"Cranky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of the boards as the dog dropped ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... asked him if he would not come and examine my 'coal room,' the place where I was digging coal. He came, and seemed to make a thorough examination, and ordered me back to work, saying, there was no danger, and that he thought I was going 'cranky.' I returned to my work, and had been digging away for something like an hour, when, all of a sudden, it grew very dark. Then it seemed as if a great iron door swung open, and I passed through it. The thought then came to my mind that I was dead and in another world. I could see no one, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... cent," he whined, as they took their places in the cranky pirogue; "but I might jes' happen to kill a squir'l or a elephant ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... propel that log by jumping on it, by rolling it squirrel fashion with the feet, by punting it as one would a canoe; to be skillful in pushing, prying, and poling other logs from the quarter deck of the same cranky craft; as he must be prepared at any and all times to jump waist deep into the river, to work in ice-water hours at a stretch; as he was called upon to break the most dangerous jams on the river, representing, as ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... a home, Bert Lloyd could hardly fail to be a happy boy, and no one that knew him would ever have thought of him as being anything else. He had his dull times, of course. What boy with all his faculties has not? And he had his cranky spells, too. But neither the one nor the other lasted very long, and the sunshine soon not only broke through the clouds, but scattered them altogether. Happy are those natures not given to brooding over real or fancied troubles. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of my adventoor. It emejetly sot her into one of her cranky tantrums. Says she, "HIRAM, you've an old fool. Why don't you stay home, where you belong, and not go pokin about the country ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... the overwhelming majority of the cooking animals, they behave much more "naturally." They are a merry crowd, ever anticipating a good time, ever jolly, eager, greedy. Or, they are cranky, hungry, starved, miserable, and they turn savage now and then. Some are gluttonous. Many ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... it not have been wicked to have delivered ourselves over to any cranky, miserly economy or to any distortion or affectation of thrift? Had fortune smiled, her gifts would have been sanely appreciated, for our ideas of comfort and the niceties of life are not cramped, neither are ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... circles I believe this sort of thing isn't usually said to a gentleman in his own apartments, but never mind that. Make yourself at home,' adding to this retort an observation to the effect that his friend appeared to be rather 'cranky' in point of temper, Richards Swiveller finished the rosy and applied himself to the composition of another glassful, in which, after tasting it with great relish, he proposed a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... large caverns, not taverns: a mummy in a tavern would frighten all the idlers and ragamuffins out of it. I don't know but what it would be a good plan, but you two dear little twisters and turners of the king's English would frighten that cranky old fellow, Dr. Johnson, into a long sickness, if he was only alive and could hear you. I love to hear you talk; it does me good. Don't go out of the room, but take that pack of cards I gave you to play with, and sit down on the floor and build ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... heart lying as heavy as a plummet in her breast, was just as bright and useful and entertaining to her cranky old friend as if life was a boon instead of a bane to her. You know from her letter how bitter life was to her; and I think if you have ever known sorrow and a great disappointment, you will comprehend how it was possible for her, with the fear of God before her, and a desire to be ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... but which were excellent for wear in wet boats. When, in order to change my uncomfortable position, I placed both legs on one side, the edge of the prahu nearly touched the water and the Dayaks would cry out in warning. I have not on other rivers in Borneo met with prahus quite as cranky as these. At the Bugis settlement I bought fifty delicious pineapples at a very moderate price and distributed ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... with you." Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... soberly, "I think the people have struck a rapid pace these days and are growing bold and impudent. The law appears to allow them too much liberty. After our experience of this morning I shall not be surprised at anything that happens—especially in this cranky state of California." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... swiftly on her way, bounding over the low, gentle swell of the calm ocean. Tom shivered whenever he thought of the possibility of the motors becoming cranky. With such important human freight aboard any mishap to the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... a little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... about sendin' flowe's to that little girl reminds me of the time when I once sent some flowe's, but instead of sending them to a girl, I sent them to a big crusty old man. This man was, to a great extent, an exception to the rule that I have just laid down. That is, he was cranky and ha'd to get next to for nearly ever'body, and sometimes he was pretty rough with me. But I handled him fairly well and always got business out of him, although sometimes I had to use a little jiu jitsu to ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... Yura demanded that father himself undress him. "Now, you are getting cranky," said father. "I don't know how to do it; ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... said Mrs. Jones. "I wish my poor old mother was as easy to live with as you, Sara; but 'tis being alone so long has made her cranky. And the money—oh, she loves it dearly. Indeed, if I can get Davy to agree, we will give up this house and go home and live near her; 'tis pity the old woman should grow harder ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the tragedy. The old man had always been cranky and erratic, and he'd played the despot on Hikihoho so long that he'd got the idea in his head that there was nothing wrong with the king—or the princess either. When Armande was eighteen he sent for her. He had ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... lettuce at table. One cranky old family friend had it served to him in a water bucket, set beside him on the floor. He shook it free of water, cut it, without bruising, to wide ribbons, covered them thickly with hard-boiled egg-yolk mashed fine, then ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... First out of your conversation I fancy it will be plain sailing. I hope you are not bursting with the subject, as the immortal Mr. Dick was, when he found himself compelled to fly his kites; but it is a fact that Unwin is a bit cranky about him.