"Matronly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assembly, her style is full of sweetness as well as of courtesy, yet on other occasions she is majesty itself. The tones of her voice, with its still foreign accent, are most captivating; her eyes penetrate into every countenance on which they rest. Her figure, plump and matronly, has lost much of its contour; but is well suited for her part. Majesty in women should be embonpoint. Her hands are beautifully white, and faultless in shape. The king always admired her bust; and it is, therefore, by royal command, tolerably exposed. Her fair hair is upraised in full short ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... scar and its singular effects. At the time when Lombroso saw her first, Eusapia was just beginning to be known to scientists, but no one of special note had up to this time (1891) reported upon her. She was known as the wife of a small shop-keeper in Naples, and seemed a decent, matronly person, quite untouched by mysticism. Although not eager to sit for Lombroso and his party of scientists, she finally consented. Among those who took part in these celebrated experiments were Professor Tamburini, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... glimpse of her given in Longinus, On the Sublime.] This is the more remarkable, since our enormous ignorance of her life and poetry would give almost free scope to inventive faculty. It is significant that none of our writers have been attracted to the picture Welcker gives of her as the respectable matronly head of a girl's seminary. Instead, she is invariably shown as mad with an insatiable yearning, tortured by the conviction that her love can never be satisfied. Charles Kingsley, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... than twenty, tall and graceful, with a touch of the matronly, which she must have had even in childhood, for it belonged to her—so staid, so stately was she in all her grace. With her brown hair, her lily complexion, her blue gray eyes, she was all of the moonlight and its shadows—even now, in the early morning, and angry. Her ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... that she was sorry she had spoken to her as she had, and lady Ann had received the statement as an expected apology. Their quarrel had indeed given lady Ann no uneasiness. Daughter of one ancient house, and mother in another, a pillar of society, a live dignity with matronly back flat as any coffin-lid, she was of course in the right, and could afford to await the acknowledgment of wrong due and certain from an ill bred and ill educated chit of the colonies! For how could any one continue indifferent to the favour of lady Ann! She was incapable ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... indeed had come over Lady Fulkeward—a change, sudden, mysterious and amazing to many of her former distinguished friends with "pedigrees." In her husband's lifetime her hair had been a soft silver-gray; her face pale, refined and serious; her form full and matronly; her step sober and discreet; but two years after the death of the kindly and noble old lord who had cherished her as the apple of his eye and up to the last moment of his breath had thought her the most beautiful woman in England, she appeared with golden tresses, a peach-bloom complexion, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... this crowd of emigrants beggars description. Their dress was as varied as pieces in a crazy quilt. Here was a matronly dame in clean apparel, but without shoes; her husband perhaps lacked both shoes and hat. Youngsters of all sizes were running about with scarcely enough clothing to cover their nakedness. Some suits and dresses were so patched that it was impossible to tell what ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... white; that has become so canonized as the wedding dress of a virgin bride that it is not even proper for a widow to wear it on her second marriage. The shades of rose-color, crimson, or those beautiful modern combinations of velvet and brocade which suit so many matronly women, are all ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... at no distant date. Everything in the place had a sad, subdued look, and seemed conscious of having come down in the world, without hope of ever rising again; even the stript walls appeared to look at one another with a stony gaze of settled despair. But there was a clean, matronly woman in the place, gliding about from side to side with a cloth in her hands, and wiping first one, then another, of these poor little relics of better days in a caressing way. The shop had been her special care when times were good, and she ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... a cloud of white drapery was seen moving in the verandah. It soon resolved itself into a tall, dignified old lady, another of matronly appearance, and a bevy of young ones; two or three of them mere girls; perfect Houris they seemed to Adair, and Jack was much of the same opinion. As Adair threw himself from his horse, the old lady advanced from among the rest, holding out both ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... their glance betrayed secret, ever-watchful care. Only her yellow hair had resisted the force of time and sorrow; for it still fell in rich and wavy folds over a smooth white forehead. She was, indeed, half ashamed of it, and often took pains to force it into a sober, matronly hood. Only at nights, when she sat alone talking with her boy, she would allow it to escape from its prison; and he would laugh and play with it, and in his child's way even wonder at the contrast between her stern face ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... never made so long a speech in his life before, turned chokingly away. Then Mrs. Miller spoke, and Miss Forrest's dilated eyes were turned slowly from the major's bulky shape to the matronly form upon the sofa and the woe-begone face that appeared from behind the handkerchief. Miss Forrest's cheeks had paled and her lips were parted. She had seized and was leaning upon the back of a chair, but not one word had she spoken. ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... B. They are both very clever. Lady B, extremely well-informed in languages, living and dead; books, and gossip; very pretty; with two little children, and not yet five and twenty. Lady A, plump, fresh, and rosy; matronly, but full of spirits and good looks. Nothing would serve them but we must dine with them; and accordingly, on Friday at six, we went down to their room. I knew them to be rather odd. For instance, I have known Lady A, full ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... white all the time. One day two weeks ago Dad and I went to Los Angeles to buy clothes for her. I don't believe I ever had quite such a good time in all my life. 'Twas just like shopping for one's very own child. I put my hair up high for the occasion, and endeavored to look matronly, but I guess I failed, for when I saw a ravishing pink dress and said, "I guess it's too small for my little girl," the stupid ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... in his entertaining some idea of that kind about you," replied Mrs. Tempest, with a sudden assertion of matronly dignity. "But for him to think of me in that light would be too absurd. I must be some years, perhaps four or five years, his ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a confidential interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester had fully armed herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying example of matronly affection and prudence. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Joyce was now and whom she had married, for of course she had married. Did she too live somewhere down there in the valley, the matronly, contented mother of lads and lassies? He could see her old home also, not so far from his own, just across a green meadow by way of a footpath and stile and through the firs beyond it. How often ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had developed into matronly comeliness. Her fair complexion and pink cheeks had lost none of their freshness. Her smooth auburn hair was as soft and bright as it had been when she had braided it preparatory to a Barlingford tea-party in the days of her spinsterhood. She was a pretty, weak little woman, whose education ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... minister, who was then accounted an old man, being between forty-five and fifty, stopped on his way down the aisle where Ellen waited for her mother, busy in matronly conclave, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... satirically at us from the centre of Peg's bed. Another, a dilapidated, striped beastie, with both ears and one eye gone, glared at us from the sofa in the corner. A dog, with only three legs, lay behind the stove; a crow sat on a roost above our heads, in company with a matronly old hen; and on the clock shelf were a stuffed monkey and a grinning skull. We had heard that a sailor had given Peg the monkey. But where had she got the skull? And whose was it? I could not help puzzling over these ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... boasts of never having consulted a physician or taken a drug. Mrs. Duncan wore her own glossy hair at forty-five, without a thread of silver among it, while her step was as elastic, and eye as bright, as in her girlhood. Her cheek was less rounded than it was formerly; but the matronly dignity and motherly kindness that characterized her, amply compensated for its loss. True types of man and womanhood were they, whom no dangers or vicissitude could daunt, no trials swerve from the path of right or inclination. Mr. Duncan well knew the undertaking ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... looked up to as her superior in understanding and in knowledge of the world, whom, therefore, she leaned to for protection. On the other hand, she was also a mother. Whilst, therefore, to her child she supported the matronly part of guide, and the air of an experienced person; to me she wore, ingenuously and without disguise, the part of a child herself, with all the giddy hopes and unchastised imaginings of that buoyant age. This double character, one aspect ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... by Garofalo, Joseph is caressing the Child, while Mary—a rather full figure, calm, matronly, and dignified, as is usual with Garofalo—sits by, holding a book in her hand, from which she has just raised her ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... mourning colour, and of a fashion more matronly than perhaps altogether befitted her youth—plain to an extremity, and devoid of all ornament, save her rosary—Eveline now performed the duty of waiting upon her wounded deliverer; a duty which the etiquette of the time not only permitted, but peremptorily enjoined. She was attended by Rose ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... would immediately go and give his vote for a Female House of Congress, or of Commons? or who, on the receipt of a lady's letter of business,—I speak of the average,—would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice stocked with matronly lawyers, or thronged by ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... after wandering about the city for some hours, he turned into a park to rest. As he approached his usual bench, sacred to him because Ida and he in the old days had often sat there, he was annoyed to see it already occupied by a pleasant-faced, matronly looking German woman, who was complacently listening to the chatter of a couple of small children. Randall threw himself upon the unoccupied end of the bench, rather hoping that his gloomy and preoccupied air might cause them to depart ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... a slim figure in a white dress, with a blue sash round her waist. The face was a little like Ermengarde's, but the eyes which looked down now at the two children had Marjorie's expression in them. There were other portraits of Mrs. Wilton in the house, later and more matronly portraits; but Marjorie liked this the best—the girlish mother seemed in touch with her ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... met in the hall by a matronly woman with a tray in her hands, and at his approach she stepped back to allow him to enter a room, the door of which ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... touch of remorse. I had broached the matter rather roughly. I laid my hand on her shoulder—now so round and matronly, once so slender. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... their thievish eyes Forever on watch, ran off each with a prize. Then away to the fields it went blustering and humming, And the cattle all wondered whatever was coming. It plucked by their tails the grave, matronly cows, And tossed the colts' manes all about their brows, Till, offended at such a familiar salute, They all turned their backs and stood silently mute. So on it went, capering and playing its pranks; Whistling with reeds ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... a happy hour for them all. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun filled the air with a genial warmth. A little breeze bore from the orchard near by a fragrance of apple-blossoms. A matronly hen, tethered by the leg to her coop, raised indignant protest against the outrage on her personal liberty, or clucked and crooned her invitations, counsels, warnings, and encouragements, in as many different tones, to her independent, fluffy brood of chicks, while a huge gobbler strutted up and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... to attend the social parties pretty often in those old days. He did not dance and he stood about rather awkwardly. It must have been a great affliction, but he bore it with exemplary fortitude. Once or twice I saw Mrs. Bradlaugh there. She had a full-blown matronly figure. Miss Alice and Miss Hypatia came frequently. They were not then living in the enervating air of London, and they looked extremely robust. I also remember the boy Charles, of whom Mr. Bradlaugh seemed very proud. He was a remarkably bright lad, and full ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... father. But I remembered that he had several times before said that if I would so square my morals as to become in favor with the matronly portion of the parish he would even try and make a parson of me, which was, in his opinion, a promotion still higher than schoolmaster. Having got a parish, and chosen the richest damsel of the flock for my wife, there was nothing to hinder me from snapping my fingers at ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... which is smoked the tumbic or Persian tobacco,) and other sundry traces of female industry, to be appropriated as the common sitting-room of the family, was on our entrance precipitately deserted by all its occupants, save one fine-looking matronly lady, whom Giorgio introduced as his mother; and while she was welcoming us with many 'F[a]dd[a]lls,' and politely repeating, Anna mugsond shoufuk, (be seated, I am delighted to see you,) with innumerable other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... boldly across the meadows, which were gay with lady's smock, and he walked, by special request, between her and three matronly cows—feeling as Perseus might have done when he fended off the sea-monster. And so by the mill, and up a steep path to Immering Common. Across the meadows Lewisham had broached the subject of her occupation. "And are you really ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... was slightly gray and her magnificent figure somewhat matronly, but there were no other signs of autumn; her beautiful white skin was still as delicate as a baby's, her jet-black eyes as bright and full, her teeth just as they were thirty ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and cold. I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights. On coming up from dinner, however, (N.B.—I dine between twelve and one o'clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five)—on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant-girl on her knees surrounded by ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... At table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks. I was great in the expression of my terror for these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. "You give me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!" I had very nearly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frown had lost its accustomed sternness, as he stood regarding his eldest child. A gentle, sympathetic light was in his eyes as they rested on the sweet face grown older, much, in those days of anxious care. How matronly she looked! So patiently listening to, and answering every wish of ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... where it is," said Mrs. Bradley, greatly amused, "and pray sit still and take some refreshment. You'll make yourself ill after your exertions," she added, with a charming assumption of matronly solicitude. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... a crowd of diners to the inn- table; when we were all seated we made quite a company at the long, narrow board. The candles and lamps lit up any number of Vandyke pointed beards, of bald heads, of loosely-tied cravats, and a few matronly bosoms straining at the buttons of silk holiday gowns. For the Fete-Dieu had brought visitors besides ourselves from all the country round; and then "a first communion is like a marriage, all the relatives must come, as doubtless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven hundred acres across up yonder, and paid for it; but they cheated us out of it. Sells was the owner." ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Miss Conny, her elder sister, who by virtue of her seniority and the fact of her having reached the mature age of ten was rather prone to giving herself certain matronly airs of superiority over the others, which they put up with in all good faith, albeit they were most amusing to outside onlookers. "You are always imagining something terrible is going to befall everybody, instead of hoping for the best! Why don't you learn to look on the bright side of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... no need to dwell upon the matronly bustle of Miss Prowley, who, utterly ignoring the proper ordinances of the day, proceeded to send to the hotel for a beefsteak and a bottle of British Stout which could be warranted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the winter there arrived at the parsonage the new mistress,—in the person of Miss Eliza Johns, the elder sister of the incumbent, and a spinster of the ripe age of three-and-thirty. For the last twelve years she had maintained a lonely, but matronly, command of the old homestead of the late Major Johns, in the town of Canterbury. She was intensely proud of the memory of her father, and of his father before him,—every inch a Johns. No light cause could have provoked her to a sacrifice of the name; and of weightier causes she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... characteristics can nowhere be seen to better advantage than in the Madonna of St. Andrew and St. Peter, in the Verona Gallery. The Virgin is in an oval glory, edged all around with small, fleecy clouds. She has a beautiful, matronly face, with abundant hair, smoothly brushed over her forehead. The two apostles, below, are fine, strong ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... On the matronly bosom of Sister Agnes the girl told her story,—the story of her love, of her suffering, of her hopes, of her ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... house, too, I remember," says Miss Morris. "I wore long and loose garments to make me look more matronly, but, alas, the drapery Queen Gertrude wears was particularly becoming to me and brought me uncommonly near to prettiness. Mr. Ellsler groaned, but said nothing, while Mr. Bandmann sneered out an 'Ach Himmel!' and shrugged his ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... it. Twelfth or thirteenth hand, a vagabond, botched bedstead, type of all the furniture in Ginx's rooms, and in numberless houses through the vast city. Its dimensions were 4 feet 6 inches by 6 feet. When Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs. Ginx, who was, you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it, there was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were forced to find resting-places for all the children, it not seldom happened that at least one infant was perilously wedged between the parental bodies; and latterly they had been so pressed for room in the household that ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Scudder his success was immediate, she was completely won over by the deferential manner with which he constantly referred himself to her matronly judgments, and, on returning to the house, she warmly pressed him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... turned southward to Kilravock, over the fatal moor of Culloden. He admired the ladies of that classic region for their snooded ringlets, simple elegance of dress, and expressive eyes: in Mrs. Rose, of Kilravock Castle, he found that matronly grace and dignity which he owned he loved; and in the Duke and Duchess of Gordon a renewal of that more than kindness with which they had welcomed him in Edinburgh. But while he admired the palace of Fochabers, and was charmed by the condescensions of the noble proprietors, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... marble monument of Lady Frederica Stanhope is in the church; plain though she was in life, she is beautiful in death, something of exquisite tenderness in the expression of her countenance, maternal tenderness, and repose, matronly repose, and yet the freshness of youth in the rounded arm and delicate hand that lightly, affectionately presses the infant—she dies, if dying it can be called, so placid, so happy; the head half-turned sinks into the pillow, which, without ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the young folks and when, at dusk all the lights of the house went on with an illumination that fairly startled the guests, the host proposed a cheer for the boys which found an eager and unanimous response. Mr. Hooper attempted to make a speech, with his matronly and contented wife laughing and making sly digs at his effort, and his daughter ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... her most matronly manner, "kindly remember that a woman past her first youth always prefers to sit with her back toward ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... which they resented; and when their father returned with them to the front of the house, this noise was swelled by the gleeful yap-yapping of the terrier and the voices of a few other people who had appeared upon the scene—a matronly looking woman and two or three sun-burnt harvestmen. From Mrs. Massey's observations it could be gathered that she had been minding the Wogan twins by deputy, and further that she entertained the gloomiest views about the mental and moral qualities ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... been the victim of some unhappy love-affair, which had soured her disposition, and inclined her to look on the joys and follies of girlhood with a jaundiced eye. It was easy enough to please Miss Bagshot, who had a genial matronly way, and took real delight in her pupils; but it was almost impossible ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... Bradford's well pleased voice, "let me bring you to the notice of Mistress Southworth, in whose matronly company your ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... seemed to approach the outskirts of the forest, and at length arrived at a farm-house. An unspeakable joy arose in my heart at beholding an abode of human beings once more, and I hastened up to the door, and knocked. A kind-looking, matronly woman, still handsome, made her appearance; who, as soon as she saw me, said kindly, "Ah, my poor boy, you have come from the wood! Were you in ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... to Bessie; "indeed, that was what brought me here. My sisters sent me to ask whether they may shelter themselves under your matronly protection, for ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the opposite wall—a broad band of mellow light, vividly telling of the glory he was shedding where roof nor shade checked his genial glow. On the smooth, hard, ashen floor, in the center of this bright zone, sat a matronly cat, giving with tongue and paw dainty finishing touches to her morning toilet, and watching with maternal pride a kittenish game of hide-and-seek on the front step. Through the open doorway came the self-complacent cackling of hens, celebrating ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... think that his aunt, Lady St. Maur, would be waiting for him on the doorstep. As no matronly figure materialized in that locality, he alighted, and obeyed a brass-lettered injunction to "knock and ring." Then he disappeared inside the house, and remained there so long that Dale's respect for the law began to weaken. The chauffeur had been given ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... piazza consisted chiefly of women. Madame L'Ouverture was there—like, and yet unlike, the Margot of former years—employed, as usual—busy with her needle, and motherly, complacent, tenderly vigilant as of old; but with a matronly grace and dignity which evidently arose from a gratified mind, and not from external state. Her daughters were beside her, both wonderfully improved in beauty, though Genifrede still preserved the superiority there. She sat a little apart ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and full-bottomed wig, though she did not blush half as much as the husband of nineteen in his new character. Indeed, had it not been for her childish prettiness, her giggle would have been unpleasing to more than Lady Archfield, who, broad and matronly, gave a courtesy and critical glance at Peregrine before subsiding into ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at the hostelry of Mr Pritchard without meeting any adventure worthy of being marked down. I went into the little parlour, and, ringing the bell, was presently waited upon by Mrs Pritchard, a nice matronly woman, whom I had not before seen, of whom I inquired what I could have ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... looked up, and for the first time perceived that some other persons were in the room—a gentleman and a lady. The first I did not know; but I soon, to my infinite satisfaction, recognised in the other my old and charming playmate—once Ellen Barrow, now Mrs Northcote—not less charming, but more matronly than before. She and her husband shook hands most kindly with me; but we had no time for conversation before I was again summoned to the bedside of Sir Charles. His looks showed that he wished to speak on some matter of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... cats, although I admit they are well enough in their place, and I can worry along comfortably with a nice, matronly old tabby who can take care of herself and be of some use in the world. As for Ismay, she ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... when she had determined Mr. Ferris's exact position, where he stood with a smile shaping his full brown beard and glancing from his hazel eyes. She was dressed in perfect taste with reference to her matronly years, and the lingering evidences of her widowhood, and she had an unaffected naturalness of manner which even at her age of forty-eight could not be called less than charming. She spoke in a trusting, caressing tone, to which no man ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... think it worth while to give some hint of the thunderbolts they are silently forging? And why, oh, why did it never enter any of our thick heads that the day would come when even Charlotte would be considered too matronly for toys? One's so-called education is hammered into one with rulers and with canes. Each fresh grammar or musical instrument, each new historical period or quaint arithmetical rule, is impressed on one by some painful physical prelude. Why does Time, the biggest ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... a matronly air. "And if her father's gone to Europe, and every day is baking, or washing, or mending, or something, who is there besides you and me for her to look to, I'd like to know? Only you needn't think you're going to ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looking for visitors already at eleven o'clock. Quick, Madame Camilla, tell my maid to arrange every thing in the dressing- room. Please see to it yourself that I may find there an elegant, rich, and not too matronly, morning costume." ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... girls!" said he, soon after, "you may go down; I do not want you; you need not wait." The two timid, gentle creatures instantly obeyed. More than an hour elapsed, and then Mr. Vanderclump's bell rang. The two matronly maidens were very busily employed in making a new cap. Betty rose at once; but suddenly recollecting that she had been trying on her new and unfinished cap, and had then only a small brown cotton skull-cap on her head, she raised both ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... drew down her face and folded her hands in matronly dignity, gazing pensively at the blue-and-white stove, her head a little ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... of the raven heard by the river bank. Lit-lit grows matronly day by day and is very happy. Also, there are sisters to the sons of John Fox's first wife who lies buried in a tree. Old Snettishane is no longer a visitor at the Fort, and spends long hours raising a thin, aged voice against the filial ingratitude of children in general and of his daughter ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... with the greatest kindness and the utmost courtesy." "The Germans are brutes, absolute brutes," said another. Probably a third, who described both statements as exaggerations, came nearer the average truth. One of this same party described the kilts referred to above as causing matronly indignation in Berlin.[67] ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... grassa" does not belie its nick-name, and it is said that the matronly ladies, all over forty, who cook for the rotund priests, are the cordons bleus of Italy. The restaurant of the Hotel Brun is the one where the passing Anglo-Saxon generally takes his meals and a chat with the proprietor, who is generally addressed as Frank, is entertaining, for he owns vineyards ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... firstling; doyen, father; primogeniture. [Science of old age.] geriatrics, nostology^. V. be aged &c adj.; grow old, get old &c adj.; age; decline, wane, dodder; senesce. Adj. aged; old &c 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile^; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced in life, advanced in years; stricken in years; wrinkled, marked withthe crow's foot; having one ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... destiny had been different—if she had died ripe in years, after a life spent in calm matronly happiness, with all that she loved best round her, would she have been nursed so tenderly or mourned so bitterly by the nearest and dearest of them all as she was by her tempter to sin? I think not. I believe that in all the world there never was a greater ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... scaffold to scaffold, from haymow to haymow, she leaped defiant. She pulled out the hay from under the very noses of the astonished cows, to see if, perchance, some inexperienced pullet might there have deposited her golden treasure. With all four-footed beasts she was on the best of terms. The matronly and lazy old sheep she unceremoniously hustled aside, to administer consolation and caresses to the timid, quaking lamb in the corner behind. Without saddle or bridle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peak as one's own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... intimately connected with my existence. I think that I have before said that she never avowed herself, either to my nurse or to myself, as more than my godmother. She evinced a brief, but violent emotion; and then controlled her features to a very staid and matronly expression. For myself I wept most bitterly; from many mingled emotions; but, to the shame of human nature, and of my own, wounded pride was the most intolerable pang that I felt. In all my day-dreams, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... girls are—and boys!" said Kate with a matronly sigh, burying her face in a nest where a hen was clucking and two downy chicks were ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... her maiden appellation among her familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by way of drum, and was very carefully ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of however long duration, conclusively fatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and not afraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to the past—in strong terms of self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like despairing prostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet even in this respect the Homeric Greeks were better ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... be called a matronly personage. Having married when about sixteen, she was now just thirty-eight years of age; and though the bloom of maidenhood was gone, the beauty of a well-favoured and healthy woman still remained. She ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly, yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... was Numeris Humber. Bro. Humber and his wife were among the excellent of the earth. Sister Humber was a matronly woman, comely in person, greatly beloved, and a queen of song. When D. S. Burnett afterwards held a protracted meeting at this place, it was the songs of Sister Humber and Stephen Sales, as much as the preaching of D. S. Burnett, that made the meeting ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... on Wednesday morning that a chariot, with a dowager's arms upon the doors, and in it a grave matronly lady [not unlike mother H. in the face; but, in her heart, Oh! how unlike!] stopped at a grocer's shop, about ten doors on the other side of the way, in order to buy some groceries: and methought Dorcas, having been out ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... at this. So Mrs Chick, who had her matronly apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the little Dombey ('acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring happiness of this union, and can, as privileged ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... for a time," I suggested. He looked at me for a moment, then brought his fist down on the general disarray with a thumping "I will!" And take my word for it, Dane, a year hence, when the very ordinary girl greets him with the matronly kiss and his fever and folly have left him, he will take up the book and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... in its shade in the summer and sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy, imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... almost equal to it. There are two Lucretias—one by Guido and one by Giordano: though both are beautiful, particularly the former, there was, I thought, an impropriety in the conception of both pictures: the figure was too voluptuous—too exposed, and did not give me the idea of the matronly Lucretia, who so carefully arranged her drapery before she fell. I remember, too, a St. Cecilia by Carlo Dolci, of most heavenly beauty,—two Correggios—Iphigenia in Aulis, by Padovanino: in this picture the figure of Agamemnon is a complete failure, but the lifeless beauty of Iphigenia, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... I outstep the bounds of matronly modesty by this airy philandering with my young Lord Rochester, or that my serious Fareham is ever offended at our pretty trifling. He laughs at the lad as heartily as I do, invites him to our table, and is amused ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... stout and matronly, held a fat and placid year-old baby on her lap with one arm, while with the other hand she lunged out intermittently to pick up a much-chewed rubber dog cast upon the floor by the infant. "Oh, now I remember; they're at the bank, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... that she reciprocated the regard which makes her nephew so emphatic in her praise may be conjectured from the fact that, when he made his debut as a candidate for the honours of the State, she emerged from her habitual seclusion, laid aside for a time her matronly reserve, and, in order to assist him in his canvass, faced for his sake the rustic impertinence and ambitious turbulence of the crowds who thronged the Forum and the streets ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... spoke the truth. The woman who is now added to the group has truly 'a kind eye and a gintle voice.' She is short and small of form, of middle age and matronly appearance; neatly and even handsomely dressed, as becomes the mistress of one of the largest and wealthiest farms of a country where large farms are rare. She has a handsome, placid face, and looks as if the world had moved on quietly and happily ever since she had been on its surface. Her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... mother but a rosy-faced Irish woman who stopped her sewing and asked him in a thick, sweet brogue if he needed anything. As he stared at her, recollecting but dimly having seen her glossy brown hair and fair, matronly face before, she exclaimed: "Ah, I'm Bridget McCartey, you know, an' you were hurted by the lads throwin' a baseball into your ribs. It's lyin' here a week sick you've been, and, savin' your pardon, the sooner you tell me where your folks ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the fellows there, owing to an influence or two in the camp itself and another or two just outside it, all become, in a strong, fine sense and high degree, ladies' men? It was good for them spiritually, and good for their field artillery evolutions, to be watched by maidenly and matronly eyes. Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black snouts ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of humanity, though mamma and Emily detected wonderful resemblances; I never saw them, but then he inherited his mother's repulsion towards me, and roared doubly at the sight of me. My mother held that he was the victim of Selina's dissipations and mismanagement of herself and him, and gave many matronly groans at his treatment by the smart, flighty nurse, who waged one continual warfare with ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... curious. When the mother feels the fulness of time at hand, the priestess of Lucina, the midwife, is duly summoned, and she comes bearing in her hand a tripod, better known as a three-legged stool, the uses of which are only revealed to the initiated. She is received by the matronly friends of the mother, and begins the mysteries by opening every lock and lid in the house. During this ceremony the maiden females ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt |
