"Dowdy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declare it's charming! Now look at yourself. Why should you make yourself look dowdy? It's all very well—but you can't be ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we shall hear no more of the bread and cheese and onions, pot-house scores, and low company, with which you have so unceremoniously taxed our lordship. You will drive your jumped-up coach, with your awkward wives and dowdy daughters, and your tawdry liveries, all the way from Russell Square to the Green Park, to catch the chance of a glimpse of our lordship. You find out from our lordship's footman that our lordship wears a particular collar to his coat, and you will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and well at the side," the oracle, said. "I'm glad you're going to, dear, it looked just a wee bit dowdy, ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... never feel as if I was dressed right. My things seemed elegant at home, and I thought I'd be over over-dressed if anything; but I look countrified and dowdy here. No time or money to change now, even if I knew how to do it,' answered the other, glancing anxiously at her bright pink silk ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... I called for Duperre's wife at the hotel, and she came down wearing a plain, dark-brown motor coat with a small, close-fitting cap to match. She was, indeed, unusually dowdy ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... have been part of the undertaker's permanent stock-in-trade. Henrietta hated the mournful looks of these ancient cousins, the shaking of their black beads, their sibilant whisperings, and in their presence she was dry-eyed and rather rude. Aunt Caroline would have laughed at them and their dowdy clothes that smelt of camphor, but it seemed as though no one would ever ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... so dull and dowdy in the spring weather, when the snow drops and the crocuses are putting on their dainty frocks of white and mauve and yellow, and the baby-buds from every branch are peeping with bright eyes out on the world, and stretching forth soft little leaves ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... how ravishing that simple costume made her appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw! Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing aloft a parasol that but the day before had been the joy of her girlish existence, she was fully convinced that a more commonplace addendum to a feminine wardrobe ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... grateful Under skies serene; But the human type is hateful On a tragic scene; When the outlook's drear and cloudy Punch would rather see you dowdy Than extravagant and rowdy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... upon her favorite theme, she had forgotten her haste. "She sees at a glance all the good points of a figure; she knows how to bring them out strongly; she discovers by intuition what is lacking, and dexterously hides the defects. I have seen her convert the veriest dowdy into an elegant woman. And, when she gets a subject that pleases her, she perfectly revels in her art. Look at this dress for instance,—see by what delicate combinations it ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... wore evening frocks; others, with more limited means, contented themselves with Sunday frocks or delicately coloured robes that had been manoeuvred into something that showed enough white neck and bosom to be at once alluring and decorous. There was nothing of the plain or the dowdy. They were all out for enjoyment, and they meant to make the best of everything, themselves included. Frills and fluffiness were the order. They were ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... don't believe he wrote Mildred Lawson (in the volume entitled Celibates) with malice prepense. Too great an artist to use as a dialectic battering-ram one of his characters, for all that he makes Mildred very "modern." She doesn't despise men, nor does she care much for the ideas of her dowdy friend the "advanced" Mrs. Fargus; on the contrary, she makes fun of her clothes and ideas, though secretly regretting that she hadn't been sent by her parents to Girton College. Like Hedda she is ambitious ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... strong rounded chin and beautiful mouth. For his looks were wasted on a man; Michael wanted to see them repeated and softened in a girl. As his eyes rested contemplatingly on his companion's bent head and youthfully-lean figure, he began to visualize a very plain, dowdy sister. The "Good Lord, no!" probably meant that although Freddy was not the least vain of his own extraordinary good looks, he could not help exclaiming at the idea of his dowdy sister being considered ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... yellow and dowdy, and you are feeling blue and hysterical; if you don't go away at once you'll go on doing both for ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... ideas as to provincial life in the course of it. His horizon widened; society assumed different proportions. There were fair Parisiennes in fresh and elegant toilettes all about him; Mme. de Bargeton's costume, tolerably ambitious though it was, looked dowdy by comparison; the material, like the fashion and the color, was out of date. That way of arranging her hair, so bewitching in Angouleme, looked frightfully ugly here among the daintily devised coiffures which he ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... esh-Shukafa could not distract my thoughts from the sealed envelopes; and three very modern handwritings came obstinately between my eyes and the matchless wall-paintings—paintings as fresh in their underground hiding-place as if finished yesterday instead of in days when it was dowdy to be pagan, fashionable ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... fair-weather spark that was here just now? Will he thrash my jacket? Let'n,—let'n. But an he comes near me, mayhap I may giv'n a salt eel for's supper, for all that. What does father mean to leave me alone as soon as I come home with such a dirty dowdy? Sea-calf? I an't calf enough to lick your chalked face, you cheese-curd you: —marry thee? Oons, I'll marry a Lapland witch as soon, and live upon selling contrary winds and ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... a few finishing touches before we go," said Marion, a few minutes afterwards, "and I will lend you my green brooch and a veil. You must let me alter your bonnet a little one night next week. There; now you don't look quite so dowdy," said Marion, as she pushed her cousin before the looking-glass after the "few touches" had been given to her bonnet ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... a staccato voice. Sally Carter entered the room, kissed Betty, shook hands heartily with Emory, and threw herself into a chair. Her fortune equalled Betty's, but it was her pleasure to wear frocks so old and so dowdy that her friends wondered where they had come from originally. She had been a handsome girl, and her blue eyes were still full of fire, her fair hair abundant, but her face was sallow and lined from many attacks of malarial fever. Her manner was ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... use of having them? And don't you think for the daughters of a Marchioness they are a little what you'd call—dowdy?