"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coast was clear, I returned to the library with my heart beating and shut the door. Peter had disentangled himself from the sofa and was taking fluff off his coat with an air of happy disengagement; I told him with emphasis that I was done for, that my name would be ringing in the police news next day and that I was quite sure by the inspector's face that he knew exactly what had happened; that all this came from Peter's infernal ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... who rode on a car drawn by panthers, was quite beardless, with not even a vestige of fluff on his face, had horns, was crowned with grape-clusters, his hair tied with a fillet, his cloak purple, and his shoes of gold. Of his lieutenants, one was short, thick-set, paunchy, and flat-nosed, with great upright ears; he trembled perpetually, leant upon a narthex-wand, rode ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... took off his cap, he put down his basket and knelt to open it and out popped the littlest, drollest fluff of a spaniel ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... had a great time with notionate mothers hatching out broods under the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the "weedies" added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it, undeterred by indignant clucks from ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... suddenly and walked rapidly across the room. She had made what in the light of recent events was a startling discovery. At first she had imagined that the long silken fluff was attached to one of the rings, but this her quick eyes had proved to be a mistake. On one of the slim fingers of the Countess was ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times apparently for luck, as tears welled ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... lonely—but not quite 'torture' to me, with the family so close, across the street," I answered him, and I went on whipping the lace on a piece of fluff I am making, to discipline myself because I loathe a needle so. "Please don't you worry over me, dear." I raised my eyes to his and I tried the common citizenship look. It must have carried a little way for he flushed, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... threading her way through the maze of vehicles at "Dead Man's Corner," with her skirt held up just enough to show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too highly tinted face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under the screen of a big Parisian hat—that did for him on ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... gases, or germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising. If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor "drafts" are made ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... the remains of a feather bed. The feathers had come out through a ragged hole in one corner of it; Nora, in the shock of hearing of Lady Purcell's arrival, trod on the corner of the bed and squeezed more of the feathers out of it. A gush of fluff was the result, followed by a curious and unaccountable movement in the bed, and then from the hole there came forth a corpulent and very mangy old rat. Its face was grey and scaly, and horrid pink patches adorned its fat person. It gave one beady glance at Nora, and proceeded with hideous composure ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... an economical way of extending the meat flavor that I think every young housewife should know it. Mary copied it from The Farmers' Bulletin, an article on the "Economical Use of Meat in the Home." The dumplings, as she prepared them from this recipe, were regular fluff balls, they were so light and flaky. I would add, the cook-pot should be closely covered while cooking or steaming these dumplings, and the cover should not be raised for the first ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... still grasping my wrist, I shrank back into the doorway, as something that looked in the darkness like a great ball of fluff came rapidly along the passage toward me. Just at my feet the thing stopped, and I made it out for a small animal. The tiny, gleaming eyes looked up at me, and, chattering wickedly, the creature bounded past and was lost ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Young Thomas gravely said that it was unfounded. The minister looked graver still and said he was sorry—he had hoped it was true. His wife glanced significantly about Young Thomas's big, untidy sitting-room, where there were cobwebs on the ceiling and fluff in the corners and dust on the mop-board, and said nothing, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... two or three kinds of creepers she wore; and, when it had done its work, he washed her thoroughly in soap and warm water, in spite of her teeth, claws, and yowls. Kitty was savagely indignant, but a warm and happy glow spread over her as she dried off in a cage near the stove, and her fur began to fluff out with wonderful softness and whiteness. Jap and his assistant were much pleased with the result, and Kitty ought to have been. But this was preparatory: now for the experiment. "Nothing is so good for growing fur as plenty of oily food and continued exposure to cold weather," ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nightfall; then, when the Princess had fallen asleep, it crept up on to her bed, and gnawed a hole in the pillow, through which it dragged one by one little down feathers, and threw them under the Princess's nose. And the fluff flew into the Princess's nose, and into her mouth, and starting up she sneezed and coughed, and the ring fell out of her mouth on to the coverlet. In a flash the tiny mouse had seized it, and brought it to Waska ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... red breast, And your blue back like a feathered sky, You have to go down south Before biting winter comes And my flower-beds are covered with fluff out of the clouds. Before you go, Sing me one more song Of tree-tops down south, Of darkies singing their babies to sleep, Of sand and glittering stones Where rivers pass; Then ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... of which came to its meetings armed with musket and cutlass. Their tribunal was, of course, that of Judge Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... but after several spasmodic repetitions a blue silk curtain flickered at one of the cabin windows on "Lorelei," and a little, old, brown face, with a fringe of fluff round the chin, appeared in the aperture—a walnut of a face, with a pair of shrewd, twinkling eyes, and a pipe in a slit of a mouth. Another call brought on deck a figure which matched the face; and on deck Mr. Paasma (it looked like ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a great courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her; then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh. "We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only forty-six—I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low- spirited this morning; ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... "What! Little Fluff we used to call her? I don't understand you, father; surely Ellen would never part ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... as he went he flew out quietly at somebody who was not there: "Uprightness? Knowledge of business, as that Philistine of an inspector says? I know why you're forcing your way in and insinuating yourself in here, you fluff-picker! Pretend to be as innocent as you like, I"—he made the gesture that meant: "I am one who know life and the species that wears long hair and aprons!" With this he turned toward the door, but his movement was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... looked like a mountain having an earthquake when she got up, and animals rolled off her in all directions. A poodle, two fox terriers, a toy Spitz, and a cat and kitten, had all been sleeping in the nooks her outline makes. They all barked in different keys, and between saying, "Down, Hector!" "Quiet, Fluff!" "Hush, hush, Fanny!" "Did um know it was a stranger?" etc., etc., she got in that she was glad to see me, and hoped you were better. When she stands up she is colossal! Her body dressed in the last fashion, and then the queerest face with no neck, and lemon-coloured ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... fowls, it may be taken for granted that before long they will pay you a visit, and you will see the rooster scratching your pot plants out by the roots as if they were so much straw, just to make a nice place to lie down and fluff the dust over himself. Goats will also stray in from the street, and bite the young shoots off, selecting the most valuable plants with a discrimination that would do credit to ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the sea with as little ado as he had entered. On the end of his spear twisted a fish. His fur, slicked flat to his strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air and fluff out while the sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands and feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal back into the water, where some shadowy things arose to tear at the ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thin vapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the heart. Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times more significant. It is the unseen that ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... reply; and from just on the other side of a pile of merchandise that reached to the ceiling Hilary could hear some one blowing at the tindery fluff made by lighting the top of a ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... noted how talkative they get as soon as danger's over. Mrs. Polwhele took a glance at the inside of the coach to make sure that her belongings were safe, and then, turning to the ladder that the Boots was holding for her to mount, up she trips to her outside place behind the box-seat, all in a fluff and commotion, and chattering so fast that the words hitched in each other like beer in a ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grass, chewing at its green blades, scarce dry of dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of bitterness. And the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there in the warmth of the August day, with its scent and murmur of full summer, while the pigeons cooed and dandelion fluff ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cold, was still. The flakes were not yet falling heavily and they lay on the hard crust of snow as light as silk fluff. What might be coming down in another hour from the darkness overhead, however, could not be foretold, while if both a gale and a great fall of snow occurred the labour of the night ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... said Lord Henry, his head still bowed, and his free hand picking imaginary atoms of fluff from his trousers, "that if you tell me the truth, our two heads may make some progress. If you deliberately mislead me, although the task will even then not be beyond the wit of man, it will be a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... as "German lined"—a highly absorbent, closely woven paper, having an even surface and no loose "fluff" to adhere to the specimens—is the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... villi; lovelock; beaucatcher^; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity^; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus^, moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c adj.; go against the grain. render-rough &c adj.; roughen, ruffle, crisp, crumple, corrugate, set on edge, stroke the wrong way, rumple. Adj. rough, uneven, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lace collar, she flew to the mirror to put it on. Her hair dissatisfied her, and she made it fluff out a little under the rich braid which crowned her brow. Finally, she ruthlessly tore a rose from her new hat and pinned it to her girdle as she had ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... my paper and asked for three days' leave of absence from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department. The good old Scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... danger zone. From the earth the tiny white shell clouds have a fascination for the onlooker. More so perhaps, than for the man in an aeroplane, not many yards distant from the bursting shrapnel. The ball of fluff that follows the sharp "bang" is small at first, but unrolls itself lazily until it assumes quite a size. That morning the anti-aircraft gunners seemed unusually accurate. The third shell burst not far below the plane, and two ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... the flapper stuff; What's fit for Pholoe, a fluff, Is not for Ibycus's wife— A woman at ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... day that was!" Beth observed. "Did you notice the sea? It was the sort of sea that might make one long to be a crab to live in it. Though a crab is not the animal that I should specially choose to be. I long to be a cat sometimes. To be able to fluff out my fur and spit would be such a satisfaction. There are feelings that can be expressed in no other way. And then to be able to purr! Purring is the one sound in nature that expresses perfect comfort and content, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest little things—fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and there, like stray feathers that have stuck ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... into you where none was before. The pawn man—why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime. That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a big bright grocers' calendar—the Death of Nelson—and if I could see it through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches—not fruit jam, you know, but raspberry ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Monsieur Wachner took a long spoon off the table; with its help he put all that he had swept up—pearls, dust, and fluff—into the little fancy bag. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was simply waiting for the Main Fluff to come up from behind the Chrysanthemums and say, "We have ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... and walking with an athletic stride offset by a feminine cry-baby chin and the usual mediocre allotment of freckles on the usual mediocre nose! Mary Faithful was not pretty; she was a "good-looking thing," Trudy would usually conclude, glancing in a near-by mirror to approve of the way her fluff of pink tulle harmonized with her pink ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow a suggestion of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... companions in Janot's atelier. Of the rest I only remember one—poor Cazalet. He wore a self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an Englishman, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the surface are burnt off; with gas all the loose fibres are burnt off. This is brought about by the gas flame passing straight through the cloth. It is not necessary to describe the gas singeing machine in detail. Singeing machines should be kept scrupulously clean and free from fluff, which is liable to collect round them, and very liable to fire. Some machines are fitted with a flue having a powerful draught which carries off this fluff, away from any source ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... jacket and hat. A colored cotton apron covers her skirt below the waist, and the short skirt displays stout stockings similar to Sarah's. She wears clogs, and the clothes—except the shawl—are covered with ends of cotton and cotton-wool fluff. Even her hair has not escaped. A pair of scissors hangs by a cord from ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... 'em. I'm boss of a few dozen of these floating palaces at present. In fact we're a patrol and I've caught you red-handed on my own beat, and what I want to know is what the devil are you doing on it? Not trying to elope with that little bit of fluff, I hope, because I can assure you she doesn't love you in the ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... pleasure, for the contessa immediately returned. Nina was glad when Donna Francesca Dobini and the young Prince Allegro cantered up. Donna Francesca was soon talking with Sansevero, leaving Nina to Allegro—an attractive youth, but light as a bit of fluff. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... laughed as he heard her, but Jean's mamma did not laugh. She knew about "I Forgot," and she laid her hand tenderly on Goldie's little body, all thin under the fluff of feathers. ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... from his tunic. After a minute or two he was aware of Muskingon watching him with interest, and by signs begged for a feather from the young Indian's top-knot. Muskingon drew one forth and, under instructions, plucked off a piece of fluff from the root of the feather, a small quill or two, and handed them over. With a length of red silk drawn from his sash John, within half an hour, was bending a very pretty fly on the hook. It did not in the least ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... struggled. but not wildly, for a few seconds and then remained passive with bright eyes glinting in the gloom. She was a dusky little creature, the primaries, the back of the head, neck, the shoulders, and tail being black, but when the wings were extended the grey fluff of the base of the tail was conspicuous. After a few minutes I put her back on the nest, and she clung, to it having no shyness or fear. I noticed that the beak was very short, the gape very large, the legs ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... pretty one," said Pennell. "God! but they're queer little bits of fluff, these girls. It beats me how they're always gay, and always easy to get and to leave. And they get rottenly ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... walks around the grounds with me, at sunset," she explained, in intervals of cajoling the grumpy mass of fluff to descend. "And he ran ahead of me, to-day, to the edge of the path. That must have been when Bobby caught sight ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... was on deck, dressed—for it is always best to dress,—and there, sure enough, right ahead, about a mile and a half off, through the mist, which had come on very thick, I could distinguish the upward shooting fluff of seas shattering against rocks. No land was to be seen, but the line of breakers every instant became more evident; at the pace we were going, in seven or eight minutes we should be upon them. Now, thought I to myself, we shall see whether a stout heart beats ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... the northern world, is distinguished from its congener, the following, not only by the episporic character, but generally by its different peridium and more sombre colors. It never shows at maturity the brilliant golden yellow fluff that hangs in masses about the open and empty vases of T. favoginea, a fact not unnoted by Batsch, and rendering his figure and ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... responsibility, the sweat beads stand on the brow in the sowing. With nature undisturbed it may be the blind flower of the wild violet perfecting its moist seed under the soil, a nod of a stalk to the wind, a ball of fluff sailing by, or the hunger of a bird, and the sowing ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... sacrifice for such a master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat sleeve when the door opened and Henry Rogers ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... to the door and opened it. A swirl of snow greeted Darrin in the face, and another big swirl of the white fluff blew ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... spite of her load, to catch a nice juicy worm now and then and had one left for the babies when she reached them. Those cunning little fluff-balls were so glad to see their mother. For the first time, they ...
— The Little Red Hen - An Old English Folk Tale • Florence White Williams
... now I felt both my hunger and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but as I passed by one open porte-cochere, something, I know not what, made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague forms fallen there. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... December afternoon there entered upon this trail from the timberless hills far away to the northward a weary team of six dogs, driven by two men. It had been snowing since dawn, and the dim sled-tracks were hidden beneath a six-inch fluff which rendered progress difficult and called the whip into cruel service. A gray smother sifted down sluggishly, shutting out hill and horizon, blending sky and landscape into a blurred monotone, playing ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... kidnap you, Betty; go fluff and rose up a bit," he commanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determination which was as business-like as his management of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... clouds—a temple. The atmosphere has that absolute transparency, the distance that clearness which follows a great downpour of rain; but a thick pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray fluff, which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and below all this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by pursuing each ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... his eyes sparkled with eagerness and excitement, "I call that splendid; I shall be a rich man one of these days, and then you will see what I shall do for you, and Fern, and Fluff." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... our gym. clothes, picks out a set of kid pillows, and had just stepped out on the rubber for a little warmin' up, when in sails a fluff delegation. There was a fat old one, that looked as though she might be mother; a slim baby-eyed one, that any piker would have played for sister; and another, that I couldn't place at all. She wasn't a Fifth-ave. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... behind, over the roof. He was carrying a piece of yellow-fluff, part of a lamp-shade, as ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the golden sunlight, translucent, like an angel carved in alabaster. But on the shoulder-blades lay shadow, deep shadow—no, not shadow, a fluff ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... captured linnets to sing. They are expert in making guns and traps for small birds, and in making and using bird-lime. They make play guns of reed, which go off with a trigger and spring, with a cloud of ashes for smoke. Sometimes they make double-barrelled guns of clay, and have cotton-fluff as smoke. The boys shoot locusts with small toy guns very cleverly. A couple of rufous, brown-headed, and dirty speckle-breasted swallows appeared to-day for the first time this season, and lighted ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... a big dog when I bought him, but just a little ball of orange-tawny fluff that I could carry with one arm. He cost me all the money I had saved up for a holiday trip to Passy. I had seen his father, a champion St. Bernard, at a dog-show, and felt that life would be well worth living with such a companion; but ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... fazzoletti—it would be so interesting afterwards, she thought—while the Senator exerted himself in the way of cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fashionable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in the same house with Fluff, an Angora cat of great beauty. Teddy has been carefully taught, and his manners are delightful. Often when passing the chair where Fluff lies asleep, Teddy will put up his black nose and give her face a friendly lap. Fluff stretches out her fore-feet sleepily, ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a suspended frock of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark, warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but the agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That little wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek, wiped all other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across the gloomy hills she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and bright-eyed Satan, and the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, gentle hand of Daddy Dan; but the cry of the puppy blotted ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... bore Henry even farther back than the voice of the owl, and his preternaturally acute senses took on an edge which the modern man never knows in his civilized state. He heard the fluff of the owl's feathers as it moved and the panting of the wolves in the valley below. Then he saw the leader walk from the low mound and take a slow and deliberate course along the slope, with the others following in single file like Indians. The king was leading them nearer to the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nook by the world unguessed, Where the thrush's song is sung, And the dainty yellowbird's fairy nest, Lined with the fluff from the cattail's crest, 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; And further on, by the elder hedge, Where the turtles come out to sleep, The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, 'Mid the shadows ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the minute he had to converse with his host, Lord Channelcliffe, and almost the first thing that friend said to him was: 'Who is that pretty woman in the black dress with the white fluff about ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... at the bottom of the small ravine Naginlta's eyes regarded him knowingly. Travis signaled with his hand and thought out what would be the coyotes' part in this surprise attack. The prick-eared silhouette vanished. Uphill the chitter of a fluff-fur sounded twice—Tsoay ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... wash your face and brush all that fluff off your jacket. Then pluck up, and like a man go in to the captain; keep cool—you'll be cooler by that time—and tell him exactly how it all was; say you are sorry, and—Don't keep on shaking your head like ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... ere long. We had a small mishap ere he went, for as we were talking of his journey my brother Hosea must needs start playing with my father's powder-flask, which in some way went off with a sudden fluff, spattering the walls with fragments of metal. So unexpected and loud was the explosion, that both my father and I sprang to our feet; but Saxon, whose back was turned to my brother, sat four-square in his chair without a glance behind him or a shade of change in his rugged face. As luck would ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mad impulse to snatch up the precious bottle then and there and make off with it, and might have yielded to the temptation, with disastrous consequences, had not an elderly man entered the shop at that moment. He was bent, and wore rather more fluff and flue upon his person than most well-dressed people would consider necessary, but he came in with a certain air ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... talking to her of all sorts of grave, stupid things—and she wants amusing—waking up. I know the look of her. Don't you?" She slipped her arm inside Mary's. "You know, if you'd only do your hair a little differently—fluff it out more—you'd be so pretty! Let me do it for you. And you shouldn't wear that hat—no, you really shouldn't. It's a brute! I could trim you another in half an hour. Shall I? You know—I really like you. He sha'n't ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... good; none moves, none seeks a quarrel with his neighbours. Clinging together, they form a continuous drapery, a shaggy ulster under which the mother becomes unrecognizable. Is it an animal, a fluff of wool, a cluster of small seeds fastened to one another? 'Tis impossible to tell ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Mike, snipping a piece of fluff off his judgeship's shoulder. "There's a white-bearded old guy, two or three swell gents with tall hats, Counselor Tutt and an attorney named Chippingham, besides that pretty Miss Wiggin; and they ain't speakin' ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... to their babies? Were their sons to be left on the bank by themselves, now that they had shaken the last fringe of down from their tails and lost the fluff from their heads? Did they need no older company, now that they looked like grown-up sandpipers except that their vests had no big polka dots splashed ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... cup will be, e'en were the virtue thine to stop the loom, Thine though the gift the willow fluff to sing, pity who will thy doom? High in the trees doth hang the girdle of white jade, And lo! among the snow the golden pin ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... ever remembered anything at all, and in answer to enquiries always said that he had had a very good night indeed, thank you. Once or twice he seemed to have a dim recollection of something—some "bustle and fluff," as he expressed it—during his troubled sleep; and then he would ask anxiously whether he really had been giving them any bother, and assure them that he was so very sorry, and hoped they would forgive him for having been so stupid. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... a lady friend of mine. Poor old Fluff, poor old girl! Don't scare her, Sheila. Can't you see ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... prizes in England under the name of Baby Flossie. She is the daughter of Duke of Kent and Topso, of Merevale. Her paternal grandparents are Mrs. Herring's well-known champion, Blue Jack, and Marney. The maternal grandparents are King Harry, a prize winner at Clifton and Brighton, and Fluff. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... Sally Groves, she seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work; through the dust and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... substantial and cup-shaped, having a diameter of about 31/4 inches by 21/4 inches in depth, lined inside with fine grass, the soft fluff from the willow when in ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... considerations, by having to remember every blessed one of the manners they go in for so terribly here. I've never met so much manners as in Germany. The protestations you have to make! The elaborateness and length of every acceptance or refusal! And it's all so much fluff and wind, signifying nothing, nothing at all unless it's fear; fear, again, their everlasting haunting spectre; fear of the other person's being offended if he is stronger than you, higher up,—because then he'll hurt you, punish you somehow; ten ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... of the moon looked down and made the shadows of the trees and the forest grow deeper and darker. Now and then I heard, when all was still, from his nesting-place, the brave yet delicate notes of the song sparrow, singing in his dreams from out a happy, overflowing heart. Dear little fluff of feathers! ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Curving one hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hovered over it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to the boys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg would change to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after a while would fly away among the trees and fill the woods with sweet sounds. "If you destroy the egg, you kill all that beauty and music, and there will be no little bird to sit on the tree and sing to you." The boys assured him that they had ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... moment the great car, devouring its own path of light, set us down at Calliope's gate, and Calliope herself, trim in her gray henrietta, her wrinkled face flushed and shining, came at our summons. And I pushed Viola in before us—little fairy thing in a fluff of ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... had proved a success; the field had in time been covered with cotton plants, which had burst first into a bright yellow blossom, and had then been covered with many balls of white fluff. The picking the cotton had been looked upon at first as great fun, although it had proved hard ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... airy ships between him and the silver moonlight, dropping seeds—seeds—seeds; seeds of fire flower and golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults; sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years! And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... "a basket six miles high, even if you filled it up with cotton fluff, would weigh ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... swang, swingle, swuff, Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Thus we go, To and fro; Here and there, Everywhere, Born and ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... is not a matter of size only. As I look down at this glossy coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever a dirty yellow color, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as young cubs' coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time, used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her mouth with the back of her paw. ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... guard gently extracted a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of Brion's pants. He cracked open the car door, and just ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... trotting slowly back with panting flanks and lolling tongue, throws himself on his side exhausted. His mouth is now carefully examined, and two fingers being inserted, scoop round the fauces. The test is successful; there are traces of blood and fluff. "Bravo! Rattler! Show him—good dog. Show him!" Rattler rises with an effort, and lazily strikes into the bush, to the right. We follow in Indian file, and at about half a mile distant we come upon the kangaroo lying dead, with the second dog, old "Ugly," ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... sound of her voice. She appealed to Elliott for corroboration on this point and Elliott grew almost interested trying to decide whether or not Chanticleer knew he was "Chanticleer" and not "Sunflower." There were also "Fluff" and "Scratch" and "Lady Gay" and "Ruby Crown" and "Marshal Haig" and "General Petain" and many more, besides "Brevity," so named because, as Priscilla solicitously explained, she never seemed to grow. They all, with the exception of Brevity, ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... summer morning that he and his twin—no, let us say triplet—brother Dab (the three kittens were called Dot, Dab and Fluff, for they were too tiny to toddle around under heavier names, their mistress said) were lying sleepily in their favorite corner of the piazza. To make sure he was missing nothing that a kitten should not miss, Dot opened his drowsy eyes and looked around. Instantly the drowsy ...
— The Book of the Cat • Mabel Humphrey and Elizabeth Fearne Bonsall
... You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long—ditto ditto my song—and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... some respects the tumultuous disorder of an overturned Ant-hill; others were hurriedly climbing to the tip of a blade of grass and descending with the same haste; others again were plunging into the downy fluff of the withered everlastings, remaining there a moment and quickly reappearing to continue their search. Lastly, with a little attention, I was able to convince myself that within an area of a dozen square yards there was perhaps not a single blade ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... by long green curtains, stepped a graceful almost childishly slim figure in a bronze-green Norfolk suit and close-fitting hat from beneath which curled a fluff of bright golden hair. ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... has no honour in his own country," said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. "This filthy fluff will never ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Harold, whose life has been so full of care and toil. Poor boy! how I pitied his great warm hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could have kissed every seam and scar upon it. But by and by his hands shall be white like Tom's, though not so soft. I hate a hand which feels like a fluff of cotton. He shall not live here, for Harold could never get along with mother and Tom; but we will build a house together, Hally and I, with Jerrie to help and plan—build one where the cottage stands, or near it, so Jerrie can still see the old Tramp House she is so fond of. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the house, still clad in her black mantle which had evidently not been removed while she looked over the guild work, for it bore traces thereof upon it in morsels of cotton and the fluff ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and seemed for a moment as though she must yield to the temptation. The boa—the boa was in the lower drawer. Reluctantly, remorsefully, she opened the drawer and took it out in her hands. Fluff and feathers, fluff and feathers—nothing more than that! But oh, how soft, how smooth, how yielding, how serpentine! With a violent effort she steadied herself, and looked round for her scissors. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... you think is to happen to-day?—Oh! Aunt Selina, we all have new names at home; even mother is now called Mother Wings and I am Fluff. The other Blue Birds have names they chose for themselves, and Ned is an Owl, and prints our weekly paper called the Chirp. Now, instead of Aunt Selina, I want to call you a ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to deafen me, and at those bits of fluff under the bed, and at that dust on ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... He seemed to be at least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers, mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the "poor smell" which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which no ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... us that man, at first a hairy brute, walking on all fours, has risen on his hind-legs and shed his fur; and you complacently demonstrate how the elimination of the hairy pelt was effected. Instead of bolstering up a theory with a handful of fluff gained or lost, it would perhaps be better to settle how the original brute became the possessor of implements and fire. Aptitudes are more important than hair; and you neglect them because it is there that the insurmountable ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... forehead, which I always saw more or less covered with a golden fluff of hair, seemed ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... fine birds; don't borrow finery; don't be attractive for your fine dresses; the men attracted by fluff, frills, feathers and furbelows are not ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... he winged his alabaster flight Neath the full beams of the mistaken sun O'er gazing crowds, till at th' unwonted sight Some unexpected sportsman with a gun Brought down the bird, all fluff, mid sounding cheers: Mourn, maidens, mourn, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks from programs] 1. /vt./ To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... just to work my heart and my life away, and to sicken i' this dree place, wi' them mill-noises in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for them to stop, and let me have a little piece o' quiet—and wi' the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath o' the clear air yo' speak on—and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and o' all my troubles—I think if this life is th' end, and that there's no God to wipe away all tears from all ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a large mirror, and in front of this she laboured patiently for a full ten minutes, twisting her hair this way and that, and using the comb and brush vigorously. Now and then, as she worked, she became aware that a fluff of hair rolling down low over her forehead did amazing things to her face and brought her from Sally Fortune into the strange dignity of a "lady." But she could not complete any of the manoeuvres, no matter how promisingly they started. In the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... hover about, picking up those which, failing to obey the first law of nature, reveal themselves by movement. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, what is the provision of Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct rays of the sun, which brings the coral to such a heat ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... there, dancing crazy, swoopy stuff, possible at lunar gravity, as Frank and Gimp entered. Her costume was no feminine fluff; cheesecake, of which she presumably didn't have much, was not on display, either. Dungarees, still? No, not quite. Slender black trousers, like some girls use for ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the enchanting manner ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens |
