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Fretted   /frˈɛtɪd/   Listen
Fretted

adjective
1.
Having frets.
2.
Having a pattern of fretwork or latticework.  Synonyms: interlaced, latticed, latticelike.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fretted" Quotes from Famous Books



... believe, as madly in love as ever man was in the history of the world; petted, encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane weakness of my own nature I have let all manhood ooze out of me. I am unlike Hamlet, my dear Gertrude. I am both to be fretted and ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... Comboloio[159] lies A Koran of illumined dyes; And many a bright emblazoned rhyme By Persian scribes redeemed from Time; And o'er those scrolls, not oft so mute, Reclines her now neglected lute; And round her lamp of fretted gold 560 Bloom flowers in urns of China's mould; The richest work of Iran's loom, And Sheeraz[160] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... must stay in port to mak' a patent pay. My Deeferential Valve-Gear taught me how that business lay, I blame no chaps wi' clearer head for aught they make or sell. I found that I could not invent an' look to these—as well. So, wrestled wi' Apollyon—Nah!—fretted like a bairn— But burned the workin'-plans last run wi' all I hoped to earn. Ye know how hard an Idol dies, an' what that meant to me— E'en tak' it for a sacrifice acceptable to Thee.... Below there! Oiler! What's your wark? ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... had not yet been disturbed by love of woman, who fretted not over the salvation of his own soul, had therefore, in order to follow his mentor's advice, to turn his attention to the prospect. His way led in an opposite direction from the church, and he was ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Victor sat at the desk where he had, four hours earlier, inscribed those characters which should have hurried Nogam into a premature grave. That they had failed of their mission was something that fretted Victor Vassilyevski, his mind and nerves, to a pitch of exacerbation all ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... incapacitate ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... last of that blunder if she gets hold of it," he fretted. "Say, Polly, don't tell—her ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... anxious to go on that Father Roubeau fitted him out with grub; but he couldn't let him have any dogs, for he was only waiting my arrival, to go on a trip himself. Mr. Ulysses knew too much to start on without animals, and fretted around for several days. He had on his sled a bunch of beautifully cured otter skins, sea otters, you know, worth their weight in gold. There was also at Pastilik an old Shylock of a Russian trader, who had dogs to kill. Well, they ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... the Quarterly article had only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical affliction—hereditary consumption—was oppressing his mind. His death occurred on February 23, 1821—about two and a half years after ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... act to hurt the three people who would grieve for him. He would bear the hurt of forever loving in silence, and continue to wait for the open road that would lead him to prison and disgrace, or maybe a death of shame. He considered, as often before, all the arguments that continually fretted him and tore his spirit; and, as before, he knew the only course to follow was the hard one which took him back to Amalia, until spring and the melting of the snows released him—to live near her, to see her and hear her voice, even touch her hand, and ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... you to talk," continued de Lescure. "How would you have borne it yourself? You would have fretted and fumed, and dashed yourself like a bird against its cage, till either your senses or your breath had left you. Henri," he then added, in a calmer tone, "I feel that ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet, Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With Golden Architrave; nor did there want Cornice or Freeze, with bossy Sculptures grav'n, The Roof was fretted Gold. Not Babilon, Nor great Alcairo such magnificence Equal'd in all thir glories, to inshrine Belus or Serapis thir Gods, or seat 720 Thir Kings, when Aegypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxurie. Th' ascending pile Stood fixt her stately highth, and strait the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... more she had fretted herself ill. The picture was there in the corner, turned to the wall; he could only just prevent her from driving her palette-knife through it. And she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, silent, a book on her knee, her hands hanging beside her, and her feverish eyes wandering—wandering ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a mile in either direction, but there was no sign of our companions, and my heart sank again. There were, however, here and there, ridges of rock, running down like breakwaters into the sea, and about which it fretted and tossed tremendously; and, in the hope that one of these ridges might hide our friends from our view, I climbed to the top of the highest piece of rock I could reach, and took a long ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... ivory fan from an inner pocket and spread it in the air. Dong-Yung knew the fan well. It came from a famous jeweller's on Nanking Road, and had been designed by an old court poet of long ago. The tiny ivory spokes were fretted like ivy-twigs in the North, but on the leaves of silk was painted a love-story of the South. There was a tea-house, with a maiden playing a lute, and the words of the song, fantastic black ideographs, floated off to the ears ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... is one of the earliest erected in stone, and is remarkable for skilful construction, the masonry in no part being more than seven inches thick. This spire is belted with three broad bands of panelled tracery, and there are eight pinnacles at its base, two on each corner of the tower. The ribs are fretted throughout the whole height with elegant crockets, thus imparting to the sky-line an appearance similar to the gusty spray on the borders of a rain-cloud. An admirer has said of it, "It seems as though it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... he whistled merrily as he trudged along the road beyond Stanton, with his heart as free from care as the yolk of an egg is from cobwebs. At last he came to where a little stream spread across the road in a shallow sheet, tinkling and sparkling as it fretted over its bed of golden gravel. Here Robin stopped, being athirst, and, kneeling down, he made a cup of the palms of his hands, and began to drink. On either side of the road, for a long distance, stood tangled ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... "They're like wet wood this evening," he would say; "they won't kindle at all!" And then he would look round to see what kind of people they were; and sometimes he would find them laughing at the wrong time, when they ought not to have laughed, and that vexed him; and he fretted, and was an unhappy man, and at last fretted himself into ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house, breakfasted, and had family-prayers. Since then, he has donned his Sabbath array, both mental and bodily. Mentally, having dismissed the cares of the week, he has strictly united himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... home," he replied, as if the word fretted him. "Yes, I like to see it again. But it isn't the place for young people to live in. You will see how you ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... with Sir J. Minnes, [Sir] W. Batten, and [Sir] W. Pen in the last man's coach to St. James's, and thence up to the Duke of York's chamber, which, as it is now fretted at the top, and the chimney-piece made handsome, is one of the noblest and best-proportioned rooms that ever, I think, I saw in my life, and when ready, into his closet and did our business, where, among other things, we had a proposition of Mr. Pierces, for being continued ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... that we can more easily bear up against a real evil than against suspense! Let it not be supposed that Amine fretted at the thought of her approaching separation from her husband; she lamented it, but feeling his departure to be an imperious duty, and having it ever in her mind, she bore up against her feelings, and submitted, without repining, to what could not be averted. There was, however, one circumstance, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... she wore ship and came nearer. It seemed now that she would attempt to board us, for we spied men waiting with grapnels, and she came steadily on while our own men fretted at their guns, not daring to fire without the captain's orders, till we could see the triumphant sneer on the dark ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... and as limpid as pure air, throwing back the mountains, clothed in dark pines, along the whole of its eastern boundary, the points thrusting forward their trees even to nearly horizontal lines, while the bays were seen glittering through an occasional arch beneath, left by a vault fretted with branches and leaves. It was the air of deep repose—the solitudes, that spoke of scenes and forests untouched by the hands of man—the reign of nature, in a word, that gave so much pure delight to one of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... fencing than art. He was a champion with various weapons; he could box, and was even skilled in the favorite blows of the prize fighters of the slums. "Useless as a drone, and as dangerous, too," fretted his father. And yet in the back of his troubled mind fluttered an irresistible satisfaction—an animal pride in the thought that this hare-brained terror was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... concert at his Ferragosto on the first of August; and—most vexatious of all—a couple of goldsmiths came with their work, and with rival models of a button for the Pontifical cope. Giuseppe fumed and fretted while the Holy Father put on his spectacles to examine the great silver vase which was to receive the droppings from his table, its richly chased handles and its festoons of acanthus leaves, and its ingenious masks; and its fellow which was to stand in his cupboard and hold water, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... a Christian man, whether it be good or evil, with his spirit braced and yet chastened, by honest and patient labour, instead of being weakened and irritated by idling over to-day, while he dreamed and fretted about to-morrow? ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... soul—its turn will come. And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give an account of them, for there were no thoughts in his brain, but something very vague, and, above all, intense excitement. He felt himself that he had lost his bearings. He was fretted, too, by all sorts of strange and almost surprising desires; for instance, after midnight he suddenly had an intense irresistible inclination to go down, open the door, go to the lodge and beat Smerdyakov. But if he had been asked why, he could not have given any exact reason, except ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... displayed Looks with its venerable face Over the far and subject sea, Which makes the fearless isles so free! And 'tis a strange and noble pile, Pillared into many an aisle: Every pillar fair to see, Marble—jasper—and porphyry— The Church of St. Mark—which stands hard by With fretted pinnacles on high, And Cupola and minaret; More like the mosque of orient lands, Than the fanes wherein we pray, And Mary's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the child{14} among his new-born blisses, A six years' darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art— A wedding ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... It's simply a question of how the other fellow will separate easiest." He stopped and tightened his snow-shoe thong, then rising, gazed curiously at the listless countenance of his travelling companion, feeling anew the curiosity that had fretted him for the past three weeks; finally he observed, with a ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... day, and it is then that Armand is come,—Armand, who was weaver, too, but who had been soldier with the great Emperor, and seen the girls of all countries. But he cared for none of them till he saw me, for his thought was always on his work; and he, too, planned machines, and fretted that he had not education enough to make them with drawings and figures so that the masters would understand. When machines have come he has fretted more; for one at least had been clear in his own thought, and now he cannot have it as he will, since ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... was a commercial traveller, absent with his samples in Damascus most of the time; and the poor girl had no one to protect her from the outrage of exclusion from the parties to which she was not invited. She fretted and chafed very much at first, but after forbearance ceased to be a virtue it came rather natural to her to exercise a patient endurance. But perceiving this was agreeable to her sisters she abandoned it, devising a rare scheme of vengeance. She sent to the "Levant ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... Wazir, I have somewhat to say;" and the Wazir replied, "Out with all thou hast!" "It is my opinion," continued the slave-dealer, "that thou shouldst not carry the maid to the King this day; for she is newly off a journey; the change of air[FN11] hath affected her and the toils of trouble have fretted her. But keep her quiet in thy palace some ten days, that she may recover her looks and become again as she was. Then send her to the Hammam and clothe her in the richest of clothes and go up with her to the Sultan: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... child, a daughter was surely the most fitting companion for a widowed mother. The house Mrs. Meadowsweet lived in fitted her requirements to perfection. In short, she was fat and comfortable, both in mind and body; she never fretted, she never worried; she was not rasping and disagreeable; she was not fault-finding. If her nature lacked depth, it certainly did not lack affection, generosity, and a true spirit of kindliness. If she were a little too well pleased with herself, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... Of old, Link had fretted at the waste of time in taking out the sheep and cows and in going for them at night. This dual duty was now a thing of the past. Chum did the work for him, and reveled in the excitement of it. Chum also—from watching Link perform the task twice—had learned to ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... it was no worse, for very few, he had noticed, ever recovered from serious wounds of spear or arrow. The wounded generally died; only the fortunate escaped. Thus he ran on, talking as much for his own amusement as that of his guest. He fretted because he could not join the camp and help work the artillery; he supposed the ram would be in position by now and shaking the wall with its blow. He wondered if Baron Ingulph would ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... at last been exhausted on Pitcairn Island, and the mutineers had to learn to do without it. Some of them said they didn't care, and submitted with a good grace to the inevitable. Others growled and swore and fretted, saying that they knew they couldn't live without it. To their astonishment, and no doubt to their disgust, they did manage to live quite as healthily as before, and with obvious advantage to health and teeth. Two there were, however, namely, Quintal and McCoy, who would not give in, but ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... life I had only to stretch out my hand. Irritated at the quietude of my days, wearied with a happiness that cost me nothing, I sought heroic struggles, chivalrous encounters, and not finding them in a well-regulated society, where strong interests have been substituted for strong passions, I fretted in secret and wept ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... one's spiritual condition is a delicate and debatable matter with her. In Wellesley square, later in the evening, the conditions were different. It would not be easy to imagine a scene that suggested greater liberality of sentiment. The moon shed her light upon it, and the palms threw fretted shadows down. Beyond them, on four sides, lines of street-lamps shone, and tram-drivers whistled bullock carts off the lines, and street pedlars lifted their cries. A torch marked the core of the group of exhorters; it struck pale gold from Laura's hair, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Brains are too little agaynst one that is resolved to cheat. 'Tis noe Goode complayning to a Man; he will not see, even though unafflicted like Father, who cannot. Men's Minds run on greater Things, and soe they are fretted at domestic Appeals, and generallie give Judgment the wrong Way. Thus we founde it before, poor motherlesse Girls, to our Cost; and I reallie believe it was more in Kindnesse for us than himself, that Father listened to the Doctor's Overtures in behalfe of Miss Minshull; for what Companion ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... Belshazzar's carousal, where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of the banqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when there was set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400,000. But I speak now of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Its floor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Its song is a song of fire. Its walls are buttresses of fire. Solomon refers to it when he says: "Her guests are in the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... The parents begin to repair the evil by a greater one. They attempt to patch their own rents by dilapidating their children. They recruit their own exhausted energies by laying hold of the young energies around them, and older children are bored, and fretted, and deformed in figure and temper by the care of younger children. This is horrible. Some care and task and responsibility are good for a child's own development; but every care, every toil, every atom of labor that is laid upon children beyond ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... Lady O'Moy greeted him petulantly. Since she spent her life in keeping other people waiting, it naturally fretted her to discover unpunctuality ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... Is there a second? Come with me, and you will never ask that question again. Get under the shade of St. Hilda's— see once those fretted roofs and those painted windows. Listen but once to that angel choir, and then dare to ask me what chapel I mean when I invite you to come ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... to soothe and calm a mind fretted and harassed with the cares and turmoils of this every-day world; a sunny vista into the future, welcome in a weary hour to the worn spirit, which longs, as for the wings of the dove, that it may flee away, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Miss Thusa," said he, handing it to her as he spoke, "which I put aside on purpose for you. It contains an account of a celebrated murder, which occupies several columns. It is enough to make one's hair stand on end, 'like quills upon the fretted porcupine.' I am sure it will lift the paper crown ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... and her daughter ran after her, screaming a wild and piercing note. I moved to the dying man. He was insensible to anything I could say. Fretted and ashamed of myself, I hurried from the house, and, returning home, rushed to my room, fell upon my knees, and implored my Father to inflict at once the punishment due to lukewarmness and apostasy. How vain had been all my previous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... know. Poor Eric was for rushing into the blinding whirl, that turned earth and air into one white tornado; but he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and we prevailed on him to come back. On the third night, the wind fell like a thing that had fretted out its strength. Morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet and reflecting a white dazzle that made one's eyes blink. Great icicles hung from the naked branches ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... express image of his religious belief. The secret of his character and of his actions lay in perfect humility and an absolute faith. Events did not discompose him, because they were sent by One who best knew his own purposes. He was not fretted by the folly of others, or irritated by their hostility, because he regarded the humblest or the worst of mankind as objects, equally with himself, of the divine love and care. On all other points he examined himself so closely that the meditations ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in my ears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over that, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, that had long been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... fronting the street, the mild old woman sat, with her bed in one corner, and her simple vassals ranged upon the forms around. Here, "with quaint arts," she swayed the giddy crowd of little imprisoned elves, whilst they fretted away their irksome schooltime, and unconsciously played their innocent prelude to the serious drama of life. As we ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... now whether he was left to himself or not, except that conversation harassed and fretted him; for, as to turning his mind to the subjects which were to have been his occupation that morning, it was by this time far too much wearied and dissipated to undertake them. On Mr. Batts' departure, then, he did not make the attempt, but sat before the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... women sought every available patch of shade, while dogs stretched themselves under the buggies, panting, with lolling tongues. Children alone ran about, as though nothing could mar their enjoyment; but babies fretted wearily in their mothers' arms. Overhead the sun blazed fiercely in a sky of brass. Now and then came a low growl of thunder, giving hope of a change at night; but it was very far distant, although a dull bank of cloud lay to the west. David Linton watched ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... the Falls of the Ohio, and he, too, counseled haste. Lewis drove his drunken, lazy workmen in the shipyards as hard as he might, week after week, yet found six weeks elapsed before at last he was in any wise fitted to set forth. The delay fretted him, even though he received word from his chief bidding him not to grieve over the possible loss of a season in his start, but to do what he might and to possess his soul ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, the rosettes and favors fretted of silver on the flat ice. The little cascades in the brook were ornamented with transparent shields, and long candelabrums and spermaceti-colored fools'-caps and plated jellies and white globes, with the black water whirling along transparently underneath. The sun ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... they rode on in silence. None of them spoke much. A curious, dreamy, irresponsible feeling crept over them. It was as if they had all taken some narcotic drug—the merciful anodyne which Nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far. They thought of their friends and of their past lives in the comprehensive way in which one views that which is completed. A subtle sweetness mingled with the sadness of their fate. They were filled with the ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... forces,—Maryllia's eyes, glancing half timidly, half wistfully at him, and her fair face, slightly troubled in its expression, had moved him to an exertion of his best powers to please her, and make everything bright and gay around her. Instinct told him that some secret annoyance fretted her—and watching her looks, and noting the monosyllabic replies she gave to Lord Roxmouth whenever that distinguished personage addressed her, he decided, with a foolish thrill at his heart, that the report of her intended marriage with ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn And make a dearth in this revolting land. Or shall we play the wantons with our woes And make some pretty match with shedding tears? As thus: to drop them still upon one place Till they have fretted us a pair of graves Within the earth; and, there inlaid: 'There lies Two kinsmen digg'd their graves with weeping eyes.' Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see I talk but idly, and you laugh at me. Most mighty prince, ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... the children's countenances changed, and they became captious and irritable. Both parents were fretted at this reaction upon their own states of mind, and manifested, at some slight misconduct on the part of one or two of the children, a degree of ill-nature that instantly transferred itself to those against ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... fit for a young princess, and in very good taste besides, because I was born with that. An inheritance, no doubt. And my uncle never complained at all about the bills. I seemed to have become, in some way, a person of considerable importance in the house. Ann Coddle no more fretted at me, but waited on me with alacrity. The cook ceased to bully me, and on the contrary, flattered me outrageously. I remembered the long years of bullying, and put no faith in her assurances. I did not know exactly why this change had happened, but supposed it might be the result of having ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... it. The abruptness, the sharp transitions, the startling and picturesque contrasts which mark so much of the talk of his persons, reflect not merely his agility of mind but his aesthetic relish for the Gothic richness and fretted intricacy that result. The bishop of St Praxed's monologue, for instance, is a sort of live mosaic,—anxious entreaty to his sons, diapered with gloating triumph over old Gandulph. The larger tracts of soul-life are apt in his hands to break up into shifting phases, or to nodulate into ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... time we heard a footfall near the cave—dreading lest it should prove to be that of our executioner. But as time dragged heavily on, we ceased to feel this alarm, and began to experience such a deep, irrepressible longing for freedom, that we chafed and fretted in our confinement like tigers. Then a feeling of despair came over us, and we actually longed for the time when the savages would take us forth to die! But these changes took place very gradually, and were mingled sometimes with brighter thoughts; for there were ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... more fatal tone with Ruth at that moment. All the afternoon she had been a complicated tangle of fretted nerves. Her quarrel with Kirk, Bailey's visit, a conscience that would not lie down and go to sleep at her orders, but insisted on running riot—all these things had unfitted her to bear up amiably under ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... want?" returned his master in a rage. For some time he had been hauling on the curb rein, which had fretted his temper the more; and when he let go, the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... first fragile link with certain strenuous new northern writers, translations of whom in every tongue had just then descended, Gothlike, upon Europe, to the great energising of its various literatures. She it was too who first handed them the fretted golden key to the enchanted garden of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the striking head of the young Dante in sepia, which had hung in a sort of shrine-recess in Henry's study, had been copied for him from Rossetti's sketch by ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... entered her home. The sick woman moaned, and the child fretted for food. The doctor bent above his patient, shaking his head ruefully as Maarda built the fire, and attended to the child's needs before she gave thought to changing her drenched garments. All day she attended her charges, cooked, toiled, watched, forgetting her night of storm and sleeplessness ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... feverish night, that, although the physician had let a little more blood to counteract it, I verily seemed almost to forget the stocks and what I was to undergo of disgrace and ignominy, being principally glad that the window was to the west, and that burning sun which had so fretted ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... had spoken had not been renewed, and though he was far too proud to show his annoyance, the omission galled and fretted his haughty nature, for the lowliness of his birth and circumstances chafed him continually, and engendered a sensitiveness to small annoyances which would not have troubled a nobler nature. In spite of all this, he found himself, as the term drew near its close, looking forward with pleasure ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... devil and mammon were too strong for him, particularly coming as they did, half hidden beneath the gloss of parental affection. There was little of the Roman about the earl, and he could not condemn his own son; so he fumed and fretted, and twisted himself about in the easy chair in his dingy book-room, and passed long hours in trying to persuade himself that it was for Fanny's advantage that he was going to ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... The woman fretted and fumed, and wished ill to the day when she had ever seen either Reginald or Love. He bore her vituperation patiently, as it was his only ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet symphonies, and voices sweet, Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven; The roof was fretted gold." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and its three deep-pointed arches, piercing through a great thickness of stone, and throwing a cavern-like gloom around these entrances. The front is very rich. Though so huge, and all of gray stone, it is carved and fretted with statues and innumerable devices, as cunningly as any ivory casket in which relics are kept; but its size did not so much impress ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with well-wooded islands. They are sometimes fringed with green meadows, sometimes bounded by rocky promontories rising directly from comparatively deep water, while the calm bright surface is often fretted by a delicate pattern of interlacing ripples, or reflects a second, softened, and ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... outwardly, and she drew her hand away. Allison remembered the long, happy hours they had spent together before Isabel came into his life. Now that she was gone, the old comradeship had returned, the sweeter because of long absence. Rose had never fretted nor annoyed him; she seemed always ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... as he lay back on the dusty floor and pillowed his head on his hands. And then while he still fumed and fretted, outraged nature asserted herself and he ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... willfulness in the other—happen to bring them to the same spot. Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered man, tolerant both of differences and defects; but a point of view different from his own concerning the settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more than if it had concerned Church discipline or the ballot, and faults were the less venial for belonging to a person whose existence was inconvenient to him. In no case could Grandcourt have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... asunder. The nearest name for it is insecurity, something fitting in men walking on cliffs and the verge of things. Adventure, a lonely taste in liberty, a humour without wit, perplex their critics and perplex themselves. Their souls are fretted like their coasts. They have an embarrassment, noted by all foreigners: it is expressed, perhaps, in the Irish by a confusion of speech and in the English by a confusion of thought. For the Irish bull is a license ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... below was what we took at first to be a rounded hill of black rock, oblong in shape, from which projected a gigantic shaft of stone ending in a kind of fretted bush that alone was of the size of a cottage. The point of this bush-like rock was exactly opposite the little plateau on to which we had emerged and distant from it not more than thirty, or at most, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... worked on Horace Jardin's plane, but seemed to make no headway. Horace threatened one thing and then another, ready to take the advice of whoever stood nearest. Frank made it a point to be that person as often as possible. He fretted no longer about money, a ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... pony to the left, and took up a position behind some huge bowlders from whence he could see without being seen. The pursuer toiled into sight, a slim, wiry youth on a buckskin. He came forward out of the shadows into the fretted moonlight. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... There was no one in the hotel, in the Casino, or on the beach; the whole town being in the act of climbing the further cliff, to reach the downs on which the races were to be held. The green hillside was black with trudging spectators and the long sky line was fretted with them. When I say there was no one at the inn, I forget the gentleman at the door who informed me positively that he would give me no breakfast; he seemed to have staid at home from the races expressly to give himself this pleasure. But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Rita fretted and stamped her pretty feet, and said various explosive things under her breath, and not so far under but that they could be heard pretty well, but all this did not avail to make the saddle smaller ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... illuminated the table, where coffee and liqueurs were set out. There were no chairs, and the guests drank their coffee standing, while the hubbub the waiters were making in the next room grew louder and louder. Nana had disappeared, but nobody fretted about her absence. They did without her excellently well, and everybody helped himself and rummaged in the drawers of the sideboard in search of teaspoons, which were lacking. Several groups were formed; people separated during supper rejoined each ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... by fifty men would look well in this bay.... The bay is antiquity, and those hills; all the morning while talking to you a memory or a shadow of a memory has fretted in my mind like a fly on a pane. Now I know why I have been expecting a nymph to rise out of those waves during breakfast. For a thousand years men believed that nymphs came up on those rocks, and that satyrs and their ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... if the last hoarded drops of summer's sweetness were being poured over all the world. The air was full of quiet sounds. Turtles rustled beside the brink and slid into the water,—cows plashed in the shallows,—fishes leaped from the placid depths,—a squirrel sobbed and fretted on a neighboring stump,—a katydid across the lake maintained its hard, dry croak,—the crickets chirped pertinaciously, but with little fatigued pauses, as if glad that their work was almost done,—the grasshoppers kept up their continual chant, which seemed thoroughly melted and amalgamated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Malone, and were running the town to suit their own inclinations. As the days wore on and the prospects of their receiving arms and supplies to equip the invaders became more and more remote, the leaders chafed, fumed and fretted alternately, and finally became absolutely discouraged. Their fondest hopes were blasted, and they bitterly berated the United States Government in blasphemous language for stopping their expeditions. While ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... of McClane's corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing nothing. She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they were not wanted. But here there were not enough hands for the stretchers, and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time. From the first minute you could see what you were ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... faces were various, some dark and coarse, as if swollen with disease; others pale, delicate and finely cut. As various as the faces were their expressions; there were those who, with mouth wide open and idiotic eyes stared into vacancy; others twitched and fretted with ill concealed impatience but most of them, though suffering, looked patient and submissive. Their outward appearance showed an equal variety, from the decent coat of the rich man's child, in gentle graduations to the sleeveless ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... of use in the world. It fretted her to live as they did, pensioners on her grandfather, whose fortune had sadly dwindled of late years. Her mother's income was barely sufficient to clothe the three of them, and Alex felt she ought to be earning her own living. That ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... and on the second night we lay in camp in a burnt forest. We were all tired and hungry, and—for Johnston was silent—a melancholy settled down upon the camp, while I lay nearly frozen under two blankets, watching a half-moon sail slowly above the fretted ridge of ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... yet there was in him that which transcended Forsyteism. For it is written that a Forsyte shall not love beauty more than reason; nor his own way more than his own health. And something beat within him in these days that with each throb fretted at the thinning shell. His sagacity knew this, but it knew too that he could not stop that beating, nor would if he could. And yet, if you had told him he was living on his capital, he would have stared you down. No, no; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... we th' trouble o' comin' out for un. Us tol' un not to think o' that; us was glad to do it for un, an' 'e'd done it for any one o' we, many times over if 'e 'ad th' chance;—an' so 'e would. An' then 'e fretted about th' b'y 'e was goin' to see, it bein' too late to reach un, an' us tol' un 'is life was worth so much more 'n th' b'y, fur 'e could save others an' th' b'y couldn'. But 'e ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... his orders contemplated. He was at once savagely attacked and all evening the rattle of the guns sounded like many bunches of fire crackers. Repeatedly we heard him sound the charge and we all fretted that we could not descend and join in the battle. Perry's men were desperately afraid that "the Apache boys," as Bernard's men were called, would clean out the Indians and leave them nothing to do on the morrow. But our orders ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... me when I fretted about getting well, and thought nobody cared for me, which was very naughty, 'Don't be troubled, God won't forget you; and if you must be lame, He will make you able to bear it,'" said Jill, softly, her quick little mind all alive ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... fretted, and worried of late, and his health itself might break down under the strain, for his constitution was not strong. During one long, anxious year there had been fear of lung trouble, and mental agitation of any kind told quickly upon him. Margot's thoughts flew longingly to ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... She fretted, however, at last, over the lack of stability. When the perfect hours came back, her heart did not forget that they would pass away again. She was uneasy. The surety, the surety, the inner surety, the confidence in the abidingness of love: that was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... 'I fretted and fumed all next day, and raised a great disturbance,' rejoined the old gentleman. 'At last I got tired of rendering myself unpleasant and making everybody miserable; so I hired a carriage at Muggleton, and, putting ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... things was distasteful enough to Isidore, who had hoped in the excitement of a busy campaign to be able to forget his sorrows, and who fretted continually over the mean and miserable position he was now condemned to occupy. He had begun to think seriously of returning to Quebec in the hope of meeting with his uncle the Baron de Valricour, when an event occurred which put an end, at all events for a time, to any such thoughts. ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... morning, Brent, Halloway and O'Keefe went to consult with Alexander as to the next step. None of them meant to give up after going this far and the men fretted for immediate action, but Alexander to their mystification shook her head. "Not yit," she ruled. "I'm waitin' hyar now fer tidin's thet ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... Undine a long time to accustom herself to such an atmosphere, and meanwhile she fretted, fumed and flaunted, or abandoned herself to long periods of fruitless brooding. Sometimes a flame of anger shot up in her, dismally illuminating the path she had travelled and the blank wall to which it led. At other moments past and present were enveloped ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... very angry, and fumed and fretted; but he made no reply, and on the following morning he departed ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Beauty, but over light-headed: a Booby who had fine legs. How these first courted, billed, and cooed, according to nature; then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged and blew one another up.—Boswell's Life ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... it lacks the frequent accompaniment of the violent cascade known as "a tropical shower." The glorious Botanical Garden is approached by a mighty avenue of colossal kanari-trees, over a hundred feet high, with yellow light filtering through the fretted roof of interlacing boughs, which suggests a vast aisle in some primeval forest. Stately columns and spreading roots garlanded with stag-horn ferns, waving moss, white and purple orchids, or broad-leaved creepers, falling in sheets and torrents of shining foliage and knitting tree ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... forces, offered them battle, by advancing almost to the very entrenchments of their camp. But finding every thing quiet there, he retired; blaming, in appearance, the cowardice of the enemy, whom he upbraided with having at last lost that valour so natural to their ancestors; but fretted inwardly, to find he had to do with a general of so different a disposition from Sempronius and Flaminius; and that the Romans, instructed by their defeat, had at last made choice of a commander capable of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... of the triumph and malicious delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant Parson, and her sister Beaytrice, as they called her, followed it up with another still more alarming. Then, as he did not wire instant submission, the telegram was sent. Old Quimby was on the platform ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... his complete loneliness and utter insignificance was hourly thrust upon him. He brooded and fretted until he was in a fever; yet he never guessed the cause. He was filled with a vast impatience, a longing ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... examine the sign. Sure enough, it was the track of a man's knee; and the plastic mud exhibited on its surface a print of fretted lines, which must have been made by ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... will have no difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles; and by according some half-dozen years of immunity to the 'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery soul',—contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realization of the scheme of 'making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.' That done,—let it pursue ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... entered a small, low-ceilinged room whose general grime was streaked here and there with smears of soot. It contained a small wooden table at which sprawled a freckled and undernourished office boy, and a wooden bench where fretted a woman obviously of "the profession." She was dressed in masses of dirty white furbelows. On her head reared a big hat, above an incredible quantity of yellow hair; on the hat were badly put together plumes of badly curled ostrich feathers. Beneath her skirt was visible one of her feet; ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... her favoured cousins were at their studies. Was this the beginning? Somehow, though her better sense knew this was a foolish fancy, she had a secret pleasure in pitying herself, and posing to herself as a persecuted heroine. And then she was greatly fretted to find the housemaid in her room, looking as if no one else had any business there. What was worse, she could not find her jacket. She pulled out all her drawers with fierce, noisy jerks, and then turned round ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... know what they wanted. I was high bred and had a great deal of spirit and was very wild, no doubt, and gave them, I dare say, plenty of trouble, but then it was dreadful to be shut up in a stall day after day instead of having my liberty, and I fretted and pined and wanted to get loose. You know yourself it's bad enough when you have a kind master and plenty of coaxing, but there was nothing of that sort ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... parted wide, The gust of His approach would clash it to Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue. Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their changed bars; Fretted to dulcet jars And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. I said to dawn: Be sudden—to eve: Be soon; With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... summer with your children, and meet a constant run of company more choice than at a watering-place, and all without any expense. When your cousin comes back to town, be sure to let me know, that I may call upon her. Susan Goldsborough is fretted enough that she was not apprised of her being here, and so are some of the Longacres; they blame ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... I could see it fretted him worse than anything since we came back, but he filled himself up with the idea that we'd be sure to get the gold all right, and clear out different ways to the coast, and then we'd have something worth while leaving off with. Another thing, we'd ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... unwritten, and he possessed the most remarkable daring and determination. Exposing himself in this fight with his usual recklessness, he received a wound, which disabled him so much that he could not be removed. He was made prisoner, and in a few days fretted himself to death. The enemy's loss, in killed and wounded, was over four hundred, and two thousand and four prisoners were carried off to Murfreesboro'. If there ever was a fight to which the time honored phrase, so frequent in official reports, was applicable, viz.: "That ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... small borrowings will yield no more. [161] Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind. In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail — In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, [171] With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... armorial bearings of his house, sat Lord Greville, lost in silent contemplation. A chased goblet of wine with which he occasionally moistened his lips, stood on a table beside him, on which an elegantly-fretted silver lamp was burning; and while it only emitted sufficient light to render the gloom of the spacious chamber still more apparent, it threw a strong glare upon his expressive countenance and noble figure, and rendered conspicuous that richness of attire which the fashion of those stately ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... in earnest, and in such a hurry to be off that she could hardly stand still to have her hair brushed, and thought there were a great many unnecessary buttons and strings on her clothes that day. Usually she lay late, got up slowly and fretted at every thing as little girls are apt to do when they have had too much sleep. She wasn't a rosy, stout Daisy; but had been ill, and had fallen into a way of thinking she couldn't do anything but lie about, reading fairy-tales, and being ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... blue-bloused, sabotted men slowly working in the fields, with slow oxen, or still slower heavy Norman horses; the same horses gayly bedecked, dragging slowly not only heavy wagons, but their own apparently more monstrous weight over the white road, fretted his nervous Western energy, and made him impatient to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... still in store. For when at last he grew weary of such insignificant earthbound company, he deserted me at a certain spot I knew; then dropped, subsided, and slunk away into nothingness. I raised my eyes, and before me, grim and lichened, stood the ancient whipping-post of the village; its sides fretted with the initials of a generation that scorned its mute lesson, but still clipped by the stout rusty shackles that had tethered the wrists of such of that generation's ancestors as had dared to mock at order and law. Had I been an infant Sterne, here was a grand chance for sentimental output! ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... the foremost village maiden stood rooted to the spot in speechless horror: then, uttering a wild cry, she fell backward, rolled down a steep bank, and was ingulfed in the rapid stream that chafed and fretted along the side of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... blackberry-vine (strange to say), of such cunning workmanship that Julian says he knows the berries are good to eat. The blossoms, and the black and red and green fruit and leaves, are all equally perfect. Then there are little golden balls, to imitate a plant that grows in Ireland,—fretted gold. Small flowers are woven closely in, over the top of the head, and behind the ears the long, streaming vines hang ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... Lancelot could have knocked the unsuspecting colonel down for the word. It just expressed the contrast, which had fretted him ever since he began to hunt with the Whitford Priors hounds. The colonel's long practice and consummate skill in all he took in hand,—his experience of all society, from the prairie Indian to Crockford's, from the prize-ring to the continental ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... in your veins, if nothing else has power to inspire you. Do you remember how the heads of the college caused your dog's leg to be shot off, and you, by way of revenge, proclaimed a fast through the whole town? They fumed and fretted at your edict. But you, without losing time, ordered all the meat to be bought up in Leipsic, so that in the course of eight hours there was not a bone left to pick all over the place, and even fish began to rise in price. The magistrates and the town council ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... first, then the women enveloped in huge black shawls, carrying babies and leading older children by the hand. Cowboys, Indians and soldiers raced their horses through the swarming street with reckless skill. Automobiles honked and fretted. The street cars, bulging humanity at every door and window, strove in vain to relieve the situation. Several children and numerous pigs and chickens were run over. From the unpaved street to the cloudless sky rose a vast cloud of dust, such as only ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... ancient Gothic church, standing solemn and serene among its mossy tombs. In the misty blue atmosphere above the elms the fretted steeple seemed to the boy to lie imbedded and asleep, but even as he gazed upon it the churchbell, sounding the hour, broke the stillness with a deep, hollow roar which thrilled him ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... transportation assumed a greater importance than at the present moment. The colonists are fretted by the vacillation of her Majesty's government, but they are anxious to know that their honor and happiness are compatible with their present political relations. The plantation of new colonies in our vicinity, the now constant intercourse with the American continent, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... survey of the position shows that there need have been no hurry over land acquisition. Nor was there any great clamour for haste except in Taranaki, where rather less than 3,000 settlers, restricted to 63,000 acres, fretted at the sight of 1,750 Maoris holding and shutting up 2,000,000 acres against them. So high did feeling run there that Bishop Selwyn, as the friend of the Maori, was, in 1855, hooted in the streets of New Plymouth, where the local newspaper wrote nonsense about his "blighting influence." ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... school for whom the Spider had an affection, and let her love her all day long; and almost at once there was a change in the sad little face of the Spider. She had been cared for by an old grandfather after her mother's death, and it seemed as if she had fretted for him and needed someone all to herself to make up ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him! That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past happenings lapped like a fretted sea. "Dear me!" he reflected, "but I am really in a very ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... began to explain, with the quaint air of practical wisdom he adored in her, "I'm not out at all—and I'm nearly nineteen. Dear mamma fretted over it as it was—and if she knew it hadn't been done yet—Well something must be managed, but I don't know what. It isn't as if Miriam could do anything about it, though she's a great deal older than I am, and has seen a lot of social life at Washington and in England. But she's ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... interrupted his studies; she would have encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to expend it in social diversions; while Cesarine fretted at her splendid voice going to waste in this solitude—the house in the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... impute to these the fault If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... and what has become of, you? I have received no letters for these two years, and I have fretted myself to death. I received your letter about the rascally court-martial; but perhaps you have not heard that the little scoundrel is dead. Yes, Peter; he brought your letter out in his own ship, and that was his death-warrant. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... kind was wasted on Sir Edmund. Remonstrance and appeal were alike in vain. It was the charter he wanted, not long-winded excuses, and he fumed and fretted while the slow-talking members wasted the hours in what he looked upon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... porte-cochere that sheltered the high entrance doors. These were both flung open, a butler and two footmen were standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within. Honora climbed the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall with a black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse of two huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house spread with wicker chairs and tables. Out of a group of people at the farther end of this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and clasped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to Redgauntlet Castle wi' a heavy purse and a light heart, glad to be out of the laird's danger. Weel, the first thing he learned at the castle was, that Sir Robert had fretted himsell into a fit of the gout, because he did not appear before twelve' o'clock. It wasna a'thegether for sake of the money, Dougal thought; but because he didna like to part wi' my gudesire aff the grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and brought him into the great oak parlour, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... lay dark as a lake at Helen's feet and the rustling of the heather might have been the sound of water fretted by the wind—deep, black water whose depths no wind could stir. At Helen's right hand a different darkness was made by the larch-trees clothing Halkett's hollow, and on her left a yellow gleam, like the light at the masthead of ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play, Among the lowing of the herds, The rustling of the trees, Among the singing of the birds, The humming of the bees; The foolish fears of what ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... with him, walking up to the hotel, and all that evening she kept him amused, so that he would not want to look at his manuscript. She used him, as a wife is apt to use her husband when he is fretted and not very well, as if he were her little boy, and she did this so sweetly that ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... rattling in the timber like a fall of rocks. Something went quivering in me. It seemed as if my vitals had gone into a big lump of jelly that trembled every step I took. We quickened our pace; we fretted, we complained. The weariness went out of our legs; some wanted to run. Before and behind us men were shouting hotly, 'Run, boys! run!' The cannon roar was now continuous. We could feel the quake of it. When we came over a low ridge, in the open, we could see the smoke of battle in the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... before us, through a door, into a world of light, where we should presently join her, where all things would be radiant and blissful, but where we three would, in some unknown way, be particularly drawn together in a tie of inexpressible beatitude. He fretted at the delay; he would have taken me by the hand, and have joined her in the realms of holiness and light, at once, without this dreary ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... whatever else is usually said on such an occasion. "Mademoiselle," replied he, somewhat embarrassed, "I know not"—"How?" said she, with graceful astonishment, "do you forget your friends so soon?" The word "forget" fretted him: he shook his head and replied, peevishly enough, "Truly, mademoiselle, I did not know!"—She now retorted with some humor, yet very temperately, "Take care, captain: I may mistake you another time!" And so she hurried past, taking huge strides, without looking ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... where Greylock rolls Itself toward heaven; in these deep silences, World-worn and fretted ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... unwound itself in long, languishing phrases, in rich, voluptuous rifiorituras, all fretted with tiny scales and exquisite, crisp shakes; it stopped ever and anon, swaying as if panting in languid delight. And I felt my body melt even as wax in the sunshine, and it seemed to me that I too was turning fluid ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... pile! with awe I tread The sacred mansion of th' illustrious dead! Where rise, o'er forms now mould'ring into dust, The "storied urn" and "animated West."— Beneath the fretted dome, aspiring high, Here monarchs, heroes, poets, sages, lie! "Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue," Here sleeps the bard with those whom erst he sung; And all consigned to one impartial doom, Lo! kings and subjects ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... revery, Dick compared the little stream of water to his life, running fretted and troubled, from the very edge of its birthplace; and he followed it with his eye down through the pasture lot, until it was lost in the distance; then looking into the blue vista of the hills, he followed on, in ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... care of Sergeant MacDougall, a crusty old warrior, who proved a hard master and made the boy's life anything but a happy one. And Maurice, though he was proud of the colonel's kind words and of serving with the regiment, fretted greatly at the harsh ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... signifies a man limping past with neither fire-lock nor knapsack. Where the discarded knapsack has rubbed for weeks against his shoulder-blades the jacket and shirt are fretted away, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... destruction are here named. There is a slow decay going on in the opponents and their opposition, as a garment waxing old, and there is a being fretted away by the imperceptible working of external causes, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... to Peter as he climbed up the iron-fretted steps to the lonely promenade-deck that life had begun to take on its old golden glow, the luster of the uncertain, the charm of women who found ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts



Words linked to "Fretted" :   interlaced, reticular, music, unfretted, latticed, fret, reticulate



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