"Armchair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the house, her eyes brimming, the paper shaking in her poor old hand. She groped her way to an old haircloth armchair in her sitting room, and put on her spectacles. The moisture from her eyes dimmed the glasses and she had to take them off and wipe them before beginning ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the word was spoken barely above a breath, Eric turned slowly round and faced us with blood-shot, gleaming eyes. He made as though he would speak, sank into the armchair before the grate and pressed ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Eliza. All this made considerable delay; and when they reached the high-road again, the snow was indeed fast melting. Elizabeth Eliza was inclined to turn back, but Hiram said they would find the sleighing better farther up among the hills. The armchair joggled about a good deal, and the Christmas-tree creaked behind her; and Hiram was obliged to stop occasionally and tie in the chair and the ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... her davenport and came to the sofa. "Sit down, Billy," she said, indicating an armchair opposite—Lord Ingleby's chair, and little Peter's. Both had now left it empty. Billy filled it readily, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... creamy white. But Peyton had no eye for details at the moment. He noticed only that his entrance disturbed the slumbers of the old gentleman—Matthias Valentine—who had been sleeping in a great armchair by the fire, and who now ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Nothing can be more erroneous. There will, of course, be such moments, when an actor at a white heat illumines some passage with a flash of imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the accumulation ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Mrs. Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... entirely to himself. It is only a question of approaching the same goal from two different directions. Smith is welcome to make himself a better man by exercising his legs three hours a day. But I prefer to sit in an armchair and exercise my soul. Smith comes in refreshed from a half-day's sojourn in the open air, and I come away refreshed from a roomful of old friends talking three at a time amidst clouds ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... into the armchair which stood before his writing-desk, took a pen-knife and began to mark and cut the arm of the chair with as much zeal and perseverance as if the object in view was to accomplish some useful and urgent task. Then, when the floor was covered with tiny chips, and the black, delicately carved ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... rough bed formed of sacking spread over dried fern leaves, and the shed he was in had for furniture a rough table formed by nailing a couple of pieces of board across a tub, another tub with part of the side sawn out formed an armchair; and the walls were ornamented with bunches of seeds tied up and hung there for preservation, a saddle and bridle, and some garden tools neatly ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... an armchair by the fire, reading, was a woman of about forty-five, with a fine blonde, aquiline face, distinctively English, and radiating intelligence from its large sympathetic lines. She was in some respects so different from her husband as at times to make children precociously wise—but ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... eyes fixed on the orator, who sat in an armchair, his head leaning on his hand and his attitude indicating exhaustion. But suddenly he stood up again, and Jurgis heard the chairman of the meeting saying that the speaker would now answer any questions which the audience might care to put ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and passing her arms around patients to hold them up, whilst Madame de Jonquiere slipped pillows behind them. However, shortly after eleven o'clock, she was all at once overpowered. Having imprudently stretched herself in the armchair for a moment's rest, she there fell soundly asleep, her pretty head sinking on one of her shoulders amidst her lovely, wavy fair hair, which was all in disorder. And from that moment neither moan nor call, indeed no ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... just been won is the victory of the Radicals. Gladstone and the Caucus have triumphed all along the line, and it is the strong, definite, decided policy which has commended itself, and not the halting, half-hearted, armchair business.... The country feels it, and we should be mad to efface ourselves and disappoint the expectations of all ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... big bulgy old armchair that had belonged to Theodora's father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne declared that the chair had come to look ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Major Graf von Farlsberg, was finishing the reading of his mail, comfortably seated in a large tapestry armchair, with his booted feet resting on the elegant marble of the mantelpiece on which, for the last three months that he had been occupying the Chateau d'Uville, his spurs had traced two deep grooves, growing ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... was a long dining-table covered towards the upper end with a delicately white cloth, on which stood, however, a few trenchers, plain drinking-horns, and a large old-fashioned black-jack, that is to say, a pitcher formed of leather. An armchair was at the head of the table, and heavy oaken benches along ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drawn his armchair to the fire. The time-table he had been studying lay on the floor, and he sat staring with dull acquiescence into the boundless blur of rain, which affected him like a vast projection of his own state of mind. Then his eyes ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... her stealthily—not Uncle Mo; his weight on the old stairs would have made a noise. They stood side by side on the landing, just catching sight of the little poppet in the armchair, all unkempt gold and blue eyes, quite content with her personation of the beloved old presence it would never know again. Aunt M'riar could just follow Susan Burr's stifled whisper:—"She's being old Mrs. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... say it did me good to see him. I remembered the way the Spanish officers used to insult me in a language which I, fortunately for me, could not understand, and how I hated the sight of them, and I enjoyed seeing his red and yellow cockade on the table before me, while I sat in a big armchair and smoked and was in hearing of the marines drilling on the upper deck. He was invited to go to breakfast with the officers, and I sat next to him, and as it happened to be my turn to treat, I had the satisfaction of pouring drinks down his throat. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... in the large armchair in the middle of the room weeping in the slow, regular way a woman has of starting out with tears, when she means to let them flow for hours, maybe days, and there were just five echoes to her grief, all done ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... continued with me all through that evening. After dinner some of the party played and sang. As it was Sunday, and Lucy was rigid in her views, the music was of a sacred character. I sat in a low armchair in a dark corner of the room, my mind too dreamy to think, and too passive to dream. I hardly interchanged three words with Alan, who remained in a still darker spot, invisible and silent the whole time. Only as we left the room to go to bed, I heard Lucy ask ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... his armchair by the sitting-room window, and leaned forward with a start. His lips moved as he closed his Bible reverently and marked his place. At the foot of the stairs he surprised Jackson by waving him aside, for the Colonel himself flung open the door and held out his hand to his friend. The Judge released ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he said, putting her into a capacious wooden armchair and busily unbuttoning her boots, "you shall do nothing that you don't wish to do. Your feet are like stones. Yes, yes, my dear, I am a wretch unworthy to live. I ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... on the ground floor, a dining parlour, a small back-parlour, and a still smaller third room that had been probably appropriated to a footman—all still as death. We then visited the drawing-rooms, which seemed fresh and new. In the front room I seated myself in an armchair. F—— placed on the table the candlestick with which he had lighted us. I told him to shut the door. As he turned to do so, a chair opposite to me moved from the wall quickly and noiselessly, and dropped itself about a yard from my own chair, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... dry and roomy dug-out beloved by the armchair artist, very, very rarely offers its cosy hospitality to the warrior dwelling in the Front Line—even if there is anything bearing a faint resemblance to such an elaboration it is immediately seized by Company Headquarters. The inter-connecting series of holes occupied ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... side of the old man a judge with small, bleared eyes filled the armchair with his fat, bloated body. On the other side sat a stooping man with reddish mustache on his pale face. His head was wearily thrown on the back of the chair, his eyes, half-closed, he seemed to be reflecting over something. The face of the prosecuting attorney was also worn, bored, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... tremendously the air of a man of affairs; as the phrase went, he was full of politics, the plain repository of deep things. He had a shrewd eye, a double chin, and a bluff, crisp, jovial manner of talking as he lay back in an armchair with his legs crossed and played with his watch chain, an important way of nodding assent, a weighty shake of denial. Voting on purely party lines, the town had later rewarded his invincible expectation by ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... When within sight of the distant shore, a pilot boat came along and offered to take anyone ashore in six hours. I was so delighted at the thought of reaching land that, after much persuasion, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Birney consented to go. Accordingly we were lowered into the boat in an armchair, with a luncheon consisting of a cold chicken, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine, with just enough wind to carry our light craft toward our destination. But, instead of six hours, we were all day trying to reach the land, and, as the twilight deepened and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... inside, closing the door without re-locking it; and, using his flashlight now, moved forward, and entered a sort of inner office that was partitioned off from the rest of the room. There was a flat-topped desk here, a swivel chair, an armchair, a rather good drawing or two on the walls, and a soft yielding carpet underfoot. Thorold was far too clever to overdo anything—it was simply businesslike, with an air of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... even be sitting quietly in an armchair in the Kremlin, probing through several thousand miles of solid earth to peep into the brains of ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... Fletcher's machine came up the driveway, and he joined us with a worried and preoccupied look on his face that he could not conceal. "She's terribly broken up by the suddenness of it all," he murmured as he sank into an armchair. "The shock has been too much for her. In fact, I hadn't the heart to tell her anything about the robbery, poor girl." Then in a moment he asked, "Any more clues ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... down to the club and set in Townley's armchair. Andrew Townley ain't ever going to sit anywhere again, I reckon; he's flat on his back for keeps now. His chair is mighty empty-looking and there ain't a man round the store but would welcome you to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... of the room, coiled up in a big armchair, Zita was apparently reading a new magazine, but was, in reality, listening intently to every word that ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... moving out that way. I didn't know any houses beyond the club and I was pondering about this, idly as you might say, when Bush Jones pulls his team up right in front of the clubhouse, and there on the load is the two I had tried to lose. In a big armchair beside a varnished centre table sits Ben Sutton reading something that I recognized as the yellow card with Wilfred's verses on it. And across the dray from him on a red-plush sofa is Alonzo Price singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' in a ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... left the room and went downstairs to Herr Sesemann; when he was once more sitting in the armchair opposite his friend, "Sesemann," he said, "let me first tell you that your little charge is a sleep-walker; she is the ghost who has nightly opened the front door and put your household into this fever of alarm. Secondly, the child is consumed with homesickness, to such an extent that ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... everywhere with my feet up in taxis. I was the wildest little boy. Here it's snowy and bitter. We wear scarves round our ears to keep the frost away and dream of fires a mile high. All I ask, when the war is ended, is to be allowed to sit asleep in a big armchair and to be left there absolutely quiet. Sleep, which we crave so much at times, is only death done up in sample bottles. Perhaps some of these very weary men who strew our battlefields are glad to lie at last ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of". {540} Fear—fear of unforeseen consequences, fear of committing ourselves, fear of ridicule—is one great inhibiter of action, and inertia is another, since it is much less strenuous to sit in the armchair and plan than to get out and put the plan into effect. Besides this, some people who are good at planning come to take so much pride and satisfaction in the thinking part of an enterprise that they do not feel the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... tanned by the sun and wind of the long sea voyage—people still came home from India by the Cape—till his hair and moustache showed pale against his bronzed skin. And to Richard, listening and watching from the deep armchair drawn up at right angles to the hearth, he appeared as a veritable demigod, master of the secrets of life and death—beheld, moreover, through an atmosphere of fragrant tobacco smoke, curiously intoxicating ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... quickly seating himself in an armchair, 'I have come to you for you to settle a matter of doubt ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... moved into the house and towards the uncle's armchair. Here ten busy hands fastened him down so that he should ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... what we had ourselves wasn't good enough. An' it's him 'at sent t' armchair, t'bed-linen, t'bath, an' that there ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... had a dreadful neatness; it smelt of disinfectant, furniture polish and soap, and Sophia, from the big armchair, said mournfully, 'They might have left it as it was. It feels like lodgings.' And as the very feebleness of her outcry smote her sense and waked echoes of all she left unsaid, her mouth fell shapeless, and she cried, 'She's gone!' ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... a hand through his hair, then, mechanically yielding to the superior strength and self-control of his daughter, eased himself into an opposite armchair. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea of Sally's taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Sally herself sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of a black haircloth armchair, while her mother said over and over again it was ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... cigar cabinet and selected one thoughtfully. Then he lit it and drew his favourite armchair up to the hearth. His profile was towards me, and I remarked, as I had done a hundred times before, what a beautiful face it was. The lines were as clear and round as a woman's; the mouth sensitively delicate, but firmly set; the nose straight, with only the slightest indentation below the brows. ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... fellow unlocked the iron door and set it wide, he said he would get them a man, and he got Mrs. Forsyth a gilt armchair from some furniture going into an adjoining twenty-dollar room. She sat down in it, and "Of course," she said, "the pieces I want will be at the very back and the very bottom. Why don't you get yourself a chair, too, Ambrose? What are you ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... do," Jim answered. He was sitting with his father in the smoking-room at Billabong, his long legs outstretched before the fire, and his great form half-concealed in the depths of an enormous leather armchair. "Of course he'll want guidance; you couldn't expect him to know much about stock yet, though he's certainly picked up ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... distinguish the exterior of the house, neither was the interior plainly discernible, lighted as it was with an oil lamp, and a single tallow candle. But she scarcely thought of this, so intent was she upon the beautiful face of the crippled boy, who sat in his armchair, eagerly ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... torpor and listless ennui in which he was sunk, the disorder of his library, whose arrangement had never been completed, irritated him. Helpless in his armchair, he had constantly in sight the books set awry on the shelves propped against each other or lying flat on their sides, like a tumbled pack of cards. This disorder offended him the more when he contrasted it with the perfect order of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... covering both men with short glances. Druel, his face muddily white as the whiskey bloat deserted it, shrunk inside his shabby clothes. He seemed, every time de Spain darted a look at him, to grow visibly smaller, until his loose bulk had shrivelled inside an armchair hardly large enough normally to ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... of Anne. Anne's figure crossed the floors before him, her head turned over her shoulder to see if he were coming; her voice called to him from the doorways, her running feet sounded on the stairs. That was her place at the table; that was the armchair she used to curl up in; just there, on the landing, he had kissed her when he went ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... are burned into their memories, and which can never be effaced so long as a single German remains in their beloved land. I no longer wonder, but I do not cease to admire. Let anyone who from the depths of an armchair at home thinks that I have spoken too strongly, stimulate his imagination to the pitch of visualizing the town in which he lives destroyed, his own house a smoking heap, his wife profaned, his children murdered, and himself ruined, for these are the things of which we know. Then, and ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... quiet smile upon his lips, rose from his armchair, and, keeping his clasp on Madison's hand, led Madison to the door, opened it, and with a gesture at once courtly and affectionate bade ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... suit me," declared Mrs. Meade amiably. "David, just find me some place where I can drop into an armchair and have some other middle-aged woman like myself to talk with. Then you young people need pay no further heed to me. Examination week doesn't ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... during the long days on active service that followed. At last a halt was called, and luckily at this point there was a nice dry ditch into which we quickly flopped with our backs to the hedge and our feet on the road. It made an ideal armchair! ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... I ever thank you, Mr. Jollyman!" she exclaimed, half hysterically, as she let herself sink into the armchair. "Without you, what would have become of me! Oh, I feel so weak, if I had strength to get myself a ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... gubernatorial armchair of our state when this century was born happened to be an admirer of classic lore and the sonorous names ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... poor gintleman was near his end—an' it was owin' to Pat Corrigan that I seen him at all—for Pat, you know, is his own man. When I went in to where he sat I found Mr. Fethertonge the agent wid him: he had a night-cap on, an' was sittin' in a big armchair, wid one of his feet an' a leg swaythed wid flannel. I thought he was goin' to write or sign papers. 'Well, M'Mahon,' says he—for he was always as keen as a briar, an' knew me at once—'what do ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... were not addressed to the offending canvas nor to the imaginary countryman, but to his chum, Sam Ruggles, who sat hunched up in a big armchair with gilt flambeaux on each corner of its high back—it being a holiday and Sam's time his own. Ruggles was entry clerk in a downtown store, lived on fifteen dollars a week, and was proud of it. His daily fear—he being of an eminently ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "washerwoman," who happened to be passing by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman's lodgings; and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in clouds of white muslin, and dying with frightful rapidity in an armchair. In the next and last scene, all that remained to represent the unhappy heroine was a coffin decently covered with a white sheet. With slow and funereal steps, the Curate, Miss Grace, "h'Adam," the Highwayman, and the "venomous and voluptuous liar," Chartress, approached ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Mistress Percy was as usual wasting good pine knots. I had a vision of the many lights within, and of the beauty whom the world called my wife, sitting erect, bathed in that rosy glow, in the great armchair, with the turbaned negress behind her. I suppose Rolfe saw the same thing, for he looked from the light to me, and I heard him ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... the rug, on which Will and Geordie stood at ease, showing their uniforms to the best advantage, for they were now in a great school, where military drill was the delight of their souls. Steve posed gracefully in an armchair, with Mac lounging over the back of it, while Archie leaned on one corner of the low chimneypiece, looking down at Phebe as she listened to his chat with smiling lips and cheeks almost as rich in color as ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... suffering he had lighted upon such calm quietude, such unbroken regularity of life, that he was scarcely conscious of existing. He gave himself up to this jog-trot peacefulness with a dazed sort of feeling, continually experiencing surprise at finding himself each morning in the same armchair in the little office. This office with its bare hut-like appearance had a charm for him. He here found a quiet and secluded refuge amidst that ceaseless roar of the markets which made him dream of some surging sea spreading around him, and isolating him from the world. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... river, was a large fishing lodge built of logs and finished artistically in rustic style. It was a two-story building spread over a good deal of ground space. A wide porch ran round the front and both sides. Upon the porch were a man in an armchair and a girl seated on the top step with her ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... he was mistaken, he went and sat down in his armchair again and thought of the boy, and he thought of him for hours, and whole days. It was not only a moral, but still more a physical obsession, a nervous longing to kiss him, to hold and fondle him, to take him onto ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... blinked perplexedly behind her eye-glasses. Her long frail face was full of puzzled wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her hands on the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident desire to say something that ought ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... mood which comes over me at times when the pettiness of the past starts up in the presence of these immensities of sea and sky. M., you know, when he would come back to his studio from some yachting cruise in the Channel, and find me in his armchair, would drag me out to look at the ceaselessly changing glories of the river at sunset, and tell me how the vastness of the sea always communicated to him an overwhelming sense ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... asked him to go down to the post office and buy her three War Savings Stamps and the Rabbitville Gazette for Uncle John, who had a touch of rheumatism in his left hind toe and didn't feel like hopping around, but preferred to sit in an armchair on the back stoop where it ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... armchair, his head resting in his hands. Job understood something of the father's anguish and refrained from any comment. Standing by the broad oak mantelpiece, he mused over the chances of the boy's escape alive. Knowing Bonnet's eccentricities, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... relief, Captain January retired to the fireplace, and sitting down in a huge high-backed armchair, began leisurely pulling off his great boots. One was already off and in his hand, when a slight noise made him look up. He started violently, and then, leaning back in his chair, gazed in silent amazement ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... reply. But a little after half-past one his "All well, signor?" received no response. He raised his voice, but still no answer came. He went to the door, therefore, and looked into the Grey Room. The watcher had slipped down in the armchair they had set for him under the electric light, and was lying motionless, but in an easy position. He still wore his fur-coat. Prince Henry did not see. The room was silent and cold. The electric light burned ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... childlike, the novelist obeyed the will of the stronger man, throwing himself into an armchair, and burying his face ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... any one ever lived in," said Mary drowsily, as she dropped her head on the cushioned seat of the armchair near her. Fresh air, and digging, and skipping-rope had made her feel so comfortably tired that she ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bank of flowers hides the grate, is in the left-hand wall of the room. On the further side of the fireplace there is an armchair, and before the fireplace a settee. Behind the settee, also facing the fireplace, are a writing-table and chair; close to the further side of the writing-table is a smaller chair; and at the nearer end of the settee, but at some distance from it, stands ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... Ruthven's soft, brown eyes, and the way they would look at him across the heads of the congregation. Anna led the village choir, and the rector was painfully conscious that far too much of earth was mingled with his devotional feelings during the moments when, the singing over, he walked from his armchair to the pulpit and heard the rustle of the crimson curtain in the organ loft as it was drawn back, disclosing to view the five heads of which Anna's was the center. It was very wrong, he knew, and to-day he had prayed earnestly for pardon, when, after choosing his text, "Simon, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... ultimate escape might exist; and he accordingly lost not a moment in disengaging himself from the life-buoy that still supported him, and adjusting it beneath the unconscious body of the woman in such a manner that she sat within it almost as though it were an armchair; the buoy floating aslant in the water, with its lower rim supporting the weight of the body, while its upper rim, which rose several inches above the surface of the water, pressed against and supported the woman's shoulders. By this arrangement the woman's head was raised well ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... when, if ever, it does light on me again! Meanwhile it seems as if we might be here for some hours. The boat is just settling herself into the mud bank, like a rather tired fat old woman into an armchair, and pray, Mr. Lavendar, what do you propose to do? as Talleyrand said to the lady who told ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... after trying to comfort me, went away about two o'clock. My grandmother, seated opposite me in her large Voltaire armchair, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... The armchair was solid. I did not venture to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they had been preparing for me, have been laughing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... from clean. Their pace was a fast run, a compound of walk, trot, and canter, or rather of a trot and a canter, the latter broken down and frittered away through the instrumentality of a ferocious Mameluke bit, but as easy as an armchair; and this was, I speak it feelingly, a great convenience, as a sailor is not a Centaur, not altogether of a piece with his horse, as it were; yet both Captain Transom and myself were rather goodish horsemen ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Mr. John, I obey you," said Julie, sitting down again in a large armchair before the flames, where the ruddy light once more deepened the gold of her hair and the rose of her cheeks. "It seems that you ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wasn't going to hand over his work to be mucked up by such and such a body at home; B said he wasn't going to have his buried in museum book-shelves never to be seen again; C said he would jolly well publish his own results in the scientific journals. And the ears of the armchair scientists who might deal with our hard-won specimens and observations should have ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... and to-morrow would find him in town, writing and scolding—in short, himself again. He sat up in bed, and looked round. The gas was turned low, but on a little table consecrated to his wants stood a carefully-shaded lamp. By its soft light he discovered his wife, fast asleep in the low, wicker armchair, whose gay chintz cover contrasted strangely with her neat dark dress. She had evidently meant to sit up all night in case he felt worse, but had succumbed from sheer weariness, still grasping the tiny frock she had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... listened for a moment, but could hear nothing, except the beating of her own heart. Then, without knocking, she went in. The room was ruddy and dim with firelight, and at first she thought it was empty, but the next minute she saw Martin huddled in an armchair, a tea-tray on a low ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to improve my mind and keep myself "posted up," as the Americans phrase it, with the literature of the day. And what happens? Given, a walk after luncheon, a pleasing book, and a most comfortable armchair by the fire, and you know the rest. A doze ensues. Pleasing book drops suddenly, is picked up once with an air of some confusion, is laid presently softly in lap: head falls on comfortable arm-chair cushion: eyes close: soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club secrets? Of afternoons, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wriggles along the floor ever so slowly, seeking cover from chairs. He moves L. where the Toff is. The three sailors are R. Sniggers and Albert lean forward. Bill's arm keeps them back. An armchair had better conceal them from the Indian. The ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... luxuriously and slid down to a half-reclining, half-sitting position in his dad's favorite library armchair. He ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... submersion of joy? Cosette and Marius were passing through one of those egotistical and blessed moments when no other faculty is left to a person than that of receiving happiness. And then, an idea occurred to M. Gillenormand.—"Pardieu, this armchair is empty. Come hither, Marius. Your aunt will permit it, although she has a right to you. This armchair is for you. That is legal and delightful. Fortunatus beside Fortunata."—Applause from the whole table. Marius took Jean Valjean's place beside Cosette, and things ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... orders, taken upon himself to dispose of much of the furniture, and to replace it with some of an entirely different fashion and appearance. The parlor was snug and cosy; a bright fire blazed on the hearth; a comfortable armchair stood beside it; the room looked warm and homely. Ned's two friends had followed him in, and tears stood in ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... his lower lip. He had planted himself in an armchair, while his wife remained standing a little behind him, her face, it seemed to Esther, full ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the armchair and fumbled in the old play box for the remaining scraps. There were but a few meaningless bits of ribbon and gauze, with the end of a Christmas candle, the survivor of some past festival, burned ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... corner of the little place, in an old, tumble-down barrack. His two sons were weavers, and in their old home the noise of the loom and the whistle of the shuttle was heard from morning till night. The grandmother, old and blind, slept in an armchair, on the back of which perched a magpie. Father Brainstein, when he did not have to ring the bells for a christening, a funeral, or a marriage, kept reading his almanac behind the small round ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... made the young woman accompany him into the office, and when they were seated, said to her: "Now, my good girl, I want you to muster all the courage you have in the world. When the President comes back, he will sit down in that armchair. I shall get up to speak to him, and as I do so you must force yourself between us, and insist upon his examination of your papers, telling him it is a case of life and death, and admits of no delay." These instructions were carried ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... arranged as a lounge—they all lingered a few moments. Rosalie, with a dreaming look in her blue eyes, stood sipping a glass of hot milk. Rosanne had thrown off her white velvet cloak and flung herself and her crushed tulle into a great armchair. Mrs. Ozanne, with a cup of chocolate in her hand, looked old and weary—though in point of years she was still a ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Daniel's agitation it appeared that Sir Hugo must have been making a merely playful experiment in his question about the singing. He sent for Daniel into the library, and looking up from his writing as the boy entered threw himself sideways in his armchair. "Ah, Dan!" he said kindly, drawing one of the old embroidered stools close to him. "Come and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... rest of the house is down almost to zero. Luckily it is not a cold winter, but it is very damp, as it rains continually. I have an armchair there, a footstool, and use the kitchen table as a desk; and even then, to keep fairly warm, I almost sit on top of the stove, and I do now and then put my feet ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... pavilion. In the background to the left a door; in the foreground to the right, another door. RACHEL, with a plumed crown on her head and gold embroidered mantle about her shoulders, is trying to drag an armchair from the neighboring room, on the right. ESTHER has come in through ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... into a deep armchair near the round table, and had the face, for a while, of a man who is waking from sleep. For a number of days he had been so buried in thought over this weighty enterprise, and that day from early morning he had been so absorbed by the feeling of that victory which he had won, that he had ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Fred p'tend He's "tramp-mans" an' will come right in; I put my ear on Rover's back So's I could hear th' growl begin. An' oncet he thought he'd try his nap Right in my grampa's big armchair. My grampa, he sat down on him, 'Cause "he wa'n't 'spectin' dogs ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... you think?" began Mrs Asplin tragically, seating herself in state in an old armchair and endeavouring to keep up an imposing front, despite the fact that the absence of the fourth castor sent her tilting first to one side and then to the other. "What do you think we have got to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the long winter evening began. Here was a picture of industry enjoined alike by the law of the land and the stern necessities of the settlers. All were busy. Idleness was a crime. On the settle, or a low armchair, in the most sheltered nook, sat the revered grandam—as a term of endearment called granny—in red woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her busy ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... glance he consulted his watch, then looked towards the figure seated in the armchair by the fire. Sartorius, perfectly self-contained, was making entries in a notebook, apparently little concerned with what went on behind him. A certain scornful touch about his absolute sang-froid unnerved Roger somewhat. It made him feel that perhaps he was acting the fool, jumping at false ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... they could see two people sitting in front of the cottage. Uncle Darcy was in an armchair on the grass with one of the cats in his lap, and Richard sat on one seat of the red, wooden swing with Captain Kidd on the opposite site one. Richard had a rifle across his knees, the one Georgina had suggested borrowing. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fallen asleep, and was leaning comfortably back in her armchair. Miss Laura excused herself, brought a veil, and laid it ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the community. The mimicry of the bumblebee fly, which was said to be one of the most conclusive cases, is, after all, a mere childish notion. Patient observation, continually face to face with facts, will have none of it and leaves it to the armchair naturalists, who are too prone to look at the animal world through the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... confusion, could prevent him, he seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and "Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, himself sinking into an armchair to ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... out of the chatter and whirl of the crowd into the seclusion of the library. Genevieve led the way to her father's favorite table, but avoided the big high-backed armchair. Lord James placed a smaller chair for her at the other side of the table, facing the door of the cardroom, and as she sank into it he took the chair at ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... ruthless power of making every subordinate bend or break in every time of crisis: otherwise he would have bent or broken Longstreet. Next, it may have been that he was not then at his best. Concludingly, it may be granted to armchair (and even other) critics that if everything had been something else the results might not have been ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... tired of running about the salon downstairs, I would steal on tiptoe to the schoolroom and find Karl sitting alone in his armchair as, with a grave and quiet expression on his face, he perused one of his favourite books. Yet sometimes, also, there were moments when he was not reading, and when the spectacles had slipped down his large aquiline nose, and the blue, half-closed eyes and faintly smiling lips seemed to ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Ellen what Captain Tracy had said; but Miss Ferris had made up her mind to go if she could, and was not to be deterred from her purpose. One evening Norah was seated at the open window with her work before her, while her father occupied his usual armchair, smoking his pipe, when a rapid step was heard approaching the house. Norah uttered a cry of delight, and, hurrying to the door, the next moment was in Owen ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... a curious listener might have heard him at the coals, and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room. He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... the grave Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'that majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom,' while sitting solemn in an armchair in the Isle of Sky, talk, ex cathedra, of his keeping a seraglio[607], and acknowledge that the supposition had often been in his thoughts, struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast, that I could not but laugh immoderately. He ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... superintendence. I happened to go into his room a little earlier than usual that evening, and remaining unnoticed stayed to watch the nursing-sister feeding the blaze in the fireplace. My father sat in a deep armchair propped up with pillows. This is the last time I saw him out of bed. His aspect was to me not so much that of a man desperately ill, as mortally weary—a vanquished man. That act of destruction affected me profoundly by its air of surrender. Not before ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... The other armchair is the Little'un's. Now, this young gentleman, though the most youthful of our party, is by no means the least. He is, in fact, six feet six inches in height, and is of broad and muscular build. His private seat is therefore of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... had at least stunned Isagani, the old lawyer fell back in his armchair, outwardly very serious, but ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... and projecting brow and cheeks, seemed almost as if beauty and bestiality were here combined. But Jerry had a habit which would have made Father Matthew loathe him and those who encouraged him. He had been taught to sit in an armchair and to drink porter out of a pot, like a thirsty brickmaker; and, as an addition to his accomplishments, he could also smoke a pipe, like a trained pupil of Sir Walter Raleigh. This rib-nosed baboon, or mandrill, as he is often called, obtained ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... any one but a ghost would look for me. I had not been in it for three months and was going to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in my armchair, reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I, and what it was and what it wanted, I have never been ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald continued absently: "As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home at night I take my only companion from the mantelshelf and leaning back in my old armchair say, 'Praise me, my pipe, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and led the way to the fireplace. "Yes, Monsieur le Prefet, Laurence Vanderlyn at your service. I think we have already met, at the Elysee——" he drew forward a second armchair. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... received by a very old Signor Ramolino, brother to Madame Letitia. In common with my sisters, who drew pictures of Napoleon all over the place, I professed the greatest admiration for the great warrior. So I asked his uncle for some souvenir of him, and he presented me with a red armchair, out of the room in ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... small table by the window of our private sitting-room in the Black Bull Hotel. The table was covered with newspaper, and on it lay the long grey horn and Thorndyke's travelling-case, now open and displaying a small microscope and its accessories. The butcher was seated solidly in an armchair waiting, with a half-suspicious eye on Thorndyke for the report; and I was endeavouring by cheerful talk to keep Mr. Stopford from sinking into utter despondency, though I, too, kept a furtive watch on my colleague's ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... an armchair of gilded wood picked out with red, with blue feet, and with lions for arms, covered with a thick cushion of purple stuff starred with gold and crossed with black, the end of which fell over the back, was seated ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... her failing heart; of how he had laughed, and said he had felt she was wanting him, and so had put what he was doing on one side and hurried to her. And as she thought of this, lying with shut eyes in her armchair, a curious feeling that he was there again with her in the room, took possession of her. She was not afraid; she lay quite still, hardly breathing, feeling "Harry is here! If I open my eyes I shall ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... composition. He had a fine electrical apparatus, and used it with skill. I myself, amongst others, was subjected to a course of electricity under his charge. I remember seeing the old Earl of Hopetoun seated in a large armchair, and hung round with a collar, and a belt of magnets, like an Indian chief. After this, growing quite wild, Graham set up his Temple of Health, and lectured on the Celestial Bed. He attempted a ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... had heard: "What a pitiful little offensive that was!" It was made by one of those armchair "military experts" who look at a map and jump at a conclusion. They appear very wise in their wordiness when real military experts are silent for want of knowledge. Pitiful, was it? Ask the Germans who faced it what they ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... put on an easy dressing-gown of pale blue cashmere, drew up an armchair, and, arranging her electric reading-lamp, sat down to a new novel she intended ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot, feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not seen his eyes blue and dark, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Dorothy, and released her to an armchair; he took another, fastened his eyes upon her like visual ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... stenographer she need not wait, and of an appointment he had which she was not to forget. Before she reached the door he remembered two more things she was not to forget. The telephone rang, and, still talking, he walked briskly around a sofa, avoided a table and an armchair, and without fumbling picked up the instrument. What he heard was apparently very good news. He laughed delightedly, saying: "That's fine! ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... her belt sagging where it was of little actual use, sighed deeply. But there was patience and understanding in her big, dark eyes. "He's in with Mother doing finances," she said with resignation. "It's Saturday. Let's sit down and wait." Then, seeing that Maria already occupied the big armchair, and sat staring comfortably into the fire, she did not move. Maria was making a purring, grunting sound of great contentment; she felt no anxiety of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... stairs to her room on the sixth floor and the concierge returned to her quarters and settled herself in an armchair. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre |
