"Tidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dinner was cooking, Jacob amused the children by showing them how to put things in order; the floor was swept, the hearth was made tidy. He shewed Alice how to wash out a cloth, and Humphrey how to dust the chairs. They all worked merrily, while little Edith stood and clapped ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... had not had a wash since we had left our happy home in England). We started with the idea of washing ourselves at the hotel; but on seeing the basin and water and towel provided, I decided not to waste my time playing with them. As well might Hercules have attempted to tidy up the Augean stables with ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderful panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden and the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effect of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left I looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but I could distinguish the high fence ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... and filial in disposition, with a nature as sweet as the daisies that grew in the green meadows about her home, and a mind as clear as the brook that rippled through them. Fond of pretty things in the house, a daintily set table, tidy rooms, and loving neatness and order, she was a good cook, a capable housekeeper and a charming hostess as well. She loved the flowers that bloomed each summer in the wide dooryard, and had enough romance to enjoy nature's moods at all times. She cared ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... wunna drownded, for if 'e 'ad bin I should 'a' tore our Sam all to winder-rags, an' then 'e 'd a bin djed an' Frank drownded an' I should a bin 'anged. I toud Sam wen 'e t{)o}{)o}k the 'ouse as I didna like it.—"Bless the wench," 'e sed, "what'n'ee want? Theer's a tidy 'ouse an' a good garden an' a run for the pig." "Aye," I sed, "an' a good bruck for the childern to peck in;" so if Frank 'ad bin drownded I should a bin the djeth uv our Sam. I wuz that frittened, ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... them! But, they were only babies to the big rifled breechloaders now in vogue; albeit they did tidy enough work in the destructive line in their day, as the annals of our navy can tell, and other nations have experienced to their cost both on ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Economyward had passed out of hearing, Jane Duncannon in a neat brown dress with a little round brown ribboned hat set trimly on her rippley hair, and a little round basket on her arm covered daintily with a white napkin, was nipping out her tidy front gate between the sunflowers and asters and tripping down Maple street as if it had been on her mind to go ever ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... to keep your eye on your committee-man, and kind of foller along with him, whatever he does. That's me." He placed a dingy bottle on the keg. "I jest dropped in to see how you boys were gittin' along—mighty tidy little place you got here." He changed the stub of his burnt-out cigar to the other side of his mouth, shifting his eyes in the opposite direction, as he continued benevolently: "I thought I'd look in and leave this bottle o' gin fer ye, with my compliments. I'll be around ag'in ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... kettle of fish!" exclaimed Tom; "just as if he couldn't give a fellow time to paint up a bit and look tidy after sweltering all the pitch off her for eighteen months on the coast, and scuttling across the Atlantic as if the deuce were after us, and not a day allowed us to overhaul and make the old ship look presentable—why, ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... hert greet tae see him," Mrs. Macfadyen said to me one day, "sae booed an' disjackit, him that wes that snod (tidy) and firm. His hair's turned white in a month, and he's awa' tae naething in his claithes. But least said is sunest mended. It's no richt tae interfere wi' another's sorrow, an' it wad be an awfu' sin tae ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Holworthy couldn't if she'd wanted to. It's all foreordained an' fixed beforehand. Daniel Burton was to get jest the annual while she lived, an' then the whole in a plump sum when she died. Well, she's dead, an' now he gets it. An' a right tidy little sum it ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... perhaps, a certain talent for hedge carpentering or thatching, become tinkers, or even blacksmiths. In such capacities a man may save a little money—not much, perhaps L30 or L40 at furthest. With the aid of this he manages to build a very tidy cottage, in the face of the statement made by architects and builders that a good cottage cannot be erected under L120. Their dwellings do not, indeed, compete with the neat, prim, and business-like work of the professional builder; but still they are roomy and substantial ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... full of honeysuckle and roses; clean cows and white fat sheep feeding in most beautiful rich green grass; the nicest little cottages with lattice windows and thatched roofs and neat gardens, and roses, ivy, and honeysuckle creeping to the tops of the chimneys; everybody and everything clean and tidy.... The cart-horses are beautiful, and even the beggars look as if they ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... large, that was certain—probably black, too, like her hair. Little black eyes! That was ugly enough, surely! And he hated heavy black hair growing in those unusual great waves. Women's hair should be light and fluffy and fuzzy, and kept tidy in a net—like Isabella's. This looked so thick—enough to strangle one, if she twisted it round one's throat. What strange ideas were those coming into his head? Why should she think of twisting her hair round a man's throat? It must be the port mounting to his brain, he decided—he ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Selwyn, Mr. Tidy, and Mr. Thrale seated themselves to whist ; the rest looked on : but the General, as he always does, took up the newspaper, and, with various comments, made aloud, as he went on reading to himself, diverted the whole company. Now he would cry, "Strange! ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... that a very young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig. Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be unnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic birds and tropic blossoms. Tropic birds look like staring toys out of a toy-shop. Tropic flowers simply look like artificial ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the girl's moving figure, on the cat dozing in a chair, and on the geraniums brought in from the door-way, where Ethan had planted them in the summer to "make a garden" for Mattie. He would have liked to linger on, watching her tidy up and then settle down to her sewing; but he wanted still more to get the hauling done and be back at ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... nothing to do with order. The room is perfectly tidy. It's a question of your memory. You don't remember the ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... conduct themselves in their domestic life as I do, I shall be satisfied; and for the present, so long as my follies—for I have committed follies —are no loss to any one but the gulls—excuse me, you do not perhaps understand the slang word—they will have nothing to blame me for, and will find a tidy little sum still left when I die. Your children cannot say as much of their father, who is ruining his son and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... large suite together on the third floor, with a bath all their own, and a maid to wait upon them. Grace was used to this; but she was a very simple-minded girl, and the presence of a tidy, be-aproned and be-capped maid not much older than herself, did not particularly impress Grace one ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... back from a street or court to a sheer wall. Some of the remodeled and newly built houses have modern doors and windows. The upper stories are reached from the outside by ladders and stone stairways built into the walls. The rooms are smoothly plastered and whitewashed and the houses are kept tidy and clean, but the streets ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... brightness of the light which fell directly upon it and which reflected to the camera. When such a plate has been developed and fixed, as described in Section 121, we have the so-called negative (Fig. 83). The collar is very dark, the black tie and gray coat white, and the white tidy very dark. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... said Emilie pleasantly, "now, we shall see what sort of a manager you will be; you must do all you can to make things tidy and comfortable for the lodgers. Is their room ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... American institutions. Cookery with us is means to an end; therefore, as much a matter of economy of time and toil as building a road. Almost every cottage has specimens of fine art on the walls in the shape of pictures "done" by Jane or Eliza, or embroidery upon lambrequin, portiere, or tidy. It occurs to Jane and Eliza as seldom as to their fore-mothers, that cooking is an art in itself, that may be "fine" to exquisiteness. In their eyes, it is an ugly necessity, to be got over as expeditiously as "the men-folks" will allow, their ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... gift for keeping herself spotless. When her hands were clean she could do nothing, but felt as if everything would slip through her fingers. If she was told to do her hair on Sunday, to wash and to put on tidy clothes, she felt the whole day as if she had been sewn into a sack. She only seemed to be happy when, smeared and wet with washing the boards, the windows, the silver, or the doors, she had become almost unrecognisable, and had, if she wanted to rub her nose or her eyebrows, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... into the dormitory to hastily tidy herself, looking flushed and tired, she went to her cubicle in silence, none of them coming out to greet her or to make inquiry. When they had gone downstairs they found that she did not follow them into the dining-hall to breakfast, and they then ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... looked at himself anxiously, but was at once relieved by what he saw. "I'm all right," he said. "I'm not marked. That mouse"—he pointed gayly to the lump under his eye-"will run away to-morrow. I am pretty tidy, considering. But it's bellows to mend with me at present. Whoosh! My heart is as big as a bullock's ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Merton. He didn't get moore pay a week than a pitman does; look how he lived, how comfortable everything was! What a home that ud be for a man to go back to after his work was done! Noice furniture, a wife looking forward neat and tidy to your coming hoam for the evening. Your food all comfortable, the kids clean and neat, and ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... had no sooner finished than he found that some clumsy fool of a water-rat—vole, I mean—with a mania for mining, had run a shaft into his hole, and brought the whole roof crumbling down upon his scrupulously neat and tidy nest of fine hay and carefully shredded rush—the only approximately warm corner he possessed in all that biting cold—so that days of labor would not repair the silly damage; and he had had to enter into a free fight with and turn ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... disinterested idolatry: but as a means to teach mankind the lesson of Christ it has rather patently failed to do its business. Men are not fools: or rather they are fools, but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught to be foolish. They pay us ministers of religion, Agatha, a tidy lot of money, if you take all Europe over: and we are not delivering the goods. In their present frame of mind they will soon be discovering that, for any use we are, they had better have saved the cash and put it into ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... real, then; they were artificial! It was some sort of a swindle! Of course! But the experts had agreed that they were diamonds—real diamonds! Perhaps they had been deceived, or—by George! Did these two men mean to say that they were real diamonds, but that they were manufactured? Mr. Latham's tidy little imagination balked at that. Absurd! Whoever heard of a diamond as big as the Koh-i-noor, or the Regent, or the Orloff being made? They were crazy—the pair ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... game. After three days of this my park-suit became almost a total ruin, particularly as to the trousers, so that I was glad to borrow a pair of overalls such as Cousin Egbert wore. They were a tidy fit, but, having resolved not to resist America any longer, I donned them without ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of an intoxicated temperance lecturer. But England was saved by a forgotten thing—the English. Simple men with simple motives, the chief one a hate of injustice which grows simpler the longer we stare at it, came out of their dreary tenements and their tidy shops, their fields and their suburbs and their factories and their rookeries, and asked for the arms of men. In a throng that was at last three million men, the islanders went forth from their island, as simply as the mountaineers had gone forth from ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... Chloe. First of all you had better make some tea. You know what is a good thing to give for a fever, and if you can find anything in the garden to make a drink of that sort, do; but I hope he will doze off for some time. When you have done, you had better get this place tidy a little; it is in a terrible litter. Evidently no one has been ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... old-fashioned house near at hand. Its walls were weather-worn, its yard was not tidy. The faded curtains at the windows hung crookedly. The glass of the panes was dirty. The entire aspect of the place indicated that there was no woman's hand to make it home. It ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... what money she could find. She was not a very tidy person, and the money had to be collected from odd trinket-boxes and discarded purses. Marcos was still talking politics with his friend from the mountains when she passed beneath his window. Sarrion and Evasio Mon had gone to the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... the board-room, with the remains of the incense in the plates, would have shown them at once that the visit of the Phoenix had been no dream, but a radiant reality, but no one went into the board-room again that day; and next day, before the office was opened, it was all cleaned and put nice and tidy by a lady whose business asking questions was not part of. That is why Cyril read the papers in vain on the next day and the day after that; because no sensible person thinks his dreams worth putting in the paper, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead? Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans, gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins gracefully enough—as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and chills my friends ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... said. "I thought it would be nice for you to be near each other. And I know you are very tidy, Bee, so you will set ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... into the bosom of my family. We are residing in the secluded village of Ruswarp, on the banks of the Esk, about two miles inland from Whitby. Our lodgings are comfortable, and we possess the additional blessing of a tidy landlady. Mrs. Wragge and Miss Vanstone preceded me here, in accordance with the plan I laid down for effecting our retreat from York. On the next day I followed them alone, with the luggage. On leaving the terminus, I had ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... up on to one another's backs and look foolish. "What a cargo of cattle!" cries the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly on the breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin caps, old military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women's tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old, wrinkled pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but want, and expectancy, and a certain animal greed are visible in all of them. The unfamiliarity of the moment brings a touch of stupidity into them, as they press forward, or climb up to get ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... uncle's, my sister's husband's home, both of which families' houses are extremely spacious, that we can put up provisionally, and by and bye, at our ease, we can send servants to make our house tidy. Now won't this be a considerable saving ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... She opened the door of the ground-floor bedroom and looked in. All was tidy and pleasant as usual. Every mat lay in its place; the chairs were set against the wall as she loved to see them; the rows of books, the shelves of chemicals, at which she hardly dared to look, and which she never dared to touch for fear something would "go off" ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville. I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat near Victoria Station. A maid of all work cooked for us and kept the flat neat and tidy. My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day (and the flat) to myself and my work. During the next six years I wrote several novels and a number of plays. Only one of these novels had any success, but even that failed to make the stir that my first one had made. I could get no manager to ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... criticism whatsoever, as if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather odd, and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat she ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to descend to begging of Lorilleux and his wife. But they refused her a son or a crumb and laughed at her. It was terrible. She remembered her ideal of former days; to work quietly, always having bread to eat and a tidy home to sleep in, to bring up her children not to be thrashed, and to die in her bed. No, really, it was droll how all that was be? coming realised! She no longer worked, she no longer ate, she slept on filth; all that was left for her to do was to die on the pavement, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... has taken to his bed, groaning with a stitch in his side. The doctor has been telephoned, and Maria Maxwell, as usual bursting with energy, which on this occasion takes a form between that of a dutiful daughter and a genuine country neighbour, has gone over to Opal Farm to tidy up a bit until the doctor gives his decision and some native woman, agreeable to Amos's taste, can be found to look after ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... confusion. Cyril said this morning we should be all ill if we passed another night in that way; so he and Biddy have been putting up the beds, and getting the upstairs rooms in order, and Mollie was sent down to make the dining-room a little tidy.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... passage, being careful he should not detect it, for fear of his contempt. Then I minutely examined my clothes and thought that everything looked old, worn and threadbare. I had let myself get too slovenly. My uniform, perhaps, was tidy, but I could not go out to dinner in my uniform. The worst of it was that on the knee of my trousers was a big yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain would deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity. I knew, too, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... peasantry. They almost invariably seek the cities, where the Magyar neighborhoods can be easily distinguished by their scrupulously neat housekeeping, the flower beds, the little patches of well-swept grass, the clean children, and the robust and tidy women. Among them is less illiteracy than in any other group from eastern and southern Europe, excepting the Finns, who are their ethnic brothers. As a rule they own their own homes. They learn the English language ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... the poor horses, who had to scamper along up and down veldt and berg, over bog and spruit, with this lumbering conveyance at their heels. Not for long, though: every seven miles, or even less, we pulled up—sometimes at a tidy inn, where a long table would be set in the open verandah laden with eatables (for driving fast through the air sharpens even the sturdy colonial appetite), sometimes at a lonely shanty by the roadside, from whence a couple of Kafir ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... hearts. It is the immemorial custom of the desert not to bury dead camels or horses but to let them lie. Then you know where you are and the sun soon cooks the carcases till they become inoffensive. This is, however, repugnant to the tidy minds of European sanitary experts, who give orders for the burial of the deceased. The wiser Egyptian is overruled and has to do the burying. Now it takes a simply monstrous hole to hold a camel, and the result of the clash of English and Egyptian ideas is a very imperfectly buried ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... these from the Goodyear Company," vouchsafed Inspector Val; "had them made after patterns of his own. A mighty tidy invention, take my word for it!" and the eye of Inspector Val glanced approval of the circular rubber raft. Then he showed Richard how the cushion could be inflated in a few seconds with an air-pump; and how, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and belly, towards none of which (the best far transcending the worst Italian Judas) they seem to feel any repugnance. They have also a beastly love of horrors; their decollations and flagellations are quite sickening in detail, as distinguished from the tidy, decorous executions of the early Italians; and one feels that they do enjoy seeing, as in one of their prints, the bowels of St. Erasmus being taken out with a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her in his romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the head of the sprawling, snoring ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... table. One or two cases were related of young girls having made quite a handsome sum from a small garden-bed. But the general testimony went to prove that strawberry-growing was so simple an art that any woman who had sufficient good sense to keep herself tidy could successfully practise it, more especially if she had a taste for horticultural occupations. I concluded, therefore, that the true reason why women had not engaged more extensively in this employment was because no one had taken pains to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... especially as it was so small it needed to be firmly pinned on in its place. It consisted of a centre or crown of white crepe, a little frill of the same, and a close-fitting wreath of deep red feathers all round. Very neat and tidy it looked as I took my last glance at it whilst I hastily knotted a light black lace veil over my head by way of protection during my drive. When I got to my destination there was no looking-glass to be seen anywhere, no maid, no anything or anybody to warn me. Into the dining-room I marched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... over them in a sort of milky way. I have always seen cows in comfortable stables, with nice, clean straw under their feet and pails full of succulent food placed within easy reach, while at certain intervals a tidy, tender- hearted young milkmaid appears with a three-legged stool and a roomy pail, and extracts what the cow chooses to give her. But here the wiry creatures roam from door to door, and drop a pint or so at each call. It ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... she had found her way into a tidy little room with a table in the window, and on it (as she had hoped) a fan and two or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves: she took up the fan and a pair of the gloves, and was just going to leave the room, ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... the stalks and leaves are!' said Dora. 'I wish they would make themselves tidy instead of always staring at the sun. Why are there so many holes ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... that's a very tidy-lookin' boat of yourn, and there don't seem to be nothin' partic'lar the matter with her. I reckon she's quite worth hoistin' in, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... be a big job, chief, but there is no doubt we must lay in a great store of it. Well, there is plenty of timber down in the valley, and with ten horses we can bring up a tidy lot every day." ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which she had so often adorned, In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy little body. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... a couple of letters, make all ready—prepare myself. I would wash myself carefully and tidy my bed nicely. I would lay my head upon the sheets of white paper, the cleanest things I had left, and the green blanket. I ... The green blanket! Like a shot I was wide awake. The blood mounted to ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... the cottage tidy while I am out. When I come back, I must see the fire bright, the hearth swept, and the kettle boiling; no dust on the table or chairs, the windows clear, the floor clean, and the heather in blossom—which last comes of sprinkling it with water three times a day. When you are hungry, put your hand ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... they'd laugh," said the cap'n stoutly. His eyes were glowing with the surprise of it and the happy anticipation of Mariana's tidy ways. "Nobody laughed at me an' Mandy; leastways if they did, I ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Cameron, Lucy; she is going to teach you all manner of nice things. Hold yourself straight, Annie. What will these young ladies think of you, Belle, if they look at your dirty pinafore? Mine are such troublesome children," she continued, in a complaining voice; "they are never nice and tidy and obedient, like other children. Mr. Thorne spoils them, and then finds ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... cast an apologetic glance at Mary Sands, who had come in quietly and sat down with her sewing in the front room, "I've always laid it to some to the fire. Look at your house here, boys!" he gave a wistful glance round the two bright, tidy, cheerful rooms. "If I had a home like this, would I be a rover? I guess not! I guess I shouldn't need no cobbler's wax on the seat of the chair to hold me down; but if all you had come home to was an empty cellar hole, not a stick nor a stitch—nothing was saved, you remember,—why, ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... all," replied Marjorie. "He's not a poor person's child, and he's not exactly a gentleman's. The carriage was very shabby, with such an old rug; and the girl wasn't tidy enough for a nurse, she looked like a general slavey. Dona, I don't believe ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... an appearance of protection rather than of patronage. It was a matter of self-respect, perhaps. No windows on the Street were so spotlessly curtained, no doormat so accurately placed, no "yard" in the rear so tidy with morning-glory vines over ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... best brown silk dress, with a lace collar and cuff set contributed the Christmas before by her Aunt Kate from Ontario, and at her waist, one of the doctor's roses. The others had been brought over by Mary, and were in a glass jar on the tidy desk, where they attracted much attention and speculation as to where they had come from. They seemed to redeem the bare school-room from utter dreariness, and Pearl found herself repeating the phrase in the doctor's letter, "Like a ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Brown-eyed Boy and the Blue-eyed Girl climbed way, way, way up that big tree and looked into the round little room up there. There was no furniture—none at all. Just one bare nursery, in which five babies were staying day and night. Yet it was a tidy room, fresh and sweet enough for anybody to live in; for a crow, young or old, is a clean ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... the coach began to enter the village, and very soon it stopped at the door of a very neat and tidy-looking inn. Mr. George engaged lodgings for the night, and called for supper. The supper was served in a pleasant little coffee room, which was fitted up in a very snug and comfortable manner, like a back ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He stayed out of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. He glanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bales and cases hamperin' their movements; but now that they've got everything snugly stowed under hatches, they're comin' down to try conclusions with us; and if they really mean business we've a very tidy little job afore us." ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... male obstinacy, always asserted that the room was tidy enough, and that he hated to live in a prim apartment. He said that he could lay his hand on anything he wanted, and that the seeming confusion was perfect order to him. Lucy gave up arguing on these grounds, but privately determined ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... was at play in the wood, the great wolf galloped on as fast as he could to the old woman's house. Grandmother lived all by herself, but once or twice a-day a neighbour's child came to tidy her house and get her food. Now, grandmother was very feeble, and often kept her bed; and it happened that she was in bed the day Little Red Riding-Hood went to see her. When the wolf reached the cottage ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... retaliation. With a bow to Eliza, and a total oblivion of me, she went out of the Exchange. She had flaunted "her" John in Eliza's face, she had, as they say, rubbed it in that he was "her" John;—but was it such a neat, tidy victory, after all? She had given away the last word to Eliza, presented her with that poisonous speech ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... room, with tattered oilcloth and damp, distempered walls, has an air of tidy wretchedness. On the bed lies JONES, half-dressed; his coat is thrown across his feet, and muddy boots are lying on the floor close by. He is asleep. The door is opened and MRS. JONES comes in, dressed in a pinched black jacket and old black sailor hat; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The tidy breezes with their brooms Sweep vale, and hill, and tree! Prithee, my pretty housewives! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... they aided Albert Edward in the process of washing up. When everything was tidy he lighted his most malignant pipe and told them seafaring yarns not necessarily true. Then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and fell asleep there by the fire, effacing himself as effectually as one of three people can in a single ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... night That ever parents had to spend—a moon That shone like daylight on the breaking wave. Ah me! and other men have lost their lads, And other women wiped their poor dead mouths, And got them home and dried them in the house, And seen the driftwood lie along the coast, That was a tidy boat but one day back. And seen next tide the neighbors gather it To lay it on their fires. Ay, I was strong And able-bodied—loved my work;—but now I am a useless hull: 'tis time I sank; I am in all men's way; I trouble them; I am a trouble to ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... been the elder,—on the condition of the younger brother having a tidy slice out of the property ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... into aunt Madge's kind gray eyes, and she made up her mind that the poor child should be comforted. So she quietly put away the silk dress she was so anxious to finish, and after dinner took the fresh, tidy, happy little Susy across the fields to aunt Martha's again, where the unlucky day was ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... draggle-tails, unkempt and unwashed, with orange and red kerchiefs round their necks (the gipsy colours). Happening to look out of window, they saw a young servant girl with a perambulator on the opposite side of the 'street;' she was tidy and decently dressed, looking after her mistress's children in civilised fashion; but they recognised her as a deserter from tribe, and blazed with contempt. 'Don't she look a figure!' exclaimed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the Melburys once were back in their own house they would not be disposed to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Diggory, showing a heavy leathern bag. "No more toiling in this ruinous old hall, with scanty scraps, hard words, and no wages; but a tidy little homestead, pig, cow, and horse, your own. See here, Deb," and he held up a piece ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house? That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself alive and give them something better than a ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... unpleasantly of course. Three persons: reading from left to right as I face them—a soggy, sleepy, slumpy lump in a gendarme's cape and cap, quite old, captain of gendarmes, not at all interested, wrinkled coarse face, only semi-mechant, large hard clumsy hands, floppingly disposed on table; wily tidy man in civilian clothes, pen in hand, obviously lawyer, avocat type, little bald on top, sneaky civility, smells of bad perfume or, at any rate, sweetish soap; tiny red-headed person, also civilian, creased worrying excited face, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... winter, to work; this house Ysidro was but too happy to give to Alessandro till his own should be done. It was a tiny place, though it was really two houses joined together by a roofed passage-way. In this passage-way the tidy Juana, Ramon's wife, kept her few pots and pans, and a small stove. It looked to Ramona like a baby-house. Timidly Alessandro said: "Can Majella live in this small place for a time? It will not be very long; there ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... answered Steffins, promptly, "and I wouldn't guess you to heft over one twenty-eight or thirty at the outside. I'll have the box filled in with spruce boughs and a lot of nice bunch-grass, and put some comforts over that, and you'll be all snug and tidy. You won't starve, either, not while there's ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... good deal of experience of boats, knew that her aunt's fears were well founded. But she had not yet reached the age at which a girl thinks it desirable to be clean, tidy and well dressed when she goes to meet a strange cousin. She treated Miss Lentaigne's ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... caught like a rat in a trap, without a chance of escape, seemed too bad. We were all standing, not knowing what to do, some proposing one thing and some another, expecting the French boats to come alongside and take possession of our tidy little frigate, when a flaw of wind came down the harbour. Scarcely had we felt it than our third lieutenant, Mr ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... sure, mon,' said the sexton cheerily, pleased with the little opening for intelligent patronage. 'Coom your ways in, and we'll see if we can't oblige yo. I've got a tidy lot o' books in my parlour, an I can give ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the little berths with sliding shutter fronts, and the lockers, which were like a fixed seat running round two sides of the cabin, with lids opening and showing places to put away things in. I was not famous in the nursery for keeping my things very tidy, but I fancied I could stow my clothes away to perfection in a locker, and almost cook my own dinner with the bargeman's ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... wanted anything more about liquid matter, I would just inform him that we carry the milk of our cows wrapped up in old newspapers, and that it keeps that way for months, as solid and tidy and handy as a brickbat in the end of ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... my wife, "that your Bridget is worth teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has good recommendations from excellent families, whose ideas of good bread, it appears, differ from ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, she will come ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Chanor; "but he must work. He would have a tidy sum by now if he had stayed with us. What is to be done? Artists have a horror ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... a helpless invalid and together with her bedridden father lived day after day imprisoned in the small tenement overlooking the rushing, hurrying world of which she was no part. Each morning Louise, Hal's younger sister, made tidy the house, packed up a luncheon, and the two started for Davis and Coulter's spinning mills where all day they helped to operate the busy machinery. It was a noisy, monotonous occupation; a stretch ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... minute or two! No one couldn't think o' nothin' to say, f'r the only thing to say was suthin' 't no one in their senses would think o' sayin', but o' course some one had to say it, 'n' Mrs. Craig got up at last 'n' with the tears standin' in her eyes 'n' a kind o' sad look all around her nice tidy house, she sort o' sighed out, 'We must have the organ Sundays, 'n' I'll take Augustus.' There was a air o' bein' sorry for her all over, but every one was so glad it was her 'n' not them 't they couldn't help bein' more relieved 'n anythin' else, 'n' then we all remembered 't we was hot, 'n' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Raquin who had to arrange the rooms and tidy up the shop. Therese at last lost patience at seeing the good old lady incessantly turning round and round before her eyes; she engaged a charwoman, and forced her aunt to be seated ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... devolved on him were trying. He had to scrub and keep the mess clean and tidy; to draw all the provisions and prepare them for cooking; then, to take them to the galley, and fetch them when cooked. That this last was no simple matter, such as any shore-going tail-coated waiter might undertake, was brought forcibly out ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... it?" he droned, and his complaining voice was deadly again. "So that's it! But he wasn't so far gone that he couldn't put up a tidy little battle, was he? Funny about that, too, but I could always do my best little jobs of man-handling when I was about ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... communication with the town where they sell their corn, oil, vegetables, and wine, and easily getting confused with the lower class of artizans with whom they doubtless largely intermarried. These peasants whom we see in tidy kilted tunics and leathern gaiters, driving their barrel-laden bullock carts, or riding their mules up to the red city gates in many a Florentine and Sienese painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... dinner with faithful Miss Prue, then, accompanied by a goodly little procession, walked down to the beach, where Jasper Norris, who had somehow happened home a few days before, was waiting with his tidy little wherry to row them across the bay to Norcross, where they would reach the railroad, their goods having been sent by wagon a day or two before. It was curious to see how differently each of the Olmstead group was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... parts again for half a score o' years at least. He added that he'd done his work as usual while the master was away; but he didn't mention that Hyssop Burges had made so bold as to call at Dunnabridge with a pony and cart, and that she'd spent a tidy long time there, and gone all over the house and farmyard, among other places, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... that there was actually a fixed rate at which smuggled goods were conveyed from place to place; for instance, for tea or tobacco from the Solway to Edinburgh the tariff was fifteen shillings per box or bale. A man, therefore, owning three or four horses could, with luck, make a very tidy profit on the carriage, for each horse would carry two packages, and the distances were not great. There was certainly a good sporting chance of the convoy being captured in transit, but the smugglers were daring, determined men, and the possibility of a ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... collected in mid-channel between Newhaven and Dieppe by the engineers of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway in stoppered glass carboys. The author has used the combustion method, the albuminoid ammonia, and in some cases the oxygen process of Prof. Tidy. To determine how the various methods of water-analysis were effected by a change of the organic matter from organic compounds in solution to organisms in suspension, some experiments were made with hay-infusion. The results confirm those ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... thought Jacinth, as she cut and folded and manipulated the brown paper entrusted to her charge for the books' new coats, rewarded by her aunt's 'Very nice—very nice indeed, my dear,' when it was time to go home, and she pointed out the neat little pile of clean tidy volumes. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... a tidy sum of money on deposit with the bank at one per cent., if he wants to employ a sum for a short time, say for the purchase of cattle, he prefers to raise the money on a ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... that any strain was being put upon his intelligence. His attention was centred upon the woman who faced him, flushed with gaiety and pleasure, not alone because she was once more with her father, but also because she unexpectedly was looking her best. If she had been well suited in her tidy pongee travelling costume, she found her evening gown no less becoming. It was a black affair, very simple and individual; her shoulders rose from it with intensified purity of tone, like fair white ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... light-hearted man than before. His smile was less ironical, his politeness less distant. He did not study Machiavelli so intensely,—and he did not return to the spectacles; which last was an excellent sign. Moreover, the humanising influence of the tidy English wife might be seen in the improvement of his outward or artificial man. His clothes seemed to fit him better; indeed, the clothes were new. Mrs. Dale no longer remarked that the buttons were ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... glance, Agnes made the necessary change in her dress, as quickly as possible. On her way back to the drawing-room she was addressed by a chambermaid in the corridor who asked for her key. 'I will put your room tidy for the night, Miss,' the woman said, 'and I will then bring the key back ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... light, the three articles took on real significance. The spectacles I fancied were Miss Emily's. They were, to all appearances, the duplicates of those on her tidy bedside stand. But the handkerchief was not hers. Even without the scent, which had left it, but clung obstinately to the pages of the book, I knew it was not hers. It was florid, embroidered, and cheap. And held close to the light, I made out a laundry-mark in ink ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... A tidy old woman, in coif and white apron over her black gown, bowed her head as she answered his question. The good father was in. Would the stranger walk ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... kitchen that was as usual tidy to the last degree; the General, however, true to the influence of his environment, was busy with a tiny broom and dustpan. Emma sat in the window reading, and on the stove something simmered ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... "No such good luck as that. Still, it is a tidy little fortune. Let me see if I can ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... which were placed with an eye to attract attention, and these the Girl prized most highly: one was a homemade rocking-chair that had been made out of a barrel and had been dyed, unsuccessfully, with indigo blue, and had across its back a knitted tidy with a large, upstanding, satin bow; the other was a homemade, pine wardrobe that had been rudely decorated by one of the boys of the camp and in which the Girl kept her dresses, and was piled up high towards the ceiling with souvenirs of her trip to Monterey, including the hat-boxes ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... good a business to be let drop," replied Mr. Tulliver; "but I shouldn't think that young lady upstairs would be much of a hand at trade. I wouldn't mind offering a fair price for the business,—I've got a tidy little bit of money put away, though my salary has been small enough, goodness knows; but I've lived with the old gentleman, and never wasted a penny upon pleasure; none of your music-halls, or ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... do," Uncle John would say, "is to keep the garden clean and tidy, and to water the plants every morning so that they may be very green." And Toby would go and whisper this to the baby, and she would stare at the ceiling with large, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... to see her start. Sometimes my father would have me brought out, and take me before him on his horse for a few minutes. But my nurse never allowed this if a ready excuse could prevent it. Her care of me was maternal in its tenderness, but she did not keep me tidy enough for me to ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... happen? Well, it was one morning when they came to tidy up the lumber-room; they threw it really rather roughly on the floor, but a servant dragged it off at once downstairs, where ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... of the woman was shown in thus organizing and allowing no one to teach who was not duly prepared. These students were obliged to pay a good stiff tuition, which fact made them appreciative. In turn they went out and taught; all students paid the tidy sum of one hundred dollars for the lessons, which fee was later cut to fifty. Salvation may be free, but Christian Science costs money. The theological genus piker, with his long, wrinkled, black coat, his collar buttoned behind, and his high hat, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard |
