark and lowering from its deep and gloomy appearance, shed a cloud of despondency and sadness upon the thoughtful brow, leaving thereon an expression that was fretful and annoying. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the habit of associating with nervous, irritable people, quit it until you grow strong in the power of concentration, because irritable, angry, fretful, dogmatic and disagreeable people will weaken what ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... women whose household duties press hard: "Your husband would rather see a cold lunch on the table, or 'go out' for dinner, while his wife rested, smiling and happy, than to have a most sumptuous meal spread before him and the wife tired, and fretful." Every woman should make it the rule of her life to stop just this side of the outburst of words, and lie down long enough, breathing deeply, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... butterflies—gay little motes In the sunbeam of Fashion; and even Blue Books Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow busy as rooks; And the postman (that Genius, indifferent and stern, Who shakes out even-handed to all, from his urn, Those lots which so often decide if our day Shall be fretful and anxious, or joyous and gay) Brings, each morning, more letters of one sort or other Than Cadmus, himself, put together, to bother The heads of Hellenes;—I say, in the season Of Fair May, in May Fair, there can be ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Champneys, instead of the usual Mist' Peter. When he spoke to her she accordion-plaited her lips, and stuck her eyes out at him. Her head, adorned with more than the usual quota of toothpicks, brought the quills upon the fretful porcupine forcibly ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... friendships that make so much unhappiness, half the folly lies in expecting the other person to be always at high-water mark, and in being fretful and ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... Tell me, what have I to write? Every error I could find Through the mazes of your mind, Have my busy Muse employ'd, Till the company was cloy'd. Are you positive and fretful, Heedless, ignorant, forgetful? Those, and twenty follies more, I have often told before. Hearken what my lady says: Have I nothing then to praise? Ill it fits you to be witty, Where a fault should move your ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the regulation of the thoughts down to the spreading of a sheet or the hemming of a towel; and to this exact standard she feels it her duty to bring every one in her household. She does not often scold, she is not actually fretful, but she exercises over her household a calm, inflexible severity, rebuking every fault; she overlooks nothing, she excuses nothing, she will accept of nothing in any part of her domain but absolute perfection; and her reproofs are aimed with a true and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... 'Neath thy soft pleading eyes her milk-white teeth. Oft, Love, in other times, in sheltered nook, We scattered pearly millet by the brook. Lo thine lay barren in the sand. Quick mine Upspringing sifts o'er pale blooms odors fine: Hateful thy chidings grow; each breeze doth bring Ever thy plaints—thy fretful murmuring. These many days I weary of thy sighs; Know, Lilith, I alone rule Paradise." Thereat he rose, and quick at every stride The fawning leopard gambolled at his side. So fell the first dark shadow of Earth's strife. With coming evil all the winds were rife. Lone lay ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... ordered home, Captain Reud's mental aberrations became less frequent; but, when they supervened, they were more extravagant in their nature. He grew roguish, fretful, and cruel. Though he never spoke to me harshly, he addressed me more rarely. I had not dined with him for a long while: he had taken the mysterious destruction of my wardrobe as a valid excuse; ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... strictly to avoid crowded rooms; her mind should be kept calm and unruffled, as nothing disorders the milk so much as passion, and other violent emotions of the mind; a fretful temper is very injurious, on which account you should, in choosing your wet-nurse, endeavour to procure one of a mild, calm, and placid disposition. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... doubt about. When first he saw St. Mark's, he threw up his arms in wonder, and then, clasping them round Wilson's neck (she was carrying him), he kissed her in an ecstasy of joy. And that was after a long day's journey, when most other children would have been tired and fretful. But the sense of the beautiful is certainly very strong in him, little darling. He can't say the word 'church' yet, but when he sees one he begins to chant. Oh, he's a true Florentine ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... her shy and reticent hours; Dragging to light her blinking, slothful moods; Publishing fretful seasons when her powers Worked wild and sullen in her solitudes, Or when her mordant laughter shook ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... details of these ecclesiastical squabbles distracted him at a time when he should soon leave this fretful earth behind him. He ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... you tell me who it is?" she retorted, in an impatient, fretful tone, not having the discernment to see that he wished to prepare her for what was coming. "Can't you speak, Jan, if he won't? People have no right to come, dressed up in other people's clothes and faces, to frighten us to death. He ought to be transported! ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable. Yet it ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... could get a shot we would blaze away. At last one got up very close, and passed right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine; I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand, until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... them and reproduced. To take one example among many, the pitch and intonation of the voice often impress more than the words. A nurse with a querulous tone has a restless nursery; she makes the high-spirited contradictory and the delicate fretful. In teaching, a high-pitched voice is exciting and wearing to children; certain cadences that end on a high note rouse opposition, a monotonous intonation wearies, deeper and more ample tones are quieting ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... St. John, in a very bad temper, was banging about him with his cross, while the queen of heaven, reduced to tears of anguished fatigue, had been picked up in the strong arms of her father, where she was on the point of dropping asleep. "Pickle Johnny," too, was getting fretful again, having exhausted the charms of scent-bottle and toy looking-glass, and May was beginning ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... sentimental restlessness, but she did not understand the cause of her own uneasiness. On the days that Sir Lionel came to her, she was happy, and in good spirits; when, however, he went to Miss Todd, she was fretful. Sometimes she would rally him on his admiration for her rival, but she did it with a bad grace. Wit, repartee, and sarcasm were by no means her forte. She could not have stood up for five minutes against deaf old Mrs. Leake; and when she tried her hand on Sir Lionel, her failure was ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... down, dear. I can't get Aggy out of my arms a minute. It's nearly supper time, and I havn't been able even to put the kettle on the fire. She's very fretful." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... find out their habits; and I will tell you what they are. All very young animals like to sleep a good deal, and to be let alone. It both frightens and hurts them to be pulled about, and makes them fretful and ill-tempered; spoils their growth, and prevents their loving you. A puppy or a kitten is very fond of play, and will jump and bounce about with you for a long while; but the moment they begin to get tired, they should be left alone, to rest as much as they like. ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... on his way out. He could afford to wait a year for such a spring blossom as that, surely. And wait he did, with commendable patience, comforting his godly soul with the fact that Sylvia was spared meantime the daily tendance and care of a fretful old woman like his mother; for, though Master Loomis was the best of sons, that did not blind him to the fact that the irritability of age and illness were fully developed in his mother, and he alone seemed to have ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... her domestic and farm activities from disturbing incursions. This spring morning Moira's apprehensions awakened by an extremely light mail, were realized, as she beheld her father bearing down upon her with an open letter in his hand. His handsome face was set in a fretful frown. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... ever open doors. They and the ancient church in their midst seem weary of the ceaseless jangle around them. Perhaps, standing there for so many years, listening to the long silence of the dead, the fretful voices of the living sound foolish ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... how I can get ready soon. The baby is fretful, and I'm all worn out between broken rest and worry. Won't you take Effie for ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... would rather not go without Kenneth," said Max hastily; and The Mackhai said no more, being in doubt in his own mind whether the refusal was from cowardice or from disinclination to leave the invalid, who grew more fretful and impatient every ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... thee sad or fretful, Or too regretful; Be still. What God hath ordered must be right; Then find in it thy own delight, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Lily's little hall and said that the child would "pull through." ... The spiritual squalor of that scene flashed back in sharp visualization: the doctor; Lily, her amber eyes overflowing with tears, kissing his hand; Jacky's fretful cry from upstairs.... Here he was! that same kindly medical man, "getting off some guff to Mrs. Morton," Maurice told himself, in agonized uncertainty as to what he had better do. Should he recognize him? Or pretend not to know him? It galloped through his mind that if he did ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... she was very active and merry and displayed an abundant fund of good health and spirits. She early learned to talk and walk and was considered an unusually bright and precocious girl. Her earliest months gave a hint of her love for music. If fretful or peevish with weariness or ill-health she could soon be pacified by a gentle song from her father as he carried her about ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... gave his horse a "breather," as he called it. The animal was so strong and powerful that he chafed at restraint, and, unless ridden regularly and hard, had a very disagreeable, fretful trot. After a good gallop up one of the long Rockbridge hills he would ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... without a murmur, lest her complaints distract me for one precious moment from my work. Even the nights brought her no rest, for while I slept, she stole from cot to cradle and from cradle to crib, covering outflung little legs and arms, cooling parched little throats with water, quieting fretful whimpers and hushing threatening outcries with a low 'Hush, darling, mother's here. Don't cry! You'll wake father—and father must have his sleep.' And father had it—that sleep, just as he had the best of everything else in the house: ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... a noise," said the Bird of Paradise. "I never can eat when there is a noise. St. James," continued she, in a fretful tone, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... it would appear that cotton was king, at least in British eyes. The war did come, and Great Britain regarded the two parties as belligerents, standing, as far as she was concerned, on equal grounds. This it was that first gave rise to that fretful anger against England which has gone so far toward ruining the Northern cause. We know how such passions are swelled by being ventilated, and how they are communicated from mind to mind till they become national. Politicians—American politicians ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... awakened in the morning by the fretful voice of her mother, as she went scolding about the house, trying to pick up something for breakfast; and she heard her father answering her in no pleasant mood, and kicking about the floor ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Why was the child thus carried? Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame! Patient little Tim,—never was he heard to utter a fretful or complaining word. No wonder they cherished ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on this particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!' he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an apparent contradiction, in ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... with something that must either soon cause the keenest thought, or at length a spiritual callosity: somewhere in her was a motion, a something turned and twisted, ceased and began again, boring like an auger; or was it a creature that tried to sleep, but ever and anon started awake, and with fretful claws pulled at its nest in the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the land must go," said the wife in a fretful tone. "Our rent-roll will be still smaller. There will be still less money to educate Terence. I had set my heart on his going to Cambridge or Oxford. You quite forget ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... are able to drink, and drink any thing. But I was just now going to draw the Manner of Behaviour I would advise People to practise under some Maxim, and intimated, that every one almost was governed by his Pride. There was an old Fellow about forty Years ago so peevish and fretful, though a Man of Business, that no one could come at him: But he frequented a particular little Coffee-house, where he triumphed over every body at Trick-track and Baggammon. The way to pass his Office well, was first to be insulted by him at one of those Games in his leisure Hours; for his Vanity ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... taking the hint, Master Putnam, like a dutiful husband, who really loved his somewhat peevish and fretful wife, acknowledged by his silence in the future that the Harmons were much superior to any family that could not boast of possessing a minister and an island; the ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... a busy time for the housekeeper. She had neither leisure nor inclination to argue with a fretful patient, so went away and left him to himself. But she found his desire for Katharine's society an excellent thing. As she had said of Deacon Meakin, "it kep' her out of mischief" to act as nurse to the injured farmer, and he now delighted in her. The stories of her ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... you and everyone Who through the heat and flies conspire to dish The "Drang nach Osten" of the beastly Hun Shall win their strenuous virtue's modest wage. And if at Nishapur and Babylon The cup runs dry, we'll fill it later on, And here where Cherwell soothes the fretful don In flowing sherbet pledge our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... damp, hot wind blowing, and the music-room is crowded and stuffy beyond words, or I might not be unselfish enough to remain with G. I did go up, and a fat person, whose nurse was ill, gave me her baby to hold, a poor white-faced, fretful baby, who pulled down all my hair, and I have had the unpleasant task of doing it up again. If you have ever stood in a very hot greenhouse with the door shut, and wrestled with something above your head, you will know what ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Hawyot), the next in age, had a small well-set head, a pretty neck, and fine dark eyes, but the small-pox had made havoc of her bloom, and left its traces on cheek and brow. The wreck of her beauty had given her a discontented, fretful expression, which rendered her far less pleasing than honest, homely Betty, though she employed all the devices of the toilette to conceal the ravages of the malady and enhance her remaining advantages ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. The night was still and languorous, one of the peaceful nights of large spaces when the heavens brood over the earth like a mother over a fretful child. At last no more cars came booming out of the distance. She shut the windows and bolted the door; then she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sound of utter weariness and pain, Betty's fear left her and all the tenderness and passionate desire for service that had made her such a wonderful little "hand" with ill and fretful babies in her old home at Pineville came to take ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... luxuries are not a necessity. Comfort will make the surroundings pleasant. Drudgery, overwork and exposure are the three things that tend to make women miserable while in the state of pregnancy, and invariably produce irritable, fretful and feeble children. Dr. Stockham says in her admirable work "Tokology:" "The woman who indulges in the excessive gayety of fashionable life, as well as the overworked woman, deprives her child of vitality. She attends parties ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the sick-room swiftly and noiselessly, put the nun through a strict cross-examination with the fretful sharpness of a person disturbed in her night's rest. Then she went into the sitting-room where Philippus was on the point of pledging Paula in his second cup of wine, while she stood before him with dishevelled hair and robe ungirt. All this was an offence against good manners such as she would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... very grasp of death, did this faith fail him. He kept, in the midst of a fretful, slothful, wailing world, where prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and despondent, as the decadents they despised, the temper of his Herakles in Balaustion. He ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... logically ordered, is neat, compact, clearly defined, and covers the whole ground. I desire to recommend it to such as find the other systems too difficult, exacting, and irksome for the uses of this fretful brief ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prized it doubly, even though, by a strange fatality, she had never had so much trouble and vexation with them as arose at once on their being made over to her! When all was settled, doubt over, and the routine life begun, Lucilla evidently felt the blank of her vanished hopes, and became fretful and captious, weary of things in general, and without sufficient motive to control her natural taste for the variety of naughtiness! Honor had not undertaken the easiest of tasks, but she neither ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the crest he fights with it and wrestles with it until he makes it stand erect in a feather-edged design. I can tell by his expression that he is pleased with this arrangement. He loves to send his victims forth into the world tufted like the fretful cockatoo. He likes to see surging waves of hair dash high on a stern and rockbound head. His sense of the artistic ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... stamina. A sort of numbness, the lethargy of great weakness, was creeping over him; his heart was sagging with a dull despair. He believed that he must be lost, yet he was past cursing or complaining aloud. Only an occasional gasp or a fretful, inarticulate sound came when his horse ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... need of knowledge concerning a certain contagion of emotions. Strong feeling sometimes vibrates that which is hostile and selfish. One fretful, scolding woman can upset a neighborhood, to ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... resting on my breast, I launched on a madder flight: And I lashed the waves to a wild unrest, And howled with a fierce delight Till the daylight slept; and I wailed and wept Like a fretful babe ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... contents from wet, insects and rodents. Ants in summer and mice at all times are downright pests of the woods, to say nothing of the wily coon, the predatory mink, the inquisitive skunk, and the fretful porcupine. The boilers are useful, too, on many occasions to catch rain-water, boil clothes, waterproof and dye tents, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing Jan was just then impervious to any such ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... not have borne to walk even to the end of the street unprotected. So I stayed where I was, seated in a chair near the window of the larger room, saturating myself in the vague and heavy flood of sadness that enwraps the fretful, passionate city in the night—the night when the commonest noises seem to carry some mystic message to the listening soul, the night when truth walks abroad naked ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... fingers on guitar strings, waded unprofitably in oceans of Locke and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex of a triangle than its comfortable base? And you always as calm as though 'sailing over summer seas!' Come—I am absolutely blue;' and the half-fretful belle, who had really exhausted her strength and amiability by a grand pedestrian tour in the Central Park that morning, stretched out demurely her gaiter boots, and drew with an invisible pencil on imaginary paper, the outline of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
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