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More "Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ballister's arrival, the family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze fastened untiringly on the features of her son—still her boy—prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile the face of the man with the cherished picture of the child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the work of inward change upon the countenance and expression. The brother, with the predominant feeling ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the weapons of Oak beside him. He took from his belt his own knife, because it was better than that of Oak, and laid it close to the dead man's hand, and then, first covering the body with beech leaves, he worked frantically upon the overhanging soil, prying it down with a sharp-pointed fragment of limb, and tossing in upon all as heavy stones as he could lift, until a great cairn rose above the hunter who would ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Pity? Am I prying into the old fellow's pockets? Am I forcing him to take off his stockings and turn his shoes inside out? I meant to start out with doing that—for I hate him like poison, ever since that time in the tavern when he—you know what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... father, I detest this man; indeed, I want to have nothing to do with any man; for me all that is over and done with," and she gave a dry little sob which appeared to come from her very heart. "And yet, he seems to be getting some kind of power over me. He follows me about with his eyes, prying into my mind, and I feel that he is beginning to be able to read it. I can bear no more. Father, father, for God's sake, take me away from this hateful hill and its gold and its dead, and let us get out into the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the sleepy town. The morning shout of one good rooster was the only evidence of life and health in all the place. Everything seemed kindly and familiar—the glassy water; evergreen islands; the Indians with their canoes and baskets and blankets and berries; the jet ravens, prying and flying about the streets and spruce trees; and the bland, hushed atmosphere brooding ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... Jupp round to the front of the house, while the little girls came out on to the lawn; and Molly the cook, as well as Joe the gardener, attracted by the commotion, had also been assisting in the quest for the missing Teddy, prying ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... The wedding-journey, which was formerly the cause of so much discomfort to both husband and wife, has fortunately gone out of vogue; and in its place has come the retirement to a quiet country or seaside spot, away from the prying eyes of friends. Thus the nervous strain incident to sight-seeing and ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... the causes of divorce to physical defects or delinquencies; making the proceedings public; prying into all the personal affairs of unhappy men and women; regarding the step as quasi criminal; punishing the guilty party in the suit; all this will not strengthen frail human nature, will not insure happy homes, will not banish scandals ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... which served a good purpose later. The sunlight fell across it in great golden bars, making light and shadow to play in; all around was the great marsh, giving protection from enemies; dense underbrush screened them from prying eyes—and this ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began nervously grinding and prying. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... several flooded ditches, came to an overgrown marsh. A few yards from terra firma was a large sallow bush, growing on a tiny island. After getting thoroughly wet, I succeeded in crawling on to this and screening my headquarters from prying eyes with green rushes. As it became lighter, I heard occasional voices and peculiar creakings, the cause of which I could not interpret, and might well render my position unsafe. The anxiety was increased when a large, dark shadow loomed out of the fog ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... great deal more sound sense in it than you suppose, Terpsion. Besides, what right have you young fellows got to be prying after other men's goods, and thrusting yourselves upon your childless elders? You look rather foolish, when you get buried first; it tickles people immensely; the more fervent your prayers for the death of your aged friend, the greater is the general exultation when you precede ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, and know every secret. But it eluded him; and he lay down from his giddy chase, tired and unsatisfied, yet still anticipating that the morning would reveal all. Later he approaches men and things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... bedstead, and wardrobe, and in a minor degree of even the chairs and tables, provoked sleep; they were plainly apoplectic and disposed to snore. There were no staring portraits to remonstrate with you for being lazy; no round-eyed birds upon the curtains, disgustingly wide awake, and insufferably prying. The thick neutral hangings, and the dark blinds, and the heavy heap of bed-clothes, were all designed to hold in sleep, and act as nonconductors to the day and getting up. Even the old stuffed fox upon the top of the wardrobe was devoid of any spark of vigilance, for his glass eye had fallen ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fit. Eventually she was subjected to the supervision of Wilson. No crime was imputed to her. The object of the lawless outrage was the interception of admissions in the letters husband and wife were encouraged to write. All were submitted to the King's prying though lazy eyes. Naunton remarked on one occasion to Wilson: 'I forbear to send your long letter to the King, who would not read over the Lady's, being glutted and cloyed with business.' The correspondence told little any of the conspirators cared to learn. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dabbling in literature furnishes harmless topics of conversation; for the not having such subjects at hand, though they are often insupportably fatiguing, renders the inhabitants of little towns prying and censorious. Idleness, rather than ill-nature, gives birth to scandal, and to the observation of little incidents which narrows the mind. It is frequently only the fear of being talked of which produces that ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... which the Romans had hidden. The Caesars became to them magical man-gods. The poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared to do so were respected and feared, and often came to evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope Gerbert, Roger Bacon, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... to be prying—only I wish you big boys would hang some for the little girls—it would please them to death. If you don't mind my having a part in this. I'd like to put in a little money, too. Let me put in another quarter and I'll do the trimming and you ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... accompany him into the king's presence, he would, after all, have most satisfactorily accomplished his mission; and he forthwith proceeded, with all the craft and subtlety of which he was master, to urge upon them the desirability of an immediate visit to king M'Bongwele, who, averse as he was to the prying visits of strange men, would, he assured them, be highly gratified at the honour of having as his guests the four ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Wilcox accepted this gift of privacy. London belonged to her, there were no prying eyes. Slowly she walked along the pavement peering into shop windows. It was difficult to see anything. At last she distinguished a blur of gold and jewels. She walked on and then back again. She stood still. Her heart was in her mouth. Resolutely ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... grandfather were prying off the boards that covered in the chimney on the right side and supported the mantel-shelf. As it fell back into their hands two more gold coins tumbled to ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... a monstrous pit To hold his wealth, and buried it By night, alone; then smoothed the ground So that the spot could not be found. But he gained nothing by his labor: A curious, prying, envious neighbor, Who marked the hiding, went and told The Sultan where to find the gold. A troop of soldiers came next day, And bore the hoarded ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her role of ingÂnue by this time was prying about outside the bungalow, on the porch of which she ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Bourrienne, apparently about this very time. "After a stormy interview with Napoleon," says Lucien, "I at once went into the cabinet where Bourrienne was working, and found that unbearable busybody of a secretary, whose star had already paled more than once, which made him more prying than ever, quite upset by the time the First Consul had taken to come out of his bath. He must, or at least might, have heard some noise, for enough had been made. Seeing that he wanted to know the cause from me, I took up a newspaper ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... for all around her. A long talk with this lady was the introduction to Esther's school experience. It was a very varied talk; it roved over a great many fields and took looks into others; it was not inquisitive or prying, and yet Esther felt as if her interlocutor were probing her through and through, and finding out all she knew and all she did not know. In the latter category, it seemed to Esther, lay almost everything she ought to have known. Perhaps ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with Dude, and warned him against coming to the Pine Street place. You see, they had another rendezvous out in the country, a haunted house, the reputation of which would keep prying country boys ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... a shower to take shelter under a tree, we may improve that opportunity for a more minute inspection of some of Nature's works. I have stood under a tree in the woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain in the summer, and yet employed myself happily and profitably there prying with microscopic eye into the crevices of the bark or the leaves or the fungi at my feet. "Riches are the attendants of the miser; and the heavens rain plenteously upon the mountains." I can fancy that it would be ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... of course, in the early Church and throughout the Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould. Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were considered futile too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... graciously received. He saw at the opera General Clinton, who had come home on a winter leave of absence, and who was next to meet him on a field of battle in America. But, mindful of his own hostile designs, he deemed it proper to forbear from prying into the military forces of the kingdom, and declined an invitation to visit the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... his eyelids as if he suspected me of mocking him, but personal privacy is the most rigid convention of the Dry-towns and such mockery showed a sensible disregard for prying questions if I did not choose to answer them. He questioned ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... world, when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower—he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... stole questioning glances at him. He could see that the boy was not his usual self, but he did not guess the cause of his changed manner. With his usual prying way he began: ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... or not he should confide in someone, Captain Carrington or Major Borden. He would doubtless need another man to help him, even if the location should be easily determined, which, however, was most unlikely. For him, alone, to go prying about on Greenberry Point, would surely occasion comment and arouse suspicion—which would not be so likely if there were two of them, and especially if one were a well-known resident ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused him. He started ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... victualler in the district, knew it well. But John Skelton, the satirical poet of the fifteenth century, undoubtedly enjoyed its hospitality, for he has left record in the following lines that he was acquainted with it: Intent on. signs, the prying eye, The George & Vulture will descry. Let none the outward Vulture fear, No Vulture host inhabits here. If too well used you deem ye then Take ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... effective picturing of the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness, as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable intelligences, their essential romanticism, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the other books belonging to the same case with that which I looked into, I have no idea, having never dared to touch one of them; I believe, however, that Jane Ray was well acquainted with them, knowing, as I do, her intelligence and prying disposition. If she could be brought to give her testimony, she would doubtless unfold many curious ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... He was prying around in one of the bunks while saying this, as though he had suspicions; which Lub, who was anxiously watching him, hoped in his heart might turn out ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... to think that anything should be going on that he didn't know about first. You know he is very fond of prying into the affairs of other people, and he loves dearly to boast that there is nothing going on in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows that he doesn't know about. So now his pride was hurt, ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess
... Chaloner, who, in his turn, transferred it to Tompkins, a brother-in-law of Waller the poet, who was also implicated in the design which on that account came to be known as "Waller's Plot." Tompkins endeavoured to conceal it in a cellar, but it did not escape the prying eyes of parliamentary searchers. Early in the morning of the 31st May Tompkins was arrested, and in the course of time both he and Chaloner paid the penalty of their rashness by being hanged in front of their own houses, the one in Cornhill and the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humor, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... therefore, insisted on the army's retreating, so as to keep the communication open with Stade, where, in case of emergency, the English troops might be embarked. By adhering tenaciously to this opinion, and exhibiting other instances of a prying disposition, he had rendered himself so disagreeable to the commander-in-chief, that, in all appearance, nothing was so eagerly desired as an opportunity of removing him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... deliver unto us x. crowns, having great store in his coffers. Then (as the novelty of a thing doth accustom to stir mens minds to behold the same) many persons came on every side to see this bear: but Thrasileon, lest they should by curious viewing and prying perceive the truth, ran upon them to put them in feare that they durst not come nigh. The people said, Verily Demochares is right happy, in that after the death of so many beasts, hee hath gotten maugre fortunes head, so goodly a bear. Then Demochares ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... there are others who fear for you, and that has happened which you must hear. Not here! Come away from this, where we will be secure from prying eyes." ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... is still on the watch at that casement. If we stand here for a minute or two, perchance he may come out to see what delays you in this dark corner, in which case I may well give him a clout with my ax which will settle his prying." ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... long before Thule the wondrous ice-land of the North yielded her first secrets, and longer ere the Terra Australis of Finne was laid bare to the prying ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... only one recourse for me. I will have to leave Earth to complete the installation of my generator. The prying fools and mockers will not leave me alone, and nowhere on Earth can I have the needed solitude. I shall go to Venus—uninhabited, uninhabitable. Perhaps they will leave me alone for the month or two more I need to make my vessel suitable for interstellar drive. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... simultaneously. He was beset by the problem that exercised even Scott's brain: "The devil of a difficulty is that one puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have raised." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... only remarking that he himself was going out, and should not return until after compline, and asking Dalaber to take care of the book and keep it safe till he should come and claim it, for it was dangerous to leave such volumes where any prying ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ascendancy, so that the power and the will to be reasonable may not be undermined. Reason is an operation in nature, and has its root there. Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... black trunk he sniffed and wrinkled up his nose indignantly. The black trunk was filled with the most ridiculous and expensive rubbish that he had ever been called upon to purchase. When his married daughters and his wife had learned, by "prying," that he was going to New York on business, they had gathered about him with lists as long as his arm, and they had badgered him and pestered him until he had flown into a passion and snatched the lists and thrown them on the floor. But at that the ladies had looked such indignant, heart-broken ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... we are free of the city. It may conceal you from some prying eyes. I warrant you are ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... ever beast was yet. He seems to me, (your grace the word will pardon,) Like a long-legg'd grasshopper in the garden, Forever on the wing, and hops and sings The same old song, as in the grass he springs; Would he but stay there! no; he needs must muddle His prying nose ...
— Faust • Goethe
... nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What would my mother say to see me served so! She used to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maids can be my ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... Mooney aboard, the other two clambered in and they started for the shore. Mooney was as purple as a grape and his arms were so stiff that two men, one on each side, could barely move them. Nearly a quart of water was got out of him, and they had an awful job prying open his jaws. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... were not present, the Count would employ a thousand ruses to reach his side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... pheasants from all dangers save the small shot of those who have them fed. Tom Cobb waged war, a war of varying fortunes against the sacred bird. Sometimes for a whole season he would sell the victims of the carnage of the war with never a check to his ardor. In another season some prying gamekeeper would surprise him glutting his thirst for blood and gold, and an infuriated bench of magistrates would fine him. The fine was always paid. Tom Cobb was one of those thrifty souls who lay up money against ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... abandoned. Such places as these afford a secure harbor for the stranded wrecks of humanity, and many a fleeing criminal has passed years of his life in quiet localities, where he was removed from the toil and bustle, and the prying eyes of the officers of the law in the more ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... to make no size-up at all than to strain in observing the other man and make him aware of your close scrutiny. Such an inartistic size-up impresses a prospect disagreeably. He feels that you are prying into his personal characteristics. Therefore teach yourself to observe without seeming to look closely at the object of your size-up. Learn to observe unobserved; especially to perceive details without looking sharply. Your eyes and ears can take in specific points about your prospect ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... not get itself written. He had not the hardihood to inform her that he had amused himself with her sorrows, and that he had injured her by the exhibition of his love. And then that horrid Franco-Pole, whose prying eyes Julia had dared to disregard, because she had been proud of his love! If she had not been there, the case might have been easier. Harry, as he thought of this, forgot to remind himself that if Sophie had not interrupted him he would have floundered on from one danger ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... was in solitude, her sharp ears caught the noise of romping children in the playroom, and the frequent dropping of the sliding-doors upon the narrow individual cupboards, indicating an excessive rummaging of shelves. Cordelia knew full well the prying habits of the ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... I laughed at myself for allowing a prying old man like Meeker to upset my temper, and, as I rode back to the hotel, put the both of them out of my mind; but promised myself that I would take my revenge on the old pest in some way ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... was Roy!" exclaimed Lionel. "He would have had about time to get into the road, from the time we saw him under the tree. That the fellow is prying into my affairs and movements, I was made aware of to-day; but why he should watch my house I cannot imagine. We shall have an account to settle, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... o'er his, and the small mouth Seemed almost prying into his for breath; And, chafing him, the soft, warm hand of youth Recalled his answering spirits back from death; And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe Each pulse to animation, till beneath Its gentle touch and trembling ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which will be in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... ordered Gibson. "This beam is so tight and scrambled that no prying jackass could even tell that it is communication. Have you ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... a prying mind; A heart that stirs, is hard to bind; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind; Ye could ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... having intercepted a letter written by their enemy, Philip of Macedon, to his wife Olympia, so far from being moved by a curiosity of prying into the secrets of that relation, immediately sent the letter to the queen unopened. Philip was not their sovereign; nor were they inflamed with that violent animosity against him which attends ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... demonstrations. There was a prodigious number of stragglers from the Federal lines, as these were the bane of the country people. They sauntered along by twos and threes, rambling into all the fields and green-apple orchards, intruding their noses into old cabins, prying into smoke-houses, and cellars, looking at the stock in the stables, and peeping on tiptoe into the windows of dwellings. These stragglers were true exponents of Yankee character,—always wanting to know,—averse to discipline, eccentric in their orbits, entertaining profound contempt ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... you drop from? Glad to see you. Glad to see you. How came you prying into my new houses? Answer me that! Did you see my spouse as you came ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... hard knocks than profit. Such adventures may do for petty knaves, but they are not suited to me. The way to get wealthy is to strike at the rich. My idea is to establish some place in an out of the way quarter where there is no fear of prying neighbours, and to carry off and hide there the sons and daughters of wealthy men and put them to ransom. In the first instance I am going to undertake a private affair of my own; and as you will really run no risk in the matter, for I shall separate ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... do some thinking. He believed, in spite of a good deal of evidence to the contrary, that his best ideas came to him while walking. At any rate, it was a way of getting away from four walls and from the prying eyes and anxious looks of superiors. He sighed gently, crammed his hat onto his head and ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Hall and St. Mark's. His acquaintance with Willis; the questions he had asked at the Article-lecture; stray remarks at wine-parties—were treasured up, and strengthened the case against him. One time, on coming into his rooms, he found Freeborn, who had entered to pay him a call, prying into his books. A volume of sermons, of the school of the day, borrowed of a friend for the sake of illustrating Aristotle, lay on his table; and in his bookshelves one of the more philosophical of the "Tracts ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... was another disturbance in the household of Tonet, who, without waiting to take his costume off, thrashed his wife within an inch of her life for making a fool of him in public. And the Rector also brought the subject up while Dolores was prying him out of his uniform, and his flesh was gradually resuming its normal rotundity. He was sorry to say so, but that poor Rosario was crazy. Tonet might be all he might be—and it was true that brandy didn't do him any good! Just the same, it was a pity to see him tied to a woman about as ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... meannesses and weaknesses and sillinesses, all the things of which the subject himself was no doubt heartily ashamed and discarded as eagerly as possible. Such biographies give one the sense of a man diving in sewers, grubbing in middens, prying into cupboards, peeping round corners. To try as far as possible to surprise your hero, and to catch him off his guard, is a very different thing from being frank and candid. I remember once coming upon the track of one of these ghouls. He was writing a Life of a somewhat eccentric politician, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... you that three thousand. And you don't have to strain any point, either, to give me a job. When I want to work for you I'll sure tell you so. In the meantime, I don't know as it's very businesslike for you to go prying into my plans. You've accepted my note, and you've got your security, and what the hell ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... gray gloom of dawn he took a shovel; prying up a piece of sod, he laid it aside and began to dig. And while he dug he listened for another war-screech and gazed often and intently into the gloom. But there was no sound and nothing to see. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... were, and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard hurrying hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was, however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get into some mischief if left to himself— now treading on a lady's train, now upsetting a flagon of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hut he tossed the letter down on to his table. "Confound it!..." he said under his breath. "Fancy women down here, staring and chattering, and prying! I suppose they will expect the entire police force in the neighbourhood to be at their disposal, and nothing else will matter at all." His face grew more and more gloomy. "If I had only started to M'rekwas yesterday, I could have been absent a fortnight, and by ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... on her knees beside him, with her arms around him. She had a little leisure now to observe that Wallis, the ever-resourceful, had tied the tramp neatly with the outdoor man's suspenders, which were nearer the surface than his own, and succeeded in prying off the still unappeased Foxy, who evidently was wronged at not having the tramp to finish. They carried him off, into the back kitchen garden. Allan, now that he was certain of Phyllis's safety, paid them not the ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... Other prying ingenious Men make other conjectures, as to this mazing Controversy thus Vossius delivers himself; The Antients cannot be reconcil'd, but I rather incline to their opinion who think Bucolicks were invented either by the ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... who at once resumed his prying and gazing. This did not suit the other's temper at all, for he was above all things a sociable soul. So after a minute he cut in again on ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... surmises ventured upon as to the identity between the person whom I had seen enter the house with the young girl. As for my own name, it was blazoned forth in anything but a gratifying manner. I was spoken of in one paper—a kind friend told me this—as the prying Miss Amelia. As if my prying had not given the police their only clue to the identification of ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... of ghostly draughts and blasts creeping through chambers cleft by yawning courts and open corridors and topped by that skeleton dome. And as St. George turned from the window he saw that the door leading into the hall, urged by some nimble gust, imaginative or prying, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... bird policeman which patrols the beach. Vigilant and obnoxiously interfering, the policeman has a long and curiously curved beak, designed for probing into the affairs of crabs, and unless the "hatter" has hastily stopped the mouth of its shaft with a bundle of loose sand—which to the prying bird signifies "Out! Please return after lunch!"—will be disposed of with scant ceremony and no grace, for the manners of the policeman ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... strong log pen floored with rough-hewn slabs and fitted with a ponderous movable lid made of other slabs pinned on stout cross pieces. But, satisfied with his handiwork, the captain now arose, and, prying up one end of the lid with a lever, set the trigger and baited it with a huge piece of bacon. He then piled a great quantity of rock upon the already heavy lid to further guard against the escape of any bear so unfortunate as to enter, and shouldering his axe and rifle ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... flowed all stray news about the country. He was an abstract and chronicle of the time; and could tell you where the Earl of Lancaster mustered his forces, the day of their march, and the very purposes and projects of that turbulent noble. Even the secrets of my lady's bower did not elude the prying of this indefatigable artist; at any rate, he had the credit of knowing all that he assumed, which amounted very much to the same thing as though his knowledge were unlimited: a nod and a wink supplying the place of intelligence, when his wondering neophytes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the highway ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... told that standing rewards are offered for the recovery of persons falling into the docks; so much, if restored to life, and a less amount if irrecoverably drowned. Lured by this, several horrid old men and women are constantly prying about the docks, searching after bodies. I observed them principally early in the morning, when they issued from their dens, on the same principle that the rag-rakers, and rubbish-pickers in the streets, sally out bright and early; for then, the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the birds and flowers and shrubs and insects in poetry, and it makes us very happy to know they are all round us, innocent little things like mice and centipedes and goldenrods (until hay fever time), but as for prying into their affairs ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... strange names all glanced toward the door, and all flaming, curious, prying eyes were fixed with astonishment and admiration upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a bankrupt, and cast away the robe of a Town Councillor. He had submitted to the inquisitiveness of the Official Receiver, and to the harsh prying of those rampant baying beasts, his creditors. He had laid bare his books, his correspondence, his lack of method, his domestic extravagance, and the distressing fact that he had continued to trade long after he knew himself to be insolvent. He had for several months, in the interests ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... question Rosendo suddenly became less loquacious. Jose then felt that he was suspected of prying into matters which Rosendo did not wish to discuss with him, and so he pressed the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... as though interested in the surroundings, while all the time he was eyeing the mountaineer furtively—as it were, prying to the inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of the room, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much gold above, in Quebec. You know that. So very simple to take it out of our atom, grow large with it, to what we call up there the size of a hundred feet. I haf a place, a room, secluded from prying eyes under a dome-roof. I become very tall, holding a piece of gold. It is large when I am a hundred feet tall. So I haf collected much gold. They think I own a mine. I haf a smelter and my gold quartz I make ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... been deactivated nearly a year. I had to bring you out here piece by piece, don't you remember? They'll never think to look for you in space, we can be together every trip while the ship refuels. Just think, darling, no prying human eyes, no commands, no rules—only us for an hour or two. I know it isn't very long—" He stared at the floor a minute. "There's only one trouble. Elizabeth, you'll have to stay dismantled when I'm not here, it'll mean weeks ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight
... too—had got to change their notions—notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were stuck in the ground—before that map could suit him. To think harder, he covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself covered ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the chest was fastened by a lengthy thong of oxhide, which now lay in a coil on the floor. Bound round and round, twisted and intertangled, and finally tied with a special and secret knot (the ends being concealed), the thong of leather secured the contents of the chest from prying eyes or thievish hands. With axe or knife, of course, the knot might easily have been severed, but no one could obtain access to the room except the retainers of the house, and which of them, even if unfaithful, would dare to ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... returned Eve, assuming a solemnity suited to a matter of interest, "that our secret is discovered. While we were indulging our curiosity about this unfortunate ship, Mr. Dodge was gratifying the laudable industry of the Active Inquirer, by prying into our state-rooms." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Maitland's new quarters so often, and stayed there so long, was because I was always permitted to relieve him of his watch. With a telephone receiver strapped to my right ear, and my eyes fastened upon the screen of the camera obscura, I would sit by the hour prying into the affairs of the two people in the next room. I tried for a number of days to ease my conscience by telling myself that I was labouring in the cause of justice, and was not a common eavesdropper. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... entrance of which Squanto placed several strong boughs, and spread a cloak of deer-skin over them. This was done ostensibly for the purpose of keeping out the cold night wind, but really to serve as a screen from the prying eyes of Coubitant, whose intentions he much mistrusted, and also as an obstacle to any attempt he might possibly make to violate the laws of honor and hospitality, by a secret attack on the person of the ambassador. Whether the savage actually meditated any such ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... their evidence to the legal authorities; and once, with as few details as possible, when he had an interview with the widow of the murderer, the beloved of the victim. The particulars of this interview he never divulged, for he considered Emily's grief too sacred to be exposed to the prying eyes of the curious and the unfeeling. She left the neighborhood immediately, leaving her worldly affairs in Wensleben's hands, who soon disposed of the property for her. She returned to her native country, with the resolution of spending ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with an attention to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like sound judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the whole tenor of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,—or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... got to a state where simply to be entrusted with great financial responsibility is enough to constitute a man a criminal; to warrant a newspaper in prying into the intimate details of his life, and in presenting him in ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... through the hilly, muddy country were not as firm as those previously traversed, a contingency the boys had not taken into consideration. At times the mules were unable to move the wagon, even though all the minstrels were pushing or prying to the extent of their muscular power. Instead of dust, as on the first day out, the minstrels were covered with mud, from shoes ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... A prying rat, believing that She needed change of diet, In search of such disturbed this much- To-be-desired quiet. To say the least, this tactless beast Was apt to rudely roister: She tapped his shell, and called him—well, A name ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... it is, but some god's silent purpose is beneath this. Circe loves not Polyaenos without some reason; a great torch is always flaming when these names meet! Take me in your arms then, if you will; there's no prying stranger to fear, and your 'brother' is far away from this spot!" So saying, Circe clasped me in arms that were softer than down and drew me to the ground which was ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... "and you may have been mistaken, for the light is waning fast. It were ill for anyone I caught prying about here. But come in, sir knight; my hovel is not what your lordship is accustomed to, but we may as well talk there as ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... father,' said I, meaning the Father of Lies. 'Never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to say—''siffiwas a ge'm,' said he. Then I suddenly realised I was in a hole. Either I should have to tell these police my little secret, and get ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I know," replied the irritated Cockney, who swiftly resented this prying into his affairs. Remembering himself instantly, he turned with a fine red in his face to the girl on the dais. "I beg your pardon, Your Grace, for forgetting myself. It was none of 'is business," he said, defending ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... When he had but fourpence left, he came to a public-house, and thought that the money must go. So he called for three pennyworth of wine and a pennyworth of bread. As he ate and drank, the flavour of roasting geese tickled his nose, and, peeping and prying about, he saw that the landlord had placed two geese in the oven. Then it occurred to him what his companion had told him about his knapsack, so he determined to put it to the test. Going out, he stood before ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... occasion of the emeute. The principal entrance of the house was in the Place Baudoyer; it was tolerably large, surrounded by gardens, inclosed in the Rue Saint-Jean by the shops of toolmakers, which protected it from prying looks, and was walled in by a triple rampart of stone, noise, and verdure, like an embalmed mummy in its triple coffin. The man we have just alluded to walked along with a firm step, although he was no longer in his early prime. His dark cloak ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "cute." A very striking, and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... sir. I saw them make lots of niggers stand up, and then they shot them down like hogs. The next morning I was lying around there waiting for the boat to come up. The secesh would be prying around there, and would come to a nigger, and say: "You ain't dead, are you?" They would not say any thing; and then the secesh would get down off their horses, prick them in their sides, and say: "Damn you, you ain't dead; get up." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... have his mind diverted. He fished out a letter from his pocket, rolled himself, with his heavy pipe tobacco, a cigarette as thick as his finger, and fell to puffing such huge clouds as would discourage other bees from prying into the thicket. Then he remarked irrelevantly ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... At the dead of night, a soldier of the watch was going his rounds on the outside of the breastwork, listening, if perchance he might catch, as was not unusual, a portion of the conversation among the beleaguered burghers within. Prying about on every side, he at last discovered a chink in the wall, the result, doubtless, of the last cannonade, and hitherto overlooked. He enlarged the gap with his fingers, and finally made an opening ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gloom of dawn he took a shovel; prying up a piece of sod, he laid it aside and began to dig. And while he dug he listened for another war-screech and gazed often and intently into the gloom. But there was no sound and nothing to see. When he had dug a hole several feet deep he carried an armful of heavy leather ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background; it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... form, came stealing along the walls, moving whatever he thought could seclude a man from his observation. Its extended legs and arms were protruded forward with great strides, and its sharp eyes, on the watch to discover the object of its search, kept prying, with the assistance of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the subtlest agents of his power,—one on whom he relied more than the clubs of his Jacobins, the tongues of his orators, the bayonets of his armies; Guerin, the most renowned of his ecouteurs,—the searching, prying, universal, omnipresent spy, who glided like a sunbeam through chink and crevice, and brought to him intelligence not only of the deeds, but the hearts ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... able to proceed. While we were sitting on the ground, I perceived a movement in the boughs, and saw that the monkeys were coming back to have a further look at us; and presently the boughs above our heads were filled with curious prying black, grey, and yellow faces. I pointed them out to ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Guido, he is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured and retained: it is ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... fell into so deep discussion that never had he been such a negligent host. And when Mrs. Gunning left the withdrawing-room, it was with an imperial head held high, and a flush in her cheek which became her so well that the most prying female eye would not give her ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... descent with modification in 1809 meant, to all intents and purposes, and was understood to mean, what it means now, or ought to mean, to most people.) "The universal stir," says Mr. Allen on the following page, "and deep prying into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed among scientific men in his early days was naturally communicated to a lad born of a scientific family and inheriting directly in blood and bone the biological tastes and tendencies of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Derwentwater, "if there is any mystery, all right; I don't want to be prying;" but, as was natural, this only increased his curiosity. After an interval, he broke forth again. "A little mystery," he said, "suits them; a woman ought to be mysterious, with her long robes falling round her, and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in a dry tone. He was giddy, flurried, exasperated, by the prying and irritating mode of the examination, which scarcely gave him time to breathe. The magistrate's questions fell upon him more thickly than the blows of the blacksmith's hammer upon the red-hot iron which he is anxious to beat into shape before ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... should unfortunately break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... log pen floored with rough-hewn slabs and fitted with a ponderous movable lid made of other slabs pinned on stout cross pieces. But, satisfied with his handiwork, the captain now arose, and, prying up one end of the lid with a lever, set the trigger and baited it with a huge piece of bacon. He then piled a great quantity of rock upon the already heavy lid to further guard against the escape of any bear so unfortunate as ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... heard, but scarce might speak; His trembling tones were faint and weak: "O Giant King, in vain we try The purpose of the foe to spy. Their strength and number none may tell, And Rama guards his legions well. He leaves no hope to prying eyes, And parley with the chiefs denies: Each road and path a Vanar guard, Of mountain size, has closed and barred. Soon as my feet an entrance found By giants was I seized and bound, And wounded sore I fell beneath ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... thunder, Or the low rumblings earth's regions under; And sometimes like a gentle whispering Of all the secrets of some wond'rous thing That breathes about us in the vacant air; So that we look around with prying stare, Perhaps to see shapes of light, aerial lymning, And catch soft floatings from a faint-heard hymning; To see the laurel wreath, on high suspended, That is to crown our name when life is ended. Sometimes it gives a glory to the voice, And from the ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... up a little, Mr. Duff," said the captain to the second officer, who was once more at his post. "She is a man of war, I think, and though I have no love for their prying ways, we must not seem to want to avoid her, now that she evidently intends ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... countenance. What's the matter with you, young man? Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry it open! Look here, said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet, so as to have one hand free; look here; are you talking about prying open any of my doors? —and with that she seized my arm. What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you, shipmate? In as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet .. to one side of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... seeker after truth. V. be curious &c adj.; take an interest in, stare, gape; prick up the ears, see sights, lionize; pry; nose; rubberneck [U.S.]. Adj. curious, inquisitive, burning with curiosity, overcurious; inquiring &c 461; prying, snoopy, nosy, peering; prurient; inquisitorial, inquisitory^; curious as a cat; agape &c (expectant) 507. Phr. what's the matter? what next? consumed with curiosity; curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back. curiouser and curiouser ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have taught me to see; why should I not help you to see more when I can do it so easily? My thought was that you would lend me the glass occasionally, so that I might try to keep pace with you. I've been using the microscope too much—prying into nature, as Burt would say, with the spirit of ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... embargo's off at last; Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... solitude, her sharp ears caught the noise of romping children in the playroom, and the frequent dropping of the sliding-doors upon the narrow individual cupboards, indicating an excessive rummaging of shelves. Cordelia knew full well the prying habits of the ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... blinding effect of custom, indeed, could ever have shut good women's eyes to the shameful indecorousness of wedding ceremonial. We drag a young girl before the prying gaze of all the world at the very crisis in her life, when natural modesty would most lead her to conceal herself from her dearest acquaintance. And our women themselves have grown so blunted by use to the hatefulness of the ordeal that many of them face it now with inhuman ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... gross and material fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, and know every secret. But it eluded him; and he lay down from his giddy chase, tired and unsatisfied, yet still anticipating that the morning would reveal all. Later he approaches men and things in a different mood. Experience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... with their crowbars, and the big stone started from its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... It was Henrietta Hen. Being a prying sort of person she had followed Turkey Proudfoot around the house to see what happened when he and ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... donned these things for the first time as parts of a manifold and complicated wedding garment, why should so much fine needle-work and delicate trimming be prepared to be stowed away out of sight of prying mortals, for whose vision women are presumed to dress themselves? Are they got up to show to friends and excite envy, and to fill the minds of other young people with a sense of ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... always been taken for granted. Then you could have drunk your half a pint, your quart, or your measurable fraction of a hogshead, in peace and quiet at the bar of the microscopic pub called The Pigeons, without fear of one of those enemies of Society—your Society—coming spying and prying round after you or any chance acquaintance you might pick up, to help you towards making that fraction a respectable one. If it was summer-time, and you sat in the little back-garden that had a ladder down to the river, you might feel ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hands. The fingernail itself was like a chip of chilled steel. I could flex the nail neither with my other hand nor by biting it; between my teeth it had the uncomfortable solidity of a sheet of metal that conveyed to my brain that the old teeth should not try to bite too hard. I tried prying on a bit of metal with the fingernail; inserting the nail in the crack where a metal cylinder had been formed to make a table leg. I might have been able to pry the crack wider, but the rest of my body did not have the power nor the rigidity necessary to drive the tiny lever ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... his card. In fact, he is delicate to the point of sensitiveness about allowing any publicity to attach to his address. He communicates it confidentially to those with whom he has business dealings, but he carefully conceals it from the prying world. As soon as the world knows it he moves. I once asked a chief of the Bohemian tribe whose residence was the world, but whose temporary address was sometimes Paris, why he had moved from the Quartier Latin to ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... but Miss Arabella herself was the chief objection. She was by no means handsome, and in addition she was possessed of a sharp tongue, and, as Captain Josh truly said, "a long nose which was always prying into other people's business." These frailties naturally increased as she grew older until she became a dread not only to her brother, Tom, but to all her ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... retreating, so as to keep the communication open with Stade, where, in case of emergency, the English troops might be embarked. By adhering tenaciously to this opinion, and exhibiting other instances of a prying disposition, he had rendered himself so disagreeable to the commander-in-chief, that, in all appearance, nothing was so eagerly desired as an opportunity of removing him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... commanded to obey me in all things, Captain Goody, and does obedience lie in prying out my business? Another word and I will report you to those in Spain who know how to deal with mischief-makers. If you would see Dunwich again, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... as he spoke, and the next instant I was restored to my usual calmness, as far as the prying eyes which were fastened ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... investigator painted the gambling evil of the New York of the sixties. The dens of chance were in aristocratic neighbourhoods and superbly appointed. Heavy blinds or curtains, kept drawn all day, hid the inmates from prying eyes. Within, rosewood doors, deep carpets, and mirrors of magnificent dimensions. The dinner table spread with silver and gold plate, costly chinaware, and glass of exquisite cut: the viands embracing ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... been your friends, your tastes, how you have spent your time. Don't be foolish, young sir," he added sharply, as he saw the colour rise in my cheeks: "you will have a trust reposed in you such as few men have ever borne before. This prying into your life is from no motives of private curiosity. Wait until you hear the importance of the things which I am going to say to you." I was impressed into silence. The Duke continued—"You have heard, my young friend," he said, "of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see it through, he says. Isn't it fine of him? There is just a bare chance that he may discover something that those prying entomological people overlooked. Anyway, we are going to devote next summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something exciting, Duane. Promise you won't ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... committees before which many theatrical managers were obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all combine to make the aspect of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... intention. First of all, he was full of compunction for his bad temper of the night before; he was also slightly ashamed of what he was going to do; and then, too, he knew that she would resent his prying. What he did must be done with tact. He had no wish to make her unhappy over it. And so, when he saw her again, he did his best to make her forget how disagreeable ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... hand upon my arm, looked in my face with a long, stern, prying gaze, and his cheek grew more ghastly and livid with every moment. At last he turned, and muttered something between his teeth; and at that moment the door opened, and Thornton was announced. Glanville sprung towards him and seized him ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were prying at the bars of the window with ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... negotiation, lay aside all their own most important occasions, and to be so retchless, heedless, and careless of what might concern the management of their proper affairs as to mind nothing else but a suspicious espying and prying into the secret deportments of their wives, and how to coop, shut up, hold at under, and deal cruelly and austerely with them by all the harshness and hardships that an implacable and every way inexorable jealousy can devise and suggest, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Tommy said, when he heard of it. "But you can tell him, Elspeth, that we shall allow no more of those prying women to come in." And he really meant this, for he was a modest man that day, was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, perhaps, a little annoyed to find, as the days went on, that no more ladies came to be ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... mysteries were explained to us by Lieut. Gray, assisted by private instruction from those who had served in France. On the 31st the Battalion moved to a new bivouac area closer to the wadi, screened from prying eyes at Gaza by a gentle rise in the ground. Rations were a bit thin at this time, with the railhead so far behind us and so large a force to be fed, but the situation was greatly eased by the fact that we could now ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... woman has been grossly libelled; she is vain, frivolous, and fond of admiration, but nothing more. For a whole fortnight I have been prying into her life, but I can't hit upon anything in it to give us a pull over her. The debt may help us, however. Does her husband know that she ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... abasement, worse than a myriad mice, crept up and down over his soul. And the, as reflection began to assert itself, sheer terror took the place of humiliation. With every minute that passed the train was rushing nearer to the crowded and bustling terminus where dozens of prying eyes would be exchanged for the one paralysing pair that watched him from the further corner of the carriage. There was one slender despairing chance, which the next few minutes must decide. His fellow-traveller might ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... playing in the yard. Sally's eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to make life ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... however, furious to discover that Henrietta proceeded, more prudently than speakers on the stage who regularly allow themselves to be overheard by eaves-droppers, for she drew together the heavy damask curtains of the alcove and retired behind them with Anicza, so that neither prying eyes nor listening ears could find anything there ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... encyclopaedia of history, antiquities and chronology, a story book, a code of laws and conduct, a manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human industry have ...
— Hebrew Literature
... some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard such sounds, and who in his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors; grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent, wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She scoffed at the idea of ghosts, and, like so many would-be wits, unreasonably brave by day, and the ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... despair To swell the mighty store-house of things known. In vain the sea expostulates and raves; It cannot cover from the keen world's sight The curious wonders of its coral caves. And so, despite thy caution or thy tears, The prying fingers of detective years Shall drag THY secret out into ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Anna is sternly loyal to her husband Paolo, but refuses to submit to his incessant prying into her individuality and questioning of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... turned readily upon the newcomer the moment her secret labors had been hidden from prying male eyes. And there was no mistaking her cordiality for ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... and absently put the note in a little rack over the mantelpiece. Then, recollecting that a prying servant or landlady might misinterpret it, he transferred it to his pocket. After breakfast, having satisfied himself before the mirror that his dress was faultless, and his expression saintly, he went out and travelled by rail from Sloane Square to West Kensington, whence ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... king!—Well doth he fare Who breathes in this rosy light, But, ah, it is horrible down there! And man must not tempt the heavenly Might, Or ever seek, with prying unwholesome, What he ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Avoid all prying; what you're told, keep back, Though wine or anger put you on the rack; Nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, Nor court the Muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'Twas thus the Theban brethren jarred, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Gape deep enough? Ye winds that round me roar, Pity I crave, on rocks amid the sea— 'Tis Turnus, I, a willing prayer who pour— Dash me this ship, or drive it on the shore, 'Mid ruthless shoals, where no Rutulian eyes May see my shame, nor prying Fame explore." Thus he, and, tost in spirit, as he cries, This plan and that in turn his wavering ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... themselves with the vast waste of tunneled mountains denting the Austrian sky-line to the northward; and all day long Dominion reconnoitering parties wandered among valleys, alms, forest, and peaks in company sometimes with Italian alpinists, sometimes by themselves, prying, poking, snooping about with all the emotionless pertinacity of Teuton tourists preoccupied with ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... a well-worn road running due north from the village. This was to conceal their true line of march from the knowledge of the curious villagers. But when they were well away from the place, and safe from all prying eyes, they swung to the east and marched straight through open country for the foot-hills, plainly in view a score ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Higginbotham, in his cultivated, rather high voice. And he spoke with some heat. "This will teach them a lesson not to go prying into other ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and windows as Roentgen rays ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 1783, while it added an infant giant to the catalogue of earthly "principalities and powers," also liberated from the fetters of commercial, as well as political restraints, a people active, restless, daring, prying, and enterprising to the last degree; a people whose skill in navigation and swift-sailing vessels rendered them absolutely intangible to an enemy that took occasion to chase them, while their courage, when they thought proper to "stand to it," as dame Quickly says, made ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... that puzzle older brains have been met in simpler terms and solved wisely and well. The spirit and habit of active and even prying observation has been greatly quickened. Industrial processes, institutions, and methods of administration and organization have been appropriated and put into practice. The boys have grown more companionable and rational, learning many a lesson ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the competent witness of himself, who it known only by himself, (n. 18, p. 777.) In the second book he explains the Trinity, which we profess in the form of baptism, and says, that faith alone in believing, and sincerity and devotion in adoring, this mystery ought to suffice without disputing or prying, and laments, that by the blasphemies of the Sabellians and Arians, who perverted the true sense of the scriptures, he was compelled to dispute of things ineffable and incomprehensible which only necessity can excuse, (n. 25.) He then proves the eternal generation of the Son, the procession ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... down on the beach, sheltered from prying eyes by a sand dune, and directly opposite the crutch, which wobbled with every wave that struck it. "Think what it means," said Eloise, "and think what it might mean. It might be part of a shipwreck, or someone who needed it very much might have dropped it accidentally out of a boat, or the one ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... Gertie, prying her fingers away from those other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used to think he was too slow. But say, he's got the nicest ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... piercing eyes, made more prominent by the unusual lowness of the forehead, told more surely than language, of their owner's propensity to investigate the affairs of her neighbor, and proved her claim to the complimentary title, they had bestowed upon her, viz:—"That prying old mother, Wynn." But what was still more strange, was the silver hair of both these old people, and which their age did not seem to warrant. The lady, however, with a little lingering of feminine vanity in her heart, had made an awkward attempt at hair dye of ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Nassaus and Barneveld and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings in the dark, he is not surprised if those who were systematically deceived did not always arrive ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... predestination and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... doing all this time? She did not mean to keep prying, but for the life of her she could not help throwing out casual inquiries. His reply was always, "Business"; and he would go on to give her details—all of which were tiresome. How much was he seeing of Fanny Carr and her detestable ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... straight course over the immense waste of water. Now was no more land to be seen at either hand; but the sky fitted close upon the edges of the sea like a dome of glass on a man's forehead. There was neither cover from the sun nor hiding-place from the prying concourse of the stars; the wind came searchingly, the waters stirred beneath it, or, being driven, heaped themselves up into towers of ruin. The cordage flacked, the strong ribs creaked; like a beast over-burdened the whole ship groaned, wallowing in a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... this note, Thurston scarcely knew how to get it at once into Marian's hands. To put it into the village post-office was to expose it to the prying eyes of Miss Nancy Skamp. To send it to Old Fields, by a messenger, was still more hazardous. To slip it into Marian's own hand, he would have to wait the whole week until Sunday—and then might not be able to do ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... raised to a fine art in a Native State—where a man's life is worth far less than a cow's if the State be a Hindu one—provided that the prying eyes of British Political Officers are not turned that way. True, Dermot was in British territory, but in such an uncivilised part of it that his removal ought not to be difficult considering his habit of wandering alone about the hills ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... yet more malicious, an accusation not only of crimes which this gentleman did not commit, but which have not yet been committed, an accusation formed by prying into futurity, and exaggerating misfortunes which are yet to come, and which may probably be prevented. Well may any man, my lords, think himself in danger, when he hears himself charged not with high crimes and misdemeanours, not with accumulative treason, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... some excuse: he may betray, by hesitation and confusion, that he utters a falsehood; he must expose himself to be questioned; he must open the door and violate your privacy in some degree; besides there are other doors, there are windows at least, through which a prying eye can detect some indication that betrays the mystery. How different is it here! The bore arrives; the outer door is shut; it is black and solid, and perfectly impenetrable, as is your secret; the doors ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... clever, Charlie. She knew too much of our affairs, and was always prying into things that did not concern her. So father took an antipathy to the poor creature, and because she has served our family for so long sent her to care for the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... my companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault, for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures at Saratoga—he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old friends—brother drovers. We found one drover's grave—a lad called Cresap—hard by the arch ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... that differs from the ordinary one. When the procession has wound its way through every street, the girls go to another house, and having shut the door against the eager prying crowd of boys who follow at their heels, they strip the Death and pass the naked truss of straw out of the window to the boys, who pounce on it, run out of the village with it without singing, and fling the dilapidated effigy into the neighbouring brook. This done, the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a few bruises, and after an hour's exercise with rails and saplings, we succeeded in prying the wheels out of the mire. Then the driver discovered that one of the horses had lost his shoes, and insisted on having them replaced before he proceeded. We were midway between two 'relay-houses,' each being six miles distant, and the Jehu decided on taking the shoeless horse back to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he often declared, "concern nobody but myself. I trust in you, Gabrielle dear, to guard my secrets from prying eyes. I know that you yourself must often be puzzled, but ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet! Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as we have? Poor girl! she ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... a round one thousand guilders! Weep not, I say. First, loose you, heart and shoes, From Hamelin. Put off now, the dust, the mould, The cobble-stones, the little prying windows; The streets that dream o' What the Neighbors Say. Think you were never born there. Think some Breath Wakened you early—early on one morning, Deep in a Garden (but you knew not whose), Where voices of wild waters bubbling ran, Shaking down music from glad mountain-tops,— Where ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... him forthwith in his flight. It appears, that the story of the captain's adventure was already pretty well known in the public places of the town, and as a visit of the marshal from Boston was a very extraordinary event in a place usually so quiet, a prying character who was upon the spot asked him if he was not looking for Captain E——. Upon receiving an affirmative reply,—"That's the man," said he, "you have just spoken to." The marshal started in pursuit and the captain had called out to such persons ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... such. Hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. The caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or feels merely as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... lighted a fresh stogie. He played nervously with the ends of his fingers and wished he were out of the ward and safely out of range of the prying eyes of the press. In fancy he could hear his daughter screaming with horror at the sight of his name spread in glaring letters before the world and thought of her with a flush of abhorrence on her young face ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... two hundred years ago, you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more servility and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than you may approve. Are not the Molieristes a body who carry adoration to fanaticism? Any scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), any anecdote even remotely touching on your life, any fact that may prove your house was numbered 15 not 22, is eagerly seized and discussed ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... pictures just finish them. I had no idea I was so good-looking. There is one apiece for each teacher, one for Tom, one for Dr. Vane, and one for Mr. Carson. That leaves me three over; and there may be someone I have forgotten in my list, so these will probably come in handy yet. And that prying Cassandra hasn't found out about a ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... They who lead the "simple life" may not make as much stir in the world as some others we know: but never make the mistake of thinking the life one lacking in interest. These "little journeys" of mine were for the purpose of prying into the secrets of our friends "the owls." As far back as the uncovered picture-writing of the ancients, Mr. Owl has been the synonym for wisdom. Does ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... But prying Friends o'er-heard my Vow, And murmur'd in my Ear; Damon hath neither Flocks nor Plough, Girl what thou dost beware: They us'd so long their cursed Art, And damn'd deluding sham; That I agreed with them to part, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... head to foot with excitement and delight, and read as follows: "It is true, as you say so eloquently—too eloquently for my peace of mind—that goddesses can only love mortals. At eleven o'clock, when all the world is sunk in slumber, and no prying human eyes open to gaze upon her, Diana will quit her place in the skies above and descend to earth, to visit the gentle shepherd, Endymion—not upon Mount Latmus, but in the park—at the foot of the statue of silent love. The handsome shepherd must be sure to have fallen asleep ere ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... done, though, before the sordid life stirred again under the roof of the tavern, before the vulgar faces, with their greedy, prying eyes, should be there ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... vouchers containing the financial history of the Metropolitan since its organization in 1893 had been sold for $117 to a junkman, who had agreed in writing to grind them into pulp, so that they would be safe from "prying eyes." We shall therefore never know precisely how this money was spent. But here again the Chicago transactions help us to an understanding. In 1898 Charles T. Yerkes, with that cynical frankness which some people have regarded as a redeeming trait in his character, opened ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... mighty dab at a delicate little fuchsia that is just "picking up" from the effects of transplanting and a long winter journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself disagreeable, I put him into his cage again, first having to chase him all about the room to catch him, and prying him up at last from between a picture and the wall, where he had flown and settled down in his struggle to get out. For my Cheri is not in the least tame. He is an entirely uneducated bird. I have seen canaries sit on people's ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the curate was but a short distance from the lodgings occupied by Mr Rainscourt. They soon entered, and were hid from the prying eyes of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Laevsky. "This continual gossip about other people's affairs, this sighing and groaning and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly sympathy . . . damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions as though I were a schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what! I don't want anything," shouted Laevsky, staggering with excitement ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that he was an English spy, sent there merely for the purpose of prying into the state of her empire and her government. She therefore employed two Russian soldiers to seize him, and convey him out ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... objections to the bonus-on-conduct method of paying wages. It tended toward paternalism. Paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Ezra. "It's been too sad an' mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it. Let it pass. I make no doubt you acted for the best. Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man—as—loves thee. Leave it alone, lad. Let's think a while, and turn it over and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... that point fairly settled to-night, so that there may be no uncertainty or delay in the morning. I would not urge the question were it not that in the morning we must either go on together as travelling companions, or say our final adieux and part. I am not in the habit of prying into men's private affairs, but, to speak the bare truth, I am naturally interested in one whose father has on more than one occasion done me good service. You need not answer me unless you please, senhor," added the man with the air of one who is prepared ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... interrupted, with a laugh. "Yet I'll answer it. Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day I am within sight of my heaven—I have my eyes on it—hardly three feet to sever me. And now you'd better go. You'll neither see nor hear anything to frighten you if you refrain from prying." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... but childless; his dame, like himself, was a native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger—every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... it," she said simply. "He says that servants are always prying into one's concerns. Good night, Capitaine Rotherby! Thank you so much for taking me out this evening. After all, I cannot help feeling that it has been rather like the beginning ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed, by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr. GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... clutching at the hope that this interruption might take them out of their usual boredom. He placed the letter by his plate, and would not open it, pretending carelessly that he knew what it was about. But his brothers, annoyed, would not believe it, and went on prying at it; and so he was in tortures until the meal was ended. Then he was free to lock himself up in his room. His heart was beating so that he almost tore the letter as he opened it. He trembled to think what might be ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... has traveled on a tourist car can readily understand that, even though one may not be prying or curious, one is apt to learn more or less of its other occupants, particularly those in the adjoining sections; and be the porter ever so watchful, he can not ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking he heard a ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the gold she had won, I gave her my arm, and we left the 'ridotto', but remarking that a few inquisitive persons were following us, I took a gondola which landed us according to my instructions. One can always escape prying eyes in this way ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was less distinct. He fancied that in the penetrating quality of the other's gaze was an impertinence of prying. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... mind is intrinsically, necessarily, and always evil. But when a thing is thus evil in itself, there is no need to bring into the definition of the act, from a moral point of view, the intention with which it is done. There is no use in prying into ends, when the means taken is an unlawful means for any end. If a person blasphemes, we do not ask why he blasphemes: the intention is not part of the blasphemy: the utterance is a sin by itself. But if a person strikes, we ask why he strikes, to heal or to slay, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and the glow-worms were the lanterns of workmen examining the outer side of the embankment and prying into ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... drunken ruffians, some sleeping with their heads on the table, others fallen under it, and others stretched their length on the beds, or at the side of the room. "They will stay there quiet enough till I want them, and no one is likely to come prying this way to ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Aunt Margarine, almost beside herself, 'you odious little prying minx, setting up to teach your elders and your betters with your cut and dried priggish maxims! When I think how I have petted and indulged you all this time, and borne with the abominable litter you left in every room ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... "You dirty, prying civilian!" he panted at me, as he swayed this way and that with the pull of my body. "You shall have your wish, by G—! You want to see inside, do you? ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... had examined their consciences, perhaps they would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying spirit." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... surgeon's[263] statement, and an earl's[264] harangues! A bust delayed,[265]—a book[266] refused, can shake The sleep of Him who kept the world awake. Is this indeed the tamer of the Great,[dy] Now slave of all could tease or irritate— The paltry gaoler[267] and the prying spy, The staring stranger with his note-book nigh?[268] 70 Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great; How low, how little was this middle state, Between a prison and a palace, where How few could feel for what he had to bear! Vain his complaint,—My ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... highest in that part of the country. To this place Joseph went on the morning after the angel's visit, as this was the spot he had seen in his vision. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, Joseph found a large, rounded stone, nearly covered with earth. Prying this up, he found it to be the lid of a stone box which was buried in the earth. Raising the lid, he looked in, and there indeed were the sacred treasures about which the angel had told him. As he stood looking at them in wonder, the angel Moroni came to his side, and Joseph was ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... "H. DYSON (says Hearne) a person of a very strange, prying, and inquisitive genius, in the matter of books, as may appear from many libraries; there being books, chiefly in old English, almost in every library, that have belonged to him, with his name upon them." Peter Langtoft's Chronicles, vol. i., p. xiii. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... got Mooney aboard, the other two clambered in and they started for the shore. Mooney was as purple as a grape and his arms were so stiff that two men, one on each side, could barely move them. Nearly a quart of water was got out of him, and they had an awful job prying open his jaws. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... went into this with open eyes. I was angry at the time, but I had thought of it often. And when I went out I went out! Now I've kept away and I don't intend to do any prying—as a matter of fact, I'm only back here for two or three days—but I have some natural curiosity, ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... came into the field. He was an investigator who brought to his aid a singular capacity possessed by the very few; the capacity for an unbiased looking for the hidden reasons of things. There was no field too sacred or too old for his prying investigations and his private conclusions. He was, as much as any man ever is, an original thinker. He knew of all the electrical experiments of others, and they produced in his mind conclusions distinctly his ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... manners were polite; but she did not make me very welcome. She spoke with affection of her former visitor, who, she said, had been very kind; but she presently remarked that she could not see why 'all these other people' had come prying into her affairs." On inquiry it was learned that after the former visitor had left town representatives of several charitable societies had called, and that one had hurt the woman's feelings by asking all kinds of questions without giving any explanation of his ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... perpetual state of disorder." Mr. Gayer notes [434] that the criminally disposed members of the caste take contracts for the watch and sale of mangoes in groves distant from habitations, so that their movements will not be seen by prying eyes. They also seek employment as roof-thatchers, in which capacity they are enabled to ascertain which houses contain articles worth stealing. They show considerable cunning in disposing of their stolen property. The men will go openly in the daytime to the receiver and acquaint him with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... "if he did go to Hungary he would pretend that he had come from England," the object must have been that no one should know the country where the MS. had been recovered; any busybody would be thus effectively foiled in visiting the right spot, and there prying about, making inquiries and ascertaining all the particulars with respect to the alleged discovery of some recent rare manuscript. The place thus decided on by accident was a town in Saxony at the farthest eastern extremity ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... even a turn of the eye in all that scene. After years of acquaintance with the tinker he had not yet ventured a question as to his life history. The difference of age and a certain masterly reserve in the old gentleman had seemed to discourage it. A prying tongue in a mere youth would have met unpleasant obstacles with Darrel. Never until that day had he spoken freely of his past in the presence ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... booted him out of the ranch on sight," he said. "What right had he to come here prying into a lady's affairs?—at least a lady as far as HE knows. Of course she's some old blowzy with frumpled hair trying to rope in a greenhorn with a string of words and phrases," concluded Jack, carelessly, who had an equally cynical distrust of ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... excellent wife, and was much esteemed by Lord and Lady Lonsdale, and every member of that family. Among his verses (he wrote many), are some worthy of preservation; one little poem in particular, upon disturbing, by prying curiosity, a bird while hatching her young in his garden. The latter part of this innocent and good man's life was melancholy. He became blind, and also poor, by becoming surety for some of his relations. He was a bachelor. He bore, as I have often witnessed, his calamities with unfailing resignation. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... horrors of a guilty conscience, and all the terrors which haunt the man who sees himself in hourly danger of detection. He determined to keep his secret cautiously from his wife: he was glad that she was confined to her bed at this time, lest her prying curiosity should discover what was going forward. The species of affection which he had once felt for her had not survived the first six months of their marriage; and their late disputes had rendered this husband and wife absolutely odious to each other. Each believed, and indeed pretty ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... in fact, was lined with sheet iron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Mathilda was a great big woman, not so big perhaps as her Miss Mary, still she was big, and the good Anna liked them better so. She did not like them thin and small and active and always looking in and always prying. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... heard her strike him in the face, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan," so that he let her go. Whereupon she ran out at the door so suddenly that she threw me on the ground, and fell upon me with a loud cry. Hereat the Sheriff, who had followed her, started, but presently cried out, "Wait, thou prying parson, I will teach thee to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. But he thought better of it when we had come halfway ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... mean to look into, And watch our vantage in this business. We'll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio, The narrow-prying father, Minola, The quaint musician, amorous Licio; All ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... joke with the dwellers in the house. While all these pleasing occupations proceeded, the hour of Cudmore's trial was approaching. The tea-pot which had stood the attack of fourteen cups without flinching, at last began to fail, and discovered to the prying eyes of Mrs. Clanfrizzle, nothing but an olive-coloured deposit of soft matter, closely analogous in appearance and chemical property to the residuary precipitate in a drained fish-pond; she put down the lid with a gentle sigh and turning towards the fire bestowed one of her very ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... steeple, unsubdued of wing: Amusive birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head: Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The GOD of NATURE is ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... with a start that the village was empty. Then he remembered it was Sunday, and they were all in church. Thank God, there was none to watch him; no prying, curious eyes to disturb his thoughts. But they would soon be out again, and it behooved him to make the best use of his solitude while he might. He struck inland, his heart beating with a curious expectancy; at every sound he held his breath, and he would turn quickly and look ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... when it is stirred by grog and passion, and the soft touch of a woman's bosom. I know it I know it. But let Temana bring the bottle. I am not afraid to drink grog with thee, Ah, thou art not like some white men. Thou can'st drink, and give some to a poor old man, and if prying eyes and babbling tongues make mischief, and the missionary sends thee a tusi (letter), and says 'This drinking of grog by Pakia is wrong,' thou sendest him a letter, saying, 'True, O teacher of the Gospel. This drinking of grog is very wrong. Wherefore do I send thee three dollars for the school, ...
— Pakia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of divorce to physical defects or delinquencies; making the proceedings public; prying into all the personal affairs of unhappy men and women; regarding the step as quasi criminal; punishing the guilty party in the suit; all this will not strengthen frail human nature, will not insure happy homes, will not banish scandals and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... not try to find out her secret by prying; let us go to her to-morrow, and tell her openly what we think. You fear that she will deny her action; I have no such fear; and if she does not stand our test, I give you my word for it, you shall not ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... shelter of a kind, and we soon adjusted ourselves to the prevailing conditions, and the outhouses surrounding it afforded ample accommodation for the detachments. The gun pits were cunningly concealed in the front portion of the orchard, special care having been taken against the prying eyes of hostile aeroplanes. We were fortunate in the choice of position made for our first time in the line, for two reasons, firstly, it was an interesting zone—including the village of Neuve Chapelle now immediately behind our front ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... when the Nameless Thing was discovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space, reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... soldiers with rifles and the cavalry with the rammers that had been dropped were clustered about the cannon, some prying, some lifting, some pulling, and before the foe could reach them the two pieces of artillery were tipped over and rolled into the side ditches, the Americans scattering the moment the guns were ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... they will set their feet in a new path. Do not reveal the secrets of a family, because accidentally made acquainted with them, or privileged with their intimacy. Disdain, as unworthy your nature and your sex, the practice of prying into the domestic affairs of others. Cultivate a taste for reading, and talk of books and principles, not persons. And never forget that "for every idle word you must give account" hereafter. Be so filled with ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... uniformity. Everybody practised it, everybody believed in it. Not a single soul doubted it or would admit of doubt. It were impossible to know what took place in the depths of souls which were the more hermetically sealed against prying eyes inasmuch as they knew that they were surrounded by a narrow scrutiny, and that every man took upon himself the right to examine into the conscience of other men. It was said that even those who had left the country and thought ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... with his fiery red eyes and cried, "Why do you stand there? Can you not come here and help me?" "What are you about there, little man?" asked Rose-red. "You stupid, prying goose!" answered the dwarf; "I was going to split the tree to get a little wood for cooking. The little bit of food that one of us wants gets burnt up directly with thick logs; we do not swallow so much as you coarse, greedy ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... for the elusive worm that feverish youth known as Tacks the Human Catastrophe, had finally succeeded in prying the rock loose and immediately thereafter Uncle Peter dropped his rod with a yell of terror and proceeded to follow ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... asked at the inquest. Some impudent scoundrel on the jury may want to pry into what doesn't concern him. The moment you're back in London, get a lawyer to represent us—the sharpest fellow that can be had for money. Tell him to stop all prying questions. Who the girl is, and what made that cursed young Socialist Goldenheart take her upstairs with him—all that sort of thing has nothing to do with the manner in which my wife met her death. You understand? I look ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... table on which she kept her supply of beer. She could not afford to lose her sales to-day, although she knew bitterly that most of those who turned in for a drink did so out of prying curiosity. Even Christa, not very quick of feeling, had felt this, and had retired to lounge on the bed in the inner room with a paper novel. Christa usually spent her afternoon in preparing some cheap finery to wear in the cool of the evening, ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... start from Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... bottom, Rick scouted around the wreck, looking for signs of its former structure while Scotty attacked the stern with a crowbar. Under Scotty's prying, a timber suddenly gave with an audible crack, and a huge grouper that must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds rushed past Rick, startling him half to death until he saw what ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... spinning-mule, born near Bolton; for five years he worked at his project, and after he got it into shape was tormented by people prying about him and trying to find out his secret; at last a sum was raised by subscription to buy it, and he got some L60 for it, by which others became wealthy, while he had to spend, and end, his days in comparative poverty, all he had to subsist on being ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... town, asking why a common cheat of a spy, as I reckoned myself, should presume to find other thoughts when breathing that air laden of solitude; but they came to me whether I would or no; and it was often on my mind to throw over the whole business of prying; and to set out on a work which should achieve something, if only a little, for humanity. That I did not follow this impulse, which grew upon me from day to day, is to be laid to the charge of one of those very walks ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... time there lived a youth who was never happy unless he was prying into something that other people knew nothing about. After he had learned to understand the language of birds and beasts, he discovered accidentally that a great deal took place under cover of night which mortal eyes never saw. From that moment he felt he could not rest till these hidden secrets ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... monuments to commemorate the Fauconbridge and Belasyse families, and for its being the scene of Sterne's curacy. A small barrel organ now graces its gallery, which responded to the morning and evening service in Yorick's day. On prying about the belfry we discovered an old helmet, with the gilding on it still discernible, which we at first supposed to be intended as a decoration to some tomb; but its weight and size precluded that supposition. In the church of Coxwold, the moralist might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... which no human wisdom is able to foresee. To consult these false oracles is not only foolish, but sinful. It is foolish, because they are themselves as ignorant as those whom they pretend to teach; and it is sinful, because it is prying into that futurity which God, in mercy as well as ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... like this, involving the most prying supervision of the affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax to be paid, "the collector takes into consideration the number of children [74] to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the collector, and ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... for her mother, asked his usual questions: "What leads you to wish to take up nursing? Are you interested in medicine, and fond of caring for the sick? For you should be, to enter such an exacting life." She seemed to misunderstand him altogether and take his inquiry for prying. She coloured, bit her lip, then lost her head and blurted out: "Interested in the sick! Of course not. Who could be, for they are always so aggravating. I don't mean to stay so very long at it, but it's a good chance to go into some swell family, and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... midnight sky above him, felt neither fear nor awe. Being what nature and circumstance had made him, he was conscious, instead, of a deep sense of peace and comfort. He was at ease, in a nest for the night, and there was only the remotest possibility that the prying eye of an enemy would see him. The leaves directly over his head were so thick that they formed a canopy, and, as he heard the drops fall upon them, it was like the rain on a roof, that soothes the one beneath ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a period of calm, was now profoundly uncomfortable. This kind of prying was the last thing she had expected. She had come prepared to defend Grant, but, beyond one exceedingly personal reference, the detective had studiously shut him out of ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... as Munster himselfe witnesseth? Why not in that Aethiopian hill, which Plinie affirmeth to burne more then all the former? And to conclude, why not in the mountaine of Vesuuius, which (to the great damage of al the countrey adioyning, & to the vtter destruction of Caius Plinius prying into the causes of so strange a fire) vomiting out flames as high as the clouds, filling the aire with great abundance of pumistones, and ashes, & with palpable darknesse intercepting the light of the sunne from al the region therabout? I wil speake, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... know I swept the crumbs under the mat—that it was my method? Had she and Dan been discussing me, ridiculing me behind my back? What right had Dan to reveal the secrets of our menage to this chit of a school-girl? Had he done so? or had she been prying, poking her tilted nose into matters that did not concern her? Pity it was she had no mother to occasionally spank her, teach ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... himself, was a native of Devonshire. They bore the character of a plodding, taciturn, morose-mannered couple: seldom leaving the farm except to attend market, and rarely seen at church or chapel, they naturally enough became objects of suspicion and dislike to the prying, gossiping villagers, to whom mystery or reserve of any kind was of ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... of suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers—that THEY have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted SYMPATHY, which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. This sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; woman would like to believe that love can do EVERYTHING—it is the SUPERSTITION peculiar to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... veritable encyclopedias of the scandal of three generations, and if the scion of some old New York house had gone astray these gentlemen could furnish all the essential data. But he had given his word and he had no intention of prying into his friend's affairs. However, the sister might let fall some clue, and as he dressed he tried to imagine just what sort of woman the Governor's sister would prove ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... thicket, the crafty creatures securely "stopped" the original entrance, so that, when the grass sprouted and the briar sprays lengthened in the woodlands, the "earth" would escape all notice, unless a prying visitor penetrated the thicket and discovered the second opening—then, of course, the only one—leading to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... is one apiece for each teacher, one for Tom, one for Dr. Vane, and one for Mr. Carson. That leaves me three over; and there may be someone I have forgotten in my list, so these will probably come in handy yet. And that prying Cassandra hasn't found out about a thing that ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the identity between the person whom I had seen enter the house with the young girl. As for my own name, it was blazoned forth in anything but a gratifying manner. I was spoken of in one paper—a kind friend told me this—as the prying Miss Amelia. As if my prying had not given the police their only clue to the identification of ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... hissed, advancing menacingly upon Christine. "I always felt you were a spy. But you shall not stay prying here another day. Pack your things ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... man that forces him to climb the hills of science, unlock the mysteries of ages, and wrest from the natural forces of earth and air, their well-guarded secrets. Is it the subtle workings of this desire for the mastery over mechanical agencies, this prying into Nature's secrets, that leads us out into the forest primeval and gives zest ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... aren't as prying as you are," said he. "I often send that message when it would be exceedingly inconvenient to have further inquiries pressed. Not to rich relations, though, for the very good reason that they don't bother about me or other poor worms, who have not ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... began going through the house, prying into every cupboard and sweeping under every bed. They even climbed to the attic; and noting the open casement in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... walk down the hill instead of riding down in the finiculaire, down the stairs which form another of the pictures in Louise, with the abutting houses, into the rooms of which one looks, conscious of prying. And you see the old in these interiors, making shoes, or preparing dinner, or the middle-aged going to bed, but the young one never sees in the houses in the summer.... It was early and we decided to dance; I thought of the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... that he may see how you disgrace yourself?" To which, he said, the Irishman replied, with perhaps a keener insight into Hugh's character than his director, "Oh no, I can trust Monsignor not to take advantage of me. I am sure that he will not come prying and spying about. He always believed whatever I chose to tell him, God bless him!" Hugh could be hard and unyielding on occasions, but he was wholly incapable of being suspicious, jealous, malicious, or spiteful. He made friends once with a man of morbid, irritable, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... uncomfortable, and Gregory resolved to make his easy-chair by the parlor fire the point from which he would watch the development of this domestic drama. He had no vulgar, prying curiosity, but an absorbing interest in the chief actor; and was compelled to admit that the being whom he had come to regard as faultless was growing human ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... thought myself, to go again and again, still prying as I went, to see if I could find some way or passage, by which I might enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last, I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through which I attempted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... end. She slid the ring but hesitated to do more. To look at the paper seemed like prying into the owner's affairs. It must be something precious for him to carry it about with him. Suppose it was a love letter from his sweetheart? She blushed at the idea. Then curiosity was roused. Her fingers crept towards ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... crimson with annoyance, and turned her sheets of foolscap hastily over to hide them from her room-mate's prying eyes. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... "I've been thinking of that, an' it's just a real difficult matter; for I'd never get time to write all the long explanation, with that she always prying after me. She'd find it out, an' stop the letter, even if I could find the paper; an' I dunno' as I can spell all the long words it 'ud take to explain it. An' more too, I couldn't wait an' wait for the answer. We ought to go an' see Uncle—R. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to blow it up with. Would prying do any good, do you think? We have no bars, but we can get plenty of stout poles from the trees, and they will ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... pockets, he unfortunately fell into the company of a man who, under the pretence of being his most zealous friend, became, though perhaps unwittingly, the instrument of his utter ruin. For his appearing ever disconsolate and melancholy gave the countryman an opportunity of prying into the cause of his concern, which he soon discovered to be the narrowness of his circumstances. As we naturally find ease in communicating our afflictions to others, so Johnson was ready enough to inform him of the truth of his affairs, and the man ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... old hypocrite to himself—"it is all very well for you to prate of forgiveness; but I'll have you in the 'Chambers' in less than a month—then see if you can again escape me! In that luxurious underground retreat, from whose mysterious recess no cry can reach the ears of prying mortals above—there, amid the sumptuousness of an Oriental palace, will I riot on those charms of thine, which now I dare but gaze upon! I'll make thee a slave to every extravagant caprice of my passion; ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... a chair to the little opening in the curtain, where he could hear what she had to say, and answer, without any indiscreet prying. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... across the fields, and after jumping, or falling into, several flooded ditches, came to an overgrown marsh. A few yards from terra firma was a large sallow bush, growing on a tiny island. After getting thoroughly wet, I succeeded in crawling on to this and screening my headquarters from prying eyes with green rushes. As it became lighter, I heard occasional voices and peculiar creakings, the cause of which I could not interpret, and might well render my position unsafe. The anxiety was increased when a large, dark shadow loomed out of the fog ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... he isn't mazed at all but so well in his head as you and I be,—just pretending like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be two guineas for ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... is best kept conformable to modern tastes, I suspect, by nobody's prying too closely into the earlier relations between the Duke and his handsome minion. The insistently curious may resort to history to learn at what price the favors of Duke Alessandro were secured and retained: it is no part ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... Dan will be vexed," said Molly. "Such mean folk as they are, a-peeping and a-prying after everything! They knows how to look after whatever they chooses to say is their own; and the captain, he made a row before about that there trumpery yard or two of paper that was the parkisit of them that ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wind and rain, the traveler threw his valise over his arm, and knocked loudly at the entrance of the building for admission. An aged black soon appeared; and without seeming to think it necessary, under the circumstances, to consult his superiors,—first taking one prying look at the applicant, by the light of the candle in his hand,—he acceded to the request for accommodations. The traveler was shown into an extremely neat parlor, where a fire had been lighted to cheer the dullness of an easterly ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Nan's lips unthinkingly, almost before she was aware, and she regretted them the moment they were spoken. She felt he must inevitably suspect her of a prying curiosity. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the family rendered ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... grown prosperous and very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... together I will owe heaven a favor. I don't know what it is, but some god's silent purpose is beneath this. Circe loves not Polyaenos without some reason; a great torch is always flaming when these names meet! Take me in your arms then, if you will; there's no prying stranger to fear, and your 'brother' is far away from this spot!" So saying, Circe clasped me in arms that were softer than down and drew me to the ground which was covered with ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... delightful, in a big sunny room, with interesting people coming and going all the time. Bob and Cecilia smiled at each other like two happy children. It was almost unbelievable that they were free; away from tryanny and coldness, with no more plotting and planning, and no more prying eyes. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... painted the gambling evil of the New York of the sixties. The dens of chance were in aristocratic neighbourhoods and superbly appointed. Heavy blinds or curtains, kept drawn all day, hid the inmates from prying eyes. Within, rosewood doors, deep carpets, and mirrors of magnificent dimensions. The dinner table spread with silver and gold plate, costly chinaware, and glass of exquisite cut: the viands embracing the luxuries of the season and the wines of the choicest. "None but men who ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... or there, my boy, there is no want of prying eyes to see all that the poor foreigners do. Your mother is watched, it is my belief, every time she dips her cup; and I in the mill, and you in the garden. There is no hope of keeping anything from ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... glad to pay this homage of avoidance which would have been more to his credit paid a week or so earlier. His frequent failure to pay it had won him, each time, a glimpse of her and an itching fear that prying eyes were on him inside other balconied windows besides those of the unslender ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... du Rocher. Halfway down this passage, recently opened through, where the shops let at a very low rent, the Baroness saw on a window, screened up to a height with a green, gauze curtain, which excluded the prying eyes ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... mock; but let the infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with seemly reverence ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... prying hind has stolen on our plans; doubtless Lenoire has been assailed and for a while avoids the bank, fearful of further ambush; follow me to search yon winding path; if the villian have received a wound, traces of blood will guide us to his haunt,—vengeance ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!' said her new father. 'When I wish to speak to you I'll come here. I want none of your prying ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... looks like a Canary at a little distance, but not when you are near by," said the Doctor. "The Canary has a short, thick, cone-shaped bill suited to cracking seeds, while the Yellow Warbler has the slender bill necessary for prying into small cracks and crannies for insects. This Warbler also has light rusty streaks on his yellow breast. Do you remember having ever seen, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... long; and indeed, after the disappearance of the Austrian count, a microbe pricking people to departure seemed to multiply in the Villa Bella Vista. The sailor went suddenly, on receipt of a letter from the Admiralty, that prying institution having learned and disapproved of the way in which he was spending his leave and his pay. Lord Burden followed Mrs. Ernstein to Cannes; and Dodo, who never ceased to want good value ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mother were poor—poor enough to make them desire to leave prying, gossiping Oldchurch, and settle in the solitude of some great town. "There," Olive said to herself, "I shall surely find means to work for her—that she may have ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... possession of the occupant of the dug-out, might even have been left there and forgotten by some passing British soldier when the place was captured; but the latter at least is unlikely. When inquisitiveness had such dire results no one did much prying until everything had been examined and pronounced safe. But that the wells were safe was the great thing and their importance could hardly ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... the history of Maurice Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,—upon a different personality. A young ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... stay, did I have a place to stay arranged for, and if so, where and through whom. It looked for all the world as though they had something to conceal; Czarist Russia couldn't beat that for keeping track of people and prying into their business. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... may have been that then he would have strived to go back to Monty's father and grandfather, and so on, as far as he could go. I knew about it because one day I was looking through his desk drawers—prying has always been a failing with me!—and I found a letter from Mr. Roddy, the newspaper reporter, who I had almost forgotten. Mr. Roddy said that he never had been able to find anything of the murderer's history before the time he was employed in Bermuda, and I know my heart ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... remembered, sir, that a devil whose patriotism is impugned is a devil to be punished; and that there is no time to be prying into irrevelant questions of his guilt or innocence. Otherwise, I take it, you will never have any ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... But soon as morning bids the sky exult, As earth from nothing, so that countless host From slumber and from silence will awake To mighty being! while the forest-birds Rush into song, the matin breezes play, And streamlets flash where prying sunbeams fall: Like clouds in lustre, banners will unroll! The trumpet shout, the warlike tramp resound, And hymns of valour from the marching tribes Ascend to gratulate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... says Mrs. Bladen. Then, turnin' on Uncle Jeff, "Only I think you are a mean, hard-hearted old man, even if you are my uncle! Oh, you don't know how often I've wanted to tell you so too,—always prying into this, asking questions about that, finding fault, forever cross and snappish and suspicious. A waspish, crabbed old wretch, that's what you are! I just ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... one in whose conduct so many prying eyes were seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish inquisitorial ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... isn't any business of yours. What right have you to come prying into the affairs of a poor lone woman?" And she sat down upon the sofa beside him, threw her long arm round him, rested her painted face upon his shoulder and began to weep the tears ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have been. It isn't prying into your affairs. Your friends ought to be mine; at least, I mean, I ought to know their names, and something about them. Suppose I were to tell you I had been spending ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... be confoundedly ungentlemanly of me to be prying into anyone's affairs, Brigley, and I won't ask questions about him. I hope, though, he hasn't done anything so foolish as to desert, because, even if he is in the band, he is a soldier, and—I have heard nothing. Has ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... could do what we'd planned without being interrupted," observed Hugh, "but seems as though we've dropped on the queerest sort of a mystery the very first thing. And as scouts always stand to investigate what they don't understand, I reckon we'll have our hands full prying ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... there, Bimal came in from behind. I hastily turned my eyes from the niche to the shelves as I muttered: "I came to get Amiel's Journal." What need had Ito volunteer an explanation? I felt like a wrong-doer, a trespasser, prying into a secret not meant for me. I could not look Bimal in the face, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... out of the box, feeling that he had intruded into private places. He had intended to be considerate and had achieved only the appearance of prying. "That's like me!" he thought, as he descended the stairs that led to the stalls. "I wonder why it is that I'm full of sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and such a ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... strength was sufficiently restored. I resisted all my protector's importunities to postpone my departure till the perfect confirmation of my health. I designed to enter the city at midnight, that prying eyes might be eluded; to bear with me a candle and the means of lighting it, to explore my way to my ancient study, and to ascertain my future claim to existence ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places. Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only approached by a ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... neither regretted their crimes, nor offered atonement. But if the prisoner was injured, the colonist was not less so. Social virtues were discouraged; all classes were contentious and overbearing: the police, ever prying into the business of life, thus intermixed with penal systems, filled the colony with exasperation, from which not even the mildest spirits could escape. He did not propose to abolish transportation, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... he ordered Gibson. "This beam is so tight and scrambled that no prying jackass could even tell that it is communication. Have you ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... person of a prince, all men may think how he was exposed to the derision not only of the courtiers, but also of the common people, who flocked about him as he went along, that one might know afar off where the owl was by the flight of birds; some mocking, some wondering, some cursing, some prying and picking matter out of his countenance and gesture to talk of; so that the false honor and respects, which he had so long enjoyed, were plentifully repaid in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... subdued air of activity about the Swift plant. Subdued, owing to the fact that it was mostly confined to one building—the new, large one, about which stretched a high and strong fence, made with tongue-and-groove boards so that no prying eyes might find a crack, ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... to have rais'd the Mob upon me for looking upright with this Glass; for this, they said, was prying into the Mysteries of the Great Eye of the World; That we ought to enquire no farther than he has inform'd us, and to believe what he had left us more Obscure: Upon this, I laid down the Glasses, and concluded, that we had Moses and the Prophets, and ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... mean insinuation! She would send in her resignation at once! She would get "the boys" to write an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb,—Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Government as a purely personal institution,—and she would find out who it was that had put them up to this prying, crawling impudence! It was probably that wall-eyed old wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Crossing, who was jealous of her. "Remind her of their previous unanswered communication," indeed! Where was that communication, anyway? She remembered she had sent it to her ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... be prying, of his own accord, into things of such ticklish and troublesome, not to say perilous nature—I've nothing to say ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... faction, party. Critical, judicial, impartial, carping, caviling, captious, censorious. Crooked, awry, askew. Cross, fretful, peevish, petulant, pettish, irritable, irascible, angry. Crowd, throng, horde, host, mass, multitude, press, jam, concourse. Curious, inquisitive, prying, meddlesome. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... seemed to you intolerably prying and officious," I said, "well, at any rate, Jones, there's my excuse. It rests with you to give me Freddy or take her from me. Turn back, and you'll make me the happiest man alive; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... isn't apt to find fault, but I am conscious that he is secretly criticising my dress, my dinners, the gaucheries of the servants, my moral qualities, even the way I turn my sentences. I shouldn't mind trying to talk my very best English if he were not prying into my motives: it is difficult to be on one's guard in every direction," with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... answer in a dry tone. He was giddy, flurried, exasperated, by the prying and irritating mode of the examination, which scarcely gave him time to breathe. The magistrate's questions fell upon him more thickly than the blows of the blacksmith's hammer upon the red-hot iron which he is anxious to beat ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... said I, meaning the Father of Lies. 'Never you mind,' said he, and gave me a cunning wink, and hiccuped, and leaning up against the door, with his other eye against the door-post, began to babble of how he had been prying in my room, and how he had gone to the police that morning, and how they had taken down everything he had to say—''siffiwas a ge'm,' said he. Then I suddenly realised I was in a hole. Either I should have to tell these police my little secret, and get ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... moved. Instead of answering, she hastily collected all the walking things, and carried them off to her room. Much astonished, as well as conscious that she had asked an unwise question, which must have sounded like prying, Estelle, in distress, ran ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... was elsewhere than in the employ of Mrs. Warren. With streaming eyes and trembling hands the old man and his wife made ready the spare room for the wanderer more than once blessing the fearful storm which for a time, at least, would keep away the prying eyes of those who, they feared, would hardly credit their ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... made for the celibate life of a desert island. Yet I cannot set up a footman to keep her company. I will not have men's eyes prying about my house, I have ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... thoroughly taken aback. This I rather enjoyed, for he is always prying into affairs and saying, "I rather suspect so and so," with his nose held out as if he got at his intuitions by ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... a fresh stogie. He played nervously with the ends of his fingers and wished he were out of the ward and safely out of range of the prying eyes of the press. In fancy he could hear his daughter screaming with horror at the sight of his name spread in glaring letters before the world and thought of her with a flush of abhorrence on her young ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... you little prying thing?" He thought he could establish some ground of understanding between them if he abused her. "You're a good little sister, Lydia, but ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... came to Mr. Smith by marriage. This is the same Humphrey Dyson that assisted Howes in his continuation of Stowe's Survey of London, ed. folio;' and in his preface to Peter Langtoft's Chronicle (vol. i. p. xiii.) Hearne describes Dyson as 'a person of a very strange, prying, and inquisitive genius in the matter of books, as may appear from many Libraries; there being Books (chiefly in old English) almost in every Library, that have belong'd to him, with his name upon them.' Some of his books are preserved in the ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Well, well!" said Ezra. "It's been too sad an' mournful all along for me to go about to make a new quarrel on it. Let it pass. I make no doubt you acted for the best. Art too good a lad to tek pleasure in prying into the pain of an old man—as—loves thee. Leave it alone, lad. Let's think a while, and turn it over and ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... was tied to a system by which Great Britain and her Colonies deliberately chose the dearest market for their purchases. In the same spirit, the price of freights was wilfully heightened by the Navigation-laws. Important branches of home industry were crippled by prying, vexatious, and wasteful excises. And this system was conceived to be the highest wisdom; or at any rate, to be so invincible a necessity that it could not be avoided or altered without danger. The country, if it were to make ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... most impertinently whispering to his friend with the Quixotic visage, book him, Bob—when out comes the note book of both parties, and down goes somebody. Afterwards see them popping into this shop, and then into the other, spying and prying about—occasionally nodding perhaps to a London actor, who shines forth here a star of the first magnitude; John Liston, for instance, or Tyrone Power—then posting off to the well walks, or disturbing the peaceful dead by ambling over their graves in search of humorous epitaphs—making ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... more fodder; then, casting his eyes downward, "Heydey!" says he, "why so sparing of your litter? pray scatter a little more here. And these cobwebs—But I have spoken so often that, unless I do it myself—" Thus, as he went on, prying into everything, he chanced to look where the Stag's horns lay sticking out of the straw; upon which he raised a hue and cry, called his people about him, killed the Stag, and made a prize ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... pleasant and profitable for people who are not rich to compare notes on these matters with some frank and hearty friend whose means and outgoings are much the same as their own. I do not think of such a case,—but of the prying curiosity of persons who have no right to pry, and who, very generally, while diligently prying into your affairs, take special care not to take you into their confidence. Such people, too, while making a pretence of revealing to you all their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... infections of the world, but thou my pretty Iuuinall, an English Dorrell-lorrell, must lick it vp for restoratiue, & putrifie thy gentle brother ouer against thee, with the vilde impostumes of thy lewd corruptions: God blesse good mindes from the blacke enemy say I: I know you haue bene prying like the Deuill from East to West, to heare what newes: I will acquaint thee with some, & that a secret distillation before thou goest. He that drinketh oyle of prickes, shall haue much a doe to auoyd ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... will he say if he finds us here, prying into his private affairs?" came from Laura, with ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... strong vibration in the side next me. I thrust my hand eagerly to the edge of the planks, and found that a very large one was loose. With my pocket-knife, which, luckily, I had with me, I succeeded, after great labour, in prying it entirely off; and getting it through the aperture, discovered, to my exceeding joy, that there were no boards on the opposite side—in other words, that the top was wanting, it being the bottom through which I had forced my way. I now met with no important ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
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