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... straw hat, and his wife stooped low as a makeshift for bowing. An outsider might have thought that the aristocratic coach would have gone by this extremely humble couple without so much as noticing it. But the gentleman who was driving lifted his hat to the dowdy lady, with a gesture of marked politeness, and a young and elegantly-dressed lady, his sister, nodded and smiled, and waved her hand to her. After the coach had rolled some fifty yards away, the farmer pulled into the road, and went on through the cloud of dust it had left behind it, with a complacent ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... badly, whose shoe-heels turned over as they walked, who stood first in their classes, whose belts behind made a practice of revealing large white safety-pins; and whose hats, even disassociated from their dowdy wearers, and hanging in the cloakroom, were of an ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... who go to dance at the Rainbow. One of them, however, was very neat and prim, while the other—well! she was a terrible dowdy." ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... she like a certain lady I know who chose to be married in a dowdy dress and a poke bonnet for fear ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... and all pretty and perfectly dressed, as even quite common people appear to be in America. I haven't caught sight of a dowdy woman since I came. None of their frocks hitch up in front and dip down behind, as you see people's doing if you are taken to a shop in Oxford Street or even sometimes in Bond Street; and their belts always point beautifully down at the waist, although ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... office, with a plain lamp and a big door-plate—then some dreary private lodging-houses—then, at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger's very small, the chemist's very smart, the pastry-cook's very dowdy, and the green-grocer's very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a glib, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... but it would have done you good to have seen her before she was put into the water. Shapely? shapely is not the word for it, she is absolutely beautiful! She is to other craft what,"—here his eye rested upon Miss Onslow's unconscious face for an instant—"a perfectly lovely woman is to a fat old dowdy. There is only one fault I have to find with her, and that is only a fault in my eyes; there are many who regard it as a positive ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... pretty soon," said Belle, bitterly, to her sister. "For I won't stand that dowdy thing here for ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... crust the pastry and bake in a moderate oven for forty-five minutes. Let cool and then run a knife around the edge of the baking dish and loosen the crust from the dish. Place a large platter over the dowdy and then invert. Dust the dowdy lightly with nutmeg and serve with fruit or ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... mother would like me to marry? Oh, I know the sort! First, she must be tall and handsome, with red, fashionable hair, and cool, offhand manners. She must never look shy or put out, or as if she did not know what to say. On the contrary, she must know who's who, and what's what, and never wear a dowdy bonnet, but always a stunning hat. And she must have a father who can give her something handsome when she is married. That's my mother's girl for me. I can't bear to look such a girl in the face! She makes me ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... discernible in the overflow of natural emotion. Darrell had come resolved to be released if possible. Pleased he was, much more than he had expected. He even inly accepted for the deceased Captain excuses which he had never before admitted to himself. The linen-draper's daughter was no coarse presuming dowdy, and in her candid rush of gratitude there was not that underbred servility which Darrell had thought perceptible in her epistolary compositions. There was elegance too, void both of gaudy ostentation and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... street was to be seen the appalling spectacle of the ten-year-old son of the refined and fashionable Trafaim dragging along a cart constructed of a sugar box and an old pair of perambulator wheels with no tyres, in which reposed the plebeian Frankie Owen, armed with a whip, and the dowdy daughter of a barber's clerk: while the nine-year-old heir of the coal merchant ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... apple-green Poland mantlet and jockey bonnet of lilac satin checked with maroon. But Dolly had no such weight of by-gone sorrow to balance her present woe, and the things she had left at home were infinitely brighter than that dowdy Faith's. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... they are smarter," said Matilda; "and there's nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, But, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off—to Jamaica, China, Hounslow barracks, or somewhere; and then ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of those clever, epigrammatic, dowdy old duchesses that one reads about in English novels. I'm sure she had cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of it all. I know that her reply would ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... and she would go ahead and prove it. She could, too—she no longer doubted her possession of the college girl's one talent that Betty had laughed about. For there was Theresa Reed, her friend down the street. She was homely and awkward, she wore dowdy clothes and wore them badly, she was slow and plodding; but there was one thing that she could do, and the girls admired her for it and had instantly made a place for her. Helen was glad of a second proof that those things did not matter ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... youth to one of Bulwer's heroes, or Disraeli's, or even Thackeray's! And his simple old duke of a father and his dowdy old duchess of a mother are almost as devoid of swagger as himself; they seem to apologise for their very existence, if we may trust these American chroniclers who seem to know them so well; and I really think we no longer care to hear and read ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the mist had lifted and the sky was a freshly washed blue. Suvaroff walked down Kearny Street, and past Portsmouth Square. At this hour the little park was cleared of its human wreckage, and dowdy sparrows hopped unafraid upon the deserted benches. A Chinese woman and her child romped upon the green; a weather-beaten peddler stooped to the fountain and drank; the three poplar-trees about the Stevenson monument trembled to silver in the frank sunshine. Suvaroff could not remember when ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... too! George Hawker is one of them; but we can't see who the other is. Who should it be but Mary, though, with whom he should walk, with his arm round her waist talking so affectionately. But see, she raises her head. Why! that is not Mary. That is old Jewel's dowdy, handsome, brazen-faced grandaughter. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... mellow sunlight crowned her ancient nobleness with a becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park, all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet lineaments shone down in almost every American parlor ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... permit it. The unlucky picture has settled that point. Maude will not suffer her to cross the threshold! But for the portrait I could bespeak my cousin's favour and indulgence for a somewhat countrified young girl, dowdy and awkward. I could plead for her good looks in that ad misericordiam fashion that disarms jealousy and enlists her generosity for a humble connection she need never see more of! If I could only persuade Maude that I had done an indiscretion, and that I knew it, I should be sure of her friendship. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... dowdy! How dare you come here to disgrace me in my own house and premises, after my sending you L50! To take the very time, too, when—when Richard gasped for breath; and the laugh of his guests rang in his ears, and got into his chest, and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nearly opposite, stared at the girl in stupefaction. "She makes me feel dowdy," she had confessed to Lee in the dressing-room. "Why didn't you warn me to come in my best? Who has been coaching her? Alice Heath, I suppose." She now wondered as sharply over the girl's manner; for Bertha, carried out of herself by Ben's word of praise, felt no desire to drink or ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... young wife had brought together a great Christmas house-party composed of the odd, ill-assorted social elements which gather at the call of the wealthy host who has exchanged old friends for new acquaintances. Peggy's own people, old-fashioned country gentry, were regarded by Pargeter as hopelessly dowdy and "out of it," so none of them had been invited. With Laurence Vanderlyn alone had the young mistress of the house had any link of mutual interests or sympathies; but of flirtation, as that protean word was understood by those about them, there ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... features than in England. What may be called nice looking girls abound all over Australia. In dress the Melbourne ladies are too fond of bright colours, but it can never be complained against them that they are dowdy—a fault common to their Sydney, Adelaide, and English sisters—and they certainly spend a great deal of money on their dress, every article of which costs about 50 per cent. more than at home. In every town the shop ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... is a pie consisting of apples, molasses, and bread crumbs baked in a tin pan. This is known to New Englanders as "Pan Dowdy." An agreeable bread was at one time made by an ingenious Frenchman which consisted of one third of apples boiled, and two-thirds ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... killed. And as those vizard-masks maintain that fashion, To soothe and tickle sweet imagination; So our dull poet keeps you on with masking, To make you think there's something worth your asking. But, when 'tis shown, that, which does now delight you, Will prove a dowdy, with a face ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Hammersmith. It was a grand and inspiring sensation to swing through Hammersmith thus aristocratically repudiating the dowdy Sunday crowd that stared in ingenuous curiosity. And there was a wonderful quality in the spectacle of the great, formidable car being actuated and controlled by the little gloved hands and delicately shod feet of this frail, pampered, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Panopticon Theatre? I am an artist giving life to a character in romance, I suppose; certainly not a grown-up child playing at being somebody out of Mrs. Markham's history of England. I wear whatever becomes me. I cannot act when I feel dowdy." ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... should ever forget a jot of the real happiness of any portion of my life. When you and I, dear Sook (an awful scowl, and a sudden change of her position, on her costly rocking chair. Fitz looked askance at Mrs. Fitz, and proceeded); when you and I, Susan, lived in Dowdy's little eight by ten 'blue frame,' down in Pigginsborough; not a yard of carpet, or piece of mahogany, or silver, or silk, or satin, or flummery of any sort, the five ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... "Dowdy-cow, dowdy-cow, ride away heame, Thy[1] house is burnt, and thy bairns are tean, And if thou means to save thy bairns Take thy wings ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... Madame Thuillier wear last night were a present from her, and it was because she came herself to superintend the toilet of our two 'amphitryonesses' that you were so surprised last night not to find them rigged in their usual dowdy fashion." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... expressed herself perfectly delighted with the delicate, beautiful gift, but, being a true lady, Bart's mother said nothing about the matter to those who would have been glad to spread a little gossip unfavorable to the dowdy society ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... So that dowdy get-up is for my benefit, and is not habitual to her!—Or is it, that she has only one costume and keeps it for Sundays ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... had a white dress, too," observed Edna regretfully; for in her heart she thought Bessie's favorite gray gown very dowdy and Quakerish. "But we must try to enliven you with a few flowers. You are going to wear a gray hat. Wait a moment." And Edna darted out of the room, and returned a moment afterward with a dainty cream lace fichu. "Look, this lace is lovely! Mamma ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game is ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... old dress, dear; it's so plain an' dowdy. I've somethin' better than that;' and, looking as pleased as a young girl at his interest in her dress, she went off nodding and smiling at the thought of the pleasure she was going to give him at sight ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... observe one or two peculiarities of this kind as we stroll about the city, and they are explained to us by our colonial friend. Some extremely dowdy females we see riding in a barouche are the wife and daughters of a high official, who is stingy to his woman-kind, so they say. Two youths we pass are in striking contrast, as they walk along arm-in-arm. One ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ten to one more suffering from over-swathing. For pain, actual, excrutiating; for pain invincible, somber and unutterable, one proud woman reduced to a last season's frock suffers more than twenty arrayed in customary rags and tatters. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, but not to the dowdy woman. The occupant of the cottage or cabin as he hurries home on Saturday night with his hard-earned store perhaps envies the occupant of the mansion where lights burn brightly and music fills the air, but the master of the mansion may be driven to the verge ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... she said to herself as she ran upstairs, "He's growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed." She dashed to the wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake. "Old, dowdy, unbecoming, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... now that he sat there in that quiet room that had once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy school-boy on the other wall, he ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... both waltz, and I assure you it is very distingue indeed. But be careful in learning. Your sister Fanny says the Boston young men stick out their elbows dreadfully when they waltz, and look like owls spinning on invisible teetotums. She declares, too, that all the Boston girls are dowdy. But she is obliged to confess that Mr. Beacon and Mr. Dinks are as well dressed and gentlemanly and dance as well as our young men here. And as for the Boston ladies, Mr. Dinks tells Fanny that he has a cousin, a Miss Wayne, who lives in Delafield, who might ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... housekeeper waited upon us—a fresh rosy little old woman in a clean dowdy cap and a scanty sprigged gown; a quaint careful person, but accessible to the tribute of our pleasure, to say nothing of any other. She had the accent of the country, but the manners of the house. Under her guidance we passed through a dozen apartments, duly stocked with old pictures, ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... that melted in along with her words, like the gold in the quartz, Triplet was obliged to own her the goddess of beautiful gayety; but still he had the last word: "Woffington was all she is, except her figure. Woffington was a Hebe; your Nell Jordan is little better than a dowdy." ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... he is very fond of anything aristocratic. Mrs. Briggs, nee Van Duysen, has nothing Dutch about her but her name. The Knickerbockers of New York were famous for their thrift, their economy, their neatness, and, above all, their housewifely virtues. Mrs. Briggs is thriftless, extravagant, dowdy in her old age, although she had been a beauty in her youth, and knows as little about keeping a house as she does about keeping a horse. During the war, at a fair given for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission, in Union Square, several Knickerbocker ladies organized a kitchen upon the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... matter of fact, so far from discouraging the passion for dress among their female dependents, ladies of position and fortune are apt to insist on their dressing smartly. They like to see some of their own lustre reflected on their attendants. A dowdy in sad-colored print or linsey is by no means to their taste. This has been well pointed out in a letter in which a "Maid-servant" replied, through the Pall Mall Gazette, to the project of reform proposed by a "Clergyman's ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... poor dowdy in a haase. It's a queer thing, but eddication seems to mar as mony as it maks. Aw dooant know ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... Let my books be young, fresh, and fragrant in their virgin purity, unspotted from the world. If my copy is to be soiled, I want to do all the soiling myself. It is very different with a manuscript, which cannot be too old or too dowdy. These are its graces. Dr. Neubauer once said to me, "I take no interest in a girl who has seen more than seventeen years, nor in a manuscript that has seen less than seven hundred." Alonzo of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that "age appeared to be best in ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... the dully-lighted shop, and turned in at her own gate. In a moment she was inside the house, sniffing at the warm odour-laden air within doors. Her mouth drew down at the corners. Stew to-night! An amused gleam, lost upon the dowdy passage, fled across her bright eyes. Emmy wouldn't have thanked her for that! Emmy—sick to death herself of the smell of cooking—would have slammed down the pot in ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... when he overtook Mrs. Duncombe and offered her a lift, for her step was weary. She was indeed altered, pale, with cheek-bones showing, and all the lustre and sparkle gone out of her, while her hat was as rigidly dowdy ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recognise me as a relation." Then, oh! visions of the golden dream of bliss when she could visit such titled kin in Old England, and report it all when at home in New York, filled her head. And with her mind eaten up with it, she pushed rudely by a plain, somewhat dowdy-looking woman ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... appeared before Mr. Champneys in her new clothes. She thought that if she had been allowed to pick them out for herself, instead of having been hypnotized—"bulldozed" is what she called it—into plain old dowdy duds by two shopwomen and a Jew manager, she'd have given him more ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... she even came, but she went back just now. She was dressed terribly fine—gold lace and green silk, but it was old and dowdy; and, Momsy, her cheeks were just as red! I was on the stepladder tackin' up the Bethlehem picture, Sisty was standin' on the high-chair hanging up the star, and Buddy's arms were full of gray moss that he was wrappin' round ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... dowdy, old-womanish dresses to please her, along with other girls of my size that are dressed up in their best. I'd rather stay at home than be mortified that way, and I just wish ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Beguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... I marry some entrancing slip of girlhood, what am I to say when, later, I discover myself irrevocably chained to a fat and dowdy matron? I married no such person, I have indeed sworn eternal fidelity to an entirely different person; and this unsolicited usurper of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... lady of the shop, without reference to her. After all, it was very charming to be so affectionately made a fool of, and it was better for her children as well as due to the house of Charlecote that she should not be a dowdy country cousin. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... really suitable place where she could buy a new evening dress at eight-thirty on Sunday evening. And, anyhow, he said, she looked quite nice, really very smart; besides, Mrs Mitchell was not the sort of person who would think any the less of a pretty woman for being a little dowdy ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... solitude of hospital nights or becalmed, mid-ocean days, and had hours for fruitless dreaming, I wonder what viands we should choose, in setting forth a banquet from that ambrosial past! Foods unknown to poetry and song: "cold b'iled dish," pan-dowdy, or rye drop-cakes dripping with butter! For these do we taste, in moments of retrospect; and perhaps we dwell the more on their homely savor because we dare not think what hands prepared them for ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... flight and Herbert's own comment on it in the form of his standing up with Nan for the nuptial benediction of the Vicar of St. Bernard's on a very cold, bleak December morning and amid a circle of seven or eight long-faced, red-nosed and altogether dowdy persons. Poor Nan herself had come to affect him as scarce other than red-nosed and dowdy by that time, but this only added, in his then, and indeed in his lasting view, to his general and his particular morbid bravery. He had cultivated ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... to know what you mean by the American girl. There are all sorts of girls among us, as there are among girls of other nations: pretty girls and plain ones, bright girls and stupid ones, clever girls and silly ones, smart girls and dowdy girls. Though I will say, we've got a larger proportion of smart-looking, well-dressed girls than any other country. But then we make up for that by so many of us having frightful ya-ya voices and raw pronunciations. As for our wonderful cleverness, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... became redder. She pushed her gaily trimmed hat forward over her heated brows. She had an instinctive feeling that she had never before seen any one so dignified and magnificent as Miss Sophia Tredgold. She knew that this was the case, although Miss Sophia's dress was almost dowdy, and the little brown slipper which peeped out from under the folds of her gray dress was decidedly the worse for wear. Nancy felt at the same time the greatest admiration for Miss Tredgold, the greatest dislike to her, and ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... shaft of brightness stood two figures, a dowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The woman held some ferns in her hand, and the boy was sitting down and resting his chin on his hands, which were folded on ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that," said Ermengarde with a jealous look. "There's my dark blue serge, but it will look dowdy ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... and constant writer for the stage, and an intimate friend of Farquhar and Steele. There is an absence of indelicacy in her plays, but not a little farcical humour, especially in the character of "Marplot" in "The Busybody," and of rich "Mrs. Dowdy" with her vulgarity and admirers in "The Platonic Lady." She often adopts the tone of the day in ridiculing learned ladies. In one place she speaks as if even at that time the founding of a college for ladies was ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... irony. Her clothes were dowdy, for she had turned the broadcloth dress she had had at her marriage and was wearing it in the street; but if he thought her well dressed, it seemed hardly fair to undeceive him. Had she been any other woman, she reflected, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... shall get, too, traipsing through weather like this. My gown and bonnet will be spoiled quite. Needn't I wear them, then? Indeed, Mr. Caudle, I shall wear them. No, sir; I'm not going out a dowdy to please you or anybody else. Gracious knows, it isn't often I step over the threshold; indeed, I might as well be a slave at once—better, I should say. But when I go out, Mr. Caudle, I choose ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... roe, like a dried herring.—O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!—Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench,—marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her; Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gypsy; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots; Thisbe, a gray eye or so, but not ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was instantly over, I stole a tip-toe to the passage door, and opening it with a noise, passed for having that moment come home; and after a short pause, as if to pull off my things, I opened the door into the dining room, where I fund the dowdy blowing the fire, and my faithful shepherd walking about the room, and wistling, as cool and unconcerned as if nothing had happened. I think, however, he had not much to brag of having out-dissembled me: for I kept up, nobly, the character of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... count myself a very fortunate girl. I can have all that is best in fashion through Mrs. Vandervoort, and all that is intellectual through Mrs. Latimer, so you see I come in for both. Then if Floyd had married Madame Lepelletier, there would have been another set here. But that little dowdy, who doesn't even know how to dress decently! Common respect ought to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... selected pork and beans, which I loathed. Some would choose plum-pudding, others apple-pies. There were always two or three dishes for breakfast, as, for instance, fried potatoes and butter, or cold meat, or pan-dowdy—a kind of coarse and broken up apple-pie—with the tea and bread and coffee, but we could only eat of one. There was rather too much petty infant-schoolery in all this, but we got on very well. Pepper and mustard were forbidden, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... results. People didn't give them jobs in the same way. Young men possessed the earth; young women had to wrest what they wanted out of it piecemeal. Johnny might end a cabinet minister, a notorious journalist, a Labour leader, anything.... Women's jobs were, as a rule, so dowdy and unimportant. Jane was bored to death with this sex business; it wasn't fair. But Jane was determined to live it down. She wouldn't be put off with second-rate jobs; she wouldn't be dowdy and unimportant, like her mother and the other fools; she would have ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... nearest approach to the ideal, being the most expensive. Then he had to get a few diamond pins, butterflies, true-love knots, and so on, to fix it with. And, while he was about it, a diamond necklace, and a few little trifles of that sort for Minnie and Kate. Then their figures (dimly dowdy) had come back to him across the years, one plain, the other pretty but peculiar. He accounted for that by remembering that Kate had been literary, while ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... After a holiday at Godmother's, she received a hot letter from Mother. Godmother had complained of her looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to spend the coming Saturday as well at Prahran, and in her new dress, under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going against an order of this kind, and with death at her heart Laura prepared to obey. On the fatal ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... ever. But few cast him more than a passing glance. Then they gave an audible gasp, induced by an ingenuous compound of amazement, disappointment, and admiration. They had been prepared to forgive, to endure, to make every allowance. The poor thing could no more help being plain and dowdy than born in Boston, and as their leader had satisfied herself that she "would do," they would never let her know how deeply they ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... a note of defiance, almost of contempt, in her voice as she said the last words. The well-fed, much-too-well dressed Baroness stared angrily at the dowdy old woman who had come forth from her usual and seemly position of ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... no use in talking to you. You will go your own way. Only, as I am in town, do come to my dressmaker's. Though you had your mourning in Paris, do you know, you look quite dowdy. You'll not mind my ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... antipathy to all that remarkable woman's tastes and opinions. The silent handsome girl of two-and-twenty, who is covering the 'Memoirs of Felix Neff,' is Miss Eliza Pratt; and the small elderly lady in dowdy clothing, who is also working diligently, is Mrs. Pettifer, a superior-minded widow, much valued in Milby, being such a very respectable person to have in the house in case of illness, and of quite too good a family to receive any money-payment—you could always send ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Joseph's coat would have been a colorless piece of apparel beside her dress if we finally hadn't sat on her and told her certain things couldn't be done. She was crazy to pile on a bunch of ancestral lace, yellow and dowdy; but we told her not much, told her freshness and daintiness suited her style much better, and she wasn't old enough to emphasize ancestral lace, and she blushed and gave in. But nothing would have made her do it if Miss Fannie hadn't thought to throw out the age-line. She caught ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... the Queen of Hearts was a stout, dowdy old lady, with no traces of beauty, and himself a flighty, amiable old gossip of seventy, Karl Victor von Bonstetten wrote to the Countess of Albany from Rome: "I never pass through the Apostles' square without looking up at that balcony, at that house ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... occurred the promenade, taken as a brisk constitutional by a few, but by the great majority as a languid stroll designed to create an appetite for luncheon. That meal was followed by a period of torpor, then every one sought the beach—the high, the low; the rich, the poor; the dowdy and the well-dressed; the virgin in white and the cocotte in scarlet; the thin and the obese; the French, the Dutch, the Italian—yea, and the angular English, for Weet-sur-Mer attracted a crowd as hybrid as its name! There they amused themselves each after his own fashion, with dignity or abandon, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... the rest of the company, convinced Undine that they must be more important than they looked. She liked Mrs. Fairford, a small incisive woman, with a big nose and good teeth revealed by frequent smiles. In her dowdy black and antiquated ornaments she was not what Undine would have called "stylish"; but she had a droll kind way which reminded the girl of her father's manner when he was not tired or worried about money. One of the other ladies, having white hair, did not long arrest ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... "Gracious, no! she's a dowdy thing, always trailing round with a book and those horrid children. No danger of his marrying her." And a derisive laugh seemed to settle that question ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... such a dowdy little thing, not a bit nice-looking, and he was quite handsome, and looked rather distinguished. You know I always take stock of people, and make up my mind about them at once. And then we are to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... queerest little people. Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... when their portraits adorn the picture-galleries. With women it is quite different. Woman is born to beautify the domestic circle, woman is always fascinating whether she be dressed up or domestically dowdy, but man is least of all fascinating ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... delighted in dispensing equivocal nothings to the dowdy Muse of the sofa and back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... valuable lessons. "Any woman can dress well if she knows how," Kate had declared. She had taught Clara how to study and emphasize by dress the good points of her body. Beside Clara, Rose McCoy looked dowdy ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... is positively dowdy. Pray wear something better in honour of Lord Mallow. There is the gown you had for my wedding," suggested Mrs. Winstanley, blushing. "You look ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... asked, later, of the half-dozen men to whom she was giving tea in the billiard-room. "If I'd stayed to watch you shoot for another five minutes, I should have escaped them! Not a bad, dowdy little woman—the man a worse stick in the drawing-room than the pulpit, if possible. Subjects: his—parish room he wants to build; hers—son at sea, or going to sea, or has been to sea, or something. What is it to me? If he is drowned ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... to ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what I've just ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... her fur coat brushed me, and her breath touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely. Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don't pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... dull here," she moaned. "I'm afraid you'll be bored to death." And she looked at Mary with her most smilingly cruel expression. "Oh, Mary, why did you put on that dreadfully dowdy frock? I've asked you over and over again to give it away, but you never pay attention to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... painted court-dwarfs and the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and hooped up, I ween, They're mothers full often before they're sixteen, And fading and dowdy and sickly at twenty, With one boy in trowsers and two girls in laces Complaining of starving while dying of plenty The fate is of ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... your own. I won't smudge my fingers over the accounts, like that wretched Dora in David Copperfield. Understand that, Howard; I won't be your girl-bride. I won't promise that I won't wear spectacles and be dowdy—anything to ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him to forget that a woman about to travel abroad wants to make herself as stunning as she possibly can on the day of departure, so that the impression she will make at the start shall be strong enough to carry her through the dowdy stage which comes, as Marguerite had intimated, on the second and third days at sea; and to expect a woman like Marguerite Andrews, who really had no responsibilities to call her up at an early hour, to be ready at 9.30 ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... brought to St. Botolph's Mission Hall the oddly-assorted crowd which generally finds its way to such functions. There were smart people, just a scattering of the cultured, dowdy and dull folk, who had "helped the good cause," and expected to get as much sober entertainment in return as might be had for the asking. Then, there were the ever-present army of free sight-seers, and a leaven of ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... The Mad Hatter would have liked this Club—it would have been a club after his own heart. It opens at half-past two in the morning, and the first to arrive are the most disreputable members. In Rook-land the rowdy-dowdy, randy-dandy, rollicky-ranky boys get up very early in the morning and go to bed in the afternoon. Towards dawn, the older, more orderly members drop in for reasonable talk, and the Club becomes more respectable. The tree closes about six. For the first two hours, however, the ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to photograph the family on the porch, where the light was good. While I walked around the house outside, they passed through the front room, which seemed to be the common dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother had, in those brief moments of transition, contrived to arrange their hair and dress to a degree which took from them all those picturesque qualities with which they had been invested at the time of my arrival. The father was being reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for not "slick'n' ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... years we are all more or less alike. We don't begin by being dowdy and angular, and dogmatic and prudish; we begin by being pretty and cheerful like you. I used to change my blouse every evening, and ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... her spell over me was broken, and we became friends. I admired her as much as ever, but she was no longer the all-devouring siren. I could say "no" to her as easily as to the most dowdy ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... painters: he met them at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that were beginning to come into existence. He enjoyed them there, and was bored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid and dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and even after his most exciting talks with Ned Winsett he always came away with the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that the only way to enlarge either was ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... who have the fewest charms, that they may make something out of nothing. They succeed best in fiction, and they apply this rule to love. They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of Sancho, that Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose of signalising his valour just as well as the 'fairest princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will serve them to write about just as well as another. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a speckled Hamburg hen, and a nice quiet she-goat,' said Robina; 'but they are all dowdy, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bateson. Men wants gells as look pretty and make 'em laugh; they don't care for the dull, dowdy ones, such as me; and yet how can a gell be light-hearted and gay, I should like to know, when it's work, work, work, all the day, and nurse, nurse, nurse, all the night? Yet the men don't make no allowance for that—not they. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... American girls as exquisitely beautiful, stylish, quick-witted, energetic, and good-tempered, while the mothers are portrayed as awkward, dowdy, stupid, and ill-educated, though honest and kind. We resent the distortion of this picture, for in America, as elsewhere, girls are largely what they are made by their mothers, yet we do have certain conditions which make sharp contrasts ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... I saw her the first day she came, and was the victim of despair until she suddenly got sick and so couldn't wear those wonderful waists and jackets. I felt like a dowdy when I ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from shoulder ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... She removed her dowdy black dress, and, opening a drawer in her wardrobe, took out a soft gray silk which lay folded between tissue paper and sprigs of lavender. She put the dress on, and fastened soft lace ruffles round her throat and ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... fashionable or anything of that kind. I would not for one moment think of allowing any of my court-ladies to cut their hair short, for instance, or to wear one of those foolish hobble skirts; but nobody, nobody could accuse us of being dowdy. Now tell me, have you ever seen one of us looking like that, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... girls who had "understanding" mothers, did not need this special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to fulfil the duties of parents ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... that which was once funny is now perverse. And the more practical a man is, the larger his stock of Connecticut commonsense, the greater his disillusionment as his children grow to manhood. When he beholds dawdling inanity and dowdy vanity growing lush as jimson, where yesterday, with strained prophetic vision, he saw budding excellence and worth, his soul is wrung by a worry that knows no peace. The matter is so poignantly personal that he dare not share it with another in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... He was not afraid of her. But he was afraid of her dress—not of the material, but of the cut of it. If she had been Susan in Susan's dowdy and wrinkled alpaca, he would have translated his just emotion into what critics call "simple, nervous English"—that is to say, Shakespearean prose. But the aristocratic, insolent perfection of Helen's gown ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... body, shape, voice, language, look, and features, into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad, laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bediz'ning, dowdy dress that ever cover'd the untrain'd limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here you would have thought it impossible the same creature could ever have been recover'd to what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... daughters can have the advantage of my example, and of studying my polished manners (just fancy my polished manners; and I know, because little Tom, who is a brick, told me, that only last year he heard his father tell Emily—that's the eldest—that I was a dowdy, snub-nosed, ill-mannered miss, but that she must keep in with me and flatter me up). No, I will not live with Uncle Tom, and I will tell 'it' so. If I must leave my home, I will go to Aunt Chambers at Jersey. Jersey is a beautiful place for ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... us so with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them after marriage? If he reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, dowdy woman opposite, in a faded gingham wrapper, put on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, sparkling, bright little sayings and doings that used to make it impossible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... than men are. Everything is against us. I suppose women think they deceive us for our good, but they should continue to do so after marriage. 'Pon honor! I have seen the sweetest, most amiable girl turn as sour as could be a few months after the ceremony. The dressiest ones often get dowdy, the most musical can't abide music, the most talkative have the dumps. A man has no chance of judging how they are going to turn out. He is duped by the daughters, inveigled by their mothers, and, what is worse still, as soon as he is married they both undeceive him. It would not matter if a fellow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... a serving man, by reason of this opportunity and importunity, inveigles his master's daughter, many a gallant loves a dowdy, many a gentleman runs after his wife's maids; many ladies dote upon their men, as the queen in Aristo did upon the dwarf, many matches are so made in haste and they are compelled, as it were by necessity, so to love, which had they been free, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... thanks," said Osborn. Walking was a sort of recreation not too dowdy. They went a little way on foot, then turned into a Tube station and travelled home. When they wormed their way down a crowded tube train compartment to two seats they were faced with the everyday aspect of life again. Tired people were going home; business men had not yet shaken ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... changed since your day, Aunt, and it takes time to get used to new ways. But you, Jessie, surely like this costume better than the dowdy things Rose has been wearing all summer. Now, be honest, and own you do," said Mrs. Clara, bent on ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Italian women, Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars. All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... be untrue. Are not the keys verily here? Can falsehood build up so august a lie? A couple of friars shuffle past him, and go to their prayers at some near altar; he does not even smile at their shaven pates and their dowdy, coarse gowns of serge. Low music from some far-away chapel comes floating under the panelled vaultings, and loses itself under the great dome, with a sound so gentle, so full of entreaty, that it seems to him the dove on the high altar might have made it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... appearance of the tower and spire, after restoration, contrasted so strongly with the "dowdy" appearance of the remainder of the church, that it was little wonder a more determined effort should be made for a general building, and this time (1872) the appeal was no longer in vain. Large donations were given by friends as well as by many ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... caused it! Nay;—in one sense she had caused it, for he certainly would not have destroyed himself had she consented to go with him to Guatemala or elsewhere. And she knew his wife. An uninteresting, dowdy creature she had called her. But, nevertheless, they had been in company together more than once. So she presented her compliments, and expressed her sorrow, and hoped that she might be allowed to call. There had been no one for whom she had felt more sincere respect and esteem than for her ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... at the first station, which was a junction, a lady mounted to their compartment just before the train began to move. She was stout and middle-aged, and had never been pretty, but she bore herself with a kind of authority in spite of her thread gloves, her dowdy gray travelling-dress, and a hat of lower middle-class English tastelessness. She took the only seat vacant, a backward-riding place beside a sleeping passenger who looked like a commercial traveller, but she seemed ill at ease in it, and March offered her his seat. She accepted it very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... graveyard though. Ah didn't have a home after she died and Ah wandered from place to place, stayin' with a white fambly this time and then a nigger fambly the next time. Ah moved to Jackson County and stayed with a Mister Frank Dowdy. Ah didn't stay there long though. Then Ah moved to Winder, Georgia. They called it 'Jug Tavern' in them days, 'cause jugs wuz made there. Ah married Green Hinton in Winder. Got along well after marryin' him. He farmed fur a livin' and made a good livin' fur me and the eight chilluns, all born ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... on the stone steps of Miss Teeturn's boarding-house for the dowdy servant-girl's return—such dirty, unkempt steps as they were, and such a dingy door-plate, spotted with rain and dust, not like Malachi's, he thought—he could hardly restrain himself from beating Juba with his foot, a plantation trick Malachi had taught ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... their hold of it occasionally, and she was lost in bitter thoughts. She however finished it, and then busied herself with a new bonnet for Peggy, which was to be made not at all fashionable, but big and rather dowdy. Elsie's taste rebelled a little at the uncongenial task; but she was doing her best to please Peggy when the postman delivered two letters to Jane—one from Francis, and the other from Mrs. Rennie. Francis' letters had been frequent, and had been a little interesting even to Elsie, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... you once told me she was very pretty," she said: "but I think her a fright in that dowdy dress, and bare-headed, too! Did it to show her hair, no doubt! There is probably some of her mother's nature ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... all the fashion now, but I think it gives a terrible dowdy look. Only that does not signify when you are not out.—By-the-bye, Miss Merton, are ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... violently at times, and Max Hastings, who had had considerable previous experience in outdoor life, there were Steve Dowdy, whose quick temper and readiness to act without considering the consequences had long since gained him the name of "Touch-and-Go Steve"; Owen Hastings, a cousin to Max, and who, being a great reader, knew more or less about the theory of things; and last, but not least, a boy who went by the ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... from their posts retired, And Julius in a general hiss expired; Sage Booth to Cibber cried, "Compute our gains! These dogs of Egypt, and their dowdy queans, But ill requite these habits and these scenes, To rob Corneille for such a motley piece: His geese were swans; but zounds! thy swans are geese!" Rubbing his firm invulnerable brow, The bard replied—"The critics must ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... said Susan: on my life, I'll be no farmer's dowdy wife, To toil and drudge thro' mud and mire: I hope you'll hold ...
— Think Before You Speak - The Three Wishes • Catherine Dorset
... party. She would have been better, only that our excellent Bishop was there too, and Lady Margaret thought it well to show off all her graces before the Bishop and the Bishop's wife. I never saw such a dowdy in all my life as Mrs. Rolland. He is all very well, and looks at any rate like a gentleman. It was, I take it, that which got him his diocese. They say the Queen saw him once, and was taken ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... was Saturday and market day in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou—the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and gentlemen with powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics from the Mediterranean, and fishermen with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
