"Grumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Woolwich once while Mary was with her grandparents, but it was not, from her point of view, a very satisfactory visit. Reggie was grumpy, and looked very tired and overworked. Moreover, Mary, though she could not have confessed it for the world, was just a trifle hurt that he never reminded her ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... grumpy miser, Peleg Growdy," said the orator, waving his hands to emphasize his words. "He never had any use for boys, you know, and often says he wonders why the pests were ever born. I don't remember doing him any mean thing in my ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... was fortunate enough to sit between Prince Metternich and the Marquis de Gallifet. Certainly I could not have two more delightful companions, each so different and yet so entertaining. The Marquis was very aggressive and grumpy; but ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... and after dinner we sat on the stoop; he was still rather grumpy, though we pretended not to notice it. Presently Chad came along and took a seat beside us; but at first I don't think anybody, except, perhaps, Nora, paid him much attention. Felix had been very ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... grumpy, with a fine forgetfulness as to the saltness of time, says that young Mr. Mill had been kept such a recluse that when he met Mrs. Taylor he considered that he was the first man to discover the potency ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... transported. He seemed to be more morose than ever, but it was observed that he seldom said or did anything to hurt his neighbours, as once was the case. Sam Green, as he began to recover from his broken leg, was much the same man as before, sour and grumpy. He was able to move to his own cottage, but matters did not improve there. Only when Tiny Paul was with him was he seen to smile. He was never tired of watching the little chap, who would get hold of one of ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... a grumpy old man called Simon Hixon. After a long time Peter and Simon become more friendly. There is an accident and the vessel is cast up on a rock fairly near an island. The Captain is injured as he had been the last ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... long-armed, humpbacked, hairy gnomes, bristling with anger, stretching forbidding arms downwards to bar our passage to their sacred heights. Sometimes an inviting vista through the branches would lure us in, when it would narrow, and at its upper angle we would find a solid phalanx of these grumpy dwarfs. Then we had to attack boldly, scrambling over the obstinate, elastic arms and against the clusters of stiff needles, till we gained the upper side and found ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... sway from these who want to help you! I'm a grumpy old woman, but I can feel for you. Don't try and keep it all back, like this! A woman would cry, and it would all seem clearer at once. Now won't you ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... home to the boarding house, he found the atmosphere there as dreary as the street itself. The boarders were grumpy and Mrs. Atterson was ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... see no hurry, one way or another. I don't say but that a husband is a good thing to have, mind you! I guess I'm like all other women and want to have one some time, but so long as I've got pa I'm in no hurry. He's as much trouble as a husband would be, and as grumpy when things don't go to suit him. Sometimes I feel like in the end I'd choose to marry the Colonel, since it wouldn't be so much of a change, the Colonel bein' like pa in some ways, such as bein' economical; and then again I feel like ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... you're right, Max; it has often struck me as a curious fact that, when one is cross or grumpy, he is apt to think all the rest of the world is also cross or grumpy. By the way, that reminds me—though I don't see why it should remind me, seeing that the two things have no connection—that Coppet came to ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Tonnison was grumpy, and I felt out of sorts. It was a somewhat dismal day, and there was a touch of chilliness in the air. There was no mention of going out fishing on either of our parts. We got dinner, and, after that, just sat and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... health in London. He had been impassioned with the theatre, and had become a diligent attendant at first-night performances. Even these ceased to have any joy for him, and he neglected, in fine, all his old sources of amusement He went about sorrowful and grumpy, expressing the dolefullest opinions about everything. There was going to be war, stocks were going down, trade was crumbling, there was no ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... she. "If I'd been in your place, I should have been mad enough to say anything. But it's no use to sit here and be grumpy. You'd better let me go and get you a book. The "Critical Magazine" for 1767 and 1768, is on that list, and I know there are lots of queer, interesting things in it, but it takes a good while to hunt them out from the other things for which you would not care at all. And ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... Lin Tai-y smiled. "Yes," she observed, "your servant-girls must, I fancy, have been too lazy to budge, grumpy and in a cross-grained mood; this is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... him, unless there was something to watch out for. As it happened there was, though Jim did not know it. As a link in the chain of what was to occur, I must mention the negro porter of Jim's car. He was an undersized, grumpy person, and Jim had earned his ill will by giving him a call down for his impudence to a lady who had ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... a lot, an' mebbe it's got a heap of effect on Number Two, who sort of thinks that if she gets tied up to such a sucker she'll be able to wrap him around her finger. But if he loves Number Two, he'll be mighty grumpy to the next fellow that goes to makin' ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was grumpy and monosyllabic. He refused to discuss the situation or Mrs. Sherwood, returning with an obvious effort to commonplaces. Mrs. Morrell exerted all her fascination to get him back to the former level. A little cold imp sat in the back of Keith's brain and criticised ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... be off, he's sure to be out of temper; masters and missuses are always grumpy when they first get up. (DIBBS kisses TILLY, who slaps him. Exit, L. ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... didn't you know I would?" asked Rose Mary quickly, in her simplicity of heart not at all catching the subtle drift of his question. "They all missed you, and Uncle Tucker went to bed almost grumpy, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... lunch and put on another exhibition of free-hand feeding, getting more grumpy and disgusted every minute. We were all ready to yell for mercy and put on our civilized clothes when we heard a terrific riot from outside. Then ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... to above was certainly startling. I was talking to an old man whom I had long known: a little wrinkled old man, deservedly esteemed for his integrity and industry, full of experience as well as of old-world notions sometimes a little "grumpy," a little caustic in his manner of talking, but on the whole quite kindly and tolerant in his disposition. You could often watch in his face the habitual practice of patience, as, with a wry smile and a contemptuous remark, he dismissed some disagreeable topic or other from his thoughts. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... West we have had one merry round of sickness in the house ... but all are on their feet once more and as gay as they can be with a more or less grumpy head of the household in the neighborhood, (assuming for the nonce that I am ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... went far enough home to stir the fault-finders. Sawdy and Carpy took grumpy counsel together. Presently they hunted up Laramie, who in front of the ranch-house was talking horses with Kitchen and Doubleday. They told him the situation and asked for help: "Come over to the creek and show the bunch up, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... their altered circumstances, they would have enjoyed it immensely. Mrs. Saxon, the unfailing sunshine-radiator of the household, tried to ignore the tone of discontent in her husband's voice, the grumpy attitude of Egbert, Quenrede's fit of the blues, and Athelstane's rather martyred pose. She insisted on bundling everybody out for a blow ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the widow's mind; she sorely wanted money, and she might not have another chance of letting the room. This grumpy old man might prove pleasanter on further acquaintance; at any rate he might not be so disagreeable as many another; and with one glance at her little sick boy upon the rug, the mother made up her mind and decided to take her ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... laughing through wool. Of none such comes good." A young lady must not speak too loud or be too boisterous; she must even tone down her wit, lest she be misunderstood. But she need not be dull, or grumpy, or ill-tempered, or careless of her manners, particularly to her mother's old friends. She must not talk slang, or be in any way masculine; if she is, she loses the battle. A young lady is sometimes called upon to be a hostess if her mother is dead. Here ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... however, circumstantial accounts of the wedding, and there were portraits of the pair—in which Colin looked grumpy and Lady Bridget whimsically amused—snap shots, too, of the wedding cortege, in which Sir Luke Tallant, fathering the Bride, appeared a pompous figure in full uniform; and Lady Tallant in splendid panoply, most stately ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... observed Markham, altering his demeanor. "You mustn't mind my being gruff and grumpy, Mr. Forbes. I've just stopped smoking a few days ago, and it's got ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... of speech, brusque and even grim of address, sensible, devoted to commonplace activities, and with a due appreciation of the comforts and conveniences of life. His conversation had no suggestiveness or subtlety. He was grumpy in the morning and good-humoured in the evening. He seemed impatient of new ideas, and endowed with a firm grasp ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wedge of base hemlock in the citron. Not so. She ate in the kitchen because she could not yet face that vacant chair in the dining room without choking and losing her appetite. She could not look at the chair without visualizing that glorious, whimsical, fascinating mother of hers, who could turn grumpy janitors into comedians and send importunate bill collectors away with nothing but spangles ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... be so grumpy,' Randolph put in, 'and do fix what you're going to buy. There's something over here that papa would like, I know. A whistle, such a jolly strong one, and only two-pence. It would do for him to call me in by, and much less trouble than ringing that ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... you, dear." And Dorothy kissed her. "And you coaxed Lorry to come to dinner, after all! I don't know what made him so grumpy, though. I would have been sorry if he hadn't come to dinner, even if he ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... mad all the morning about it, and was pretty grumpy to Windsor; for I thought he might as well have sent a week ago. But, by George! I'd like to see the feller that 'ud be grumpy ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... with it, The Peace of the Augustans is a book to read with delight—an eccentric book, an extravagant book, a grumpy book, but a book of rare and amazing enthusiasm for good literature. Mr. Saintsbury's constant jibes at the present age, as though no one had ever been unmanly enough to make a joke before Mr. Shaw, become amusing ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Secretary, said, "Well, I congratulate you." I confess I did not see at that moment what any mortal man had to congratulate me about. I had a deuced bad cold, with rheumatism in my head; it was a beastly November day and I was very grumpy, so I inquired in a state of mild surprise what might be the matter. Whereupon I learnt that the Medal had been conferred at the meeting of the Council on the day before. I was very pleased...and I thought you ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... til him; brackfast! why, mon,"—drawing out a huge, turnip-like silver watch—"it's nearly sax o'clock p.m. Will a bite o' dinner no' serve ye as weel? Hech, hech," and the queer, grumpy-looking visage of the really genial-hearted doctor beamed into a smile, as his lips uttered the strange sounds which with him passed ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... wasn't, sir. I thought to myself, thinks I, 'Mr. Farnham must have been disappointed in love or something,' he was so grumpy and dull. Always before when he came he had a good word for me, 'How do you do, Ginnie?' or a smile and a nod, but now he went by me without a sign, for all the world as if he'd never seen me before, though I've been here since I was seventeen; that's six years ago. When I spoke ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... sent Cleena 'the furnishing of a good dinner,' she told me. I don't know when we may have another such a meal, one that thee would think fit to eat. I'd like to ask thee to come and share it with us, instead of staying here alone, all grumpy with the gout. But it isn't my dinner, thee sees, and I'm going home to tell my people everything. About the picture and the donkey and all. If, after that, they agree with me that it would be nice to ask thee to spend the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... little bear cub that lived with Grumpy, his mother, in the Yellowstone Park. They were among the many Bears that found a desirable home in the country ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... cloud seemed hanging over me, and I felt its oppressiveness, and waited for it to break. I had grown used to many things of late; I had learned much from what I had seen at the Zasyekins; their disorderly ways, tallow candle-ends, broken knives and forks, grumpy Vonifaty, and shabby maid-servants, the manners of the old princess—all their strange mode of life no longer struck me.... But what I was dimly discerning now in Zinaida, I could never get used to.... 'An adventuress!' ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... matter off airily, but the boys were grumpy and would not speak. Meg kept looking at her with a peculiar expression, as if she were recovering from a shock. Altogether, Diana felt that her deed of daring had fallen very flat. She was annoyed that no one congratulated her upon it. She considered that for a ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... an enemy to pleasure? You know the contrary, and that it is only too certain people can tax me with nothing but being too good-natured. Laugh at the preachings of an old grey-beard of a father; go on, I tell you, and mind them not. Upon my word, I am of opinion that these old, effete and grumpy libertines come to stupify us with their silly stories, and being virtuous, out of necessity, hope through sheer envy to deprive young people of all the pleasures of life! You know my talents; I am at ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... said with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness, "we are both hungry and consequently grumpy. Now, suppose you prepare lunch. We will feel ever so much better after we ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... leaving port in heavy weather, with many a lurch and much tacking against an adverse wind. By the expression on the Semitic face you might have thought that Isaac Zahn was beholding some new and interesting object of natural history, instead of a ponderous and grumpy old sailor, who seemed to doubt somewhat the bona fides of the Kangaroo Bank. But the truth was that the young man was dazzled by the personality of one who might command such wealth; it had suddenly dawned on his calculating ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... see why he shouldn't be there," said Lily. "I would rather it should be he than I, because Lady Julia is so grumpy." ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... those who were well enough enjoyed his discomfiture immensely. Going into Salle III where there were shouts of laughter (the convalescents were sent to that room) I saw a funny sight. One little man, who was particularly fussy and grumpy (and very unpopular with the other men in consequence), slept near the stove, which was an old-fashioned coal one with a pipe leading up to the ceiling. The concussion had shaken this to such an extent ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... we had just then—she was going to be married in a fortnight, but we didn't much care. She had only been about a year with us, and we counted her rather a grumpy nurse. She always thought that we should catch cold if we ran into the garden without being all muffled up, or that we should break our necks even ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... important," Anne assured him anxiously. The mail carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look the part of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain that his memory was to be trusted. But he said he would do his best to remember and she had to ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fear that in their enthusiasm they would shake his hand off. It was almost as serious as being a Presidential candidate. It is needless to say, however, that Mr. Jones was not one of the friends who congratulated him. He, on the other hand, looked decidedly grumpy, and as if he had lost his best friend. He pushed his way through the crowd up ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... Giraffe, who seemed a trifle grumpy on account of having his fire-making abilities made fun of, for he was quite touchy on that score; "chances are, it'll knock spots out of you, first of all, or give you a few to remember it by, if you go and get excited, and pull ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... we marched, and formed in line. Lieutenant Pendleton came and spoke to the captain, then walked away smiling. "The lieutenant says you did well," said the captain briefly. But he was so short that we thought him grumpy, especially since the lieutenant had never before been seen to give us anything else than his little ironical smile. Yet at company conference, in the evening, one of us ventured to ask the captain if we really had done badly. "No," said ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus's grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... seeing that young Maitland hesitated about proceeding, his grumpy tone acting as a sort of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... breakfast, at an early hour upon the morrow, Mistress Winthrop cool and distant; his lordship grumpy and mute; Mr. Caryll airy and talkative as was his habit. They set out soon afterwards. But matters were nowise improved. His lordship dozed in a corner of the carriage, while Mistress Winthrop found more interest in the flowering hedgerows than ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... being secretaries and things and doing very, very well indeed. Why, I declare it would do you good to have a lady secretary yourself in that big, dusty office of yours in the City, never dusted from one year's end to another, I'm sure! Laetitia, wouldn't it do your father good, the cross, grumpy old thing? Give your master some more of the sauce, Parker. Isn't that trout delicate and nice, Pyke? Trout for a pike! And I'm sure very like a nasty, savage old pike the way you tried to gobble up poor Rosalie, the dear child. Now, Rosalie, dear child, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... possible that the colonel had extracted the information he sent her FROM Briones. They had parted from Pendleton in London, as he was grumpy and queer, and, as Milly thought, becoming very miserly and avaricious as he grew older, for he was always quarreling over the hotel bills. But he had Mrs. Woods's New York address at Under Cliff, and, of course, guessed ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... out; but he soon took to me, and in a surprisingly short time we became friends. He was in the next cabin to mine, and evidently wished so much to have been with me, that I tried to get another man to exchange; but he was grumpy about it, and I had to give it up, much to young Carr's disappointment. Indeed, he was quite silent and morose for a whole day about it, poor fellow. He was a tall handsome young man, slightly built, with the kind of sallow complexion that women admire, and I wondered ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... directors," he said in his more usual grumpy voice, "or I wouldn't have bothered you. I'll leave it and you can sign it and send it down ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Featherington would have raced through the pages hungrily, avidly. Not so on this fair November afternoon. Whether it was the mince pie and melted cheese she had partaken of a bare hour before, or whether it was the even-more-so-than-usual grumpy mood of her employer, Joshua Barnes, she could not tell. Perhaps it was neither. She refused to analyze it. Whatever the cause, she felt heavy and wistful ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... we met by appointment at eight o'clock, and tried to behave as if nothing had happened; but I realised that I would have been a dead failure as an actor. I was grumpy and glum, and the coaxing, child-like ways which the Boy used for my beguiling were in vain. I did not say anything about my change of plans for Aix, but I brooded darkly upon them throughout the day, my mood eating away all pleasure in the ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the rude awakening," cried Du Meresq. "Dinner spoiled, and a very stern expression of paternal opinion to you, my poor Cecil. Very grumpy to me. By Jove, I won't tell him to-night! Here's your half-baked boots. We shall never get them on. Shall I carry you to the boat, and roll ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... uttered the slightest expression of gratitude for that, or for any thing else we could do for her. She was constantly asking us to lend her different articles of dress, and when we declined it, she said, "Well, I never seed such grumpy folks as you be; there is several young ladies of my acquaintance what goes to live out now and then with the old women about the town, and they and their gurls always lends them what they asks for; I guess you Inglish thinks we should poison your things, just as bad as if we was Negurs." ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Commander was the only person in the kingdom who was not sharing the general joy. He was grumpy because he had lost all the honor of winning a bloody battle. Even the sight of all his army alive and well could not soothe the wound to his vanity; so when the Princess and the Wizard were exchanging the last courtesies, he strode forward, ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... six miles off, and it took a very long time indeed to drive there in the rumbling old chariot, for the old horses were fat and wheezy, and the old coachman fat and wheezy too. Lady Lavander was, of course, old too—very old indeed, and rather grumpy and very deaf. Miss Grizzel and Miss Tabitha had the greatest respect for her; she always called them "My dear," as if they were quite girls, and they listened to all she said as if her words were of gold. For some mysterious reason she ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... taken his beautiful new yellow and red and blue and black and white rattle, which rattles so beautifully, over to show to Grumpy Grundy, the Owl!" ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... delicious, and so like being a goddess reclining on a wind-blown cloud. No wonder motorists' faces, when you can see them, almost always look madly happy. So different from "hay motorists," as The Blot says. They generally look grumpy. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to him and begged him not to consider us any more for the present. We must think of the maids too. You see, Hugo makes a good deal of extra work, and I'm afraid Hannah might turn grumpy if there was yet ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... the art of unfolding his mind and his subject he was a master. I questioned and he answered, and I remember distinctly feeling that I had never before put myself so easily en rapport with any man. I had been told that he was gruff, nay, grumpy, and quite without any of the arts of the diplomatist, and that I should find him very different from the statesmen and politicians to whom I was accustomed. Instead, I found him plain and straightforward, but as kind as he ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... thinking,' he answered when Robert asked him what he was so grumpy about. 'I'll tell you when I've thought it ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... just like you do. He used to get very grumpy, and very, very unhappy. He begged and pleaded with me for understanding, and I couldn't give it to him. Then one day he got dreadfully drunk, after a whole year away from it. And mother's cousin came. He talked to father for five or six hours while Aunt and I kept shivering and thinking father ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... laughed Tom—who had got out of his grumpy state quickly enough; for his disposition was almost as light-hearted as that of his friend, and it was only the heat and the confinement on board ship when in harbour that had previously oppressed his spirits—"let us look smart, and be off. Here's that fellow Tompkins just ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... hammer and build, to sail, to ride horses, to run, to leap; having for our splendid inheritance love in youth and memory in old age, and we are to take one miserable little faculty, our one-legged, knock-kneed, gimcrack, purblind, rough-skinned, underfed, and perpetually irritated and grumpy intellect, or analytical curiosity rather (a diseased appetite), and let it swell till it eats up every other function? ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... at the time I met him he was nearer the forty than the thirty line. Nature seemed to have marked him for single—cussedness, I had almost said, from the first. He was no favorite with any set, being grumpy, fussy, and peculiar. But five years after he rose into sight above my horizon he married a most sensible, lovely woman; not a child, by the way, for she was almost forty; and in less than no time, it seemed ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... with the remark that "the tears of a son are seldom lasting." The terrible spectacle of the French Revolution excited in his mind only a feeling of self-pity because his retreat in Switzerland was invaded by the unhappy refugees, just as a grumpy country gentleman in England might complain that he was annoyed by the trippers. There is a touch of dislike in all the allusions which Boswell makes to Gibbon—often without even mentioning his name—and one ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... after another, on the various coasts,—solemn Frank, long Gus, gallant Ed, fly-away Molly Loo, pretty Laura and Lotty, grumpy Joe, sweet-faced Merry with Sue shrieking wildly behind her, gay Jack and gypsy Jill, always together,—one and all bubbling over with the innocent jollity born of healthful exercise. People passing in the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... good that does, when he's never there!" flashed Evadna, unintentionally revealing her real grievance. "He just eats and goes—and he isn't even there to eat, half the time. And when he's there, he's grumpy, like all the rest." She was saying the things she had told herself, on the way up, that she would DIE rather than say; to Miss ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... near the garage. But she did not have much success with him. He was grumpy and, replying to Sara's assertion that the situation was rapidly becoming rife with disagreeable possibilities, he replied that he did not care a very little bit, and that Anne could marry all the princes in Christendom for all he cared. So Sara, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... "Grumpy-natured," put in Cousin Jack; "that's what's the matter with Bertha,—she hasn't any sunshine in her makeup. Now as Marjorie has sunshine enough for two, I think it will be a good plan to put ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... opens, and Mr. Amherst enters, then Marcia. Philip straightens himself, and puts on his usual bored, rather sulky expression. Molly smiles upon her grumpy old host. He offers her his arm, Philip does the same to Marcia, and together they gain ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... and mirage; the same occasional strips of green marking the watercourses and oases. As to smaller detail, we saw many interesting divergences. In the foreground constantly recurred the Bedouin brush shelters, each with its picturesque figure or so in flowing robes, and its grumpy camels. Twice we saw travelling caravans, exactly like the Bible pictures. At one place a single burnoused Arab, leaning on his elbows, reclined full length on the sky-line of a clean-cut sandhill. Glittering in the mirage, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... chalet in the wood, it was rather fun. Mr. Hodgkinson and Lord Doraine sat on either side of me. Lord Valmond came up with the last guns, rather late, and he looked round the table and frowned. He seems quite grumpy now, not half so good-tempered as he used to be. I expect it is because ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... happened at last! The Leverings brought a friend to call this afternoon, who has just arrived in Lone-Rock to spend the rest of vacation with them; a grumpy, middle-aged, absent-minded, old professor from the East, who seemed rather bored with us at first. But when he was taken out to the side-show in the 'Zoo,' he waked up in a hurry. His very spectacles gleamed and his gray whiskers bristled with interest when he saw my assortment of pressed ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... seen you without a hat in a month. Gone bald, or something?" He was often cross like this lately. Grumpy, Cora called it. Hats were one of Cora's weaknesses. She had a great variety of them. These added to Ray's feeling of restlessness and impermanence. Sometimes she wore a hat that came down over her head, covering her forehead and her eyes, almost. The hair he used to ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... He greets the grumpy checkroom tyrant like a friend and brother, and has just slipped him a cigar when a husky-built square-jawed gent steps up behind and taps Alvin familiar ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... settled Jaffery proclaimed himself the most care-free fellow alive. His hitherto grumpy and resentful attitude towards Liosha changed. He established himself as fellow slave with her under the whip of Susan's tyranny. It did one good to see these two magnificent creatures sporting together for the child's, and incidentally their ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... all I've been thinkin'," said Biddy; "I feels all stirred up with thinkin', like the soup when Grumpy puts the stick in it. I never slept at all till I thinked it out as how I'd do jist ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sisters, but they live on in the memory as ornamental symbols of a vanished past—a day when fiction-writers impressed it, on their readers with every means at their command, that a hero was well-dressed, well-washed, and well-groomed. Such details have become unnecessary, and grumpy stand-patters no longer contemptuously mutter, 'Soap! Soap!' when a hero comes down to breakfast. Some of our older politicians, to be sure, still wear a standard costume of Prince Albert coat, pants (for so one must ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... a goodness of heart that has ripened into wisdom. For Flaubert, too, though he was seventeen years her junior, the flamboyance of youth was long since past; in 1862, when the correspondence begins, he was firmly settled, a shy, proud, grumpy toiling hermit of forty, in his family seat at Croisset, beginning his seven years' labor at L'Education Sentimentale, master of his art, hardening in his convictions, and conscious of increasing estrangement from the spirit of his age. He, with his craving for sympathy, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... was a pity that in Pleasant Valley, where Farmer Green's meadow lay, there were many of the fat-loving kind. Not only Peter Mink and Tommy Fox, but Grumpy Weasel, Solomon Owl, Ferdinand Frog, Henry Hawk and even Miss Kitty Cat were usually on the watch for Master Meadow Mouse. Naturally, he soon learned to be on the lookout for them. And if he hadn't ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Jack, flushing at this grumpy attitude, but deciding to do the manly thing, nevertheless, and extending his hand, "let ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... steady, sober men. The officers did their best not only to keep the men employed, but to amuse them in a variety of ways. No grumbling was heard from any ranks. One fellow only showed signs of insubordination. He had long been known on board as "Grumpy Dick." No sooner had he set his foot on shore than he asserted that he was a free man, and would no ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dick. My, but old Rick is getting more grumpy every day! If this railroad knows its business it will soon get another manager here," was Gilbert Ponsberry's comment, as he led the ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... back we met old Yule; he seemed rather grumpy, I thought. I don't think she's the kind of girl to make a paying business of literature. Her qualities are personal. And it's pretty clear to me that the valley of the shadow of books by no means agrees with her disposition. Possibly old Yule ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... D. B., that's flat," declared Blix; "the idea, 'matrimony if suitable'—patronizing enough! I know just what kind of an old man B. P. T. is. I know he would want K. D. B. to warm his slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. B. P. T., just an abbreviation of bumptious. No, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... hardly say the passage was deserted when I opened the door. I went downstairs, took up the Scotsman and found Sir William writing in the hall. He was grumpy and restless and at last, putting down his pen, he came up to me and said, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... a cat was kept below stairs, or she would not have allowed it, for she was very fond of mice. Mr. and Mrs. Mouse knew they were perfectly safe with her, but they were not at all as sure of her maid, who looked very cross and grumpy. So things went on for some time very happily, and Mrs. Mouse began to look about for a good place to put her babies in, for she had fifteen of them. She found a large bottle under the wardrobe at one end, and so she told her husband she would put them ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... All dogs everywhere wag their tails at her, anyway, and all babies, big and little, smile and reach out to her. If we get held up it's a joke, and if we take the wrong car, it's the funniest thing that ever happened. And that's the way 'tis about everythin'. One just can't stay grumpy, with Miss Pollyanna, even if you're only one of a trolley car full of folks that don't ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... still looked serious. "Why, my dear old boy," continued Wildney, "the Gordonites'll be the first to laugh at the trick when we tell them of it next morning, as of course we will do. There, now, don't look grumpy. I shall cut away and arrange it with. Graham, and tell you the whole dodge ready prepared to-night ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I judged harshly of other people's mistakes in marriage, it may have been because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years. I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another some good, Trot,—at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come between us, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... yonder—where you see the smoke a-coming up through the trees," said the man, more and more grumpy, as Phyllis noticed. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... the pianoforte when Felix conducted at the desk, Rebekka singing, and Paul playing the 'cello. Zelter, who was generally averse to praising any of his pupils, and, indeed, was regarded as a very grumpy personage, was a regular attendant at these performances, and never failed at the finish to speak a few words of praise or criticism. The old musician was secretly very proud of his pupil, and despite his habitual roughness of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... leaned against his shoulder. "Don't be grumpy," she whispered, "I like you best of all—when you're not ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... the old man sitting on the porch of his Iber City shack, thoughtfully chewing tobacco and fingering his home-made cane. At first he answered in grumpy monosyllables, but by the magic of a good cigar, he gradually let himself go, disclosing minute details of a most remarkable ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... than we now can have any idea of; and that, after a little, people would rather be anxious to seek work than to avoid it; that our working hours would rather be merry parties of men and maids, young men and old enjoying themselves over their work, than the grumpy weariness it mostly is now. Then would come the time for the new birth of art, so much talked of, so long deferred; people could not help showing their mirth and pleasure in their work, and would be always wishing to express it in a tangible and more or less enduring form, and the workshop would ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... dark was Colonel Clifford. He was nearly always confined to his room. However, one day he came down, and found Julia and Percy together. She introduced Percy to him. The Colonel was curt, but grumpy, and Percy ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the first things to remember in the cultivation of beauty is expression. Who doesn't enjoy looking upon the young girl, with a bright, cheerful face, laughing eyes and all that? Everybody! And when the grumpy lady or the whiney lady or the lady of woes trots in and sullies your near landscape, how do you feel? Just about as cheery as if she'd come to ask you ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... Maecenas and physician, Is in so grumpy a condition I really more than half suspicion He nears his end; Who then would lie on earth to shave me, To feed me, coach me, and to save me From tedious cares that would enslave me— ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... 'Young Grumpy,' now," he continued musingly. "As sober-minded a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank. From his earliest days he took life seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the other wild youngsters do. Yet in spite of himself he was ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 'the case of an heir apparent of seventy; his father was ninety-five. One day the young man was very grumpy. They tried to find out what was the matter with him; at last he broke out, "Everybody's ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... she said in a grumpy tone, "Ach! What is it? Yes?" And then her face cleared, and she even smiled ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the little group of dwellings on the Cohasset shore which the Government provides for them, and which shelter their families. The term of duty on the rocks is two weeks; at the end of each fortnight two happy men go ashore and two grumpy ones come off; that is, if the weather permits a landing, for keepers have been stormbound for as long as seven weeks. The routine of duty is much the same in all of the lighthouses. By night there must be unceasing watch kept of the great revolving light; and, if there ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... "The grumpy old fellow with the bald head!" she said shortly afterwards to her bosom friend, not careful that her words should be ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... you to-night, Kenneth, old man? You're more than commonly grumpy, it seems to me; ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... this time he was much more likely to be there than in his own. Old Madder said that Brown had taken Rose over to Brooklyn, to the Philharmonic, and he believed that they were going to dinner at Mr. Mangan Brown's afterward, and would not be in till late; and he seemed to be pretty grumpy about it. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Otto. "Otherwise he'll get in one of his Berserker rages. Don't be so grumpy, old fellow," he said, laying his arm on Olsen's shoulders. "No one can compete with you in the art of tumbling ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... possible that he blinded himself to it. It was too vividly apparent for that. "A perpetual eyesore," Marshall termed it in private. But then there was no accounting for the ways of folk in high places. Marshall did not pretend to understand them. He was, in his own grumpy fashion, sincerely attached to his master, and he never presumed to criticize his doings. He ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell |
