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More "Fussy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Viola!" said the lad, in a tone of brotherly tolerance. "You are in no more danger—now—then if you were in bed. Though I admit it might have been rather fussy if we hadn't met you!" he added, with a ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... talk with his mother, he boarded a Key West steamer just as it was leaving its New York pier. He sat on the deck and watched busy ferry-boats in the river, fussy tugs and chug-chugging launches in the harbor, and the white-winged yachts and great ocean steamers in the lower bay. He looked back from the Narrows upon the receding city, to the east upon Coney Island with its pleasure palaces, and to the southwest upon the great curve of Sandy Hook. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... picture to finish, which he hoped to get ready in time to be a New Year's present, since Olga had insisted on Lucia's being done first. He had certainly secured an admirable likeness of her, and there was in it just all that his stippled, fussy representation of Lucia lacked. "Bleak December" and "Yellow Daffodils" and the rest of the series lacked it, too: for once he had done something in the doing of which he had forgotten himself. It was by no means a work of genius, for Georgie was not possessed ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... me, namely, that they might have acquired a sufficient stock of bankers and mechanics by this time, and be able possibly to discover a vacancy for a public-school man with a fairish knowledge of the world and some other things—one who, moreover, had himself served in a cranky and fussy Government Department and, though working in another sphere, had been thanked officially for certain labours—once by the Admiralty, twice by the Board of Trade; and anyway, hang it! one was not so infernally venerable as all ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... away the old man, not without some slight compunction. "But in my opinion she's too dark for such somber dresses. I've told her so a score of times." Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole bill and be done ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Soprano flirted. He gave her a ribbon and she promised to marry him. Just a bluff! And then he wanted his ribbon back, but she had already made it into garters, and when he tried to take them by force she boxed him smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no war at the time and anyway his "mother wouldn't let him"—the ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... "Don't worry your fussy old self," said Josephine cheerfully; "nobody really believes in me, but Judy never forgets. We'll put the wig with our own fair hands on Molly Seaton's head. Come on, Judy, and see if Cathy's ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... apparently too scared to run, with Teddy, like Fate, grimly at their heels, steadily "pointing" them off the premises. We were a little anxious, therefore, as to how Teddy would take our little terrier, with his fussy, youthful self-importance, and eternal restless poking into other folks' affairs. But Teddy, as we might have told ourselves, had had a long and varied experience of terriers, and had nothing to ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river. The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that the poetry of the future ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... they seem to think of it so. Once or twice, when I've paid calls with mamma, they were so fussy and show-off. You know ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... crushes"; they never pinned on their audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere. They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff; their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. Baxter, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... her hair a new way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of cherry coloured velvet across her forehead, but she was wearing the first ankle watch ever seen in Red Gap. I couldn't begin to tell you the fussy improvements them ladies had made in themselves—and all, mind you, for the passing child of Nature who had never paid a bill for 'em ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Vergennes in rendering aid to America, which Franklin would not believe, or could not see. Nor were the relations of Adams very pleasant with the veteran Franklin himself, whose merits he conceived to be exaggerated, and of whom it is generally believed he was envious. He was as fussy in business details as Franklin was easy and careless. He thought that Franklin lived too luxuriously and was too fond ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... annoyed. In her disgust with her father and her anxiety to attract David's notice, she had so entirely forgotten his religious delinquencies, that it seemed fussy and intrusive on Dora's part to make so much of them. She instinctively resented, too, what sounded to her like a tone of proprietary interest. It was not Dora that was ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to have Pot Pool again for the evening. Again it was dull, with an incipient drizzle as we started out at six o'clock. The fish were now rising, at any rate, in my pool. At the very entrance to it, which was, in fact, the connecting run from The Rocks, I killed, after a fussy tussle and plenty of leaping out of the water, a grilse of 4 lb.; and we had barely rowed out into the stream when a fish of 6 lb. or 7 lb. leaped head and tail out of the water at my fly without touching it. The overcast character ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the novelist's characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each one growing from within and not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... methods he pursued in the management of the house were the outcome of a naturally malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I think. I will soon release you." Clara pressed her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exactly the same thing. And here, again, "The Logicians" seem to me to take much too humble a position. When they are putting the final touches to the grouping of their Proposition, just before the curtain goes up, and when the Copula——always a rather fussy 'heavy father', asks them "Am I to have the 'not', or will you tack it on to the Predicate?" they are much too ready to answer, like the subtle cab-driver, "Leave it to you, Sir!" The result seems to be, that the grasping Copula constantly gets a "not" that had better have been merged ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... hostility. Why, even that old man was a complication! Nay, he was the worst thing of all! But for him, she could drop out! There was no getting away from him! He was as much permanently there as the chair upon which he was drowsing. She saw him as an incubus. And then Emmy being so fussy! Standing on her dignity when she'd give her soul for happiness! And then Alf being so ... What was Alf? Well, Alf was stupid. That was the word for Alf. He was stupid. As stupid as any stupid member of his immeasurably stupid ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... "duties" which the World's voices make so clamorous! It may be that our sense of their greatness and remoteness produces a certain "humility" in us, and a certain mood of "waiting on the Spirit," not altogether encouraging to what this age, in its fussy worship of energy, calls "our creative work." Well! There is a place doubtless for these energetic people, and their strenuous characters, and their "creative work." But I think there is a place also for those who cannot rush about the market-place, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... short side whiskers, a chunky, fussy, and hot-tempered man, but whether Madge Pemberton had managed him, or whether he'd worn her out, I couldn't make up my mind about the likelihood. I sat a while talking with him, and watching Madge McCulloch, his daughter, lay the tea table. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... described as a mental quicksand. There is something in the atmosphere which makes the most industrious man contentedly idle. Here the nervous, irritable, fussy individual, who for years has never known what rest meant, and who has fidgeted when he could not work, finds himself relaxing, against his will, into a condition of what a celebrated statesman described as "innocuous desuetude." The balminess of the air, which is at once warm and invigorating ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... over the training and care of the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman—e.g. to a boy's pranks—causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... mean that, Dunny," I said firmly, continuing my dinner. It was a good dinner; we had consulted over each item from cocktails to liqueurs, and we are both distinctly fussy about food. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... gettin' an attack of modesty. "I'm kinda fussy about my food and I been figurin' out different ways of cookin' up stuff to get the best outa it, for years. That's the only amusement I got. I ain't so much as a cook, but you oughta see ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... apt to make when we get old and step out of the high road of life. He found out that his son did not appreciate his advice, and that Mrs. Tom cared still less for his frequent appearances. Indeed, he himself once saw her bounce out of the shop as he entered, exclaiming audibly, "Here's that fussy old man again." Tozer was an old man, it is true, but nobody (under eighty) cares to have the epithet flung in his teeth; and to be in the way is always unpleasant. He had self-command enough to say nothing about it, except in a very modified shape to his ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... call the notes of this bird sad; but it only seems so from our point of view; for he is a happy, fussy little bird, and I dare say that when he calls he is only saying 'peek-a-boo!' to his mate on the other ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... opinion) was laid before a young conveyancer, who, having much less business than Mr. Mortmain, would, it was thought, "look into the case fully," though receiving only one-third of the fee which had been paid to Mr. Mortmain. And Mr. FUSSY FRANKPLEDGE—that was his name—did "look into the case fully;" and in doing so, turned over two-thirds of his little library;—and also gleaned—by note and verbally—the opinions upon the subject of some half-dozen of his "learned friends;" to say nothing of the magnificent ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... to be a picnic. This word tickled one of the drunken officers so much, that suddenly he let his loose legs relapse and clapped his spurs into his animal, which reared horribly, and in the end sent him on the ground. I thought I should die of laughter. Then everybody became more and more fussy, because they were afraid of L——, but, fortunately, the general started off ahead, muttering to himself, and we rode after him like some procession. It seemed to me very absurd, and at that point I lost all confidence in the success of the expedition. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... redden, and Lisle, looking around at the sound of a footstep, saw Marple standing a pace or two away. He was a fussy, bustling man, and he ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... my dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave the boy to me a bit. Good ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... guess it who read all these trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, though this was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man was ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a modern progressive ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... waistcoat with birds'-eye spots, came bustling up to them. It was Armitage, the butcher and grazier, well known for miles round as a warm man, and the most liberal patron of sport in the Riding. "Well, well," he grunted, in a thick, fussy, wheezy voice, "you have come, then. Got your ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and cream-tarts on which the expected visitor was to be regaled. Of course she kept on telling herself all the time what a foolish old woman she was, and how silly Mr Ogilvie would think her if he only knew of all her little fussy preparations; men who had knocked about the world hated to be fidgeted over and made much of, and no doubt it was quite natural they should. And then she went bustling off to impress on Martha the ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... supposed there were doctors in Sunderland who would do her more good than I should. She doesn't seem to be able to understand why I should want to go. She says it's fussy." ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... to Boston and to school, where old acquaintances were renewed and new ones made. The Misses Cabot welcomed her with fussy and dignified condescension. Barbara Howe hugged and kissed her and vowed she had not seen a girl all summer who was half ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... amazingly. "I'm so glad," she said in a relieved tone. "I suppose I seem fussy, but now and then the problem of help gets to be a regular nightmare. Once or twice lately I've been afraid I was making a terrible mess of things, and might, after all, have to accept one of the offers I've had for the ranch. I should hate dreadfully ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... travelling on business, and was afraid she would be nervous. He had been very persistent on this point; but in whispered conversations she had persuaded him out of his objection. It was one of those pretty, fussy little houses; and it seemed to have taken her fancy. Added to which, according to her argument, it was just within their means, which none of the others were. Young Hepworth may have given the usual references, but if so they were never taken up. The house was sold on the ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... so abominably pretty you wouldn't be so fussy. Most young ladies would consider the good-looking and only son of a millionaire absolutely perfect ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... fatuously on. "You're the only person I ever felt that way about. Absolutely the only one. But you've got to expect that sort of thing in a man who prevails in such a world as this. When men get too high-toned and aristocratic, too fussy about manners and dress, along come real men to ride them down and under. But I'll try to be everything you wish—to you. Not to the others. That would defeat our object; for I'm going to take my wife ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... power charily, however, or rather with principle. He quietly insisted on his rights; but as he granted hers without a word, and never irritated her by small, fussy exactions, good-breeding prevented any serious clashing of wills, and their married life had passed in comparative serenity. As time elapsed her will began, in many ways, to defer to his quieter and stronger will, and then, as if life ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... fact as this fussy little personage was on the ground, taking in his breakfast and giving out his song, he was a different bird when he got above it. Alighting on the wren's brush heap, for instance, he would bristle up, raising the feathers on head and neck, his red eyes ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... bear his weight—with many falls, of course—and then he began to scurry about on his feet. His usual style of progression at this period was to take from two to four abrupt, jerky strides, rather with the air of a fussy and corpulent old gentleman who had to catch a train, and then to subside in a confused lump, on chest and nose, with tail waggling angrily in mid-air. This was not so annoying to the grey pup as one might suppose, because, though generally in ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... sorely disappointed in her boy, and made remarks to the effect that if she had looked after his bringing up instead of entrusting him to an indulgent grandmother, affairs at this time would not be in their present state. Parents are apt to be fussy: they can not wait. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight—all spoke to me, clearly and unmistakably, of something new and beautiful, of ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... is not so excusable. His fussy vanity is an inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride. His obtrusive affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and his mustaches brushing the peak. And by ten o'clock we were quit of Genoa; the last lean, blue-chinned official had left our decks; the last fruitseller had been beaten off with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from his boat; the last passenger had come aboard at the last moment—a fussy graybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatman over half a lira. But at length we were off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed, and Raffles and I leaned together over the rail, watching our shadows ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the bravery of the kingbirds to be sure that the end was not yet. Also, I longed to watch the restless pair whose ups and downs I had found so interesting. I should like to see the orchard oriole in the role of a father; a terribly fussy one he would be without doubt. Above all, I most desired to see the infant orioles, to know if they begin their quarrels in their narrow cradle, and if their first note is a scold. But the troubles of this courtship had, like the wars of Augustus and Arabella in a ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... homekeeping sisters and to their husbands also for that matter; and the fact that he could at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... printing of music is an expensive and fussy piece of work, too. It must be accurately done, and done by men who are experienced in that special kind of work. One misprint will cause a discord and throw the music out of sale. Of course if a song turns out to be popular, a small fortune is often reaped from it; ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... been standing before them with a composure which impressed Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little more erect, as he replied, with an ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... traveller. He felt he had indeed been "led" to this plain, brown-faced, broad-shouldered lady, when he remembered how nearly, after her curt nod from a distance had engaged him, he had responded to the blandishments of a fussy little woman, with many more bags and rugs, and a parrot cage, who was now doling French coppers out of the window of the next compartment. "Seven pence 'apenny of this stuff ain't much for carrying all that along, I DON'T think!" grumbled his mate; and Jane's young porter ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... save for one fact—at the Staatsbahnhof, at Vienna, just before our train left for Budapest, a queer, fussy little old man in brown entered and was given ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... that diverting piece "High Life below Stairs" seem almost flat. The simperings of these gentry, their airs and conceit, we may be sure, obtain now. Once coming out of a Theatre, at some fashionable performance, through a long lane of tall menials, one fussy aristocrat pushed one of them out of his way. The menial contemptuously pushed him back. The other in a rage said, "How dare you? Don't you know, I'm the Earl of —-" "Well," said the other coldly, "If you be a Hearl, can't you be'ave ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... good enough," said Mr. St. Clair, "you're too fussy about trifles, Isabel. Come, children, scurry off to bed, you'll get no beauty ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... Cowan idly lolled by this while the Wilbur twin sprawled in the scented grass at his feet. He well knew he should not be on the ground in his Sunday clothes. On the other hand, if the gypsies stole him they would not be so fussy as Winona about his clothes. None of them seemed to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... them, or giving an order, he repeats several times in succession, with a puzzled, far-away air: 'What's your name?... what, what's your name?' with extraordinary sharp emphasis on the first word, which gives the phrase a rather close resemblance to the call of a quail. He is very fussy and terribly close-fisted, but manages his land badly; he had chosen as overseer on his estate a retired quartermaster, a Little Russian, and a man of really exceptional stupidity. None of us, though, in the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky had bored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight. She seemed to be tired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face had not even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which one sees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of the presence of an unknown ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to say that Angela was as fussy as a hen with one chick was to speak but very mildly of her condition. She looked on it as the foundation of her fortunes, and, surely, she thought, no one had ever owned such a beautiful ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the fussy pomposity of the Queen's jubilee, the voice of the thinkers has not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... most important developments of the Salissa mystery would take place. He wanted to know what Steinwitz was doing, and whether Konrad Karl was still enjoying his spendthrift holiday in Paris. He would have liked to be in a position to watch the fussy activities of Sir Bartholomew Bland-Potterton. Later on I was able to tell him something, not of Steinwitz or Konrad Karl, but about Sir Bartholomew. It was impossible to live in London during the latter part of July without perpetually bumping against Bland-Potterton. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... stretch of rollicking, tumbling, buoyant waters between bank and bank, only one piece of river-craft could be seen. This pushed onward, cleaving through the little billows in the teeth of the morning breeze. It was a tiny naphtha launch—a horrid, fussy, smoking little thing, cutting through breeze and water, and diffusing a scent of oil and greased iron in the pure and radiant air. A white bird on the bank looked at it, and rose with a startled note of alarm, and a flight of lovely-salmon-coloured colleagues followed. The others merely looked ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... difficulties about that," he said. "It happens that David is very fussy about his guns, always cleans them himself, you know, and won't let another soul touch 'em. And though he keeps them in the gunroom like the rest of us, he's got his own particular glass-fronted cupboard which he keeps the key of himself. My uncle and I share one between us, and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... was a kindly little man, with an absurd fussy manner full of importance, as so many kindly little men have. Is it by some gentle providential dispensation that the physically insignificant are so often ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... were fighting and shouting for the possession of the best peep-hole to see through. On the spot where I had heard the cry for help from the burning room, on the spot where the panic-stricken servant had dropped on his knees, a fussy flock of poultry was now scrambling for the first choice of worms after the rain; and on the ground at my feet, where the door and its dreadful burden had been laid, a workman's dinner was waiting for him, tied up in a yellow ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of ugly dispositioned animals, who are always in a ferocious mood, just like certain ill-tempered human beings, who believe everything and everybody is trying to injure them. The common shrew, for example, is noisy, bold and fussy. He seems to delight in calling attention to himself by his grunty, squeaky voice. He advertises himself as a bad animal; and bad he is, for his terrible odour prevents other animals from coming near. Horses and mules are at times quite ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... any other human being, even the beloved brother Russell. No, no; she would never ask him for such a thing, that honorable, high-minded, hero-uncle, with his scorn for everything that was contemptible or mean; "fussy," Percy had called him, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... he used to speak of those who had been kind to him (such as his publisher, Mr. John Murray for instance) to show that no one could be more loyal or more grateful than he who has been depicted as the incarnation of all that is spiteful, fussy, and mean. There is no need for the world to be told here that the author of "Lavengro" is a delightful writer, and one who is more sure than most authors of his time to win that little span of life which writing men call "immortality." But if ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... A fussy devil, the room-clerk! He knew perfectly well that Archie found his room satisfactory. These chappies gassed on like this so as to try to make you feel that the management took a personal interest in ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... one was listening to Gadabout. Any further fussy complaining of this little craft was drowned by the Commodore reading aloud. He had bethought him of a book containing some chapters on Brandon that we had got from the manor-house. And reading made us hungry; and there were two apple ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... when I saw it; and though they were amusing, the beach was spoiled. The hotel rooms were close and hot; I missed all the dainty freedom and purity of my own home; the people I saw were, it seemed to me, entirely in keeping with the rooms; that is, they were stiff and fussy, not quiet and busy. They were busy after their own fashion, indeed; but it always seemed to me busy about nothing. The children I saw too did not attract me; and I fear I did not attract them. I was sober-hearted ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... join some acquaintances in Switzerland. Luckily her trustee and would-be lover, Bill Chester, proposed to come out and join the party there. That was something to look forward to, for Sylvia was very fond of him, though he sometimes made her angry by his fussy ways. Chester had not approved of her going to Paris by herself, and he would certainly have shaken his head had he known of ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... under Roy's beech-tree was splashed with freckles of sunshine; freckles that were never still, because a fussy little wind kept swaying the top-most branches, where the youngest beech-leaves flickered, like golden-green butterflies bewitched by some malicious fairy, so that they could never fly into the sky till summer was over, and all the leaf butterflies in the world ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... auctioneer, sat with his clerk at the end of the table, arranging his papers and unrolling his map of the property. He was a fussy little man, and made a great pother because the map as soon as unrolled started to roll itself up again. He weighted one corner with the inkpot, and for a second weight reached out a hand for one of three hyacinth vases which decorated the centre ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... is a sage, and understands the Great Way (tao)." On the other hand, only fifty years before this, when in 538 Ts'u, with Tsin's approval, first tried her hand at durbar work, the king was horrified to hear from a fussy chamberlain (evidently orthodox) that there were six different ways of receiving visitors according to their rank; so that Ts'u's ritual decorum could not have been of very long standing. The following ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... large English yachts adds quite a new feature to every grand regatta. Here again, however, the French navy led the way, and England follows somewhat tardily. The French fleet at the Cherbourg review, some years ago had a swarm of these fussy little creatures buzzing about the great anchored iron-clads. English steam-launches were built to carry each a gun, and so they are bluff and slow. Our Admiralty declined to allow a race between these and the French launches in Paris, else, no doubt, the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... dear, there you are mistaken. She is too fussy; she irritates people. But for the old admiral she would often get into difficulties. Beechhurst has taken to ladies' meetings and committees, and all sorts of fudge that she is the moving spirit of. I often wish we were back in the quiet, times when dear old Hutton was rector, and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... quarters of a twentieth century woman of wealth and leisure. In the sitting room were books in four languages; on the walls were tasteful reproductions of her favorite old masters. The excellence of her education was attested not by the books and pictures but by the absence of those fussy, commonplace draperies and bits of bric-a-brac where—with people of no taste and no imagination furnish their houses because they can think of nothing else to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... a deep inhale.] Gee, they're fussy in this dump, ain't they? [She puffs, staring at the table top. MARTHY looks her over with a new penetrating interest, taking in every detail of her face. ANNA suddenly becomes conscious of this appraising stare—resentfully.] Ain't nothing wrong ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... a merry sound. None of the boys had a truly jovial look, nor was it to be expected of them. Tom was solemn as an owl, Harry fussy; Dan was grinning in a sickly sort of way, as was Dave Darrin. Greg Holmes, utterly silent, stood with his fists clenched, thinking how he would like to be able at this moment ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... know what to suggest in that case," smiled Lester. "The old gentleman oughtn't to be so fussy." ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... physical possession, the divine glow had paled about his brow. She had found him only a man, self-conscious, egotistic and domineering. He had many personal habits she did not like. He was overfastidious in his dress, and critical and fussy about her lack of order in housekeeping. He was finicky about his food. He hated tea, declaring the odour made him sick. She felt this a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the old fortune-teller. Now and then she heard voices and laughter, and it gave her such a lonely, left-out feeling that she could scarcely keep back the tears. She knew that the others thought she was fussy and overparticular, and that helped to make her ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Bolsheviks ... Did I tell ye that Miss Reston sent me a grand feather-boa—grey, in a present? I've aye had a notion o' a feather-boa, but I dinna ken how she kent that. And this is no' yin o' the skimpy kind; it's fine and fussy and soft ... Here, did the Lord send Miss Jean a present?... I doot he's aff for guid. Weel, ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... with a fussy conscience, a nervous fear of wrong-doing, who are without intelligence and imagination, but you never meet the noblest, and serenest, and largest examples of goodness without these attributes," ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and reached the hammock in the garden where Cecily lay. She liked a hammock, and her father could not stand china figures and vases on it, so that it secured her where to lay her head. Gainsborough was very fussy over the news; a deeper but quieter excitement glowed in Cecily's eyes as, listening to Sloyd, she feigned to pay no heed. She had designs on the check. Beauty unadorned may mean several things; but moralists ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to grant a deferred audience at home to various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished complete and habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that the place should be both habitable and hospitable. They were right, they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had returned home some time after midnight, with the Wyllyses; but the next morning she rose with the chickens, and before the October sun, to pursue, as usual, her daily labours. It was truly surprising how much Patsey Hubbard found time to do in a single day, and that without being one of your fussy, utilitarian busy-bodies, whose activity is all physical, and who look upon half an hour passed in quiet thought, or innocent recreation, as so much time thrown away. Our friend Patsey's career, from childhood, had been one of humble industry, self-forgetfulness, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... while I was there. I thought he was going to be aggrieved, but he was not with ME. If it is not a snobbish thing to say, he is rather proud of his son's choice. He was a bit too fussy and outspoken, and dear Peter got the fidgets wondering what he would say next; but I did not mind. He talked about building us a house, but Peter whispered to me that that would take too long, and that already he had one in his eye (I know it—a lovely place, with the prettiest grounds, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... report," she said. "Regulations require that each post-mortem be reported promptly and that a record of the Lani concerned be posted in the death book together with all pertinent autopsy data. Man Blalok is very fussy about proper records." She drew one of the chairs to a spot beside the desk and sat down, crossed her ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... across the desk. Forrester, though he supposed some people might be fussy about it, could see no objection whatever to the term Aphrodisiacs. A wild thought dealing with Spheres of Influence strayed into his mind, ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that she was seducing him from his work, while she would just sit numbed until the enchantment came again. Without it there were moments when he seemed just ridiculous with his masses of papers, and Mr Clott, and his fussy insistence on being a great artist.... It was a keen pleasure to her to bring him back suddenly to physical things like food and clothes and to care for him. Sometimes he would forget everything except food and clothes, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... morning to have a look at a guard. He found our one and only T. B. Ponks doing sentry. "Turn out the guard," was the order. "Eh?" was the response. "Where is the guard?" asked the flushed suite. "A dunno," said T. B. The suite was inclined to be fussy, but our Brigadier is essentially human. "Where are the other lads?" he asked genially. "They 'm in theer," said T. B., pointing to the entrance with no particular enthusiasm. The Brigadier and his staff made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... at their dress," said Jennie; "they are to the full as fussy and particular about it as girls; they have as many fine, invisible points of fashion, and their fashions change quite as often; and they have just as many knick-knacks, with their studs and their sleeve-buttons and ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "I was dreadfully fussy while I was a woolly lamb," said Dorothy, "for it didn't feel good, a bit. And I wasn't quite sure, you know, that I'd ever get to be ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... said Fisher, "but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... the Aldwych Theatre in London. The Deveral household consists of old Mrs. Deveral, her middle-aged children—Agnes who is efficient, Emily who is muddle-headed, and Henry who is fussy—and Judy Deveral, her granddaughter. Rodney Walter, Henry's agent, is making love to Judy, and she prefers him to the young and unsophisticated Bobbie Forrester, who also loves her. It is Judy's eighteenth birthday, and her relations feel that it is ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried to extend his sway to pools and bogs, And rule the Frogs! But modern Frogdom, which had champions able, Had read old-AEsop's fable, And of King Stork's appearance far from ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... bowie-knives, and were only separated after JOHN had inflicted on THOMAS ten mortal wounds and received from him one less. It is generally admitted that nothing could have been fairer than the conduct of the police, who formed a cordon round the duellists, and thus prevented the fussy interference which has so often brought similar affairs to a premature termination. The two coffins are to be of polished walnut-wood, and will be provided by the Friendly Society to which the two deceased belonged, as a last ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent for a few hours longer than usual: 'A sight of you, Mr Harding, is good for sore eyes;' how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn't have dined, or couldn't have breakfasted, or couldn't have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... some men—small, fussy, finicking fellows, with whom nature has made the irreparable blunder of sex—who are as troublesome in their endless interference as the narrowest-minded and most meddling women of their acquaintance; but the feminine characteristics ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... small sallow man, with rather an agitated fussy manner, and eyes that never seemed to be looking at you. He was neat, almost dapper, in his dress, and was rather like the butler in ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was now established in a comfortable basket in a corner of the scullery. There she lay, looking like a ball of ermine, with her two ten-days old kittens snuggling up close to her. Josephine was a nervous, fussy mother, but she was devoted to her master, and he could do with her ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... is," said Aunt Marjorie in her fussy tones. "Judy, I hope Hilda is not going to encourage you in silly sentimental talk of that kind. You say your heart aches with pleasure. Really, my dear, I have no patience to listen to you. I should like to know what a child like you knows about heart-aches—you, ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... precincts of your nunnery.'[18] But it was useless for any bishop to order Madame Eglentyne to give up her dogs, she could not even be parted from them on a pilgrimage, though they must have been a great nuisance in the inns, especially as she was so fussy about their food. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Crowther, returning to his grievance. '"Substitute some athletic pursuit involving less danger to the general public: something more conducive to the preserving of law and order,"' he quoted, bitterly, with a clever imitation of the fussy little Doctor's pompous manner. 'Fancy giving up hare-and-hounds for some "pursuit" like croquet, or ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... will, won't consent to set one aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... at it or, being scaremongers, rabidly approve it—considered it a great shame and a great pity that the poor old man should thus victimise those closing years of his life which should have been spent in that honourable retirement which is the right place for fussy old people of both sexes and all ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... few minutes, she thought, by running down to the corral where Frank would probably stop and unload the few sacks of grain he was bringing, before he drove up to the house. Frank was very methodical in a fussy, purposeless way, she had observed. Twice he had driven to Echo since her father had been hurt, and each time he had stopped at the corral on his way to the house. So she closed the screen door behind her, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... wusser dan night owls," said the old woman. "Ef you keeps on wid dis settin'-up-all-night bizness, I boun' some er you gwine turn inter one'r dese yer big, fussy owls wid yaller eyes styarin', jes' de way li'l Mars Kit doin' dis ve'y minnit, tryin' ter keep hisse'f awake. An' dat 'mines me uv a owl whar turnt hisse'f inter a man, an' ef a owl kin do dat, w'ats ter hinner one'r ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction." We can only praise either as it is "clothed in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise the one by getting too much of the other. Confounded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. When people all about us are doing things by their own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regulation and discipline and the wholesome restraint ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... only Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long, dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double bow-knot, with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn bonnet, and eyes like black glass beads shining through in the bows of her horn spectacles, and her hymn-book in her hand ready to lead the psalm. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the midst stood two ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had to admit that probably all these things were really good for me. But it got to where everything I did was something that was good for me—and that was bad. Hell, it isn't natural for a young fellow just out of college to live like a fussy old man of seventy with a grudge against the undertaker. Life became ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... mountains alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world. Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful, fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no variation, neither ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... enough, but yesterday Milnes said I was the only literary man he ever knew, tenax propositi, able to make out a life for himself and abide in it—'for,' he went on, 'you really do live without any of this titillation and fussy dependence upon adventitious excitement of all kinds, they all say they can do without.' That is more true—and I intend by God's help to live wholly for you; to spend my whole energies in reducing to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... road, sits upon his box in repose; and that repose inspires me with confidence in him; but if he should be constantly on the look-out for some trick, and constantly examining his harnesses, and constantly fussy and uneasy, I should lose my confidence in him, and wish I were in ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... thrills. Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. Once while we were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked the road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, waiting for his next cue. The lady in pink satin had made a little dugout for herself under the track, and ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... payment of an exorbitant rent in advance, and the receipt of innumerable letters from a restless and fussy steward whom he had not yet seen, went as evidence, he knew himself to be the tenant in possession of a great shooting in Morayshire. He had several photographs of what was called the lodge, but looked like something between ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... settlement into a centre of mercantile activity. Seven years ago I journeyed down the Yukon towards Siberia and a problematical Paris in a small crowded steamer, built of roughly hewn logs, and propelled by a fussy little engine of mediaeval construction. We then slept on planks, dined in our shirt-sleeves, and scrambled for meals which a respectable dog would have turned from in disgust. On the present occasion we embarked on board a floating palace, a huge stern-wheeler, as ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... as were their ancestors on both sides. My mother was uniformly religious, but not fussy about it. I have seen her intensely happy, but never heard her shout. Her religion was a deep, smooth, current without fluctuation. My father was religious more by spells, but still he never went to extremes, and could never "get religion" ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... crown. Just once the noble head was lowered—as that of an ancient Greek philosopher to an inquisitive child—and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took note of the fussy movements ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Fussy old duck," murmured the barkeeper as he let the flame he had ignited die out, flicking the blackened ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... obstacles had attended his intrusion into the castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs. Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while talking to George carrying on two other conversations on topics of the moment), and he was past the censors and free for one night only to add his presence to the chosen inside the walls of Belpher. His duties ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of his joy was such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles—never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility—almost fussy about it. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... impede, and sometimes frustrate, business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in colloquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... finished doing this, she was ready to have the Gu'un Dzan (Manchu headdress) placed on and pinned through the knot with two large pins. Her Majesty always dressed her hair first and then washed her face. She was as fussy and particular as a young girl and would give it to the eunuch if he did not get it just to suit her. She had dozens of bottles of all kinds of perfume, also perfumed soap. When she had finished washing her face, she dried it on a soft towel ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the stuffy people Lili Estradina won't be bothered with, there are days when I never lay eyes on Paul, and barely have time to be waved and manicured; but, apart from that, Raymond's really much nicer and less fussy than he was." ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... which he expected to spend the evening with the Grays he found it not a little difficult to keep his mind upon his work with the Judge, and that gentleman seemed to him extraordinarily particular, even fussy, about having every fact brought to him painstakingly verified down to the smallest detail. When at last he was released, and he rushed home in his car to dress, he discovered that his spirits were dancing as he could not remember having felt them dance for a year. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... sound of steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning herself ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... bred in it. He remembered how the old servants used to smile as they opened the door to him; how the familiar butler would say, when he had been absent a few hours longer than usual, "A sight of you, Mr. Harding, is good for sore eyes;" how the fussy housekeeper would swear that he couldn't have dined, or couldn't have breakfasted, or couldn't have lunched. And then, above all, he remembered the pleasant gleam of inward satisfaction which always spread itself over the old bishop's face whenever ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... China Cat," said her sister Angelina. "She is so white that the least speck shows on her. Real white cats are very fussy about keeping themselves clean, so I do not see why a white China Cat should not be treated the same way. You dust the Nodding Donkey, Geraldine, and ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such an infinity of angles to human ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the library in his uncle's house, he began to be comforted by his luxurious surroundings, the same bright fire burned that Honor loved to see and the easy chairs and soft rich carpet suggested satisfaction to the most discontented. A few minutes of fussy preparations and the gloomy twain were immersed in dry business. Apart from the monotonous scratching of their hurried pens there was but an occassional short remark uttered until the welcome sound of the tea-bell broke the spell of sullenness ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... nervous fussy little man. Russians are not cowards, but Andrey Vassilievitch lost his wife last year. He was very devoted to her—very. He is miserable without her, they say. Perhaps he has come to ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Street poured out incessantly upon the bridge seemed ripe and good in her eyes. A traffic of copious barges slumbered over the face of the river-barges either altogether stagnant or dreaming along in the wake of fussy tugs; and above circled, urbanely voracious, the London seagulls. She had never been there before at that hour, in that light, and it seemed to her as if she came to it all for the first time. And this great mellow place, this London, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and dropped a bundle of picks and shovels which he was carrying to the gunners, who had begun the emplacements; the boyish Major dismounted, subduing his excitement with a dignified frown; and for a while he was very fussy and very busy, aiding the battery captain in placing the guns ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... a visit from Diana. Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her side, even to this pere prodigue, obeyed the summons promptly, with the full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... a fussy little woman, her hostess of the night before, on her way down the room stopped and ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... M. Rotsartz{3}, is doing a drawing of me. I go to Lady Bagot's hospital, where he is laid up, and sit to him in the intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have known so far. Lady Bagot is never bustled or fussy, nor even "busy," and her staff are excellent men, with the "Mark of ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... general clerical servant of all work. Mr. Mearns is a calm, rather bilious- looking, elderly man. There is nothing bewitching in his appearance; he looks like what he is—a quietly-disposed, evenly-tempered, Methodist minister. He is neither fussy, nor conceited, nor fond of brandishing the sword of superiority. He goes about his work steadily, and is as patient in harness as out of it. He has northern blood in his veins which checks impulsiveness and everything approaching that solemn ferocity sometimes displayed in Methodist ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... She was profoundly indifferent to what happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part, and at which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes, and in puffed Jeffries, solicitous as a fussy old ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... what I call a finished product of a wife. I'll never do it in the world. I can get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer's hen-house week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I'm due to put the old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this year. I'm thinking of buying him a hen farm to save myself trouble. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional parent has been created in the schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto on any tune he too positively dislikes, and it is well known that the ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... returns to the charge and pays his respects to each member of the "ten tribes" in turn. The author's offense is found to consist largely of ignorant meddling. The publisher is too often ignorant, fussy, unskilled, pedantic, shiftless, and money-seeking, willing to make books unsightly if their cheapness will sell them. The printer is the scapegoat, and many books are spoiled in spite of his efforts, while he gets all the blame. But he is apt to have ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... cedar tree, the Queen Mother was growing restless and fussy. She knew that the Workers were raising some young Queens, and she tried to get to the royal cells. She knew that if she could only do that, the young Queens would never live to come out. The Workers knew this, too, ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... rich and costly clothes. In truth, he was in early life a good deal of a dandy. His clothes were made in London; and from his long letters to his tailor we know that he was fussy about their quality and their fit. Even while away from home fighting Indians and making surveys, he did not neglect to write to London for "Silver Lace for a Hatt," "Ruffled Shirts;" "Waistcoat of superfine scarlet Cloth and gold {67} Lace," "Marble colored Silk Hose," "a fashionable ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... a good time!" her grandmother answered. And then settling back comfortably, she added with her kind, fussy superiority, "Well, Kate, I've wondered where you were hiding yourself all this time! Let's have the business. But first I want to say that I appreciate your turning to me. If it's money—I've got it. If it's something else, Chris Liggett is one of the cleverest men in New ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... which Richard de Bury proposed to apply for the safety of his library when reposed within the walls of Durham Hall. These provisions are specially interesting as an example of the care with which a fussy bookworm attempted to safeguard his treasures, and because they permit free lending of books outside the Hall. Five of the scholars sojourning in the Hall were to be appointed by the Master to have ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... arise over the training and care of the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman—e.g. to a boy's pranks—causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,—tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father who arouses the mother's concern for the child. If a frank quarrel results, no ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the first to demand breakfast, as always. Very neat, was Pa, and fussy, and strangely young looking to be the husband of the grey-haired, parchment-skinned woman who lay in the front bedroom. Pa had two manias: the movies, and a passion for purchasing new and complicated household utensils—cream-whippers, egg-beaters, window-clamps, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... too soft. You need something to wake you up to the real hardships that men have to go through. Then you won't be so fussy over little things. Perhaps I've talked plainer to you than I should; but I believe in going after a fellow with a club before his face rather than a knife behind his back. Now let's open those windows so the fresh ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... age and sex of his last victim would have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and all the people on the pier smiled at us. We scuttled ashore and shook ourselves for delight. There was a policeman, a postman. Who are these fussy fellows with badges on their arms? ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... opportunity to put a crimp in the business for the owners. I envied the owners (we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling fussy little strikes often enough I could have kept the profits close to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid covetousness. The Golden Rule also ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... had grown up round the feud; but if anyone had had patience to examine it to the bottom he would probably have found the long and short to be that Mr Bickers, being unhappily endowed with a fussy disposition and a sour and vindictive temper, had incurred the displeasure of the boys of his rival's house, and not being the man to smooth away a bad impression, had aggravated it by resenting keenly what he considered to be an unjust prejudice ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... be so fussy," said Connie fretfully, "wet feet don't do any harm." But she obligingly soaked her feet, and ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Genoa; the last lean, blue-chinned official had left our decks; the last fruitseller had been beaten off with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from his boat; the last passenger had come aboard at the last moment—a fussy graybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatman over half a lira. But at length we were off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed, and Raffles and I leaned together over the rail, watching our shadows on the pale green, liquid, ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... T'an Ch'un and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort of fussy helter-skelter!