"Primly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the big boys were becoming unmanageable, but no such information leaked from Alethea-Belle's lips. Each evening at supper we asked how she had fared during the day. Always she replied primly: "I thank you; I'm getting along nicely, better than ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the center of the room, Lucy's gaze wandered over her aunt's shoulder and composedly scanned every detail of the kitchen, traveling from ceiling to floor, examining the spotless shelves, the primly arranged pots and pans, the gleaming tin dipper above the sink. Then the roving eyes came back to the older woman and settled with unconcealed curiosity upon her lined ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... into this house when it was empty, and laboured to decipher the mystic hieroglyphics written on its walls, and learn to what uses the departed craftsman put the strange, delicate implements which they found fastened so primly ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... few inches high, so that from his present perch the board appeared to rest on the pavement itself. Behind the table in a row, as shopkeepers might await a customer, three of the Warlockians, seated cross-legged on mats, their hands folded primly before them. And at the side a fourth, the one whom he had trapped on ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... to them, seated in the doorway between the two rooms so that both could hear; she gave them reports of the condition of things outside; and Miss Hope said primly that she would like to meet and thank the boy who had been so kind as soon as she could be "suitably attired." Betty was thankful that she did not ask his name, but the sisters were not at all curious. They ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... sublime confidence, while it is undoubtedly mistaken, is nevertheless appreciated," she told him primly, moving away with her hands full of flowers. "If you've got the nerve, come inside and read some of my stuff; I want to know if it's any ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... by-road, where there were some old-fashioned, semi-detached cottages, sheltered by a row of sycamores, and shut in by wooden palings. I opened the low gate before the third cottage, and went into the garden,—a primly-kept little garden, with a grass-plat and miniature gravel-walks, and with a grotto of shells and moss and craggy blocks of stone in a corner. Under a laburnum-tree there was a green rustic bench; and here I found ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to have the slightest authority over you," said Eileen very primly, as she drew back in the shadows. "You have come and gone exactly as you pleased. All I ever tried to do was to keep up a decent appearance before the neighbors and ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... began. I couldn't even turn and say good night to the chauffeur, as I walked primly into the hotel, laden ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... grave. "Nellie is breaking the news to her now," she said primly. "I am afraid she is going to find it very hard. But, as sister says, there are times when one has to follow one's own judgments. When mother sees that we all ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... five sober little faces as they sat upon their red-painted stools with their paws folded primly in their laps. Then he winked slyly at Mother Graymouse. "Oh, well, if you are going to feel as bad as all that, perhaps I might manage to tell you one more story," he chuckled. "But I think Silver Ears will hardly call it exciting. And I wonder if you little ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... rear is opened and MRS. KEENEY stands in the doorway. She is a slight, sweet-faced little woman primly dressed in black. Her eyes are red from weeping and her face drawn and pale. She takes in the cabin with a frightened glance and stands as if fixed to the spot by some nameless dread, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously. The two men turn ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... when we finally came to a halt. I confess that just at that minute even Sunnyside seemed a cheerful spot. We had paused at the edge of a level cleared place, bordered all around with primly trimmed evergreen trees. Between them I caught a glimpse of starlight shining down on rows of white headstones and an occasional more imposing monument, or towering shaft. In spite of myself, I drew my breath in sharply. We were on the edge ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... CAROLINE (primly). Hush, Bertram. We ought always to be polite to our visitors when they stay with us. I am sure, if Rosemary wants ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... drink," returned Mendenhall primly. He had not relished the roughness with which the other had snatched the check from him, though making allowance for the natural annoyance of one who had been ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... was triumphant. She had been waiting for days with the revelation when he should make that old request. Now she enunciated it with every vowel and consonant correctly and primly uttered; indeed, she repeated it four or five times in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the fateful twentieth, Mrs. Morton and Jane were putting the last touches on the guest room and on Chicken Little's own chamber, which Katy and Gertie were to share with her. The fresh fluted muslin curtains were looped back primly. The guest room had been freshly papered with a dainty floral design, in which corn flowers and wheat ears clustered with faint hued impossible blossoms, known only to designers. Both rooms looked fresh and cool and summery, and the windows opening ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... like being indebted to the promiscuous charity of strangers, and Mr. Melrose was hardly more than a stranger to us," Nealie put in a little primly. Being the eldest, it was natural she should be a little ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... answers to her inquiries, though brief, were polite and kind. People generally did soften to Clover. There was such an odd and pretty contrast between her girlish appealing look and her dignified little manner, like a child trying to be stately but only succeeding in being primly sweet. ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... the road with the bead bag on her arm. She toed out primly, for she had on her best shoes. A little girl, whom she knew, stood at the gate in every-day clothes, and Ann Lizy bowed to her in the way she had seen the parson's wife bow, when out making calls ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... so open; the tall columns of the portico entrance look down on you so grimly; the front of the booking-offices, in their garment of clean stucco, look so primly respectable that you cannot help feeling ashamed of yourself,—feeling as uncomfortable as when you have called too early on an economically genteel couple, and been shown into a handsome drawing-room, on a frosty ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... fire there before going over to her sister's, but it had burned low. The glow of the coals and the smoky flare of the candle lighted the room uncertainly, scattering and not dispelling the shadows. There was a primly festive air in the room. The flag-bottomed chairs stood by twos, finely canted towards each other, against the wall; the one great hair-cloth rocker stood ostentatiously in advance of them, facing the hearth fire; the long level of the hair-cloth sofa ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sniffed Aunt Charlotte, primly. "She may call me a respectable-looking body as much as she likes now. It's more than ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... mean," he added hastily, "don't be a fool. There are some things one can't bet on. As you ought to have known," he said primly. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Cobb solemnly, as he remounted his perch; and as the stage rumbled down the village street between the green maples, those who looked from their windows saw a little brown elf in buff calico sitting primly on the back seat holding a great bouquet tightly in one hand and a pink parasol in the other. Had they been farsighted enough they might have seen, when the stage turned into the side dooryard of the old brick house, a calico yoke rising and falling tempestuously ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with Mrs. Featherfew, Wilhelmine and Victorine. They spoke very primly and politely, and seemed to our little folks like grown-up ladies cut down short. But when after dinner they all went out into the grounds to play, Mine and Rine, as they called each other, could play as ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... sat in her father's study-chair as stiff and stolid as a lay-figure in a shop window, with her lips drawn primly over her teeth. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... the train," she said primly, and started to talk about something else. And she became most ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat'," said Dora, primly. "What I want to ask about has been talked of all over the place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was your 'frat' that sent the first telegram to members of the Government offering support in case ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... piazza of one of the quaint old-fashioned houses, behind a needless screen of climbing woodbine, two girls are whiling away the afternoon. One of them is lounging in a lassy rocking-chair, while the other sits more primly and is industriously sewing. ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... pecked Anne's cheek and said she supposed they'd hear from her when she got settled. A casual observer might have concluded that Anne's going mattered very little to her—unless said observer had happened to get a good look in her eyes. Dora kissed Anne primly and squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had been crying on the back porch step ever since they rose from the table, refused to say good-bye at all. When he saw Anne coming towards ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said, Master Carver. I had some such thought myself," said Allerton rather primly, while Hopkins and Billington exchanged an irreverent grin, and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... attempts," Rak said primly, "were completely successful. One must assume that the victimized laboratories also had ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... last week," she told him primly, just grazing him with one of her impersonal glances which nearly drove him to desperation. "Aunt Mary has typhoid fever—there seems to be so much of that this spring and they sent for mamma. She's such a splendid nurse, ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... most grave sir, to open the business which has procured me the honor of this visit?" said May, seating herself primly in a chair opposite to him, and folding her little hands together with an air of dignity. Mr. Fielding coughed, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... to prove that "love suffices for everything."[416] Old pictures of the sixteenth century show that it was considered modest to squint. A Spaniard thought that it showed friendship for any one to squint at him. It was also considered a sign of probity to have the lips primly closed and drawn.[417] The Italian cicisbeo in the seventeenth century was a cavalier servente, who attended a married lady. Such men practiced extravagances and affectations, and are ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that moment writing to Grizel in Thrums. But was it, then, all a dream? he cried, nearly convinced for the first time, and he went into the arbour saying determinedly that it was a dream; and in the arbour, standing primly in a corner, was Grizel's umbrella. He knew that umbrella so well! He remembered once being by while she replaced one of its ribs so deftly that he seemed to be looking on at a surgical operation. The old doctor had given ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... said Audrey primly, but inwardly fluttering. The housekeeper's room had heard something of the news by this time, and Audrey had had a busy time explaining to other members of the staff exactly what he had said, and what she had said. The details ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... quaint little barn, which appeared to wear its big north light rather primly, as a girl her first low-necked gown. It was unfurnished, save for a table and easel, several canvases, and an old arm-chair. Felicity glanced at ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... (undoubtedly hopeful). We mustn't be too sure, but I think that is it. (Primly.) What is it exactly that ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... him was somewhat gruesome. Everything was carefully wrapped in newspapers. Pictures enveloped in newspapers hung on the walls, newspaper chairs stood primly around a newspaper table. In the dim twilight it looked like the very ghost of ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... people!" whispered Do to Flo, and both stood primly silent till they were tumbled into another mail bag, and went rattling on again with ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... within the closest official limits. A Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... stop before the box-shaped ornate house, its rough concrete front pretentiously inlaid over the doors and windows with a design of pebbles stuck like dates on a cake, and perched primly on the topmost step of the square veranda the inert ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... plate, and comfortable-looking bags suggesting bullion; and the gayest ship of all lay close up to the carpeted landing-stage. Already the bride was stepping daintily down the gangway, her ladies following primly, one by one; a few minutes more and we should all be aboard, the hawsers would splash in the water, the sails would fill and strain. From the deck I should see the little walled town recede and sink and grow dim, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... pools of green-brown waters, Smooth and framed in snow-white marble, Show between their mirrored statues Gold and silver fishes playing. Slender stems of oleander Cast their prim array of shadows On the primly close-cropped greensward. Overhead, the arching branches Meet and twine to sheltering niches, Where are grouped in loving couples Stiff-limbed heroines and heroes.... Dolphins three pour splashing streamlets In three shell-shaped marble basins. Chestnut blossoms, richly fragrant, ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... I might venture to advise you on a subject that has no personal interest for me," she countered primly, "I would suggest that you hide most of that gas in one of these niches, and take only one can at a time to wherever your aeroplane is. I tell you, Bland Halliday is not to be trusted. You say he was broke and had lost his machine in a wreck or something, and was beating his way to the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... that impression," she said, almost primly. Then, with a change of tone, "But I can't—I won't stay at the hotel where I am. To-night at her house Lady Dauntrey invited me to come and stay there. I was asked before, to Christmas dinner. I could accept, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... he met his pretty truelove skipping along most lady-like and primly. She was dressed in a light blue dress with a white sash tied at the side in two knots. Her long fair hair hung down her back tied with a pink ribbon, and her fringe was fluttering in the breeze. Behind her fringe she wore a wreath of green ivy. In one hand ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... gone, primly grateful for the scrap of comfort, Corinna stood for a minute with her eyes on the sunbeams at the window. Outside there were the roving winds and the restless spirit of April; and feeling suddenly that she could stand the close walls and the familiar objects no longer, she put ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... bit. But horribly unhappy. I must look a sight." Then, remembering her manners, as the Street had it, she said primly:— ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stood a big comfortable sleigh of the old-fashioned pattern. Although it had once been very handsome, it was now faded and ancient. A man who almost looked as if he had gone into service along with the sleigh and the other belongings of his mistress, sat primly upon the front seat. He expressed as much pleasure at seeing the little Peppers coming, as his stoical countenance would allow, but he didn't move a muscle of face or figure. At any other time Joel would have howled with delight at seeing Miss Parrott's ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... all, and as a means to this end their first idea was to dress, act, and talk as correctly and unblamably as boys and girls could. So, by the time the worthy lady was heard descending, they were all in the drawing-room, seated primly on the stiffest chairs they could find, and apparently absorbed in the books they gazed at with serious faces and furrowed brows. To the trained eye the "high-water marks" around faces and wrists were rather ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... we'd like some water, too," Miss Honey returned primly, "we had some soda-water, strawberry, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... fire in it. The chimney is half of one of the boats of the yacht. On the walls of the kitchen proper are many plate-racks, containing shells; there are rows of these of one size and shape, which mark them off as dinner plates or bowls; others are as obviously tureens. They are arranged primly as in a well-conducted kitchen; indeed, neatness and cleanliness are the note struck everywhere, yet the effect of the whole ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... into them," sighed Mollie primly, handing over the box with an air of resignation. "Betty, what ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is the love of liberty. Whereas the mediaeval was always shutting himself into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will"; eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the brickwork which the mediaeval would ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... they all resort euery Friday to keepe their holy day. But, as I thinke, that will no longer endure, then whiles they doe liue that came from thence, for their posteritie is so confused, that they haue nothing of a Moore in them but abstinence from swines flesh, and yet many of them doe eate thereof primly. [Sidenote: It should seeme by their voyage to be Cardandan in Ortelius.] They tell mee that their natiue Countrey hath name Camarian, a firme land wherein be many kings, and the Indish countrey well knowen vnto them. It may so be: for as soone as they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... went suddenly to his throat. He almost tore away the collar and primly arranged tie. Rochester was by his side in a second, and saved him from falling. His face was white to the lips. A shriek from the women rang through the hall, and came echoing back again from the ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Allardice family gave me my invitation to Tibbie's wedding. I was taking tea and cheese early one wintry afternoon with the smith and his wife, when little Joey Todd in his Sabbath clothes peered in at the passage, and then knocked primly at the door. Andra forgot himself, and called out to him to come in by; but Jess frowned him into silence, and, hastily donning her black mutch, received Willie on the threshold. Both halves of the door were open, and the visitor had looked us over carefully before knocking; ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... up through, lights going, heat turned on from the basement furnace; everywhere that tended, homelike appearance a competent servant gives a place. On the hall table as we passed, I noticed a doctorish top coat, with a primly folded muffler ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... said Miss Wodehouse, rather primly. She had never disputed that fact by word or deed, but still it was not pleasant to have the statement thus thrust upon her without any apparent provocation. It was not the sort of thing which a woman expects to have said to her under such circumstances. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... no reason to think that Mr. Harbison cares one way or the other about me," I said primly. "You don't think he's—he's in love with me, do you, Dal?" I watched him out of the corner of my eye, but he only ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was posed in a nun's dress, pensive gray, with virginal white bound primly across her brow. Marietta is a capital model, and her sad face and tender eyes were upturned with exactly the desired expression to the grinning mask in the centre of the ceiling. Silentia kindly consented ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... kind of life, thanks," said Andrew primly, "and I repeat that I am not going to have my business—enlivened, if that's how you choose to put it, and my family disgraced, and my reputation lost; and if I let you go on another day as you've been going, it'll be ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... when a ceremonious knock at the door compelled him to release her. Biddy presented herself very upright, primly correct. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... primly down the lane to the sea with her bathing-dress. She is a worker on a holiday. But she cannot play. She goes down every day to bathe in the Cornish sea, the sea that on a calm sunny day is like liquid Venetian glass and flings at you, under the least breeze, long, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... "Sir," said the lawyer primly, "you are thinking of criminal cases; but if a man be unfortunate enough to get into debt, that is quite a different thing:—we are harder to poverty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... cried Betty wildly, then, meeting his eye, she laughed, a twinkling little laugh. "You shouldn't ask questions like that, not so suddenly, anyway," she said primly. "It isn't fair." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... infinite goodness of God." It is hard to say which of the two was the better, or which commended itself most to the church full of people who listened. Deacon Tourtelot,—a short, wiry man, with reddish whiskers brushed primly forward,—sitting under the very droppings of the pulpit, with painful erectness, and listening grimly throughout, was inclined to the sermon of the morning. Dame Tourtelot, who overtopped her husband by half a head, and from her great scoop hat, trimmed with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... great reader myself," remarked Miss Mitty, a trifle primly. "My father used to say that when a lady had read a chapter of her Bible in the morning, and consulted her cook-book, she had done as much literary work as was good for her. Too intimate an acquaintance with books, he always said, was ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Dunleavy, with his safe ancestry of two generations of wholesalers and strong probabilities about the respectability of still another generation, was her ideal of a Christian gentleman. She wore a full white muslin gown with a blue sash, her hair primly parted in the middle, her right hand laid flat over her left in her lap. Her vocabulary was choice. For a second, when she referred to winter sports at Lake Placid, she forgot herself and tucked one smooth, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... a man talking about the abolition of slavery," he remarked gloomily, "I always expect him to want to do away with marriage next—" he checked himself and coloured, as if an improper speech had slipped out in the presence of Mrs. Lightfoot. The old lady rose primly and, taking the rector's arm, led ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Martha Pinkerton comes primly on, with Mrs. Stanhope at her side, who turns often with a friendly glance toward a happy-seeming couple that walk apart, as if their chief enjoyment was in each ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... I must speak to Miss Lesley, ma'am; my mistress said I must," said Sarah, primly. Then, forgetting her loyalty to her employers in her desire to be communicative, she went on—"Maybe you haven't heard what's happened, ma'am. Mr. Brooke's been taken up on the charge ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... studs in his unpolished shirt front and four shining black buttons on his neat white waistcoat; his clawhammer coat had a velvet collar and fitted him about the shoulders as if it had been constructed for a man who possessed much more of a figure than he; and his trousers were primly pressed. Not the same old Bingle outwardly, you will say, but you are wrong. He was, and always will be, like ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... I know nothing about that,"—she said, primly— "Nor should I even make it my business to enquire." There was an awkward pause after this, and though Longford skilfully changed the subject of conversation to generalities, the rest of the interview was fraught with ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... last long. His natural buoyancy asserted itself and he beckoned to Lavinia who was sitting primly on the edge of the hard chair, her folded hands resting on her lap. Before she could cross the room Spiller and Leveridge took up Bolingbroke's argument, and urged Gay not to meddle further in ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... her that she had had enough of him—more than was good for her, and she sat up straight, primly retying her neckerchief. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... that? A sweet face in a Quaker bonnet, a white kerchief folded primly over a gown of dove-colored satin, a pure plain dress, looking very distinguished, for all its simplicity, among the gay toilet ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... allow you to use this pump!" said a crisp voice primly. "This is not," with capital letters, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Clement J. Cleggett walked sedately into the news room of the New York Enterprise with a drab-colored walking-stick in his hand. He stood the cane in a corner, changed his sober street coat for a more sober office jacket, adjusted a green eyeshade below his primly brushed grayish hair, unostentatiously sat down at the copy desk, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the stage where two young officers of Houssas sat primly side by side on the verandah sipping their coffee. Neither spoke, and the seance might have ended with the conventional "Good night" and that punctilious salute which Bones invariably gave, and which Hamilton as punctiliously returned, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... visitors within the gates; so we left the fly at the inn, and set out to walk from the entrance to the house. There is no porter's lodge; and the grounds, in this outlying region, had not the appearance of being very primly kept, but were well wooded with evergreens, and much overgrown with ferns, serving for cover for hares, which scampered in and out of their hiding-places. The road went winding gently along, and, at the distance of nearly a mile, brought us to a second gate, through ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... raciness of the original. Let the reader imagine a smug, elderly, sleek, and venerable-looking man, approaching seventy years of age, rather (as novel-writers say) below than above the middle height, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and upright in his carriage withal; with his hair most primly powdered, and nicely curled round his brow and temples: let them imagine such a person habited in sober black, with his feet thrust carelessly into a pair of unlaced half-boots, and his hands into the pockets of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... dark-gray superfine cloth enveloped her form completely. A small bonnet of gray taffeta silk was tied primly with a demure bow under her chin. It left not a wisp of hair visible. A riding mask covered her face so that only a finely turned chin was to be seen. So suddenly did she appear that both Robert and ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... more than a guest myself; but Mr. Power is always glad to see whoever cares to come," replied Christie rather primly, though her eyes were dancing with amusement at the recollection of those love ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... our highest ideas," Peace answered primly, recalling a little lecture she had received that morning. "You are Dr. Shumway, ain't you? ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... years the little girl had divided with his profession the doctor's days. Every morning after breakfast he stood to watch the trim, sturdy, round little figure dance down the steps, step primly down the walk, turn at the gate to throw a kiss, and then march away along the street to the corner where another kiss would greet him before the final vanishing. Every day they met at noon to exchange on equal terms the experiences of the morning. Every night they closed the day with dinner and ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... came and planted himself at the very edge of the bare spot. Without giving her so much as a glance, he sat there primly and looked straight off the end of his nose at the sugar bowl in the middle. Not till this moment had Janet realized what a beautiful, intelligent-looking collie dog Mr. Brown had. His brown-buff coat, of just the right shade, seemed slightly veiled with black; his full out-arching front ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... such dreadful expressions, Alan," said Molly primly. "You know mamma doesn't like to hear ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... relieved Clapham,—whose crimes, says Kipling very wisely, are 'chaste in Martaban,'—of police and the Pax Britannica for a hundred years or so, lurid Martaban would have little pre-eminence left to brag about. The class that now goes up primly and plugly to business in the City day by day would be cutting throats a little; they would be making life quite interesting. Their descendants, I mean. It would take time; Mother Grundy would not be disthroned in a day. But it would come; because men follow the times, and not the Soul; and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... primly forth, and, seeing Edward, put out her tongue at him in the most exasperating manner conceivable; then passed on her way, her shoulders rigid, her dainty head held high. A man can stand very much in ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... very primly in her best silk, holding a parasol and wearing a pair of lace mits that had appeared on state occasions for the past twenty ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... vases of a Regent-street china-shop to all the dingy chefs-d'oeuvre of a Wedgwood, or the quaint shepherds and shepherdesses of Chelsea. As for books, were there not four or five resplendent volumes primly disposed on one of the tables; an illustrated edition of Cowper's lively and thrilling poems; a volume of Rambles in Scotland, with copper-plate engravings of "Melrose by night," and Glasgow Cathedral, and Ben Nevis, and other scenic and architectural glories of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... home when Raymond got there at six. She prided herself on this. She would say, primly, to her friends, "I make a point of being there when Ray gets home. Even if I have to cut a round of bridge. If a woman can't be there when a man gets home from work I'd like to know what she's good ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... young man in front of a piano, striking a chord from time to time, and exercising a voice that does not seem to have lost much of its timbre; while there is an exceedingly pretty, gentle-eyed, rather foreign-looking young lady engaged in putting flowers on the central table, which is neatly and primly laid out for four. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... his hands rather unsteady. So many men given soup, so many given chocolate. So many dressings done. And at the bottom Sara Lee's request for more money—an apologetic, rather breathless request, and closing, rather primly with this: ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... grimly rigid aspect of the silent Queen, Rebecca straightened herself primly and remarked, with her most formal air: "I s'pose you are the Queen, ma'am. You seem to be havin' a little party jest now. I hope I'm not intruding but to tell ye the truth, Mrs. Tudor, I've got into a pretty pickle and I want to ask a little ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Bailey. He is a faultlessly dressed young man of about twenty-seven, who takes it as a compliment when people think him older. His mouth, at present gaping with agitation and the unwonted exercise, is, as a rule, primly closed. His eyes, peering through gold-rimmed glasses, protrude slightly, giving him something of the dumb pathos ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... sort: he had set out to break down without having, or even thinking he had, the rudiments of rebuilding in him; and he effected nothing national even in the way of destruction. The Tennysonians still walked past him as primly as a young ladies' school—the Browningites still inked their eyebrows and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... church. Nana and Pauline walked first, their prayer-books in their hands and holding down their veils on account of the wind; they did not speak but were bursting with delight at seeing people come to their shop-doors, and they smiled primly and devoutly every time they heard anyone say as they passed that they looked very nice. Madame Boche and Madame Lorilleux lagged behind, because they were interchanging their ideas about Clump-clump, a gobble-all, whose daughter would ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Sir Robert was expected shortly to arrive at the inn, and that we must be on the road at once. She thanked me very primly for the information, but declared she would not trouble me further, that she meant to abide at the inn all night no matter who came; moreover, that when she did leave Hamish Gorm would be sufficient guard. I ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Bobby slowly. "I've been thinking. Suppose she did find your beautiful locket and—and appropriate it for her own use," finished Bobby rather primly. ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... he said. "Les fleurs! C'est la vie parfumee." Waiting for the breakfast to be served, he showed us about in his apartment. In the salon, rather primly furnished, stood the grand piano. The bookshelves contained Cherubini's (his master) and his own operas, and his beloved Bach. A table in the middle of the room, covered with photographs and engravings, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... should never forget is to be neat! Not primly so, but daintily so. The girl well got up, with irreproachable gloves, and shoes that fit, though her gown be only cotton, yet if it be well turned out, may compete with the richest, while the slovenly dresser, ...
— How to Marry Well • Mrs. Hungerford
... them—a broad valley was disclosed, with a broad, shallow stream dividing its meadows; scattered farmhouses, orderly, prosperous, commanded their shorn acres. A mailbag was detached and left at a crossroad in charge of two little girls, primly important, smothered in identical, starched pink sunbonnets. The Greenstream stage splashed through the shallow, shining ford; the ascent on the far side of the valley ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... people who let children dine late," said Vic, primly, "I shan't come down to dinner till ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... something we thought you ought to know," Celie began primly, "so Ma and I hurried right over, so as to put ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... old in years, but, unhappily for himself, too tenacious of youth in its grand discontent and keen susceptibilities to pain, strode noiselessly on, under the gaslights, under the stars; gaslights primly marshalled at equidistance; stars that seem to the naked eye dotted over space without symmetry or method: man's order, near and finite, is so distinct; the Maker's order remote, infinite, is so beyond man's comprehension ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who was waiting, rooted and rigid, close by. The reddish eyes of the nurse-maid fairly bulged with importance. Her lips were sealed primly. Her face was so pale that every freckle she had stood forth clearly. How strangely—even direly—the great dining-room affected her—who was so at ease in the nursery! No smile, no wink, no remark, ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... comes.' He gravely shook the hand she held out primly, keeping a certain distance from him lest he should attempt to ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... with that young lady I should imagine she would have had some delicacy in telling you otherwise," returned Mr. Dingwall primly. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the Lily of the Valley. Cut it with a good deal of foliage, and be careful to give each stalk ample room in which to adjust itself. A vase with a flaring top is what this flower ought to have, as its stalks have just the curve that fits the flare. A straight vase obliges it to stand up so primly that half the charm of ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... she replied primly. Would he expect her to say "Sir?" Anyhow, she wouldn't! She compromised with a dainty meekness which might be interpreted as respect for a superior. Mr. Meggison fixed her with a sharp look which would have detected the impudence of a ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... had the pleasure of casting my optics upon the individual of Nancy Ellen's choice," said Agatha primly, "but Miss Amelia Lang tells me he is a very distinguished person, of quite superior education in a medical way. I shall call him if I ever have the misfortune to fall ill again. I hope you will tell ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... herself far back in a deep leather chair, and sat primly upright, her feet sticking straight out in front, while she clasped the doll in ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster |
