"Uncommunicative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trimmed and who wore a ruby ring upon his white hand, made an anxious inquiry whether Fetherston, whom he minutely described, had been there that day. At first the head waiter hesitated and was uncommunicative, but, the stranger having uttered a few low words, Henry's manner instantly changed. He started, looked in wonder into the stranger's face, and, taking him into the smoking-room—at that moment unoccupied—he allowed himself to be closely ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... little, therefore, came of the visit. Mr. Somers, to give him his due, had attempted to do his best; being anxious, for Herbert's sake, to conciliate Owen; perhaps having—and why not?—some eye to the future agency. But Owen was hard, and cold, and uncommunicative,—very unlike what he had before been to Mr. Prendergast. But then Mr. Prendergast had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the trees, or gathering fragrant herbs and the bright-colored berries of the Marzanita. These and his company he generally brought to the editor's office, late in the afternoon, often to that enterprising journalist's infinite weariness. Quiet and uncommunicative, he would sit there patiently watching him at his work until the hour for closing the office arrived, when he would as quietly depart. There was something so humble and unobtrusive in these visits, that the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... back in her seat, shrinking from all these demonstrations, for she knew that her husband was unworthy of them. The carriages disappeared in the distance, and then—sad, suspicious, uncommunicative—the men went off to draw their last dividend and go about their work. They fought desperately against their own distrust. In the proportion that they doubted the proprietor they were ready to defend ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... conversation from her sister; and though she could have talked about Alaric by the hour, if Gertrude would have consented to talk about Harry, she did not know how to start the subject of her own lover, while Gertrude was so cold and uncommunicative as to hers. She struggled very hard to obtain the privilege for which she so anxiously longed; but in doing so she only met with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... a certain stage in every sorrow when it rejects sympathy. Purdee, always taciturn, grave, uncommunicative, was, invested with an austere aloofness, and was hardly to be approached as he sat, silent and absent, brooding over the fire at his own home. When roused by some circumstance of the domestic routine, and it became apparent that his mood was not sullenness or anger, but simple ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Barrington Erle seldom told her any news. Mr. Rattler never had a word for her. Warburton, who had ever been discreet, became almost petrified by discretion. And even Phineas Finn had grown to be solemn, silent, and uncommunicative. "Have you heard who is the new Prime Minister?" she said ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... He had served last in the early part of the war on the Peninsula. He was loquacious enough on other subjects; but if one questioned him concerning these last military services, he became on the instant morose and uncommunicative, and one could not but perceive, that the topic was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... for what fresh intelligence they received tended to confirm what they supposed they already knew of the enemy's approach. A few uhlans, forbidding looking fellows in their long black cloaks, were brought in as prisoners, but they were uncommunicative, and so daylight came at last, the pale, ghastly light of a rainy morning, bringing with it no alleviation of their terrible suspense. No one had dared to close an eye during that long night. About seven o'clock Lieutenant Rochas ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... his successful cures and extraordinary treatments, while the other, taller and more robust, although much younger, was Isagani, one of the poets, or at least rimesters, who that year came from the Ateneo, [6] a curious character, ordinarily quite taciturn and uncommunicative. The man talking with them was the rich Capitan Basilio, who was returning from a business ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... area gate. Immediately I was seized with an impulse to interrogate him in regard to a matter which had more or less interested me ever since the inquest; and that was, who was the Mr. Robbins who had called upon Eleanore the night of the murder? But Thomas was decidedly uncommunicative. He remembered such a person called, but could not describe his looks any further than to say that he was not ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... finished his breakfast and left the house before Gilbert and Henry came down from their rooms. Henry was too tired to talk much, and Gilbert, finding him uncommunicative, made no effort to make conversation. He picked up the Times and contented himself with the morning's news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh which had come ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... landlady is old and thin, with a faded, dusty face. She is uncommunicative. The few words she utters seem to cost her pain. Probably her lungs are half choked with dust. She keeps my rooms as free from this commodity as possible, and has the assistance of a strong girl who brings up the breakfast ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... river-side; his family was purse-proud and tyrannical; worst of all in the eyes of a Pope-hating people, the Windybank family still clung to the old faith. Young Master Andrew was quite accustomed to cold looks, and, as a rule, they troubled him not at all. He was by nature reserved and uncommunicative, and he was sufficiently well satisfied with himself to care but little for the opinion of other people. He turned aside from the town and breasted the steep hill that ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... professional appreciation and confidence, and a certain relief, noticed by Codrington, from the dry, unsympathetic rule of Collingwood, a man just, conscientious, highly trained, and efficient, but self-centred, rigid, uncommunicative; one who fostered, if he did not impose, restrictions upon the intercourse between the ships, against which he had inveighed bitterly when himself one of St. Vincent's captains. Nelson, on the contrary, at once invited cordial social relations with the commanding officers. Half ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... dismiss the subject from her mind until next day, when she was sitting alone with her daughter in the morning room up stairs. They were both working, but the conversation flagged, and Mrs. Beale, from wondering why Edith was so uncommunicative, found herself involuntarily repeating the bishop's observation: "That child is not right," and the question: "What is the matter with your face, dearest?" slipped from ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... in the village an old waif, a scholarly oddity, uncommunicative, whose coming to dwell there had excited much gossip before the inhabitants got used to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... inclined to be ugly and uncommunicative; but, with a happy thought, Billy Brackett displayed the badge with which Sheriff Riley had provided him. At sight of it the man at once expressed his readiness to impart all ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... young ladies in the refreshment-bar at Swindon. There they gather, numerous and fair as the sea-nymphs—Doto, Proto, Doris, and Panope, and beautiful Galatea. Of them Maitland sought to be instructed. But the young ladies were arch and uncommunicative, pretending that their attention was engaged in their hospitable duties. Soup it was their business to minister to travellers, not private information. They had seen the gentleman and lady. Very attentive to her he seemed. Yes, they were on the best terms: "very sweet on each other," one young ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... turned the horses' heads toward Kennisburg. Radnor in his present uncommunicative frame of mind was not likely to ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... of our arrival at Mars itself, and especially after the battles began, the prisoner had resumed his savage and uncommunicative disposition, and had seemed continually to be expecting that we would fall victims to the prowess of his fellow beings, and that he would be released. How an outlaw, such as he evidently was, who had been caught ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... emotions after the Battle of Prag were, we do not much know. They are not inconceivable, if we read his situation well; but in the way of speech, there is, as usual, next to nothing. Here are two stray utterances, worth gathering from a man so uncommunicative ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Lucretia had made no difference in her demeanour to Coningsby to that which she offered to the other guests. Polite, but uncommunicative; ready to answer, but never originating conversation; she charmed him as little by her manner as by her person; and after some attempts, not very painstaking, to interest her, Coningsby had ceased to address her. The day passed by with only a faint recognition ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... he was held, had "struck it rich," in other words, that his claim was proving an unusually fruitful one, and he was making money rapidly. How this came to be known it would be hard to say, for he was very uncommunicative, going and coming to and from his work quietly and unostentatiously, and living in the ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... replied, looking up from her work, "if you go on chatter-magging away like this, there'll be no frock ready for you tonight," and with a most uncommunicative air, the old woman turned away, and gave a little impressive shake to the billowy mass of white tarletan to which she was ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... door against which John was leaning. "Good morning!" John said, glancing at the slouch hat and the shabby reefer coat and the brown boots. "Have you come to do this ceremony, too?" The man nodded his head. He was very uncommunicative and had a surly look. "But they won't let you in, like ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... she went from teepee to teepee. The Kakisas showed themselves awed by her condescension, but still they were uncommunicative. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... word in reply: "This place will be your headquarters. You can judge for yourself." I left Memphis for my new field without delay, and reached Corinth on the 15th of the month. General Halleck remained until the 17th of July; but he was very uncommunicative, and gave me no information as to what I had been called to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... what would meet her mother's favour and what would not. The unconscious conclusion was, that reason had little to do with it; and the consequence, that without being untrue, Daisy had learned to be very uncommunicative; about her thoughts, plans, or wishes. To her mother, that is; she was more free with her father, though the habit, once a habit, asserted itself everywhere. Perhaps, too, among causes, the example of her mother's own elegant manner of showing truth only as one shows a ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... that men are more complex, they would require so much. For instance, if I were to have a friend, he must be an uncommunicative man: that limits me to about thirteen or fourteen people in the world. It is only with a man of perfect reticence that you can speak completely without reserve. We talk together far more openly than most people; but there is a skilful ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... a very uncommunicative person. Ruth tried to get him to talk about himself as they crossed the rocky spit, but all that he said of a personal nature was ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... dejected and most unsatisfactory chum when he got back to the room after the Chambers game that Saturday afternoon. All of Tim's demands for an explanation of the whole puzzling affair met only with evasion. Don was not only uncommunicative, but a trifle short-tempered, a condition quite unusual for him. All Tim could get from him was that he "felt perfectly punk" and wasn't going to try to ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... quite naturally." Then he got a candle and sat down over the fire with a volume of a novel. It was not yet past five, and Lady Julia did not go upstairs to dress till six, and therefore there was an hour during which they were together. John had at first been rather grand to his old friend, and very uncommunicative. But before the dressing-bell had rung he had been coaxed into a confidential strain and had told everything. "I suppose it is wrong and selfish," he said. "I suppose I am a dog in a manger. But I do own that there is a consolation to me in the assurance that she will ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... continued, "my father always said that he meant to retire on his fortune, and did not wish me to carry on the business, but, being naturally an uncommunicative man on business matters, he never gave me any information as to details. Of course, I had expected that his manager here, and his books, would reveal all that I required to know, but the soldiers have settled that question. Mill ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... find my own father treading in the unknown ways? Then perhaps some day he would come across me, and take me farther than I had yet been; but I would not be the first to whisper that I was there. It seems strange enough to me now that I should have been so uncommunicative; but I remind myself that I have been thoroughly made over, at least once, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... every step she took gave her pain and her back was so stiff that she stooped considerably when walking. Mrs. Livingston had tried to get the story of Harriet's saving of their lives from the three girls. Patricia and Cora were uncommunicative. Tommy had no very clear idea of what had occurred, except that she "wath thmothered almotht to death." But Mrs. Livingston was not to be put off so easily. She found an opportunity to speak with Harriet early in the afternoon. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... nothing of the "wobbly" gait we often see in people who are not well-proportioned. His character was undoubtedly that of a young man who had the desire to get ahead faster than his opportunities would permit. Solitude had made him uncommunicative and secretive; anxiety and privation had made him self-helpful and self-reliant; lack of sympathy had made him calculating; but doing for others had made him kind-hearted and generous. His reading ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... "Deuced uncommunicative sort of a fellow," said Jack to himself. "But I know I've come in contact with him some place. It may come ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... and had a heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul talk with her—one that I shall never forget. She was so silent, so uncommunicative, yet I talked on until I felt the Spirit say, "Enough." I have seen her since. She was still leading the kind of life which had been instrumental in sending her sister's soul and others' souls by the thousands to eternal perdition. She received me kindly, but she would ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... murder was committed. He spoke of his cousin with much feeling, and tried to excuse his conduct, as being the result of his father's ill-treatment and neglect; and he commented upon Anthony's solitary habits, and sullen uncommunicative disposition, as having been ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Physically, he was a big man with a bull neck and black, piercing eyes. His policy in coffee was one of blood and iron. He brooked no interference with his plans, and he was ruthless in his methods of dealing with men and governments. Usually silent and uncommunicative, occasionally he exploded under stress; and when he did so, there was no mincing of words. He knew no fear. Newspaper criticism annoyed him but little; and he had a kind of contempt for the fourth estate as ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave—it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine—his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... two-hour rest periods morning and afternoon, and a diet of eggs, chicken, cream and fresh green vegetables. Ridiculous orders for a working girl in New York! They disturbed Esther. She was very quiet, more uncommunicative than ever. I used to catch her looking at me in a sort of anxious way. It seemed as if I couldn't wait to help her with her too-heavy burden. Although I had brought back from the hospital fifteen pounds less flesh on my bones, there ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins—those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... difference of opinion, on a question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy results, inasmuch as it deprived the General, in his hour of need, of the strength which unanimity imparts, and produced an uncommunicative and disheartening reserve in an emergency which demanded the freest interchange of counsel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... dream and fulfilment. The glorious splash of patriotic fervour which launched us on our way has subsided; we have reached mid-channel; and the haven where we would be is still afar off. The brave future of which we dreamed in our dour and uncommunicative souls seems as remote as ever, and the present has settled down into ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... simple breakfast he was uncommunicative. "Don't worry, dear," he said, once, when she had plied him with questions, attempted to change his decision by arguments. "I cannot afford to run away. Monsieur Lefevre has given me a duty to perform, and I must at least tell my story. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... arms held folded over her head as a shield against expected blows. She was still sullen, uncommunicative, her head down. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... witlings in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how dull; constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets instinctively buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... found Maximilian in conference with a stranger; a heavily-built, large-jawed, uncommunicative man. As I was about to withdraw my friend insisted ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... gaunt and black against a roseate sky, grew longer and longer; and then, as twilight fell, the two coming home met a few paces from the cottage. He asked some questions about the work she had been doing, and she answered briefly. Then, silent and uncommunicative, they went in together. The girl set the bread and cider on the table, and going to the great black pot which had been simmering all day upon the fire, poured some broth into two pitchers. It did not escape Michel's frugal ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... floods were lapping the road-side as Eric and his sister left the twinkling lights behind and turned, after a crackling six miles of metalled high-way, on to the primaeval ride that bored faint-heartedly through the forest. He was tired and uncommunicative, though his journey from Waterloo had been uneventful; once inside the carriage and tucked warmly into a corner, Barbara had closed her eyes, sighed and dropped asleep. Not until he stirred himself to collect his hat and coat did she open her eyes and look round with a tired smile; as the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... down, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally she put some random question about his travelling-companion, a slow shy meditative youth whom he had once or twice brought down to Givre. She reflected that it was natural he should have given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his livelier acquaintances, and aloud she said: "I'm so glad Fred ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... quickly away from the black, uncommunicative mass of the abandoned building. The woods were lonelier than before. They ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... hand, welcomed me back to Falmouth with a carelessness which disappointed if it did not nettle me. He fetched out the tea and guava-jelly, to be sure, but appeared to take no interest in my doings during the holidays, and was uncommunicative on his own. This seemed the stranger because he had important news to tell me. During my absence he and Mr. Goodfellow between them ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... she went in earnest, and the Settlement workers were left alone in their transformed parlor to consider the madness or merit of her little plan. Michael saw her at breakfast next morning but she was gayly uncommunicative as to her plans, and that night Mrs. Hills reported that her star boarder (who had the two best and biggest rooms, now, and a dressing-room and bath and her own telephone) had gone west for a month or ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Hill. But when she saw him again on the day after their safe return to Trelevan there was nothing in his demeanour to remind her of the stress through which they had passed. He was, as ever, perfectly calm and self-contained, and wholly uncommunicative. Adela sought in vain to satisfy her curiosity as to the happenings in Barren Valley which her courage had not permitted her to witness for herself. Fletcher Hill was as a closed book, and on some points Dot was equally reticent. By no persuasion ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... went in haste to his home, on North Square, and said to his young wife, "Nabby, let me have a beefsteak as quickly as possible." While he was eating it, a rap was heard on the window, and he rose at once from the unfinished meal and departed. He returned late, tired and uncommunicative. In the morning, there was found in his shoes, and scattered upon the floor, a quantity of tea. The inevitable inference from these circumstances is strengthened by evidence of a very different character. Near the close of Major Melvill's life, he gave, while dining with a few friends, some ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... at once," he said. He crushed Jimmy's note into his pocket and went back for his hat. He called a taxi, and took the man from the hotel back with him; he asked him a few questions, but the man was uncommunicative, and apparently not very interested. Yes, the lady was dead right enough, so he had been told, he admitted. The gentleman—Mr. Challoner—seemed in a great ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... down, if only he himself might clutch Mayes's throat in the end. This explained the "business" that had called him away after the Barbican stronghold had been captured; finding both Hewitt and Plummer somewhat uncommunicative, and himself somewhat "out of it," he had drawn off, and had followed Hewitt's every movement, confident that he would be led to his old enemy at last. What I had told him of the cypher message had led him to hunt out ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... Carleton Conne, of the American Secret Service, quiet, observant, uncommunicative, never too sanguine and never too skeptical, had strolled on to the Channel Queen, lighted his cigar, and was now tilted back in his chair outside the Quartermaster's office in Dieppe, not at all excited and waiting for the Texas Pioneer ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sufficiently wealthy man, and a Takur, a feudal chieftain of a Raj, one of the hundreds of similar Rajes. Besides, he is a true friend of ours, who offered us his protection in our travels and volunteered to play the mediator between us and the suspicious, uncommunicative Hindus. Beyond all this, we know absolutely nothing about him. It is true, though, that I know a little more than the others; but I have promised silence, and silent I shall be. But the little I know is so strange, so unusual, that it is more like a ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the effect of imprisonment, and its anxiety and privation, coupled with the exhaustion arising from his recent accident, but how was the first to be accounted for, and wherefore was he, after so long a separation, and under such circumstances, thus uncommunicative and unaffectionate? All these reflections occurred to the mind of the sensitive Henry, as he sat watching, and occasionally addressing a remark to, his taciturn brother, until he became fairly bewildered in his efforts to find a clue to his conduct. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... compass. And worse still, he has not the explorer's instinct. If he possessed this, he would somehow find his way himself,—a thing which occasionally happens when the reader has more than usual ability. Between the covers of those books, turning to him their uncommunicative backs, behind those labels—to him so unexpressive—there may be passages, whole chapters or more, that would give him entertainment, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... ascertain the number of her state-room—a double-berth which she shared with nobody. But it was less easy to find out whether she ever left it, and if so, at what time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and the stewardesses on the Lithuania were mature, experienced and uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he met a muffled Isabel ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... that Peggy was silent, as well as uncommunicative. She fenced skilfully to evade direct answers to their questions, but she did not seem inclined to introduce new topics of conversation. And when Amy called her from the kitchen, where she and Ruth were getting supper, Peggy sat staring abstractedly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Duncan had been sullen and uncommunicative. He was evidently crushed by the sudden and surprising turn which affairs had taken. In the moment of his triumph he had fallen, and when he fancied himself the most secure, defeat and detection had overtaken him. It was not long, however, after they ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... like to know more about it," she sighed, a quaint little air of childish petulance graving two lines between her eyebrows. "Do you know, Harry, you are a singularly uncommunicative sort of being. I have to guess that your life is interesting and picturesque,—that is," she amended, "I should have to do so if Wallace Carpenter had not told me a little something about it. Sometimes I think ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sword of Damocles over the heads of the American people. Tension increased. "We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst," came one official view early in the crisis. The President became detached and uncommunicative. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... regard. There was in that circle of silent, terrible, remorseless parasites of society, a young man whose classical face, exquisite manners and varied accomplishments set him apart from all the others. He moved among them like a ghost,—mysterious, uncommunicative ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... are days even here somewhat dull-looking, when the mountain seems uncommunicative, sending out no appreciable invitation, as if not at home. At such time its height seems much less, as if, crouching and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta is always at home to those who love her, and is ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... home from Annette's father put an end to the fears of Philip. Annette pouted, but papa must be obeyed. She blamed Philip and Aunt Nina for telling tales, but Aunt Nina was uncommunicative, and Philip too obviously cheerful to derive ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... he answered, with seeming reluctance, and from that instant he relapsed into the same uncommunicative mood ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... But there was a change in all. The father and mother sat—not side by side, in that propinquity which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's garment gives pleasure; they sat one at each corner of the table, engrossed in their several occupations; reading with an uncommunicative eagerness, and sewing in unbroken silence. Each was entrenched within a chilling circle of thoughts and interests in which the other never entered. And now the only point of meeting between ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... can learn, for Tish is very uncommunicative about the entire matter, the morning passed quietly enough. She had taken the precaution of having her folding card table and two pillows sent to the engine house, and when Aggie and I arrived at midday ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... add, Mr. Hamlin's surmise was correct. Mr. Rylands found Jane still in the kitchen alone, terrified, remorseful, yet ever after silent on the subject. Stranger still, the hired man became equally uncommunicative. Mrs. Rylands, attributing her husband's absence only to care of the stock, had gone to bed in a feverish condition, and Mr. Rylands did not deem it prudent to tell her of his interview. The next ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... inclined, I'm sorry you have a blister on your off heel, and I sympathize with you because of your prickly-heat. But it's all in the day's work and you'll survive. In the meantime, however, I suggest that you compose your restless New England soul in patience, old man, and enjoy with our uncommunicative Cahuilla friend and myself the glories of a sunrise ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... keenly than one which takes the practical form of leaving details to his own discretion; and, coming from Buchanan, it was doubly acceptable. For, in Desmond's opinion, there were few men in the world like the Colonel, hard and uncommunicative as he was; and it never occurred to him that his strong, unspoken admiration was returned with interest by ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... it's my own business, and I've a right to hide it," retorted Tom, smiling once more, though still uncommunicative. ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... that he had only alighted to obtain more petrol, rushed him back to the city in his car. His comrades and competitors, on arriving, sought to interview the second man, whose name they had not been able to ascertain; but he was very uncommunicative, being occupied in cleaning the engine. Lieutenant Smith was back with petrol in twenty minutes; in half-an-hour he was again on his way. This extreme haste caused great disappointment to the airmen and civic dignitaries of the city, they having risen from their beds on hearing of his arrival ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the journey lasted. Having failed with me, he pitched next upon another emigrant, who had come through from Canada, and was not one jot less weary than myself. Nay, even in a natural state, as I found next morning when we scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, uncommunicative man. After trying him on different topics, it appears that the little German gentleman flounced into a temper, swore an oath or two, and departed from that car in quest of livelier society. Poor little gentleman! I suppose he thought an emigrant should be a rollicking, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arose and looked straight at the flushed young pilot. His eyes were uncommunicative. "Lieutenant Siddons just left here with Colonel Watts, going back to Wing headquarters," he said. "I may tell you, Lieutenant, that the Colonel came down a short time after Siddons hopped off, and gave me a ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... "that I now understand why Spatola grew so uncommunicative and suspicious toward the end of our interview at City Hall. We both thought it was because I spoke of shorthand. But it was perhaps because I mentioned an invention in the way of writing music. He feared that I was trying to incriminate ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... in while we were looking the plant over, but seemed uncommunicative to all Kennedy's efforts to ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... What the enemy was doing across the Potomac, scarce thirty miles away, was naturally of intense interest to the people of the border town. But not the smallest detail of intelligence, however unimportant, escaped his lips. To his wife he was as uncommunicative as to the rest. Neither hint nor suggestion made the least impression, and direct interrogations were put by with a quiet smile. Nor was he too shy to suggest to his superiors that silence was golden. In a report to Johnston, written four days after Kernstown, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... When Blood was not dicing or drinking in the taverns of Tortuga, keeping company that in his saner days he had loathed, he was shut up in his cabin aboard the Arabella, alone and uncommunicative. His friends at Government House, bewildered at this change in him, sought to reclaim him. Mademoiselle d'Ogeron, particularly distressed, sent him almost daily invitations, to few ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... sadly. Of course there was Doris, he thought, but he had never spoken of her. Sometimes when the longing to see her again would come upon him, he would have talked of her to his native wife, but he was by nature an uncommunicative man, and the thought of how Doris must feel her loneliness touched him with remorse ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... subject of his protracted weekly absences at the State capital, the Honourable Hilary was as uncommunicative as he would have been had he retired for those periods to a bar-room. He often grunted and cleared his throat and glanced at his son when their talk bordered upon these absences; and he was even conscious of an extreme irritation against himself as well as Austen because ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without appearance of fatigue. There was in his mien a mixture of shame and of determination. His air of passionate energy excited Philip's romantic imagination, and when, the sitting ended, he saw him in his clothes, it seemed to him that he wore them as though he were a king in rags. He was uncommunicative, but in a day or two Mrs. Otter told Philip that the model was a Spaniard and that he had ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... pretty, attractive children, and Henry, the baby, was a sturdy toddler, the pride of the household. Little Sam was the least promising of the flock. He remained delicate, and developed little beyond a tendency to pranks. He was a queer, fanciful, uncommunicative child that detested indoors and would run away if not watched—always in the direction of the river. He walked in his sleep, too, and often the rest of the household got up in the middle of the night to find him fretting ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... received by the company with somewhat gloomy interest. Nastasia was silent, and would not say what she thought about it. Gania was equally uncommunicative. The general seemed the most anxious of all, and decidedly uneasy. The present of pearls which he had prepared with so much joy in the morning had been accepted but coldly, and Nastasia had smiled rather disagreeably as she took it from him. Ferdishenko ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... talk, but for so jovial a specimen he was surprisingly uncommunicative. Indeed, I think he soon decided that I somehow did not belong to the fraternity, that I was a "farmer"—in the most opprobrious sense—and he soon began to drowse, rousing himself once or twice to roll another cigarette, but finally dropping ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... fur collar which all but covered her head, the black eyes followed him as alertly as a bird's; intercepting the soft melancholy of his gaze, she smiled at him, mischievous, confident, and uncommunicative, and snuggled deeper into ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... acquired superiority. He was neither reserved nor impatient, but suffered her to "commune with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon told her all her questions; there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not." It ill becomes those who can teach, to be supercilious and uncommunicative. As the rich are required to supply the necessities of the poor with a judicious liberality, being expressly appointed as the trustees of Providence, and dispensers of its bounty; and as those who withhold, when it is in the power of their hands to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... whole life to her. His very seeming carelessness about restraining her was all calculated; he knew that restraint would produce nothing but utter alienation. Just so far as she allowed him, he shared her studies, her few pleasures, her thoughts; but she was essentially solitary and uncommunicative. No person, as was said long ago, could judge him,—because his task was not merely difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A nature like Elsie's had necessarily to be studied by itself, and to be followed in its laws where it could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... ground where he had lain. They were missing. Suspecting the newcomers, he called their officer's attention to the fact. Then for the first time he noticed the strange demeanor of his new companions. The officer was utterly unknown to him. He seemed uncommunicative. There was something particularly unfamiliar in the men's appearance. Yet as a number of companies in the imperial army had been formed with city recruits or even with prisoners taken in the sorties during the siege, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... to-day my uncle was very uncommunicative, and I think ashamed of the fright he had given us; but afterwards he inquired of me whether Mr. Spearman was still in town, adding that he thought that was a young man who had some sense left in his head. I think you know, my dear Emily, that I am not inclined to disagree ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... one of his dirty fingers in his mouth, and looked stupid and uncommunicative. He glanced at the young officers around him, and then over ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... nobody to speak to, by reading some very amusing "Conversations on Political Economy." But he sinks to rise again. He obtains many pupils, who had no sooner mastered the first principles of science, than they began to throw off their retired habits and uncommunicative manners. "Being not utterly ignorant of some of the rudiments of knowledge, and consequently having completed their education, it was now their duty, as members of society, to instruct and not to study; and on all occasions they seized opportunities of assisting the spread of knowledge. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite's face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... poisoned her father against me, for henceforth Alvarez never spoke of me with that partiality he had previously felt. They repaired to London: her father was often absent, and often engaged with men whom she had never seen before; he was absorbed and uncommunicative, and she was still ignorant of the nature of his ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prevented Elsmere's fulfilling the trust, or rather, realizing the hope, for though he did go straight to Bertha's house, he did not find her there. The maid who opened the door proved uncommunicative on the subject of Bertha's whereabouts, and Elsmere sauntered away, undecided what to do next. Ten feet from the gate, he stumbled upon a cat. At once a beautiful thought came to him. His own cat-pussy had gone away, tired of abuse and starvation irregularly combined with affection in ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... the scene of his engineering triumph, and at precisely the time of its climax. But the situation for Waldhorn was this, that if he resigned and left the place he would only come the more closely under immediate espionage. Whatever his motives, he remained, sullen and uncommunicative. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... quite possible for young women to have friends among the young men without this friendship developing into a strong affection. You do not know, girls, how valiantly you are defended by the boys. Boys are usually such uncommunicative creatures! But touch their friendship, and they will throw a volley of rhetoric right in among a crowd of gossipers. Slow to receive favors from you, as they sometimes seem, they never forget a kindness ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the group, however, interest fell promptly away from Pete and centred around this more legitimate pole. But Bas turned on them all a sullenly uncommunicative face, and the idlers were quick to recognize and respect his unapproachable mood and to stand wide of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance that none knew, none will ever know, the motive principle he employed or the enginery he devised. While he was working at this survey, near the spot at which we stand, the Board of Award ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... lager-beer, and he betrayed not the smallest desire to drink too much. Furtively she watched him throughout the meal, trying to adjust her impressions, trying to realize him as the lover to whom she had been faithful for so long, the lover who had written those always tender, though quite uncommunicative letters, the lover, who had cabled her his welcome, and then had so completely and so cruelly ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... and I would be friends now if he would let me. But how can you be friends with a man who is as reserved as the Great Pyramid and as uncommunicative as the Sphinx, and who sticks up iron palings all round himself, like a specimen tree in the park, so that nobody can get near him? If a man wants a girl to like him he should be nice to her, and not require an introduction every ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... Victorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and certainly quite at their ease with ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... but the subject fascinated Mountfort. The girl had sprung away and disappeared down one of the cliff paths directly Hugh had been extricated from danger. Mountfort was curious about her, but Hugh was uncommunicative. He had no answer ready to Mountfort's question. He scarcely seemed to ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... remained nothing but to sing Te Deum, draw a line, and begin on a fresh page of my unwritten diary. I do not pretend that I recovered all I had lost with Mamie, it would have been more than I had merited; and I had certainly been more uncommunicative than became either the partner or the friend. But she accepted the position handsomely; and during the week that I now passed with them, both she and Jim had the grace to spare me questions. It was to Calistoga that we went; there was some rumour of a Napa land-boom at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dealt with him at some length. He was a peculiar man—of sixty-five about—iron gray, hard-faced, obstinate, and uncommunicative. He used to keep the ship loafing at sea for inscrutable reasons. Would come on deck at night sometimes, take some sail off her, God only knows why or wherefore, then go below, shut himself up in his ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... and the archdeacon, and yet it seemed agreed among them that something should be done. He went up to London, and saw his daughter,—not daring, however, to mention such a subject. Lord Dumbello was cross with him, and very uncommunicative. Indeed both the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had found that their daughter's house was not comfortable to them, and as they were sufficiently proud among their own class they had not cared to press themselves on ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... as good as his word, and got in communication with the prison just before school time. The warden was gruff and inclined to be uncommunicative at first, but his manner changed remarkably after he heard of the radio message and he inquired ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... Piotr, the young master was as uncommunicative as the old; and the door to the inner sanctum had, throughout this interview, been shut and bolted. Thus mere speculation was all that found tongue in the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... chain of reasoning by which she might know beforehand what would meet her mother's favour and what would not. The unconscious conclusion was, that reason had little to do with it; and the consequence, that without being untrue, Daisy had learned to be very uncommunicative about her thoughts, plans, or wishes. To her mother, that is; she was more free with her father, though the habit, once a habit, asserted itself everywhere. Perhaps, too, among causes, the example of her mother's own elegant ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... very uncommunicative. All I heard was that the reason he didn't get my letters at Packworth was that he had told me, or thought he had told me, to address my letters to "T," and I had always addressed them to "J." But even had I addressed them correctly, he ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the accordion, said, "Who's that now?" went to the window, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into the darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling had passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against some object in the stream, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... running through the words. "You mean 'bribes,' don't you? For I assure you, dear cousin, it is the metallic clink of American gold, and nothing else, that lures your great men over the sea. As for my silence, ma belle, I have been uncommunicative because there really seemed nothing at all worth saying. I can't accustom myself to small-talk—I can't even listen to it patiently. I always feel a wild impulse to fly far, far away, where I can ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... and still, possibly, capable of some such folly as that of which she was thinking. If it were not so, if there were not something of that kind in the wind why should he—why should she—be so hard and uncommunicative in all their answers? There lay her niece, however, sick with the headache, and therefore weak, and very much in Lady Ball's power. The evil to be done was great, and the necessity for preventing it might be immediate. And Lady Ball was a lady who did not like to be kept in the ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... his brother; it was believed by others that he had simply gone to Sacramento to borrow money on his share, in order to continue the improvements on his own responsibility. The partners themselves were uncommunicative; even Whiskey Dick, who since his remarkable social elevation had become less oracular, much to his own astonishment, contributed nothing to the gossip except a suggestion that as the fiery temper of George Kearney brooked no opposition, ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... were a source of much gossip and great speculation, of course, to the good people of Green Isle, (as we shall style this gem of the Pacific, in order to thwart the myrmidons of the law!) They found them so reserved and uncommunicative, however, on the subject of their personal affairs, that the most curious gossip in the settlement at last gave up speculating ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... of coherent intentions. At that time Socialism had come into politics again after a period of depression and obscurity, with a tremendous ECLAT. There was visibly a following of Socialist members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft felt hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to casual advances a little surprisingly in rich North Country dialects. Members became aware of a "seagreen incorruptible," as Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Address, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... it is this isolation which creates the difficulties of their ethnology. No historical records throw any light upon their origin—a statement which the most sanguine investigator must admit. But tradition, perhaps, is less uncommunicative. Many investigators believe this. For my own part I should only be glad to be able to do so. As it is, however, the arguments of the present chapter will proceed as if the whole legendary history of Ireland and Scotland, so far as it relates to the migrations by which the islands ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... might think of the situation of affairs, she had never said a word to any living soul, not even to her children. Naturally cold and reserved, she was very uncommunicative—a fact that pained Hulda and Joel not a little. But with that respect for the head of the family innate in Northern lands, they made no attempt to break down a reserve which was eminently distasteful to them. Besides, Dame Hansen never asked aid or counsel, being firmly convinced of the infallibility ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; intent, assiduous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... conversation showed a tendency to flag. The headmaster had opened brightly enough, with a summary of the evidence which Mr. Downing had laid before him, but after that a massive silence had been the order of the day. There is nothing in this world quite so stolid and uncommunicative as a boy who has made up his mind to be stolid and uncommunicative; and the headmaster, as he sat and looked at Mike, who sat and looked past him at the bookshelves, felt awkward. It was a scene which needed either a dramatic interruption or a neat exit speech. As it ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... seems mighty amusing to me; it is a man's mode of viewing correspondence. Men's letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative. I never quite knew before why they made them so. They may be right in a sense: strange chances do fall out certainly. As to my own notes, I never thought of attaching importance to them or considering their fate, till Arthur seemed to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... knowledge to themselves confined Is the same avarice of mind; Nor makes their conversation better, Than if they never knew a letter. Such is the fate of Gosford's knight, Who keeps his wisdom out of sight; Whose uncommunicative heart Will scarce one precious word impart: Still rapt in speculations deep, His outward senses fast asleep; Who, while I talk, a song will hum, Or with his fingers beat the drum; Beyond the skies transports his mind, And leaves a lifeless corpse behind. But, as for me, who ne'er ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... to as John Telfer had said, with kisses in a darkened room by a shame-faced yokel and, after marrying some such a yokel, live lives of unspeakable blankness. Into the houses of these women come the husbands at evening, tired and uncommunicative, to eat hurriedly and then go again into the streets or, the blessing of utter physical exhaustion having come to them, to sit for an hour in stockinged feet before crawling away to ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... and eighty-seven passengers, principally returning emigrants. No passenger escaped, and only two of the crew: one was an Italian speaking no French, from whom they could get nothing; the other was an Englishman from Cardiff, speaking French, but almost obstinately uncommunicative. He said that he was below when the ship struck, that the captain had locked the passengers in the cabin, and that he knew nothing of the causes which had led the ship to go out of her course to run ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a second cigarette and commented on the warmth of the night to an elderly gentleman who entered the carriage from the corridor. The elderly gentleman was uncommunicative and merely growled in reply. Mannix offered him a match. The gentleman growled again and lit his cigar from his own matchbox. Mannix arrived at the conclusion that he must be, for some reason, in a bad temper. He watched him for a while and then decided further that ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the better class. They are well trained, many of them having been brought up as the valets, or butlers of the Southern gentry, and answer better for such places than whites, inasmuch as they are quiet, uncommunicative, attentive and respectful. One of these men is always in charge of the front door, and visitors are admitted with caution, it being highly desirable to ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... uncommunicative to be interesting, Pinkey got up and left him to his reflections, remarking philosophically as he ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... wanted to know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.—How all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case, was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had advised ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... shadows, who apparently preferred darkness to light. Our landlady either knew nothing, or would say nothing. At any rate she found no fault, and I have since wondered often by what magic this fellow was able to convert a common landlady of a common lodging-house into a discreet and uncommunicative person. This alone was a sign of genius ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... did not get up that day, or the next, or the next. She lay abed, pale and uncommunicative, denying herself even to Mattie Allen, but less easily shutting herself from the operations of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... brevet brigadier, and had been making a good thing of it ever since in the government service. The office bristled with military titles. Everybody except Barwood and Judge Montane was either colonel, major, or captain. As to the judge, a middle-aged, uncommunicative man who was known to be supporting a large family, he confessed one day over a bottle, ordered in by the bureau during the general's absence, that his title was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Bidwell and went to Pickleville to see Hugh. He wrote a story telling of Hugh's early poverty and his efforts to become an inventor. When the reporter talked to Hugh he found the inventor so embarrassed and uncommunicative that he gave up trying to get a story. Then he went to Steve Hunter who talked to him for an hour. The story made Hugh a strikingly romantic figure. His people, the story said, came out of the mountains of Tennessee, but they were not poor whites. It was ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Lawyer Lang, panting bonnetless down the road. But before the lawyer had started for the scene of disaster, the minister, Thomas Merriam, had appeared, and asked for a word in private with him. Nobody ever knew just what that word was, but the lawyer was singularly uncommunicative and reticent as ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... lot of interest in ghosts and their stories. So I was generally at Haralal's desk cross-examining him about this affair; at first the gentleman was very uncommunicative but when he saw I would give him no rest he made a statement which I have every reason to believe is true. This is more ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... case in point. She was uncommunicative. She liked to gather in information, but she found it difficult to give it up once it was ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hidden from view by a sandy knoll, where, in some cottonwood brush, beside a small creek, they found half a dozen tepees, around which were squatted twenty or thirty disreputable-looking Indians, their ponies tethered in the brush near by. The bucks were sullen and uncommunicative, maintaining a solemn silence broken only by an occasional grunt. Their dress was a combination of Indian costume and articles purchased from the white people, the latter being put on to suit the individual taste of the wearer, without the least regard to the use for ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... was disappointed not to find Geraldine, and that Felix had become so absorbed in the business that had brought him home, that he only sent in word that he was obliged to go into the town, and tea must not wait for him. Lance remained, but the burthen of two secrets rendered him uncommunicative, when Wilmet tried to understand the cause of Cherry's delay at St. Faith's; and Alda was curious about Vale Leston and Mrs. Fulbert, whom she had seen at Kensington Palace Gardens. It did not take much acumen to exclaim, 'Still no children! Then there ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... welcome," said Anderson, thinking of his horses and cows. Mother agreed with him, while Mrs. Maloney repeated over and over again that she was always under the impression that Mick Donovan was in gaol along with his bad old father. Dad was uncommunicative. There was something on his mind. He waited till the company had gone, then consulted ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd |
