"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talk they had remained in their original positions—she on the doorstep, he on the side-walk, bare-headed for the sake of coolness, and with the bandbox on his arm. But upon this last speech Harry, who was unable to support such point-blank compliments to his appearance, nor the encouraging look with which they were accompanied, began to change his attitude, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... House of Representatives organized a serenade to President Fillmore and his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. The President bowed his acknowledgments from a window of the Executive Mansion, but Mr. Webster came out on the broad doorstep of his home, with a friend on either side of him holding a candle, and, attired in a dressing gown, he commenced a brief speech by saying, "Now is the summer—no! Now is the winter of our discontent ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... every one reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. You remember how Franklin slyly dropped his first contribution through the slit in his ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... crossed the room and opened the door to listen; not a sound—that peculiar stillness of the early morning when sleep with all mankind is at its heaviest. But the noise had made her nervous, and when, suddenly, at her feet, on the very doorstep, she saw something white lying there—a letter evidently—she hardly dared touch it. It seemed so ghostlike. It certainly was not there when she came upstairs; had Louise dropped it? or was some tantalising spook at play, showing her ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... there must be something wicked in him to ride like that. But he turned her aside from the steep hill, and passed along the street that led to the town gate of the House.—Whom should he see, as he turned into it, but Mrs Catanach!—standing on her own doorstep, opposite the descent to the Seaton, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking far out over the water through the green smoke of the village below. As long as he could remember her, it had been her wont to gaze ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... he, after collecting himself, his cycle, and his scattered wits from the ditch and conscientiously cursing the road, the dark, and the wet, duly turned to bless the luck that had brought about an accident right at the doorstep of a section of the Motor Transport. There were about ten massive lorries drawn up close to the side of the road under the poplars, and Courtenay made a direct line for one from which a chink of light showed under the tarpaulin and sounds ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... found sitting hunched up on a doorstep in a back street in Belfast. Her skirt and the step are webbed with threads clipped from machine-embroidered linen, or pulled from handkerchiefs for hemstitching. A few doors away little Helen Keefe, all elbows, ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... of muddy water into the back entrance, which flowed right across the kitchen into the back passage and larder, leaving a deposit of alluvial mud that would have charmed a geologist. However, we have stopped that for the future by a drain under the doorstep. The new breakfast-room is being papered and will look tidy soon. A man has been to measure for the stairs. The front porch door is promised for to-morrow, and the stairs, I suppose, in another week. A lot of fresh pointing is to be done, and all the rain-water ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... them as was kivered over by the robin-redbreasts arter they'd committed sooicide with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'ere little Tony. He's alvays a playin' vith a quart pot, that boy is! To see him a settin' down on the doorstep pretending to drink out of it, and fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking a bit of firevood, and sayin', "Now I'm grandfather," - to see him a doin' that at two year old is better than any play as wos ever wrote. "Now I'm grandfather!" ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... on his doorstep with his chin in his hands, and it was very plain to see that Danny had something on his mind. He had only a nod for Jimmy Skunk, and even Peter Rabbit could get no more than a grumpy "Good morning." It wasn't that he had been caught napping the day before by Reddy Fox and nearly made an end ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... on the doorstep of the hut). He's tender-hearted. It's hard on him, poor dear. Well, what of that? ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Brambles grew about the doorstep, and the hinges of the door were deep in rust. No friendly light gleamed at night from the lattice, a beacon to the wayfarer or a message of cheer to the disheartened, since the little house was alone. The secret spinners had hung a drapery of ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... called from the doorstep: "It's all right. Don't block the street. Break away, boys, break away." The crowd opened to let them pass, fixing curious ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... had brought Shashai to the doorstep, and who had been staring popeyed during the conversation, dashed away toward the paddock, to rush upon Shelby with a wild tale of "dat lady f'om de norf was a-sassin' Missie Peggy jist scan'lous and orderin' Shelby fer to come quick ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... hang up your receiver for five minutes," the voice said. "Precisely at half-past twelve you go and look on your front doorstep. Then come back and tell me what you have found. You need not fear that I ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... running in and out over the stone doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... to you, Makar Alexievitch! Whence, too, did you get the money for your debauchery? For the love of God be more careful of yourself, or you will be ruined. How shameful, how abominable of you! So the landlady would not admit you last night, and you spent the night on the doorstep? Oh, I know all about it. Yet if only you could have seen my agony when I heard the news! . . . Come and see me, Makar Alexievitch, and we will once more be happy together. Yes, we will read together, and talk ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the doorstep, and he took off his hat to the cool, pine-laden breeze that came from a mountain in the distance. He liked this town at once. He liked the elm-lined village street, and the snug white houses and the quiet and content of it. Then he found himself being introduced ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... not out indeed to destroy life or limb—we leave that to the men who are trying to coerce women—but we mean to sweep men like Sir Wilfrid Lang out of our way! Meanwhile we can pay special attention to his meetings—we can harass him at railway stations—we can sit on his doorstep—we can put the fear of God into him in a hundred ways—in short we can make his life a tenth part as disagreeable to him as he can make ours to us. We can, if we please, make it a burden to him—and we ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thither, for it was not far, with a great crowd of all sorts following and shouting. And there must I stand with all that tail after me while they beat on the gates in such sort that the poor nuns must have thought the Danes at their doorstep. ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... easy utterance, "like treacle off a spoon," said Urquhart; and then they tore back through the starry night to Onslow Square, leaving in their wake the wrecks and salvage of a hundred frail taxis; finally, from the doorstep waved the Destroyer, as the boys agreed she should be called, upon her ruthless course, listened to the short and fierce bursts of her wrath until she was lost in the great sea of sound; and then—replete to speechlessness—Lancelot looked up to his mother and ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... my dear!" she told Ann. "And the dust. Not even for the sake of a new rig-out could I endure it. I thought of cool little Silverquay with the nice clean sea washing its doorstep every morning—and I bolted. Madame Antoinette has probably been, wringing her hands over my ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... they had she eyed very closely, standing out on the front doorstep in the rain, and she saw that one end of it seemed to touch the ground at the foot of a pine-tree on the side of the mountain, which was quite conspicuous amongst its fellows, it was so tall. The other end had nothing ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... place to tame me. When Veronica heard that I was going, she told me that I would be stifled, if I lived at Grandfather Warren's; but added that the plums in his garden were good, and advised me to sit on the yellow stone doorstep, under which the toads lived. She also informed me that she was glad of it, and hoped I ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... so close to the purring waves that in storms their spray splashed over its very doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily on the front door. This producing no result, she marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer. Miss Rosetta tried ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hastened her marriage with the peasant, Vacca Accattabriga, seems quite certain: they sought to establish her in a respectable position. And so she acquiesced, and avoided society's displeasure, very much as Lord Bacon escaped disgrace by leaving "Hamlet" upon Shakespeare's doorstep. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... had been very idle while they were gone. He sat absently on the doorstep, watching the grass that grew almost visibly in the warm spring sun. Occasionally he tapped his forehead with his finger tips. It helped him to think, and just now he ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... from house to house to be milked at the doorstep, and occasionally a hill-man may be seen wandering about in the hope of finding a purchaser for the freshly-caught leopard he is leading. What will, perhaps, most strike Europeans are the bullock gharries by which the heavy traffic of the town is carried ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... Paris still smiled; and, buttoning up his coat, he paused for a moment on the doorstep to turn his face to the copper-red sun and breathe in the crisp, invigorating air; then, with a quaintly decisive manner that seemed to set sentiment aside, he walked to the edge of the footpath and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... hesitate upon the doorstep. She opened the door and went in, and shut the door behind her before the echo of her step had died. Ford was lying as he had lain once before, upon a bunk, with his face hidden in his folded arms. He did not hear her—at any rate he did ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... at the door, then I backed off the step, when it opened, thinking there must be a mistake about the date, and maybe inscriptions on gravestones was exaggerated; there was a girl in the doorway that looked and acted like Madge Pemberton complete. Moreover an old seaman falling off the doorstep didn't seem to upset her balmy calmness. ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... road which passed by our dwelling. Soon I heard the wheels of a light buckboard, and Dawee's familiar "Ho!" to his pony. He alighted upon the bare ground in front of our house. Tying his pony to one of the projecting corner logs of the low-roofed cottage, he stepped upon the wooden doorstep. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... he always is when it is a bright day like this. He sits in an old chair on that broad doorstep in front of his house, and leans on a big, thick ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... her doorstep with her rifle across her knees and halfway to the fence-line Jerry paused and looked back. The rifle came up—and dropped back again as Alexander belatedly pretended that she had not seen him. At the stile O'Keefe paused to turn his head again. He even waved his ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the beneficent contributions of science to the well-being of mankind that were now too familiar for discussion. He had heard a good deal of this particular discovery as applied to men. No doubt Dinwiddie and Osborne would soon be appearing as gay young sparks on her doorstep. It might be the greatest discovery of all time, but it certainly would work both ways. While its economic value might be indisputable, and even, as she had suggested, its spiritual, it would be hard on the merely young. The mutual hatreds ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to Cleveland the Republican candidate did not, during the campaign, leave Canton, though from his doorstep he spoke to visiting hordes. His opponent, in the course of the most remarkable campaigning tour ever made by a candidate, preached free coinage to millions. The immense number of his addresses; their effectiveness, notwithstanding the slender preparation possible ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the convalescent Hound went to lie upon the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn. They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's diary, nobody ever wanted to know. It gave him grounds for claiming literary ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... under the solicitous guidance of my valet and hastily descend in the electric elevator to the front hall. My wife has already taken her seat in the motor, with an air of righteous annoyance, of courteously suppressed irritation. The butler is standing on the doorstep. The valet is holding up my fur coat expectantly. I am sensible of an atmosphere of ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... were, a funeral cortege behind us. But I could perceive that these carriages were filled for the most part by young men, and that there was no contemporary of Crasweller to be seen at all. As we went up the town hill, I could espy Barnes gibbering on the doorstep of his house, and Tallowax brandishing a large knife in his hand, and Exors waving a paper over his head, which I well knew to be a copy of the Act of our Assembly; but I could only pretend not to see them as our carriage ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... morning as she sat rather disconsolately on the doorstep of the boarding-house, not knowing exactly what to do with herself, for in consequence of last night's visiting she had neglected to provide herself with a new book, Katie came by and greeted her brightly. She looked so sweet and fresh in her simple ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... mother say? So the little child went into the next room and began to pray. The door was open, and the mother could hear every word. "O God, you have come and taken away father, and mamma has got no money, and the landlord will turn us out because we can't pay, and we will have to sit on the doorstep, and mamma will catch cold. Give us a little home." Then she waited, as if for an answer, and then added, "Won't you, please, God?" She came out of that room quite happy, expecting a house to be given them. The mother felt reproved. I can tell you, however, she has never ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... the only one he had to watch out for at all was Black Pussy. By this time he wasn't afraid of her; not a bit. In fact, he rather enjoyed teasing her and getting her to chase him. When she was dozing on the doorstep he liked to steal very close, wake her with a sharp bark, and then race for the nearest tree, and there scold her to his heart's content. He had made friends with Mrs. Brown and with Farmer Brown, and he even felt almost friends with Bowser the Hound. ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... supper, she sate her down on the doorstep, and, bringing out her distaff, began to spin. And as ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... of water behind the street-door. 'Voila de l'eau pour vous debarbouiller,' says she. And so there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo crackers all ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chagrin on being informed that we had not been to the genuine churchyard. The gentleman who wept over the scenes of his early days on the wrong doorstep was not more grievously disappointed. However, he and we could both console ourselves with the reflection that the emotion was admirable, and wanted only the right place to make it the most appropriate in the world. The genuine ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a fair understanding," retorted Mr. Kavanagh. "You'd call it a fair understanding, would you, to come here and tell me to get off my own doorstep because ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... is distributing morning papers; she is a little girl who has Saint Vitus's dance; she jerks her angular body in all directions, twitches her shoulders, blinks, hustles from door to door, climbs the stairs in the high-storied houses, presses bells, and hurries on, leaving papers on every doorstep. A dog follows her and makes every ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... and because you both of you do say so very many things. But understand once and for all that in this country everything female has to be paid for by some man. I'm that man till I've left you on the Sack doorstep, and then it'll be Sack—confound him," finished ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... on the kitchen doorstep drinking coffee and smiling over the top of his cup at Elizabetta. There are ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... perpetually closed blinds suggest the owner's absence. But the householders of Madeira Place do not absent themselves, even in summer; they could hardly get much nearer to the sea. And if you will take the pains to seat yourself, toward the close of day, upon an opposite doorstep, between two rows of clamorous little girls sliding, with screams of painful joy, down the rough hammered stone, to the improvement of their clothing, you will see that the house ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... from the bride's face by her relatives, who do their utmost to throw it on to the roof, thus signifying that she will rule over the occupants when she enters. The bridegroom's people on the contrary try to trample it upon the doorstep, as an indication of the rigor with which the newcomer will be subjected to the ruling of the head of the house. Much blood is shed, and people are often seriously injured in these skirmishes. The new bride remains for three days in a temporary shelter before ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... doorstep of one of these cottages—a well-kept, clean and neat little dwelling—sat, this August afternoon, an old woman, spinning busily. She, although some of her neighbors might be, was not asleep. Oh, no! Seldom was Madame McAllister ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... hard brown hand stopped halfway to the pea-basket and fell limply at her side on the doorstep. It made a little thud as it fell. Rebecca Mary's horrified gaze wandered out into the glare of sunshine where wandered Thomas Jefferson, stepping daintily, hunting bugs. That was his day's work. Thomas Jefferson ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... is an inch taller for our grandeur; peu s'en faut, he thinks me a great lady and himself a great butler.' Hassan was a personage in the establishment. One night, on returning from a theatrical party at Dickens', my mother found the little boy crouching on the doorstep. His master had turned him out of doors because he was threatened with blindness, and having come now and then with messages to Queen Square, he found his way, as he explained, 'to die on the threshold of the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... turned a head in his direction. She tolerated his presence and that was all. But wherever she went he shadowed her. He was not obtrusive, but was content to keep at heel, and to be permitted to admire. I have seen him sit for half an hour on a doorstep, a canine monument of patience, waiting for her to come out, and I have seen her travel about the Place in apparently purposeless zigzags and circles for the mere pride and vanity of knowing how closely he would ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... here tonight, born 79 years ago. She lives in the inner city, where she cares for infants born of mothers who are heroin addicts. The children, born in withdrawal, are sometimes even dropped on her doorstep. She helps them with love. Go to her house some night, and maybe you'll see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor talking softly, soothing a child in her arms—Mother Hale of Harlem, and she, too, is an ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... bald marriage had been perpetrated in the old town. Green Valley did not resent the scandal of the occurrence. It was the absence of details that was so maddening. But gradually these began to trickle from doorstep to doorstep and by nightfall Green Valley was crowding out of its front gates with little ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... came back from Aunt Rachel's I found a voluble, fat, dirty, old, yellow-haired tramp established in the ground floor of the same house. He had, in the first place, come to our back door to beg a hand-out. And, sitting on the doorstep and eating, and drinking coffee, he had persuaded my grandmother that if she would give him a place to locate on credit he knew a way to clear a whole lot of money. His project for making money was the selling of home-made hominy ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sure," declared Tommy. "I dreamed the cats were scratchin' me; an' then that very nex' mornin' the old doorstep scratched me!" cried the ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... makes a path of gore. The wife from the window hath seen, and rushed; He hath reached the step, but the blood hath gushed; He hath crawled to the step of his own house-door, But his head hath dropped: he will crawl no more. Clasp Wife, and kiss, and lift the head, Harrington lies at his doorstep dead. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... of amontillados so steep that the camera probably gets a crick in the neck looking up at him; ride the foaming torrent with one hand clasping the mane of his now tamed broncho, and the other hand triggering his shooting-iron; and eventually fall exhausted from the horse at the very doorstep of the ranch, one arm, pinged by a dastardly rifle-bullet, dangling helplessly by his side. (It is, by the way, always the arm or shoulder; the cinema never allows him to get it distressingly in the leg or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... rough and broken laths, his knees as high as his chin, was a big slovenly boy of about seventeen, looking lazily out from under an old ragged hat-rim, pushed over his eyes. Another big, slovenly boy, a year or two younger, sat on the doorstep, whittling quite as much for his own amusement as for that of a little five-year-old ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... at Jim's doorstep and he made no reply. As usual, words seemed futile to him. He showed Pen his house and found the tobacco, letting Mrs. Flynn do all the talking. Then, still in silence, he led Pen back to her tent. At the door he gave her the tobacco and ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... went to the door; but Tumbu on the doorstep refused to come in; he barked, bounced off, and returned the next minute to whine and ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... see yuh spilled the soap, all right enough. I'm willin' to believe yuh did without no affidavit. Doggone it, a bachelor never has any such a man-trap around in a fellow's road. I've lived in Montana fourteen years, an' I never slipped up on my own doorstep till you got here. It takes a woman t' leave ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... at the doorstep to sniff, suspiciously; and carrying his nose up and down the jambs, as though following a scent. Then, suddenly, he turned, sharply, and started to run here and there, in semicircles and circles, all around ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... after the horseman with all the other boys, until, to everybody's astonishment, he stopped with tremendous prancings at Tooni's mud doorstep, where she sat to watch him go by. Then Sonny Sahib slipped away. He was afraid—he did not know of what. He ran half a mile beyond the village, and helped Sumpsi Din keep the parrots out of his father's millet crop all day long. Nor did he say a word to Sumpsi Din about it, for fear he should ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hour later I found myself upon the doorstep of Mr. Hornby's house in Endsley Gardens listening to the jangling of the bell that I ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... doorstep of the corner house, he raked the street right and left with searching glances, and was somewhat reassured. Apparently he called at an hour when the Boche pickets were off duty; at the moment there was no pedestrian visible within a block's distance on ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... teacher at a respectful distance. When they reached Miss Myrover's home, Sophy carried the bundle to the doorstep, where Miss Myrover took it ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Problem: What is a lady to do with a husband for whom she has no further use? If she gives him away he is sure to come back, like the clever dog that is sent in a hamper to the other end of the kingdom, and three days afterwards is found gasping on the doorstep. If she leaves him in the middle of South Africa, with most of the heavy baggage and all the debts, she may reckon it a certainty that on her return from her next honeymoon he will be the first to ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... Aleta referred to the printed sheet. "Your paper says 2370 veniremen were called into court. That's what money can do. If he'd been some poor devil charged with stealing a bottle of milk from the doorstep, how long would it ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Hoss, standing at Daddy Hannah's doorstep with his hands rammed deep in pockets, which were both empty, spoke in tones of profound bitterness. He addressed his remarks to space, but ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... descent to the road except for one shelving bit of level ground upon which rested, as if it had alighted there, a one-room cabin, for which an end of a tree trunk served as a doorstep. A loosely-hung wooden door provided the only light by day, except that given by the flickering of the flames from the burning logs on the ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... quite late when Mr. Hammond took her home in his buggy, and bade her good-night at the doorstep. As she entered the house she saw several couples promenading on the veranda, and heard Estelle and Clinton Allston singing a duet from "Il Trovatore." Passing the parlor door, one quick glance showed her Mr. Murray and Mr. Leigh ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... some subtle power, she went over to Susan's, and after sitting awhile on the doorstep, they slipped upstairs into the front chamber, and opened drawer after drawer of ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... road were littered with straw, and the straw straggled into the shop, and heaped itself at the open side door. One large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken refuge within it, and was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... position where with one jump he could land right on the doorstep. He waited a few minutes and cocked his head on one side to listen. There wasn't a sound to tell him whether Peter was there or not. Then lightly he jumped over to the doorstep and looked in at the doorway. There was no Peter to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... does, at least no one I have ever met. Three years ago, when I was living in Hammersmith, we caught two burglars with it. They broke open the sideboard, and swallowed five bottlefuls between them. A policeman found them afterwards, sitting on a doorstep a hundred yards off, the 'swag' beside them in a carpet bag. They were too ill to offer any resistance, and went to the station like lambs, he promising to send the doctor to them the moment they were safe in the cells. Ever since then I have left out a decanterful ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... incident touched me nearly this morning, as a forerunner of many that may come soon. I found sitting on a doorstep, apparently too weak to move, a young fellow of the Imperial Light Horse—scarcely more than a boy—his stalwart form shrunken by illness. He was toying with a spray of wild jasmine, as if its perfume brought back vague memories of home. I learned that he ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... crossed arms, and presently there began to escape from him strangled sobs sounding most grotesquely like some strange mimicry of the name the native girls had for him—"Pooh-pooh, pooh-pooh, pooh-pooh," over and over again repeated. Beyond his doorstep the life of the station hummed and throbbed, quickened into joyous activity by the coming of the steamer. He was not conscious of it. That roaring ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... High Street, where there was the faint stir and bustle of early morning, windows opening, a housemaid kneeling on a doorstep here and there, an occasional tradesman taking down his shutters. They drove past the fringe of prim little villas on the outskirts of the town, and away along a country road towards Arden; and once more Clarissa saw the things that she had dreamed of so often in her narrow white bed in the bleak ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... like,—he answered,—what difference does it make how you christen a foundling? These are not my legitimate scientific offspring, and you may consider them left on your doorstep. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to me thataway, too; the Man 'at I heard your Uncle Silas tellin' about one night when I sot on the doorstep at Little Zoar—He hadn't no place to lay His'n head; not so much as the red foxes 'r the birds ... and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... our enthusiasm in a court where the living green combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely. As the Artist wanted to sketch her house, some words seemed necessary. I detailed our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in this picturesque ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... were sitting about the fire. The doorway was two feet by five, and was covered with a raw deerskin hung from the top. A stick across the lower edge kept the skin taut. A log at the bottom of the doorway answered for a doorstep and in winter kept out the snow. Now the lodge ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... drove his spurs into Buster and finished the last hundred yards at a gallop. Judith, his foster sister, stood up in her stirrups, lashed Swift vigorously over the flanks with the knotted reins and when Buster slid on his haunches to the very doorstep, Swift brought her gnarled fore legs down on his sweeping tail and slid with him. She brought up when he did with her nose under his saddle blanket. The boy and girl avoided a mix-up by leaping from their saddles and jerking their ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... tell us that the opening of every new library witnesses a substitution of wholesome books for "yellow" novels in pupils' hands; while men in their prime remark their infrequent sight of the sensational periodicals left on every doorstep twenty years ago; while publishers of children's books are trying to give us a clean, safe, juvenile literature, and while some nickel novel publishers are even admitting a decline in the sale of their wares; in spite of these evidences of success, a ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... times to engage him in talk; an insistent fellow who, despite rebuffs, had followed him into the street after the meeting, and, refusing to be shaken off, had led the way so skilfully that Joseph found himself at last on Nicodemus' doorstep and with no option but to accept Nicodemus' invitation to enter. He did not like the fellow, but not on account of his insistence; it was not his insistence that had prejudiced him against him as much as the young man's elaboration of raiment, his hairdressing above all; he wore ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... to New York;—what will you do with your youngster?" he interrupted himself. "Leave him on Dr. Lavendar's doorstep, I suppose?" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... Rosy Posy were deposited on their own doorstep, and the big red car flew across the street to give Delight an exhibition of ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... purchased by Earl Fitzwilliam for 980 guineas. The grown-up person of the sitter for 'Puck' was in Messrs. Christie and Manson's room during the sale, and stood next to Lord Fitzwilliam, who is also a survivor of the sitters to Sir Joshua. The merry boy, whom Sir Joshua found upon his doorstep, subsequently became a porter at ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... no more The leaves around the kitchen door. It takes my time till ten fifteen To make the doorstep nice and clean," ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... John Halifax went across and picked up the slice of bread which had fallen on the doorstep. At the best of times, wheaten bread was then a dainty to the poor, and perhaps the Cornish lad had not tasted a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I've found you!" The voice sounded suddenly quite close at hand, and a man blundered against the doorstep. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from William. But there was something in the manner of Jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the rooms, a certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... quite beside himself with rage. But what was the use? And now Hanne and her mother had come out over yonder. Hanne was wearing a yellow straw hat with broad ribbons. She looked bewitching; the old lady had the lunch-basket on her arm. She locked the door carefully and put the key under the doorstep. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... virago pass, Laidlaw proceeded to the court, where, to his great surprise, he found Tommy Splint sitting on a doorstep, not exactly in tears, but with disconsolation deeply impressed ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... all I could to prevent it!" cried Mary, in despair. "All is over, I am afraid. I was sitting on the doorstep, preparing some arrowroot, when I saw Aunt Lizzy go out the gate. I thought it strange at the time of day, but never suspected the truth. Presently I saw her coming back with the priest, and knew in an instant she had ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... Maslennikoff's wife's "at-home" day, to which he had been invited. At the moment Nekhludoff drove up there was a carriage in front of the door, and a footman in livery, with a cockade in his hat, was helping a lady down the doorstep. She was holding up her train, and showing her thin ankles, black stockings, and slippered feet. Among the carriages was a closed landau, which he knew to ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... lithograph, representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed willow—hung in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental parlor. Her household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of age, of whom more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon her doorstep when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken in for the night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by the good soul as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the dreadful truth. Having previously assured herself that Robin and Ann were both out, she darted into the Cottage on the plea of delivering the monthly parish magazine and, naturally, lingered on the doorstep to chat a little ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... but she could already chatter like a magpie, murdering her words in an incessant childish babble. Old Mother Chantemesse after a time gathered that her name was Cadine, and that on the previous evening her mother had left her sitting on a doorstep, with instructions to wait till she returned. The child had fallen asleep there, and did not cry. She related that she was beaten at home; and she gladly followed Mother Chantemesse, seemingly quite enchanted ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... crossed the hall. Lord Porthoning was preparing to leave. "Have my car called up!" he ordered the footman from the doorstep. "Mind, I'm not going to hang about on the pavement in this sun for any one. If that's the motor waiting for the young people it'll have to get out of the way. Lord Porthoning's car at once, young fellow! Hello, Paul!" he added. "Come to see me ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as they make them. Last night, at the euchre, she found a double almond, and we ate filopena for a box of candy against a kiss. I got caught, of course, but she gave me the kiss on her doorstep as we parted. Then she dropped a hint that it was for a five-pound box. Just think of that! You remember that line out of "A Texas Steer," "I wonder if it cost Daniel Webster a hundred to ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... house which had been greatly improved by Suzanne's good taste and fancy. It was surrounded by a garden with arbours and quaintly-clipped old trees and a clear, winding stream that flowed under the very doorstep. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... would no doubt call many of my doorstep acquaintance, and I do not attempt to defend them altogether against the world, which paints but black and white and in general terms. Yet I would fain veil what is only half-truth under another name, for I know that the service of their Gay Science ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... in a gondola and ferry him across to his father's house. The nurse went with him, and informed Messer Paolo of what had happened. Doctors were sent for, and the whole family gathered round Gerardo's bed. After a while he revived a little; and thinking himself still upon the doorstep of Pietro's palace, called again, 'Nurse, Nurse!' She was near at hand, and would have spoken to him. But while he summoned his senses to his aid, he became gradually aware of his own kinsfolk and dissembled the secret of his grief. They beholding him in better cheer, departed on their several ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... walls, chairs and tables have taken heart, and now wear an honest gloss upon their legs and faces; ornaments, which had hitherto been too dirty to be ornamental, now show themselves in their real colours. Outside the house, also, wonderful things have come to pass; the rocking doorstep is at rest, and its fellow has been adjusted to a proper level; ever-greens have taken the place of the old never- greens; knocker and door handle are not ashamed to show their native brass; ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... many of them, but never such a man as this. This one smiled, yet his face had much of the sadness in it. He had perhaps walked many weary miles in the heat. Would he—with a gesture interpreting her speech—be pleased to rest awhile? Without hesitation, he would. As he sat on the doorstep gazing contentedly at the flowers bordering the path, Anita's mother appeared from some mysterious recess of the 'dobe and questioned Anita with quick low utterance. The girl's answer, interpretable to Sundown only by ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Gerard was glad, for he wanted to buy a pair of shoes; his own were quite worn out. They soon found a shop that displayed a goodly array, and made up to it, and would have entered it, but the shopkeeper sat on the doorstep taking a nap, and was so fat as to block up the narrow doorway; the very light could hardly struggle past his "too, too solid flesh," much less a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... twin fathers had had supper and were settled safely by their candles, which were beacons that led them back into past ages, I sat by myself on the front doorstep in the perfumed darkness that was only faintly lit by stars that seemed so near the earth that they were like flowers of light blossoming on the twigs of the roof elms. In a lovely dream I had just gone into the arms of Pan when I heard out beyond the orchard a soft moo of a cow, ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been an industrious mechanic, but had for two years been pursuing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to another, and Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in a man's shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill, while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel across his knees, a weary ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... his shadow withdrawn from the doorstep, and he had his business with Honeycutt. He left the door wide open so that no one might come suddenly upon them and turned ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... broke up. By ones and twos luxuriously dressed little figures went down the great staircase, where Grayson stood in the hall and the footman on the doorstep signaled to the waiting cars. Mademoiselle, watching from a point of vantage in the upper hall, felt a sense of comfort and well-being after they had all gone. This was as it should be. Lily would take up life again ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... downstairs yet. Ellaline, too, was still in her room, sulking, no doubt, and hadn't said good-bye to Sir Lionel or any of us. I know that, because my room at this hotel has been close to hers—and to his, too; so whenever a word is murmured on a doorstep I hear. No word has been murmured this morning; and E. has had her ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... ahoy!' I heard that well-known music as I sat lonely on the doorstep of the deserted mansion in the Square. The milkman looked lonely too; so I thought it would be only kind to go home with him. I did. He was a very well-meaning man, but his tastes were low. He took skim milk in his tea, and ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... the doorstep, when we arrived, just ringing the bell. She looked round at us both; being evidently as complete a stranger to my fair companion as she was to me. When the servant ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... and purr and snort but at least it could not talk, and his secret was quite safe. This reflection lighted his face with courage and when the family came out to join him no one would have suspected that the slender boy waiting on the doorstep harbored a thought of anything but anticipation in the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... that man and he won't be put off. And what's more, Bob Grand ought to get it good and hard. Somebody ought to spike him, and who's got a better right than Tom Braddock? I'm ashamed of you, Joey! If you'd been half a man you'd 'a' beat his head off to-night when he put his foot on your doorstep, after what he put up to Ruby. I—I ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... midst of our happy preparations the bad news fell with bomb-like suddenness. The messenger who brought the telegram whistled shrilly and shuffled a breakdown on the doorstep while he waited to hear if there was ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... out by watching and waiting in vain for Adrien, she again found herself without a home and without shelter; so, crouching on a doorstep, as she had done the previous evening, overcome with ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... that afternoon she met old Lord Groome on the doorstep, just coming to call on her, and hesitated a moment between asking him in or allowing him to accompany her as far as Mrs. Beale's, but decided on the latter because she would get rid of him so much the sooner. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... otherwise might have lived in peace, just as well without a church as with one. But the girl listened listlessly and unsmilingly, hardly hearing what was said. Going out of the room she sat for a long time on the doorstep, watching the forest path with patient wistfulness. But there was no sign of the young doctor's coming back and it was a relief when David came up the river bank. He reminded her that she had asked him to go with her to the Sisters' house, and she arose and went ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and have abdicated. ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... but a bit o' red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin' his best to be civil, "Nay, lad, it's like this. You've getten to choose which way it's goin' to be. I'll ha' nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin', an' borrows my lass's money to spend i' their drink. Ho'd tha tongue, 'Liza," sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at I were welcome to th' brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn't pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in, seein' as Jesse were losin' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... tumor grew, but grew very slowly. After two years the tumor was discovered by her lover, who after a year of exhausting and upsetting arguments, forced Marie to seek treatment. Since Marie adamantly refused to go the conventional medical route, she ended up on my doorstep as ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... these disturbing reflections that she almost forgot the real business in hand until she stood on her own doorstep waiting to ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with one of his latest converts upon his own doorstep, with admirable al fresco effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. "Good-by, good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down, or round the gulch, you know—ha, ha!—but straight across lots to the shining gate." He had raised his voice under ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... doorstep Johnny sat, Up and down the street looked he; Johnny did not own a hat, Hot or cold tho' days might be; Johnny did not own a boot To ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... so quick, Rebecca," said Mrs. Meserve, greatly mortified at the situation. "But don't you believe a word that lyin' critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be ridin' and consortin' with him? I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda if she should hear ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... often depended upon the caprices of hawkers for the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age, when errant knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising. You went on to your doorstep, caught your meal as it passed, withdrew, cooked it and ate it, quite in the manner ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... period of the colony, the grief of the widow was of short duration, for a suitor usually stood at her doorstep almost as the funeral procession ended. The most generally known, of such incidents, was the pursuit of Cicely Jordan, upon the death of her husband Samuel. Within two days Reverend Greville Pooley ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... inches from the nests. This spring more little houses were made and fastened up in the trees—rude little painted boxes, with a roof and a door in front, the whole set on a small board serving for a doorstep as well as general foundation. The bluebirds were specially delighted with these houses, and took possession almost as fast as they were put up. The catbird, a first cousin of the Southern mocking-bird, is also very fond of the neighborhood of human ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... a hollow, stood the small cottage where, at that very moment, her grandmother was preparing the evening meal. And, beyond, in the village was the little old stone church and Father Murphy's square bit of a house with its wide doorstep and its roof of thatch, and Widow Mulligan's and the Denny's and the Finnegan's and ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... to her, considering the marvellous thing which I had just beheld of her, in the fulfilment of her prophecy. But now my master's house was in sight, at the turning from the steep stairs and the wynd, and there stood Elliot on the doorstep, watching and waiting for the Maid, as a girl may wait for her lover coming ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... peering round the doorway, discovered her sitting on the doorstep, a Greek dustman gazing ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... commencement proper of this story, one Solomon Appleyard, pushing in front of him a perambulator. At the brick wall surmounted by wooden railings that divides the garden from the court, Solomon paused, hearing behind him the voice of Mrs. Appleyard speaking from the doorstep. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... into his trowser pockets, began to whistle and returned to his own doorstep with an air of profound unconcern. There for a time, to the tune of "Men of Harlech," he contemplated the receding possibility of kicking Mr. Rumbold hard. It would be splendid—and for the moment satisfying. But he decided not to do it. For indefinable reasons ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... crashed ponderously on the table. Presently Filmer drew a long breath and, stepping out on the trim gravel path, glanced up quizzically at the chief constable who looked as though enthroned on his own doorstep. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... opened quietly; a figure appeared for an instant in the light of the hall, and then, as quietly, the door closed again. There was a lull at the moment, but Carrington could hear not a sound. The figure must be standing very still on the doorstep, listening—evidently listening. And then the thickset form of Simon Rattar appeared dimly on the gravel, crossing to the lawn beyond. The pebbles crunched a little, but not very much. He seemed to be walking warily, ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... quite in the same line. One day a gentleman walking down a street observed a little boy seated on a doorstep. Going up to him, he said, "Well, my little chap, how is it you are sitting outside on the doorstep, when I see through the window all the other young folks inside playing games and having a good time? ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... for her. She looked from the window, she watched from the doorstep, but her daughter came not. The hours passed slowly, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... daring thoughts. In the case of the present author, there was absolutely no choice in the matter; she must write thus, or not at all. A recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like her person, from all but a very few friends; and it was with great difficulty that ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... subject all day as he walked to and fro across the shop, encumbered with several large pieces of bedroom furniture which they had been unable to get into the back room; he pondered it, too, as he stood on his doorstep, with his pen behind his ear, and feasted his eyes delightedly on the hurly-burly of Parisian commerce. The clerks who passed with their packages of samples under their arms, the vans of the express companies, the omnibuses, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... impudence; the House of Commons almost forgot to chatter. The case of the working man was the most striking of all—he forgot he was the working man. The very dogs forgot themselves, though that, to be sure, was no novelty, as the Irish writer demonstrated in his terrific outburst: 'On my doorstep.' But time went on, and hens in their turn forgot to lay, ships to return to port, cows to give enough milk, and Governments to look ahead, till the first flush of self-forgetfulness which had ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the same moment there was a glimmer of a gray dress in the twilight of the hall; and the next moment Honnor Cunyngham appeared on the doorstep, the morning light shining on ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... bent over the unconscious young man, Philippa seemed to come out of her trance; slowly, with upraised hands, and head bent upon her breast, she stepped backward, backward, out of the room, out of the house. On the doorstep, in the darkness, she paused and listened for several minutes to certain dreadful sounds in the house. Then, suddenly, a passion of purpose swept the daze of ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... for some method of expression, might serenely gratify itself in accordance with its lights—crude though they were. Here, at the entrance, lie a couple of charred sticks, significant of the last fire of the artist, which smouldered out perhaps half a century ago. On the very doorstep is a disc of pearl-shell, the discarded beginning of a fish-hook. These relics give to the scene a pathetic interest. As I looked at them ponderingly, a frog far in the back of the cave gave a ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... that ridiculous little Methodist meeting house on the very doorstep of my garden, father?" I demanded, as I stood tall and furious before him in the breakfast room on the morning after my return home from my winter in the East with Aunt Clara. "Cousin Nickols has spent many months out of three years on the plans of restoration for that garden, and he is ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... nearly two hundred cats,' said Anthea, 'besides the cow—and it would have to be a different-sized basket for her; and then I don't know how you'd carry it, and you'd never find a doorstep big enough to put it ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... house, made up of the walls and furniture, and not of any pleasantness or unpleasantness supplied by the inmates. It was a small house on the south side of the street, squeezed in between two large mansions which seemed to crush it, and by which its fair proportion of doorstep and area was in truth curtailed. The stairs were narrow; the dining-room was dark, and possessed none of those appearances of plenteous hospitality which a dining-room should have. But all this would have been as nothing if the drawing-room had been pretty as it is the bounden duty of all drawing-rooms ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... knocked himself, singed himself, and scalded himself, and in fact forgot himself altogether; and when, late that night, Crusoe went with Dick into his mother's cottage, and the door was shut, Grumps stretched his ruffled, battered, ill-used, and dishevelled little body down on the doorstep, thrust his nose against the opening below the door, and lay in humble contentment all night, for he knew that Crusoe ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the hospital, and all the streets leading to it, on this occasion she became bewildered, and after wandering about for some time, and feeling utterly worn-out with her long fatiguing day and the painful emotions she had experienced, she sat down on a doorstep in a lonely dark street, not knowing where she ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... settled ideas about personal self-denial. Another of her lieutenants tells that, during one Self-Denial week, a friend, thinking that the officers might be depriving themselves of nourishing food, left a basket packed with fresh goodies on the doorstep. The Adjutant smiled, sold the goods and the basket, and put the ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... for some moments on the wide doorstep. It was night now and the lamps were lit. Lovers strolled by under the trees, and against the railings of the garden opposite couples were ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality; above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven, because the beings who pass along have ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Therese, I believe, who managed to keep me out of the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them on my return from my visit to the Quartel Real last year. I couldn't have stayed much more than half an hour with them anyway, but still I would have liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that Therese persuaded my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of the hill. I saw the old man a long way off and I understood how it was. I dismounted at once and met him on foot. We had half an hour together walking up and down the road. He is a peasant priest, he didn't know ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Chief of Police here, and that everybody is afraid of me? I have only to give orders and every one will kill any one I like." Here he discontinued shaking his somewhat grimy hands under my nose and, drawing himself up, stood upon the doorstep of the hotel in order to harangue the great crowd which ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... poor girl had visions of the doorstep and a closed door. Two, perhaps, for I am sure Burker would not have taken her in if I had turned her out, and she may ...
— 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
... direction from that officer, who was searchlighting areas for want of something to do, with an implication of profound purpose. He decided on loneliness and a walk exactly the length of a cigar, throwing its last effort to burn his fingers away on his doorstep. He carried the animation of his thoughts on his face upstairs to bed with him, for it lasted through a meditation at an open window, through a chorus of cats about their private affairs, and the usual controversy about the hour among all the town-clocks, which ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... at least a welcome distraction, and under its genial influence Mrs. Briggs's spirits rose. She was quite cheery by the time her two visitors took their leave. They left her waving farewell from her doorstep, the patches of paste still upon her ruddy countenance, but with no other traces of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell |