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... rest of her lecture aside for future use, said: "Well, if it's all settled, then I've no more to say. Probably I'm too fussy about ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was a fussy, elderly gentleman, and in the two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so unprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. The latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... use to continue in that place, we hooked the cable: up it came, was tested, and lo! another complete break, a quarter of a mile off. I was amazed at my own tranquillity under these disappointments, but I was not really half so fussy as about getting a cab. Well, there was nothing for it but grappling again, and, as you may imagine, we were getting about six miles from shore. But the water did not deepen rapidly; we seemed to be on the crest of a kind of submarine mountain in prolongation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this unorthodox baptismal procedure, the boy is borne away. Curled up in the German's warm berth, this little eight-year-old bareback rider, wearied with the night's performance, sleeps until the next evening, unconscious of what has happened. Our fussy old 'granny' sits out on deck, rolling and pitching with the boat's motion, wondering what ails that chap who ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... bears it on horizontally. It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook, that you can ford all the year round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it? You are going to wind up your lead and line, shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... mamma is so fussy. I never have any peace of my life,' sighed Kitty, feeling that her lot ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the just man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine. But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. In other words, his treatment of the high theme chosen by him ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... frenzy of energy throughout the day leaves one at sunset as exhausted as a punctured balloon. The fussy little fellow who fancies himself rushed to death, who has no time to talk with anybody, who cannot be polite to his stenographer and his messenger boys because he is in such a terrible hurry, is dissipating his ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... who were well enough enjoyed his discomfiture immensely. Going into Salle III where there were shouts of laughter (the convalescents were sent to that room) I saw a funny sight. One little man, who was particularly fussy and grumpy (and very unpopular with the other men in consequence), slept near the stove, which was an old-fashioned coal one with a pipe leading up to the ceiling. The concussion had shaken this to such an extent that accumulations of soot had come down and covered him ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... upsetting whatever we undertake. Instead of giving to the problem of Judaism the careful deliberation that it requires, we get busy with a thousand and one things, whereby we hope to escape the need of concentrated attention. We have become fussy and fidgety. We are divided into committees and sub-committees. In place of clearness of thought we have a confusion of tongues. Our case illustrates the truth which Pascal enunciated, that most of the evils in the world can be traced to the inability of a person ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... yet Adam was the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a redeeming feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman, four years his senior, who had been teaching in the Hartley schools when he began courting her. She was a prim, fussy woman, born of a prim father and a fussy mother, so what was to be expected? Her face was narrow and set, her body and her movements almost rigid, her hair, always parted, lifted from each side and tied on the crown, fell in stiff little curls, the back part hanging free. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of obstacles had attended his intrusion into the castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs. Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while talking to George carrying on two other conversations on topics of the moment), and he was past the censors and free for one night only to add his presence to the chosen inside the walls ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There is a garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees and gardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finished hall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendance upon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality as a clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as his master, and, on my being civil to him, talked much ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... strides since 1860 were strikingly visible. In the earlier year I used frequently to visit a friend living at Nichtherohy, on the opposite shore of the bay. The ferriage then was by trig, long, sharp-bowed, black paddle steamers, with raking funnels. They were tremendously fussy, important, puffing little chaps, with that consequential air which so frequently accompanies moderate performance. The making a landing was a complicated and tedious job, characterized by the same amount of needless action and of shortcoming in accomplishment. We would back and stop about twenty ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and I went to him and asked him why he didn't fix the place up. He was as coolly polite as an iceberg, but he told me in so many words that it was none of my business. That it was his business to look after the interests of his employer and collect the rents, and not to humor the whims of a few fussy women who ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily career is very regular and monotonous. Our life is as stagnant as a Dutch ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... won't be fussy any more; I will just speak as I think. You are wiser than the aged, child! You will have to help me out. I am a mass of crusted prejudices, I find; but you are melting them all away. What beats me is how you found it ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said the fussy old gentleman, "why can't you stop—I don't want to hear you cry. Here," continued he, fumbling ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... disparagement to her sex by this—far from it; she referred to a manly man as compared with an unmanly one, and she thought, for one moment, rather disparagingly about the salute which her Samuel's bald pate had given to the door that morning. Probably she failed to think of the fussy manner in which she herself had assaulted the superintendent of police, for it is said that ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... agreed Ruth, as the young moving picture operator looked to her for confirmation. "I'm not a bit fussy," she added. "I've done harder things than crawl on my hands and knees out of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... subsequently for the ministry of commerce and public affairs, and that in turn for the foreign office. He was universally regarded as a stronger man than any of his chiefs during this period; but his public and private actions alike were always marked by a certain fussy quarrelsomeness which prevented him from being ever accounted a statesman of the first rank. The spirited foreign policy, calculated above all things to precipitate a quarrel between France and Great Britain, of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... action; and (provided that all the conditions had been accurately fulfilled, without the slightest flaw) the erring tradesman would be told by the Court not to do it again; while the complainant would have to pay all costs, and possibly a fine; and would be sneered at by the magistrate as a fussy idiot and a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... between the company and its workmen, indeed, seem to me to be governed by a sensible avoidance on the part of the company of everything like fussy paternalism; and to this, in some measure, I have no doubt, must be attributed the remarkably smooth and easy working of these relations through so long a course of years. The workmen are treated, not like children, but like ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... moved with him into the parsonage. She was a small, fussy lady, energetic and very business-like, who complained of what she called previous mismanagement and seemed ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... stalks and blades of bright-green grass were to be seen; the little rivulets glittering in the sunshine, and sweeping clods of earth and tiny chips of wood along with them; the reddish twigs of the lilac, with their swelling buds, which nodded just beneath the window; the fussy twitterings of birds as they fluttered in the bush below; the blackened fence shining wet from the snow which had lately melted off it; and, most of all, the raw, odorous air and radiant sunlight—all spoke to me, clearly ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... what you'd mean by Brooklyn. Your remark shows you to have subtlety. I must remember that, mustn't I! I won't always be driving through this big land. But—— Will I get all fussy and ribbon-tied again, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... more dressy ones. But it is a little fussy for a quiet evening at home, I suppose. Well, ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... on toward the Aquarium, both of us watching the ships as they came into the bay from the North river. The fussy, spluttering little tugs, the heavily laden ferries, the lazy fishing boats, the dredges and scows—even the least of them was made beautiful by its setting of clear winter sun ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... was far more interested in the winks and flatteries of the grocer's boy and the milkman than in any conquest of the fussy little fat man, who ate whatever she slammed before him and never ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... itself whether he could trust his sight and his hearing, indeed, whether he was really there or dreaming. Even this victim of extreme doubting folly conducted his business successfully so long as I knew him, and so comported himself in general as to attract no further comment than that he was "fussy." ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... capes; a ponderous man, hoarse of voice and mottled of face, who, having swallowed his hot rum and water in three leisurely gulps, tosses down the glass to the waiting pot-boy (and very nearly hits a fussy little gentleman in a green spencer, who carries a hat-box in one hand and a bulging valise in the other, and who ducks indignantly, but just in time), sighs, shakes his head, and proceeds to rewind the shawl about his neck ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... taking up my quarters in the chapar-khana, a party of Persian travellers appear upon the scene, and with them a fussy little man in big round spectacles and semi-European clothes. Scarcely have they had time to alight and seek out quarters than the little man makes his appearance at my menzil door in all the glory of a crimson velvet dressing-cap and blue slippers, and beaming ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... is out of the question without coolness, silence and submission. A fussy sailor is always a bad sailor; calmness and quiet being the great requisites for the profession, after the general knowledge is obtained. No really good officer ever makes a noise except when the roar of the elements renders it indispensable, in order to be heard. In that day, French ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... keen-witted men and women—just to set an example to the world of how people ought to live. Dolly Chapman, his wife, (for what would a reformer be without a wife,) was a ponderous woman, weighing more than two hundred pounds, and a proof that even in matrimony the opposites meet. She was a fussy, ill-bred woman, spoke with a strong nasal twang, and a sincere believer in all the reforms advocated by her husband, though she differed with him on one or two points of religion. And there was Mattie Chapman, a bright, bouncing girl of fifteen, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... minutes before seven Lord De Guest came into the small drawing-room, and found Johnny seated there, with a book before him. The earl was a little fussy, and showed by his manner that he was not quite at his ease, as some men do when they have any piece of work on hand which is not customary to them. He held something in his hand, and shuffled a little as he made his way up the room. He was dressed, as usual, in black; but ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Reform? Oh! just a fad,— Its advocates, in fact, as bad As those who want Cremation. A set of foolish, fussy fools Whose misplaced ardour nothing cools— A ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... having begun badly, threatened to end worse. Master Vallance chewed the cud of country-side gossip. He reminded himself that not so very far away the King had set up his standard at Nottingham and summoned all loyal souls to his banner; that not so very far away in Cambridge, a fussy gentleman, a Mr. Cromwell, member for that place, had officiously pushed the interests of the Parliament by raising troops of volunteers and laying violent hands upon the University plate. Master Vallance tickled his chin and tried ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that day fortnight. The next morning wardrobes were ransacked. The silk, muslin, and lace of their prosperous days were looked out: grave discussions were held over each work of art. Rose was active, busy, fussy. The baroness threw in the weight of her ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... an assembly of the free and easy our traveller entered. He was a short, thick-set man, carefully dressed, with a round, good-natured countenance, and something rather fussy and particular in his appearance. He was very careful of his valise and umbrella, bringing them in with his own hands, and resisting, pertinaciously, all offers from the various servants to relieve him of them. He looked ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... moved only along the east and west axis of the Exposition. The north and south development is not without its charm. The terraced city of San Francisco, on the south, without a doubt looks best on a densely foggy day. With its fussy, incongruous buildings - I hesitate to call them architecture - it serves hardly as a background for anything, let alone a group of monumental buildings. The opposite side, where nature reigns, atones for multitudes of sins that man committed on the city's ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... mutual complaints, as if everybody were against everybody, agreeing in nothing but in appealing to the elder sister. First, there was Alda's story. Never had there been such a miserable time—with Geraldine interfering, fussy, fretful, fault-finding; Clement intolerable in primness and conceit, only making the children worse when he pretended to keep them in order, and making such a fuss about Geraldine, when nothing ailed her but ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time need not be referred to here; for he himself has related them in clear, life-like, homely terms which reveal one of the sources of his personal influence. Englishmen admire a man who is active without being fussy, who combines greatness with simplicity, whose kindliness is as devoid of ostentation as his religion is of mawkishness, and with whom ambition is ever the handmaid of patriotism. The character of a commander perhaps counts for more with ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... a stile through the fence at the point where they reached it, and Dave Cowan idly lolled by this while the Wilbur twin sprawled in the scented grass at his feet. He well knew he should not be on the ground in his Sunday clothes. On the other hand, if the gypsies stole him they would not be so fussy as Winona about his clothes. None of them seemed ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... make it too fussy," said Dorothy, "or Nellie may not feel at home; and we certainly want her to enjoy herself. Will we put a pink or blue ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... under control at every leap, till, by a supreme effort, Chip brought them, panting, to a stand before the porch where the Old Man stood boiling over with anxiety and excitement. James G. Whitmore was not a man who took things calmly; had he been a woman he would have been called fussy. ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the ignorance—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance—of what "people" in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... There is danger, and very real danger, lest we should take for granted what the "Grad-grinds" tell us, that the only thing which matters is that we do work, and are not idle. Work for its own sake is not enough. It may turn men into machines—all clatter and monotony; or it may make them fussy nuisances. "A soulless activity," says Canon Ainger, "may save a man from vagrancy only by turning him into a thing; or it may keep him from idleness by making him an egotist." There is the man who, to use the common phrase, "sticks at it" with scarcely a competing thought or ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... Christians, you will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and laughed. "'Youth is a great time, but somewhat fussy,'" she quoted; and the two ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... time—and how careful we were about our clothes, and our amateur barbering. Terry, in particular, was fussy to a degree about the cut of his beard, and so critical of our combined efforts, that we handed him the shears and told him to please himself. We began to rather prize those beards of ours; they were almost our sole distinction among those tall and sturdy women, with their cropped hair ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... next morning she rose with the chickens, and before the October sun, to pursue, as usual, her daily labours. It was truly surprising how much Patsey Hubbard found time to do in a single day, and that without being one of your fussy, utilitarian busy-bodies, whose activity is all physical, and who look upon half an hour passed in quiet thought, or innocent recreation, as so much time thrown away. Our friend Patsey's career, from childhood, had been one of humble industry, self-forgetfulness, and active charity; her time ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... being with sporadic hairs upon his face, spectacles, a red button nose, and aged black raiment. He was evidently enormously impressed by my uncle's monetary greatness, and by his own inkling of our identity, and he shone and brimmed over with tact and fussy helpfulness. He was eager to share the watching of the bedside with me, he proffered services with both hands, and as I was now getting into touch with affairs in London again, and trying to disentangle the gigantic details of the smash from the papers I had succeeded in getting ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Still, all this being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional parent has been created in the schoolmaster's mind by that fussy and ill-informed individual who is always "writing to complain." Now, he who pays the piper does not necessarily call the tune. That would be too absurd. But he has a veto on any tune he too positively dislikes, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a modern progressive ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... like a touch of manliness. A feeble, and fussy, and finicking little proctor, who happened to be on the bank, was pompously endeavouring to assert his dignity, and make himself attended to. He was just beginning to get indignant at the laughing contempt with which his impotent ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... get you the things," she said with apology in her eyes and voice, as if fussy celebrities had descended on her small, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... department. Fussy little brute. Won't leave you alone. Always trying to catch you on the hop. There's one thing, though. The work in the postage is pretty simple. You can't make many mistakes, if you're careful. It's mostly entering ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... think one does, always," he remarked placidly. "I sometimes think that accounts for a good deal! There's a man, now—see that fussy little fellow getting out of his motor coat? ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... crowd was gathered at the New York end of the Brooklyn Bridge waiting for trolley-cars. An elderly lady, red in the face, flustered and fussy, dug her elbows into convenient ribs ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... man to work for them and said he would much like to go with them. So much he got from his talk that they let him join them. It was very cold and there was a driving snow-storm. As the man was so fussy and talkative they gave him a nickname and ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... to run into the little flat one," said Sunny Boy positively, pointing an excited little forefinger at a fussy little tugboat making straight for a lazily floating ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... library in his uncle's house, he began to be comforted by his luxurious surroundings, the same bright fire burned that Honor loved to see and the easy chairs and soft rich carpet suggested satisfaction to the most discontented. A few minutes of fussy preparations and the gloomy twain were immersed in dry business. Apart from the monotonous scratching of their hurried pens there was but an occassional short remark uttered until the welcome sound of the tea-bell broke the spell ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... enlighten me too, should she be thereunto moved. She was a venerable, silver-haired old lady, clad in the traditional dress of her sect, and looking very much like a living representation of Elizabeth Fry. She received me very cordially; though I felt as if I were a fussy innovation of the nineteenth century breaking in upon the sacred, old-fashioned quiet of her neat parlour. She "thee'd and thou'd" me to my heart's content: and—to summarize the conversation I held ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... party to land was a tall young man in white ducks, while directly behind came another elderly man with a very high forehead and a fussy, excitable manner. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Switzerland. A festive journey, yes; but the expression regards the mental progress rather than the apparent. Mr. Dillwyn, being an old traveller, took things with the calm habit of use and wont; and Lois, new as all was to her, made no more fussy demonstration than he did. All the more delicious to him, and satisfactory, were the sparkles in her eyes and the flushes on her cheeks, which constantly witnessed to her pure delight or interest in something. All the more happily he felt the grasp of her hand ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... of the struggles between fallen consequence and rising wealth. The last may, and does have the best of it, in the mere physical part of the strife; but in the more moral, if such a word can be used, the quiet ascendency of better manners and ancient recollections is very apt to overshadow the fussy pretensions of the vulgar aspirant, who places his claims altogether on the all-mighty dollar. It is vain to deny it; men ever have done it, and probably ever will defer to the past, in matters of this ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... there are many wives and widows possessed of these qualities, there seems to be some handicap to the spinster in the race of life who undertakes to arrive at middle age with all the womanly attributes. Almost invariably she drops some of them by the wayside. She becomes overorderly and fussy—so that association with her for any length of time is insupportable—or careless and indifferent. Or she may grow inordinately devoted to animal pets, and bitter and critical toward ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... His host, very fussy as he always was on the morning of his big shoot, came bustling towards Peter, Baron de Grost, with a piece of paper in his hand. The party of men had just descended from a large brake and were standing about on the edge of the common, examining ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... characters, no two clergymen, no two British matrons, no two fussy spinsters, no two men of fashion, no two heavy fathers, no two smart young ladies, no two heroines, are alike. And this variety results from the absolute fidelity of each character to the law of its own development, each one growing from within and not being simply described from without. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... morale matters were presented in the properly dramatic fashion so that that indefinable aura of reality, customarily omitted from official historical documents, could be included. The Evaluation Division, back on Earth, was very fussy ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... stevedores, their laboring bodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, the numerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we have noticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussy cargo winch. The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieks of the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped the hoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as could ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... told her their love troubles, the young wives came to her with tangles and little jealousies; and, if she could not always straighten them out, she had a marvellous way of comforting. Young men drifted toward her by some species of magnetism, though she had none of the fussy motherliness of some old ladies. With faculties still keen and bright, a great fund of good-humor that had the sparkle of champagne rather than any insipid sweetness, she never wearied or palled on any one. She kept ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... send him to the Burgesses and to make him a vestryman of old Pohick Church; if he felt the need of recreation he went fishing or fox-hunting or attended a horse race or played a game of cards with his friends, and he had few things to trouble him seriously. But fussy kings and ministers overseas were meddling with the liberties of subjects and were creating a situation out of which was to come a mighty burden—a burden so Atalantean that it would have frightened most men, but one that he was brave enough and strong enough ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the moat peaceful meadows led to the river, where between high wooded banks a stately silver stream glided slowly and tranquilly on in its path towards the ocean, rippling over weirs, and bearing on its calm bosom an occasional pleasure boat, punt, or fussy little motor yacht. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... seem utterly devoid of the instinct for dressing properly. Her masses of dull brown hair she wore strained from her high forehead and wound round her head in a fashion hopelessly obsolete. Her evening gown, of handsome gray silk, was ruined by those little fussy touches of lace and ruffling that brand a garment ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... the convoy generally begin to find out how matters stood, than like a parcel of fussy and frightened old women, they began to pop, pop, pop, firing away their one and two-pounders in all directions, and those farthest from the scene of action serving their guns the quickest, and firing the oftenest. It seemed to them of but ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they were a menage a trois. She recalled the beginnings of her married life. How fussy, how anxious, how unstable they had been! Now the current flowed strongly, steadily, evenly. The river seemed to have a soul, to know whither it ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... Aaron Whitcomb, and Mr. Silas White, were stalking majestically about the premises, with note-books and pens. Aaron Whitcomb was a grave portly old man, with a large head of white hair. Silas White was little and wiry and fussy. He monopolized the greater part of the business, although he was not half as well fitted for ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a dispirited way just what they find to do, and lapsing into indolence and indifference the moment that prescribed work ceases, those are the spirits that afford the real problem, because they despise activity, and think energy a mere exhibition of fussy diffuseness. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... matter," the fussy man said. "I think it is wrong to chase dogs or to tie tin cans on ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... don't. Station partings are fussy and disagreeable. I want to say good-bye to you here in your quiet room, just as I shall say goodbye to Sylvia at home. Ah, Mike, yes, both hands and smiling. May God give us other meetings and talks and companionship and years of love, my ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... annoy me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon such ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of an extra rigid character. I, for one, never believed there was any foundation for these silly reports, but, if any special formalities were prescribed, Mr. Chamberlain brushed them aside, and simply conducted himself with quiet, easy grace, always calm and self-possessed, and never fussy ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... had been standing before them with a composure which impressed Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little more erect, as he replied, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was a fine-looking woman—very fussy and very French. She smiled, and displayed her brilliant teeth at her daughter's answer, then stooped, and kissed her brow. Mrs. Delancey loved her child, with all the strength of affection she ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... intellectual movement of the great Reformation epoch here opens itself to us. In this case, also, we shall gain the conviction that a true genius takes the liveliest interest in the fate of his own nation, and does not occupy himself with distant, abstruse problems (such as fussy metaphysicians would fain philosophise into 'Hamlet'), whilst the times are going out of joint. The greatest Englishman remained, in the most powerful drama of his, within the sphere of the questions that agitated his time. In 'Hamlet' he identifies Montaigne's philosophy with ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Oh, no! A fussy busy-body! He knows so many ways of making himself unpleasant that everybody is afraid of him. It's just a game for the likes of him, making trouble for everybody. I must be off now! Mustn't keep work waiting, you know! I'll drop in again to-morrow morning and tell you all the ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... the ridiculous, the selfish, the pitiful, the human. Glimpses, hints, echoes, suggestions, involving tender sentiments hitherto unknown, we may suppose, to that unclaimed sister's breast,—pleasant excitement of receiving congratulations from suddenly cordial friends; the fussy delights of buying furniture and shopping for new dresses,—(it seemed as if she could hear herself saying, "Heavy silks,—best goods, if you please,")—with delectable thumping down of flat-sided ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chest from the sudden gusts which freshen the atmosphere of Guerande. He always went armed with a gold-headed cane to drive away the dogs who paid untimely court to a favorite little bitch who usually accompanied him. This man, fussy as a fine lady, worried by the slightest contretemps, speaking low to spare his voice, had been in his early days one of the most intrepid and most competent officers of the old navy. He had won the confidence of de Suffren in the Indian ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... dining-room, where Madame Beattie seldom went. Esther received him with a cool dignity. She was pale. Grandmother would no doubt have said she made herself pale in the interest of pathos; but Esther was truly suffering. Moore, fussy, flattered, ill at ease, stood before her, holding his hat. She did not ask him to sit down. There was an unspoken tradition in Addington, observed by everybody but Miss Amabel, that Moore was not, save in cases of unavoidable delay, to be asked to sit. He passed his life, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... until such time as his podgy legs had hardened sufficiently to bear his weight—with many falls, of course—and then he began to scurry about on his feet. His usual style of progression at this period was to take from two to four abrupt, jerky strides, rather with the air of a fussy and corpulent old gentleman who had to catch a train, and then to subside in a confused lump, on chest and nose, with tail waggling angrily in mid-air. This was not so annoying to the grey pup as one might suppose, because, though generally ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... nurse took Lord John, and the doctors stood round, And examined the child and his clothes; Whilst a fussy physician, with looks most profound, Wiped his aristocratical nose. "It is, I declare, most uncommonly fair, And its voice, oh! how sweet when it cries; It really would seem like the child of a dream, Or an angel just dropt from the skies." Now, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... himself, and, though he ate like a ravening animal, did not talk. Almost the only conversation was between the owner and the native servants, who waited at table abominably and were noisily reprimanded, and argued back. Each reprimand increased their inefficiency and insolence. Natives detest a fussy, noisy ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... looking porter stood on the rear platform of a sleeping-car in the Pennsylvania station when a fussy and choleric old man clambered up the steps. He stopped at the door, puffed for a moment, and then turned to the young man ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... hurried meal out of a tin can, drink unboiled water and walk or ride in the sun without a pith hat or an umbrella. Some foreigners who ought to know better are careless about these things and good-naturedly chaff one who is more particular. But while one should not be unnecessarily fussy, yet if he is courageous enough to be sensible, he will not only preserve his health, but be physically benefited by his tour, while the heedless man will probably be floored by dysentery or even if he escapes ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... her stay. Emma Jane has the promise of her next Sunday and Alice Robinson the next. Mrs. Simpson wanted I should have her first because I've had so much experience in babies. Come in and look at her sitting up in my bed, aunt Jane! Isn't she lovely? She's the fat, gurgly kind, not thin and fussy like some babies, and I thought I was going to have her to undress and dress twice each day. Oh dear! I wish I could have a printed book with everything set down in it that I COULD do, and then I wouldn't ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
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