|
|
|
More "Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would have made to this pert speech was cut short by a loud cry of pain or terror from the old half-dismantled barn on the other side of the road. All eyes were at once turned in that direction, and beheld Joe Fairthorn rushing at full speed down the bank, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... 's a summerish day, and not feelin' just as pert as I oughter I reckon I 'll ride a right smart piece with you for ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... enemies said it reminded them of snakes. Her eyes were of a darker shade of ashen grey, verging on hazel. Her mouth was mobile, with thin lips and an expressive corner—the left-hand corner—and at this moment it suggested pert inquiry. Some people thought she had an expressive face, but then some people are singularly superficial in their mode of observation. There was really no power of expressing any feeling in the small, delicately cut face. It all lay in the mouth, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... a beauty in her youth, and there were those who placed confidence in the rumour. Mrs. Stornaway did so herself, and it had been intimated that it was this excellent lady who had vouched for the truth of the statement in the first instance; but this report having been traced to a pert young relative who detested and derided her, might have had its origin in ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The pert vivacity of La Fille at Montreuil was all we could find there worth remarking: it filled up my notions of French flippancy agreeably enough; as no English wench would so have answered one to be sure. She had complained of our avant-coureur's behaviour. "Il parle sur le bant ton, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... not till my mother remembered that if she did not see herself that my bed was well aired I should certainly lose the use of my limbs, and therefore disappeared with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, who seemed to think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I told my father of my ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against ridicule ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... dead silence after Betty had read these few words of Christina Rossetti. The girls glanced from one to another. For a minute or so, at least, they could not be frivolous. Then Olive made a pert remark; another girl laughed; and the cloud, small at present as a man's hand, seemed to vanish. Betty replaced her book on Olive's book-shelf, and sat quite still and quiet. She knew she was a wet blanket—not the life and soul of the meeting, as was generally ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... being a light-haired, stiff-necked, free and easy sort of footman, with a swaggering air and pert face, had attracted Mr. Weller's special attention at first, but when he began to come out in this way, Sam felt more than ever disposed to cultivate his acquaintance; so he launched himself into the conversation at once, with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... from indulging them in many rather doubtful ways. Chief among his foibles stood curiosity. He was a born gossip; and life, and especially those parts of it in which he had no experience, interested him to the degree of passion. He was a pert, invincible questioner, pushing his inquiries with equal pertinacity and indiscretion; he had been observed, when he took a letter to the post, to weigh it in his hand, to turn it over and over, and to study the address with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spoke to him tenderly, telling him that he had come from a friend with a little money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At first, on seeing Pierre's cassock, the old man had growled some coarse words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: "Well, then, I'll willingly drink a drop," he said distinctly, "and have a bit of bread with it, if there's the needful; for I've lost taste of both for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... assigned as a cause, We were all much too heavy to gallope and waltz. What impertinence this, want of grace to ascribe To the Lord of the whole Lepidopterous tribe; I too'll give a ball, and such folks to chastise, I'll not be at home to these pert butterflies. Bid the Empress[3] come hither, and we'll talk about What arrangements to make ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... low cottage viewed from inland, and a tall, grim structure seen from the sea. On a higher level stands St. George's, once a church, but years ago promoted to a cathedral-dignity, making Freetown proud as Barchester Towers. We shall presently pass it and its caricature, the pert little Wesleyan church to its east. The extreme west of the triangle-base is occupied by the gaol. No longer a 'barn-like structure faced by a black wall,' it is a lengthy scatter of detached buildings, large enough to accommodate half the population, and distinguished ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the deferential lover with more delicate or graceful attention. Poor fellow, the pert, intruding sparrows plague him abominably; and really it becomes almost an affair of police that some measures should be adopted for their exclusion. He is subject to fits, too, and suddenly, without the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... words of entreaty upon his sister, but seized her in his arms, and pulling the coverlet in which she had huddled herself up with her pert chin on her knees, more closely about her, he strode along the passage with her in his arms till he stopped at an open door leading into a large chamber which looked ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... England. The grown-up people often fancy that cold reserve, and an assumption of great state, indicate high birth and breeding. The younger branches seem frequently to think that there is no such thing at home as the period of adolescence; consequently, you often see a pert young master deliver his unasked opinion and behave before his seniors and superiors as though he wanted to intimate that he was wiser in ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a young girl, or very young woman. It is one of the prettiest words in the Nipponese language; it seems almost as if there were a little pout in the very sound—a pretty, taking little pout, such as they put on, and also as if a little pert physiognomy were described by it. I shall often make use of it, knowing none other in our own language that conveys ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... A pert, petulant young clerk, continually fooling with the mate, swearing at the stevedores and laboring men, who regard him ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... was a mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the hussar ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Come, Miss Pert, you must mind your behaviour," says Florence; "remember, Mr Tankardew is a gentleman and ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... the afternoon he caught sight of his house (some of our folks was right behind, and they saw him), and he stood right up in the sleigh and shook his fist, he was so mad; but afterwards he bu'st out laughin'. It did look kind of curi's; it wa'n't bigger than a front entry, and it set up so pert right there on the heater-piece, as if he was calc'latin' to farm it. The folks said Susan Ellen covered up her face in her shawl and began to cry. I s'pose the pore thing was discouraged. Joseph was awful mad,—he was kind of laughing and cryin' together. Our folks stopped and asked him ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of candle-shape, joined in batteries of six or twelve, with a pert handle at one side, and tiny holes at the tips, through which the wick-ends were thrust, by help of a long broom-straw. Well in place they were drawn taut, the reeds so placed as to hold the wicks centrally, then tallow melted with ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... action, the readiness, and above all the downright courage of the little woman, had its effect. A roar of sympathetic applause followed the act. "Cut and run while you can," she whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without altering the other's attitude of pert and saucy defiance toward the audience. But even as she spoke the poet tottered and sank fainting upon the stage. Then she threw a despairing whisper behind the scenes, "Ring down ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh bear-track near a spring below ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip of her tongue, but ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... by the tossing up of caps; and by these harbingers I knew who were coming. When my palfrey eyed them askance for their clamorousness, and shrank somewhat back, they quarrelled with him almost before they saluted me, and asked him many pert questions. What a pleasant spot, Sidney, have you chosen here for meditation! A solitude is the audience-chamber of God. Few days in our year are like this; there is a fresh pleasure in every fresh posture of the limbs, in every turn ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... heroine of her, especially at noon, when her father was in New York and she, consequently, was alone. They pitied her, in a covert sort of fashion, because her father was going to get married again, especially Mrs. White and Lillian. Lillian was a very pretty girl, with a pert carriage of blond head, and a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it wears no outer sign; No more the signet of the mighty line Stamps the great brow for all the world to know. Shrunken the mould of manhood is, and lo! Fragments and fractions of the old divine, Men pert of brain, planned on a mean design, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... in her new linsey-woolsey and shining bandana as a turban, started off in great glee for the Court House. That she might appear there fresh, brisk, and pert, she was not suffered to walk, but Washington, the coachman, was ordered to drive her in the ark of the plantation wagon. Joe, smart, smiling, and newly-equipped in clothes, sat by her side, scarcely knowing whether he had best share in his mother's uncommon gaiety, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... it clear that it is not the reporters but the owners of the papers that should be censured. With the exception of a few garrulous and gushing geese, who think it smart to ask pert and meaningless questions, the male reporters that I have met have not only been serious and intelligent, but men with whom I have discussed literature, politics and religion; but it would not pay their editors, I presume, to publish conversations of this character. On the front page of ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... hold! before I close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean. Oh, had I Shadwell's second bays, Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays,— Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow I never missed your works till now,— I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, That only way you please the Nine; But since I chance to want these two, I'll make the songs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... deserted all that afternoon, for Psyche sat in the orchard drawing squirrels on the wall, pert robins hopping by, buttercups and mosses, elves and angels; while May lay contentedly enjoying sun and air, sisterly care, and the "pretty things" she loved so well. Psyche did not find the task a hard ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the heroine, who drove between them in a hansom and pair and received the shots in its panels! Out West, too, he could probably put more money in his pocket if he were disposed to put his pride there too. One pert youth in Arizona preferred to lose my order for cigars rather than bring the box to me for selection; he said "he'd be darned if he'd sling boxes around for me; I could come and choose for myself." However, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... child, said she, in drollery, don't be too pert neither, I beseech thee. Thou wilt not find thy master's sister half so ready to take thy freedoms, as thy mannerly master is!—So, a little of that modesty and humility that my mother's waiting-maid used to ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Well, Admiral, it may be the case; but still there is no excuse for your folly: and mark me, Sir Gilbert, I will not have that pert minx, Lucy Bargrove, closeted with my daughter Agnes. As to the boy, it is a downright puppy and fool, or, to speak less plebeianly, is a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... under the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing, would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open, seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert, gay little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones, bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the white traces ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... cried Lionel, hurriedly (he was afraid some one might come, and then he would be snatched unceremoniously away from the open door, and the beggar sent smartly about his business by one of the pert-tongued maids); "but is it for ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... he seemed known, and several came to greet him and some to whisper in his ear. At last a pert boy in a satin suit that was striped in the Imperial livery of black and yellow, pushed his way through ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Armada leaves me no repose," he said; "I can think of nothing else. I don't content myself with what I have written, but write again and again, although in great want of light. I hear that the Armada has sunk and captured many English ships, and is refitting in a Scotch pert. If this is in the territory, of Lord Huntley, I hope he will stir up the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the variety is quite astonishing. It appears like a large Shop full of toys, work-baskets, Columns, little Cottages, pyramids, mounts—in short, what is there in the form of a Monument which may not there be found? A pert little Column with a fanciful top, crowned by a smart wire basket filled with roses, marked the grave, I concluded, of some beautiful young girl of 15 or 16. Lo and behold! it was placed there to commemorate "un ancien Magistrat ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Now your fader an' moder are honahing dar moder, an' you are goin' to hab a chance ter honah dem an' your granma, too. You will hab temptations in de streets ter be pert an' idle, ter stop an' talk to dis one and ter answer back to dat one in a way you shouldn't. But if you go along quiet an' steady, an' do what you're tole, an' be car'ful 'bout de money an' de messages an' de orders an' so forth, you will reflect honah on us all an' 'specially ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... quickness: "I am not to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious, little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form." And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... mutual dependence upon each other. Not that he placed the slightest value on Waitstill's opinion of him, or cared in the smallest degree what she, or any one else in the universe, thought of his conduct; but she certainly did appear to advantage when contrasted with the pert little hussy who had just left the premises. Also, Waitstill loomed large in his household comforts and economies, having a clear head, a sure hand, and being one of the steady-going, reliable sort that can be counted on in emergencies, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "Ye be a pert girl, Tessibel, and I were a cuss for trying to scare ye—but the brindle bull has got ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... fine arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query "A quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat hardly echoed the note ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... Pert," said her mother, laughing. "I wish you would learn to be more steady and to remember what is ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... them, too, when their sweethearts came along, and seen—oh, yes, many, many things have I seen, and many, many things have I heard of those fair young ladies of quality. She belongs to them, and she likes that good-for-nothing, pert little Susy Hopkins! Yet it don't matter to me. Susy shall have my good graces if she has secured those of Miss ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... dead sorry for her having to work so hard! It's a comfort to her now to see you doin' so well. Where have been now? I saw you comin' out of the doctor's office just now—anybody sick? You're not looking as pert as usual yourself—you haven't been powdering' your face, I hope! No one sick, eh? Just a friendly call then, was it? See here, Pearl—when I was young, girls did not do the chasin', we let the men do that, and I'm here to tell you it's the best way. And look here, there's enough ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... is the part of the tale which leaves a melancholy impression; Goldsmith has so determined it—and to his judgment we bow implicitly. Had any other author so wretchedly disposed of his heroine, in a work not professedly tragic, we should have been pert as critics usually are. Mrs Primrose is certainly here too young. We cannot keep our eyes off Olivia; and see, the scoundrel has slyly taken her innocent hand, and the other is put up to her neck in such modest doubt of the liberty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... tell me where to shear, for she had played In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride To keep them in their beauty. Plague I say On their new-fangled whimsies! we shall have A modern shrubbery here stuck full of firs And your pert poplar trees;—I could as soon Have plough'd my father's grave as cut ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about it for me. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... diatribe concerning the lively Judith: "Surely you remember her, Jeff. She used to come here selling blackberries when she was a kid—a little barefooted girl and as pert as you please even then. After old Dick Buck died she used to trap rabbits and bring them here for sale and sometimes fish. It always made me mad for Aunt Em'ly to encourage her by making Mother buy the things. I think poor persons should ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... times, fair game for their stings and arrows. In one of the northern hotels, there used to be a portly and rubicund waiter who might have passed for the High Priest of the Goddess of Health. His face shone, if I may say so, with the radiance of perfect digestion. A pert commercial, one day, approached him with an affected look of deep concern and said, "Well, I hope you're keeping better," accompanying the remark with a dig in the waiter's stomach. The waiter, who had never known a minute's ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... he uttered them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... I'd have got out of the scrape at any price," said he, bold as brass. "But I'm sorry for that beautiful creature. She must lead a beastly life, between a silly, overdressed woman and a pert minx. Poor child, she's evidently as hard up as I am, or she wouldn't stand it. She's miserable with ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was rude and noisy, when I tried so hard to be still. I made some hateful remark about her in the hall, which she overheard, and when Mrs. Lindsey scolded me for it, saying she was a very wealthy lady from Florida, and accustomed to every attention at home, I said back some pert things, I suppose, for she threatened to write and tell you, and so I thought I'd come and ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... one of these journeys, if any strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the whole will read a work today, Of moderate sense, with any pleasure? And as regards the dear young people, they Pert and precocious are beyond ...
— Faust • Goethe
... He was tired of the house, tired of the frozen garden, tired of scolding the slovenly girl who pottered around all day in a boudoir cap and slovenly wrapper. Tired of Anna's rebellious face and pert answers. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... There's a pert little poppet called Polly, Who frequently falls into folly! She's a terrible tongue For a 'creetur' so young, But if she were dumb she'd ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... performances, was determined to do the thing in style. Bertha and Carmel between them evolved a poster. It was painted in sepia on the back of one of Dulcie's school drawings, sacrificed for the purpose. It represented the profile of a rather pert looking young person with a tip-tilted nose and an eye several sizes larger than was consistent with the usual anatomy of the human countenance. Lower down, in somewhat shaky lettering, was set forth the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... a readiness that was practically pert. "To have it, first. Not, at any rate, to go on not having it. Then ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... pert stare of the village girls, the glimpses of happy homes caught through the windows, and the noisy stir of life, only made more striking the contrast of her own lonely lot. Gladly would she hasten back to her own silent fireside, where the cats, at least, were glad of her ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... simple. You have an instrument ready to your hands. You can do just what you like with him—make an Italian of him; make him renounce his engagement to this pert little Lena of Lenkenstein, break his sword, play Arlecchino, do what you please. He is not required for any outrageous performance. A week, and Angelo will have recovered his strength; you likewise may resume the statuesque demeanour which you have been exhibiting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... back our old chair, the rocker with the red roses onto it. Seems ter me them roses must 'a' knowed all the time that this was a-goin' ter happen. They was jest as pert an' ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... a question, others a felicity in replying to the motive which prompted the question. In one case you get an answer addressed to your understanding; in the other, an answer which smites like a slap in the face. Thus, when a pert skeptic asked Martin Luther where God was before He created heaven, Martin stunned his querist with the retort,—"He was building hell for such idle, presumptuous, fluttering, and inquisitive spirits as you." And everybody will recollect the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... owed this—Mr. an' Mis' Holly did—and they had agreed ter pay it next Sat'day. And they was all right, too. They had it plum saved in the bank, an' was goin' ter draw it Thursday, ter make sure. An' they was feelin' mighty pert over it, too, when ter-day along comes the news that somethin's broke kersmash in that bank, an' they've shet it up. An' nary a cent can the Hollys git now—an' maybe never. Anyhow, not 'fore it's too ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... began with Jemima. They were all pretty, but she was a love—yet there was an awkwardness about them that convinced me they were not of the bon ton of Philadelphia. The answers to all my questions were quick, pert, and given with an air of assumed consequence; at the same time I observed a mode of expression which, though English, was ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... splendid achievement in Berlin woolwork, that was to be the glory of an approaching charity bazaar, was rapidly advancing towards completion. The design was a group of dogs, after Landseer, and Miss Granger was putting in the pert black nose of a Skye-terrier as the gentlemen entered. The two ladies were as far apart as they well could be in the spacious room, and had altogether an inharmonious air, Mr. Granger thought; but then he was nervously anxious that these two ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... after Quebec it is English. There are weather-beaten farm-houses, rolling country, thickets of trees, little hills green and grey in the distance, decorous small fields, orchards, and, I swear, a hedge or two. Most of the towns we went through are a little too vivacious or too pert to be European. But there seemed to be real villages occasionally, and the land had ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... I will particularly caution you against either using, believing, or approving them. They are the common topics of witlings and coxcombs; those, who really have wit, have the utmost contempt for them, and scorn even to laugh at the pert things that those would-be wits say upon ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her—only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan—the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... an exciting event occurred. It concerned Susy's pony. Percy Eastman said he was called Wings "because he hadn't any feet." Susy was vexed at this remark, and Prudy, taking her part, said, "Percy is such a pert boy;" adding next moment, "What is pert?" ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... out so young Wid a look in its face like a sassy tongue, Den it grows light-headed wid self-conceit Wid a flighty ol' age, for full defeat. An' it ain't by itself, pert chillen, in dat— No, it ain't by itself ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... English correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at Marseilles has the French. For the Italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to Jew-German,—the other languages having been cut off from him,—and, by means of his frightful ciphers, brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents into a hearty laugh at the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... news for me from Unterwald? What of my father? 'Tis not to be borne Thus to be pent up like a felon here! What have I done so heinous that I must Skulk here in hiding, like a murderer? I only laid my staff across the fists Of the pert varlet, when before my eyes, By order of the governor, he tried To drive away ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... others in discoloured travel-stained garments, who pressed about the soprano with cries of joyous recognition. He was evidently an old favourite of the band, for a duenna in tattered velvet fell on his neck with genial unreserve, a pert soubrette caught him by the arm the duenna left free, and a terrific Matamor with a nose like a scimitar slapped him on the back with a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she gave him the full benefit of her eyes—both of the fond, appealing glance into ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... half-dead, and we asked no questions until she told us. She's been sick and fretful since, but I guess there's nothing you can do. When we can't keep a sick woman who has done good work for us a while we'll give up the business. She'll be pert ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... continued Tom, "Cockney is universally known to be the contemptuous appellation given to an uneducated native of London, brought into life within the sound of Bow bell—pert and conceited, yet truly ignorant, they generally discover themselves by their mode of speech, notwithstanding they have frequent opportunities of hearing the best language; the cause, I apprehend, is a carelessness of every thing but the accumulation of money, which is considered so important ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... being sorry when he saw him stretched out stiff near his home in the woodpile. "He was a pert little rascal;" said Jim. "I did kind o' hate to kill him; but he should have stayed with his own folks, if he wanted to be let alone. It's too ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... sunshine of the morn A butterfly (but newly born) Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings (all glorious to behold) Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls o'er the grass, whom when he spies, In wrath ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... all the care That waits upon a favourite heir, Ne'er felt correction's rigid hand; Indulged to disobey command, In pampered ease his hours were spent; He never knew what learning meant. Such forward airs, so pert, so smart, Were sure to win his lady's heart; Each little mischief gained him praise; How pretty were his fawning ways! 10 The wind was south, the morning fair, He ventured forth to take the air. He ranges all the meadow round, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... spring it one of these days when we're hard up for copy. Jack Frost must be a married man, did you see him try to cover up the show windows with his little traceries the other day when the shopping was at its height? There was a pert little hat in a window on Walnut Street we were very much afraid someone might see; the frost saved us. Don't forget to put Red Cross seals on your letters. Delightful to watch the faces on the streets at Christmas time. Everybody trying ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... about my poor daughter Amy, and what a sprightly, pert piece she was, and how dem awful Secesh took my poor chile ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... womb, Grown old in fraud, though yet in manhood's bloom, 70 Adopting arts by which gay villains rise, And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud; A pert, prim, prater of the northern race,[16] Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face, Stood forth,—and thrice he waved his lily hand, And thrice he twirled his tye, thrice stroked his band:— At Friendship's call (thus oft, with traitorous aim, Men void of faith usurp Faith's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... filling his water-bag. They both hoped to pull wool off dead sheep and make some more money that way. They had quite made up their minds about what they wanted to get: it must be house plants for ma; but still they both wished they could get some little thing for pa. They were not pert or forward in any way, but they answered readily and we all drew them ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... mild and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were waddling ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... most material leaves of the whole book. This, you will allow, was provoking; but I said nothing till the rest of the honest company were gone, and then gave the fellow a gentle rebuke, who, instead of expressing any concern, made me a pert answer, 'That servants must have their diversions as well as other people; that he was sorry for the accident which had happened to the book, but that several of his acquaintance had bought the same for a shilling, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... to prolong satire without wit. But the leadership of instinct, the conscious expression of mechanism, is not merely a necessity in the Life of Reason, it is a safeguard. Piety, in spite of its allegories, contains a much greater wisdom than a half-enlightened and pert intellect can attain. Natural beings have natural obligations, and the value of things for them is qualified by distance and by accidental material connections. Intellect would tend to gauge things impersonally by their intrinsic ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... own, and whom he permitted familiarly to approach him, he was exceedingly affable, and with such he frequently jested, and hilariously enjoyed the piquant story in mirthful humor; but this was for the few. He was a proud man, and was at no pains to conceal his contempt for pert folly or intrusive ignorance, wherever and in whomsoever he ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of the gardens. There was but a happy sense of green and gold, with blue topping all; of twinkling, fluent, tossing leaves and of the gray under side of elongated, straining leaves; a sense of pert bird-noises, and of a longer shadow than usual slanting before him, and a sense of youth and well-being everywhere. Certainly it was not a morning wherein ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... write. But I have known her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in which she did so she put the girl's principles to a further and unusual test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young woman—and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a rich draper in Shrewsbury—who had got through her trials pretty tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly, at the end of the last Commandment, "An't please your ladyship, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... self-possessed youth of twenty hardly seemed to expect an answer; but the man addressed in this pert manner, though the senior of the pair by six years, felt that the emotion throbbing in his heart must be allowed to bubble forth lest he ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... unlike our friend Edward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perking in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full growth, (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll,) Robert at fifteen would have made two of him,—such was the new ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... door, cautiously (as Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... neighbors. It was pretentiously ugly with its mansard roof, intricate porches, balconies and bay windows that had evidently been added after the original architectural atrocity had been committed. At her first glance as the pert and frilly maid opened the door it seemed as though the whole house were filled with innumerable elaborate draperies and fat-framed paintings and much stuffed furniture. While she waited for the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... heronsewe betoure Egrete Corlewe wodecok Pert[r]igge Plover Snytys quaylys ffretours leche la{m}me stewed Kidde rosted Veneson rosted heronsewe betoure pigeons [e]Rabetts [f]a bake mete Stokke-dovys stewed cony ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments: but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a too-studied desire to please; each in high good humour with herself; an open-mouth affectation in both, to show white teeth, as if the principal excellence; and to invite amorous familiarity, by ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... we find her rather too conscious of her own superiority; not only was she the beauty, she was also the Muse of the village; had she been less vain she must have been unnatural. Yet, under all her pert provincialism, we can detect that mysterious quality which distinguishes the good letter-writer. She writes to please two people—her correspondent and herself; she has no need, therefore, to canvass general truths, but can afford to be personal ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Birds in Cages;—they are, when well, uniformly as happy as the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no, to burst out into song—to hop about so pleased and pert—to play such fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs—to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishing to get ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... contribute, remains, I believe, pretty much the same as when I left it. I have seen, within this twelvemonth almost, the change which has been produced upon a boy of eight or nine years of age, upon being admitted into that school; how, from a pert young coxcomb, who thought that all knowledge was comprehended within his shallow brains, because a smattering of two or three languages and one or two sciences were stuffed into him by injudicious treatment at home, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... he rode cautiously down the stony track, among thick hazel copses; occasionally, through a gap, he had a view of a great valley, all wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road became more and more ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her head, and uttered with pert vivacity: "I never likes compliments, sir! But the young ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... words always seem more pert upon paper than they did upon her lips. Her naivete, the twinkling light in her eyes, and the smile flitting about her mouth, always modified greatly ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... voices. Tracey Tanner ambled into view on the other side of the street and beamed at him generously, his round red face resembling, Duncan thought, more than anything else a summer sun rising through mist. Josie Lockwood (he was to discover her name later) passed with her pert little nose ostentatiously pointed away from him; none the less he detected a gleam in the corner of her eye.... Others went by, singly or in groups, all more or less ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... A pert young Mouse, to whom the world was new, Had once a near escape, if all be true. He told his mother, as I now tell you: "I crossed the mountains that beyond us rise, And, journeying onwards, bore me As one who had a great career before me, When lo! two creatures met my wondering ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... not infrequently have accused American children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated." Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are children in America, as there ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... corrected Ricky Ralestone somewhat indifferently. "Can't you do better than that?" She gave her small, pert hat an exasperated tweak which brought the unoffending bowl-shaped bit of white felt into its proper position over her right eyebrow. "How long does it take Rupert to ask a ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded 'two shilling each horse ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... splendid ball, She never blazed in courtly grandeur, But like her native lily's bloom, She cheerfu' gilds her humble home; The pert reply, the modish air, To soothe the soul were never granted, When modest sense and love are there, The guise o' art may well be wanted; O Fate! gi'e me to be my bride The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... strawberries that succeeded them; and oh! what mirth went on all the time! Kate was chattering fastest of all, and loudest—not to say the most nonsensically. It was not nice nonsense—that was the worst of it— it was pert and saucy. It was rather the family habit to laugh at Mary de la Poer for ways that were thought a little fanciful; and Kate caught this up, and bantered without discretion, in a way not becoming ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rubens and Her Son and Daughter" was really painted to honor the boy. It has always been the custom in Europe to pay special attention to the boys in the home and keep the girls very much in the background. It is very easy to see how pert the little Albert Rubens is, and how subdued and meek is his sister. The boy has the "Lord of Creation" air that would not be good for him in America. We love the picture, for Rubens, the father, shows us plainly the old idea that the boy rules the home. Naturally the father would ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... the ground in helpless languor lay, Unheeding in his weariness the tumult of the day; In vain a pert mosquito buzzed madly in his ear, His thoughts were far away from earth—its sounds he could not hear; Nor noted he the kindly glance with which his brigadier Looked down upon his manly form when chance had brought him near. It was a glorious autumn night on which the moon looked ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... condition to go back to the house, and so did not return until it was time for supper. He found a good meal awaiting him, and his wife on hand as pert ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... to do with it. It was simply an intensely personal exhibition, and the person making it happened to be fascinating. She might have offended the taste of certain people—Ransom could imagine that there were other Boston circles in which she would be thought pert; but for himself all he could feel was that to his starved senses she irresistibly appealed. He was the stiffest of conservatives, and his mind was steeled against the inanities she uttered—the rights and wrongs of women, the equality of the sexes, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... which is in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold, I am the nose of the God of the winds, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the Eye (Utchat) of Ra is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month(89) of the season Pert (i.e., the season of growing) [in the presence of the divine lord of this earth].(90) I have seen the Eye of Ra when it was full in Annu, therefore let not evil befall me in this land and in this Hall of double Maati, because I, even ...
— Egyptian Literature
... peacocks; in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly virgins; in which rogues will sometimes triumph, and honest folks, let us hope, come by their own; in which there will be black crape and white favours; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... should be taken away the instant it becomes disobedient. It soon learns that it can not "stay with mother" unless it is well-behaved. This means that it learns self-control in babyhood. Not only must children obey, but they must never be allowed to "show off" or become pert, or to contradict or to answer back; and after having been told "no," they must never be allowed by persistent nagging ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... few. What about the wreck? No, let's hear from the date of the marriage." And Mr. Slade, inwardly surprised at Mr. Reed's patience, yet unable to forego the luxury of being as familiar and pert as possible, settled himself to listen to the story which Mr. Reed had permitted ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that," said Miss Amanda, "it looks forward and pert. It is their place to say 'Good morning,' not yours. You have no occasion to speak to your betters, and, anyway, children should be seen and ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw her spirit ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... a suppressed longing and eager interest, her eyes sparkling, in the midst of all the chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals—Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened. In this way she could live their life ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... rude old favourites, too, with slight comment—little being required. And of such, surely "Cock Robin" may well be awarded the place of honour—a song which, together with the more elaborate tale of "The Babes in the Wood," has done more to make its pert and dapper red-waistcoated subject the general favourite he is with old and young, than any virtue that may be claimed for the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... and they saw him), and he stood right up in the sleigh and shook his fist, he was so mad; but afterwards he bu'st out laughin'. It did look kind of curi's; it wa'n't bigger than a front entry, and it set up so pert right there on the heater-piece, as if he was calc'latin' to farm it. The folks said Susan Ellen covered up her face in her shawl and began to cry. I s'pose the pore thing was discouraged. Joseph was awful mad,—he was kind of laughing and cryin' together. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the maid's pert "good-morning" seemed to be in very bad taste and to properly reprove her he assumed a grave, dignified air out of which he was promptly startled by ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the lay-preacher's doings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... seemed to me a foolish answer as well as a pert one, for, besides that I was ever a Guelph and a Red, I think that politics have no business to interfere with the pleasant commerce and suave affairs of love, so I answered her reprovingly. "Kisses have no causes," said I; "I will kiss Guelph-wise; I will kiss Ghibelline-wise; ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in Cages;—they are, when well, uniformly as happy as the day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no, to burst out into song—to hop about so pleased and pert—to play such fantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs—to sleep so soundly, and to awake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn of light? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the other sentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... were Pantaloon, a merchant of Venice, a doctor of laws from Bologna, and two servants, known to us as Harlequin and Columbine. When we add to these a couple of sons, one virtuous and the other profligate; a couple of daughters, and a pert, intriguing chambermaid, we have nearly the whole dramatis personae of these plays. The extempore dialogue by which the plot was developed was replete with drollery and wit, and there was no end to the novelty ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... who takes the opposite view, and declares that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture of threadbare thievery; a trifling transcript of trite twaddle and trapessing tittle-tattle.... Like everything that falls from her pen, it is pert, shallow, and conceited, a farrago of ignorance, indecency, and blasphemy, a tag-rag and bob-tail style of writing—like a ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... cries an officer of the deck, hailing a young gentleman forward. Mr. Pert advances, touches his hat, and remains in an attitude of deferential suspense. "Go and tell the boatswain I want him." And with this perilous errand, the middy hurries away, looking ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Caesar found her distasteful, pert and impertinent; to his friend, on the contrary, she had seemed very attractive, very ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... my wanting the character," cried Julia, with angry quickness: "I am not to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form." And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting small compassion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... through with envy of one who was in a position to be unkind to Zuleika. "Happy maid!" he murmured. Zuleika replied that he was stealing her thunder: hadn't she envied the girl at his lodgings? "But I," she said, "wanted only to serve you in meekness. The idea of ever being pert to you didn't enter into my head. You show a side of your character as ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... think well of him? But, then, he is an editor, and authors always have a sort of affinity for gentlemen of the press," says a pert young creature, twisting her head on one side, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... ourselves down in the cow stalls where it's low-like—just dirt floor—and then we just naturally went a-whooping under the barn floor when the Yanks come. And we didn't know Cap'n Sawyer by his voice nohow. We heard 'im discoursing, and we allowed it was a mighty pert man, but we didn't know that ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... and clinging with a desperate grasp to his uncomfortable perch. A humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, airy little character that we had so often seen flirting with the flowers. He was evidently a humming-bird in adversity, and whether he ever would hum again looked to us exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent out to have him taken in. When the friendly hand ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... soldier on the ground in helpless languor lay, Unheeding in his weariness the tumult of the day; In vain a pert mosquito buzzed madly in his ear, His thoughts were far away from earth—its sounds he could not hear; Nor noted he the kindly glance with which his brigadier Looked down upon his manly form when chance had brought him near. It was a glorious ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to take a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly. "I don't know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never HAVE. I think you're cruel. I don't like you!" Then, after this deliverance, which might have been that of a vulgarly pert little girl in the street, she hugged Mrs. Grose more closely and buried in her skirts the dreadful little face. In this position she produced an almost furious wail. "Take me away, take me away—oh, take ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... you are not," laughed his companion. "He has as many cares as a fish has scales. And one, the greatest. That pert young Antyllus was over-ready with his tongue yesterday at Barine's. Poor fellow! He'll have to answer for it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pouertie in wit, Kingly poore flout. Will they not (thinke you) hang themselues to night? Or euer but in vizards shew their faces: This pert Berowne was out ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the side of kennels, we emerged upon the broad meadows and marshes from which rise in the distance the Roxbury and Brookline hills. The whole region is covered with bright, wooden houses. The villages have a pert, thrifty, contented air, which no suburbs in the world surpass. If the houses are very white and a village looks like a camp, it is because the instinct of the inhabitants assures them that they may strike their tents to-morrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as spry and pert as anybody. He seems to have recovered entirely from all his wounds; none of 'em have disfiggered him any, and his nerves have got over their ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... she had played In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride To keep them in their beauty. Plague I say On their new-fangled whimsies! we shall have A modern shrubbery here stuck full of firs And your pert poplar trees;—I could as soon Have plough'd my father's grave ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the palace amazement reigned throughout the Court at such a sudden and extraordinary change. Whereas formerly they had been accustomed to hear her give vent to silly, pert remarks, they now heard her express herself ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I could ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time's finger had anointed, and motherhood had etched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... because I masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack for ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... it will be only for a few days," Morgan replied, smiling a little at the pert sufficiency of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... my oats, I looked round. In the stall next to mine stood a little fat gray pony, with a thick mane and tail, a very pretty head, and a pert little nose. I put my head up to the iron rails at the top of my box, and said, "How do you ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... strikes them thorough, laying them at the point of death, always gasping for life. Thus it was with Moses, he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left, the forts and towers shall ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... K.—"Look at my pert wisehead! Knowest thou not, that he who mocks the words of the wise goes straight to hell, as happened to that disciple who laughed at the Rabbi Jochanan when he said that precious stones should be set in the gates of Jerusalem, three ells long and three ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... ever been as bald, or as pinched, or as skinny, or flourished such spare arms, or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as if he ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I'll kill you, I snap and I spring: If I only could catch you, You rude saucy thing! If you were not so little, So cunning and spry, I'd punish you quickly, Pert wretch! ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... passing, remonstrated with him by beating on the other side of the door. She was a pert young woman with a squeaky voice, and she thought she knew what was wrong with the occupant of 17. She had heard ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... stream floated the overturned canoe, already at a distance which made its recapture hopeless. A little in advance was a white straw hat, a pert bow acting as a sail. Not till that moment had it occurred to Peggy that her troubles were not yet over. Her gratitude for her escape from death was ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... summer house innocent of paint and built of old timber or some fragments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage-stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the seams with toad-stools and tight-sticking snails. To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two with plots of ground in front, laid out in angular beds with stiff box borders and narrow paths between, where footstep never strayed to make the gravel rough. Then came the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and as if she took every word I said in good part; bein' naterally so smart she would recognize the onselfishness and nobility of my mission, but I see that there wuz a real pert look on one of the ladies' faces as she said sunthin' to one of the other ones, and I mistrusted that they didn't like what I had said about that wall of theirn, and I went on to say to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in narrow streets, and between mean houses ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... ourselves behind a slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. Then the Tenderfoot ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... he arrived safe in the outer shop, where the books of the firm were exposed to sight, in process of being subscribed for by the trade. There a pert young man asked him to take a seat, while he carried his name to the publisher, and there for some time he waited, reading titles he found himself unable to lay hold of; and there, while he waited, the threatened rain began, and, ere he was admitted to the inner premises, such a black ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the poreblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp at night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling Hall, For thee, fair Justice, welcome all! Thus though my noon of life be passed, Yet let my setting sun, at last, Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! There ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... let Shakespeare alone," said the pert Benjy, "if you must quote, confine yourself ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale, pert face. "It ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... goes on well; all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them for myself. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... not say that your friend is pretty, graceful, good-natured; that she dresses becomingly, is rather cultivated in her tastes; that she is confident of herself, and a little conceited and imperious; that she is quick, and ready with somewhat pert answers; and that she is seen ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... watched them, too, when their sweethearts came along, and seen—oh, yes, many, many things have I seen, and many, many things have I heard of those fair young ladies of quality. She belongs to them, and she likes that good-for-nothing, pert little Susy Hopkins! Yet it don't matter to me. Susy shall have my good graces if she has secured those of ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... do I hear her," answered Mrs. Simpson, with a toss of her head; "but she must learn to speak respectful before I take any notice. I fully expect it's that pert little Miss Diana. They say she is called after one of the heathen gods; no wonder she is ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... no news for me from Unterwald? What of my father? 'Tis not to be borne, Thus to be pent up like a felon here! What have I done of such a heinous stamp, To skulk and hide me like a murderer? I only laid my staff across the fingers Of the pert varlet, when before my eyes, By order of the governor, he tried To drive away ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean. Oh, had I Shadwell's second bays, Or, Tate! thy pert and humble lays,— Ye pair, forgive me, when I vow I never missed your works till now,— I'd tear the leaves to wipe the shrine, That only way you please the Nine; But since I chance to want these two, I'll make the songs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I have been now describing affect the gravity of the lion; those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown, and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard plasters the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... anything," says downright Harry. "I never heard a young girl go on so. She made fun of everybody—hit about at young and old—so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so. And, do you know, sir, we had a sort of a quarrel, and I'm very glad you've told me she spoke kindly of me," says Harry, shaking his friend's hand, a ready boyish emotion glowing in his cheeks ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that she despised him for writing it. He half turned to Lady Poynter, but she was deep in conversation with her nephew. For a time he, too, concentrated his attention on the quail; but every one else was talking, and, though Barbara's challenge was too pert to be taken seriously, he felt that half-praise from her was more valuable than the adulation of women like Mrs. Shelley who were content to worship ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in Logie Pert, near Montrose, the son of a shoemaker, bred for the Church; was a disciple of Locke and Jeremy Bentham; wrote a "History of British India," "Elements of Political Economy," and an "Analysis of the Human Mind"; held an important lucrative post in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... suggests to him a parson fiddling when he ought to be praying; and following once more the lead of Newton, he remarks upon the Handel celebration as a piece of grotesque profanity. The name of science calls up to him a pert geologist, declaring after an examination ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... little amused by this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance. A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it could not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... that pert way. It sounds like insolence. That will not do, Mr Herrick, if you wish to get on in your profession. Now, sir, your orders were to stop by the landing-place, with the boat in charge, ready for my ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... quite as free and Nietzschean as it deemed itself, but yet cultivated and illuminated and refined, it nevertheless seemed exuberantly sound. The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom, the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive, little folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the close of "Tod und Verklaerung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wagner, the sultry ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of purer fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... was something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... whom, a rich young coxcomb enters to order a drug. His real intention is to see Grilletta. He is not slow to see, that Mengino loves her too, so he sends him into the drug kitchen, in order to have Grilletta all to himself. But the pert young beauty only mocks him, and at Mengino's return ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... "It was pert and unbecoming," said Father Francis, gravely, though a twinkle in his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very sorry, if this is so. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Anthony, and whispering, I warrant ye, filthy tales in his ear. Nothing can be more rueful than the patient's countenance; more forlorn than his beard; more pious than his eye, which forms a strong contrast to the pert winks and insidious glances of his persecutors; some of whom; I need not mention, are ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... but the pert Andrew was beforehand with him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with certain verses of the Bible; and when he had said these words, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... what I call lucky. I'm free t' confesh I haven't gotter shingle idea. But 'f you know, 's all right. W'en a man feels himself slightly 'tossicated, 's nozzin' like bein' in comp'ny of f'law 'at knows where 's goin'. 'Parts a highly 'gree'ble feelin' 'f conf'dence. Don't wanter 'splay any 'pert'nent cur'osity, Boffski, but p'raps 's no harm in askin' where 'tis 'at you ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... oddly. This was not the pert, saucy, little girl he had taken from Bender, nor the little playmate of the children, nor yet the quiet, domestic woman who had served him ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... got to be out of this place in half an hour, less. The fact is, Cyrus Carve has been extremely—er—pert. He's paid me a month's salary and I'm off at once. In under thirty minutes I shall be on ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... taxi-cab came to rest under the massive portico of Wilkins's, a chamberlain in white gloves bravely soiled the gloves by seizing the vile brass handle of its door. He bowed to Edward Henry and assisted him to alight on to a crimson carpet. The driver of the taxi glanced with pert and candid scorn at the chamberlain, but Edward Henry looked demurely aside, and then in abstraction mounted ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... at the expense of his neck, beside a "meikle stane"; and a melancholy old woman had hanged herself at the bush aboon the well, as the poem relates: all these matters the poet pressed into the service of the muse, and used them with a skill which adorns rather than oppresses the legend. A pert lawyer from Dumfries objected to the language as obscure: "Obscure, sir!" said Burns; "you know not the language of that great master of your own art—the devil. If you had a witch for your client you would not be ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with their pens and books before them; my three beauties in the van, now well humbled by a demeanour of consistent coolness, sat erect with their hands folded quietly on their knees; they had given up giggling and whispering to each other, and no longer ventured to utter pert speeches in my presence; they now only talked to me occasionally with their eyes, by means of which organs they could still, however, say very audacious and coquettish things. Had affection, goodness, modesty, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in her ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... bright, pert young thing, with just that dash of freedom in her manners which usually comes of the pursuit of her public calling; and it is only fair to Robbie's modesty to say that he had not deceived himself very grossly in his estimate of the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... twelve she saw him come along, having on the previous day made herself acquainted with his personality. He was a dapper pert little man, neat in his dress, and suave in his manners. Not at all like the detective of fiction as known to Mrs. Parry. There was no solemnity or hint of mystery about Mr. Steel. He would pass unnoticed in ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... in conversation, their utter worthlessness. The Gold of Chickaree is a continuation of Wych Hazel, and the two stories are as much alike as two halves of a slate pencil. Wych Hazel herself is rich and insufferably pert; her lover, Rollo, Dane, Duke, or Olaf, as he is called indifferently, is rich and in his ways 'masterful.' The earlier novel ends with the engagement of these two, and here is described their sudden marriage, which they forebore announcing even to their ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... a speech both stupid and pert in the mouth of another; but Donnegan knew how to flavor words with a touch of mockery of himself as well as another. There were two manners in which this speech could have been received—with a wink or with a smile. But it would have been impossible to hear it and ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... to one of the parties the matter was easily arranged. 'The beauty in question was a pert little Eutaw wench, that had been taken prisoner, in some war excursion, by a Shoshonie. She was readily ransomed for a few articles of trifling value; and forthwith figured about the camp in fine array, "with rings on her fingers, and bells on her toes," and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... write to your Excellency from L'Orient the 11th instant. On my journey hither, I met the Marquis de Castries, and obtained a hasty conference with him, in which I insisted principally on the necessity of a constant naval superiority on the American coast. He observed on his pert, that the dispositions of the fleet were already made; that it was not in his power to alter them; that it was necessary at the present juncture to make naval exertions in more places than one; that the French West India possessions, a nearer interest, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Green,'" he continues, "was a circumstance that was related to me by an eminent Oxford don, who is now a bishop. He had entered the room of Dr. Pusey, at Christ Church, and saw, as usual, the library table covered with books of divinity and learned tomes; but on the top of these was perched, in pert, cock-sparrow fashion, that shilling railway book that had recently been published, with the spectacled face of the Oxford Freshman on the cover. My friend told me that Dr. Pusey held up the book to him and said, that he had not only read it through, but that he kept it on his table so that he might ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you'll find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... and mossy bank There flows a clear and fairy stream; There the pert squirrel oft has drank, And thought, perhaps, ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the idee wuz — I never knew nothin' about it, nor how it got there. But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to Saratoga next summer; ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... power? "Four years I've wed; not one has passed in vain; Behold the fifth! behold a babe again! My wife's gay friends th' unwelcome imp admire, And fill the room with gratulation dire: While I in silence sate, revolving all That influence ancient men, or that befall; A gay pert guest—Heav'n knows his business—came; A glorious boy! he cried, and what the name? Angry I growl'd,—My spirit cease to tease, Name it yourselves,—Cain, Judas, if you please; His father's give him,—should you that explore, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... all her rambles by a diminutive nondescript kind of dog—a tiny, long-haired, silky looking creature, the colour of coffee freshly ground, no bigger than a large squirrel, with brilliant black eyes, bushy tail, and a pert little face, which greatly resembled ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... make you creak your joints," answered Louisa Helen with a pert little toss of her curly head as she passed him and stood by Rose Mary's table. "Miss Rose Mary, I wanter to show you this Sunday waist I've done made Maw and get you to persuade her some about it for me. I put this little white ruffle in the neck and sleeves ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... home the milk is coming; Honey's made while the bees are humming; Duck and drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake; And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... of those days of her mother when she was the pet and plaything of the guests, incited to say clever and pert things, which then were passed round and embellished till she neither knew them ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... met my Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat hardly echoed the note ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... of the town. At that time he often waltzed in a drawing-room, the windows of which looked upon the spray of the fountain—at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert, perky squirt that will never stir the heart or ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Julia (Scribonia's daughter), pert, witty, bold, and daring, was the darling of her father, whom she knew well how to amuse. Drusus, the younger son of Livia and Claudius Nero, was a bold handsome boy of winning manners and fine promise, generally noticed and loved. To these two ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... that, while in the water, the princess was very like other people. And, besides this, she was not so forward in her questions, or pert in her replies at sea as on shore. Neither did she laugh so much; and when she did laugh it was more gently. She seemed altogether more modest and maidenly in the water than out of it. But when the prince, who had really fallen in love when he fell in the lake, began to talk to her about ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... qualities, that only showed up her daughters' unamiable ones still more obviously, and she accordingly compelled the poor girl to do all the drudgery of the household. It was she who washed the dishes, and scrubbed down the stairs, and polished the floors in my lady's chamber and in those of the two pert misses, her daughters; and while the latter slept on good feather beds in elegant rooms, furnished with full-length looking-glasses, their sister lay in a wretched garret on an old straw mattress. Yet the poor thing bore this ill treatment very meekly, and ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much so. Yes, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... very deliberately, passed his thin, cramped old hand over his scant gray locks to his bald spot, climbed down stiffly from his stool, ambled to the center of the room, and, head cocked like a knowing old brown sparrow, regarded the pert Hortense over his spectacles and under his spectacles and, finally, through ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... 111, Daddy," said Miriam. "It's the other one is 109." And then evidently feeling that she had been pert: "Would you like me to play you ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... that one might swear The whole was made of woven air, Pert Fashion spreads her senseless sway Over the giddy and the gay (Who think, by showing all their charms, Lovers will fly into their arms), In thee shall Wit and Virtue find A friend more genial to their mind; And Modesty shall gain in thee ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... Of course the miller was not of the party, so we really have nothing more to do with him than we have with the rest of the throng that arrived on the train with these singled-out adventurers. But his influence traveled far, like a shadow reaching out after the heart of his spare, pert, large-eyed wife. She was not yet so far away from him that she dared move even her ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... might be termed a local Will-o'th-Wisp. He has been everything by turns, and nothing long. Now, a lean faced lad, "a mere anatomy, a mountebank, a thread bare juggler, a needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp looking wretch;" now acting the pert, bragging youth, telling quaint stories, and up to a thousand raw tricks; now tumbling and adventuring into manhood with yet the oil and fire and force of youth too strong for reason's sober guidance; and now—well and now—finding the checks of time ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... was not successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank. Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the outskirts ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... information, without a particle of it. Sir, I actually asked one of these fellows, "What was the nick to seven?" and he stared in my face and said he didn't know. He was hugely over-dressed in satin, rings, chains and so forth; and at the beginning of dinner was disposed to be rather talkative and pert; but my little sally silenced HIM, I promise you, and got up a good laugh at his expense too. "Leave George alone," said little Lord Cinqbars, "I warrant he'll be a match for any of you literary fellows." ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you, hussy? Well, I think I'll take pretty good care of you. Here, Humphrey, I leave this lady in your care. Now you may walk about the garden, Miss Pert; but Humphrey shall go with you wherever you go. So mind, honest Humphrey, I am obliged to go abroad for a little while; let no one but yourself come near her; don't be shame-faced, you booby, but keep close to her. And now, miss, let your lieutenant or any of his crew come near you ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... him"; and Fielding's own scholarship, irradiated by his wit, would assuredly have made him an ideal translator of Greek comedy. But the public of 1742 appears to have afforded very little encouragement to this scheme, preferring that "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert, Dialogue" of their own comedies, to which allusion is made ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... prescription on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills ought to do a lot for Helen May.) He glanced up at the great clock and unconsciously ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... new church, but Mary thought the church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... as a rule, about other folks' funerals, but—" She looked at him curiously. "It's cold here; come in a minute." There was no hint of vulgar nonsense, but something very earnest in the pert little face that had been so pretty. They went in. "Order drinks," she said aside, "and don't talk ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... collector, Bub," he observed. "You start out on the bare sand and gravel and raise a right pert family. Who's your friend?" ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "Now, Miss Pert, I want you to listen to me!" That was Mrs. Ladybug's greeting to Betsy Butterfly on one of the most delightful days of the whole summer. "It's my unpleasant duty—" said Mrs. Ladybug, who by that time was enjoying herself thoroughly—"it's my unpleasant duty to tell you that ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... swore an oath that was half a prayer, and the pert secretary did the first thing that was familiar since he was seen with the company—he laid his hand on Don Ruy's shoulder and felt that the horse lost was as a brother lost, and Chico had a fancy of his own to caress it, and even burnish the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is beautiful. I grieve sadly for Miss Wordsworth. We are all well again. Emma is with us, and we all shall be glad of a sight of you. COME ON Sunday, if you can; better, if you come before. Perhaps Rogers would smile at this.—A pert half chemist half apothecary, in our town, who smatters of literature and is immeasurable unletterd, said to me "Pray, Sir, may not Hood (he of the acres) be reckon'd the Prince of wits in the present day?" to which I assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... Lordship was bereaved of his splendid office, or that anything occurred, indeed, by which the uninitiated might have been led to suppose that the beams of his Lordship's consequence were shorn; but the Marquess's secret applications at the Treasury were no longer listened to, and pert under-secretaries settled their cravats, and whispered "that the Carabas interest was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... advancing hastily to meet Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse in?—And there you leave me to compromise my dignity in order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped, one of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches—one of those you can make so prettily when you are not pert—would have set everything right, even if ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... boat was called the "Ca et La." Rightly enough named it was, too. The French give singularly pert and appropriate names to their boats. "Va t'on," "Quand meme," and "Ca et La" certainly tell the stories of their missions ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... press'd through the yielding doors, High Lords, deep Statesmen, Dutchesses, and Whores; All ranks and stations, Publicans and Peers, Grooms, Lawyers, Fiddlers, Bawds, and Auctioneers; Prudes and Coquettes, the Ugly and the Fair, The Pert, the Prim, the Dull, the Debonnair; The Weak, the Strong, the Humble and the Proud, All help'd to form ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... fellows from London, Manchester and Liverpool, out for a holiday and magnificent in their uniforms of scarlet and gold, each with his beautiful and abundant hair done up in a queue, Mr. Binkus laughed and said they looked "terrible pert." He told the virile and profane Captain Lee of Howe's staff, that the first thing to do was to "make a haystack o' their hair ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... I admire the pert Blue-wren And his dainty little hen— Though she hasn't got a trace of blue upon her; But she's pleasing, and she's pretty, And she sings a cheerful ditty; While her husband is a ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... occupied the end of the bench, there sat beside her a distinctly lovely young woman. What struck Lavendar was the wealth of colour she brought into the picture: goldy brown hair, brown tweed dress, with a cape of blue cloth slipping off her shoulders, and a brown toque with a pert upstanding quill that seemed to express spirit and pluck, and a merry heart. His quick glance took in the little hands that held the withered old ones. Both heads were bowed and in the brown tweed lap was a child's shoe,—a wee, worn, fat shoe. Beside it lay an absurd bit of crumpled, tear-soaked ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Jack was a very young fellow, by much the youngest of the three brothers, and people, indeed, wondered how such a young upstart jackanapes should grow so pert and saucy, and ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose him competed for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For first, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red Beaune, now ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cranston's, with whom I had danced, to whom I had made pretty speeches, and had given the bell button that was sewn just over my heart. She certainly was not the best of them, for I can see now that she was vain and shallow, with a pert boldness, which I mistook for vivacity and wit. Three years ago, at the age of twenty, my knowledge of women was so complete that I divided them into six classes, and as soon as I met a new one I placed her in one of these classes and created her according to the line of campaign ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... that these feathered choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini and Linds of the feathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand. "'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back into ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the afflicted, or the aged. It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... my child. You are up too early. Six o'clock, that pert little Breton told me, when I found her fumbling in our trunks. When I told her that I was going to complain of her she said, 'Oh! don't do that, Madame, my godfather, the Duke de ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... slowly. She never knew what to do, there came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed to the children; and when, relying on some pert little girl for information, she had started a lesson, she did not know how to go on with it properly. The children were her masters. She deferred to them. She could always hear Mr. Brunt. Like a machine, always in the same hard, high, inhuman voice he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... in Disraeli's unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta Temple is the boldest attempt he ever made to tell a great consecutive ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... admiring with distant awe and spectacle of virtue and purity; but if he does so sincerely, he must also do so with the profoundest feeling of the error of his own ways, and the resolution to amend them. His admiration must be humble and silent, not pert and loquacious. Mr. Hunt praises the purity of Wordsworth as if he himself were pure, his dignity as if he also were dignified. He is always like the ball of Dung in the fable, pleasing himself, and amusing by-standers with his "nos poma natamus." For the person ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Enfeebles all internal strength of thought, 270 And the weak soul, within itself unblest, Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. Hence ostentation here, with tawdry art, Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart; Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 275 And trims her robes of frieze[32] with copper lace; Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer, To boast one splendid banquet once a year; The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws, Nor weighs the solid worth of ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... then? Every foolish wench has feelings In these religious days, and thinks it carnal To wash her dishes, and obey her parents— No wonder they ape you, if you ape them— Go to! I hate this humble-minded pride, Self-willed submission—to your own pert fancies; This fog-bred mushroom-spawn of brain-sick wits, Who make their oddities their test for grace, And peer about to catch the general eye; Ah! I have watched you throw your playmates down To have the pleasure of kneeling for their pardon. Here's sanctity—to shame your cousin ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... tact, And they lisp out 'How do?' And they coo and they woo, And they smile, for a while, Their fair guests to beguile; Condescending and bending, For fear of offending, Though inert, And they spy, They exert, With their eye, To be pert, And they sigh And ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... to the palace amazement reigned throughout the Court at such a sudden and extraordinary change. Whereas formerly they had been accustomed to hear her give vent to silly, pert remarks, they now heard her express herself ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... to me of Nell, and would not speak too harshly, for Nell was Protestant. Yes, Nell, so please you, was Protestant. And other grave divines forgave her half her sins because she flouted most openly and with pert wit the other lady, who was suspected of an inclination towards Rome and an intention to charm the King into the true Church's bosom. I also could have forgiven her much; for, saving my good Darrell's presence, I hated a Papist worse ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... wuz — I never knew nothin' about it, nor how it got there. But there it wuz, lookin' me right in the face of my soul, kinder pert and saucy, sayin', "You'd better go to Saratoga next summer; ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... man at the desk was surrounded by the interior of vast industrial works. The moving figures around him slowed, and became more distinct. For an instant, the man in the chair grinned as he found himself looking into a big washroom, where a tall blond girl was taking a shower bath, and a pert little redhead was vigorously drying herself with a towel. The dome grew visible, coruscating with many-colored lights and then the humming died and the dome became a cold and inert mesh of fine white metal. A green light above flashed on and ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... fed the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With science poorly mask their hurt; And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... discernible. It is most likely, however, that the bulk of the work was Young's, and that his colleague did little more than furnish the Preface, which is partly written in the first person, and betrays its origin by a sudden and not very relevant attack upon the "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert Dialogue" of Modern Comedy into which the "infinite Wit" of Wycherley had degenerated under Cibber. It also contains a compliment to the numbers of the "inimitable Author" of the Essay ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... devilry as well. The rest of the face would have been quite unremarkable, but the laughter-loving mouth and pointed chin wholly redeemed it from the commonplace. She was a little brown thing like a woodland creature, and her dainty air and quick ways put Scott irresistibly in mind of a pert robin. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... girl, And the witty girl, And the girl that bangs her hair; The girl that's a flirt, And the girl that is pert, And the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of the other. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Paris who wan so much be a slight promising the peaple to let them sy a horse wt its taille wheir its head sould be: that of on Martin Merry, who on a tyme pressing to win in to sie the King, the great Tresorier of England was at the door, who seing him so pert demanded him whither he would go; he replied, he would sie the King; the Thersorer told him he could not sie the King; then, he replied, I know what I'le do then; the thresorer thinking he was bravado'ing him, demanded him what can ye ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... reasoning. "In my opinion," says one of the characters in the Dialogue, (to be identified as the author,) "profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert superficial thinker who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees changes of causes and effects, so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... quietly, "It 's a summerish day, and not feelin' just as pert as I oughter I reckon I 'll ride a right smart piece with you ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... Excellency from L'Orient the 11th instant. On my journey hither, I met the Marquis de Castries, and obtained a hasty conference with him, in which I insisted principally on the necessity of a constant naval superiority on the American coast. He observed on his pert, that the dispositions of the fleet were already made; that it was not in his power to alter them; that it was necessary at the present juncture to make naval exertions in more places than one; that the French ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... A jackdaw, empty, pert and vain, Who held his equals in disdain, One day some beauteous feathers found, Left by a peacock on the ground. When in the gaudy plumage dress'd, The shallow thing his fortune bless'd; With stately gesture strode along, And boldly join'd the peacock ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... said Father Francis, smiling, "thou art a pert varlet. I will do my best on Sunday to turn you to a ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... imagining that his discomposure was the consequence of guilty fear, called upon him to remember the duties which he owed to England, the benefits which he had received from himself, and the probable consequence of taking part in a pert boy's insolent defiance of the power of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Mark would have made to this pert speech was cut short by a loud cry of pain or terror from the old half-dismantled barn on the other side of the road. All eyes were at once turned in that direction, and beheld Joe Fairthorn rushing at full speed ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... going to be upon the high ropes, it seems I might as well have stayed away," was Afy's reply, given in the pert, but good-humored manner she had ever used to Joyce. "My hand won't damage ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "You are a pert young lady, Miss Gatty," said Schillie, "and had better leave the Mother to settle with Madame; come with me and let us see what fish the boys have ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the cows come home the milk is coming; Honey's made while the bees are humming; Duck and drake on the rushy lake, And the deer live safe in the breezy brake; And timid, funny, pert little bunny Winks his nose, and ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... wise expression. As for her knowledge of scripture, it is truly wonderful, and a decided improvement when contrasted with the meagre set-out of her table. Tea time having arrived, Lady Swiggs is invited down to a cup by a pert Irish servant, who accosts her with an independence she by no means approves. Entering the room with an air of stateliness she deems necessary to the position she desires to maintain, Sister Scudder takes her by the hand and introduces her to a bevy of nicely- conditioned, and sleek-looking gentlemen, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... I masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack for saying things in an ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... gaunt city cats skulking about the yard, would retire to the rug, and curl herself up as if all hope of finding congenial society had failed; while little Nick would sing till he vibrated on his perch, without receiving any response except an inquisitive chirp from the pert sparrows, who seemed to twit him with his captivity. Yes, by the time the little teakettle had lost its brightness, Polly had decided that getting one's living was no joke, and many of her brilliant hopes had shared the fate ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... "'Spare your remarks, Miss Pert!' returned the fairy, 'and step in. I pledge my honour, and will give up my hope of salvation, if this bark of our master's do not carry thee safely over half the earth ball ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... special faults that arose from its author's accidental history; he was deprived of education, and therefore it was in some ways uneducated; he was confronted with the folly and failure of his natural superiors and guardians, and therefore it was in some ways pert and insolent. Nevertheless the main fact about the work is worth stating here for any reader who should follow the chronological order and read the Sketches by Boz before embarking on the stormy and splendid sea of Pickwick. For the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say that it, in fact, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... her first in an atmosphere Of tender and low-breathed sighs; But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear To the soul of the enterprise; "You beg so pert for the kiss you seek It reminds me, John," she said, "Of a poodle pet that jumps to 'speak' For a crumb or a crust ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... soldier, banker, lawyer, whatever you are, confess the facts to yourself: you were once as I. You have suffered the same feelings that I suffered. Perhaps with you it was not Della Fox.... Who then? Did saucy Marie Jansen awaken your admiration? Was pert Lulu Glaser the object of your secret but persistent attention? How many times did you go to see Marie Tempest in The Fencing Master, or Alice Nielsen in The Serenade? Was Virginia Earle in The Circus ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... me," said Fay. "She said we were pert, forward misses, and we must hold our tongues, for we should be whipped if we ever said you name, Cousin—Sister Aura, again; and she would not let us go to wish Brother Amyas good-bye ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Lily's demeanour may be imagined. She gazed through Simon as though he did not exist, and passed magnificently onwards as soon as the throng permitted. She was Mrs. Albert Shawn, as neat as ninepence, as smart and pert as a French maid out for the day. She drove in hansoms, and she had a five-pound ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... to London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still staring ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... "Such a kid!" he murmured. "Why didn't you lay low, and not go butting down their door? Why didn't you lose the old man and snub up one of the girls—marry her? Big one's a rip-snortin' beauty; pert, by jingo! ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... cheeks, the members of the regimental band flung out their deafening, brazen notes upon the air, stimulated in their efforts by a smartly-dressed bandmaster who looked like a pert little sparrow, and who zealously flourished his baton. Grouped round the band-stand were clerks, shopmen, schoolboys in Hessian boots, and little girls wearing brightly-coloured handkerchiefs round their heads. In the main walks and side-walks, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... echo that it is possible to conceive. It shouted the names of our fireside friends in the very tone in which William and Coleridge spoke; but it seemed to make a joke of me, and I could not help laughing at my own voice, it was so shrill and pert, exactly as if some one had been mimicking it very successfully, with an intention of making me ridiculous. I wished Joanna {41} had been there to laugh, for the echo is an excellent laugher, and would ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... are pert and deceitful, for you have kept secret from me that which I had a right to learn; also you have too good an opinion of your own looks, which as I tell you now for the last time, are nothing compared to mine at your age, or even to those of my daughter Suzanne, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... windows of which looked upon the spray of the fountain—at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert, perky squirt that will never stir the heart or brain ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the letter as her voluntary act. But if she were really in love with Ferdinand as she has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his passionate entreaties with cool ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... open the door of difficulty." The king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than the sun and the envy of a pert. He clasped her in his embrace, exclaiming, "There is no strength, no power, save in God!" and he felt assured in his heart that his prayer was granted. In due time a son was born to him, and, eager to show his gratitude, he bestowed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of. And with the flowers grow the weeds. My first weed shall sprout by Arno, in a cranny of the Ponte Vecchio, or cling like a Dryad of the wood to some gnarly old olive on the hill-side of Arcetri. If it bear no little gold-seeded flower, or if its pert leaves don't blush under the sun's caress, it shan't be ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... of Quality and Estate resort to Will's, for really they make the best Figure there; an indifferent thing from 'em, passes for a Witty Jest, and sets presently the whole Company a Laughing. Thus we admire the pert Talk of Children, because we ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... on the whole will read a work today, Of moderate sense, with any pleasure? And as regards the dear young people, they Pert and precocious are beyond ...
— Faust • Goethe
... grave voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up; Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup; Her hair's the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine, It's rolling down upon her neck ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... like young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... may be the case; but still there is no excuse for your folly: and mark me, Sir Gilbert, I will not have that pert minx, Lucy Bargrove, closeted with my daughter Agnes. As to the boy, it is a downright puppy and fool, or, to speak less plebeianly, is a non ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... two here?" Mona could be very pert when she tried. "Jack and I are holding down the ranch just now; the boys are all on roundup, of course. Jack went to town today to ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements are, for the most part ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... oneself forward; fish for compliments; give oneself airs &c. (assume) 885; boast &c. 884. render vain &c. adj.; inspire with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not, I would not willingly rob my neighbour of a rood of it. Now you have a pretty property of some thousand acres there, and when you have passed your present Inclosure Bill, your income will be doubled, (there's a metaphor, worthy of a Templar, namely, pert and low,) while my wild common is too remote to incommode you, and quite incapable of such fertility. I send you (which return per post, as the printer would say) a curious letter from a friend of mine[83], which will let you into ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced, Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thought of the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr. Hardyman to speak favorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you are not jealous of ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... with a pert air of show off and consequence, "I found the place, and I found the lady. Ain't I ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and believe themselves able to pay for their wine with the mirth which it qualifies them to produce. Full of this opinion, they crowd with little invitation, wherever the smell of a feast allures them, but are seldom encouraged to repeat their visits, being dreaded by the pert as rivals, and hated by the dull as disturbers of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... laid the table were very graceful, in the pert style. She dropped forks into their appointed positions with disdain; she made slightly too much noise; when she turned she manoeuvred her swelling hips as though for the benefit of a soldier ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... with Chook's mother had been like a long honeymoon, and Pinkey had led the life of a lady, with nothing to do but scrub and wash and help Chook's mother keep her house like a new pin. So she had grown plump and pert like a well-fed sparrow, but the care and worry of the new shop had sharpened the angles of her body. Not that Pinkey cared. She had the instinct for property, the passionate desire to call something ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is very frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... keep it up. She was brought up by her father to hate her mother's family; and she'll look with no favour upon a working chap like you—a townish girl as she's become by now. I never cared much about her. A pert little thing, that's what she was too often, with her tight-strained nerves. Many's the time I've smacked her for her impertinence. Why, one day when she was walking into the pond with her shoes and stockings off, and her ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... kit?" burst out the third member of the party indignantly—a sprightly youth with a very short tunic and a pert expression. "Do they want you to return your small kit when you get the mitten? Watch me returnin' mine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... a few moments, one of the owners, overcome by wren curiosity, will appear, clinging to a reed stalk and twitching his pert, upturned tail, the badge of his family. Soon he springs up into the air and, bubbling a jumble of liquid notes, sinks back into the recesses of the cat-tails. Another and another repeat this until the marsh rings with their ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... whirling by, Cissy unnecessarily large and bare, and Elsie intolerably pert and middle class, Morton regretted that he would have to ask them to dance. And, when he had danced with them and the three young ladies Madame Delacour had introduced him to, and had taken a comtesse into supper, he found that the fourteenth waltz was over. But Mildred bade him not to ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... mob crowded round Rusty Wren's door. And the pert gentleman who had just spoken thrust his head through ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... more—that Agne would certainly disapprove of. The stranger whom she had tried to draw into a flirtation was a really chivalrous man. Gorgo might be proud of such a lover; and if now, he were to go to her and tell her, probably with some annoyance, how provokingly he had been delayed by that pert little singing-girl, it would be all her own fault. She felt as though there were something in her which forced her to seem much worse than she really was, and wished to be. Agne, Marcus, the young soldier—nay, even Gorgo, were loftier and nobler than she or her people, and she was conscious for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will please your Grace and your ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... on well; all goes well!" he crooned. "There's Douglas, gone for good! The boy is young and soft-like. He might fall into this pert minx's hands as young Douglas with Queen Mary of old. And, thank God, he knows nothing of the packet of jewels! Not a soul knows in the wide world! Why should I not save them for myself and turn them into gold? Yes, save them ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the "I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present writer has seen something ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... empty—without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Oscar once, when the two were together at Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I wish ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... I-talyan an' English. An' if I ever meets a lady with long soft hands like his'n, I'm for a pert ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... splendid genius in all Scotland! When I was at Ayr, a sister of Burns, Mrs. Begg, was still living, and I am always regretting that I did not call upon her. His widow, Jean Armour, had died but a few years before; and when a certain pert American who called upon the old lady had the audacity to ask her: "Can you show me any relics of the poet?" answered with majestic dignity: "Sir, I am the only ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... a 'minx'. I had the greatest curiosity about words, and as this was a new one, I looked it up in our large 'English Dictionary'. But there the definition of the term was this:—'Minx: the female of minnock; a pert wanton.' I was as much in the dark ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