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lived on the river here all my life, ain't I, Bill, an' I know. Yer don't give an automobile no name, an' yer don't give an airyplane no name, an' yer don't give a motorcycle nor a bicycle no name, but yer give a boat a name 'cause she's human. She'll be cranky and stubborn an' then she'll be soft and amiable as pie—that's 'cause she's human. An' that's why a man'll let a old boat stan' an' rot ruther'n sell it. 'Cause it's human and it kinder gets him. You treat her ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... rope round the neck of a half-grown calf that was too strong for her (and she was tough as fencing-wire), or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the 'poddies' (hand-fed calves) in the pen. I'd get off the horse and give her a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow that wouldn't 'bail-up' and threatened her with her ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... replied: "'Twould be a merry riot, surely, doctor, if I gave in to my complaints, with noisy customers downstairs and two cranky ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... risks he ran. More than once, as the wind changed a point, it seemed that the cranky craft must turn turtle. But she escaped again and again, plunging on her headlong course. The Sepoys were sturdy enough fellows, but being unused to the water they cowered in the bottom of the boat, except when Desmond's stern command ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... chattering over a checker-board for the pleasure of the silvery, tinkling music of their voices. But woe is me for the voices, male and female, that you so often hear in New England,—the harsh, strident voices, the monotonous, cranky, yanky, filing, rasping voices, without modulation, all rise and no fall, a monotonous discord, no soul, no feeling, and no counterfeit of it, loud, positive, angular, and awful. Indeed, I do not see how we New-Englanders are ever ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... that was more Mr. Charles Hawker's fault than her own. No; Elsy is good enough for me, and I'm not very badly off, and begin to fancy I would like some better sort of welcome in the evening than what a cranky old brute of a hutkeeper can give me. So I think ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... their first wild hunting expedition. This first excursion was not to be a very formidable one; it was only a canoe trip several miles up the coast, to a place where the wild ducks and geese were numerous. Like all white people, on their first introduction to the birch canoe, they thought it a frail, cranky boat, and were quite disgusted with it, and some of the tricks it played upon them, on some of their first attempts to manage it. For example, Frank, who prided himself on his ability in pulling an oar, and in managing the ordinary small skiffs or ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me the broad waters of Helena Sound. The fresh salt breeze from the ocean struck upon my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my efforts to get within a region of higher land, and to ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... was a broken-down lawyer, who, as he got old, had prostituted the talents of his early days to the meanest kind of pettifogging and rascality. Everybody did their best to keep out of his clutches, and his 'make up' was seedy enough; yet he managed to keep in court half a dozen 'cranky suits,' in which, to be sure, he figured as a party himself, on one side or the other. The circumstances of one of them, which have just come to our memory, are perhaps worth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Remember, Ned, his brain is made of finer stuff than that stolid sponge inside your pia mater, that can take in quantum sufficit of beer, fog, and tobacco-smoke, unharmed. He can't stand it, and he's too rare and delicate a machine to go cranky thus soon. You've got the child under your thumb,—bring him out o' that. Make him take a dose of Verulam, get him back into the world again, and order him four hours per ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... gunboat. We wondered if he recognized the Dulcibella, but, anyway, she seemed to take no notice of us and steamed slowly on. We quite expected to fall in with her when we came to the islands, but the actual sight of her has excited us a good deal. She is an ugly, cranky little vessel, painted grey, with one funnel. Davis is contemptuous about her low freeboard forward; says he would rather go to sea in the Dulce. He has her dimensions and armament (learnt from Brassey) at his fingers' ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Guthrie Carey ground through his strong teeth, "that the cranky beast would break his neck." It was not the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... crumpled up where they had stood like bits of flame-swept paper. Others pitched forward in the bottom of their crafts, while still others stood for a minute swaying from left to right like drunken men, to finally crash over the sides like fallen trees, taking their cranky crafts over with them in their ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... inebriates, if it does nothing else; and I am afraid it does nothing else with me. In spite of the warning, I continue to take my favorite beverage as strong and as frequently as ever, and so I suppose must look forward to a cranky nervous ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... a rude affair known as a "flat." It was long and narrow, with square ends and sides, and from its cranky motion evidently ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... will yer?" he pleaded. "Cause I'll sure find it soon's I git home, an' Jane, she's kind o' cranky, yer know! But she's got her good streaks, Jane has! She brought me a bowl o' custard th' other day—that was proper nice o' Jane!" His wrinkled face lighted at ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... to study him: Sancho Panza may escape a good many sad experiences by knowing his master's weaknesses. But as Nietzsche no longer belongs to the Quixotic class, as Germany seems to emerge with him from her youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of being thrashed in the company of your Master: no, you will be thrashed all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human being. "Solamen ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... louder guffaw of laughter, and in his horrible falsetto squeaked, 'See here, my sweet Signor barber, my excellent Signor surgeon, my honoured Annibal Caracci, my beloved Guido Reni, be off to the devil, and don't ever show yourself here again, if you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of the room, and hurl me down the stairs. But that, you know, was past everything. With ungovernable fury I seized the old fellow and tripped him up, so that his legs stuck uppermost ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... small garrison of Beluch soldiers, and a Wali, or governor. Starting the following morning, we put to sea again, and in three days—sailing against a strong southerly current, aggravated by a stiff north-easterly breeze, almost too much for our cranky little vessel, and which frightened the crew and our little timid Sheikh so much that they all lost presence of mind, and with the greatest difficulty were repressed from "'bouting ship," and wrecking themselves, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... toss of her head, "the on'y differ there is in it is that I am the same as ever I was, an' you have turned crabby an' cranky." ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... not let the woman be her own worst enemy; I was big enough to overlook her unfortunate attitudes and see through the cranky exterior to the worthy idealist and true woman beneath. I was interrupted in my thoughts by Miss ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... little water came through a couple of deep cracks, but not much and I sopped it up with my hat. But oh, jingoes, I never had to sit up so straight in school (not even when the principal came through the class-room) as I did in that cranky old log with a hole in it. And oh, you would have chucked a couple of chuckles if you'd seen me guiding my Indian bark with a bunch of reeds. Honest, they looked like, ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... is running for Judge again: really, Laura, I hope he'll win. George says he will. George says Henry Fenn is the only trouble Mr. Van Dorn will have, though I don't see as Henry could do much. Though George says he will. George says Henry is cranky and mean about the Judge someway and George says Henry is drinking like a fish this spring and his legs is hollow, he holds so much; though he must have been joking for I have heard of hollow horn in cattle, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... considering the cranky nature of a canoe at its best, what journeys can be made in them. My skilled canoeman and I used to run wild rapids, and cross over storm swept lakes of large dimensions. We lived on the game we could shoot as we hurried along, slept on the rocks or sandy beach where ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... gutter, to splash in the sink about the hydrant, and to dance to the hand-organ that came regularly into the block, even though they sadly missed the monkey that was its chief attraction till the aldermen banished it in a cranky fit. Dancing came naturally to them, too; certainly no one took the trouble to teach them. It was a pretty sight to see them stepping to the time on the broad flags at the mouth of the alley. Not ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... dusted it and ornamented the hearth with bunches of lilacs in a broken pitcher. Twelve yellow chairs, a mahogany stand, a dark rag-carpet, some speckled Pacific sea-shells on the shelf, among which stood a whale's tooth with a drawing of a cranky ship thereon, and an ostrich's egg that hung by a string from the ceiling, were the adornments of the room. When we were dressed for church, we looked out of the window till the bell tolled, and the chaise of the Baxters and Sawyers ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... piano when Elizabeth found her. "It depends," she replied. "If Smiles will allow me to do overtime this evening, I won't be able to come. I'll be too tired. If she's cranky and locks up ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... faithful Mike, who has been in charge here ever since Mr. Butterwood took to travelling about for the good of his rheumatisms? Why, my dear young lady, the whole country looks upon Mike as a pattern man-of-all-work. He may be getting a little cranky and independent in his notions, for he has been pretty much his own master for years, but I am sure you could find no one to take his place who would be more trustworthy or ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... "'What's the matter with you, Dora?' I asked her. 'Don't you like me any more?' And she got wild and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted, cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... anti-Semitism.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} As a matter of fact, it was then high time to bid him farewell: but the proof of this came only too soon. Richard Wagner, ostensibly the most triumphant creature alive; as a matter of fact, though, a cranky and desperate decadent, suddenly fell helpless and broken on his knees before the Christian cross.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Was there no German at that time who had the eyes to see, and the sympathy in his soul to feel, the ghastly nature of this spectacle? Was I the only ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... doors in the morning, with his foot on the native heath of his farm, Holcroft's hopefulness and courage always returned. He was half angry with himself at his nervous irritation of the evening before. "If she becomes so cranky that I can't stand her, I'll pay the three months' wages and clear her out," he had concluded, and he went about his morning work with a grim purpose to submit ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... gentlefolk that came this afternoon with their own carriage and heathenish French servant: a cranky old grandee and a daughter with more airs than a peacock: Sir Something- or-other Killigew—Lord ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and discomforts—the months spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing of ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you're a sensible girl you'll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I'm sorry for ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "It makes me cranky," observed Whitney, "to see the way a lot of the girls seem to notice just such fellows as Prescott, Darrin, Reade, Dalzell—-fellows who, by rights, ought to be through with their schooling and earning wages as respectful grocery ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... of a woman doing so. It is regarded as a dark, bohemian, and almost brutally masculine indulgence; exactly as it was regarded by the dowagers in Thackeray's novels. Indeed, this is one of the many such cases in which extremes meet; the extremes of stuffy antiquity and cranky modernity. The American dowager is sorry that tobacco was ever introduced; and the American suffragette and social reformer is considering whether tobacco ought not to be abolished. The tone of American society suggests some sort ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... so," said the Squire. He felt that the vagaries of the affections was too deep a subject for him. "Anyhow, Looizy, I don't want no old maids and bachelors potterin' round this farm getting cranky notions in their heads. Look at the professor. Why, a good woman would have taken the nonsense ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... more. Chris was well known to be what the others called "cranky" in his temper; and when he considered, as he generally did, that he was right, and every one else wrong, there was nothing for it ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... been stored away in shipshape manner, and came conveniently to hand. The wind freshened perceptibly while I was thus engaged, veering into the southeast, so that all the cloth I dare spread was the jib and a closely reefed mainsail. The boat acted a bit cranky, but, confident she would stand up under this canvas, I crawled back to the tiller, eased off the sheet a trifle more, and waited results. We shipped a bucket full of water, and then settled into a good pace, a cream of surge along our port gunwale, and a white wake astern. The woman kept on bailing ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... upon the dusty path, On the grass, all wet with dew, And the old goose turned round quickly, She wished an interview. And Kitty said,—"Oh, open your mouth As much as ever you please; I'm going to take your gosling, Because I love to tease Such a cranky, impudent squawker as you." And she laughed right out, and stooped To take the toddling little thing, When down upon her swooped, The angry goose with hisses fierce, And wildly flapping wing, And gave her a nip that was ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... this. She fully acknowledged to us the lies which had created so much trouble. "Well, I was telling the first lies and then when I was going to tell him that I knew that I was telling wrong he acted so cranky and said such things to me. He said he knew somebody had done bad things to me and so I thought I had to give the name of somebody and so I ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... cranky!" said Master Putnam. "A pretty world the rascals would make of it, if the honest men were too good to fight. It seems to me there is something absolutely wicked in their ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... essayist in education than any other American. He has that rarest of educational gifts,—the ability to throw light brilliantly, and yet softly, making his paragraphs both bright and mellow, all without "preaching," without pedantry, and without being cranky.—Journal of Education, Boston. ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the fearlessness of her eyes gave her that. And Mrs. Baynes, too, shrewdly recognized that behind the uncompromising frankness of June's manner there was much of the Forsyte. If the girl had been merely frank and courageous, Mrs. Baynes would have thought her 'cranky,' and despised her; if she had been merely a Forsyte, like Francie—let us say—she would have patronized her from sheer weight of metal; but June, small though she was—Mrs. Baynes habitually admired quantity—gave ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of them dugouts. One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other paddlers in ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... library was a book-case which my father had recently purchased of some cranky inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and size something like the old-fashioned "wardrobes" which one sees in bed-rooms without closets, but opened all the way down, like a woman's night-dress. It had glass doors. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... this very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... dead silence. Then, I grieve to say, shame and its twin brother rage took possession of their weak humanity. Oh, yes! It was all of a piece! Why in the name of Folly hadn't he sent for an able-bodied man. Were they to be drowned through his cranky obstinacy? ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... never-varying cargo of cattle-dealers, priests, and peelers on their way to the west country, as though the demand for such colonial productions in these parts was insatiable. This was pleasant, you will say; but what was to be done? We had nothing else. Now, nothing saps a man's temper like ennui. The cranky, peevish people one meets with would be excellent folk, if they only had something to do. As for us, I'll venture to say two men more disposed to go pleasantly down the current of life it were hard to meet with; and yet, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in any way. Every one of the ten girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner. And each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... who he is," he answered. "He is a queer sort of fellow, lives all alone, and is a bit cranky, they say. Come in and have some breakfast. I don't suppose that any one else ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... house, he could never hope to go upstream against it. His only chance was to make sure that he could reach the middle of the torrent above the house and drift right down upon it. A few yards' extra leeway would enable him to steer his cranky craft to the desired spot. So, though it seemed to him as if he were going away from Anton, and though, indeed, he was now so far away that the crippled boy's shouts no longer could be heard, Ross stuck to ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky, happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former years. Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who have been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and innocent method of the new Era of politics note dawning—they never will. Nothing proved. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the world by the windpipe. Its very life-breath would be at our disposal. Ha! What about revolution, then? What about popular discontent, and stiff-necked legislators, and cranky editors? What about commercial and financial rivals? What about these damned Socialists, with their brass-lunged bazoo, howling about monopoly and capitalism and all the rest of it? Eh, what? Just one squeeze," here Flint closed his corded, veinous fingers, "just one tightening ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... returned the ferryman, rising. "Most of my boats have gone into winter quarters, your Honor. The Mayflower went into dry dock last week to be calked up; the Pinta and the Santa Maria are slow and cranky; the Monitor and the Merrimac I haven't really had time to patch up; and the Valkyrie is two months overdue. I cannot make up my mind whether she is lost or kept back by excursion steamers. Hence I really don't know what I can lend you. Any of these ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... want to know what things look like, old Pam, so I'll try and tell you. In the first place, it's just a glorious spring day. At the back of the cranky bit of a ruined farm where we have our diggings (by the way, you may always go back at night and find half your bedroom shot away—that happened to me the other night—there was a tunic of mine still hanging on the door, and when you opened the door, nothing but a hole ten feet deep full ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... return to New Orleans I so telegraphed General Grant, and he, thinking General Caravajal (then in Washington seeking aid for the Republic) would answer the purpose, persuaded him to report to me in New Orleans. Caravajal promptly appeared, but he did not impress me very favorably. He was old and cranky, yet, as he seemed anxious to do his best, I sent him over to Brownsville, with credentials, authorizing him to cross into Mexico, and followed him myself by the next boat. When I arrived in Brownsville, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... mainly because I don't want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... fishing village is Tout-Petit. The deep blue sea, the green hills, and the tiny red-roofed, white-walled hamlet straggling down to the port made it very quaint. A rivulet, spanned by a cranky bridge, swept round the base of the hill to the left, and down the centre of the village street, till it found its way into the sea at the harbour. There were shady paths close to the shore, little knots of silver poplar and birch, winding walks among the rocks and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... better do," said Moriarty to me—"better hang your socks on Nosey Alf's crook to-night. His place is fifteen mile from here, and very little out of your way. Ill-natured, cranky beggar, Alf is—been on the pea—but there's no end of grass in his paddock. And I say—get him to give you a tune or two on his fiddle. Something splendid I believe. He's always getting music by post from Sydney. Montgomery had heard him sing and play, some ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... assented; "and I think Herman is too toploftical and full of cranky theories. They say Mrs. Greyson has hit the nail exactly on the head in that statue she showed in Paris last year. That pleased the critics and the public both, and that's exactly what we are after. I think we ought to ask her to make ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... boat (pulled by a crew of six natives), that we had hired for the occasion from a Chinaman in the capital. More than half our journey had to be accomplished by sea, which, as it was blowing half a gale, and looking at the capabilities of our cranky old craft (christened Sri Laut, or Beauty of the Sea, by her proud owner), was not a pleasant prospect. Ere we had been half an hour afloat we were wet through with the rain, which beat through the old ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... little hempen mats slip away from under your feet without slipping away for good; and finally, the foot-warmers are miserable wrecks, hingeless, charred, broken away about the holes. It would be impossible to give an idea of the old, rotten, shaky, cranky, worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of the furniture without an exhaustive description, which would delay the progress of the story to an extent that impatient people would not pardon. The red tiles of the floor are full of depressions ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... cranky bachelor (well impersonated by Spottiswoode Aitken) brings up his orphan nephew with an awkward affection. The nephew is impersonated by Henry B. Walthall. The uncle has an ambition that the boy will become a man of letters. In his attempts at literature the youth is influenced by Poe. This brings ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... editions of the Bible; and tens of thousands of humbler Americans carry their inherited idealism into the necessarily sordid experiences of life in an imperfectly organized country, suppress it for fear of being thought "cranky" or "soft," and then, in their imagination and all that feeds their imagination, give it vent. You may watch the process any evening at the "movies" or the melodrama, on the trolley-car or in ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... him out-climb McGee. Did you see how McGee took off? Like a cadet doin' solo—afraid to lift her. And they say he's one of the best aces in the R.F.C. Huh! I think he's got the pip! Ever since he first touched his wheels to this 'drome he's been yellin' about his motor bein' cranky. And it's all jake. She takes gas like a race ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Walden—the jolly sort o' saint, o' coorse,— not the prayin', whinin', snuffin' kind. 'E's been doin' nothin' but good ever since 'e came 'ere, which m'appen partly from 'is not bein' married. If 'e'd gotten a wife, the place would a' been awsome different. Not but wot 'e ain't a bit cranky over 'is, flowers 'isself. But I'd rather 'ave 'im fussin' round than a petticut arter me. A petticut at 'ome's enough, an' I ain't complainin' on it, though it's a bit breezy sometimes,—but a petticut in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... in my rough ol' heart, an' I got it a-plenty, too, A center shot from a pair o' eyes of the winninest sort o' blue, An' I ride the ranges a-sighin' sighs, as cranky as a locoed steer— A durned heap worse than the novel blokes that the narrative gals'd queer. Just hain't no energy left no mo', go 'round like a orphant calf A-thinkin' about that sagehen's eyes that give me the Cupid gaff, An' I'm all skeered up when I ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... each other, considerate, business-like. The wives made pleasant homes and the husbands came and went at will. In their spare time the wives developed their personal interests and "lived their own lives," as critic number two advises. When the husbands took cranky streaks the wives simply made light of it to themselves, and forgot it as soon as possible. They lived on as comfortable terms as if the wives were simply first-class hired house-keepers; little crankisms were all in the bargain. ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... capacity than one would at first suspect; John Macdonald, a Scotsman, whose record was that he had never solved a puzzle himself since the club was formed, though frequently he had put others on the track of a deep solution; Tim Churton, a bank clerk, full of cranky, unorthodox ideas as to perpetual motion; also Harold Tomkins, a prosperous accountant, remarkably familiar with the elegant branch of ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... all the mots in this here jug, [1] There's none like saucy Dolly; And but to view her dimber mug [2] Is e'er excuse for folly. She runs such precious cranky rigs With pinching wedge and lockets [3] Yet she's the toast of all the prigs ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Mr. Herring and Mr. Avery, I experimented with several full sized gliding machines, carrying a man. The first was a Lilienthal monoplane which was deemed so cranky that it was discarded after making about one hundred glides, six weeks before Lilienthal's accident. The second was known as the multiple winged machine and finally developed into five pairs of pivoted wings, trussed together at the front and one pair in the rear. It ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... are once more in the European Middle ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty, gabled houses, with sharp French roofs of burnished tin, like those of Liege; processions of the Host; altars decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots, blouses, and the scarlet of the British lines-man,— all these are seen ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... canoes have, I understand," Bristles chuckled. "They just watch till you're not lookin', and then chuck you overboard. Some of 'em are worse than a bucking bronco at throwing a feller. But looky here, Billy, how does it come you're in this cranky boat? I'd 'a thought your dad would have told you to ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... were strangers to the place, were in a mortal fright, not knowing whether we might find a precipice at the bottom, and be shot over, perhaps into the sea. Very soon, too, we reached some steps, down which we went, of course faster than ever, with terrific bounds, till the cranky old vehicle could no longer stand ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... toyshop! He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying the child a cranky Noah's Ark, very much down by the head, that he had gone in and asked the ladies' permission to treat him to a tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such a handsome boy might not grow up with a ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... had offered Rousseau a retreat in her little house, the Hermitage. There it was that he began the tale of La Nouvelle Heloise, which was finished at Marshal de Montmorency's, when the susceptible and cranky temper of the philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions of Grimm. The latter had but lately said to Madame d'Epinay "I see in Rousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him; you will do him a very sorry service in giving him a home at the Hermitage, but you ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cranky," Mrs. Cox said resignedly. "He's always been that way! You cook him corn beef—that's the night he wanted pork chops; sometimes he'll snap your head off if you speak, and others he'll ask you why you sit around like a mute and don't ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... did well, and next winter you can look up another sour spinster and cranky old lady and make them happy," said Anna, with the approving smile all loved to ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... in dreamland?" she demanded. "When you're just irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What's she going to do about ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... us awful news. But we can and do. Susan is putting in the garden, and mother and she are housecleaning, and we Junior Reds are getting up a concert in aid of the Belgians. We have been practising for a month and having no end of trouble and bother with cranky people. Miranda Pryor promised to help with a dialogue and when she had her part all learnt her father put his foot down and refused to allow her to help at all. I am not blaming Miranda exactly, but I do think she might have a little more spunk ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and odour of fir woods. I love their men, those genuine mariners, the right diviners of sky, coast, and tides, who know exactly what their craft will do in any combination of circumstances as well as you know the pockets of your old coat; men who can handle a stiff and cranky lump of patched timbers and antique gear as artfully as others would the clever length of hollow steel with its powerful ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... be supposed, because of this perfect and continual illusion of Nature's playful phenomena, that all visible creation is purely an illusion of the senses, as some cranky metaphysicians would have it, because this is ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... nothin' ahead nor gettin' up anything decent. She's a Go-upper and thinks the end of the world is li'ble to come any minit. And the way I figger it, not havin' vittles reg'lar has give me dyspepsy, and dyspepsy has made me cranky, and not safe to be squdged too fur. And that's the whole trouble. I've got a hankerin' for strorb'ries. They may make me more supple. P'raps not, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... call them (and you are very rude to a lot of good, nice women, Edna), are not necessarily cross and cranky; the unmarried women I know are all busy, cheerful creatures, full of life and energy, and very useful in their generation. Father says he always enjoys a talk with an unmarried lady; so many of them keep their freshness and youth, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... cranky, Nelly. At any rate I've no business to be here this minute. I started for Annapolis, but my wits got wool-gathering, I reckon, and I let Shashai turn in here without noticing where he was going. Aunt Katherine will reach Annapolis before I do and—then—" ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a great deal better than that—and so do we, too!—you're only cranky! a little cranky, Frank, and given to defending any folly you commit without either rhyme or reason—as when you tried to persuade me that it is the safest thing in nature to pour gunpowder out of a canister into ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Altamont, a runaway convict, and threatened to break in the oak. Now, sir, in my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage along the gutter into Bows and Costigan's window, and I sent Jack Alias along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for it had grown very cranky; and then, after a parley, let in ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometimes he'd hurry through as quick as he could, and sometimes he'd loiter and listen very intently. I rather joked about this at first, till I found it really distressed him; then, of course, I pretended not to notice. We're all cranky somewhere, and for that matter, I can't touch a ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... on 'em bottled By Mr. D'Eyncourt and Mr. Hawes, who makes soap yellow and mottled! And hasn't Sir Benjamin Hall, and the gallant Commodore Napier, Made such a cabal with Cabbell and Hamilton as would make any chap queer? Whilst Sankey, who was backed by a Cleave-r for Marrowbone looks cranky, Acos the electors, like lisping babbies, cried out "No Sankee?" Then South'ark has sent Alderman Humphrey and Mr. B. Wood, Who has promised, that if ever a member of parliament did his duty—he would! Then for the Tower Hamlets, Robinson, Hutchinson, and Thompson, find that they're in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the lawyers," Joyce explained as they hurried away. "But it wouldn't do any good, I guess, if we knew. We couldn't go and question them, for it's plain from what the agent said that they don't want to talk about it. My, but that man was cranky, wasn't he!" ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... cared Little-Lovely Leila for seeing sights? Anybody could see sights—any dreary and dried-up fossil, any crabbed and cranky old maid—the Tower and Westminster Abbey were for those who had nothing better to do. As for herself, her horizon just now was bounded by primrose wreaths and fragrant boxes, and the promise of seeing ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... old crank, and Jakie's a waxed angel," she surrendered with a little grimace. "You think so now, but that's because you are being led astray by your appetites, like all men. You just wait: You'll be homesick for a sight of that fat, bald-headed, cranky old Patsy bouncing along on the mess-wagon and swearing in Dutch at his horses, before you're through. If you're not so completely gone over to Jakie that you will eat nothing but what he has cooked, come on up to the house. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... below, I can always distinguish the back of Marie-Joseph from the others. To-day she brought me a present of milk and potatoes, and we sat down to chat over a cup of coffee—nay, four cups of coffee, for Marie-Joseph has no cranky ideas about abstinence from food and drink, and I must, perforce, pretend I have none. I love her and her ways, though she always manages to disturb me when I wish to work or think. Writing and thinking are not work to Marie-Joseph. She ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... setting up your cranky opinions against the hard facts? The plain truth is that everybody who ever heard of Stanhope is going to give you the cold shoulder for a dog; we can depend ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the motor over, first of all. Perhaps it's a small matter, and I can fix it up. Sometimes these new machines act a bit cranky. Want of oil will even bring about trouble. Jerry, you take a look with me. Two heads are often better ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... Mr. Bentham were situated at the extreme end of a dingy, depressing looking street which ran from the Adelphi to the Embankment Gardens. It was a street of private hotels which no one had ever heard of, and where apparently no one ever stayed. A few cranky institutions, existing under the excuse of charity, had their offices there, and a firm of publishers, whose glory was of the past, still dragged out their uncomfortable and profitless existence in a building ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "cranky! cranky!" sounded from all the furniture; there was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the Ranger's crew, with a top-heavy, cranky ship under their feet, and a Commander who day and night insisted on every rag she could stagger under, without laying ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... 'maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the store play it fine. I'm mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I believe I could go to sleep a while if you'll stay right beside me ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... After those cranky dances, it'll do both of us good to step out in some other way than that silly tango, and monkey climb. Have you thought up any scheme yet for learning the truth ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... H. The brother of the patient stated that she was like other girls, and very good at school. At 16 she became quieter, less energetic. She came to America at 17. After arriving here she has seemed low spirited, cranky and faultfinding. She often complained of indefinite stomach trouble and headaches; when at home she often had a cloth around her head. The informant recalled that she said, "I wish I could get sick for a long time and get either cured or die." However, she worked. For one and ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... at first; For he'd a tongue of his own; and could use it, too, Better than most menfolk—a bonnie sparrer, I warrant, in his time; but past his best Before I kenned him; little fight left in him: And when his wits went cranky, he just havered— Ground out his two tunes like a hurdygurdy, With most notes missing ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... he fingered the horrible ridged cicatrice, he could see the boundless ocean and the boundless blue sky from a wretched cranky canoe-shaped boat, in which certain Arab, Somali, Negro, and other gentlemen were proceeding all the way from near Berbera to near Aden with large trustfulness in Allah and with certain less creditable goods. It was a long, unwieldy vessel which ten men could ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... lazy deluded cranky resistive unco-operative will-less hipped obsessed hypocritical of mean disposition excitable fearful exacting dissatisfied undecided wilful self-centered morbid doubtful demanding ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... of the internal-combustion engine, carburetion, compression, ignition, and explosion, but also a keen insight into the whims of the human, and terribly inhuman, thing—the gasolene-motor. Nothing can be sweeter when it is sweet, and nothing more devilish when it is cranky, than an airplane engine. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... a cranky canoe, the landing-place of a bush-road, a banana-plantation, and a dwarf clearing, where sat a family boiling down palm-nuts for oil, proved that here and there the lowland did not lack lowlanders. The people stared at us without surprise, although this was only ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... and to Peggy it seemed a veritable fairy-land, with its lights, its banners, its lovely girls, uniformed laddies and music "which would make a wooden image dance," she confided to Mrs. Harold, and added: "And do you know, I used to rebel and be so cranky when Miss Arnaud came to give me dancing-lessons when I was a little thing. I just HATED it, and how she ever made me learn I just don't know. But I had to do as she said, and maybe I'm not glad that I DID. Why, ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... was always a little cranky, wasn't he?" Dominey observed. "Let me put your mind at rest on that other matter, though, Caroline. I can assure you that I have come back to England not to borrow money ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... way that it's done, sir," the mate added, filling up his glass again, and passing the bottle to the captain. "There's loadin' a cranky vessel wi' grain in bulk without usin' partition boards. If you get a little water in, as you are bound to do with a ship o' that kind, the grain will swell and swell until it bursts the seams open, and down ye go. Then there's ignition o' coal gas aboard o' steamers. That's ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Suddenly in the midst of it all there came a terrific peal of thunder, and he awoke with a start, to hear the bars being removed from his prison-door and to see the bright sunlight streaming in through cracks in both roof and wall of the cranky hut. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... knowed what his poor, cranky system needed, an' I knowed how to get it into him, especially as he'd never tasted meat in all his life. From that time on, he never saw no meat on our table, nor no chickens, nor sea scavengers, nor nothin', but all day, while he was gone, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... impetuously, "I can shoot better than Allen right now. You ask him if I can't. You ask him what I did with that cranky twenty- two last ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pints of meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them. Yet somebody along here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up the mail facilities. At French River we change horses. There is a mill here, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, which the driver thinks will not tumble down this trip. The settlement may have seen better days, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Alexander, he saw a woman picking up something or other on the side of a hill. She might be gathering flowers, but he could not see any. He stopped and watched her for a while and then went nearer. She did not take any notice of him, so he thought the poor thing had been lost in the bush, and had gone cranky. He pitied her, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... debarred? Too old and cranky or something like that?" teased Jane. Her hair was bursting from her cap like an over-ripe thistle, and her cheeks were velvety in a rich glow of early winter tints. She hardly looked too old even for ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... dancers, and all good dancers, diet. That is, they are careful to eat what is best for them, and not everything that may tickle the palate yet raise a rumpus inside one and upset the whole system, and make them cross and cranky and ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... make him feel that he's so awfully important just because he's making a fool of himself. Most boys attract more attention the first time they kick over the traces than they ever did in all their lives before. 'Tisn't any wonder to me that the elder brother gets a little cranky when he sees the fuss made over the prodigal, first because he's gone wrong and then because he's going right, same as decent folks have been ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Captain Grey to be a jolly, cranky old seadog of the old school. He has been with the Hudson's Bay Company for thirty years, and has sailed the northern seas for fifty. He shook his head pessimistically when he heard about our expedition. "You'll never get back," he said. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... pleaded that, as he had no home and neither touched tobacco nor strong drink, he should at least be given a trial, and then finished his appeal by telling the superintendent that a young, live and accommodating trainman was preferred by the patrons of every railroad to a cranky one. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... he read her account of how odd and how cranky Colonel Crofton had become when wholly absorbed in his hobby of breeding wire-haired terriers. How, when one of his dogs had failed to win a prize, he would go about muttering to himself, and visiting his annoyance and disappointment on those ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... were absent; but Mr. Hogg set to work in the most business- like style. He borrowed a boat from the Rev. William Walker, of the Gaboon Mission, who kindly wrote that I should have something less cranky if I could wait awhile; he manned it with three of his own Krumen, and he collected the necessary stores and supplies of cloth, pipes and tobacco, rum, white wine, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Harvey and Little Tim stood on the float at Coombs's landing, looking at a sailboat that lay at its berth alongside. It was not exactly a handsome craft; with too great length for its beam, and its lines drawn out so fine astern that it bade fair to be somewhat cranky. It had no cabin, and there was seating room for a large party—a design calculated ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... mid-summer he can take me right into the interior, in that cranky red car. And I don't know but what I am ready to risk it; there are places I'd like to see—where he was caught his first winter in a blizzard, and where he picked up the nuggets for my necklace. You remember it—don't you?—Mrs. Daniels. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... double-lived; but the Lord only knew how much longer thou wouldst ramble about abroad. Well, but thou art a dashing fine fellow, a fine fellow; thou canst still lift ten puds in one hand as of yore, I suppose? Thy deceased father, excuse me, was cranky in some respects, but he did well when he hired a Swiss for thee; thou rememberest, how thou and he had fistfights; that's called gymnastics, isn't it?—But why have I been cackling thus? I have ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... been asking yourself all this while just what a fat run is, here is your answer: Tips; a fine train filled with fine ladies and fine gentlemen, not all of them so cranky as X, of Cleveland—thank heaven for that!—though a good many of them have their peculiarities and are willing to pay generously for the privilege of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer |
