"Gruff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leisure to ponder over the difficulties confronting our expedition, some few of the crew now began to 'speak it foully,' and even to emit gruff proposals to return homewards. But to these waverers old Bill at once administered the sternest rebuke; and, as they at last held their peace, he averred with a gay smile (for he dearly loved the presence of danger, and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pretty, and from the gloss with which the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it was a rich material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the lamp ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... gruff assent to the arrangement. He had looked into the boy's eyes and seen honesty there, but he was not going to ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker's brother, against whom there was not sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow morning. 'And that ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... you," he said so heartily that I could only give him a grateful glance. Then I turned and went out, never to see him again in my life. I had not made three steps into the outer office when I heard behind my back a gruff, loud, authoritative voice, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Lieutenant Sullivan with a note of gruff pleading. "You know how the papers are roasting the department just now. For every little slip, we get the harpoon or the laugh. I'll be obliged to you if you don't say anything that'll let this thing get ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... to meet Mr. Walberg with this resentment so warm that his greeting of the strange gentleman was gruff and short. The caller, an alert, businesslike man, came at once to his point. He was, it proved, not the representative of a possibly repenting Baird. He was, on the contrary, representing a rival producer. He extended his card—The ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... to discuss it," interrupted Hiram, with that gruff finality of manner which he always used to hide his softness, and which deceived everyone, often even his wife. "Come back at five o'clock ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the maiden was thus warming herself in the hot spring, Tutanekai happened to feel thirsty and sent his servant to fetch him a calabash of water. The servant came to dip it from the lake near where the girl was hiding. She called out to him in a gruff voice, like that of a man, asking him for some to drink, and he gave her the calabash, which she purposely threw down and broke. The servant went back for another calabash and again she broke it in the same way. The servant returned and told ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... woe, alas! scarcely had she reached it, when she threw herself upon her bed in strong convulsions. Her eyes turned so that only the whites were to be seen, and her face grew so drawn and strange that it was a grief to look upon it, and still she kept on screaming in the deep, gruff man's voice—"For a bridegroom! a bridegroom!" she that was so modest, and had such a delicate, gentle voice. Whereupon all the sisters rushed in to hear her the moment the sermon was over; item, the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... said at length, with an easy, gruff good-humour, "I place the life of Philip Danvelt in those fair hands to do with as you please. Surely, sweeting, you will not be so ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... overturned Say's household as they were wont to overturn others, and had discovered the feathers, was not all hope gone? Shotaye suddenly recollected how Okoya had greeted her that morning,—how surly his glance, how gruff and unfriendly his call. Was that significant? Still, if the secret had been disclosed, there would surely have been some noise about it the night before. On the other hand, it might be that the council had the case in hand and preferred not to make anything public for the present. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... seated, and drawing his gown instinctively over Sibyll's face, which nestled on his bosom, in slumber so deep and heavy, that the gruff voice had not broken it, "valiant sir! we are forlorn and houseless, an old man and a simple girl. Some evil-minded persons invaded our home; we fled ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you shall not be punished.' It is not what we say, but how we say it." [1] In The Memorials of a Quiet Life it is said of Augustus Hare that, on a road along which he frequently passed, there was a workman employed in its repair who met his gentle questions and observations with gruff answers and sour looks. But as day after day the persevering mildness of his words and manner still continued, the rugged features of the man gave way, and his tone assumed a softer character. Politeness is the oiled key that will ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... compelled Murray and his companions to return to their ship. That night during the middle watch Tom and Gerald, who were fast asleep in their hammocks, were aroused by the boatswain's shrill pipe and gruff voice bawling, "All hands on deck— shorten sail!" They turned out with the rest; most of the officers and crew were on deck before they reached it. The frigate, caught in a squall, was heeling over till her lee-scuppers were under water, while dark, foam-crested seas came rolling up, deluging ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... uncivil, ungracious, unceremonious; cool; pert, forward, obtrusive, impudent, rude, saucy, precocious. repulsive; uncomplaisant^, unaccommodating, unneighborly, ungallant; inaffable^; ungentle, ungainly; rough, rugged, bluff, blunt, gruff; churlish, boorish, bearish; brutal, brusque; stern, harsh, austere; cavalier. taint, sour, crabbed, sharp, short, trenchant, sarcastic, biting, doggish, caustic, virulent, bitter, acrimonious, venomous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... misread as a Cockney dunce, Who only cared for music-hall tunes— And who went and 'listed in the Dragoons. His khaki was much the worse for wear, Soiled and crumpled and needing repair, And he hadn't unlearned since his office days His gruff laconic turn of phrase. So I had to drag it out by degrees That he hadn't been in the lap of ease, But from Mons to Ypres, out at the Front, Had helped to bear the battle's brunt. Rest? Well, they had to do without ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... any more was said, a sound of footsteps reached them from below, and a loud voice, gruff but kindly, shouted through the little place "Lucy, where are you, my girl? Has the little maid come?" and the next moment Mona was darting down the stairs and, taking the last in one flying leap, as in the old days, sprang into her ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was used to an occasional rebuff, and regarded a gruff word from his principal no more than he did the buzz of a beetle, "I know all that very well; but you, robust fellows, with millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and delicate influences ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... comforted Phormio, very gruff, "you shall walk again around Athens with a bold, brave face, though not to-morrow, I fear. Polus trusts his heart and not his head in voting 'guilty,' so I trust ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... all up with her, and she might as well engage a permanent suite in Jarvyse's little hotel up the river," he says, very sharp and gruff. "I've staved that off for a month now, but they can't see it and they're bound to try it: Jarvyse himself half advises it. And I'll risk my entire reputation on the result. If she can't fight it ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... realized all that wife and child and home meant to him when he volunteered recently for a certain hazardous duty. He knew, too, how quickly his dear wife would know the full extent of the peril with which he felt himself surrounded. And so his reply was short and seemingly gruff, as many another man's has been ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... even hear him, but continued: "I at last decided that it was best to put an end to this misery, and rising with difficulty, I was approaching the parapet, when a gruff voice beside us exclaimed: 'What are you doing there?' I turned, thinking some police officer had spoken, but I was mistaken. By the light of the street lamp, I perceived a man who looked some thirty years of age, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... A gruff, muffled sound was the only response. In a few moments, however, Dorry heard Don's window-blinds fly open with spirit, and she knew that her sisterly efforts to rouse him ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... above him, and wondered whether that also was a cell, and what sort of man the prisoner was. Once or twice at night, when all was quiet, he heard loud cries, and wondered whether they were the result of delirium or torture. His gruff jailer was somewhat won by his cheerfulness. Every day Godfrey wished him good morning as he visited the cell, inquired what the weather was like outside, expressed an earnest hope that silence didn't disagree with him, and generally ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... said the highwayman in a great gruff voice which made me marvel at him. He unhesitatingly dumped the swooning form of the landlady into another pair of arms, shook off the pretty maid, and moved sublimely upon the foot of the stairs amid exclamations of joy, wonder, admiration, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker, would have made unintelligible to any but a native ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... The man with the gruff voice hailed the boat again; but the skipper did not respond. Pearl hauled in his sheets, and headed the boat to the north-west. The steamer then ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... road the traveller had just passed over; but the latter did not seem disposed to profit by this silent invitation to which large raindrops gave more emphasis. He was so absorbed in his meditation that, to arouse him, it needed the sound of a gruff voice ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... gray and lacked in glow, Her voice some thought was gruff, And when excited was not slow To use a sharp rebuff; For she in speech was free from art; Men feared her verbal stroke, And yet they said, "She has a heart; ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... heavy gray mustache. It was said of him that his clothing was only pressed when new and that he purchased a new hat only under the combined pressure of his wife and daughter. He had an immense voice which could be gruff or pleasing, as he willed; in all, a big, strong, wholesome personality, unconventional, but in no sense unrefined. He was in striking contrast to his dapper crony, Robert Marie, who accompanied him from the yacht, a man whose distinction lay in his family, his courtly manners of the old school, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... handsome young woman at one of the desks in the outer office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white forehead. "Here," said Lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness that he had used in addressing the young man, "I want you should put these in shape, and give me ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... guilty of having wished he would step straight back into them. He was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff. He was the antithesis of pleasant little Maltby. I used to think that perhaps he would have been less unamiable if success had come to him earlier. He was thirty years old when his book was published, and ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless, he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips. As I walked towards the house, I heard Ajax following me, but he did not speak till we had reached our comfortable sitting-room. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... whole day spent thus along the rocky defiles of the little stream, eating their lunch beside a cold spring at the head of a miniature gulch, the trio of engineers were about to leave the spot when a gruff voice hailed them from the hilltop. Looking up they saw another group of three: an oldish man, a slim young fellow who was almost a grown man and a girl in her middle teens. The young people seemed ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... saw that you had grown to be a man. You see, I had looked at your picture so often that I rather expected to see a boy when you came. I had forgotten those thirteen years. But it has been said that a man is merely a grown-up boy and there is much truth in that. Despite your gruff ways, your big voice, and your contemptible way of treating people, you are very much a boy. But I am still convinced that you are all right at heart. I think everybody is, and the good could be brought forward if someone would take enough interest ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... marvel that his voice was gruff when I tell you that the membrane of the larynx was inflamed. Greater men than Charles have become ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... pitch dark and the air was hot and close. Not a sound came to his throbbing cars. With characteristic irrepressibility he began to swear softly, but articulately. Proof that his profanity was mild—one might say genteel—came in an instant. A gruff voice, startlingly near ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... did so. There were footsteps in the stillness, and a gruff word or two, and the steps came this way, ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... spot, and presenting myself at the door, asked the tall figure, which proved to be a woman, if I might take shelter under her roof for the night. Her voice was gruff, and her attire negligently thrown about her. She answered in the affirmative. I walked in, took a wooden stool, and quietly seated myself by the fire. The next object that attracted my notice was a finely formed young Indian, resting his head between his hands, with his elbows on his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hurried round to the stage-door. He pushed it open, but a gruff voice inquired his business, and a burly figure blocked ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... great astonishment of the town the young man hardly went out at all, and when he called upon him in his lodgings at Fairport, Mr. Oldbuck was astonished at the change in his appearance. Lovel was now pale and thin, and his black dress bore the badge of mourning. The Antiquary's gruff old heart was moved toward the lad. He would have had him come instantly with him to Monkbarns, telling him that, as they agreed well together, there was no reason why they should ever separate. His lands were in his own power of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... handsome, and will be very becoming to Sif. Oh, what an uproar was made about those flaxen tresses that she loved so well! And that reminds me that her husband, the gruff old Giant-killer, wants a hammer. I promised to get him one; and, if I fail, he will doubtless be rude with me. I pray you make such a hammer as will be of most use to him in fighting the Jotuns, and you may win favor both ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... their eyes. In a nest of orange velvet lay like three eggs, three white and vivid diamonds that seemed to set the very air on fire all round them. Fischer stood beaming benevolently and drinking deep of the astonishment and ecstasy of the girl, the grim admiration and gruff thanks of the colonel, the wonder of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... way she took Gregory aboard a small fishing vessel which waited at the float below. The motor started the instant their feet touched the deck and a gruff voice growled: ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Galindo, I am afraid she was the only part of the affair with which he was content. Everything else went wrong. I could not say who told me so—but the conviction of this seemed to pervade the house. I never knew how much we had all looked up to the silent, gruff Mr. Horner for decisions, until he was gone. My lady herself was a pretty good woman of business, as women of business go. Her father, seeing that she would be the heiress of the Hanbury property, had given her a training which was thought unusual in those days, and she liked ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... door with his fist. A murmur of voices stopped suddenly, and, in response to a gruff command from within, he opened the door and stood staring at all three of his victims, who were seated at the table playing ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... He was gruff, as became his racial superiority, but not unfriendly. The Chinaman, gazing sad and speechless into the darkness of the hatchway, seemed to stand at the head of ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... court-yard Otto stared to see a group of mail-clad men-at-arms, some sitting upon their horses, some standing by the saddle-bow. "Yonder is the young baron," he heard one of them say in a gruff voice, and thereupon all turned ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... was very little besides the fact that his name was Jonas Junk, that he had come to Nomatterwhat because he chose to come, and that he would stay exactly as long as it pleased him and no longer. The good people of the village, finding him such a very gruff and crusty old fellow, thought it best to let him alone; and this being exactly what old Jonas Junk wanted, he was well satisfied. Apparently what he wanted beside was to build a house for himself: at all events, that is what he did. He bought a large piece of ground ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... don't tell you there'll be no danger of your splittin' on us," was the gruff reply. "What I want to know is whether there's any show of our ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, "S'pose I'd ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... universal trait of the Indian that he is perfectly master of his feelings, never suffering them under any circumstances to escape from his controul and management. At the stake and the feast, in the field and the council, he alike subdues his mind, and utters but a gruff "Hah!" at scenes and tales which would make an Englishman very noisy and boisterous. That they liked the stories which had been told them, could be gathered from nothing that they said or did. It would ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry: ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... mine proved to be but the beginning of a long business whereof the details may be left untold. On the very next day indeed I was summoned to the house of Sir Robert Aleys which was near to the palace and abbey of Westminster. Here I found the gruff old knight grown greyer and having, as it seemed to me, a hunted air, and with him the lord Deleroy and two foxy lawyers of whom I did not like the look. Indeed, for the first, I suspected that I was being tricked and had it not been for the lady Blanche, would have broken ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... angered against Cullin, between whom and himself there was ever more or less friction, but Geordie had begun to take a fancy to him. Cullin would never have said what he did had he known the identity of Toomey's pupil, and Geordie argued that Cullin's gruff and insolent greeting was in reality a tribute to his powers—a recognition of the fact that he looked the part he ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... you, sir! Here, shepherd, call your dog. Shepherd. Be not affrighted, madame. Poor Pierrot Will do no harm. I know his voice is gruff, But then, his heart is good. Traveler. Well, call him, then. I do not like his looks. He's growling now. Shepherd. Madame had better drop that stick. Pierrot, He is as good a Christian as myself And does not like a stick. Traveler. Such a fierce ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... on a bench behind a deal table, of which there were three or four in the kitchen; presently a bulky man, in a green coat, of the Newmarket cut, and without a hat, entered, and observing me, came up, and in rather a gruff tone cried, "Want anything, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... gratitude that were gathering in Toby's eyes prevented him from saying anything more, and then Mrs. Treat and Ella both kissed him, while Ben said, in a gruff tone: ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... them, waiting to have their daughters entered for the course. Four youths were standing in a separate group, staring at the young girls beside their mothers. In a corner of the room was a little office, where the official, charged with receiving applications, was ensconced. He was a man of fifty, gruff, jaundiced from liver trouble, looking down superciliously at the girls whose names he had just received. When Madame Darbois entered with Esperance, the distinguished manner of the two ladies caused a little stir. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... led him from the cell, and onward moved Like Peter following his angel guide Deeming he saw a vision. As the bolts Drew gratingly to let them pass, he seem'd To gather consciousness, and restless grew With an unspoken fear, lest at the last Some sterner turnkey, or gruff sentinel Might bar their egress. When behind them closed. The utmost barrier, and the sweet, fresh air So long witheld, fill'd his collapsing lungs, He shouted rapturously, "Am I alive? Or have I burst ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... awfully sorry." His voice was gruff. "What he wanted to do was to crush the slim, bruised foot against his lips. The very touch of its satiny skin against his hand sent queer tremors through every ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... stood outside the tent, awaiting and receiving gruff orders from their superior. Between gulps he gave out almost unintelligible sounds, and one by one these officers, interpreting them as commands, saluted ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... a bone stuck fast. Well for this wolf, who could not speak, That soon a stork quite near him pass'd. By signs invited, with her beak The bone she drew With slight ado, And for this skilful surgery Demanded, modestly, her fee. 'Your fee!' replied the wolf, In accents rather gruff; 'And is it not enough Your neck is safe from such a gulf? Go, for a wretch ingrate, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... said, in a gruff voice. "I don't want the guinea-pigs, thank you, Jim." And opening the door hurriedly, he darted off across ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... you, young people!" he said, in the gruff voice which held the very spirit of kindliness. "Glad to see you! Hildegarde, many happy returns of the day to you, my dear child! Take my arm, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... of the happy smile of appreciation, of the kind word of sympathy and encouragement, which shall be her reward when her husband returns; and then see this star in her domestic firmament enter, sulking and surly, blind to all that her busy hands have so lovingly prepared, grim and gruff to her and the little ones, who have been fitted up in their neatest and cleanest, in which to welcome their father's return, and then see whether you can agree with Miss Cobb's assertion "that it is a woman, and only a woman—a woman ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... don't know music! Wherefore Keep on casting pearls To a—poet? All I care for Is—to tell him that a girl's "Love" comes aptly in when gruff ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... bairn?" returned the blind woman, in a gruff, almost manlike voice, hardly less unpleasant to hear than her face was ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the Irishwoman looked a little intimidated at Bill's manner and his gruff tones, but in a ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... "I am," said the gruff voice. "I saw the corners of your mouth go down. Now can you climb up? No, of course you can't, you are too small. Here, catch hold of my paw! There you are!" grunted the Lion, when Ridgwell was seated safely. "You just fit nicely; all the children fit in here. Knock ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... the Railroad Journey was a dull, vague, conglomerate, cinder-scented babble of grinding wheels and shuddering window frames; but the voices of the Traveling Salesman and the Young Electrician were shrill, gruff, poignant, inert, eternally variant, after the manner of human voices which are discussing the ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... an interlude in all her pretty, romantic little dreams about kindred feelings and a hundred other delightful ideas, that flutter like singing birds through the fairy land of first love. Such an interlude! to be called on by gruff human voices to give up all the cherished secrets that she had trembled to whisper even to herself. She felt as if love itself had been defiled by the coarse, rough hands that had been meddling with it; so to her sister's soothing address Susan made no answer, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... queer sort of freemasonry there must be among strong men, Aunt Jennie, which allows them to say gruff things to one another in friendly tones. The sick man seemed to recognize the little parson's authority and ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... handsomest of them all, that was well-nigh a hopeless imbecile. His true name was Galesus; but, as neither his tutor's pains, nor his father's coaxing or chastisement, nor any other method had availed to imbue him with any tincture of letters or manners, but he still remained gruff and savage of voice, and in his bearing liker to a beast than to a man, all, as in derision, were wont to call him Cimon, which in their language signifies the same as "bestione" (brute)(1) in ours. The father, grieved ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... a week or ten days in the harbor, owing to head winds or inclement weather we set sail; and I remember well that the pilot, Fowler by name, as he was about to leave the vessel, throwing his leg over the bulwarks, said in his gruff voice to our skipper, "I will give you twenty-eight days to ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... I saw him walking back and forth along the river bank, smoking, and seemingly thinking out some problem. Nor did he appear until I had the evening meal ready, and called to him down the arbor. He was always gruff and bearish enough when we were alone, seldom speaking, indeed, except to give utterance to some order, but this night he appeared even more morose and silent than his wont, not so much as looking ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... awakened the next morning by trampling noises in the stable below, and starting up could not at first make out where she was. The sun was shining through a rift in the loft door, Tib was gone, cocks were crowing outside, all the world was up and busy. She could hear Ben's gruff voice and the clanking of chains and harness, and soon he and the three horses had left the stable and gone out to their day's work. It must be late, therefore, and she must lose no time in presenting herself ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... the letter, by keeping her mouth full while she warmed a plate for him, it was not long before his usual luck befell the bold Carroway. Rap, rap, came a knock at the side door of his cottage—a knock only too familiar; and he heard the gruff voice of Cadman—"Can ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... feminine start, as one of her own parcels was thrown somewhat roughly on the roof, gave Bill his opportunity. "Now there," he growled to the helper, "ye ain't carting stone! Look out, will yer! Some of your things, miss?" he added, with gruff courtesy, turning to her. "These ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... whenever a thorn pricks, can say no more under exquisite pain, and their familiar words are powerless to evoke the sympathy which they have repelled so long. They are more likely to receive the severe rebuke administered by a gruff old gentleman to his maudlin, moribund neighbour, who was ever exaggerating his ailments, and who, upon his doleful declaration that "between three and four o'clock that morning he had been at Death's door!" ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the hardest fight he had ever been through, and he grew almost gruff in consequence. He ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... determination would have fainted. As it was, the transport was crowded with men whose feet had failed them, and many must have fallen behind, to be killed or made prisoner. The majority "stuck it" manfully, and faced every fresh effort with a cool, gruff determination that was wonderful. This spirit saved the Allies from the first frenzied blow of Germany, in just the same way that it had saved England from the Armada ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... the Bard of Avon. It is found in the second "English Eclogue," under the caption of the "Grandmother's Tale," and has to do with the escapade, long famous in the more humorous annals of Southey's native city, of blear-eyed Moll, a collier's wife, a great, ugly creature whose voice was as gruff as a mastiff's bark, and who wore habitually a man's hat and coat, so that at a few yards' distance you were at a loss to know whether she ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Fairford followed his gruff guide among a labyrinth of barrels and puncheons, on which he had more than once like to have broken his nose, and from thence into what, by the glimpse of the passing lantern upon a desk and writing materials, seemed ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... explosion, which sent one of the funnels into the air. I suppose we should have cheered—somehow, none of us felt like cheering. We were all keen sailors, and it went to our hearts to see such a ship go down like a broken eggshell. I gave a gruff order, and all were at their posts again while we headed north-west. Once round the Land's End I called up my two consorts, and we met next day at Hartland Point, the south end of Bideford Bay. For the moment the Channel was clear, but the English could not know ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with difficulties and uncertainty, his journey back was infinitely more perplexing. Rows of doors, garnished with boots of every shape, make, and size, branched off in every possible direction. A dozen times did he softly turn the handle of some bedroom door which resembled his own, when a gruff cry from within of 'Who the devil's that?' or 'What do you want here?' caused him to steal away, on tiptoe, with a perfectly marvellous celerity. He was reduced to the verge of despair, when an open door attracted ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... gone and done it now, young 'un, and no mistake," said a gruff voice; and I found that Ike had come softly up behind me. "I thought it was you tumbling and breaking of yourself again; but the ladder. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... drawn closely about her face. For eighteen hours she had been a keenly attentive, wide-eyed, and partly frightened bit of humanity in this onrush of "the horde." She had heard a voice behind her speak of it as "the horde"—a deep, thick, gruff voice which she knew without looking had filtered its way through a beard. She agreed with the voice. It was the Horde—that horde which has always beaten the trails ahead for civilization and made of its own flesh and blood the foundation of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... he answered in a tone less gruff, "but towards mornin' I snooze a little. Only way to pass the time, with noth'n' to do an' nobody to talk to. It's a beastly job, at the best, an' I'm goin' ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... renewal of the discussion. He produced his stores of entertaining gossip, and prolonged his stay until all threatening symptoms of the excitement seemed to be allayed. The old man returned to his ordinary mood, and listened, and made his gruff comments, but with temporary fits of abstraction. After the Doctor's departure, he scarcely spoke at all, for ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... backwards in the carriage made her ill, which poor Maria confessed to be the fact. On this, the elder lady was forced to make room for her niece on her own side, and, in the course of the drive to Farnham, uttered many gruff, disagreeable, sarcastic remarks to her fellow-traveller, indicating her great displeasure that Maria should be so impertinent as to be ill on the first ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the scene. The Shaykh, Mohammed bin Atyyah, who boasts (falsely) that he commands more than half the two thousand males composing the tribe, is a tall, sinewy man of about fifty, straight-featured, full-bearded, and gruff-voiced: his official style of speaking from the throat, a kind of vaccine low, imitated in camp for many a day, never failed to cause merriment. His costume rose to the height of Desert-fashion, described when pourtraying Shaykh Khizr the Imrni; his manners were those of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... contrast between the smooth little creature, and the rough man who seems to be carved out of hard-grained wood - between the delicate hand expectantly held out, and the immense thumb and finger that can hardly feel the rigging of thread they mend - between the small voice and the gruff growl - and yet there is a natural propriety in the companionship: always to be noted in confidence between a child and a person who has any merit of reality and genuineness: which ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... said Joe, and his gruff voice was husky in his throat,—"nay, mother, but there is them ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... themselves to the road again. They did not go as fast as when the goad was within reach of their flanks; or rather; they went more slowly than then, for "fast" was not a word that could have been applied to their progress before. Yet they went on the whole steadily, and the "Gee" and "Haw" of the gruff voice behind guided them straight as surely as ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... very still, as though he had been marked down for its prey. I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after—after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing won't make me ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not show any signs of coming forth; but when the women had screamed themselves hoarse and out of breath, his gruff voice sounded from within the house, like the growl of a wild beast, after all that shrill ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... do you kids think you're doin'?" he asked, in the gruff voice which he adopted when he wanted ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... confided to her nearest neighbor, as she shifted the baby to her other arm and arranged her wrappings tenderly, with hands that looked too rough for such loving ministration. She was thinking of her Gioan who would be waiting for her with a gruff greeting when she returned, but who was good to her, if he often scolded when the porridge was burned. But men were that way about women's work, and never knew that an angel would forget when the baby cried. "But she was growing heavy, blessed be the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... specie of the realm. It was bounded by | |the ninth and twelfth birthdays. Its inhabitants | |consisted of Fritz, an adoring dachshund; "papa," | |who was a member of the school board and a great | |man; and innumerable gruff little boys, who, | |ostensibly ignorant of her observation, spat through| |vacant front teeth and turned gorgeous somersaults | |for her admiration. She was happy and the jealous | |green complexion of the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... down ag'in and looked hard at me. 'I didn't ask you to bring my daughter back,' says he, speakin' gruff, and very different from the way he spoke before, 'and what's more, I didn't want her back, and what's more yet, I'm not goin' to pay you a red cent.'—'Now, look a-here,' says I, mighty sharp, 'none o' that, old man; fork over the money or I'll lay you out stiff ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... Bear, in his great gruff voice. And when the Middle Bear looked at his, he saw that the spoon was standing in it, too. They were wooden spoons; if they had been silver ones the naughty old woman would have put them ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten |
