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More "Hostess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go no farther; and Madame, as the head of the table, ended by asking my factotum, Selim Agha, to "have the kindness." The din, the heat, the flare of composition candles which gave 45 per cent. less of light than they ought, the blunders of the slaves, the objurgations of the hostess, and the spectacled face opposite me, were as much as I could bear, and a trifle more. No wonder that the resident English merchants avoid ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... am sure now always to have you to myself; in exchange for this great obloquy and dishonour, I will be forever your friend, your hostess, and your lady-love—more than that, your servant. My determination is to devote myself to you and efface the traces of this shame; to cure you by a watch and ward; and if the learned in these matters declare that the disease has such a hold of you that it will kill ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... front of the bungalow, if it could be dignified by such a name. It was certainly scarcely more than an iron shed, and the heat within during the day was, she could well imagine, almost unbearable. It was time to be starting back, and she wished Burke would come. Her hostess's scoffing reference to him made her long to get away. Politeness, however, forbade her summarily to drop the ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... be your good pleasure and your purpose to have it celebrated with clat, you could, needless to say, your own self have spent several taels from the private funds in that old treasury of yours! But you now produce those twenty taels, spoiled by damp and mould, to play the hostess with, with the view indeed of compelling us to supply what's wanted! But hadn't you really been able to contribute any more, no one would have a word to say; but the gold and silver, round as well as flat, have with their heavy ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... decidedly inhospitable; there was an uncompromising rigidity about the way she stared straight before her. Even the long rope of red hair seemed to have become suddenly as stiff as the rest of her. It was not an attitude in a hostess conductive to easy conversation, or to make ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... threw the door wide open, and personally announced that dinner was ready. She had doffed her white apron, and cordially shook hands, as hostess, with all of them. 'Take your seats! take your seats!' was her cry. It was half-past seven already, the bouillabaisse could not wait. Jory, having observed that Fagerolles had sworn to him that he would come, they would not believe it. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... But two steps more to where doth live She who will give To thee celestial sustenance Charitably. 53 Thither shalt thou go and rest, And shalt taste there of that fare New strength to borrow: Unrivalled is that hostess blest To give of the best To those who weeping come to ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... little upside-down bat—that hung in the mouth of the Cave said, 'O my Hostess and Wife of my Host and Mother of my Host's Son, a Wild Thing from the Wild Woods is most beautifully playing with ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... it is, to propitiate your hostess. So seating himself by the Begum, Taji led off with earnest inquiries after her welfare. But the Begum was one of those, who relieve the diffident from the embarrassment of talking; all by themselves ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... between the garden and meadow. I quite love that tree already. Also ordinary elms, oaks—no nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though. However, I must get on to my host and hostess. I only wanted to show that it isn't the least what we expected. Why did we settle that their house would be all gables and wiggles, and their garden all gamboge-coloured paths? I believe simply because we associate them with expensive hotels—Mrs. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... how easily I am determined by anything resembling cordiality—and so, though a little afraid of the formality of my host and hostess, I accepted their invitation, provided I could get some messenger to send to Shepherd's Bush for my servant ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... I took my departure. It was drizzling weather, and I was feeling very lean. Before going I presented my hostess and the children with two sovereigns apiece. 'It is English gold,' I said, 'for I have to travel among our enemies and use our enemies' money. But the gold is good, and if you go to any town they will change it for you. But I advise you to put it in ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... a lodging in Turin, and was presently introduced, by the kindness of my hostess, to the service of a countess. But this lady died shortly afterwards, and I left her house bearing with me lasting remorse for an atrocious action: I had accused a fellow-servant of a theft which I had myself committed, and thus may very well have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... fragrant lilacs, his eyes, accustomed to the dark from long practice, losing no movement of the guests. Finally it became evident that the party was at an end. One couple took the initiative, and said good night to their hostess. ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the lighting arrangements, for are not flowers and lights incentives to immorality? But his descriptions of the roses and the lilies would only lead up to his descriptions of the shameless animality that came up the staircase between twelve and one. A half-naked lady, the hostess, stood at the head of the stairs receiving her guests with smiles and words of welcome. The dresses the women wore resembled the dress worn by the hostess; young and old alike went about their pleasure with necks and bosoms and arms uncovered, and he saw these undressed ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a frill at the throat, and white trousers. After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford Collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his head, a servant who was waiting on the company in the great gallery spilled some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion, and when, after a while, she asked him how he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face, and replied, 'Thank you, madam, the agony ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... said to her, "The truth is, Mother Marguerite, I have still a schoolboy's appetite. Have you nothing to give me?" The good woman, almost beside herself with happiness, served his Majesty with eggs and milk; and when this simple repast was ended, his Majesty gave his aged hostess a purse full of gold, saying to her, "You know, Mother Marguerite, that I believe in paying my bills. Adieu, I shall not forget you." And while the Emperor remounted his horse, the good old woman, standing on the threshold of her door, promised him, with tears of joy, to pray to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... officers, including myself, took our meals at this place during the remainder of our stay at Franklin. Among the boarders were two or three gentlemen also of the name of House, and who were brothers-in-law of our hostess. They had all served in Forrest's cavalry as commissioned officers, and were courteous and elegant gentlemen. We would all sit down together at the table of Mrs. House, with that lady at the head, and talk and laugh, and joke with ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... drawback to their visit was that neither Mrs Maltby nor her daughter would be at home; but Mr Maltby had begged them not to postpone their visit on this account, as his sister, Miss Maltby, would be staying with him, and would take the place of hostess to his guests. And, indeed, sorry as Dr Prosser was that he should miss seeing his old lady friends, he was satisfied that their place would be well supplied by the ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... passed on pleasantly, and the clock of the Recollets pealed out a good late hour before they took final leave of their hospitable hostess, with mutual good wishes and adieus, which with some of them were never repeated. Le Gardeur was no little touched and comforted by so much sympathy and kindness. He shook the Bourgeois affectionately by the hand, inviting him to come up to Tilly. It was noticed and remembered that this evening ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... —want of tact,—coarseness of nature,—utter lack of power to understand you. Were you ever sitting in a considerable company, a good deal saddened by something you did not choose to tell to any one, and probably looking dull and dispirited enough,—and did a fussy host or hostess draw the attention of the entire party upon you, by earnestly and repeatedly asking if you were ill, if you had a headache, because you seemed so dull and so unlike yourself? And did that person time after time return ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... sister, Mrs. King," said Gardner Coolidge, smiling, and putting his arm about the white-serge-clad shoulders. "She is your hostess, you know. Alicia and I are ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... followed; Frederic Brunner left Cecile's grandfather and politely took leave of his host and hostess. When he was gone, Cecile appeared, a living commentary upon her Werther's leave-taking; she was ghastly pale. She had hidden in her mother's wardrobe and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... said the Burgundian, gravely, "we cannot leave without seeing the hostess, and if we do not ask to kiss this famous wind-instrument, it is a out of respect ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Denzil, attentive to both, grew more genuinely at ease. When Lilian caught his eye, he smiled at her with warmth of approving kindness. It must have been a fastidious man who felt dissatisfied with the way in which the young hostess discharged her duties; timidity led her into no gaucherie, but was rather an added charm among the many with which nature had endowed her. Speech and manner, though they had nothing of the conventional ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... ulterior purpose was suffered to appear. Burr was noted for the fascination of his manners, and his host and hostess were charmed with him. He was unusually well informed, eloquent in speech, familiar with all social arts, and could mask the deepest designs with the most artless affectation of simplicity. All the secrets of American political movements were familiar to him, and he conversed fluently of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the natives hereabouts have bobbed it down to Vil. But he'll have to breakfast alone this morning, as usual. I've changed my mind. You see, I share the proverbial weakness of the clergy for a good meal. And against so charming a hostess, old Vil hasn't a chance in the world." Dismounting, the Reverend Len Christie removed his saddle and bridle and, with a resounding slap on the flank turned the pinto loose. "Get along, old Paint, and lay in some of this good grass!" he laughed as the pinto, cavorting like a colt, galloped ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... the noble hostess, nor shall sink With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz, The only dance which teaches girls to think,[598] Makes one in love even with its very faults. Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink, And long the latest of arrivals halts, 'Midst royal dukes and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in the shy silence of older persons who are past the age of demonstrative sympathy. The girl rose, and as she passed her hostess she put out her hand. Mrs. Thorne took it quickly and followed her. They found a seat by themselves in a ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... minutes more had passed, before Teresa made an excuse for running upstairs again. She had forgotten to leave the bell rope, in case Carmina woke, within the reach of her hand. The excellent heart of the hostess made allowance for natural anxiety. "Do it, you good soul," she said; "and come back directly!" Left by herself, she filled her glass again, and smiled. Sweetness of temper (encouraged by cherry brandy) can even smile at a glass—unless it happens ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... brilliant flashes of silence, is not loved: you do not want a hostess who "holds forth," but one who sets her guests talking; and every woman is the hostess when she is talking to a man, or to any one younger or shyer than herself. You should make people go away with a regretful feeling that they missed a great deal by having talked so much themselves that they heard ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... all upset and she was busy with a dozen of her girl friends in decorating the hall and drawing-room, taking up the carpets, arranging for the supper and the cloakrooms, and immersed generally in the thousand and one tasks that fall on a hostess-to-be. Frank put himself at her orders and spent the better part of the afternoon in running errands and tacking up flags and branches; and after an hilarious tea, in the midst of all the litter and confusion, he went back to the ship somewhat after five o'clock. As he was pulled out in a shore ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... bitterness had grown in the feud between D'Aulnay and La Tour, she had made frequent voyages from Cape Sable up Fundy Bay to Port Royal. The winters were then merry among noble Acadians, and the lady of Fort St. Louis at Cape Sable was hostess of a rich seigniory. Now she had the sickness of suspense, and the wasting of life in waiting. Frequently during the day she met Father Jogues, who also wandered about disturbed by the evident necessity of his return ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... little the national peculiarities of his own countrywomen; a sure piece of flattery to their American cousins. He would gladly have devoted himself to Mrs. Lee, but decent civility required that he should pay some attention to his hostess, and he was too good a diplomatist not to be attentive to a hostess who was the wife of a Senator, and that Senator the chairman of the committee ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... disorder, nursing her latest born. Her lavish smile of welcome lights her broad sunburned face framed in tawny braids, and she indicates a bench for me with the ease and authority of a long practiced hostess. She sits there with the infant at her ample breast, and on her face is written unquestioning satisfaction with her part in life. A swift laughing tale I hear, of little frocks outgrown and of sabots worn through, and no place to buy anything, ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... that Daphne would be safe under the Fairy's protection, he took his leave, and, choosing the best horse in the Royal stud, set out on his journey to Clairdelune. By so doing, he was only—little as he suspected it—giving his hostess time to consider how she could best deal with the girl who, she no longer doubted, was the rightful possessor of the throne. But then Miss Heritage was not aware of her birthright, which seemed to suggest more than one way of coping with ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Stanton was sufficient for her. Miss Teddington need not have been afraid that the loud laugh would offend the ears of her friends; it never rang out once, and the high-pitched voice was subdued to wonderfully softened tones. For her hostess Rona evinced a species of worship. She would follow her about the house, content simply to be near her, and her face would light up at the slightest ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... which we first saw them lived a contented woman, the only one I heard of out there. She was English, and said she had seen so much suffering in her own country, that the hardships of this seemed as nothing to her. But the others—even our sweet and gentle hostess—found their labors disproportioned to their strength, if not to their patience; and, while their husbands and brothers enjoyed the country in hunting or fishing, they found themselves confined to a comfortless ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hostess, some time after retiring to rest, heard a noise in the open veranda which runs round the side of the bungalow just outside her bedroom. She got up, and, taking a lamp in her hand, went round a corner of the building in the direction of the noise, and just as she turned ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Minister's. The gardens showed to their greatest advantage in the brilliant sunshine, and an excellent band played charming tunes under the trees; but everyone was so preoccupied—and no one more than the hostess—that it was ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... or vulgar about it, you know. I think that party in which the guests were drenched with a hose and the one in which they dressed as vegetables were slightly lacking in originality. True, the hosepipe party had a stirring climax when the pretty hostess appeared in a silk bathing suit and allowed herself to be ducked by her admirers in her own bath tub; still dear, I shouldn't care for ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... with two doors, and my hostess and I had not crossed the vestibule leading to the inner one, when the knocker fell on the outer door, with a force that fairly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ancestor, 'the father of chemistry and uncle to the earl of Cork'! I stepped into my job carriage at the hour of ten, and, all alone by myself, as the song says, 'to Eden took my solitary way.' What added to my fears and doubts and hopes and embarrassments was a note from my noble hostess received at the moment of departure: 'Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish Girl; so she must bring her Irish harp. M.C.O.' I arrived at New Burlington street without my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... goddess (who had perhaps been brought to Europe as a subtle combination of etiquette-mistress and ladies'-maid) cut the Gordian knot with a quick glance, to our intense relief; and we filed in anyhow, places being indicated to Terry and me on either hand of our hostess. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and his mother arrived, and it seemed to Florence that some kind of wave of sympathy immediately caused his eyes to light upon her in her distant corner. He said a few words to his hostess, watched his mother as she greeted a chance acquaintance, and elbowed his way to ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... to the hostess, who was standing somewhat within the threshold, a glass of brandy-and-water in her hand, the third glass that stranger had called for during his half hour's rest in the hostelry, quoth ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Roland that both his host and hostess had been unusually silent at dinner the night before; and later, passing Mr. Windlebird's room on his way to bed, he had heard their voices, low and agitated. Could they have had some ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... stiffly and gave her hostess a perfunctory peck on her cheek. "We left Cousin Betty Throckmorton's this morning," she said with a toss of the ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... she often went back—had been a scene, for our young woman, of supreme brilliancy; a party given at a "gallery" hired by a hostess who fished with big nets. A Spanish dancer, understood to be at that moment the delight of the town, an American reciter, the joy of a kindred people, an Hungarian fiddler, the wonder of the world at large—in the name of these and other ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... is almost lost, and when they have to be renewed sorry attempts are made to imitate the old designs. Some celebrated artists have not thought it below their dignity to paint signboards. Some have done this to show their gratitude to their kindly host and hostess for favours received when they sojourned at inns during their sketching expeditions. The "George" at Wargrave has a sign painted by the distinguished painters Mr. George Leslie, R.A., and Mr. Broughton, R.A., who, when staying ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... us, told us to follow and he would take us to "a most comfortable place." When we stopped, it was before the door of a little mud hut. An old woman opened it, but, before letting us in, fixed the price we were to pay. We entered a room that did service for the entire wants of our hostess. It was very small, but it could not have been made larger without knocking out the sidewalls of her house. The floor was of dry mud, and there was nothing to sit upon except our saddles. We supped from the bread and meat our good missionary friend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... not in a condition to be imprudent with impunity. Sir Miles Oakstead was absolutely shocked to see the alteration in his appearance, as well as in his spirits; and although both our kind host and hostess are most solicitous on his account, it happens unfortunately that they are at this juncture quite alone, so that he is without companions of his own age. I must not, however, alarm you. The fact is, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moment to glance round the rooms and the company; then, as if conscious of the remarks and glances directed toward him, but completely "ignoring" them, and without the least shyness or awkwardness, he walked quietly through the hall to the host and hostess ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in every four or five months, and the rest ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... took the candles up with them, the stairs creaking again beneath their tread as if uttering a protest against them for their forgetfulness in not attending to their hostess's request to close and bolt the door; but they were too sleepy to do anything more than slip off their things on reaching their rooms, while almost directly after, the moon was shining in right across Rodd's snowy white bed, the pillow being in the darkness, which also formed a black bar across ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... I don't care for some boys," said the expectant hostess, confidentially. "All Tom's and Jack's friends are in long trousers. Some girls like that, but I don't: they look too grown up, and they stand around and tease, and won't play games, and are just horrid. You ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... brightened up amazingly. At table he tried to be merry as before, but failed rather conspicuously, drank more wine than was his custom, and laid the blame on the climate. His chamber was over that of his host and hostess, and they heard him walking about for hours in the night. There was something on his mind that would not let him sleep! In the morning he appeared at the usual hour, but showed plain marks of a sleepless night. When condoled with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... a single act he has demanded from the exponent of his principal character the most varied histrionic capabilities, for he has asked her to be by turns the consummate actress and the unsophisticated woman, the gracious hostess and the vindictive enemy, the humorous reciter and the tragedy queen. Nor has he done this merely by inventing plausible excuses for a succession of conscious assumptions, such as those of the entertainer who appears first in ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... by ravens, which bring him bread and meat every night and morning. When the spring from which he drinks dries up, he goes to the house of a widow at Zarephath in the country of Sidon, and there he lives with his hostess for twelve months on a barrel of meal and a cruse of oil which never fail. The widow's son dies suddenly: he prays to Jahveh and restores him to life; then, still guided by an inspiration from above, he again presents himself before ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... wanted to know more of this strange system, and had the greatest desire to accompany my hostess and her daughters. I had seen them go out almost every morning since my arrival and had noticed that they carried their purses in their hands, not exactly ostentatiously, yet just so as that those who met them should see whither they were ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the Signal Office, so we went and had some food—cold sausage and coffee. Our hostess was buxom and hilarious. There was also a young girl about the place, Helene. She was of a middle size, serious and dark, with a mass of black lustreless hair. She could not have been more than nineteen. Her baby was put to bed immediately ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... secure his interest. Leonard, meanwhile, was borne on by the stream, till his progress was arrested by a sofa-table at which sat Mrs. M'Catchley herself, with Mrs. Pompley by her side. For on this great occasion the hostess had abandoned her proper post at the entrance, and, whether to show her respect to Mrs. M'Catchley, or to show Mrs. M'Catchley her well-bred contempt for the people of Screwstown, remained in state by her friend, honouring only ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... two magnificent bronzes. Having dined one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the dining-room, "Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece." "Certainly," replied his hostess, "and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you may put your feet on top of the looking-glass," which was about ten feet from the ground. Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed it; he being of the "give but not take" kind. One ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... his hostess declared, "if you consider it pay to sit beside an engaged girl whose mind is full of her trousseau. And here's this captivating young scapegrace relative of yours. What price does he demand for coming?" and she glanced up at ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... dark eyes at the handsome stranger, and felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the letter to C. L. could possibly be about; meanwhile mine hostess, raising her hand to a shelf on which stood an Indian slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at the Golden Fleece, brought from its cavity a ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... take any, but on the artful landlady bawling in his ear, that all gentlemen supped when they arrived, he hesitated to consider (which certainly was not at all necessary) whether he was not bound to take some. Another very important remark of the hostess, which was, that he would have nothing to eat until the next morning, it being then eleven o'clock at night, decided him, and he staggered in, observing, "Nothing to eat till next morning! well, I never thought of that." He sat down opposite to ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... practically familiar with it; in other words, he had called again, three times, on Madame de Cintre. On only two of these occasions had he found her at home, and on each of them she had other visitors. Her visitors were numerous and extremely loquacious, and they exacted much of their hostess's attention. She found time, however, to bestow a little of it on Newman, in an occasional vague smile, the very vagueness of which pleased him, allowing him as it did to fill it out mentally, both at the time and afterwards, with such meanings as most pleased him. He sat by without speaking, looking ...
— The American • Henry James
... the hostess among the cabbages, Mat discovered that the picturesque white cattle in the field close by were extremely fierce and unsocial; that there was no house in sight, and the venerable horse and shay would never sustain many trips to and fro to dinner at the hotel. Lavinia ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... of a rich and hospitable Parisian merchant, who had died several years earlier, and of his ailing wife, whose lack of health kept her in bed six months out of the twelve, and while still very young she had become a perfect hostess, knowing how to receive, to smile, to chat, to estimate character, and how to adapt herself to everyone; thus she early became quite at her ease in society, and was always far-seeing and compliant. When the Count de Guilleroy was ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... oaks, and the deer, and the broad land-locked river spread out like a lake beneath, all bright in the glare of the midsummer sun; or listening obsequiously to the two great ladies who did the honors, Mrs. St. Leger the hostess, and her sister-in-law, fair Lady Grenville. All chatted, and laughed, and eyed each other's dresses, and gossiped about each other's husbands and servants: only Rose Salterne kept apart, and longed to get into a corner and laugh or cry, she knew ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... her sister the wife of a former ambassador. It was more curiosity than gaucherie that prompted her to hold the hand offered her and scrutinize the features as if to evoke from the significant, etched wrinkles the tremendous past of this hostess. The ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... House. At eleven o'clock General Huske, the second in command, saw Lord John Drummond's advance, and sent an urgent message to his superior officer. He, however, refused to take alarm, sent a message that the men might put on their accoutrements, and sat down to dinner with his fascinating hostess. At two o'clock, General Huske, looking anxiously through his spy-glass, saw the bulk of the Highland army sweeping round to the back of ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... description; but all his writing shows the power of taking infinite pains. It becomes the more important, therefore, that Macaulay held the Bible in such estimate as he did. "In calling upon Lady Holland one day, Lord Macaulay was led to bring the attention of his fair hostess to the fact that the use of the word 'talent' to mean gifts or powers of the mind, as when we speak of men of talent, came from the use of the word in Christ's parable of the talents. In a letter to his ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... of town for a couple of weeks, Nat; but the next time I see you I expect to have some news that will interest you. And I'll give it to you in advance of publication." He slapped McAllister on the shoulder and they bade their host and hostess ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... were very grateful guests indeed. They were the more grateful because Patricia Hamilton was an unexpected hostess. They clicked their heels and kissed her hand and drank her health many times in good hock. The dinner was a feast worthy of Lucullus, they swore, the wine was perfect, and the coffee—which Abiboo handed round ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... appointment to call on an elderly lady of my acquaintance, the widow of a country squire, who has settled in London on a small jointure, in an inconspicuous house in a dull street. She has always been a very active woman. As the wife of a country gentleman she was a cordial hostess, loving to fill the house with visitors; and in her own village she was a Lady Bountiful of the best kind, the eager friend and adviser of every family in the place. Now she is old and to a great extent invalided. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rare resources; the summer tourists were well-nigh gone; the peaceful roads gave no stare of intrusion to our joy. The hills looked down upon us and made us feel how high love was. The forest inclosed us, and made us understand that love was large. The holiness of beauty was the hostess of our delight. Oh, I had won her! She was my wife. She was my ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... there, of course, and both in uniform, by special request of the hostess. The major, who had met Mrs. Wittleday in city society before her husband's death, and who had maintained a bowing-acquaintance with her during her widowhood, gravely presented the lieutenant to Mrs. Wittleday, made a gallant speech about ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones, and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn; while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man, he laughed heartily, and pronounced my humor to be ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enough to say that I have a cat-like tread; I know not how that may be; at any rate the carpet I was walking upon was thick enough to smother a heavier footfall: not until I was quite close to her did my hostess become aware of my presence. Then she started violently and looked over her shoulder at me with dilating eyes. Evidently a nervous creature, I saw the pulse in her throat, strained by her attitude, flutter like a ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... his most magnificent, abode. To Venice he turned his steps each autumn of these last two years; lingering by the way among the mountains or in the beautiful border region at their feet. It was thus that, in the early autumn of 1889, he came yet once again to Asolo. His old friend and hostess, Mrs Arthur Bronson, had discovered a pleasant, airy abode on the old town-wall, overhanging a ravine, and Asolo, seen from this "castle precipice-encurled," recovered all its old magic. It was here that he put together the disconnected pieces, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... wished to pass the night. Then at the entrance of the room the youth again said quite loudly, "If I could but shudder! If I could but shudder!" The host who heard that, laughed and said: "If that is your desire, there ought to be a good opportunity for you here." "Ah, be silent," said the hostess; "so many inquisitive persons have already lost their lives, it would be a pity and a shame if such beautiful eyes as these should never see the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Alan came round to Regent's House and found bridge in full swing; he cared little for cards. Evelyn, who was playing, greeted him with a smile; so did Ella, who sat at the same table as her hostess. ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... followed her hostess up a short flight of stone steps into a handsome hall. A well-trained maid was at once in attendance, and another, a little ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... distinctly quotable passages as the other parts of the poem. The perfunctory devotion of the cavalier and the lady continues throughout, and the same ironical reverence depicts them alighting from their carriage, arriving in the presence of the hostess, sharing in the gossip of the guests, supping, and sitting down at those games of chance with which every fashionable house was provided and at which the lady loses or doubles her pin-money. In Milan ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... spent calling round the station. The owners of the two first bungalows were out; at the third the hostess carried wreaths of flowers, which she was on her way to place on her native butler's grave; he had died of plague. The next house was full of madonnas and maids worshipping the latest arrival in the station, a chubby boy of six months. The father had retired to ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... which the latter opened, informed him of his intention of leaving Paris. The Prince, thinking, no doubt, of the responsibility he would incur by doing so, did not attempt to dissuade him, but engaged the artist to go with him in the evening to Rothschild's. Chopin, who of course was asked by the hostess to play something, charmed by his wonderful performance, and no doubt also by his refined manners, the brilliant company assembled there to such a degree that he carried off not only a plentiful harvest of praise and compliments, but also ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... between the Susquehanna and the Kansas City. They discovered her proximity, dropped back until she was nearly broadside on to the former battleship, and signalled up the Theodore Roosevelt and the little Monitor. As dawn broke she had found herself hostess of a circle. The fight had not lasted five minutes before the appearance of the Hermann to the east, and immediately after of the Furst Bismarck in the west, forced the Americans to leave her, but in that time they had smashed her iron to rags. They had vented the accumulated ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... across their shoulders, and forcibly eject them from the premises; but, as her determined character was well known, this violence was seldom necessary. In strength Bess was a match for any man, and assistance from her cowherds—for she was a farmer as well as hostess—was at hand if required. As will be surmised from the above, Bess was large and masculine-looking, but well-proportioned nevertheless, and possessed a certain coarse kind of beauty, which in earlier years had inflamed Richard Baldwyn, the miller of Rough Lee, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... upholstery and metallic ornaments is as bad as upon the books," added our hostess. "This room will have to be refurnished in the spring—all on account of the changes in color both of the paper and the silk and cotton fabrics; and the bronze dressing on those statuettes is softening, so that there are lines and spots of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... go to a friend's house, ostensibly to play cards—a pastime which he hated. He generally, however, managed to escape from the eye of his hostess; and comfortably ensconced in a window behind thick curtains, or hidden behind a high armchair, he would pour into the ear of a congenial companion some of the thoughts which surged through his impetuous brain. All his life he needed this outlet ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... addressed and the position taken up by the latter with regard to her journey to Paris with Lucien. The evening was half over when she withdrew to the boudoir with the Bishop. Zephirine came over to Petit-Claud, and laid her hand on his arm. His heart beat fast as his hostess brought him to the room where Lucien's troubles first began, and were now about to come ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... the advance of enemies might be hindered. We came to a dilapidated tea-house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touching fondness for a cat and a dog. From her shack we had a view of a volcano which had destroyed two villages a few years before. Our hostess, who made much of us, said that the catastrophe had been preceded by "horrible da-da-da-bang" sounds and lightnings, and that it was accompanied by "thunderbolts and heavy thick smoke." The old woman had beheld "soil ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Flanging from protruding nails Were slender stalks of the green rush; and then Suspended from the smoky beam, the stores Of this poor cottage. Service berries soft, Entwined in fragrant wreaths hung down, Dried savory and raisins by the bunch. An hostess here like she on Attic soil, Of Hecate's pure worship worthy she! Whose fame Kallimachos so grandly sang 'Twill live forever through the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... me in an awkward dilemma, Mrs. Carey," replied Geoffrey, a little nervously, "in the alternative of criticising my hostess unfavorably or praising the looks of one woman to another. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Yonowsky should visit the Thalia Theatre on the following night. And Leah, with the glad and new assurance that the boys were safe, fell into happy devisings of a suitable array. When young Kastrinsky left after formal and prescribed adieus to his hostess, he dragged his host out to listen to a ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... night, and shall not forget the hospitable table with its steaming biscuit; the chubby baby, perched upon his high stool; the talkative elderly woman, who took snuff at the fireplace; the contented black-girl, who played the Hebe; and above all, the trim, plump, pretty hostess, with her brown eyes and hair, her dignity and her fondness, sitting at the head of the board. When she poured the bright coffee into the capacious bowl, she revealed the neatest of hands and arms, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... indictment were horror-stricken. The ladies hurried out into the hall without taking leave of their hostess, the rest followed them like sheep, and soon all were gone. Tatiana Markovna motioned Marfinka and Vera to the door, but Marfinka alone obeyed the indication. As for Niel Andreevich he had ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... thus Shakespeare, in Henry IV, represents the hostess calling her maid, Doll Tear-sheet, sweet-heart. It is now more restricted to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "some one to talk to." What could be more natural? The Contessa's "some one" had to be a man and one who could pay with sense and spirit the homage to which she was accustomed. It was her only stipulation—and surely it must be an ungracious hostess indeed who could ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... that things are too much mixed, and that the Princess ought to be giving her attention to Hartman's case. I think so too, but it is not for me to suggest it. I feel like asking Mrs. T. what all these complications mean, and why she does not straighten them out: she is Clarice's relative and hostess, and head of the house when I am away. But it will straighten itself pretty soon now, and a new tangle will begin for the predestined victim. Wild man of the woods, your hour will soon strike, and the grim executioner in the black mask will prepare to take your head ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... creditably. After the ceremonies, which were very brief, and at which Madame Mallarme herself was present, standing near the speaker, de Regnier, the entire company repaired to a restaurant near the Place Clichy, if I remember rightly. My hostess named for me the various guests as they appeared, Madame Rachilde, Reynaldo Hahn, Andre Gide, and a dozen other names less conspicuous, perhaps, excepting one, Leon Dierx, who was an old man, and whose death was announced about the city some days later. It was, needless to say, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Whither art thou bound?" cried the Laureate mirthfully. "Wilt leave our noble hostess ere the entertainment has begun? Ungallant barbarian! What frenzy ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... concern, Mrs. Austen lied as freely. "It is too sad for words." But at once the air of the sympathiser departed, replaced by that of the hostess. Through one door the men were entering. Through ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... mischief-loving knave was gone again, before the bustling dame had braced herself to open to her pert visitor. Maybe the rogue was beating up his quarters. The time of his dreaded lodgment was not yet. His apprehensive hostess was full of smiles. Summer ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Jacks was in company, there could be no dullness. Alone with his host and hostess, Otway would have found the occasion rather solemn, and have wished it over, but Arnold's melodious voice, his sprightly discussion and anecdotage, his frequent laughter, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... This virago is cast into prison with Dame Quickly (hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap), for the death of a man that they and Pistol had ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... dinner companion. One's hostess is to be considered. Oh—I remember—he was telling me some very amusing gossip, although he teased me into fearing he wouldn't. Now, if you are going to dance this hesitation with me you had better whirl me off. It is Mr. Thornton's, ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... noticed it then, but it is mother's way, and it saves a great deal of confusion. If everything is left for the day on which the company is expected, the girl who is hostess will be much too tired to enjoy her friends. She ought to have nothing on her mind which can worry her or keep her from entering into their pleasure. A hurried, worried hostess makes her guests feel somehow ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Phyllis who shone on the occasion of our call at Liliendaal, and it was she who seemed to make the impression upon the gracious mother. Whether it was the fact that she is English, or whether it was because she could talk to her hostess—as if she knew them—about various distinguished titled beings whom the lady of Liliendaal had not seen for a long time; or whether it was because Phyllis once had a cousin who wrote a book about the Earls of Helvelyn (the lady's father was an Earl of Helvelyn) at all events ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... could speak English or French. The mayor, my friend, however, sent a young woman to me who spoke a little English, and she agreed to call on me twice a day to receive my orders and translate them to my hostess. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... looked a gratitude she did not know how to express, after hearing what Jessie had to say. She fixed her large, black eyes, swimming in tears, upon her friendly hostess, and ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... was now growing thick with people all in their Hightums, and Lady Ambermere as she emerged from the smoking-parlour again viewed the scene with marked disfavour. The two Miss Antrobuses had just arrived, and skipped up to their hostess ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... harmonious and happy, but earnest, useful, and rich in the beautiful benevolence which can do so much when wealth and wisdom go hand in hand with charity. Their house was full of unostentatious beauty and comfort, and here the art-loving host and hostess attracted and entertained artists of all kinds. Laurie had music enough now, and was a generous patron to the class he most liked to help. Amy had her proteges among ambitious young painters and sculptors, and found her own art double ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... have found fault with the cold ham and the butter and the cakes but far better than all was the spirit of kindness that was there. Ellen feasted on that more than on anything else. If her host and hostess were not very polished, they could not have been outdone in their kind care of her, and kind attention to her wants. And when the supper was at length over, Mrs. Van Brunt declared a little colour had come back to the pale cheeks. The colour ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the visitor said, mechanically; then awoke to the remembrance that she had undertaken to keep Mrs Jones from all outside intercourse. She turned an anxious look upon her hostess—"I think if we ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... discretion always. The year that Hugo Tancred met Fay was a particularly good year, and Anthony had bought a touring-car, and they all went up to Scotland in it. The girls were always well dressed and went out a good deal. Young as she was, Jan was already an excellent manager and a pleasant hostess. She had been taking care of her father from the time she was twelve years old, and knew exactly how to manage him. When there was plenty of money she let him launch out; when it was spent she made him draw in again, and he was always ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... within their means. Perhaps having been "invited out," they learn by actual demonstration that the herbs are culinary magicians which convert cheap cuts and "scraps" into toothsome dainties. They are thus aroused to the fact that by using herbs they can afford to play host and hostess to a larger number of hungry and ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... dawdled down from their gorgeous cells, to a living-room as big and as full of seats as a hotel lobby. They threw themselves, on lounges and huge chairs and every form of encouragement to indolence. They threw themselves also on the mercy and the ingenuity of their hostess. But Mrs. Winnsboro expected her guests to bring their own plans and take care of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... his adventure in the garden; and declared that unless the beautiful (he supposed celestial) damsel could be obtained for him he must die of grief. The sister bade him be comforted, for in a short time his desires should be satisfied, which revived his spirits, and he accompanied his kind hostess to welcome home her sisters, who received him with their usual hospitality, but were grieved and alarmed at the sad alteration in his appearance, of which they inquired the reason, and were informed that it was the effect of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... supper, and the woman, who was ordinarily so querulous and indifferent to all who approached her, was suddenly transformed into the most smiling and attentive hostess. Had the unhappy man on whom she lavished her assiduities been previously acquainted with her, so sudden an alteration might well have excited suspicion in his mind, or at least have greatly astonished him. Caderousse, meanwhile, continued to pace the room in gloomy silence, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... your hostess, but you haven't started your visit yet. So, you've just got time to say what you really think of her, before you have ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... further. His hostess began issuing orders. A few minutes later, Primmie, adequately if not beautifully attired in a man's oilskin "slicker," sou'wester, and rubber boots, clumped forth in search of the suitcase. She ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... three nightcaps were laid upon the dressing-table. Mr Kirby retired before his companions, and was soon sound asleep. Perceiving no caps ready for them, his friends inquired for what they considered the due appurtenances of the pillow: they were assured by the hostess that three nightcaps were laid upon the table, but they stoutly averred they had not seen them; the landlady no less stoutly maintaining her side of the question. What actually passed in her own mind did not transpire, but she appealed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... then Gerhardt absented himself—for what purpose she did not know; but he left Agnes and Ermine behind, and they never told the object of his journeys. At home he lived quietly enough, generally following his trade of weaving, but always ready to do any thing required by his hostess. Isel came to congratulate herself highly on the presence of her quiet, kindly, helpful guests. In a house where the whole upper floor formed a single bedchamber, divided only by curtains stretched across, and ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... in a great arm-chair by the open fire when he entered the room. He had not expected to find any one there. He heard voices up-stairs, and supposed Miss Bailey was talking with her hostess. His mother followed the servant to remove her wraps, and he entered the drawing-room alone. She stirred, looked up, ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... juvenile party given by his little daughter Rose, eleven years of age. One part of the entertainment provided was a series of tableaux upon a miniature stage at one end of the dining-room. All went well till the third tableau, in which the young hostess took part, She incautiously approached too near the footlights, when her white dress caught fire and instantly blazed up. All present were spellbound, and it seemed as if the little girl's fate was sealed. Luckily one of the young guests, Fred Fenton, retained his coolness and presence of mind. Without ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... London, after his brief absence, there was no excuse for any hostess, even the most sceptical, in refusing to admit him to social equality on the ground of poverty. The very day he returned he acquired the lease of a house in Burlington Gardens, purchased two motor-cars, paying cash down for an early delivery, gave orders left and right for the enrichment ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... played in England? There was a mania for it at that time. The floor of Keeb's Palladio-Gargantuan hall was dotted with innumerable little tables. I didn't know how to play. My hostess told me I must "come and amuse the dear old Duke and Duchess of Mull," and led me to a remote sofa on which an old gentleman had just sat down beside an old lady. They looked at me with a dim kind interest. My hostess had set me and left me on a small gilt chair ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Their hostess had explained that a merely informal dinner awaited them, since his lordship (she observed) would no doubt prefer a quiet evening after his long journey. But Mrs. Gallosh was one of those good ladies who are fond of asking their friends to take "pot luck," and then providing ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... can't stand any criticism of her sister. Some day we can get together and say all the mean things we've a mind to about old Sarah!" Then the marchioness was transformed in the twinkling of an eye from the naughty Sally Boiling to the gracious hostess, seeing that her guests were seated and leading the conversation into the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... Twain thought this quaint book might amuse his royal hostess, and forwarded a copy in what he considered to be the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... glad for Herr Wildermann's sake. It rarely happens in this world that one hears of a want and a supply at the same time;" and the speaker, laughing as she said the last words, shook hands once again with her hostess and left her. ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the principal meal of the twenty-four hours was a 10 o'clock P.M. supper, at which, after the inevitable macaroni, were many unwholesome dishes, such as salads made of thistles, cows' udders, and other delicacies, which deprived one of all desire for sleep. Notwithstanding which, we rose early, my hostess and the ladies of the establishment appearing in the early part of the day in the most extreme deshabille. Indeed, on one occasion when I was first introduced into the family of a respectable citizen, and shown into my bedroom, I mistook one of two females who were making the bed for the servant, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... Prudy sat at her hostess's right hand, and in spite of her bashfulness, was as happy a child as ever broke a wish-bone. No one who has not had the care of a family can imagine the relief she felt now the cooking was off her mind. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... well pleased with my accommodations at the hotel where I am lodged. Mme Hembert, the proprietor, was once femme de chambre to the Empress Josephine; she is an excellent woman and a very attentive hostess, and I recommend her hotel to all those travellers who visit Florence and do not care to incur the expence of Schneider's. There is an excellent and well served table d'hote at two o'clock, wine at discretion, for which, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... a strong-willed old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and when they were respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat. For the rest—Kim giggled here as he cleaned his teeth—his hostess would rather heighten the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her bullocks critically, as they came up grunting and blowing under the yokes. If they went too fast—it was not likely—there would be a pleasant seat for himself along the pole; the lama would sit beside the driver. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... nearer, which I did at top speed, I saw there was a third native sitting on the verandah like a guest, and Uma was talking with him like a hostess. Nearer still I made out it was the big young chief, Maea, and that he was smiling away and smoking. And what was he smoking? None of your European cigarettes fit for a cat, not even the genuine big, knock-me-down native article that a fellow can really ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reached even them, and they crowded in the doorway to listen. Only the hostess held back, sending her husband an anxious look. 'Ah, dear me!' she sighed, half aloud, 'he is sure to make a muddle of it. He has already made all his speeches; what would he be ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... children of Ham had been particularly disparaging, asserted that nowhere in Chaucer, Spencer, nor any of the old English poets could anything relating to it be found. At this, the little waiter became so excited that he could no longer contain himself, and, despite the frowns and nods of our hostess, exclaimed, 'Yes it can, it's in Chaucer; here,' he continued, taking out a book from the book-case, 'here is the very volume,'[*] and turning over the leaves he pointed out the passage, to the great chagrin of the reverend gentleman, and to the amusement of the ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was bustle: the serving-lads ran from cellar to garret; the host swore and despatched his servant-girls to the neighbours, and the hostess scolded her daughter, flattening her nose against the panes of a downstairs window to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... does so precipitately. He paced up and down the room twice or thrice, and then said to me, "The matter is of a rather singular nature; I am unacquainted with law, and what I propose to do may one day serve as an example. It is my duty to rescue our unfortunate hostess, and requite her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... courteous invitation from Mr. L——, of the Indo-European Telegraph, with pleasure, for the Dak bungalow was dirty and comfortless. Although my host and charming hostess would have made any place agreeable, Quetta is, from everything but a strategical point of view, dull and uninteresting. It is an English garrison town, and all is said. The usual nucleus of scandal, surrounded by ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... I have found you," cried the young girl, sobbing; and when the hostess, who had been standing in the background, heard ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... for eight hours. When they emerged, somewhat shamefacedly, they found the family assembled on the verandah, drinking their afternoon chocolate, and impatient with curiosity. There were no girls to criticise the dilapidated garments—which the kind hostess had mended while the boys slept; but there were two youths of fourteen and fifteen and two young men who were lying in hammocks ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... social instinct. This party seemed a great enterprise. She had to pretend to an enthusiasm which she did not really feel. "Am I growing old?" she wondered more than once. She had to confess to a panic of shyness when she thought of herself as hostess. That was all she would be this time. Frances Maury held the role ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... went into a farmhouse to stay a night, and in the evening there came a knocking in the room as if some one had struck the table. I jumped up. My hostess got up and 'Good-night,' says she, 'I'm off'. 'But what was it?' says I. 'Just a poor old fairy,' says she; 'Old Nancy. She's a poor old thing; been here ever so long; lost her husband and her children; it's bad to be left like that, all alone. I leave a bit o' cake on the table ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... and buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage; for where those birds most breed and haunt the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honored hostess, Lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles, and could look like the innocent flower while she ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of selfish people who go off in the corners and have good times all by themselves, but in Hillsboro, Tennessee, it is not that way. Everybody that is not invited helps the hostess get ready and have nice things for the others, and sometimes I think they really have the best ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Christina and Dona Eugenia were quite as emphatic as their hostess in their determination not to be separated from their men-folk; so that question was very soon settled. After that there was nothing to be done but to call up our black auxiliaries, and put the house in as efficient a state of defence as the means at our disposal permitted; and this ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... past Mrs. Meckelburn's house, calling to her of their failure, and saying that they would be back soon. A little later, having left the physician at his home, they were again in the pleasant farm house, sipping tea which their hostess had thoughtfully made. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... wear six months, which is the given period for things to pass in free of duty. We then steamed round New York through much shipping and under a most marvellous new suspension bridge, which is to join New York and Brooklyn, to the dockyard; where we had another most hearty reception from our hostess. They had all been in a fidget at our being so many days late, and directly the ship was telegraphed off Sandy Hook the last night, in spite of the pouring rain, the Commodore had gone down in the tug to the Quarantine Harbour to try and ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Quixote stretched himself, and the hostess and her daughter soon covered him with plasters from top to toe, while Maritornes—for that was the name of the Asturian—held the light for them, and while plastering him, the hostess, observing how full of wheals Don Quixote was ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... progress when Larry and Ruth arrived. The latter was greeted cordially and not too impressively by gay little Sue Emerson, their hostess, and her friends. Ruth was ensconced comfortably in a big chair where she could watch the dancers and talk as much or little as she pleased. Everybody was so pleasant and natural and uncurious that she did not feel frightened or strange at ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... that the pictures on the walls were of the last correctness, and a few by illustrious painters. Here and there she could see scrawled on them "a mon ami, Andre Foa." Such phenomena were balm. Everybody in the room was presented to her, and with the greatest particularity, and the host and hostess gazed on her as on an idol, a jewel, an exquisite and startling discovery. Musa found two men he knew. The conversation was ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "a stranger whom you have saved from dangers he may never realize empties this cup to the gentlest and loveliest hostess of France." ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... chateau at Clichy, a short distance from Paris, where he kept open house. Thither came Lucien Bonaparte, at that time twenty-four years of age, bombastic and consequential, and fell in love with his beautiful hostess, as everybody else did. But Madame Recamier, with all her fascinations, was not a woman of passion; nor did she like the brother of the powerful First Consul, and politely rejected his addresses. He continued, however, to persecute ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... a solemn movement of the head, indicated her willingness to languish without her hostess' society for a short period, Miss Sallianna rose, and made her exit from the apartment, with upraised eyes ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... endearment: thus Shakespeare, in Henry IV, represents the hostess calling her maid, Doll Tear-sheet, sweet-heart. It is now more restricted to lovers ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Head was timely and grateful none the less, and no one could have been kindlier or more attentive than our hostess. We had a nicely served lunch in the hotel parlor, which was just across the hallway from the lounging room, where the villagers assembled to indulge in such moderate drinking as Welshmen are addicted to. The public ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... Continental wanderings, to take many a third-class carriage full of witty peasants, and stop at many an "unpretending" inn "Of the White Hind," with bowered rose-garden and bowling-green running down to the trout-filled river, and mine ample hostess herself to make and bring you the dish for which she is famous over half the countryside. Thus you will increase by at least one Baedekerian star-power the luster of the next Grand Hotel Royal de l'Univers which ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... very pretty. Her hair was the very brightest gold, and she had rather too much mauve and too much smile; she almost curtsied to her hostess, and instantly gave that lady the impression that she must have been not so very long ago the principal boy at ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... mahogany carving in the central hall, the dessert-service was of George II. silver-gilt, and the china beautiful old Spode. Everything else about the place told its own story of desperate financial conditions. Our hostess declared that it was impossible for a woman to manage a sugar estate, as she could not always be about amongst the canes and in the boiler-house, and her sons were not yet old enough to help her. No one who has not experienced it can picture the heat of a Jamaican sugar-factory; I should imagine ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Gerhardt absented himself—for what purpose she did not know; but he left Agnes and Ermine behind, and they never told the object of his journeys. At home he lived quietly enough, generally following his trade of weaving, but always ready to do any thing required by his hostess. Isel came to congratulate herself highly on the presence of her quiet, kindly, helpful guests. In a house where the whole upper floor formed a single bedchamber, divided only by curtains stretched across, and the whole ground-floor was parlour and kitchen in one, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... much credit by my attempt at dinner, that I had the extreme gratification of being asked to sing another song by Anneke herself. Of course I complied, and I thought the company seemed pleased. As for my young hostess, I knew she looked more gratified with my song than with the afterpiece, and that I felt to be something. Dirck had an occasion to renew a little of the ground lost by the toast, for he sang a capital comic song in Low Dutch. It is ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... this as a delicate compliment, and the thing is so prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste could be offended. Meanwhile another party of night-wanderers, attracted by our mirth, break in. More Prosits and clinked glasses follow; and with a fair good-morning to our hostess, we retire. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... score or more Of guests," the hostess said, "We'll have the Poodle Sing Yankee Doodle, A-standing on his head. And when this through, Good Parrot, you, Please show them how you swear." "Oh, dear; don't cuss," Cried the Octopus, And he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... an admirable woman and sweet hostess, was born at Liverpool, England. September 25, 1793 and died May 16, 1835. Her maiden name was Browne. She was married to Captain Hemans an officer in the British Army, but the union was not a happy one. Her imagination was chivalrous and romantic, and she delighted ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... whisper to stupid Lady Dulwich the very latest intelligence of a marriage, or listen, all attention, to the freshest bit of scandal from Mrs. General Gabbler. But perhaps by this time you have floated with the tide into the doorway, and received from your hostess the cordial shake of the hand or formal bow which makes you free of the place. So, with patience and perseverance you work your way at last into the dancing-room, and you now see what people come here for—dancing, of course. Each performer has about eighteen inches of standing ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... conversation are frequent, and answer the destined end; and in the societies of professed amusement are to be met the learned, the studious, and the rational; not presented as shows to the company by the host and hostess, but professedly seeking their ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the praefect made no reply. The man had helped him to cast off his heavy mantle, and he stood now in all the splendour of barbaric pomp, a strangely incongruous figure in this tiny bare room, both to his surroundings and to his gentle host and hostess with their humble garb and ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... children, looking forth and judging the coast clear, took Godolphus for a scamper across the dark meadow. They returned to find their hostess disrobed and in bed, and again she had the tea-equipage arrayed and the kettle singing over ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... godfather—to dine at his house. As Zaragoza had just arrived in that village for the first time, he was but too ready to accept the invitation. Now, Zaragoza was a kind-hearted man, and soon won the confidence of his host and hostess, who invited him to remain with them for several days. Luis and Zaragoza became close friends, and often consulted each other on matters ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... has he not been too cruelly used by his uncle? You must have noticed the welts on his naked back. I counted five as broad as my forefinger. How could a grown-up man torture a child like that?"—and she looked meaningly at her hostess. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal bric-a-brac belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... affidavit, on trust, before any mayor or magistrate in Christendom, that there are a great many young ladies in the world (blessings on them one and all!) whom you wouldn't like half as well, or admire half as much, as the beaming hostess ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... at the Pavillon de Hanovre, to go and admire the actors Talma, Picard, and Lemercier, whose stage performance was better than many of the pieces they interpreted. Fireworks could be enjoyed at the Tivoli Gardens; the great concerts were the rage for a while, as also the practice for a hostess to carry off her visitors after dinner for a promenade in the Bois ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... moments with his hostess, Colonel Howell departed in the motor. As soon as he was out of his host's hearing, he ordered the driver to take him to the King George Hotel. Still puffing his new cigar, the oil man entered the hotel and made a quick examination of the bar room. The person ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... Stone's reception of that news had still further confirmed his original views. When all the guests were gone—with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallison and Miss Dallison, "that awfully pretty girl," and the young man "who was always hangin' about her"—he had approached his hostess for some quiet talk. She stood listening to him, very well bred, with just that habitual spice of mockery in her smile, which to Mr. Purcey's eyes made her "a very strikin'-lookin' woman, but rather—-" There he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the sport afforded, were most picturesque. The parties in the trees could display their agility; the parties on the ground could show their costumes in charming attitudes. For a time the care of the hostess was needed in assigning the people to their proper posts of usefulness or pleasure; but when all were come and all was in train, the thing would run itself, and Wych Hazel became as free ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Aurora and the Queen Louise must worry Miss Hitchcock; how the neat Swedish maids and the hat-stand in the hall must offend young Hitchcock. The incongruities of the house had never disturbed him. So far as he had noticed them, they accorded well with the simple characters of his host and hostess. In them, as in the house, a keen observer could trace the series of developments that had taken place since they had left Hill's Crossing. Yet the full gray beard with the broad shaved upper lip still gave the Chicago merchant ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... steps more to where doth live She who will give To thee celestial sustenance Charitably. 53 Thither shalt thou go and rest, And shalt taste there of that fare New strength to borrow: Unrivalled is that hostess blest To give of the best To those who weeping come to her, Laden ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... simple and severe within. There was a fine staircase, and all the rooms were brilliantly lighted, but very scantily furnished, according to our ideas. We must have gone through at least six rooms before we reached the host and hostess. Every room was exactly alike: in each was a red strip of carpet, half a dozen rocking-chairs placed opposite one another, a cane- bottomed sofa, a table with nothing on it, and walls ditto. There are never ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his host and hostess. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... play we are constantly reminded of Every Man Out of His Humour; but the unknown writer had some inventiveness of his own, and was not a mere copyist. The jolly fat host, with his cheery cry "merry hearts live long," is pleasant company; and his wife, the hard-working hostess, constantly repining at her lot, yet seemingly not dissatisfied at heart, has the appearance of being a faithful transcript from life. Cornutus (the hen-pecked citizen) and his gadding wife are familiar figures, but not the less ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... B * * *'s, how subversive of all the morality of intrigue they considered the late step of which he had been guilty in withdrawing his acknowledged "Amica" from the protection of her husband, and placing her, at once, under the same roof with himself. "You must really (said the hostess herself to me) scold your friend;—till this unfortunate affair, he conducted himself so well!"—a eulogy on his previous moral conduct which, when I reported it the following day to my noble host, provoked at once a smile and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... into a farmhouse to stay a night, and in the evening there came a knocking in the room as if some one had struck the table. I jumped up. My hostess got up and 'Good-night,' says she, 'I'm off'. 'But what was it?' says I. 'Just a poor old fairy,' says she; 'Old Nancy. She's a poor old thing; been here ever so long; lost her husband and her children; it's bad to be left like that, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... (wasn't it?) presented to the temple of Venus, moulded on her breast. The horses were tired, so we stopped at Waggon-maker's Valley (or Wellington, as the English try to get it called), and found ourselves in a true Flemish village, and under the roof of a jolly Dutch hostess, who gave us divine coffee and bread-and-butter, which seemed ambrosia after being deprived of those luxuries for almost three months. Also new milk in abundance, besides fruit of all kinds in vast heaps, and ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... utterly lacking in humanity," retorted Gerty, "and one has to be not to admit a moral obligation to one's hostess. Besides," she confessed, with smiling pleasantry, "I shall rather enjoy Ada Lawley's face when she sees my gown. She told me last night that she would never be caught wearing silver gauze again until she wanted to look every day as old as she really is. It was ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... And, while the little hostess prepared the meal, a man looked out from the partly open door behind her, with big dark eyes, which were like her own, yet blurred by a mist of ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... a study of astronomy, and every night would ask his hostess, with much apology but firm insistence, for a pitcher of water, and for the privilege that he might retire early to his room, open the window and view the stars. Strange to say, in this he was not merely eccentric; for his reading was of the latest books ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... receive our bore. The peasant girls kissed him, the men shook hands with him, one old lady of benevolent appearance wept upon his breast. He was conducted, in a primitive triumph, to the little inn: where he was taken ill next morning, and lay for six weeks, attended by the amiable hostess (the same benevolent old lady who had wept over night) and her charming daughter, Fanchette. It is nothing to say that they were attentive to him; they doted on him. They called him in their simple way, L'ANGE ANGLAIS - the English Angel. When our ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... "Madame Vanira," said their hostess, "permit me to make known to you Lady Chandos, who greatly desires the pleasure of ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... would be Next to sit in the Hammock with her. It looked for a while as if Clara would have to give out Checks, the same as in a Barber Shop. Late that night when the Men walked homeward together, they remarked that Clara was a Miserable Hostess, they ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... kindness, and said to her, "The truth is, Mother Marguerite, I have still a schoolboy's appetite. Have you nothing to give me?" The good woman, almost beside herself with happiness, served his Majesty with eggs and milk; and when this simple repast was ended, his Majesty gave his aged hostess a purse full of gold, saying to her, "You know, Mother Marguerite, that I believe in paying my bills. Adieu, I shall not forget you." And while the Emperor remounted his horse, the good old woman, standing on the threshold of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... greatest attention to the remarks which Montalais and Athenais, alternately, whispered to her from time to time. As soon as the king's name was announced a general movement took place in the apartment. Madame, in her character as hostess, rose to receive the royal visitor; but as she rose, notwithstanding her preoccupation of mind, she glanced hastily towards her right; her glance, which the presumptuous De Guiche regarded as intended for himself, rested, as it swept over the whole circle, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to prince's palace), heavy high chairs, heavy high tables ranged against walls decorated with kakemonos and gay mottoes; only in the centre of the room was a large table covered with a cloth of European manufacture on which were set out dishes of English biscuits and sweets. Our hostess, dressed in a modified Chinese costume, received us with graceful dignity. Her fine-featured face bore a marked likeness to many that one meets on the street or in the church of an old New England town, and its rather anxious expression somewhat emphasized the resemblance. She spoke ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... interrupted little confidences on the part of the young lady, at the recollection of which he was sometimes inclined to smile? Had she not at all times, and in all places, acted the part of a prudent mamma to her pretty step-daughter, and of a considerate hostess to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... too glad to do anything I can for others who are helping the great cause." She smiled sweetly at George, and patted his dog. The boy regarded her almost sheepishly; he, too, hated the idea of imposing on so cordial a hostess. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... filled with the Holy Ghost,"(214) that she might be worthy to be the hostess of our Lord during the three months that Mary ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... German replied, very sententiously, in the affirmative; and, after a few words had passed between the husband of the fiery-faced hostess and the Judge, the sleigh moved on. It soon reached the door of the academy, where the party alighted and ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... advantage: for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honoured hostess, lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles; and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... annoyance in the interest of the conversation which ensued before we reached our destination. Once I was toiling up the four flights which led to the residence of a cultivated German lady, in company with the hostess. "Oh," I said breathlessly, "would there ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... if posed by a column, Awaiting our hostess' advance; Complacently pallid and solemn, He deigned an Olympian glance. Icy cool, in a room like a crater, He silently marched me down-stairs, And Mont Blanc could not freeze with a greater Assurance ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... interrupted only by the clattering of knives and forks, and the occasional exclamations of parties in want of some particular article of food. A chill had come over the scene—a chill whose cause was apparent to every one, except the worthy host and hostess, who had not heard of Mr. Sponge's descent upon the country. They attributed it to his lordship's indisposition, and Mr. Springwheat endeavoured to cheer him up with the prospect ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... his wife who was visiting. He said he would be away all day. He was to go down to Prarie Grove to get 'Old Man Parks, dead or alive'. Not until he was on his way did somebody tell him that he was talking about the father of his wife's hostess. Next day he came over to apologize. Said he never would have made such a cruel remark if he had known. But he didn't find his man. As the officers went in the front door, Mr. Parks went out of the back and the women surrounded him until ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... salons, that of Mme. de Tencin was the only one in which gambling was indulged in on a wholesale scale; fortunes changed hands every evening, a large part of the gains always falling to the lot of the hostess, as a sort of "rake off." She herself was a professional at the business, and by receiving private information from headquarters, through her famous friend Law, the controleur-general, and her lover ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... The Rogrons had supposed that all that was required to gain a position in society was to give a few dinners. But no one any longer accepted them, except a few young men who went to make fun of their host and hostess, and certain diners-out who ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... mouth. The ostler had explained their intrusion, and veiled their character under the vague epithet of a "hunting party," and was now evidently describing them personally. In his new-found philosophy the fact that the interest of his hostess seemed to be excited only by the names of his companions, that he himself was carelessly, and even deprecatingly, alluded to as the "stranger from Eagle's" by the ostler, and completely overlooked by the old ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... destined to get from English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the English we did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a fire in one of our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and, though the hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night, she forgot it till nine o'clock, and then we would not have it. The cold abode with us indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which had hummed and whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the first ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... room was homelike, with its fire of white-birch and its easy chairs, and Miss Thrasher herself proved to be a pleasant hostess. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... modishness, gave a fete in which the guests were requested to appear in classical costume, whose severe simplicity she fancied would be more becoming to the plenitude of her own Juno-like charms than to the slight figure of the French girl. But the Princess vanquished her hostess for she came as a Bacchante in a robe of her own designing, bordered with vine leaves embroidered in gold and belted beneath the breasts with a golden girdle. A mantle of panther's fur swept from her shoulders, her arms and her bust were laden with heavy necklaces and bracelets taken from ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... a seat at the table, and from a broken cup drank a few swallows of tolerable coffee. As for the edibles, 'twas the same old story,—corn bread and maple molasses, fried pork and onions. I staid there perhaps fifteen minutes, and learned from my hostess that Webster was, previous to the war 'a right smart village,' but that the male inhabitants had mostly joined the rebel army, then at Phillippi. She, different from most women I met in Virginia, expressed sympathy for the ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Rebecca followed her hostess in, and the boy, who had waited quiescently, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace close to the piazza-post, grew a great rose-bush, and on it, ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... suppress a momentary disposition to excuse, in some degree, their fault. When the minister goes out to tea, he is served with the richest cake, the choicest jellies, the most pungent sauces, and the finest of fine-flour bread-stuffs. Little does the indulgent hostess dream that she is ministering to the inflammation of passions which may imperil the virtue of her daughter, or even her own. Salacity once aroused, even in a minister, allows no room for reason or for conscience. If women wish to preserve the virtue of their ministers, let them feed ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... "Frank," said the hostess to the head waiter, "who do you think we've got in the blue parlour? you'll never guess! I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him; dressed just as I saw him at the Haymarket Theatre, the only night I ever was at a London ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... the most brilliant of modern dramatists. About the same period, another drama of the English courts ended in a startling and terrible peripety. A young lady was staying as a guest with a half-pay officer and his wife. A valuable pearl belonging to the hostess disappeared; and the hostess accused her guest of having stolen it. The young lady, who had meanwhile married, brought an action for slander against her quondam friend. For several days the case continued, and everything seemed to be going in the plaintiff's favour. Major Blank, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... had been arranged, so cleverly as not to excite gossip; and if the flirtation (destined by the hostess to disgust Leopold with his Chancellor's matrimonial projects) did not advance by leaps and bounds, it was certainly not the fault of ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... East that Father Foley's Aid Society was doing in the West, generously supplied the necessary Mass and Sacramental equipment. Then, too, the farewell Musical by the Paulist vocalists of Base 11, given at Garden City; and for which Mrs. Charles Taft kindly acted as hostess. Genuine regret marked that unavoidable parting. To co-labor with such splendid officers and men was truly a privilege; and to have served, even briefly, with the gallant "11" that wrought so worthily overseas, is an honor ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... studied all the furnishings of the room, keeping their faces in readiness to assume their calling expression at an instant's notice when the hostess should appear. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... drink hot water.' Hot water! Loathsome stuff. Moreover, have you noticed, Archdeacon, that a man who diets himself is a perfect nuisance to all his friends and neighbours? The moment he refuses potatoes his hostess says to him, 'Why, Mr. Smith, not one of our potatoes! Out of our own garden!' And then he explains to her that he is dieting, whereupon every one at the table hurriedly recites long and dreary histories of how they have dieted at one ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... gentleman must go to bed," observed the hostess. "There's one I've got for him in the kitchen,—a little snug cupboard by the fireside; and shure he'll there be as warm and comfortable as a mouse ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... old castle, its towers and battlements, and with its cynosure, that I know not when he will be able to prevail upon himself to depart. To-morrow, he says; but so he has said these ten days: he cannot resist the entreaties of his kind host and hostess to stay another day. The soft accent of the beautiful Leonora will certainly detain him one day more, and her gracious smile will bereave him of rest for months to come. He has evidently fallen desperately in love with her. Now we shall see virtue ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Rival, very elegant, followed by Norbert de Varenne. The latter advanced with the grace of the old school and taking Mme. Forestier's hand kissed it; his long hair falling upon his hostess's bare ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... before dinner Madame Goesler was told by her hostess that Phineas Finn was expected on the following day. The communication was made quite as a matter of course; but Lady Chiltern had chosen a time in which the lights were shaded, and the room was dark. Adelaide Palliser was present, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the rest continued where they were, in breathless expectation. In a few minutes the females returned—Bertalda pale as death; and the duchess said: "Justice must be done; I therefore declare that our lady hostess has spoken exact truth. Bertalda is the fisherman's daughter; no further proof is required; and this is all of which, on the present occasion, you ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... lover waited with anxiety for that decision, and while waiting the captain wrote his letter, the mother busied herself with her accustomed cares and duties as daughter, mother, mistress, and hostess, each heart lifting up silent petitions that the result might be for God's glory and the best ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... on her usual bedstead, the floor. 'I did, indeed,' says she, laughing heartily at her former self. However, she finally concluded to make use of the bed, for fear that not to do so might injure the feelings of her good hostess. In the morning, the Quaker saw that she was taken and set down near Kingston, with directions to go to the Court House, and enter complaint to the ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... back-logs of yore; the seven doors are in their places; the rays of the morning sun still stream through the one window; no alteration in form has been made in the old piazza—the adornments on the walls, if such the ancient hostess had, have alone been changed for souvenirs of the heroes of the nation's independence. In presence of these surroundings, it requires but little effort of the imagination to restore the departed guests. Forgetting not that ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... the way. I felt odd receiving them as though it was my home, and having to answer their questions about buying, by means of acting as telegraph between them and Mrs. Carter. I confess to that. But I know I talked reasonably about the other subjects. Playing hostess in a strange house! Of course, it was uncomfortable! and to add to my embarrassment, the handsomest one offered to pay for the milk he had just drunk! Fancy my feelings, as I hastened to assure him ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... man's as well as I am: have some mercy! He hath been here almost three weeks already. Host. Well, then, a week. Lamp. We may detain him a week. (Enter BALTHAZAR, the patient, from behind, in his nightgown, with a drawn sword.) You talk now like a reasonable hostess, That sometimes has a reckoning with her conscience. Host. He still believes he has an inward bruise. Lamp. I would to heaven he had! or that he'd slipped His shoulder blade, or broke a leg or two, (Not that I bear his person any malice,) Or luxed an arm, or even sprained his ankle! Host. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not, as some fancy, deformed; for his likeness is yet to be seen at Delphi. The mistake of the hostess of Megara was occasioned, it would seem, merely by his easiness of temper and his plain manners. This hostess having word brought her, that the General of the Achaeans was coming to her house in the absence ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... under the bed a girl of fourteen, quite naked, and with a skin as tough as that of an alligator, ordered her to the well with a large bucket. Having thus provided for my beast, I sat upon a stump that served for a chair, and once more addressed my hostess. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... remember, did not talk much, saying little more, indeed, than such polite words as her position of hostess rendered necessary. The burden of the conversation rested chiefly with her aged husband, who sustained it simply and cheerily. His chief aim at this, and indeed at all times, seemed to be to establish an ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Jenny's break-down. He had never been allowed one hint of where his blessed head had been pillowed that bitter November night. The girl had pledged her friend to absolute secrecy. Removed on his convalescence from Wells's roof to his mother's rooms at The Virginia, Forrest saw no more of his hostess for several days. Then, with a three months' leave on surgeon's certificate, he was driven, under his mother's wing, to bid her adieu, and that night they ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... skin. Teddy, as father of the family, behaved with great propriety, for he smilingly devoured everything offered him, and did not find a single fault. Daisy beamed upon her company like the weary, warm, but hospitable hostess so often to be seen at larger tables than this, and did the honors with an air of innocent satisfaction, which we do not often ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... prosper, and I shall always maintain that a wife cannot entirely undo a mother's work. Rose will have her hands full if she tries to set all Clara's mistakes right," answered Aunt Jane grimly, then began to fan violently as their hostess approached to have a dish of chat about "our ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... nun's dress for one less likely to excite observation; and having received a few dollars in addition to make up the difference, I retired to rest, determined to rise early and take the morning steamboat for Quebec. I knew that my hostess was a friend of the Superior, as I have mentioned before, and presumed that it would not be long before she would give information against me. I knew, however, that she could not gain admittance to the Convent very early, and felt safe in remaining in the house through ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... James understood that she meant her daughter, of whom Doctor Gordon had spoken. He wondered at the unusual name, as he followed his hostess. His room was on the same floor as the living-room. She threw open a door at the other side of the hall, and James saw an exceedingly comfortable apartment with a hearth-fire, with book-shelves, and a couch-bed covered with a rug, and ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... guests who came to his table. Before they sat down he or his wife said, looking at the maid who was to serve the dinner, 'This is our friend, Miss Murphy'; and then the guests were obliged in some sort to join the host and hostess in recognizing the human quality of the attendant. It was going rather far, but we never heard that any harm came of it. Some thought it rather odd, but most people thought it ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... not at all alarmed. She was eagerly watching Lady Dunstable, as one watches for the mannerisms of some well-known performer. Sir Luke perceived it, and immediately began to show off his hostess by one of the sparring matches that were apparently frequent between them. They fell to discussing a party of guests—landowners from a neighbouring estate—who seemed to have paid a visit to Crosby Ledgers the day before. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... he is.—We have just been speaking of you," said the hostess to Eugene Mihailovich, who came in at that very moment. "Why are you ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... muttered something about finding Mrs. Blackwood; to tell the truth, I was so rattled—between sympathy for the pater and embarrassment at the accident—that I hardly knew what I was saying, but my father caught at it. "Yes, yes," he said nervously, "I must speak to our hostess; I must apologise for my awkwardness. Ask Mrs. Blackwood if she will be kind enough to step here, Felix—or stay, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... indulgence from her friends. Before she did a kind thing she liked to be allowed to say one or two sharp ones. Her niece was aware of this fancy of hers and took refuge in silence. John, less experienced in his hostess's ways, launched into the protests appropriate ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... her lips breathed, almost aloud, in her excitement. "So you'd play hostess to his Majesty," she thought, "give a royal ball and leave poor Nelly home, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Lower Normandy, the land of plenty where we wander with so much pleasure in the summer months, putting up at wayside inns (where the hostess makes her 'note' on a slate and finds it hard work to make the amount come to more than five francs, for the night, for board and lodging for 'monsieur') and at farmhouses sometimes; chatting with the people in their rather troublesome patois, and making excursions with the local ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... absolute discretion always. The year that Hugo Tancred met Fay was a particularly good year, and Anthony had bought a touring-car, and they all went up to Scotland in it. The girls were always well dressed and went out a good deal. Young as she was, Jan was already an excellent manager and a pleasant hostess. She had been taking care of her father from the time she was twelve years old, and knew exactly how to manage him. When there was plenty of money she let him launch out; when it was spent she made him draw in again, and he was always quite ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... jardinieres. Everything is arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below; but the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the vulgar, is not yet refined. You would say it was a passable copy of a pretty genre picture. The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home. In Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to say so as he enters the salon, but, in ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... slipping to the ground again. 'I am mistress. I mean to attend at table.' She served the men with the manners of a kindly hostess. 'There's milk ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... upon him a painful sense of humiliation, whether because of his own or another's fault or failure. A pupil is confused by a perplexing question, a general confounded by overwhelming defeat. A hostess is discomposed by the tardiness of guests, a speaker disconcerted by a failure of memory. The criminal who is not abashed at detection may be daunted by the officer's weapon. Sudden joy may bewilder, but will not abash. The true worshiper is humbled rather than abashed before ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... if he would go back to town without touching on any but impersonal topics; but on Monday morning, after wandering restlessly about the house for some time after breakfast, Ned seemed suddenly to take his courage in both hands, and, coming up to his hostess as she sat writing notes, begged the favour of a few ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... return, "And you?" in a voice of obvious meaning? Should I take a leaf from the book of my hostess and say: "I'm a bit of an artist. I've sketched all over Europe, and I've come to have a go at the old mill that so many fellows try?" Such a claim would just match the assumption of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... pointed a teaspoon straight at her hostess. "Polly, if you heap compliments on me like this, I shall cease to believe that you're a woman. Tell me how I am to be ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed to expand; I felt a pride in the self-possession and lightness of heart with which I could listen to the scene; and I determined to prolong and heighten the enjoyment. Accordingly, when they were withdrawn, I addressed myself to our hostess, a buxom, bluff, good-humoured widow, and asked what sort of a man this Kit Williams might be? She replied that, as she was informed, he was as handsome, likely a lad, as any in four counties round; and that ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... facing his hostess. Half the room was between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of reticence and ambiguity ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Her hostess scolded her for her early morning walk—bad, she said, in the autumn for the health of a young girl. She brought the "samovar," and over a cup of tea she was about to resume her endless discussion of the Court, when a carriage with a ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... dry spot to another, Derville reached the door by which the Colonel had come out. Chabert seemed but ill pleased at having to receive him in the bed-room he occupied; and, in fact, Derville found but one chair there. The Colonel's bed consisted of some trusses of straw, over which his hostess had spread two or three of those old fragments of carpet, picked up heaven knows where, which milk-women use to cover the seats of their carts. The floor was simply the trodden earth. The walls, sweating salt-petre, green with mould, and full of cracks, ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... dressing-table. Mr Kirby retired before his companions, and was soon sound asleep. Perceiving no caps ready for them, his friends inquired for what they considered the due appurtenances of the pillow: they were assured by the hostess that three nightcaps were laid upon the table, but they stoutly averred they had not seen them; the landlady no less stoutly maintaining her side of the question. What actually passed in her own mind did not transpire, but she appealed to the first gentleman as being ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... "In his letters to his family, Chopin, as if he wished to avoid pronouncing the name of George Sand, always calls her 'My hostess,' sometimes even employing, strange to say, the plural, for instance, 'Elles si cheres, elles rirent pour tous,' or, 'Here the vigil is sad, because les malades ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... the house, gave the two boys a hurried introduction to his wife, saw them seated at the table and then ran out again. Mrs. Merrick remained in the room to wait upon them, and that was an arrangement that Tom Percival did not like; for although she proved to be a pleasant and agreeable hostess and never said a word about politics, Tom did not think it safe to talk too freely in her presence, and took the first opportunity that was offered to give Rodney ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... explained the captain as she left us, "I've invited quite a large party to attend the launching, for one reason or another. Marjorie must play hostess. They're mostly here at the hotel. Perhaps you saw some of them ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... and by way of putting his guest into a good humour, took him straight down to the cellar and gave him a draught of strong beer. Meantime the miller's wife stayed with the woman, who, as soon as the coast was clear, declared herself to be a soldier in disguise, and threatened her hostess with instant death unless she fetched out all her jewels and valuables on the spot. The poor woman accordingly had to open her great linen chest, in the bottom of which her little store of silver was hidden, and in this the ruffian began to rummage. Just when he had almost emptied it, ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... elegant villa, six miles from town, every circumstance that can make society pleasing. Johnson, though quite at home, was yet looked up to with an awe, tempered by affection, and seemed to be equally the care of his host and hostess. I rejoiced ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... course that he oughtn't so to have expressed himself. Wasn't the lady's place in the scale sufficiently indicated by Mrs. Bonnycastle's acquaintance with her? Still there were fine degrees, and he felt a little unduly snubbed. It was perfectly true, as he told his hostess, that with the quick wave of new impressions that had rolled over him after his arrival in America the image of Pandora was almost completely effaced; he had seen innumerable things that were quite as remarkable ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... there, if anywhere. They were indeed held in a social solution where many other people of no temperament at all floated largely and loosely about, but they were there, all the same, and it was worth coming on the chance of meeting them, though the indiscriminate hospitality of the hostess might let the evening pass without promoting the chance. Now, however, she had unwittingly put into Hewson's keeping, for two hours at least, the very temperament that had kept his fancy for the last half-year and more. ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... now returned to the house, and the next morning, after a cordial adieu to the host and hostess, he rode back ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... 1840.—After landing at Liverpool, I called upon an old and kind friend, Mr. Michael Ashton, and I had much conversation with him and Rev. R. Young, on the affairs of our mission. I and my brother William arrived in London on the 23rd. Took up our lodgings with my old hostess, 27 Great Ormond Street. Addressed a note to Lord John Russell, on the object of our mission; an interview was appointed for the next day. Went to the House of Commons in the evening, having an order for admission to the Speaker's gallery, through ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... And Missy, for some reason, grew sort of cross, too; she resented the other girls' unrestrainable hilarity. They wouldn't be so hilarious if it were their own households they were setting topsy-turvy; if they had sixteen "place-cards" yet to finish. In England, the hostess's entertainments went more smoothly. Things ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... something about supper-time, and fled before the questioner. The young doctor turned to his hostess, with the quick, merry smile he had. "I had to send her away!" he said. "You are flushed, Miss Blyth, and Miss Vesta is tired. Yes, you are, Miss Vesta; what is the ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... Clay followed his hostess to the stairs and went up them with her, but he went protesting, though with a chuckle of mirth. "He sure ruined my clothes a heap. I ain't fit to ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... and her gown heavy and clumsy. The other ladies were arrayed in lovely lingeries or light silks and laces. The Zenith Club was exceedingly well dressed on that day. Martha sat in her place beside her hostess and her face looked like a sulky child's. Her eye-lids were swollen, her pouting lips dropped at the corners. She stiffened her chin until it became double. Margaret was inwardly perturbed but she concealed it. The programme went on with the ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of any Englishwoman. As I returned dejectedly to my inn, I heard a lamentable voice, evidently English, bemoaning in doubtful French. The omnibus from Falaise had just come in, and under the lamp in the entrance of the archway stood a lady before my hostess, who was volubly asserting that there was no room left in her house. I hastened to the assistance of my countrywoman, and the light of the lamp falling full upon her face revealed ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... of hostess to perfection, presiding over the tea-urn with ease and grace, and pressing upon her father the numerous dainties with which the table was loaded. She seemed to have recovered her spirits, and as she sat there gayly chatting—of ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... as luminous and emphatic. The hostess at length breaks off the harangue, by proposing that they should all make a little excursion on the lake,—and they embark accordingly; and, after navigating for some time along its shores, and drinking tea on a little island, land at last on ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... in normal fashion. The two men returned to town together afterwards, Wilmore to the club and Francis to his rooms in Clarges Street to prepare for dinner. At a few minutes to eight he rang the bell of number 10 b, Hill Street, and found his host and hostess awaiting him in the small drawing-room into which he was ushered. It seemed to him that the woman, still colourless, again marvellously gowned, greeted him coldly. His host, however, was almost too effusive. There was no other guest, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers? In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes? The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way? The saints and sages in history—but you yourself? Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain, And what is reason? and what is love? and what ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... people had lately arrived on Nepenthe in favour of whom the hostess, with the frank cordiality of her nature, had issued invitations broadcast. There was the celebrated R. A. and his dowdy wife; a group of American politicians who were supposed to be reporting on economic questions and spent the Government's money in carousing about Europe; Madame Albert, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... it,' replied their mysterious hostess. 'And now,' she said, 'ye maun hae arms: ye maunna gang on dry-handed; but use them not rashly. Take captive, but save life; let the law hae its ain. He ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... dragged into the dirt inseparable from pushing. The family portraits look disdainfully from their frames, and the ancestral oaks hang their heads in shame. The company reflects the peculiar ambition of the hostess. The neighboring squires are conspicuous by their absence. The local small fry are of course ignored, though to the great lady of the county, who cuts her in town, she is cringingly obsequious. The visitors consist mainly of relays of youths, fast, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... to say that I have a cat-like tread; I know not how that may be; at any rate the carpet I was walking upon was thick enough to smother a heavier footfall: not until I was quite close to her did my hostess become aware of my presence. Then she started violently and looked over her shoulder at me with dilating eyes. Evidently a nervous creature, I saw the pulse in her throat, strained by her attitude, flutter like a ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Hostess, quick! the light goes out, Have you no pretty girl about? But if no pretty girl there be The light may soon so out, for me Why should the candle burn and beam Unless ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... development of the cabaret is the "hostess." Her duty is to "introduce" men and girls. In many instances hotels of questionable character are operated as an ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel
... kind," they had explained of their hostess; "she gives you the most galumptious teas, and the best part of it is, she has an e- normous appetite herself, so you can eat as much as you like, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... While her hostess was indulging in these heavy reflections, Bessie was uttering little staccato exclamations of delight at the sight of the room ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for me, hard by at a curate's house, whom the bishop can trust, and whose wife is so ugly as to be beyond all danger; we will decamp into those new quarters, and I leave you, thanking you for a hundred kindnesses here. Where is my hostess, that I may bid her farewell? to welcome her in a house of my own, soon I trust, where my friends shall have no cause to quarrel ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surprise awaited the pair on entering the mud-floored room to find quite a decent meal awaiting them on the table, and their sour-looking heavy hostess ready to wait on them with a kind of ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... equals the most successful efforts of the cooks at home." Fathers, mothers, and friends, when they paid visits to this excellent lady, brought away with them the most gratifying recollections of her hospitality. The men, in particular, seldom failed to recognize in their hostess the rarest virtue that a single lady can possess—the virtue of putting wine on the table which may be gratefully remembered by her guests the ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... like," he began so deliberately that his hostess, leaning forward, hung upon his words, "she is exactly like—nothing." The hostess sat back. "There was never anything in the least like her. To begin with, she is fair and young and slim. She is ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... was more accustomed to society than the others, and became, naturally, a sort of leader. He knew just what to do, and just how to do it,—how to get into the salon when he arrived, and how to greet his hostess. But the rest knew how to follow suit, and did it, and, though some of them were a little shy at first, not one was confused, and in a few minutes they were all quite at their ease. By the time the brief formality of being received was over, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... librarian is much "dressed up" and can take time to play that she is an agreeable hostess, all children, whether little aristocrats or arabs, enter into the civilized spirit of the occasion ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... expression to the opinion that "it was time to go hum." The female members of the party acquiescing, they quietly departed. And as her husband called on his way home from the shop to escort her, Ruth, shortly after, bade her kind host and hostess good-night. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... upstairs and stay there a minute till I get rid of Mrs. Frost," Lynn whispered smiling as her hostess let her in. "I've come to spend the day with you, and she'll stay till she's told you all the news and there won't be any left ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... knew that he had loved in his youth a woman who had a beautiful voice, he understood nothing of music and never talked about it. As for Lady Maud, Margaret saw much less of her than she had expected; the hostess was manifestly preoccupied, and was, moreover, obliged to give more of her time to her guests than would have been necessary if they had been of the younger generation or if the season had ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... Charles Kean" was otherwise known as Ellen Tree. Throughout the play, the Hostess is called by her Henry IV ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... on a visit only, or in the employment of the proprietor of a house in which he or she resides, should have their letters addressed first to themselves, and underneath their own name should be that of the owner of the house—their host or hostess, master or mistress. Under a guest's name you should write "care of So-and-so," and under a servant's name "At John Robinson's Esq.," or "At Mrs. John Robinson's." You write a pretty hand, and ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... coat and hat, and take me across to my lodgings. See if I don't give you a chance," said Mrs. Duffer, who was also becoming somewhat merry under the influences of the moment. But she knew that it was her duty to do something for her young hostess, and, true woman as she was, thought that this was the best way of doing it. Tribbledale did as he was bid, though he was obliged thus to leave his lady-love and her new admirer together. "Do you really mean it?" said Clara, when she and ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Kate greeted her hostess, and looked about her for the guest of honor. It transpired that the affair was quite informal, after all. The Englishwoman was sitting in a tea-tent discoursing with a number of gentlemen who hung over her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... an alien, was moved with the good-will and kindness that sung through the very air and fearlessly I would have decorated any festive ghost that happened along. I looked to see where I might lay the offering I held in my hand. My hostess plucked my sleeve and pointed to a tiny tombstone under a camellia tree. I went closer and read the English inscription, "Dorothy Dale. Aged 2 years." There was a tradition that once in the long ago a missionary ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... leafy hats do bare, To reverence Winter's silver hair; A handsome hostess, merry host, A pot of ale now and a toast, Tobacco and a good coal fire, Are ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... noble hostess, nor shall sink With the three-thousandth curtsy; there the waltz, The only dance which teaches girls to think, Makes one in love even with its very faults. Saloon, room, hall, o'erflow beyond their brink, And long the latest of arrivals halts, 'Midst royal ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... faces of host and hostess suffered sudden eclipse; as a huge mahogany-and-white collie stepped majestically from the car at the heels ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... a fantasy arose in my mind, of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones, and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn; while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man, he laughed heartily, and pronounced my humor to be of ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... past ten, Christine leaned over to her hostess, and said: "Would you care at all if I deserted ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... what had happened at Weymore: his hostess had forgotten that he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of soul had been acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew that the visitors who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost always those whom their hosts forget to send for. Yet to say Mrs. Culme had forgotten ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... into that now." Her ladyship cuts Adrian's family very short. Consider her memories of bygones! No wonder she became acutely alive to her duties as a hostess. She had created a precedent in this matter, though really her husband scarcely knew anything about her affaire de coeur with Adrian's father thirty years ago. It was not a hanging matter, but she could not object to the young ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and the man in mufti sat down again. "The last time I saw her she had a concert for the wounded at her house. A slightly bow-legged woman of great bulk was singing about her soldier lover, who saved her icckle bruvver. My hostess cried—she's that type. Only a little of course; ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... parties, Gerrit Smith, Garrison, Phillips, Pillsbury, Remond, Foster, Douglass, representing all the reforms, met in turn at Miss Mott's dinner-table, she had the advantage of hearing popular questions discussed from every standpoint. And Miss Mott was not merely hostess at her table, but on all occasions took a leading part in the conversation. All of us who enjoyed her friendship and hospitality deeply feel her loss ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years she had been without a mother, and she would receive callers at her father's house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation of a practised hostess. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
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