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More "Motherly" Quotes from Famous Books



... Elizabeth being, as I have explained, strange old-fashioned young people, full of nineteenth-century ideas, hated these convenient creches exceedingly and at last took their little daughter to one with extreme reluctance. They were received by a motherly person in a uniform who was very brisk and prompt in her manner until Elizabeth wept at the mention of parting from her child. The motherly person, after a brief astonishment at this unusual emotion, changed suddenly into a creature of hope and comfort, and so ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... why the attitude of an issuing house, to a borrowing State, should be paternal or even grand-motherly, as compared with the purely business-like attitude of a banker to a local borrower. If the bank makes a bad debt, it has to make it good to its depositors at the expense of its shareholders. It diminishes the amount that can be paid in dividends and so the bank is actually ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... subject of much discussion amongst the young ladies, for she was very pretty, and her blue cloth suit was cut after the newest city fashion, and the one young man seemed in danger of presenting himself, and begging to be allowed to fetch and carry for her also. Several of the older women, with motherly hearts, had spoken to her, but she had continued to sit aloof, discouraging all advances. It was not because she was of an unsociable nature, but the struggle to keep back the tears of homesickness took all her attention. There was no place on ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... might be seen putting off for the town just at the time of the commencement of the levee. The party in the piazza consisted chiefly of women. Madame L'Ouverture was there—like, and yet unlike, the Margot of former years—employed, as usual—busy with her needle, and motherly, complacent, tenderly vigilant as of old; but with a matronly grace and dignity which evidently arose from a gratified mind, and not from external state. Her daughters were beside her, both wonderfully improved in beauty, though Genifrede still preserved the superiority there. She ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... Fatherly, motherly Feelings had changed,— Love, by harsh evidence, Thrown from its eminence; Even God's ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... anxiety when his mate was out of his sight did not, however, compare with her unrest in his absence, for her affection seemed to be of the motherly or protecting sort. Before they became familiar with the room, and learned that, though unseen, the partner was not lost, the moment he disappeared from view she began running around the cage excitedly, looking everywhere, and calling ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... spirit of restfulness. There was something so motherly in Aunt Linda's manner that it seemed to recall the bright, sunshiny days when she used to nestle in Mam Liza's arms, in her own happy home. The conversation was full of army reminiscences and recollections of the days of slavery. ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... to put her's on, and, surveying her with a smile of gratified motherly pride, told her she looked very well in it, and that she hoped she would ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... ran away on his errand, nurse addressed herself to Marten in a kind motherly manner, for nurse was not a young woman, and she was also a pious one. "Master Marten," she said, "I am sure you will be kind to the little one—you always are—for I must say you are one of the very best brothers I know, and that is saying a deal for you—for ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood

... with her, but evidently feeling that all depended on her labors. The meeting of the mother and daughter at the close of that important day is touching indeed. The joy with which the aged Naomi greets her only solace, and the kind and motherly care with which she brings the remains of her own scanty meal, which she had laid aside, her eager questions, and Ruth's cheerful replies as she lays down her burden and relates the pleasant events of ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... grand-children, and has been Queen of England for more than forty years, she is still a comely matron, with every appearance of health and vigour. Long may she remain so! Long may she continue to be, as now, the kindly, sympathetic, motherly head of a contented, loyal, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... Tonet's attendance on his brother's household was still more assiduous. He was turning the motherly advice he got there to good account. And to avoid any chance of gossip, he showed himself day after day with the Rector up at the boat-yard, watching the progress of the big frame which was now receiving its planking and was gradually taking ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... her that each age had its beauty. "See this mild grey eye," said he, "that hath looked motherly love upon so many of us, all that love hath left its shadow, and that shadow is a beauty which defieth Time. See this delicate lip, these pure white teeth. See this well-shaped brow, where comliness Just passeth into reverence. Art beautiful in ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... every sound the shadows of forms, feelings, and events of the happy but irrevocable past. When we entered our old night nursery, all my childish fears lurked once more in the darkness of the corners and doorway. When we passed into the drawing-room, I could feel the old calm motherly love diffusing itself from every object in the apartment. In the breakfast-room, the noisy, careless merriment of childhood seemed merely to be waiting to wake to life again. In the divannaia (whither Foka first conducted ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... neat, motherly old woman, beloved by everybody. She lived a number of years after her husband's death, and I seem to see her now, sitting at one side of the old fire-place knitting. She was always knitting, and turning out scores of thick warm socks and ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... showed it negatively, by his discretions and abstentions. I have an idea that Mabel was less disposed to deride him, might even have been induced to softer sentiments; but I doubt if Dredge even noticed the change. As for his ex-goddess, he seemed to regard her as a motherly household divinity, the guardian genius of the darning needle; but on Professor Lanfear he looked with a deepening reverence. If the rest of the family had diminished in his eyes, its head ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... azure smoke betrays the lurking town; With eager footsteps I advance and reach 25 The cottage threshold where my journey closed. Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps, From my old Dame, so kind and motherly, [G] While she perused me with a parent's pride. The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew 30 Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart Can beat never will I forget thy name. Heaven's blessing be upon ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... other things led him to neglect his child? Phil needed a mother. This dear, thoughtful woman, whom nature had made for motherhood, had seen things about his child, that he, the child's father, had not perceived. To a mind like Colonel French's, this juxtaposition of a motherly heart and a motherless child ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... nothing else to do, with Gray Billy Batch lost in Rattle Water, and now decently stowed away by the Reverend John Fairmeadow. It was lonely in Gray Billy Batch's cabin, now, of course; it was sometimes almost intolerably so—and ghostly, too, with echoes of long-past footsteps and memories of soft motherly words. Pattie Batch, however, a practical little person, knew in her own mind, you must be informed, exactly how to still the haunting echoes and transform the memories into blessed companions of her busy, gentle solitude; but she had not as ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... goes on to catalogue and explain the following instincts which he considered of basic importance in any study of economics: (1) gregariousness; (2) parental bent, motherly behavior, kindliness; (3) curiosity, manipulation, workmanship; (4) acquisition, collecting, ownership; (5) fear and flight; (6) mental activity, thought; (7) the housing or settling instinct; (8) migration, homing; (9) hunting ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... post, Robin?" asked his cousin Madge that evening as she nursed the adventurous boy on her knee—and Madge was a very motherly nurse, although a full ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... after you," said motherly Mrs. Brown. "Come along, Bunny and Sue. Mrs. Newton will be at our house by ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope

... does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. Childless ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... of the house was opened by a motherly looking colored woman, and Abe, taking Calhoun once more in his arms, carried him into the house. Aunt Liza, as the wife of Abe was called, seeing Calhoun looking so pale and thin, put her fat, black hand on his forehead, and said, "Po' chile, po' chile, ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... motherly, dumpy little woman in a large shawl, a wrapping gown, a clean, trim nightcap, and shod with ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... long day alone in the cottage parlour, chiefly meditating; though more than once friendly Mrs. Tod broke in upon my solitude. She treated me in a motherly, free-and-easy way: not half so deferentially as she ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... great leader of men, patient and motherly woman, we bow our hearts to do you honor! Your tribe is fast disappearing from the land of your fathers. May we, the daughters of an alien race who slew your people and usurped your country, learn the lessons of calm endurance, of patient persistence and unfaltering courage ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... pounds. This was the first instance in which I experienced the serious consequences of sporting liberal opinions. But it was not the only instance in which this good lady (who was always called mother by her family and friends, from her very motherly habits) had an opportunity of doing me a good turn in the same way. Another elderly lady, Mrs. Watts, of Lavington, who had voluntarily made her will, and left me property and estates, as being her nearest and only relation, upon being taken ill desired that I should be ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... himself up to such Dreamers; and sitting up with Tennyson conning over the Morte d'Arthur, Lord of Burleigh, and other things which helped to make up the two volumes of 1842. So I always associate that Arthur Idyll with Basanthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw. Mrs. Spedding was a sensible, motherly Lady, with whom I used to play Chess of a Night. And there was an old Friend of hers, Miss Bristowe, who always reminded me of Miss La Creevy if you know of such ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... never failed any one was stricken down with a bad case of influenza and was unable to leave his bed. This of course made Margery also practically hors de combat. The little folks spent most of their time across the street in motherly Mrs. Lambert's care. Upon Ned Holiday's children rested the chief burden ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... without touching him. Her left arm was hanging down, and her bare hand knocked against the back of the hand in which he held his hat. She felt as if at that moment she touched a furnace, and she saw him shiver slightly, as over-fatigued men sometimes shiver in daylight. An extraordinary, almost motherly, sensation of pity for him came over her. She did not know why. The intense heat of his hand, the shiver that ran over his body, his attitude as he shrank with a kind of timid, yet ferocious, politeness against the white wall, the expression in his eyes when their hands touched—a ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... reminiscences of the stately home of our childhood,—for we are all of us poets and geniuses in our youth, while earth is all new to us, and the chalice of every buttercup is brimming with the wine of poesy,—and we all remember the beautiful, motherly countenance which nature bent over us there. But somehow we all get stolen away thence; life becomes to us a sooty taskmaster, and we crawl through dark passages without end—till suddenly the word of some poet redeems us, makes us know who ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... thanks which ought to have made them offices of affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with tender, motherly instincts. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have known it," Prudence thought, with sorrow. But her motherly pride vanished before her motherly solicitude, and Connie was soon quieted by ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... me very welcome as had ever been her way. She was an eccentric, but embarrassingly straightforward old lady; and if I had heeded her simple motherly counsel in the past ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... your kind nursing," I said to Barbara. "Truly, I know not what I should do without your motherly comforting at times." ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... Desire, in the chimney corner, sobbing and wringing her hands, and rocking her body to and fro. She wouldn't eat, though good, kind, motherly Mrs. Moore, baked, on purpose for her, some of her most tempting cakes; she wouldn't drink, though Mrs. Moore handed her a nice hot cup of tea. She did nothing but cry fit to break her heart; while sensible little Mitty whispered to her mother to know "if she hadn't better ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... carefully and fed with such regularity that mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for ten years longer. This beast was the subject of perpetual talk and occupation; it seemed as if poor Mademoiselle Cormon, having no children on whom her repressed motherly feelings could expend themselves, had turned those sentiments wholly ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... more of his time than ever and seemed to cling to him with almost a motherly apprehension. Robinson noticed it and felt it very, very much, and his joy at getting out of prison oozed away more and more as the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... last volume by saying that I had taken lodgings in Norfolk Street, Strand, for the convenience of being near King's College. It was at the house of a Mrs. Nichols, tall, powerfully built, masculine, but a kind and motherly looking widow of fifty-two—an attentive and bustling landlady, looking herself to the better cooking, and having a plain cook, who was also a general servant, to help her downstairs, and two nieces to do the waiting and attendance on her lodgers upstairs. The younger was there alone when I entered ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... with Alaric's wife. And he was right in his thoughts. The world would now have called Linda the more lovely of the two, and certainly the more feminine in the ladylike sense of the word. If, however, devotion be feminine, and truth to one selected life's companion, if motherly care be so, and an indomitable sense of the duties due to one's own household, then Gertrude was not ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... the plump, motherly woman, upsetting a pan of apples in her surprise. "What are you young ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... Masses, prayers, alms-deeds, and such like good works." Then he disappeared, and his mother, instead of any longer wasting her strength by foolish grief, began henceforth to give her son proofs of a true Christian and motherly love, by complying with his request. (L. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... some members of the House, who claimed to represent the sentiments of a considerable number of people. It was proposed to grant L30,000 and an annuity of L6,000. The Premier stated that the Queen in marrying her daughter to one of her own subjects, had followed her womanly and motherly instincts. He dwelt upon the political importance of supporting the dignity of the crown in a suitable manner; upon the value of a stable dynasty; and the unwisdom of making minute pecuniary calculations upon such occasions. It ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... multitudes of hearty, joyous, healthily constituted men, who subsist upon daily newspapers, and find the world a most comfortable place to live in. As to Olivia, she was in the warm noon of life, and a picture of vitality and enjoyment. A plump, firm cheek, a dark eye, a motherly fulness of form, spoke the being made to receive and enjoy the things of earth, the warm-hearted wife, the indulgent mother, the hospitable mistress of the mansion. It is true that the smile on the lip had something of earthly pride ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... prevalence, in mild Provence, of the Iberian vice, and hardly know whether it makes the custom more respectable that at Nmes and Arles the thing is shabbily and imperfectly done. The bulls are rarely killed, and indeed often are bulls only in the Irish sense of the term— being domestic and motherly cows. Such an entertainment of course does not supply to the arena that element of the exquisite which I spoke of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... heard the news, and she could scarcely speak, but she folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Epiphanes. He began his speech, "Ye men of Macedonia," as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. He wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, and showed them the new king, who had been trusted, he said, by his father, to the motherly care of Agathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming at the throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truth of the charge. But his voice was soon drowned in the loud ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... instantly beat a hurried retreat. They only stopped to explain that all the world knows the object of Protestant worship is the devil, and they dare not stay within hearing of the sacrilegious rites. In spite of multiform discouragements like these, the evangelist and his wife, a motherly woman of much quiet strength, whose gentleness made sweet a very homely face, talked of their work and prospects with a matter-of-course hopefulness which it was not easy to share. Nothing in their habits, they told us, had more amazed their Roman Catholic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... to watch the doll open and shut its eyes, and to try to unbutton and button its coat and dress; and then the railroad track had to be set up and the train started off on its rounds. Ellen Robinson really looked almost motherly while she watched her happy children; and Julia Cloud relaxed, and let the smile come around her ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... Mrs. Culpeper crossed the floor hastily and put her arms about her son's shoulders. Her face was very motherly and there was a compassionate light in her eyes, "My dear, dear boy," she murmured in the soothing tone that one uses to the ill or the mentally unbalanced. "My dear boy, you must really go and dress. Julia will never forgive ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... had set up for himself in an inn, and that a widowed sister of his, named Susan Rodney, who also had been in the Torques' service, was keeping house for him. She was a really good sort, he declared, although she was Peacey's sister, and very motherly; indeed, she had been terribly upset by the loss of her only child, a little boy of nine, so she would doubtless welcome the charge of Roger. At any rate, there would be no harm in letting the child go to her for a three ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... growing very tall and thin, his chaft-blades being lank and white, and his eyes of a hollow drumliness, as if he got no refreshment from the slumbers of the night. Beholding all this work of destruction going on in silence, I spoke to his friend Mrs Grassie about him, and she was so motherly as to offer to have a glass of port-wine, stirred with best jesuit's barks, ready for him every forenoon at twelve o'clock; for really nobody could be but interested in the laddie, he was so gentle and modest, making ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... How absurd! Florence, this is just another of your motherly, oldmaidish ways—dressing dolls for poor children, making bonnets and knitting socks for all the little dirty babies in the region round about. I do believe you have made more calls in those two vile, ill-smelling alleys back of our house, than ever ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... is requested to order several pairs of good linen drawers for Carl. I intrust Carl to her kindness, and entirely rely on her motherly care. ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace

... voice was harsh, but with an undertone of great tenderness. She was scrupulously careful in her attire, which was rather above her station. Altogether, she had much the bearing of a gentle-woman. Her devotion to me was quite motherly. Never having had any family of her own, although she had been the wife of one of my father's shepherds, she expended the whole maternity of her nature upon me. She was always my first resource in any perplexity, for I was sure of all the help she could give me. And as she had much influence ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... devotion of Arria to her husband, and the pathos with which he describes the conduct of Fannia, who concealed the death of her dearly loved son from her sick husband Paetus, telling him the boy was well and resting quietly, and controlling her motherly tears until she could keep them back no longer, and rushed from the room to give them free course. Then, "Satiata siccis oculis composito vultu redibat, tanquam orbitatem foris reliquisset." No one could have written that beautiful sentence ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... Morley, who respectively represented the interests of Britain and America, were tremendous friends. Miss Rodgers was fair and rather plump and rosy-faced and calm, with a manner that parents described as "motherly," and a leaning towards mathematics as the basis of a sound education. Miss Morley, on the contrary, was thin and dark and excitable, and taught the English literature and the general knowledge classes, and was rumored—though this no doubt was libel—to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... takes care of her little children has to go through a thousand tiresome actions which would be intolerable if they were meaningless, but which compose a beautiful life if they are held together by the aim which the motherly love sees before it. Whatever work a human being may perform, force on his mind the treacherous suggestion that it is meaningless, that it is slavery, that others seize the profit, and he must hate it and feel ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... later years, one of the founders of Winton, on the Western River. Mrs. Lynett lately died in Winton at the ripe age of 84, her husband, Tom Lynett, having pre-deceased her some years. Like most of the women who pioneered, she had a grand heart, and I learnt how the diggers appreciated her motherly kindness. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... great demonstrations of affection, was greeting her son-in-law and daughter, M. and Mme. Davarande, who had just arrived. She felt obliged on this occasion to make a display of family feeling and to exhibit her motherly love. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... wearisome and uninteresting. On the other hand, the little Morleys were full of life and eagerness. The fault in them was that they wouldn't take petting; and what's the good of a child that won't be petted? They lacked that something which makes a woman feel motherly. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... was a consciousness of the blessed sympathy that welled up from her motherly heart that relaxed his features into a half smile, and moved him to a half glad, half sad emotion; perhaps the memory of as dear a face that once beamed upon him with the same holy tenderness, stirred the long-time quiet depths within ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... from Flat Creek this morning, and I brought you a little angel who has got out of heaven, and needs some of your motherly care." ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... These motherly words gave Psyche heart, and she reverently took leave of the goddess and set out for the temple of Venus. Most humbly she offered up her prayer, but Venus could not look at her earthly beauty ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... wouldn't let ennythin' in shape ev a human creetur go perishin' past aour fire sech weather's this," replied the woman, as she took the baby, which recognized the motherly hand at its ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... at her almost perfect features with the bloom of health upon them, into her dark eyes with their depths of motherly pride and joy, at her snowy neck and ivory arms bare to the summer heat, and longest at the wavy silver of her hair, that crowned her beauty ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... the house Mary found the door standing open, and a motherly-looking woman waiting ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... my new boy? I am glad to see you, my dear, and hope you'll be happy here," said the lady, drawing him to her, and stroking back the hair from his forehead with a kind hand and a motherly look, which made Nat's lonely little ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part of the erotic ideal. She is both positive and negative, a blind tool of the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher mission (reminiscent of the second mediaeval ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... all doubts of my social position at rest: and I knew how far this would go with her. We soon became fast friends. She seemed to rest on me much for sympathy and comfort, and soon grew to regard me with a sort of motherly fondness that of itself brightened her life. I paid her all the attention which a devoted son might pay—humoured her whims, soothed her pains; but insensibly I led her mind out from itself—first in kindness to me, and then ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... of Barton Swift, lived with his father and a motherly housekeeper, Mrs. Baggert, in a large house on the outskirts of the town of Shopton, in New York State. Mr. Swift had acquired considerable wealth from his many inventions and patents, but he did not give up working ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... your own baby?" said I, struck with the absence of motherly tenderness in spite of the woman's compassionate ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... neighbor; but she failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... the dean and Mrs. Greystock would think so;—Lady Fawn was very sure of that. Lady Fawn was one of the best women breathing,—unselfish, motherly, affectionate, appreciative, and never happy unless she was doing good to somebody. It was her nature to be soft, and kind, and beneficent. But she knew very well that if she had had a son,—a second son,—situated as was Frank Greystock, she would not wish him to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... the last time that evening Grandmamma again wiped her eyes—though these tears were of thankfulness and motherly pride in the thought of the sweet and pretty children upstairs, who at that moment were kneeling in their little white nightgowns, one on each side of old Nurse, as they solemnly repeated after her the Lord's Prayer, and after that their own evening petitions that "God would bless ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... look, that rather startled Kitty, Jack vanished, to return presently with a comfortable cup of tea and a motherly old lady to help repair damages and soothe her by the foolish little purrings and pattings so grateful to female nerves after ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... road with alert and curious eyes and presented himself at the white cottage. He found a grave and kindly welcome from Mrs. Jebb—a stout, middle-aged, motherly person—and from the Rev. Josiah Jebb, D.D., M.A., etc., pastor of the Methodist Church and his principal to ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the lake—with beautiful marble statuettes adorning the walls; and on the table she placed a vase of flowers, and the whole room was most prettily furnished, so that Rico stood still on the threshold when, at Mrs. Menotti's request, Stineli led him up there. And when the kind, motherly woman took his hand and led him to the window, and he looked down in the shimmering lake, and over at the purple mountains in the distance, his heart filled to overflowing with thankfulness, and he could ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... house, which was presided over by the motherly Mrs. Baggert, was large, it was almost lost now amid the many buildings surrounding it, from balloon and airship hangars, to shops where varied work was carried on. For Tom did most of his labor himself, of course with ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the few diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre—when Franz had tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas was performed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death—and, on such occasions, she pointed ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... house—mild, and cheerful, and sunny, diffusing content every evening over the little circle around her hearth—wins Adele to a new cheer. Yet it is a cheer that is tempered by many sad thoughts of her own loneliness, and of her alienation from any motherly smiles and greetings that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... without number, greeted Bernardine with motherly tenderness, and interspersed all her remarks with frantic cries of "Liza, Fritz, ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden

... hand upon his head and passed her cool, white fingers through his hair. The gentle, motherly gesture soothed him: her words brought him back to his senses. Gradually his sobs were stilled; he made a great effort to become quite calm, and with a handkerchief wiped the tears and ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... children and their father settled once more in their old home, with Adam, Var-Vara, and Alexis; and life flowing on very much as it had always done, except for the absence of the gentle, motherly, Anna Olsheffsky. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... hurried up the little gravelled path, and reaching the door, found herself folded in Aunt Debby's motherly embrace, with Aunt Debby's arms round her, and Aunt Debby's round, rosy face pressed ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... had never seen her child other than deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of motherly love she bent to pick ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... moments the porch, which was none too commodious, though it was very substantial, was occupied by the entire Hightower family, which included Grandsir Hightower, a white-haired old man, whose serenity seemed to be borrowed from another world. Mrs. Hightower herself was a stout, motherly-looking woman, whose whole appearance betokened contentment, if not happiness. Abe shaded his eyes with his broad hand, and looked toward ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... say myself, sir. She WILL do it! There's a motherly feeling in Mrs. William's breast that ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens

... Flower Spirits' home." Then from the mother's breast, where it still lay hid, Into the fading bud the dew-drop gently slid; Stronger grew the little form, and happy tears fell, As the dew did its silent work, and the bud grew well, While the gentle rose leaned, with motherly pride, O'er the fair little ones that bloomed at ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... I don't know. I was so dreadfully sorry for him all that time before, and I felt so very friendly towards him, so very—oh, Gerald, so motherly. And I wanted to be wanted so badly, and you didn't seem to want me in that way. That was why, when he had gone, I went right away from you, and asked you not to write to me; I wanted to think it ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... must be very quiet. Your shoulder has been set. It is all right now. Heaven be praised that we did not kill you as we fell!" she added aside, and her sweet motherly face showed the sympathy ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... good heart, if he is so head-strong," whispered the motherly woman, as she wiped a tear from her eyes, and gazed with pride upon the manly-looking young fellow, and — invited us in ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... that the boys had been rescued in a dying condition and were still very low, and so there was great sorrow over there, even so much that it was said that two sweet young ladies refused to be comforted. When Mrs Ross heard this her motherly heart was touched, and so, as the wind had changed and the cold north wind had again made the ice safe for experienced Indian drivers, two carioles were dispatched to the mission for the aforesaid young ladies to come and spend a week or two at Sagasta-weekee. ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... the habit of addressing me in a sort of motherly way, as if she had the deepest interest in my welfare, happiness, and reputation. And thus, in every compliment, in every seeming mark of respect, she maintained the superior dignity of one who takes ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... after death, they are taken into heaven and confided to angel women who in the life of the body tenderly loved little children and at the same time loved God. Because these during their life in the world loved all children with a kind of motherly tenderness, they receive them as their own; while the children, from an implanted instinct, love them as their own mothers. There are as many children in each one's care as she desires from a spiritual parental affection. ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... standing in the entrance, but it was obviously a very respectable somebody. A dumpy, motherly somebody in a seal-skin coat and ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... vegetables equal to six plantains; besides this, they are bound to give them two suits of clothes—all specified—yearly. Alas! how appropriate is the slang phrase "Don't you wish you may get 'em?" So beautifully motherly is Spain regarding her slaves, that the very substance of infants' clothes under three years of age is prescribed; another substance from three to six; then comes an injunction that from six to fourteen the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... fellow having hastily dismounted, a most touching scene of motherly affection ensued, for, as the old man explained to me, he was her son. The poor shrivelled creature threw her arms around his neck and kissed him fondly, first on one cheek and then upon the other, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... answered Nellie, rather haughtily, while her tormentor continued: "Well, then, it is my son, and I assure you, both myself and husband are well pleased that it should be so. From the moment I first saw Mabel, I felt for her a motherly affection for which I could not account, and if I were now to select my future daughter-in-law, I should prefer ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... hush of the temple, through the quiet of her motherly dreams, Hannah heard a voice. Hannah didn't have to say, 'If you are a spirit, rap so many times.' No: she knew the voice. God prepares the listenin' soul His own self. 'They know my voice,' so the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... Madame Frabelle said she had; though she had a certain little tenderness, half of a motherly kind, for Bruce, she far preferred his society in a comfortable house. She didn't really think he was the ideal companion for the open air. And he was struck, as he had often been before, by her ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... Billy Batch lost in Rattle Water, and now decently stowed away by the Reverend John Fairmeadow. It was lonely in Gray Billy Batch's cabin, now, of course; it was sometimes almost intolerably so—and ghostly, too, with echoes of long-past footsteps and memories of soft motherly words. Pattie Batch, however, a practical little person, knew in her own mind, you must be informed, exactly how to still the haunting echoes and transform the memories into blessed companions of her busy, gentle solitude; but she had not as ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to trust that two-thirds of the men of this country have that most amiable eccentricity. But in Selwyn it amounted to something more than in the ordinary paterfamilias: it was almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate tenderness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This affection he showed to several of the children, sons or daughters, of his friends; but to two especially, Anne Coventry and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... Biddy to help her," he said quickly. Then recollecting the tastes of his comrades, he added, half apologetically, half cautiously, "Ef she could, now and then, throw herself into a lemming pie or a pot of doughnuts, jest in a motherly kind o' way, it would please ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... at the bazaar, so the drive home was once more a tete-a-tete, during which Mrs Willoughby questioned Claire as to the coming holidays, and expressed pleasure to hear that they were to be spent in Brussels. She was so kind and motherly in her manner that Claire was emboldened to bespeak her interest on ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... degree than seems to be the case with those who court affection by caresses and indulgence. We knew that her approval was of a generous kind, we prized enthusiastically her rare betrayals of her motherly tenderness, and we depended on her in a manner we only realised in the desolation, dreariness, and helplessness that fell upon us, when we knew that she was gone. She had not, nor had any of us, understood that ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as the herd winds slowly homeward, looking most luxuriantly comfortable, and bearing with them the spicy scent of the cedar-woods in which they have been wandering, and which they seem to leave so unwillingly. Philoprogenitiveness, or a deep feeling of motherly affection, being the only thing that does voluntarily induce them to come home. To encourage this desirable feeling the leader of the herd, the lady of the bell, is allowed to suckle her calf every evening. For this happy task she leaves all the delights of ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... it is!' and I bowed my head upon my hands and wept, the first tears I had shed since they took my baby from my arms. Just then baby's old nurse came in—the dear old motherly heart—the sight of ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... busily after the varied wants of the customers stood in front of them to receive Arthur's order. She was a hard-visaged creature of mature age, but she looked neat in her black dress and white cap; and she had a motherly way of attending to these people, with a capacious smile of her large mouth which ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... unconditional love of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part of the erotic ideal. She is both positive and negative, a blind tool of the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... attitudes and far too aggressive snoring. Indeed, Master Hickory's almost upright pose, with tightly folded arms, and darkly frowning brows was felt to be dramatic, but impossible for a longer period. The brief interval enabled Polly to collect herself and to look around her in her usual motherly fashion. Suddenly she started and uttered a cry. In the excitement of the descent she had quite overlooked her doll, and was now ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... smitten, bitten; attached to, wedded to; enamored; charmed &c. v.; in love; love-sick; over head and ears in love, head over heels in love. affectionate, tender, sweet upon, sympathetic, loving; amorous, amatory; fond, erotic, uxorious, ardent, passionate, rapturous, devoted, motherly. loved &c. v. beloved well beloved, dearly beloved; dear, precious, darling, pet, little; favorite, popular. congenial; after one's mind, after one's taste, after one's fancy, after one's own heart, to one's mind, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune like a step-mother has so long detained me. But nevertheless, you say—which But is aerugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But, you say, you would advise me not to precipitate ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... lying on his bed, holding his mother's hands, and drinking in the joy of her presence. And she was feeding his rapture with the tenderest motherly words and looks, and telling him ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... for a certain dear old lady had a motherly presentiment that you had got into a domestic whirlpool, and sent me as a sort of life-preserver. So I took the basket of consolation, and came to fold my feet upon the carpet of contentment in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... feeling of anger overcame her. Her motherly love gained the mastery, and in the silence of the room she ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... altered much in Australia, from a physical point of view—not yet. The rabbit has developed into something like a cross between a kangaroo and a possum, but the bush has not begun to develop the common cat. She is just as sedate and motherly as the mummy cats of Egypt were, but she takes longer strolls of nights, climbs gum-trees instead of roofs, and hunts stranger vermin than ever came under the observation of her northern ancestors. Her views have widened. ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... liked Percival, but a woman never likes a man so well as when he acknowledges his helplessness in her particular line of knowledge, and throws himself on her mercy. Mentally, I at once began to feel motherly towards Percival, and clucked around him like an old hen. He went on to say that men often are not so blind that they cannot see the prejudices and complexities of a woman's nature, but they are not ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... in her heart for that motherly woman who had sought to protect her, and felt a longing to let her know how safely she had been kept through the long journey and how good the Lord had been to her through the years. Also they both desired to reward these ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... Raydon, beginning to walk up and down the room, while I felt in such a whirl of excitement, as I saw Mrs John's beautiful, motherly eyes fixed lovingly on mine, and felt Mr John snatch my hand and press it, and then give vent to his delight at the clearing up by slapping me heavily on the shoulder, that I could not see Mr Raydon's puckered brow. What I did see was the bear's head ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... word with the Commodore, and up there we shall be nice and quiet. Go and play to Daisy: it will put her to sleep and do you both good. Sit in the porch, so I can keep an eye on you as I promised'; and with a motherly pat on the shoulder Mrs Jo left Nat to his delightful task and briskly ascended to the house-top, not up the trellis as of old but by ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... rest-cures, the most simple and harmless of the nerve restorers, serve a mistaken end. Patients go with nerves tired and worn out with misuse,—commonly called over-work. Through rest, Nature, with the warm, motherly help she is ever ready to bring us, restores the worn body to a normal state; but its owner has not learned to work the machine any better,—to drive his horses more naturally, or with a gentler hand. He knows he must take life more easily, but even ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call

... prolonged to an indefinite time, for Ethelyn did not believe in the maxim, "Early to bed and early to rise," and always begged for a little more indulgence, even after the brown eyes unclosed and flashed forth a responsive greeting to the motherly face ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... wet eyes in her neck, and lovingly patting her shoulder, as he crooned his wordless reproaches in her ear, and Mrs. Hoffstott, looking on, thought this must indeed be a good sister to win such hearty affection, and felt her own motherly heart warm to the forlorn little orphaned brood. But, as Sara climbed the steep staircase, with the child clasped close, and opened the door of their little snuggery above, her heart was full. How had the loving Father cared for his children! Here ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... absorption of the mother in said baby or flock. A motherliness which dominated society, which influenced every art and industry, which absolutely protected all childhood, and gave to it the most perfect care and training, did not seem motherly—to Terry. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... in describing motherly pride with which Mrs. Prescott introduced her son to Mrs. Davidson, ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... with his curved and derisive finger into Lisa's eyes. And in truth the tears were there. Lisa was in heart and person that which is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some pathos in the sight of this rugged man—worn by travel, bent with hardship and many wounds, past his work—shouldering his haversack and trudging off ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... to their abodes. And the people, too, came away, some naming Arjuna, some Karna, and some Duryodhana (as the victor of the day). And Kunti, recognising her son in Karna by the various auspicious marks on his person and beholding him installed in the sovereignty of Anga, was from motherly affection, very pleased. And Duryodhana, O monarch, having obtained Karna (in this way), banished his fears arising out of Arjuna's proficiency in arms. And the heroic Karna, accomplished in arms, began to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... Robert, shaving his shingle attentively, 'so long as Canadians look back to England as home, and speak of it as home, there's little fear of annexation or revolt. Mother country has only to keep up the motherly relation, and patiently loosen the leading strings, according as her colonies grow able to ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... I found much pleasure in visiting all these Homes, situated in different parts of the Dominion of Canada, in each of which children are received from two to twelve years of age, looked after with motherly affection. The greater number sent out this year ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... "Samuel" in a terrified voice, and made him walk before her backwards down the stairs till she safely reached the sitting-room.' For all these younger children Maria seems to have had a most tender and motherly regard, as indeed for all her young brothers and sisters of the different families. Many of them were the heroines of her various stories, and few heroines are more charming than some of Miss Edgeworth's. Rosamund is said by some to ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... first floor of La Citadelle the English family sat after tea. The father, a spare, mild-eyed man, his thatch of brown hair well sprinkled with grey above the temples, was lighting his pipe for the tenth time-the tenth match, but the same pipeful of tobacco; and his wife, an ample, motherly woman, slightly younger than himself, was knitting on the other side of the open fireplace, in which still glowed a mass of peat ashes. From time to time she stirred them with a rickety pair of tongs, or ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... were in Mrs. Morrison's lap. She had read them both, and sat looking at them with a varying sort of smile, now motherly and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... [Footnote 15: Motherly woman.] [Footnote 16: Not grace before and after meat, nor their graces the duchesses, but the Graces ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... one of those good-natured, motherly women, whom you will find at the firesides of New England homes, generous to a fault; and whom you cannot but love, for the interest she takes in you, and the solicitude she manifests for ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... at his family, and I followed his gaze. Miss Macklin was leaning against the wall with a look of concentrated interest. Her elder brother Fred was standing alert and ready but not quite poised for a leap. Mrs. Macklin had a motherly-looking smile on her face which for some unknown reason she was aiming at me in a disarming manner. The twins were standing close together, both of them puzzled-looking. I wondered whether they were esper or telepath (twins are always the same when they're identical, and opposite ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... the same, only the flowers and grass were fresher now, and the fountain seemed to flow more joyously, now that spring was here. The house where he had lodged was as clean as ever, and Archie at once decided to engage a room here, where he could have his New York home. So he called upon the motherly landlady, and was glad to learn that the room he had first was still vacant, and that he could take ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... view Mr. Woods with newly opened eyes; for as he paused impatiently—the sculptured Eagle above his head—she perceived that he was a remarkably handsome and intelligent young man. Her motherly heart opened toward ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... belonged to the class of woman which is generally known as "motherly," and adored her offspring almost to excess. Consequently for those weeks she found plenty to think about without troubling herself over-much as to Morris and his experiments. For these same reasons, perhaps, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... me to leave them alone before the fire and to go out on the quay to dream, leaning on the parapet and looking at the water. When they spoke of their life at N——-, and when Brigitte, almost cheerful, assumed a motherly air to recall some incident of their childhood days, it seemed to me that I suffered, and yet took pleasure in it. I asked questions; I spoke to Smith of his mother, of his plans and his prospects. I gave him an opportunity to show himself in a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... Bashford, who was sent to bring home the cows. In trying to return she became confused, and she wisely decided to keep with the cattle. When they lay down for the night, she sheltered herself against the warm back of a motherly old cow, and then followed them about in the morning till the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... went up the village, the clergyman strode past me, brandishing a thick stick and humming a chant, and joined a motherly-looking wife, who, basket on arm, was popping in and out of the cottages, looking alternately serious and funny, cross and kindly—I suppose, according to the sayings and doings ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... misled; realestate operators, fearful of all this talk about the grass bringing doom and so depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alike was to buy up ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... before it had been. She never left the room where Rhoda was lying; for Rhoda could not bear her to go out of sight, and only seemed content while she could watch her nursing the baby, in her old-fashioned, motherly manner. As Joan sat on a low rocking-chair, lulling him to sleep with snatches of hymns, and soothing him tenderly if he began to cry, Rhoda's eyes shone with a tender light, though the tears dimmed them at times. It was ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton

... on the Western River. Mrs. Lynett lately died in Winton at the ripe age of 84, her husband, Tom Lynett, having pre-deceased her some years. Like most of the women who pioneered, she had a grand heart, and I learnt how the diggers appreciated her motherly kindness. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... As the girls came up the stairs into the great station, they saw a smiling, motherly-looking lady waiting ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... Finn led his mate from the abandonment of her lonely mourning to renewed absorption in her motherly duties. It is true enough that nature was at work on Finn's side in this matter, and without the wolfhound's aid would presently have achieved the same result. But Finn assisted and hastened the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... husband was fairly off to meet his brother's family, Mrs Hugh Berrington began to realise the fact that they were coming, and actively commenced making preparations for their reception. She was a motherly, active, cheerful little woman, who never, by any chance, lost her temper, even under the most vexatious circumstances, and always saw ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... What a smiling welcome they received, my grandfather standing with his hat off, my grandmother with the tears in her motherly vehement eyes, gathering the two wanderers defiantly to her breast as if daring all the world to come on. Behind a little (but not much) was Aunt Jen, asserting her position and rights in the house. She did not seem to see Miss Irma, but to make up, she ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... to the settee, and arranged her head comfortably on its pillows. Then, giving her a motherly kiss, she said, "Rest, darling, while Tulee and ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... respectable farm labourer, of better education and more intelligence than the generality of his class. They had no children of their own, so that Mrs Williams, who was a truly godly woman, was glad to give a home for a time and a motherly care to the two little ones committed to her charge by Amos. The husband was, of course, absent from home during the working hours, so that his wife could not call him to her help when she missed the little boy; ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... to his heart, hastened his steps, and had soon reached the Grays' cottage and deposited his burden just inside the gate, where a few minutes after Gray found it. He could see Mrs Gray plainly as she sat at her work: a pleasant, motherly face; but he did not linger to look at it, but turned away and retraced his steps along the field path home. He found himself shivering as he went; the air seemed to have grown more chilly and penetrating without that warm burden against ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... man was an uncontrollable passion; his heart was strong and all its strength entered into its sorrow. Miss Blagden, "perfect in all kindness," took motherly possession of the boy, and persuaded his father to accompany Penini to her villa at Bellosguardo. When all that was needful at Casa Guidi had been done, Browning's first thought was to abandon Italy for many a year, and hasten to London, there to have speech for a day or ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... Giant land?" exclaimed Mrs. Baggert, the motherly housekeeper, as she came in to announce that dinner was ready. "You don't mean to tell me, Tom, ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... marriage faithfully. If she ever felt in her heart any jealousy as she saw Polly growing up a pretty bright little maiden, as different to the usual child product of Varley as could well be, she was wise enough never to express her thoughts, and behaved with motherly kindness to her in the evening hours spent at home. She would perhaps have felt the task a harder one had her own elder children been girls; but three boys came first, and a girl was not born until she had been married eleven ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... this royal pageant, she sinks into a reverie; her small native dale of Arc, between its quiet hills, rises on her mind's eye, with its straw-roofed huts, and its clear greensward; where the sun is even then shining so brightly, and the sky is so blue, and all is so calm and motherly and safe. She sighs for the peace of that sequestered home; then shudders to think that she shall never see it more. Accused of witchcraft, by her own ascetic melancholic father, she utters no word of denial to the charge; for her heart ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... and uninteresting. On the other hand, the little Morleys were full of life and eagerness. The fault in them was that they wouldn't take petting; and what's the good of a child that won't be petted? They lacked that something which makes a woman feel motherly. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... of Hanover, is his cousin as well. She is brother's-daughter of his Mother, Sophie Charlotte: let the reader learn to discriminate these two names. Sophie Charlotte, late Queen of Prussia, was also of Hanover: she probably had sometimes, in her quiet motherly thought, anticipated this connection for him, while she yet lived. It is certain Friedrich Wilhelm was carried to Hanover in early childhood: his Mother,—that Sophie Charlotte, a famed Queen and lady in her day, Daughter ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing. The last paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come, and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... They were on the platform. Mr. Graham led Hilda up to a stout, motherly-looking woman, who held out her ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... easy when Amy returned, and the more because she brought with the midwife a good motherly sort of woman, who was to be her assistant, and would be very helpful on occasion; and bespoke a man midwife at Paris too, if there should be any necessity for his help. Having thus made provision for everything, the Count, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... During her sickness, Mrs. Branning had been sent for to act as nurse and temporary house-keeper, and, at the urgent request of the widower, remained for a time after the funeral. Weeks passed, and her house was still tenantless. Mildred had become so much attached to the motherly widow and her son, that she would not allow the servants to do anything for her. So, without any definite agreement, their relations continued. By-and-by the village gossips began to query and surmise. At the sewing- society the matter was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... all her misdemeanors shall she be condemned? Because she has shown him a room in his innermost soul, which seems to have stood fine and clean and unoccupied all these years awaiting just such a tender and motherly little woman; or because she has already such power over him that he hardly dares to swear lest she hear it; or for what shall ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... place; why not enjoy ourselves then, as only it is possible? So why not allow certain lower faculties of our nature to delight in what are called the grosser flowers? Why not cultivate their acquaintance, as we would that of motherly, kind, portly, and phlegmatic old ladies, rustling in their silks and satins, with a comfortable complacency, satisfied with their own share of fortune's goods, and benevolently disposed toward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Blake and Pendleton: the latter was new to New York. He was fresh to the city, as four years ago she had been. In those days she had dreamed of such a man as Pendleton—a dream that she was sure she had long since forgotten. Four years was a long while. It gave her rather a motherly feeling as she thought of Pendleton from that distance. And she rather enjoyed that. It left her freer to continue thinking of him. This she did until she was almost carried beyond ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... out this idea; but others added themselves to my mind as I went on, and I got round me a circle of persons as to whom I knew not only their present characters, but how those characters were to be affected by years and circumstances. The happy motherly life of Violet Effingham, which was due to the girl's honest but long-restrained love; the tragic misery of Lady Laura, which was equally due to the sale she made of herself in her wretched marriage; and the long suffering but final success of the ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... was hidden in her motherly embrace. I could not speak for some moments, and I thought my heart had stopped beating. At last ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... cruelty of drivers to over-loaded horses. I was timid and did not dare speak to them. Very often, I ran home and flung myself in my mother's arms with a burst of tears, and asked her if nothing could be done to help the poor animals. With mistaken, motherly kindness, she tried to put the subject out of my thoughts. I was carefully guarded from seeing or hearing of any instances of cruelty. But the animals went on suffering just the same, and when I became a woman, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... itself. Now the Church having no real jurisdiction, but only the power of moral condemnation, withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists in motherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even tries to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal. She admits him to church services, to the holy sacrament, gives him alms, and treats him more as a captive than as a convict. And what would become of the criminal, O Lord, if even the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... woman with a kind motherly smile: "it's a lang way to Lunnon, a lang way, ay. Ye'll be thinkin' we're a wild kind o' folk here-away; somewhat uncouth we are, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... a fall," said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh, "we must spread as many carpets as we can." And she carried out this idea by showing a great deal of motherly kindness to ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... smile at Slosson—"it's a mother's guide and helper, and adviser. A woman who'll answer questions, give advice. Some one they'll write to, with a picture in their minds of a large, comfortable, motherly-looking person in gray. You know we get hundreds of letters asking whether they ought to order flannel bands, or the double-knitted kind. That sort of thing. And who's been answering them? Some sixteen-year-old girl in the mailing department who doesn't know ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... they no longer thought of withdrawing themselves from the licentious looks of the spectators who were crowding at the entrance to the booth. Their eyes brooded with motherly terror upon the two veiled children, while the matron, bound to the post, her eyes glittering and her teeth set in impotent fury, raised her chained arms to heaven as if to call down the punishments of the gods ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... interfere in young folks' matters, especially when they're going all right," said the motherly old soul, kissing "her son Allen" and trotting away ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... question, though aware of her sister's ardent desire to investigate her wounds, had no intention of removing the cloak that covered them. She wrapped it close about her, so close that Lady Isabel, while unable to stifle a motherly regret for the wedding that might have been, thanked heaven that Christian had not "really cared"; so close that even Judith said that, since Christian had not been hit too hard, though she regretted the coup manque she personally ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... followed the course of every event with an anxious and intelligent interest. In 1657, her oldest son had left for England, where he remained until 1661, and she wrote then some verses more to be commended for their motherly feeling than ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Primrose, the doctor's wife, full of motherly vanity, and desirous to appear genteel. She could read without much spelling, prided herself on her housewifery, especially on her gooseberry wine, and was really proud of her ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... set her table to rights than she, with an air of motherly watchfulness, drew her chair beside the damsels, with whom I was exchanging the gossip of the Cape, and entered cheerfully ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... preceptor, and prays us to receive him cordially, with all parental tenderness, into our family. We shall soon see whether he be deserving of such hearty sympathy. For my part, I must confess that my motherly tenderness for him is as ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... the late eminent judge. It is scarcely more than a year ago, at the semi-centennial celebration of the academy, that Franklin Pierce, the mature and distinguished man, paid a beautiful tribute to the character of Madam Woodbury, in affectionate remembrance of the motherly kindness experienced at her ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as good as gold," said the little creature, oh, in such a motherly, womanly way. "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed. And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the candle, and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... not notice, or, at least, not comment upon the change, Mrs. Gerhardt did not know what to say. She looked up at him weakly in her innocent, motherly way, and said, "She couldn't ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... lying motionless and with closed eyes, sprang to her feet in an instant, and as Lynn Taps laid his burden on the blankets, the woman, her every dull feature softened and lighted with motherly tenderness, threw her arms about the astonished Yankee, and then fell sobbing ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... nursery-tale. We all of us have our vague reminiscences of the stately home of our childhood,—for we are all of us poets and geniuses in our youth, while earth is all new to us, and the chalice of every buttercup is brimming with the wine of poesy,—and we all remember the beautiful, motherly countenance which nature bent over us there. But somehow we all get stolen away thence; life becomes to us a sooty taskmaster, and we crawl through dark passages without end—till suddenly the word of some poet redeems us, makes us know who we are, and of helpless ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about the time Titania began to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering humour. As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying away from the office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up some coffee and scrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to look at his damage. Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap. He woke up at noon, feeling better, though his ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... for motherly love! Dang it, what's her heart made of?" said a voice. I turned round; it was old Ben, who had been an ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... told her mother, which led that worthy person to become responsible for the young officer's recovery, no one ever knew except the two women themselves, but in addition to being a motherly-hearted woman, Mrs. Allenthorne was a soldier's daughter as well as a soldier's wife, so perhaps it was not necessary to explain so many things to her as it would have been ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... there is a much prettier story, with something of the same meaning, about Ceres (Demeter), the grave, motherly goddess of corn and all the fruits of the earth. She had one fair daughter, named Proserpine (Persephone), who was playing with her companions near Mount Etna, gathering flowers in the meadows, when grim old Pluto ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... know what he could have against the lad," said Mrs. Tulliver, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; "a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... had been so overcome with sleep at the breaking up of the festivities of the previous night that she was unable to distinguish between those whom she loved and those for whom she cared not. In these circumstances, she had seized the first motherly tail that came within her reach, and followed it home. It chanced to belong to Kunelik, so she dropped down ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... sobbing thing gently up-stairs, and persuaded her to get into the warm bed. But it was long before Janet could lie down. She sat leaning her head on her knees, convulsed by sobs, while the motherly woman covered her with clothes and held her arms round her to comfort her with warmth. At last the hysterical passion had exhausted itself, and she fell back on the pillow; but her throat was still agitated by piteous after-sobs, such as shake ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... anticipated me; and there, in the middle of the road, the poor old man embraced me, weeping floods of passionate tears of grief. He was a small man, shrunk with age, and I found him clinging to me so like a child that I felt an almost motherly sense of protection and tenderness towards his forlorn old age; but my English shyness was at the moment distressed at the sense of all the servants staring at such a meeting, and I cried out: 'Oh, sir! you should not ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a number of passengers still seated at the different little tables. A soldierly looking Penguin sat at one and a few tables beyond a motherly looking Seal with a baby boy Seal at her side was just finishing some ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory

... long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the children, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... what and the where are the knotty points in the whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the creature was. It might have been an earwig,—a very large, motherly earwig; an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe that they do get into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless to argue with me upon philosophical grounds. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... place at the tea-table in silence. She and Mrs. Ogle were alone this evening; the latter's husband—he was a journeyman printer, and left entirely in his wife's hands the management of the shop in Gray's Inn Road—happened to be away. Mrs. Ogle was a decent, cheerful woman, of motherly appearance. She made one or two attempts to engage Harriet in conversation, but, failing, subsided into silence, only looking askance at the girl from time to time. When she had finished her tea and bread-and-butter, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... without the insignia of his power. For it was "Old Linen Pants," not Dr. James Nesbit, who was the boss of the northern district and a member of the State's triumvirate. So the Doctor in the phaeton, drawn by his amiable, motherly, sorrel mare, the Doctor, white and resplendent in a suit that shimmered in the hot June sun, flaxed around town, from his office to the hotel, from the hotel to the bank, from the bank to South ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... very warmly, and the earnestness of the wishes he breathed in her ear called a bright colour to her cheek. Then came good-night, and the young American's heart grew strangely soft when he found himself included in Mrs. Connolly's motherly blessing. He thought he had never seen a happier, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... I am so nervous anyhow I hardly know what I am saying. You remember my laundress, don't you? She is so nice and motherly and a Methodist and respectable and all that,—only old and hard up. She is coming to live with us,—she will have the den for her room, and is closing her cottage. She is to keep house and look after the babies while I am at work. She only ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... Mr. Benjamin," cries a stout, motherly woman in a red cloak, as they enter the field, "be that you? Well, I never! You do look purely. And how's the Squire, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... that we were joined by others. In a bewildered kind of way I noticed that Sir Thomas and Lady Bolivick were accompanied by a tall, distinguished-looking man about fifty-five years of age, by whose side stood a sweet-faced, motherly-looking woman. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... spirit, but knows—how well!—that she has lost Him. Opposite this terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing her hair and rolling on the ground, is the other heart-broken woman, the mother; but how different! She remains maternal through her grief, with motherly thoughtfulness for others; for to the real mother (how different in this to the lover!) there will always remain in the world some one to think of. She bridles her sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that they must not stay all night on Calvary, she turns quietly homeward; and, once ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... about their labours without boisterous laughter, the children playing quietly, and the good wives in their kitchens and dairies bustling less than usual and modulating the sharpness of their voices, the most motherly among them in truth finding themselves falling into whispering as they gossiped of the great ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... like to be beautiful, dear child?" said a voice close at her side, and, when Ruth looked up, she saw an old woman whom she never had seen before. She was clothed in a long blue dress, and her face was full of motherly love. Ruth's heart was filled with gladness, for seldom had so affectionate a glance been shed on her; and when the old woman bent down and kissed her, how all remembrance of the indifference of father, mother, friends, vanished from ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... the criminal. If we succeed, other things being equal, in adducing a number of feminine characteristics with one of which the cruelty of the crime may be connected and explained, we have a clew to the criminal. The instances mentioned,—the motherly care of house and family, frugality, miserliness, hardness to servants, cruelty to aged parents,—seem rare and not altogether rational, yet they occur frequently and give the right clew to the criminal. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... that it colored his face. And the halting boyishness of the request had warmed Cecille's face too; warmed her through and through. She knew an impulse to hug his head to her breast, a very mature and motherly impulse. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... bequeathed the entire enormous fortune, which was supposed to have served as the motive for the murder, to various charitable organisations. It is characteristic that even under such terrible conditions her motherly instinct did not forsake her altogether; in a postscript to the will she left me a considerable sum, which secures my existence whether I am in prison or ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... with the string of her apron. I could see I had appealed to her motherly heart by representing you as a ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... And Waitstill came nearer to her sister with a motherly touch of her hand. "I'll not have you say such things; you that are the helpfullest and the lovingest girl that ever was, and the cleverest, too, and the liveliest, and the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... she said, in a seventeen-year-old- girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... dull children, wearisome and uninteresting. On the other hand, the little Morleys were full of life and eagerness. The fault in them was that they wouldn't take petting; and what's the good of a child that won't be petted? They lacked that something which makes a woman feel motherly. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... and kept to a far higher degree than seems to be the case with those who court affection by caresses and indulgence. We knew that her approval was of a generous kind, we prized enthusiastically her rare betrayals of her motherly tenderness, and we depended on her in a manner we only realised in the desolation, dreariness, and helplessness that fell upon us, when we knew that she was gone. She had not, nor had any of us, understood that she was dying, and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be gladly blent With a watery jingle of pans and spoons, And a motherly chirrup of sweet content, And neighborly gossip and merriment, And ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... no offence to Park-place, but the bitterness of the weather makes me wonder how you can find the country tolerable now. This is a May-day for the latitude of Siberia! The milkmaids should be wrapped in @the motherly comforts of a swanskin petticoat. In short, such hard words have passed between me and the north wind to-day, that, according to the language of the times, I was very near abusing it for coming from Scotland, and to imputing it to Lord Bute. I don't know whether I should ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... as he noticed one standing beside the stout, motherly-looking woman in the doorway ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... all our suggestions eagerly. The environment of our simple home, the ministrations of motherly hands touched hidden chords. He did not hide his enjoyment, but talked well and entertainingly of everything—except himself. At times he was boyishly gay; then, seemingly without cause, the expectant look of his eyes would fade into one of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... girls can help each other, as my dear Dora. Now bestir yourself, Mr. Haverley, and make Miriam look at this thing as she ought to. I don't pretend to deny that I have spoken to you very much for Dora's sake, for whom I have an almost motherly feeling; but you should act for your sister's sake. And please don't forget what I have said, young man, and give Miriam my ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... mere animal parents, whose lasting influence over their progeny is not a thing to be greatly desired, but of those who, having a conscience, yet avoid this part of their duty in a manner of which a good motherly cat would be ashamed. To one who has learned of all things to desire deliverance from himself, a nursery in which the children are humored and scolded and punished instead of being taught obedience, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... her first feelings of impatience at being stopped on the road, she rather liked it. As Hetty's little fair curly head hung back helplessly over her arm, and the round soft cheek, turned so white, touched her breast, Mrs. Rushton felt a motherly sensation which she had never before known ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... bow, and then, as the coach began to move, there was a cry: "Alison! Alison! It is not right!" The older woman leaned forward, and for the first time he remarked a gentle, motherly face, much lined and worn. "Sure, sir, you will ride with us," she said, and he liked the voice. "We may ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... made them offices of affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with tender, motherly instincts. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... step-mother, and she learned through a lonely childhood how to pity motherless children, and I heard a thoughtful woman say of her orphan asylum, "It was a shabby place, but beautiful to me because there was such a motherly atmosphere about it." ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... Burghe! and you too, Ben! I know that you have told stories yourselves, for I see it in both your faces, just as I see that this poor boy has told the truth by his face!" she exclaimed. Then putting her arm around Ishmael's neck in the tender, motherly way that such little women will use to boys in ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... considered as an emblem of Trinitarianism, I am not able to determine. Our hair was worn in a queue, bound with black ribbon, and reached to the small of the back, in the shape of the tail of that motherly animal which furnishes ungrateful bipeds of the human race with milk, butter, and cheese. Where nature had not bestowed a sufficiency of this ornamental appendage, the living and the dead contributed of their superfluity to supply the deficiency. Our ear-locks,—horresco referens!—my ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... "Well, Cally," said motherly Mrs. McVey, drifting by, "you must feel sort of lonesome—such a turn-out of old folks I never saw. I wanted Evey to come, but she said she 'd as soon go to a tea at the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... right motherly body. The meal over, she recommended a nap; and upon our waking much refreshed, she led us to the doorway, and pointed down among the trees; through which we saw the gleam of water. Taking the hint, we repaired thither; and finding a deep shaded ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... servant, so tender, so motherly, seemed to heal my sorrow. When I became calmer she told me some of the details of the tragedy. Paula had, dashed in front of the horses just in time to throw the child out of danger but had been unable to escape ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... danced and vaulted before the king, shewing many strange tumbling tricks, some of these being men and others women. After all these followed sometimes two hundred or even three hundred women, all carrying presents of some kind; only that every ten were headed by an old motherly woman empty handed, to keep them in order like so many soldiers. These presents were commonly rice and cashes[129] on frames of split canes, curiously laid out for show, and adorned with gilt paper, but the present itself seldom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... under-sized, earnest, dark-haired and dark-eyed young man of three-and-twenty, Abigail Mitchenor at once felt a motherly interest. Having received him as a temporary member of the family, she considered him entitled to the same watchful care as if he were in reality an invalid son. The ice over an hereditary Quaker nature is but a thin crust, if one knows how to break it; and in Richard Hilton's case, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... indicating a dilapidated old age, only kept together by the clothes he wore, which was altogether unintelligible to the Peabody family, seeing that Mr. Carrack was in the very prime of youth, till Mrs. Carrack remarked, with an affectionate smile of motherly pride: ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews

... little flock about her knees," and the complete absorption of the mother in said baby or flock. A motherliness which dominated society, which influenced every art and industry, which absolutely protected all childhood, and gave to it the most perfect care and training, did not seem motherly—to Terry. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... in his comfortable bedroom after a long look out of his window at the beautiful moonlit harbour, with its shipping bathed in the soft, silvery light, and a feeling of melancholy came over him. He was sorry to leave frank-spoken, motherly Lady O'Hara, and the thought of going right away into the wilds, though fascinating, would inspire him with a ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... to have put by all her savings from the grocery business that she might appear properly in the Campo Santo, and who is shown there short and stout and common, in her ill-fitting best dress, but motherly and kind and of ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... invented the characters of the parties and the detail of the incidents.) Edward, however, though perplexed by her strange detractions from her daughter's good qualities, yet in the innocence of his own heart still mistook[268:2] her increasing fondness for motherly affection; she at length, overcome by her miserable passion, after much abuse of Mary's temper and moral tendencies, exclaimed with violent emotion—"O Edward! indeed, indeed, she is not fit for you—she has not a heart to love you as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... do. Pansy," she said with motherly gentleness; "it is very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know you. Shall we go in where ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... house Mary found the door standing open, and a motherly-looking woman waiting to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... have been utter desolation to the little sister save for the motherly tenderness of Marilda, who took her to the home in the Rocky Mountains, and would fain have adopted her, but that Lida, acting perhaps on advice from her brother, only begged to be so educated as to fit her to be independent, and to be given a start in life. It would be shown ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Percival, but a woman never likes a man so well as when he acknowledges his helplessness in her particular line of knowledge, and throws himself on her mercy. Mentally, I at once began to feel motherly towards Percival, and clucked around him like an old hen. He went on to say that men often are not so blind that they cannot see the prejudices and complexities of a woman's nature, but they are not constituted to understand them by intuition as women ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... went. They were tenderly kissed by their father in putting them on board, and held in lingering farewells at the window till the train started. The eldest of the three then helped in arranging their baskets in the rack, but the middle sister took motherly charge of the youngest, whom she at once explained to us as enferma. She was the prettiest girl of the conventional Spanish type we Lad yet seen: dark-eyed and dark-haired, regular, but a little overfull of the chin which she would presently ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... he took action it was too late. Miss Sherwood naively declared that she had not known her own heart, and that she did not care for Frank any more. She wept a little, and was soothed by motherly Mrs. Armour, who was inwardly glad, though she knew the matter would cause Frank pain; and even General Armour could not help showing slight satisfaction, though he was innocent of any deliberate action to separate the two. Straightway Miss Sherwood despatched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... in her kind, motherly way, "Mac is all broken up. And no wonder! The shock of finding ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... cheek of me to suggest it," Olga hastened to say. "For of course I know I'd be a very poor substitute; but at least I could keep a motherly eye on you, and see that you were properly clothed and fed. And Muriel herself couldn't possibly love ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... the city in the winter, and long journeys in the summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious. But Ellen was absolutely content. Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine of motherly duties and housekeeping cares. Her evenings were equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children's little beds in the nursery. His exquisite tenderness to the children, and his quiet ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... not in accord with Manbo custom for a man to have two or more wives unless the first wife consents to the later marriages, and, if she does consent, she must always be considered the man's favorite and must be allowed to have a kind of motherly jurisdiction over the other wives. In all cases that have come under my observation, this rule was followed among Manbos but not among Mandyas. The latter frequently seem more attached to their second, third, or fourth wives, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... say to her. So she passed on. In truth her mother had nothing to say to her. She was sitting there alone, with her head resting on her hand, with that sternness at her heart and a cloud upon her brow, but she was not thinking of her daughter. Had she not, with her skill and motherly care, provided well for Clara? Had she not saved her daughter from all the perils which beset the path of a young girl? Had she not so brought her child up and put her forth into the world, that, portionless as that child was, all the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... need know, or who, at any rate, need gossip? She felt a gladness grow in her mind at the thought of the happy friendship they might have; guarded perhaps from harm by the disparity in their years, and at the same time of inestimable benefit to him, and pleasure to her. She felt almost motherly as she laid her fingers lightly on his arm, with a little laughing jest, as they stood together ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... some sleep now. Go home to bed," urged Sally. "It's no good trying to work if you're sick. Go home now." She did not know how motherly, how caressing and wise, her voice had become. She was absorbed in his state of exhaustion and passivity. "It's not right," she went on. "You can't do any good. Get the doctor to give you something to make ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... many yards distant from the cottage, Evelyn, pleading a headache, sought her chamber, and Lumley, to soothe his mortification, turned to Caroline, who had seated herself by his side. Her conversation amused him, and her evident admiration flattered. While Lady Vargrave absented herself, in motherly anxiety, to attend on Evelyn, while Mrs. Leslie was occupied at her frame, and Mrs. Merton looked on, and talked indolently to the old lady of rheumatism and sermons, of children's complaints and servants' misdemeanours,—the conversation ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Grant. You are so kind and thoughtful." Miss Carson's voice shook a little. The contrast between the day's selfish indifference of Mrs. Lowe, and the evening's motherly consideration of Mrs. Grant, touched her. "I will lie down here for a short time. Perhaps I shall feel better after getting some warm tea. I've ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur

... extended hand greeted every individual inmate. After leaving him we marched to the other side of the room, where we also received a cheery 'good morning,' and cordial grasp of the hand from the estimable and motherly wife of the superintendent. To describe one day is sufficient to picture the manner in which the inmates of the Home (and I sincerely believe that 'home' is the right designation for it) pass their time. I have never felt happier or more contented ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... of all these calculations of motherly prudence and fatherly diplomacy: he begged for baptism, so he tells us. This seems very remarkable in so young a child. But he lived in a house where all the service was done by Christians. He heard the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... pleasant dinner hour at the home of Warren Hatch when Frank met Mrs. Hatch, who proved to be a strangely modest, motherly sort of woman. Merry decided that she had been a country girl, and that the change in fortune that had lifted her from humbleness to her present position as the wife of a very wealthy man had not changed her ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... in her motherly embrace. I could not speak for some moments, and I thought my heart had stopped beating. At last ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... opened, and a motherly looking woman stood aside to let them enter. Phyllis stood directly below a flaring gas-jet, as she turned to ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said in a motherly little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made it myself. I want you to ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... news, and she could scarcely speak, but she folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... dearly like to have seen the little maid and the big basket as they set out on that long trip as tranquilly as if for a day's visit; and it is a comfort to know that before the train started, the persons who took her there had interested a motherly lady in the young traveller, who promised to watch over her while their ways were ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... turmoil of a legislative morning, he would drop in to Miss Keziah Clapp's school and listen to the exercises, or would call on Colonel Curry—"old Curry, old Abe Curry"—and if the colonel happened to be away, he would talk with Mrs. Curry, a motherly soul (still alive at ninety-three, in 1910), and tell her of his Hannibal boyhood or his river and his mining adventures, and keep her laughing until the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... again, however, she insisted upon going on, and fell into so restless and wild a state that the gate-keeper and his wife were forced to yield. Her carpet-bag was repacked with all the additions which the old lady's motherly ingenuity could suggest, her pocket-book well filled, and then, having found her a companion to Bellaire, the Colonel was again telegraphed to, and Ellen herself was the bearer of letters from the Governor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... Beckwith"—the sound of his own name was pleasant as the falling voice strayed through it. "He is coming home in a few days, so I want them to look their prettiest for him—for his first sight of them. I take care of this rose garden," she said, and laid a motherly hand on the nearest flower. Then she smiled. "It doesn't seem right hospitable to stop you, but if you will come over to Westerly, to our house, father will be glad to see you, and I will certainly give you all the flowers you want." The sweet and masterful apparition looked with a gracious ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... the kind Sister of Mercy, whose sweet, patient and motherly face was bending over a soldier to speak her words of comfort, "are there any Massachusetts boys ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... pathos of whose sufferings he was fitted to appreciate keenly, and for whom in all this wide weltering chaos of a world there was no hope. He renounced everything else in life to try to mitigate this dreadful lot. His kindness was unceasing, his pity was both fatherly and motherly; it was more,—Godlike; and yet it was of small avail. He toiled physically that she might live at ease. He exerted his mind constantly when in her presence, that she might be cheerful. He watched over her with the tenderness of both brother and lover; ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... whole time should be spent in attending to its wants; but it is necessary that so much of the time should be spent, that nothing should be neglected which could add to the child's comfort and happiness. And not only is it needful that a woman should show a motherly fondness for her child, so that she should attend to its wants and be solicitous for its welfare; it is also necessary that she should know how those wants are best to be provided for, and how that welfare is best to be consulted: ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... difficulty, and knocked at the door. A motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if to ask him ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... hurt her a bit and she will insist on staying up to take care of Stanley. Truly they are all right, Charlotte, and you mustn't worry." Betty's tone was so motherly and insistent that Charlotte couldn't help smiling. She closed her eyes sleepily and didn't even trouble to open them when she felt herself lifted from the ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... Mrs. Peters was a motherly woman, and had already lighted a fire to prepare some breakfast for her husband, in readiness for his return from the beach, so the wet clothes were soon taken off the child, and they saw it was a little girl about five years old, fair ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie

... Purchase. Would Miss Marvin be prepared (for an honorarium) to give his son private lessons? Could she afford the time? "I shrink from exposing him to influences, so often malign, of a boarding-school. What I should most of all desire for him is a steady, sympathetic home influence, a—may I say it?—a motherly influence." ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... very welcome as had ever been her way. She was an eccentric, but embarrassingly straightforward old lady; and if I had heeded her simple motherly counsel in the past all might ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... sound the shadows of forms, feelings, and events of the happy but irrevocable past. When we entered our old night nursery, all my childish fears lurked once more in the darkness of the corners and doorway. When we passed into the drawing-room, I could feel the old calm motherly love diffusing itself from every object in the apartment. In the breakfast-room, the noisy, careless merriment of childhood seemed merely to be waiting to wake to life again. In the divannaia (whither Foka first conducted ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... and smiled a feeble recognition of Jerome and Florine. The other woman I had never seen; she was much older than Florine and had a kind, motherly face. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... for, it was the first motherly caress I had ever experienced in my life. Aunt Matilda, you may be sure, never once ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... lips, smooths the gray hairs from the wrinkled brow, and calms his troubled spirit. Pansies bloom beneath the latticed windows of her cabin home. Morning-glories twine around it. Swallows twitter their joy, and build their nests beneath the eves. Motherly hens cluck to their broods in the dooryard. The fare upon the table within the cabin is frugal, but there is always a bit of bread or a herring for a wandering exile. When women pine for their old homes, when homesickness becomes ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... who drove to the Concho one morning and was welcomed by Corliss to whom she gave the little sack of gold. She told him all that he wished to know in regard to his brother Will, pleading for him with motherly gentleness. Corliss assured her that he felt no anger toward his brother, but rather solicitude, and made her happy by his generous attitude toward the wrongdoer. He had already heard that his brother had driven to Antelope and taken the train for the West. His great regret was that ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... into itself, so doth a holy heart, so far as sanctified, convert and digest all things into spiritual and useful thoughts. This you may see in Psalm cvii. 43.' And in her plain, silent, hidden, motherly way Mistress Piety adorned her old minister's doctrine of the holy heart that he was always preaching about, till she shared her soft and holy heart with her son, as his father had shared his clear and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... own little room at The Ship, and Mrs. Peck, with motherly kindness writ large on her comely, plump face, was bending over her with a cup of steaming broth in ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... something cropped up to put him out of temper. He felt it was his duty to brighten her poverty-stricken life with his high spirits. He chatted merrily to her, chaffed her, teased her, to charm her from her unnatural solemnity. And she would smile, in her quiet, motherly fashion, as one smiles at a much-loved child who seeks to drive away our cares—and would then offer to do something ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... walk brought them to the cart, which Mouti had outspanned close to Mrs. Neville's waggon, where Jess and her friends were living, and the first person they saw was Mrs. Neville herself. She was a good, motherly colonial woman, accustomed to a rough life, and one not ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... flowers in Caesar's garden, than all the statues in his palace. But in the Greek woman's heart there was no envy. On the contrary, at thought of the dangers which threatened the girl, great pity seized her. A certain motherly feeling rose in the woman. Lygia seemed to her not only as beautiful as a beautiful vision, but also very dear, and, putting her lips to her dark hair, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... his word, old Daniel Holbrook drove his sorrel horse up to the school at noon on Sunday and brought Neil Durant and Teeny-bits down to the little white house that had been his home for thirty years. "Ma" Holbrook was a motherly person, plump, gray-haired ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst

... found Payne seated on the bed with Surratt, playing with bowie knives, and surrounded with revolvers and spurs. Miss Honora Fitzpatrick testifies that Weichmann was treated by Mrs. Surratt "more like a son than a friend." Poor return for motherly care! Guilty knowledge and participation in crime or in wild schemes for the capture of the President would be a good excuse for not making all this known to Mrs. Surratt. In speaking of the spurs and pistols, Weichmann ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... from the bright sunshine. Mrs. Churton was rather large, approaching stoutness in her figure, grey- haired with colourless face, and a somewhat anxious expression; but she seemed very gentle and motherly, and greeted Fan with a kindliness in her voice and manner which served in a great measure to remove the girl's nervousness on coming for the first time ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... frightened; she had never seen her child other than deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of motherly love she bent to pick him up, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... eight o'clock, Mrs. Wadleigh was standing at the door, in the sparkling light, giving her last motherly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... which the contents, decently covered with a towel, might have been freshly laundered shirts. Being stopped by a gentleman of Allerton's impressiveness and plainly suffering expression, her face grew motherly and sympathetic. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr. Idle's ankle, with the aid of ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... aged woman, with eager eyes, and well-defined clear-cut features. Her voice was harsh, but with an undertone of great tenderness. She was scrupulously careful in her attire, which was rather above her station. Altogether, she had much the bearing of a gentle-woman. Her devotion to me was quite motherly. Never having had any family of her own, although she had been the wife of one of my father's shepherds, she expended the whole maternity of her nature upon me. She was always my first resource in any perplexity, for I was sure of all the help she could ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... presence of the whole company, so that everything will be properly settled. But were you now, ma, to begin making much of this occurrence, and telling every one, it would, on the contrary, look as if you had, in your motherly partiality and fond love for him, indulged him to stir up a row and provoke people! He has, on this occasion, had unawares to eat humble pie, but will you, ma, put people to all this trouble and inconvenience and make use of the prestige ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... had been at the same school with her son, received the exiled poet, though fully aware that by doing so she might have displeased the Duke and blasted her fortunes and those of her children. Schiller preserved the tenderest attachment to this motherly friend through life, and his letters to her display a most charming innocence and purity ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... sir. He hit my father right in the eye, raising a black and blue spot as large as a hen's egg." The painful recollection of this part of the dream so overpowered the witness, that she burst into tears, but was soon quieted by the motherly attentions of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... was the first beheld by many a little, new-born infant; her voice, the first to hush its wailing cries as she cuddled it up to her motherly breast, and oft, with loving hands, softly closed the lids over eyes no longer able to see; whom the Gracious Master had taken into ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... old Jim's neck, crooning over him, talking to him in her motherly way, telling him what a ruffian he was and how ashamed she was of him for getting the hair worn off under his collar, and he a horse old enough to know better, Bobby's "Toodles," an animated doormat of a dog, sniffing at her skirt, when Otto and ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... standard. Where dress and style are passports Annette may be excluded, but where brain and character count Annette will gain admittance. I fear," said Mrs. Lasette, rising to go, "that many a young girl has gone down in the very depths who might have been saved if motherly women, when they saw them unloved and lonely, had reached out to them a helping hand and encouraged them to live useful and good lives. We cry am I my sister's keeper? [I?] will not wipe the blood off ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... bent over her and drew the things up about her neck in a half-tender, motherly way, looking at the girl's face. Then she hesitated before putting ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... it was conjectured that the baby, pending the arrival of a step-mother, would be handed over to the cook, a rotund motherly person who was fond of asserting that she had buried ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner

... there will be three parties, National Assembly, National Rascality, National Royalty, all busy enough. Rascality rejoices; women trim themselves with tricolor. Nay motherly Paris has sent her Avengers sufficient 'cartloads of loaves;' which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed. The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-stores; loading them in fifty waggons; that so a National King, probable ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... There was no refusing them. They were the insignia of the entente. And the coffee! The good, honest, Holland coffee with no acorns in it! I doubt if our starving bodies could have carried us many days more on the uncooked roots we had been living on. The motherly housewives, in their Grecian-like helmets of metal and glass that fit closely over their smoothed hair like skull-caps, bustled merrily about, intent only on replenishing our plates and cups, full of a tearful sympathy which was as welcome ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... her charming gravity and her refined way of speaking place her above the younger children. She was thoughtful and gentle and never joined us in our rather loud conversation. Of course, I had been the one member of the family who had caused the greatest anxieties both to my mother and to my motherly sister, and during my life as a student the strained relations between us had made a terrible impression on me. When therefore they tried to believe in me again, and once more showed some interest in my work, I was full of gratitude and happiness. The thought of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... only hand to which she clung during those terrible days of fear and suffering. Another presence was almost constantly beside her night and day,—a tender, motherly presence that watched over and ministered to her with a devotion that never slackened. For some time Dinah could not find a name for this gracious and comforting presence, but one day when a figure clothed in a violet dressing-gown stooped over her ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... life. Otherwise, every year, about Valentine's day, there is much that I should like to say to my good friends the birds. I want to put it to them seriously. Is not the month of February just a little too early? Of course, their answer would be the same as in the case of my motherly friend. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... another great misfortune befell me. This was the death, on the 5th of August, of my mother, a woman of distinct culture and intellectual power, to whom her children had been indebted for many things in addition to the motherly love which she lavished upon them all so freely. It was, I think, the shock of her death, and the exertion of the railway journey to my brother Stuart's house at Wilmslow, Cheshire, which I took in order ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... sadden your enjoyment of your pleasant visit to the Engadine, by writing at any length of the sorrow that I am suffering. You know how I love my aunt, and how gratefully I have always felt her motherly goodness to me. The doctor does not conceal the truth. At her age, there is no hope: my father's last-left relation, my one dearest ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... out of the melee badly punished, so that he bellowed like a bull-calf, as he mounted on a dusty whirlwind to Olympus. Over his misadventures while playing his own favorite game certainly there were no tears to be shed; but when, prompted by motherly tenderness, Aphrodite, the soft power of love,—she of the Paphian boudoir, whose recesses were glowing with the breath of Sabaean frankincense fumed by a hundred altars,—she at whose approach the winds became hushed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... John had such a mother, and she did the most natural and motherly kind of a thing. She wanted her boys to go away up high; they must even stand in the highest places, on the right and left hand of the King in His glory. Like all mothers, she ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... and unguarded trap doors. It is no pleasant task to have to tell a joyous, sunny-hearted girl of fourteen or fifteen about the evils that are in the world, but if you love her, you will do it! I would like to see this work done by trained motherly and tactful women, in the department of social welfare, paid by the school board. I know the mothers should do it, but many mothers are ignorant, foolish, lax, and certainly untrained. The mother's kindly counsel is the best, I know, but you cannot ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... than of thoughts or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly fib like this ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... see I was a great shock to her, my attraction for her had gone—I was just "poor darling Nicholas," and she began to be motherly—Nina motherly!—She would have been furious at the very idea once. Nina is thirty-nine years old, her boy has just gone into the flying corps, she is so glad the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... masculine". But if she did not conceal a softness for children under her stern exterior why did she keep a stock of so many things dear to the childish heart, from paper soldiers (purchased by the yard) to sleds and shot? Perhaps that fantastic stock of hers was her curious expression of the Eternal Motherly. After she died, every year on the 30th of May the "Vet'rans," as they marched two by two in annually dwindling lines about the cemetery, placed a fresh print flag and a basket of geraniums on her grave, because she had sent a substitute to the War. To us youngsters this substitute used to ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... to be done? True, I was near nineteen; but, thanks to my retired life and the protecting care of my mother and sister, I well knew that many a girl of fifteen, or under, was gifted with a more womanly address, and greater ease and self-possession, than I was. Yet, if Mrs. Bloomfield were a kind, motherly woman, I might do very well, after all; and the children, of course, I should soon be at ease with them—and Mr. Bloomfield, I hoped, I should have but little to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... cheerfully ready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, took her seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one side of her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on the other. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, it was pointed out that he was wanted at the store,—was a mere boy anyhow, and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather, excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... thought out his position somewhat to this effect, his landlady appeared to clear away the breakfast things; she was a landlady of the better class, a motherly old soul who prided herself upon making her lodgers comfortable, and had higher views than many of her kind on the subjects of cookery and attendance. She had come to entertain a great respect for Caffyn, although at first, when ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... the Psalms of David, those faithful songs, and sounds of devotion, which allow of no swelling spirit, as yet a Catechumen, and a novice in Thy real love, resting in that villa, with Alypius a Catechumen, my mother cleaving to us, in female garb with masculine faith, with the tranquillity of age, motherly love, Christian piety! Oh, what accents did I utter unto Thee in those Psalms, and how was I by them kindled towards Thee, and on fire to rehearse them, if possible, through the whole world, against the pride of mankind! And yet ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... truth of what you have been saying as you can be; and as I have no thought or expectation of ever asking her to be my wife, you'll believe me for the future that I'm quite disinterested in speaking about her. I foresee trouble for that girl—perhaps want of motherly care—and I only wish you to be ready to be a friend to her, in case she needs one. Now, Fanny,' said he, 'I trust you have delicacy enough to understand, that it is as great an injury to Miss Hale as to me—in fact, she would think it a greater—to suppose ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the church he was accosted by Andrew Daney and the latter's wife, who greeted him effusively. Unfortunately for Mrs. Daney, Nan, in one of those bursts of confidence that must ever exist between lovers, had informed Donald the night previous of the motherly soul's interest in his affairs; wherefore he returned Mrs. Daney's warm greeting with such chilly courtesy that she was at no loss to guess the reason for it and was instantly plunged into a slough of ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... fourteen went her way to the end of her page. Then Miriam had ventured to interrupt and to ask her about the hanging arrangements, and the child had risen and speaking soft South German had suggested and poked tip-toeing about amongst the thickly-hung garments and shown a motherly solicitude over the disposal of Miriam's things. Miriam noted the easy range of the child's voice, how smoothly it slid from birdlike queries and chirpings, to the consoling tones of the lower register. It seemed to leave undisturbed the softly-rounded, faintly-mottled ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... and her immediate affirmative to the question, "Are these Mr. Constantine's lodgings?" at once dispelled this last anxiety. Encouraged by the motherly expression of the good woman's manner, Mary begged leave to alight. Mrs. Robson readily offered her arm, and with many apologies for the disordered state of the house, led her up stairs to the room which ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... and by turns scornful, tormenting, vexed, self-communing, absent, melting, teasing, brilliant, indignant, sad-merry, thoughtful, withering, gentle, humorous, and gay, Gay, Gay! Protecting (to Hero), motherly, very intellectual—a gallant creature and ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... cheek red, and her bust full,—there had certainly been no falling off there; nor will I say that her lip had lost its freshness. But the bloom of her charms had passed away, and she was now a solid, stout, motherly woman, not bright in converse, but by no means deficient in mother-wit, recognizing well the duties which she owed to others, but recognizing equally well those which others owed to her. All the charms of her youth—had they not been given to him, and also all her solicitude, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... messages tended otherwise than might have been expected. The sadness that had so long been almost second nature to the girl steadily deepened, and Mrs. Osler, ever kind and watchful of her charge, noticed the depression settling on her, and with motherly solicitude—she had no children of her own—insisted on the only remedy she understood—physic. And the girl submitted to the kindly treatment, knowing well enough that there was no physic to help her complaint. She knew that, in spite of his tender messages and assurances of affection, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... wrists and did duty as collar and cuffs; but Fair Maria bent back from the box-seat, where she was sitting alone with Karl Johan, and tied a very white scarf round his neck, and Karna, who wanted to be motherly to him, went over his face with a corner of her pocket-handkerchief, which she moistened with her tongue. She was rather officious, but for that matter it was quite conceivable that the boy might have got dirty again since ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... he is quite himself to-night," returned Mrs. Mayne, in her soft, motherly voice. "I fancy he misses you, Dick, and is half jealous of the Challoners for monopolizing you. You are all we have, that's where it is," she finished, stroking the sandy head with her plump hand; but Dick jerked away from ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... little face had come peering over the motherly shoulder at the moment, even whiter in the flickering light of Mrs. Archer's candle, and at sound of the name there went up a low cry ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... Otis came down-stairs she was flushed with pleasant motherly victory. "She's drunk all that hot cordial," she said to her son, "every drop of it, and I've tucked her into bed with the extra comfortables over her, an' she eat quite a good supper, an' I told her to go right to sleep, and I guess ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... prettier than a brood of chickens with a good motherly hen, like the one in this picture! See how the little chicks nestle and play about their mother! and see what a watchful eye she has over them! But some chickens do not have such kind ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various

... pleasant setting for the school life of the forty-eight pupils at The Woodlands. The two principals worked together in perfect harmony. Each had her own department. Miss Bowes, who was short, stout, grey-haired, and motherly, looked after the housekeeping, the hygiene, and the business side. She wrote letters to parents, kept the accounts, interviewed tradespeople, superintended the mending, and was the final referee in all matters pertaining to health and general conduct. "Dear Old Rainbow", as the girls ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... on the little kitchen. The visitor is at a loss—when suddenly the round, motherly face changes.—"But there now! I'm goin' to smile, whatever 'appens. I'm not one as is goin' to give in! And we 'ad a letter from Arthur [her son in the trenches] this morning, to say 'is Company's on the list for leave, and 'e's applied.—Oh ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... had in the front yard, anyhow. I remember looking out and seeing an old green plaid shawl of hers over the verbena bed. There was a fire in my little wood-stove. Mrs. Bird made it, I know. She was a real motherly sort of woman; she always seemed to be the happiest when she was doing something to make other folks happy and comfortable. Mrs. Dennison told me she had always been so. She said she had coddled her husband within an inch of his life. 'It's lucky Abby never had any children,' ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... in from the kitchen. She was a huge person with a severe yet motherly face. She had her hands on her hips, and she cast a rather disapproving glance ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... may be collars, or it may be four-roomed cottages, or it may be only the weather. Whatever it is, Booms's doleful face relaxes presently into a solemn smile, and Miss Crisp goes over and sits by Mrs Cruden, who puts her arm round the blushing girl and kisses her in a very motherly way on the forehead. It is a curious piece of business altogether, and it is just as well the four young men are too engrossed in football and cricket to notice it, and that Gedge and Waterford find their whole attention occupied by the contents of the little ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... late eminent judge. It is scarcely more than a year ago, at the semi-centennial celebration of the academy, that Franklin Pierce, the mature and distinguished man, paid a beautiful tribute to the character of Madam Woodbury, in affectionate remembrance of the motherly kindness experienced at ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Mrs. Worthington: excellent, motherly woman, the Mrs. Brinkley of the slate quarries. Her first question about you and William won my heart: she seemed so to have seen into you with that penetration of the heart, which is full as quick as that of the head, if there be any difference. She furnished us each with a pair of Devonshire ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... said the woman, her motherly sympathies aroused; "I'm rilly concerned for ye. Solomon!" she called from the window. "I say Sol, is that ar man going to tote ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... persecutions of me, I will, to my last hour, wish him good: although he hath overwhelmed the fatherless, and digged a pit for his friend: fatherless may she well be called, and motherless too, who has been denied all paternal protection, and motherly forgiveness. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... liberal and sincerely devoted to his wife. For all in the household, therefore, the days passed pleasantly; and when Mrs. Parsons one fine spring morning discovered her fair guest in tears she felt that time had established between them relations sufficiently confidential to warrant her motherly intervention. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... got here, Mr. Johns,—likely boy. But, Parson, don't you think he must feel a kind o' hankerin' arter somebody to be motherly to him? I 'most wonder that you don't feel that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... way," replied Mrs. Geer, in all the humility of motherly pride; "and so much the more reason why she shouldn't be let go so. There's Mr. Dingham sending his great logy girls to Miss Porter's seminary. (I wonder if he expects they'll ever turn out anything.) And here's our Ivy, bright ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... so full of grief that you could trace the procession by the tears that dripped upon the carpet. Yes; but the mourners all had the cunningest little "pairsols" of nasturtium leaves. There wasn't a "single one doll" that marched without a pairsol, not even my Rosy Posy; for I had a motherly heart, and couldn't mortify my child! She should have "sumpin to keep the sun off," if it cost the last cent her mamma ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May

... doctor had said that all danger at the Everetts' was over, and Grant had been allowed to come home once more. In spite of the good times he had been having with Howard and Charlie, in spite of the motherly welcome of Mrs. Burnam, the boy had been thoroughly homesick during the period of his banishment from home. It was the first time that he and his brother had ever been separated, and Ned was his hero and idol, as well as his constant ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... de Chauffours, Marguerite Guyon[12], appears in an especially amiable light. Her lonely situation and rude surroundings, the perils of the wilderness and of savage war, amidst which her little children were born, evoke our sympathy. Her goodness of heart is seen in her motherly kindness to Gyles, the young stranger of an alien race—the "little English," as she calls him. But with all her amiability and gentleness she possessed other and stronger qualities, and it was her woman's wit and readiness of resource that saved her husband's fortunes in a grave emergency. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... their guest at the opera, and she had impressed him as a lady with a great many diamonds, who talked to him about other people while he was trying to listen to the music. But she was, as Lucy phrased it afterwards, "a motherly soul, when one got underneath her war-paint." She was always inviting Montague to her home and introducing him to people whom she thought would be of assistance ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... different languages spoken there, she managed the excursion in a way which any one else would find impossible to emulate, and the advantages accruing from such a trip could not be obtained in any other manner without a very much larger expenditure of money. The girls had the advantage of motherly care during all the time they were abroad, and as the party was strictly limited in number, and the greatest care taken to select members only from the very best families in America, Mrs. Scrivener-Yapling was certain that all her patrons would ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... harshly with the erring," sighed the missioner, and then he prayed: "Let not his disobedience cause him and us too much sorrow, Blessed Virgin. Take the poor child to thy motherly bosom, and bring him back to us in safety. Thou knowest we ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... of about thirty years of age was looking, pipe in mouth, at the mail boat and the sailing vessels lying in the stream. There were four in all—the steamer, an American whaling barque, a small brig of about two hundred tons flying the Hawaiian Island colours, and a big, sprawling, motherly-looking full-rigged ship, whose huge bow ports denoted her ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... her a bit and she will insist on staying up to take care of Stanley. Truly they are all right, Charlotte, and you mustn't worry." Betty's tone was so motherly and insistent that Charlotte couldn't help smiling. She closed her eyes sleepily and didn't even trouble to open them when she felt herself lifted from the sofa and ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... back to Java with him? Yes—Then, knowing what you do of her, can't you see that this is only another example of the splendid loyalty that actuates her? My good fellow—" Mrs. Goring's tone became almost motherly, and Barry worshipped her for it—"poor Natalie is to experience a sad disillusionment very soon; she will suffer; but from the suffering she will emerge as clean as before in mind and body, and when her loyalty is enlisted in the proper place, the fortunate man will ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... deadly feeling of faintness came upon her before she had been carried to the little bed which had been made ready for her. When she opened her eyes, while a spoon was held to her lips, the first thing she saw was the sweetest, calmest, most motherly of faces bent over her, one arm round her, the other giving her the spoon of some cordial. She looked up and even smiled, though it was a sad contorted smile, which brought a tear into the good sister's eyes; but then she fell asleep, and only half awoke when the Countess came up to see her for ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... want more beauty, or more assurance, or more sympathy, or more antiquity. Have you never noticed how all converts personify their new Church in feminine terms? She becomes a Madonna, something at once motherly and young. It is the passion with which the child turns away from what is male and rough, to the mother, the nurse, the elder sister. The convert isn't really in search of dogmas and doctrines: he is in love with a presence, a shape, something which can clasp and embrace ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... appeared, we are told, with a low-necked dress badly cut, tightly laced, her arms held back as if pinioned, her hair curled all over her head, and she danced quadrilles very badly. This escapade was not allowed to repeat itself. Certain kind and motherly Cambridge ladies took the neglected child in hand, tamed her rude strength, and subdued her manners. Col. Higginson mentions half a dozen of these excellent ladies, among them his mother, at whose feet "this studious, self-conscious, overgrown girl" would sit, "covering ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... But good motherly Mrs. King saw it all, and how he had been weeping where her child had so long rested. Indeed, his face was swelled with crying, and his voice ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Dick, as he noticed one standing beside the stout, motherly-looking woman in the doorway of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... Church was spoken of throughout the whole world. That letter to the Corinthians proves that, by the end of the first century, the Roman Church had already drawn up fixed rules for her own guidance, that she watched with motherly care over outlying communities, and that she then knew how to use language that was at once an expression of duty, love, and authority.[317] As yet she pretends to no legal title of any kind, but she knows the "commandments and ordinances" ([Greek: prostagmata] and [Greek: dokaiomata]) of ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... time to recount—all her kindness, her cheerfulness, her powers of dispensing comfort, and warmth, and happiness, and promoting the direct and indirect welfare of everyone who came in her path. By what strange coincidence the brothers Foxley had been led to her glowing fireside and her motherly arms brimming over with zeal and kindness for the whole human race, does not matter. It is sufficient that they found her and found with her a sense of comparative peace and security which compensated for ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... the characters of the parties and the detail of the incidents.) Edward, however, though perplexed by her strange detractions from her daughter's good qualities, yet in the innocence of his own heart still mistook[268:2] her increasing fondness for motherly affection; she at length, overcome by her miserable passion, after much abuse of Mary's temper and moral tendencies, exclaimed with violent emotion—"O Edward! indeed, indeed, she is not fit for you—she has not a heart to love you as you deserve. It is I that love you! Marry me, Edward! and I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... programs denounced him as misled; realestate operators, fearful of all this talk about the grass bringing doom and so depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alike was to buy up ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... world where Louise is not mine! Perhaps the young universe may contain a panacea for my anguish! Solitude shall pour its balm in my wound; once away from this civilization which stifles me, nature will cradle me in her motherly arms; the elements will resume their empire over me; ocean, sky, flowers, foliage will draw off the feverish electricity that excites my nerves; I will become absorbed in the grand whole, I will no longer live; I will vegetate ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... downstairs. "You know that nice Mrs. Randall in the Models; well, she has a lodger, but she expects that he will leave her in a week or so, as he has work at a distance. I might take the room for Barton, it is a clean, tidy little place. And Mrs. Randall is a motherly sort of woman, ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to me on the road, such as the waggoner's looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some of the passengers, which were defeated by the valiance of my guardian Esther; who, to do her justice, took a motherly care of me, at the same time that she taxed me for the protection by making me bear all travelling charges, which I defrayed with the unmost cheerfulness, and thought myself much obliged to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... and Jean's letter were in Mrs. Morrison's lap. She had read them both, and sat looking at them with a varying sort of smile, now motherly and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... attending to the damp shoes and socks before going to bed. Boo lay with his round face turned up to hers, stroking her cheek while the sleepy blue eyes blinked lovingly at her as she sang her lullaby with a motherly patience sweet to see. They made a pretty little picture, and Mr. Bemis looked at it with pleasure, having a leisure moment in which to discover, as all parents do sooner or later, that ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... Taylor, shocked at the poet's appearance, procured for him at once the services of the principal physician in Peterborough. Clare had also an excellent and warm-hearted friend in Mrs. Marsh, wife of the Bishop of Peterborough, who corresponded with him frequently, in a familiar and almost motherly manner, from 1821 to 1837. When Clare complained of indisposition, a messenger would be dispatched from "The Palace," with medicines or plaisters, camphor lozenges, or "a pound of our own tea," with sensible advice as to personal ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... a bad little thing, au fond, when you get to know her. It is society that has spoilt her. She would have made a nice, helpful, motherly body ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... her, for, suddenly, with the new respect for him the knowledge of his trained and ready muscles gave her, arose a new consideration for him, almost motherly. He would be breasting dreadful peril in the passage of the flames—peril to his eyes and face and clinging, tight-clasped hands especially. And round her limbs there was the means of saving him, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... kingdom.' And Jesus made answer, 'Amen, I say to thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.' Magdalen, Mary of Cleophas, and John stood near the Cross of our Lord and looked at him, while the Blessed Virgin, filled with intense feelings of motherly love, entreated her Son to permit her to die with him; but he, casting a look of ineffable tenderness upon her, turned to John and said, 'Woman, behold thy son;' then he said to John, 'Behold thy mother.' ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... as fast as she could, eager to dilate on the subject of the embarrassed Orlando's virtues, flattered in her motherly old heart by the praise of his sermons, and yet, all the time, while her peaked chin worked excitedly, thinking about the roasted young pig that waited for her to attend ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... bed, O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as sang poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls. Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly lap and hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care—the sick man full of pain—the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover—like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, and you gently soothe us off ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Friend who led me to this choice point of observation is her father. The plump and motherly matron on the high seat, whose face alone is a remedy for care and worry, is her mother. They will invite me home with them when meeting is over. Already I see the tree-embowered farmhouse, with its low, wide veranda, and ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... and, as the conductor moved on, she said, "The nasty thing. They have no consideration at all. Look, child." For a moment Plato thought she was going to offer him flight fare from Space Junction to Venusberg, but she was not, he discovered, as motherly as that. "You know what you'll do when you get off? Send a 'gram, collect, to your people in Venusberg. They'll wire you your fare. And you'll reach them in a ...
— Runaway • William Morrison

... to her after she was in bed that evening, and kissed her good night with motherly tenderness. Then she sat for some ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... tortured girl seemed to yield herself, and slipped inertly from her grasp till kneeling down she laid her head in the motherly lap and sobbed. Miss Rowly kept stroking her hair in silence. Presently the girl looked up, and with a pang the aunt saw that her eyes were dry. In her ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... sensation among the other dwellers in our old tree. Jays were constantly inquiring how the nestlings were getting on, an inquisitive Magpie peeped into the nest, trying to get a glimpse of the pretty ones, and received a sharp peck from the angry father as a reproof for the intrusion; as to the motherly Rooks, who were supposed to care for nothing save their own family concerns, they kindly advised the young parents how to rear the brood, saying, 'Care, care,' was all that was necessary; nay, it is even recorded, as an undoubted fact, that an old Owl, who had lived for ages in a hole in ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to your better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael—how motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo—how majestic! and the Saints of Angelico—how pious! and the Cherubs of Correggio—how delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you would dance to. But neither you nor I should be a bit the better or wiser; ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... the trees. Her boots and stockings followed the skirt, for the bare sole of the human foot does not slip upon dry or even wet bark as does the hard leather of a boot. She would have liked to discard her riding breeches also, but the motherly admonitions of My Dear had convinced Meriem that it was not good form to go ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... reached the last of the passengers. She was middle-aged and motherly-looking. She peered down at him with more than common interest as he went through his pat little presentation formula. A psychologist would have gathered much from the lad's tense, flushed face and in the oddly strained look of ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... is the right stuff in you. Blood will tell, and you will come right in time. I am not afraid my boy will ever disgrace me; I am only vexed he should sometimes talk nonsense." And then he would pat my shoulder or my hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very affecting in a man so strong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... little empty, with that placid emptiness of the nursing mother—to mark the change that my not-to-be-deceived scrutiny soon discovered. We left the sleepy Mary slowly patrolling the brick walks in a pompous perambulator propelled by a motherly English nurse under Miss Jencks's watchful eye, and strolled, in our customary hand-in-hand, to the boat-house, a low, artfully concealed structure, all but hidden under a jagged cliff, and faced wherever ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... she said with motherly gentleness; "it is very kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to know you. Shall we go in where ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... had a vast number of people to be fond of. There was Aunt Eleanor, but I defy anyone to be fond of her. Respect her one might, fear her we did, but love her—it would have been as discouraging as petting a steam road-roller. We hadn't even a motherly old nurse, for Aunt Eleanor liked machine-made people like herself to serve her. I don't think it did you much harm, you were such a sunny-tempered, affectionate little boy, but it ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... children come into the world in the same imploring helplessness, with the same general organization and wants, and demanding either from the newly-awakened mother's love, or from the memory of motherly feeling in the nurse, or the common appeals of humanity in those who undertake the earliest duties of an infant, the same assistance and protection, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... is a most kind, motherly woman," Harry said. "But it isn't the Back Kitchen, neither," he added ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... A motherly-looking woman stood at the door, and gave me a cheery invitation to come in. She looked rather askance at my boy, but finding him properly convoyed by my sober self, she admitted him within the portal. A good many young gentlemen of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... the road announced that John was now near the parental roost. Mrs. Fogel with her motherly solicitude was awaiting him with happy tears dimming her eyes. She took in with all a mother's fondness his high-stepping prancers, his prosperous appearance, last but not least the entire ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... certainly attended to that face, and to that beneficent attitude, more than to be service. When the terrors of my desolate situation used to begin to creep over me in my lonely bed, I could, without much effort of imagination, bring that sweet motherly face before me, and view it visibly in the gloom of the room, and thus defy the dread glance of the visage above me. I used to whisper to myself these words—"Lady with the glory, come an sit by me." And I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... being, as I have explained, strange old-fashioned young people, full of nineteenth-century ideas, hated these convenient creches exceedingly and at last took their little daughter to one with extreme reluctance. They were received by a motherly person in a uniform who was very brisk and prompt in her manner until Elizabeth wept at the mention of parting from her child. The motherly person, after a brief astonishment at this unusual emotion, changed suddenly into a creature ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... rapid journey, the next evening. I slept all the way from Paris to beyond Montargis. My lord and master put his arm round me and pillowed my head on his shoulder, upon an arrangement of handkerchiefs. This was the one liberty he took; and the almost motherly tenderness which got the better of his drowsiness, touched me strangely. I fell asleep then under the fire of his eyes, and awoke to find them still blazing; the passionate gaze remained unchanged, but what thoughts had come and gone meanwhile! ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... unusual affection, she gathered up her lustrous silk and pushed the little girl away saying, impatiently, "Don't touch me, child, your hands are dirty." Then the thought had come to Polly that the velvet cloak did n't cover a right motherly heart, that the fretful face under the nodding purple plumes was not a tender motherly face, and that the hands in the delicate primrose gloves had put away something very sweet and precious. She ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... of that placid, motherly face breaking into lines of anguish while the gray old head bowed in weakness, completely unmanned the self-centred young scientist, and bending above ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... the stuff of our evanescent joys. There was nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of Mrs. Rexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well; and yet it might have been easier for Sophia Rexford to have lived in external peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view the relative importance of ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... the rainbow; but the queen-mother had far more important business to attend to than the adornment of her person, and in her self-devotion to her commonwealth had long ago, of her own free will, laid aside flounces and furbelows. What a good motherly body she was! and how devoted her subjects were to her! Every-where she went she was followed by an admiring crowd. No home was too humble for her to enter, and under each roof she was received with the liveliest demonstrations of loyalty and delight. The happy people ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... like this treatment, and began to expostulate in a fretful, complaining way. Instantly Polly's motherly instincts awoke; she wiped her own tears from the baby's face, and raising it in her arms, pressed its little soft velvet cheek to her own. As she did so, a thrill of warm comfort ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... turned back to the sorrow she had known when her firstborn went from her, when the aching void came into her life and robbed it of every joy and every zest, till the waif was brought to her, the care of whom filled her life with happiness and content. Her big motherly heart was trying to understand something of the anguish she would have known had that waif not come to her then; and she thought of the anguish that other mother must have known if the story she ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... of these little adventures of childhood days with irritating exactness, and there mingled with it a bitter feeling of regret for the lost opportunities. The kiss blown me from a window in Naples, the extraordinary, more than motherly cares of the hotel chambermaid in Vienna, the roses pressed into my hands on the street by a young Spanish girl somewhere in the south of France, the embrace and the kiss on my cheek which I once suddenly felt in a dark garden where I stood ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... precious Encyclopedia, his evening with General Grant, and his efforts to become something more than an office boy. No boy had ever so gracious a listener before; no mother could have been more tenderly motherly than the woman who sat opposite him and seemed so honestly interested in all that he told. Not for a moment during all those two hours was he allowed to remember that his host and hostess were the President of the United States and the first lady ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... odd, grave look, that rather startled Kitty, Jack vanished, to return presently with a comfortable cup of tea and a motherly old lady to help repair damages and soothe her by the foolish little purrings and pattings so grateful to female nerves after ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... her and drew the things up about her neck in a half-tender, motherly way, looking at the girl's face. Then she hesitated ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... Morning Glory Club will furnish genuine amusement to the reader. Originally formed to "elevate" the village, it quickly develops into an exchange for town gossip. It has a saving grace, however, in the person of motherly Mrs. Stout, the uncultured but sweet-natured and pure-minded village philosopher, who pours the oil of her saneness and charity on the troubled ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... as when our words seem all too rude We cease from speech, to take our thought and brood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing, Of long chords change-marked with sobbing— Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... only known their neighbors across the hall since coming to the Fenmore Apartment. Yet one could not live near motherly Mrs. Sarah Dalwood and not get to know her rather intimately, in a comparatively short time. She was what would have been called, in the country, "a good neighbor." In New York, with its hurry and scurry, where people live for years in adjoining ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... fire years ago, Mrs. King places her age at about eighty years. Her husband, Albert King, who died two years ago, was the first Negro policeman employed on the Toledo police force. Mrs. King, whose hair is whitening with age, is a kind and motherly woman, small in stature, pleasing and quiet in conversation. She lives with her adopted daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth King Kimbrew, who works as an elevator operator at the Lasalle & Koch Co. Mrs. King walks with a limp and moves about ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... was engaged in motherly care, removing a part of the wet clothing, and lamenting for the state in which her sturdy offspring had returned. But presently order was restored, and the bustle was succeeded ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... a motherly woman, and Mr. Bancroft was a fatherly man. Five children sat round the tea-table, distinguished by the Bancroft nose. Helen and I were seated each side of Mr. Somers. The table reminded me of our table at Surrey, it was so covered with vast viands; but the dishes were alike, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... crippled, another great misfortune befell me. This was the death, on the 5th of August, of my mother, a woman of distinct culture and intellectual power, to whom her children had been indebted for many things in addition to the motherly love which she lavished upon them all so freely. It was, I think, the shock of her death, and the exertion of the railway journey to my brother Stuart's house at Wilmslow, Cheshire, which I took in order that I might see her before she died, that brought about a relapse in my condition. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... not love-letters, though, that Lieutenant Doherty sent Eileen, for the schoolgirl had always taken him in a motherly way, and indeed signed herself "Your Mother-Confessor." But the mystery and difficulty of smuggling the letters to and fro lent colour to the drab Convent days, far vivider colour than the whilom passing of verses. So long as Marcelle's desk remained next to Eileen's it was comparatively ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune like a step-mother has so long detained me. But nevertheless, you say—which But is aerugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But, you say, you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... am not dead yet, but I will be soon. Will you defend me then? No, you need not. But defend your sisters. Think only of my children, Adele. Take a motherly care of Therese; she is the youngest and liveliest, quick for good and bad, thoughtless but weak. See to it that she marries soon, if it can be arranged. Now, I can ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg

... figures on the platform, and then threw himself back in his seat and gave free vent to his own feelings. Two girls sitting beside him sniggered at the sight of the strong-built young fellow giving way to tears, but a motherly-looking woman opposite presently put her hand ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... dozen times a day. Cherry shared her mail, which was always heavy now, with him; she flitted into the sick-room every few minutes with small messages or gifts. With her bare, bright head, her busy white hands, her voice all motherly amusement and sympathy and sweetness, she had never seemed so much a wife. She had the pleasantest laugh in the world, and she often laughed. The sick-room was kept with exquisite simplicity, with such freshness, bareness, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... knew of that affair, she commenced by informing me that at ten years of age she was a scholar of Mrs. Chatterton, his mother, where she was taught plain work, and remained with her until she was near twenty years of age; that she slept with her, and found her kind and motherly, insomuch that there were many things which in moments of affliction Mrs. C. communicated to her, that she would not have wished to have been generally known; and among others, she often repeated how happy she was that her unfortunate ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the foot of the rocks by the sea, I ventured into one of the larger of these chambers, and saw that it had at the far end an opening leading apparently to an inner room. I had walking with me an old Italian female servant who took a motherly interest in my proceedings, and who, relying principally upon a very slight knowledge of English, had constituted herself my body-guard. Encouraged by her presence, I penetrated this inner room and found that it again opened in turn into another, and so on until we had passed ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... spacious and comfortable, and there was a motherly decency in her long nursing rock and her rustling old-fashioned gait, the multitudinous swish, in her wake, as of a thousand proper petticoats. It was as if she wished not to present herself in port ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... farther back than the advent of my uncle at Lake Adieno, and all my early associations were connected with the cottage and its surroundings. I had a glimmering and indistinct idea of something before our coming to Parkville. It seemed to me that I had once known a motherly lady with a sweet and lovely expression on her face; and I had a faint recollection of looking out upon a dreary waste of waters; but I could not fix the idea distinctly in my mind. I supposed that the lady was my mother. I made several vain efforts to induce my ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... with Rhaetia," was the practical response which jumped into the mind of the Grand Duchess; but she would throw no more cold water upon the rose-flame of her daughter's exaltation. She kissed the girl on the forehead, breathing a few words of motherly sympathy; but when the Princess had flown off to her own room to dress, she ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... to the rooms and told the girls how the rooms were to be kept, and she was such a motherly, warm-hearted body that very often if she found a homesick girl in her room she would know just how to cheer and comfort her, and help her to ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... talk in the sweet clear voice that was like the voice of a child. Then came my astonishment. She knew, it seemed, all about me and my doings, and the doings of my relations and friends—not as if she had wished to be prepared to surprise me; but because her motherly heart had wanted to know, and had been unable to forget. The essence of that charm, which flooded all one's mind with love and loyalty, was not that she was great, but that she was entirely simple and kind; because she loved, not her great part ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in a balcony, the whole of which was occupied by a big gray goat. There was not room for the police inquisitor and the goat too, and the former had to wait till the animal had come off his perch. Mrs. Shallock is a widow. A load of anxiety and concern overspread her motherly countenance when she heard of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... patiently. You never saw any thing so exact—every motion and tone. He had pulled the curls over his eyes, and tied up his face with a great handkerchief over the cap, as Gruffy has been doing lately when she had the face-ache, and he went about among the little chaps in such a motherly, bustling way, it was quite affecting. Sally, who helped him, hadn't the least idea it wasn't Gruffy. However, the best of it is to come," said Salisbury, pausing a moment to recover the mirth which the recollection produced:—"He ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... door caused Elsie to turn from the cot. A sweet motherly woman of fifty, in an old faded black dress, was pleading with the guard to be allowed ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... them, and deteriorating the manners and morals of all who live in them. For these have gone the way of the other classes mentioned and become perverted from the uses they were designed for. In the seventies there were still motherly women who had come to town to make a home for the children no longer content out of it. They were willing and capable of mothering a few other children and lonely teachers and clerks, so the boarding-house began as a real family home for the homeless. ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... liked to killed you," said Mrs. Bailey. "If I'd 'a' knew the boys was up to this . . . and him just a boy! Jim Bailey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Ma Bailey wiped Pete's face with her apron and put her motherly arm beneath his head. "If he was my ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... and a motherly woman, just the one fitted to inspire young men with confidence and that home feeling which all men desire to find somewhere. Her house was a free and easy ground, social for most of the young people of her acquaintance, and Harry was a favorite ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as Aurore and with eyes so bright one would not fancy them bathed in tears so lately, or the smooth brow as containing a single anxious motherly thought. But the Marquise having heard that story of the son, wondered as she looked at her if the handsome mother had not many an anxious thought ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... the door. She put the fatal glass away and turned guiltily. A dark little woman was there, and a soft, motherly voice spoke. It must be Mrs. Braywood's. She could not have suspected, for her tone ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... Mrs. Denys gently. She put a motherly arm about the slim body that leaned against her, looking up into the pale young face with ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... and with her face fully tamed to me, was a kindly-looking, fat motherly woman, with light-coloured hair, not in the best order. She was hot and scarlet with exercise, being perhaps too stout for the steep steps of the fortress; and in one hand she held a handkerchief, with which from time to time she wiped her brow. ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope

... the old woman with a kind motherly smile: "it's a lang way to Lunnon, a lang way, ay. Ye'll be thinkin' we're a wild kind o' folk here-away; somewhat uncouth we are, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... priceless boon to women. We are willing that our womanly character should stand by the side of those who oppose this movement. Do you call Lucy Stone, the woman reformer of the world, with her eloquence, her soft voice, her matchless, unwearied work for all that is good, with her motherly appearance, do you call such a woman unwomanly? Or Margaret Fuller, or Julia Ward Howe, do you call these women unwomanly? Then let us take our place by them, cast in our lot with them and be called unwomanly. It is said, and it is sadly true, that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... moment came a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she had private business there which only hens can understand. Or it may be that she, too, had built a little house ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... see all that was wanting in myself; there I obtained that for which I was thirsty. You will learn for yourself all that you have unconsciously been to me, to me a toiler who was misunderstood, overwhelmed for so long under misery, both physical and moral. Ah! I do not forget your motherly goodness, your divine sympathy for those who suffer. . . . Well, then as soon as you wish to come to Paris, you will come without even letting us know. You will come to the Rue Fortunee exactly as to your own house, absolutely as I used to go to Frapesle. I ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... what I know, As she weeping stood by his side this morning, Would she clasp me in motherly love and woe— Or drive me out in the cold with scorning? If she knew that I loved him better than life, Better than death; since for him I gave My hopes of rest, that I faced life's strife, And renounced the quiet and restful grave, When his strong, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... not live in a palace; the Febrer mansion he would lose forever, according to the arrangement made by his friend Valls; but he would not fail to have a neat little house in the ward of Terreno or somewhere near the sea, and in it the motherly care of Mammy Antonia. No sorrow, no shame would await him there. He would even be rid of the presence of Don Benito Valls and his daughter, from whom he had so discourteously fled, without a word of excuse. The rich Chueta, according ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... entered into all our suggestions eagerly. The environment of our simple home, the ministrations of motherly hands touched hidden chords. He did not hide his enjoyment, but talked well and entertainingly of everything—except himself. At times he was boyishly gay; then, seemingly without cause, the expectant look of his eyes ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... some flowers she had in the front yard, anyhow. I remember looking out and seeing an old green plaid shawl of hers over the verbena bed. There was a fire in my little wood-stove. Mrs. Bird made it, I know. She was a real motherly sort of woman; she always seemed to be the happiest when she was doing something to make other folks happy and comfortable. Mrs. Dennison told me she had always been so. She said she had coddled her husband within an inch of his life. 'It's ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... Tiberius, who had been born before her second marriage, as well as the one who had been born after. So too when, a few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with the most careful motherly solicitude. To the second husband, whom politics had given her, she was a faithful companion. Scandal imputed to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of insatiable ambitions ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... to Weeko who was in the village came forward and released the children, as Nakpa gave a low whinny and stopped. Tenderly Zeezeewin nursed them at her own motherly bosom, assisted by another young mother of ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... to the kind Sister of Mercy, whose sweet, patient and motherly face was bending over a soldier to speak her words of comfort, "are there any Massachusetts ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... a pension, seized on the bright pans of Marie's kitchen and the promise of the brick-and-sheetiron stove. She disapproved of Stewart, having heard strange stories of him, but there was nothing bacchanal or suspicious about this orderly establishment. Mrs. Boyer was a placid, motherly looking woman, torn from her church and her card club, her grown children, her household gods of thirty years' accumulation, that "Frank" might ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... carriage as soon as it drew up. She was a handsome woman of middle age and was richly dressed. She was now in a panic of motherly solicitude. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... you are working too hard, Bensie, and it's quite true," Polly gave him another pat, this time a motherly one; "and ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney









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