"Impish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was a perfect army of fairies which overran the whole land, and the myths concerning which would have filled volumes could they ever have been gathered. The gnome-like spirits of the mountains had peaked heads, and were of a vicious, impish disposition, but were powerless to injure any one who carried a ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... stepmother completely, but tormented his sister Maud in a thousand impish ways. He disarranged her neatly combed hair. He threw mud on her dress and put carriage grease on her white stockings on picnic day. He called her "chiny-thing," in allusion to her pretty round cheeks and clear complexion, and yet he ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... faun; manito[obs3], manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c.503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin[obs3], elfish, elflike[obs3]; haunted; pokerish [obs3][U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... for all the world like magnified pictures of the moon's surface. And," she added with a dreary kind of vindictiveness, "it's here, and I'm here. I can't get away from it—that's the dickens of it." Then, because Helen May had a certain impish sense of humor, she sat down and laughed at the incongruity of it all. "Me—me, here in the desert trying to raise ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... experience—had been confined to her sister Evelyn. She compared dainty little Evelyn with the rough, uncouth, half-degenerates which she had encountered that morning, sitting before her with gaping mouths of stupidity or grins of impish impudence, in their soiled, damp clothing, and her heart sank. There was nothing in common except youth between these children, the offspring of ignorance and often drunken sensuality, and Evelyn. At first it seemed to her that there was absolutely no redeeming quality in the whole. However, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the purest, most conventional maternal agony was in the tone. For an instant, crushed and terrified, she looked at him; and then something gay and impish appeared in her eyes, and she asked with ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... blood ran too hotly for camp-fire argument. When the time for fighting came, well and good: none would be more eager than he; but meanwhile love and laughter, play and strife, invited a man, and Jim responded with the impetuosity of an impish boy just escaped from ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... She had the same quick, pale eyes, with the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists have ever been able ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... reassignment. Sandy's holding down Outpost Gog and doing well." He grinned and his face came to life with an expression of impish humor Ross would not have believed possible. "He'll end up with a million or two if he doesn't watch out. He takes to trade as if he were born with a ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Phillips was in the act of hanging ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for hours together watching the great stones grind, or the corn poured by golden showers into the hopper on its way to the stones below. Many a time had he crept up and hidden himself behind a sack; but George seemed to have an impish ingenuity in discovering his hiding-places, and would drive him out as a dog worries a cat, crying, "Come out, thee little varment! Master Lake he don't allow ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it that he could not for a moment get Mrs. Arlington out of his mind. More than once, stealing a covert glance across the table, it seemed to him that Malvina was regarding him with a mocking smile. Some impish spirit it must have been that had prompted him. For thousands of years Malvina had led—at all events so far as was known—a reformed and blameless existence; had subdued and put behind her that ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... Coach's" pupils as he crossed the Cathedral Close, where the calm silence of the old place ought to have quelled the angry throbbing in his veins; but it had an opposite effect, and the cries of the jackdaws which clung about the mouldering tower sounded like impish derisive laughter. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... some, mayhap, to set up the button as rival to the safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked and scrambled, witless of our dismay. It is fortunate, pardee, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... was drawn by a large white pony, fat and pampered, overfed with dainties from the children's tables, and petted and played with until he had become almost human in his intelligence, and a match for his youthful masters in cunning and mischief. This impish animal had been christened Robin Goodfellow, a name that was shortened for convenience to Robin. Robin's eagerness to depart was now made known to the family by an incessant ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... thou art some juggling knave—some impish charlatan, who seeks to conceal his imposture in the garb of mystery and terror. Little knowest thou the mettle of a Castilian heart. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... hours of afternoon when the children are once more upon the street, you regret your illness. Here they come trooping by threes and fours, carrying their books tied up in straps. One would think that they were in fear lest some impish fact might get outside the covers to spoil the afternoon. Until the morrow let two and two think themselves five at least! And let Ohio be bounded as it will! Some few children skip ropes, or step carefully across the cracks of the sidewalk for ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... that it was only a little more than half smoked. We were crossing the Calendaro, a sluggish stream which carefully collects all the waters of this region only to lose them again in a swamp not far distant; and it was positively as if some impish sprite had leapt out of those noisome waves, boarded the train, and flung himself into me, after the fashion of the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... affair was not brought before the Court. But perhaps it was suppressed out of delicacy for Fionn, for if Goll could be accused of ostentation, Fionn was open to the uglier charge of jealousy. It was, nevertheless, Goll's forward and impish temper which commenced the brawl, and the verdict of time must be to exonerate Fionn and to let the blame go where ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... twenty lies a chasm of age and experience that ensures patronage to one and dependence to the other. Travers felt aged and protecting, but Priscilla grew impish and perverse; besides, she always intuitively shielded her real self until she capitulated entirely. This was a new play, a new comrade, but she must ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... his eyes. The devil in the bottle directly in front of him was more impish than it had been at all. Donaldson rose. The pup rolled to the floor. Donaldson crossed the room, picked out the bottle, drew back his arm, and hurled it against the wall, where it broke into a thousand pieces. It left ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... angels with an "Ave!" hail'd the lady to the place, The impish band, each with his hand conceal'd his ugly face, And Satan stared as though ensnared, but speedily regain'd His wonted air of confidence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... happily over some of Scorch's sayings and his impish doings; so they were some miles on the journey before she began to ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew Dominick Murphy, a protege of the school, and an intimate acquaintance of her own, regarding her with impish delight. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... window stood a robin red-breast; the impish bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room: "Come out," it chirped, "come ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the case of some noxious animal or reptile, the world would be the better for his death. The young Englishman could recall without effort many an occasion when he had been so harassed and worried, and his existence so embittered by the impish spite of this same Butler that even he, gentle and kindly as was his disposition in general, believed he could have contemplated the demise of the other with a feeling not far removed from equanimity. Yet, now that the man was ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... lord the Prince knew nothing of all this, and little thought that the beautiful creature who caressed and fondled him was an impish and foul beast that had slain his mistress and assumed her shape in order to drain out his life's blood. Day by day, as time went on, the Prince's strength dwindled away; the colour of his face was changed, and became pale and livid; and he was as a man suffering from a deadly sickness. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... of impish frolic gives a new turn of saucy gait. In the jovial answer, chorussed in simple song, seems a revel of all the spirits ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... foot of the column, ten thousand spirits in prison seeming to gasp their griefs from the funereal boughs overhead, and a few twigs scratching the pillar with the drag of impish claws as tenacious as those figuring in St. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... evident interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the common wild-cat which sometimes roams these surrounding woods. I am told that Wiles is the ring leader in many reckless acts, and will stop at nothing to gain his ends. Zibe Turner, called the monster dwarf, is his right-hand man, who will pick his chestnuts from the fire, though he burn his impish fingers in ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... little sheepishly, but like Clarissa refused to be drawn into the discussion. Indeed, his patience, like that of their beast of burden, continued to be excellent. Hermia's impish spirit was not proof against such imperturbably good humor, and at last she subsided. Markham walked in silence for some moments, speaking after a while with a ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... and empty coffin of little Wang Tai. There were wise men abroad, and they said that little Wang Tai, through imperfect medical skill, had been interred alive, and that Romulus and Moses, by means of their impish pranks, had brought her to life after raising her from the grave. But wherefore the need of all this talk? Is it not enough that these two brigands were whipped and sent back into servitude, and that when the little yellow woman from Asia had gathered her baby to her breast the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... brocade and lighted wax candles, which inspired him with a solemnity that widened his eyes and narrowed his features. He looked on a new, and never-before-imagined, life. And he was grave to excess, though, later, I found plenty of the London child's impish nature in him." ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... see a fellow of like years with herself, and she gripped him to her soul in wild interest and new curiosity. Yet this childish friendship was so new and incomprehensible a thing to her that she did not know how to express it. At first she pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... from the stage and the tiring-rooms; and all gathered gleefully about to see what next the impish Nell would do, for avenged she would be they all knew, though the course of her vengeance none ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Mendacity was not outside of Miss Forbes's easy code when enlisted in a good cause, such as appeasing her own impish curiosity. Never had Io so much as mentioned that quaint and lively romance with which vague gossip had credited her, after her return from the West; Esther Forbes had gathered it in, gossamer thread by gossamer thread, and was now hoping to identify Banneker in its uncertain ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The lady smiled in a decidedly disagreeable manner. I am not timid, but I would rather write a vaudeville in three acts than to be obliged to make a declaration to her if she had that impish smile on her lips. She has a way of protruding her under lip-ugh! do you know you are terribly slender? Will you let me cut the band of your trousers? I never could dance with my ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... with the serious look of high purpose that marked his face in repose. It was as though Puck had turned poet and then had turned preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip and the jutting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, unflinching eyes, and thought of a man reckless of himself in the pursuit of some fine purpose. One saw immediately that he was a man who could be moved easily when his sympathies were touched ... but that he could hardly ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... at this point that another notion came into my mind, so antic, so impish, so fiendish, that if there were still any Evil One, in a world which gets on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his suggestion; and this was that the procession which Jan saw issuing from the tenement-house ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... right," Amanda told him with impish delight. "I hope every cross-eyed, pigeon-toed girl in the county meets you and walks ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... sea-captain and her cousin with one swift searching look. About the stiff, tall, angular mother, and the scarce less pliant figure of the daughter, a girl of twelve years old, or thereabouts, played all manner of impish antics, unheeded by them, as if it were her accustomed habit to peep about, now under their arms, now at this side, now at that, making grimaces all the while at Lois and Captain Holdernesse, who ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was taken up, as it had been during breakfast, by tactfully staving off any allusion on the Prince's part to my birthday. All was in vain, however; he said something gallant, and I was quite as giddy for a few seconds as one of the wicked Princess's lovers, lest Beechy should be in an impish mood and throw out allusions to my age. But she was as good as a kitten, though she looked at me in a naughty way, and only said, "Would any one believe Mamma was twenty-nine to-day—if it ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... unnecessary to dwell upon Poe's limitations. His scornful glance caught certain aspects of the human drama with camera-like precision. Other aspects of life, and nobler, he never seemed to perceive. The human comedy sometimes moved him to laughter, but his humor is impish and his wit malign. His imagination fled from the daylight; he dwelt in the twilight among the tombs. He closed his eyes to dream, and could not see the green sunlit earth, seed-time and harvest, man going forth to his toil and returning to his hearthstone, the America that laughs ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Then an impish sprite of mischief whispered in her ear and her eyes danced merrily. On that chance meeting with Cora and Linda in the hall Cora had told her and Grace that they were staying in a suite of rooms on the third floor, and had asked them to come to see ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... pretend ingenuousness, and spring the tale of Dierdre's adventure with Herter on the company. But he preserved a discreet reticence, more for his own sake than mine or his sister's, of course. He's as lazy as he is impish, except when there's some special object to gain, and probably he wished to avoid the bother of explanations. As for Brian, his extreme sensitiveness is better than studied tact. I'm sure he felt magnetically that Dierdre O'Farrell shrank from a reference to her part in the night air raid. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from his work, asked her what she was smiling at so quietly to herself. And she could not tell him, because it was at a horrible practical joke suggested to her by an impish spirit within. What if she should prepare a little surprise for the returning Milly? Let her find herself planted in Araby the Blest with Maxwell Davison? Mildred chuckled, wondering to herself which would be in the biggest rage, Milly or Max; for however Tims might affirm the contrary, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... noticed before that he hadn't turned up. This was a bit disconcerting. I secretly thought him the most dangerous competitor. He has a quiet, impish twinkle in his eye, and an unobtrusive way of getting what he wants. However, the ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... of the theater. But I cannot forget that I did see both her and you— indeed, Miss Forbes herself recalled the incident— and the close questioning of the Scotland Yard men who were here last night showed me the folly of imagining that I could deny all knowledge of you. I recognize now that some impish contriving of circumstances forced this knowledge upon me. The sudden downpour of rain, and the fact that I was delayed by a slight accident to my cab, conspired with the apparently simple chance which led me to overhear the conversation between Miss Forbes and yourself. I tried ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... well, that no one should possibly guess that she hadn't yet figured out just why she was doing it at all, Rae Malgregor now with quickly readjusted cap and collar began to hurl herself into the task of her own packing. From her open bureau drawer, with a sudden impish impulse towards worldly wisdom, she extracted first of all the photograph ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... horrors—diableries, the Jesuits called them—as if the very elements had been moved with pity, there burst over the darkened forest a terrific hurricane of hail and rain. This put out the fires and drove all the tormentors away but a few impish children, who stayed to pluck nails from the hands and feet of the captives and shoot arrows with barbed points at the naked bodies. Every iniquity that cruelty could invent, these children practised on the captives. Red-hot spears were brought from the lodge fires ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... and he did not stop. He stood before the fire, his feet planted firmly on the rug, and poured out a flood of pompous platitudes. Faith heard not a word. She was really not listening to him at all. But she was watching his long black coat-tails with impish delight growing in her brown eyes. Mr. Perry was standing VERY near the fire. His coat-tails began to scorch—his coat-tails began to smoke. He still prosed on, wrapped up in his own eloquence. The coat-tails smoked ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... demeans himself when among them, and enters into all their little pastimes and concerns, that they stand no more in awe of him than if he were one of their own number; and make him the butt of a thousand impish pranks, at which he laughs as heartily as the merriest rogue among them. And yet it is for that very reason, perhaps, that they love him so devotedly, and would give up their dog-knives or wax dolls any day, sooner than ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... the old man answers the youth's mocking inquiry; "the teacher receives lessons from his pupil; all is up with art for the old one, he will serve the young one as cook! While the young one makes iron into broth, the old one will prepare a dish of eggs!" With impish relish of the inwardness of the situation, he stirs the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... was open. She was leaning on the sill, but he could not tell whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's characteristics which ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... vitality of the young foreman attracted her, and she began to have a friendly sympathy for him, and even to feel a tranquil satisfaction in his reposeful silence. At times she was sorely tempted to show him the same little impish self she had portrayed on their first ride up the trail, and sometimes her conscience would sting her that she had failed to confide in him as Mrs. Kingdon had advised, but his gray eyes looked out so very straight and with such calm kindliness—the ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... and uncanny; and he found himself constantly speculating as to how he could ever become reconciled to her; or what changes future years could make in her; and whether the lapse of time could by any possibility develop this impish being into any sort of a presentable woman. From the moment that he saw her he felt that the question of beauty must be abandoned forever; it would be enough if she could prove to be one with whom a man might live with any degree of domestic comfort. But the prospect of taking her at some period ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was a cheery "Yo-ho!" and up came a black, impish-looking boy of about my own age, kicking, struggling, and tearing at the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... above the wide staircase. After four years of legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money in North and South America, and was able ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... minx with an elfin face half hidden under a wavy mass of red-brown hair. Unlike the others, she had been docked—and in contrast to their heavy eyes and sleep-puffed features she was alert and lively. She flashed him an impish grin, ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... to see the situation with her own eyes, fairly felt the clutch of it upon his own heart. She or some impish power acting through her agency had certainly made a mess of things. Her father's happiness destroyed; Rush's partnership broken; and the whole Hickory Hill project ruined unless some one could be found to buy into it in Graham's ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... almost in convulsions; and then, when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment. He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a great ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... impish devils that Michael Angelo sculptured, putting out their tongues in silent mockery ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... even merry, almost roguish, his lips parted in an alert smile, his blue eyes sparkling. He seemed to enjoy the game in which he was engaged, to be brimming over with self- confidence, to anticipate success, to relish his foretaste of combat with a sort of impish delight. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... positively impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... in their general tone, but sparkled with her delicate and sprightly humor. The children of her books were not religious puppets, moving in time to the measured wisdom of their elders, but real children of flesh and blood, acting and talking out their impish conceits, and in nowise conspicuous by ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... said Sir Pertinax, scowling also. "Here will I, and with great joyance, cleave me thine impish mazzard and split thee to thy beastly chine. And ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... piscatory propensity had been severely punished by both Monsieur and Madame C——, who could not afford to encourage such an expensive Izaak Walton; but there was no managing the child. He seemed to possess an impish capability of eluding detection and angry denunciations. To be sure, circumstances were against any very strict guard being kept over the youngster. Madame C—— was a very weak woman, a very weak woman indeed,—she declared that such was the case,—a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the impish offspring of the Stone God, wizards and witches, that made Detroit feared by the early settlers, none were more dreaded than the Nain Rouge (Red Dwarf), or Demon of the Strait, for it appeared only when there was to be trouble. In that it delighted. It was a shambling, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... He was no longer the cheerful and gentle "old man" of his people; the old man who chortled with joy at the prettiness and play of Keok and Nawadlook, who loved birds and flowers and little children, and who had retained an impish boyhood along with his great age. He was changed. He stood before Alan an embodiment of fatalism, mumbling incoherent things in his breath, a spirit of evil omen lurking in his sunken eyes, and his ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Two persons with such impish humour could not but frequently find themselves at loggerheads, but their liking for each other's society was genuine, and quarrels were followed by peace-making. "Sophia [as she nicknamed the young man] and ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Laura sat once more between the boys, Marina and Georgy stationed like sentinels at the ends of the pew, ready to pounce down on their brothers if necessary, to confiscate animals and eatables, or to rap impish knuckles with a Bible. It was a spacious church; the pew was in a side aisle; one could see neither reading-desk nor pulpit; and the words of the sermon seemed to come from a ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the cloisters and quadrangles of the colleges at odd minutes in passing them, surprised by impish echoes of his own footsteps, smart as the blows of a mallet. The Christminster "sentiment," as it had been called, ate further and further into him; till he probably knew more about those buildings materially, artistically, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... baby-devil on the watch there!' cries Jasper in a fury: so quickly roused, and so violent, that he seems an older devil himself. 'I shall shed the blood of that impish wretch! I know I shall do it!' Regardless of the fire, though it hits him more than once, he rushes at Deputy, collars him, and tries to bring him across. But Deputy is not to be so easily brought across. With a diabolical ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pick out a career more cheerless than that of Dancer, the miser, as he figures in the "Old Bailey Reports," a prey to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired man, his house beleaguered by the impish schoolboy, and he himself grinding and fuming and impotently fleeing to the law against these pin-pricks. You marvel at first that any one should willingly prolong a life so destitute of charm and dignity; and then you call to memory that had he chosen, had he ceased to be a miser, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once!' Said it in her snappiest way, too! I shouldn't be a month about going if I were you. Hello! There's the bell. Ta-ta, I'm off! I wish you luck!" and Ida Bridge fled to the region of her own classroom, with a grin on her impish face. ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... to the assistance of the Wizard, reaching him just as he was crawling out of the river, gasping for breath and dripping with water. The girl could not help laughing at his woeful appearance. But he had no sooner wiped the wet from his eyes than one of the impish pigs tripped him again and sent him into the river for a second bath. The pigs tried to trip Ozma, too, but she ran around a stump and so managed to keep out of their way. So the Wizard scrambled out of the water again and picked up a sharp stick to defend himself. Then he mumbled a ...
— Little Wizard Stories of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... excitement of noise and wine and an intriguing situation. Her hardness vanished. She sat almost with complacency, breaking her roll with two small hands, and looking at Gaga with that thin little grin which caused her meagre face to be so impish and attractive. The brilliant lights which made Sally more and more piquante had a ghastly effect upon Gaga. His grey cheeks were ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... beyond an impish desire to frighten me, which is common enough among practitioners of magic in all lands. Well, for a little while he had succeeded, although to speak truth I remained uncertain whether in a sense I ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... but the child refused. She still sat huddled up on the foot of the bed, watching her mother's face intently. Naomi appeared to sleep. The candle burned long, and the wick was crowned by a little cap of fiery red that seemed to watch Eunice like some impish goblin. The wavering light cast grotesque shadows of Sarah Spencer's head on the wall. The thin curtains at the window wavered to and fro, as ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... world has stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuine unpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his edifying death,—this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyes fixed on the cross of the mild Nazarene, and tormented with impish doubts as to whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him for ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... somewhere in the vault above her and yet unlocated in the sinister pall that spread over the skies. Her fancy ofttimes pictured him sailing in the west when he should be in the east, dodging back and forth in impish abandon behind the screen, and she wondered at such times if he would be where he belonged ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... lips curved upwards at the corner, giving an air of impish mischief to her face. She nodded her head three times over, and hitched a ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... up an impish face at her as she retreated. Then he entered the church himself to inspect progress, returning immediately to take up his position of sentry again. About noon Anderson passed on his way ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... she holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes the age-long truth as respects the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of a thing. The good attorney's weakness was money. It was a speck at first; a metaphysical microscope of no conceivable power could have developed its exact shape and colour—a mere speck, floating, as it were, in a transparent kyst, in his soul—a mere germ—by-and-by to be an impish embryo, and ripe for action. When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... enjoyed. Timmy also always knew how to manage his delicate, nervous father. John Tosswill realised that Timmy might some day grow up to do him credit. Timmy really loved learning, and it was a pleasure to the scholar to teach his clever, impish, youngest son. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Johnny's best lines. It always had a deal of effect—one way or another. It startled Maria Angelina. Her eyes opened as if he had set off a rocket—and something very bright and light, like the impish reflections of that rocket, danced ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... nature in woman abounds It is thus Cupid comes; unannounced and unbidden, In sweet pity's guise, with his arrows well hidden. But once given welcome and housed as a guest, He hurls the whole quiver full into her breast, While he pulls off his mask and laughs up in her eyes With an impish delight at her start of surprise. So intent is this archer on bagging his game He scruples at nothing which gives him ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... effect upon his imagination which is usually exercised over those who behold Chance presented to them with spectacular piquancy without advancing far enough in its acquaintance to suffer from its ghastly reprisals and impish tricks. He beheld a hundred diametrically opposed wishes issuing from the murky intelligences around a table, and spreading down across each other upon the figured diagram in their midst, each to its own number. It was a network of hopes; which at the announcement, 'Sept, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... at Merton if he had been willing to take Holy Orders, "I may take them indeed; but how believe they have been given me?" quoth he to the Warden with a tilt of one eyebrow. Whereat the Warden, aghast, wrote him off as a youth unreasonable, impracticable, and impish. Many others had the same opinion of Harry Boyce before the world was done with him. Few of them saw in his antics the uncertain spasms of too tender a ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... all that while; laughed until his sides were sore; until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to have laughed so hard and so long over an impish trick that came from the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... impish naughtiness, had a way of looking such a perfectly innocent and delightfully kissable little person that one felt he really might be a good deal nearer to the sweet secrets of Nature than his elders. However, Daddy was in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister. She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse, vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which have been quoted above, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... comes back just as if nothing had happened? Well, then, one thing is clear; that his power be on the water, and no water will drown that ere imp, so it's no use trying no more in that way, for he be a sea-devil. But I thinks this: he goes on shore and he comes back with one of his impish eyes knocked out clean by somebody or another some how or another, and, therefore, I argues that he have no power on shore not by no means; for if you can knock his eye out, you can knock his soul out of his ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught her," said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was an impish twinkle in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... pipe back in her mouth and began to smoke fiercely. The candle wick burned long, and was topped by a little cap of fiery red that seemed to wink at us like an impish gnome. The most grotesque shadow of Peg flickered over the wall behind her. The one-eyed cat remitted his grim watch and went to sleep. Outside the wind screamed like a ravening beast at the window. Suddenly Peg removed her pipe from her mouth, bent forward, gripped my wrist with her ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... destinies of mankind there is none more ironic and malicious than that same Dan Cupid in whose honour, as it were, he was now burning the incense of that pipe of his. The ancients knew that innocent-seeming boy for a cruel, impish knave, and they mistrusted him. Sir Oliver either did not know or did not heed that sound piece of ancient wisdom. It was to be borne in upon him by grim experience, and even as his light pensive eyes smiled upon the sunshine that flooded the terrace beyond the long mullioned window, a shadow ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... bearing an inscription which would inform admiring tourists that here was the desk at which the brilliant author had been wont to sit when grinding out heart-throb stories for the humble Post. He took an impish delight in my struggles with my hero and heroine, and his inquiries after the health of both were of such a nature as to make any earnest writer person rise in wrath and slay him. I had seen little of Blackie of late. My spare ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... hangings drawn at both windows; and since these had not been disturbed, something nearly approaching complete darkness reigned in the room. But though promptly on entering his fingers closed upon the wall-switch near the door, he refrained from turning up the lights immediately, with a fancy of impish inspiration that it would be amusing to learn what move Roddy would make when the tension became too much even for his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... but two, the little white cock and the black pullet, who are still impish and of a wandering mind. Though headed off in every direction, they fly into the hedges and hide in the underbrush. We beat the hedge on the other side, but with no avail. We dive into the thicket of ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... travel in an entirely opposite direction to Mo?" I argued, seeing that a crowd of grinning impish-looking carriers had gathered around us, enjoying ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... chuckle, was to convey fear to the beholder of his work. It was an impish trick, and it brought him unwittingly into peril of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring of foc'sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume the stick and apron in the cannibal islands. Impish Maori boys made not inappropriate "devils." With such assistants Colenso, working on, had by New Year's Day, 1838, completed the New Testament and was distributing bound copies to the eager Maoris, who sent messengers for them from far and near. Pigs, potatoes, flax ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the people that all sorts of odd things happen to, and now fortune has played one of her impish tricks and Jean has become a very considerable heiress. And I was there, oddly enough, when the god in the car alighted, so to ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Colwood, looking on, could only feel that had they never played their impish part, the winter afternoon for these two companions of hers would have been ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was conscious first of her slimness, her smallness. He was aware of the insistent, impish suggestion of boyishness in tilted head and poised body, before the rays that wavered over his shoulder from the windows behind him disclosed the misty gladness of welcome in her eyes, splashed now with points of light not so very unlike the blurred star-points in the infinitely ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... of high spring. "Boloo!" they cried. "Baayah. Boloo!" They were the children of the men folk, the smoke of whose encampment rose from the knoll at the river's bend. Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted hair and little broad-nosed impish faces, covered (as some children are covered even nowadays) with a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare instances, survives. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... in tearing down the larger trees. One of the females had a young one following her. I had an excellent opportunity of watching the movements of the impish-looking band. The shaggy hides, the protuberant abdomens, the hideous features of these strange creatures, whose forms so nearly resemble man, made up a picture like a vision in some morbid dream. In destroying a tree, they first grasped the base of the stem ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... others of the band seemed to lose their balance, and fared in the same fashion. The garland would topple over in a most impish way at every breath, although the arrows went through it. So Middle 'gan to feel better when he saw this one and that one tumbling ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to a stand at the gate of the little front garden of Tower Cottage, she saw, through the mist, Beaumaroy's corrugated face; he was standing in the doorway, and the light in the passage revealed it. It seemed to her to wear a triumphant impish look, but this vanished as he advanced to meet her, relieved her of the neat black handbag which she always carried with her on her visits, and suggested gravely that she should at once go upstairs and see ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... many lands. Two score ugly old women, wrinkled and blear-eyed, and with tangled hair hanging over their faces, every one a match for Macbeth's witches, and with them a number of old men stoop-shouldered, and of wizard aspect, each a very Caliban. Even the boys and girls have an impish, unearthly look, like the dwarfs that figure on the stage in a Christmas pantomime. But neither old nor young show fear, or any sign of it. On the contrary, on every face is a fierce, bold expression, threatening and aggressive, while the hoarse guttural sounds given out by them seem less ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... sound of the beating surf before we found one: and there an impish fancy took me. I had been losing grip on Farrell, and despite my small triumph of that morning, I felt a sudden desire to test him. Pretending that my purpose was only to cross and report, I waded the stream and dodged ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meaning to make a sketch of the group under the awning, but the dread apparition of his aunt's husband had twisted his nerves like wires struck by lightning, and he could do nothing. His is essentially the artistic temperament, and he is a creature of moods, impish in some, poetic in others; an extraordinary fellow, like no one I ever saw, yet curiously fascinating, and I find myself growing oddly fond of him, in an ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... against woman for the winning of the man to do her will. Margaret, using all the charm of her lovely personality to uphold standards of right, truth, purity, high living, and earnest thinking; Rosa striving with her impish beauty to lure them into any mischief so it foiled the other's purposes. And one day Margaret faced the girl alone, looking steadily into her eyes with sad, searching gaze, and almost a yearning to try to lead the pretty ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Amanda, with impish delight. "That's one on you. Aunt Rebecca ain't so dumb like she lets ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... manifest distress in breaking this news to me, and even in my evil mood I could not add intentionally to her pain. As for it cause, however, he sat absolutely unmoved. I think, indeed, from the blue light in his great eyes (which was absolutely impish), that the situation whetted his appetite. I did not deign another glance at the little wretch, as I went out, discomfited, but I felt that he was grinning ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... creepers, and thoroughly enjoy the life amid the sylvan scenes about them. It is a curious sight to see these big anthropoids, almost as large as human beings, swing themselves deftly up among the festooned creepers at my approach—to see their queer, impish black faces peering cautiously out of their hiding-place, and to hear their peculiar squeak of surprise and apprehension as they note the strange character of my conveyance. Sometimes a gang of them ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the Pleasant-Faced Lion, "the children are retreating. Carry-on-Merry, Gamble, Grin, and Grub, I believe you are the champion snowballers of the world. I think myself you must have acquired the gift from some unusually impish urchins whose methods you have closely observed round Westminster way. I consider your skill quite in accordance with the best ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... blame a man for being annoyed a bit. To have a gentle, grateful little girl you had nobly helped, suddenly perk up and turn into something quite different—something dimpling and impish and provocative—would be ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... a queer conception of the proprieties. He may think that you come to see me." A radiant smile leaped into her face, transforming its strange sombreness into absolutely impish mirth. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... only too conscious of the impish weakness, common to all mankind, which creates a desire out of sheer inability to satisfy it. Already his own throat was parched. The excitement of the early struggle was in itself enough to engender an acute thirst. He thought it best to ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... despite the fact that his furry coat was that of a buffalo instead of a bear, was a unique success in his line. One suspected, too that the Brave Little Tailor, whose waistcoat bore the modest inscription, "Seven at One Blow," and who tripped over his long sword at regular two-minute intervals, had an impish, freckled countenance. The straight, lithe figure of the youth with the Magic Fiddle reminded one of Lawrence Armitage, while his constant companion, Aladdin, a sultan of unequaled magnificence, had a peculiar swing to his gait that reminded sharp-eyed observers of Hal ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... beside Muriel, quite unconscious of her tears; her hands were clenched, and her eyes saw nothing but Don's impish ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... upon him of a priestess confidentially disrobed. It was as if she put aside for him something official, something sincerely maintained, necessary, but at times a little irksome. It was as if she was glad to take him into her confidence and unbend. Within the pre-natal Amanda an impish Amanda ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... story I read once about an impish dwarf that lived in the spaces between the double walls of an ancient castle. I wondered vaguely if my original idea of a secret entrance to a hidden chamber could be right, after all, and if we were housing some erratic guest, who played pranks on us in the dark, and destroyed the walls that ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... greeted with shouts of laughter by the impish creatures and one seized the Scarecrow's arm and was astonished to find the straw man whirl around so easily. So the Tottenhot raised the Scarecrow high in the air and tossed him over the heads of the crowd. Some one caught him and tossed him back, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... her impish arts of tantalisation and her wiles of fascination on Don Carlos during the remainder of her stay at Auchinleven. Sometimes she would seem, metaphorically, to throw herself at his head and appear to be eager to surrender herself, at other times she would completely ignore him, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the wine, sitting in an acrobatic attitude on the floor facing him. She drank it, and an odd sparkle of mischief shot up in her great eyes. She surveyed him with an impish expression—much as a grasshopper might survey ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... complacent features; the cocky pose of serene confidence presented by the effigy affected the disheartened original with as acute a sense of exasperation as he would have felt if the statue had set thumb to nose and had wriggled the stone fingers in impish derision. ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... external things seemed to suffer transmutation as her announcement progressed. The fire in the grate looked impish—demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least about her strait. The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not care. The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a chromatic problem. All material objects ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... this man who had been trusted with money and had defaulted. Even children, born long after the failure, reviled the name of the man who had made their hard lot harder. It had been the juvenile custom to throw stones at the house he had lived in. He remembered with fresh shame the impish glee with which, in company with other boys of his own age, he had trampled the few surviving flowers and broken down the shrubs in the garden. The hatred of Bolton, like some malignant growth, had waxed monstrous from what it preyed upon, ruining ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... fine honest face had a look no less intent than hers, but it was turned away from her; he was searching as eagerly as she, but on the wrong side of the lane of people; and by one of those impish tricks that Fate plays upon us in acute moments, he never saw her, nor heard her voice above the cheers of the people and the blare of the band. It was a cruel thing; she was fast wedged in the crowd. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... one could have shown greater presence of mind than the young ladies,' said that gentleman; and her father's 'I am glad to hear it!' would have gratified Gillian the more, but for the impish grimace with which Wilfred favoured her ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... growing sense of injury. Of late she had seemed absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness, his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... by a great expanse of white, the rather surprised look an the dogs' faces, the sniffing at one's knees and the wagging of tails as one approached to pat their heads, the twitching of the ponies' ears and nostrils, and the rather impish attitude the fitter animals adopted, the occasional kick out, probably meant quite playfully, and above all the grins on the faces of the Russian grooms. Yes, we were all smiling when the sun came back, even the horizon smiled kindly at us from the north. The Barne Glacier's snout lost its ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... to do forthwith, while the Old Un, seated at her right hand, kept a wary eye roving between jam dish and angel cake. And by reason of the unwonted graciousness of Mrs. Trapes, of Ravenslee's tact and easy assurance, and the Old Un's impish hilarity, all diffidence and restraint were banished, and good fellowship reigned supreme, though the Spider was interrupted in the midst of a story by ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... wouldn't listen. But I cried, and partly by working on his feelings and partly with the bribe that was a fortune to such a man, I persuaded him. Anne helped. She would have done anything for me. And she knew the Dorans. She knew Jack could never feel the same to me, as the mother of that impish girl. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... said that exaggeration takes for granted some degree of imbecility in the reader, whereas caricature takes for granted a high degree of intelligence. Dickens appeals to our intelligence in all his caricature, whether heavenly, as in Joe Gargery, or impish, as in Mrs. Micawber. The word "caricature" that is used a thousand times to reproach him is the word that does him ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... present his misery in embodied form, he produced a note-book and tried to concentrate his attention upon the items therein recorded. Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee before him, defying inspection. But at the foot of the column, like soldiers waiting to shoot a prisoner, stood four formidable units unquestionably pointing ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... a powerful fist. And this last, failing to find a mark, threw its owner off his balance. Tripping awkwardly over the low curbing of the dooryard walk, he reeled and went a-sprawl on his knees, while his hat fell off and (such is the impish habit of toppers) rolled and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... aspect of night is calculated to excite. The long-broken luxurious silence that, in their frozen climate, reigns from the going down of the sun to its rise; the wandering and sudden meteors that disport, as with an impish life, along the noiseless and solemn heaven; the peculiar radiance of the stars; and even the sterile and severe features of the earth, which those stars light up with their chill and ghostly serenity, serve to deepen the effect of the wizard tales which are instilled ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... troubles increased. Frank's dislike had grown to an impish vindictiveness, and if the old man Meeker had any knowledge of his son's deviltries, he gave no sign. Mrs. Meeker, however, ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... care?" retorted Klara, who seemed to take an impish delight in teasing the young man, "you are not in love with Elsa, ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in making his salute to her that he loosened his hold on the monkey. He was an impish monkey and always ready for adventure, and it is probable that the sight of a little girl excited him. He suddenly broke loose, jumped on to the slates, ran across them chattering, and actually leaped on to Sara's shoulder, and from there down into her attic room. It ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... door and walked in. She bowed to Alston Choate, though she did not take his outstretched hand. He was receiving such professional insult, Anne felt, from one of her kin that she could scarcely expect from him the further grace of shaking hands with her. Lydia, looking at her, saw with an impish glee that Anne, the irreproachable, was angry. There was the spark in her eye, decision in the gesture with which she made at ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... view from this grey boulder, Each high snow-peak, each rocky shoulder: Charming, yet wild, the sight. Cherry-trees, with white blossom laden, And 'neath their shade a peasant maiden, Comely her costume bright. —Oh, how these impish ants do bite! ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough |
