"Darned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... isn't a Hun, I'm a Dutchman!" said Tommy to himself. "And running the show darned systematically too—as they always do. Lucky I didn't roll in. I'd have given the wrong number, and there would have been the deuce to pay. No, this is the place for me. Hullo, here's ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity: "Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly darned?" ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... on this blazing and dusty day. Their bower of wicker chairs crackled in the heat. It was too hot for sustained conversation. Once Barney Bill said: "If Bob"-Bob was the old horse's unimaginative name—"if Bob doesn't have a drink soon his darned old hide'll crack." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... blush to think I never took notice how they are tattered. I have no fewer than three women in the house, and in a summer's evening, only two hours long, the worst of these rags might have been darned across. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... singing that song. Cleverest dodging I ever did! On the first night I was so nervous I could scarcely hold the mandolin. I'd never played the infernal thing before anybody at all—only up in my bedroom. I struck the first chord, and found the darned instrument was all out of tune with the orchestra. So I just pretended to play it, and squawked away with my song, and never let my fingers touch the strings at all. Old Florance was waiting for me in the wings. I knew he was going to fire me. But ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... woolen socks will habitually be worn for marching. Cotton socks will not be worn unless specifically ordered by the surgeon. The socks will be large enough to permit free movement of the toes, but not so loose as to permit of wrinkling. Darned socks, or socks with holes in them, will not be ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... be darned to match the pattern, following the flowers of the design, and large holes may be mended like the "Scouts' Patch" just described. To sew on buttons properly, leave them loose enough for the iron to push. ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... answered, slowly. "It's a rigged-up heliograph, and they're using the Morse code; dash my eyes if they aren't. Well, this is civilization! What the dickens can have come to the island of Boupari? There isn't a darned European soul in the place, nor ever has been. Anchorage unsafe; no harbor; bad reef; too small for missionaries to make a living, and natives got nothing worth speaking ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... settlers was of the most varied description. Here and there was one who had brought with him the tight knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes of polite society. But many had arrived with only what was on their backs; and these soon found their garments, no matter how carefully darned and patched, succumb to the effects of time and labour. It was not long before the settlers learnt from the Indians the art of making clothing out of deer-skin. Trousers made of this material were found both comfortable ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... brought our own chairs with us would wait in the corridor for one of the blind to propel us along while we would do the guiding ourselves, giving directions to our steeds in nautical terms, such as: "Starboard a little!" "Steady, steady, you idiot!" "Hard aport!" "Quick!" "Now, you darned fool, you jolly nearly smashed that window!" When we got to the door of the hall, we would be piloted into the area reserved for carriages, and so tightly were we jammed that it took about twenty minutes to ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... and I followed her. I could see she wasn't a person who wasted words. Inside a little fire was smouldering, and seated with his back to us was a big, broad-shouldered buck, with a dark blanket wrapped around him. 'Your good wife,' I began cheerily—I was getting pretty darned sick of silence—'has allowed me to make some tea over your fire. Have some? I'm shipwrecked from a canoe and on my way to Lower Post. If you don't understand what I say, it doesn't make the slightest difference, but for God's sake grunt—just once, to show you're ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... manner of announcing unexpected departures. Bud read the letter, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it toward the little heating stove. "If that's the way yuh feel about it, I'll tell the world you can go and be darned!" he snorted, and tried to let that end the matter so far as he was concerned. But he could not shake off the sense of having been badly used. He did not stop to consider that while he was working off his anger, that day, Marie ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... in the middle of the day; she helped to detain Master Ward at the tea-table, and to keep his wig and knee-buckles from too early an appearance and too thorough a soaking of his self-conceit and wilfulness at his tavern; and she heard the lads their lessons, while she darned ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... pride!" the lieutenant added, in a lower tone. "Almost ready to keel over from lack of food, but stiff as a cigar-store Indian. Darned if I'm not beginning ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... two rooms, a light-closet and a kitchen, and was low-ceilinged and poorly furnished, but there was a distinct air of cleanliness about it, with a consequent tendency to comfort. The carpet of the chief room was very old, but it had been miraculously darned and patched. The table was little larger than that of a gigantic doll's-house, but it was covered with a clean, though threadbare, cloth, that had seen better days, and on it lay several old and well-thumbed ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... rotten 'Last Rose of Summer' are driving me mad. I could stand lots of both if we were doing well. They might be forty overproof and played by forty bands, and every darned piccolo of them out of tune, if only we were making money. Come, let's up stick and away. We can't do worse and we might do better on that bit of 'reef Mammerroo talks about. Here, Mammerroo, stop that blasted ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... is a cool one! This is no vulgar darned occasion! I need all my wits to-day!" He was studying over the brief words when the ready waiter took his order for a cosy breakfast. He had deliberately moved out all his lines to an easy comfort, throwing out a line of pickets ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... was, had to suffice, without even being repaired. Felicite, however, who keenly felt the necessity for this parsimony, exerted herself to give fresh polish to all the wreckage; she herself knocked nails into some of the furniture which was more dilapidated than the rest, and darned the frayed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Tippoo Tib buried. If you found one lot, that would lead you to the next, and so on. I got a suspicion where one lot is, although I couldn't prove it. And I made up my mind that the German government knows darned well where ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... which, for all the show it made, might have been a man's own hair. He wore no sword. His hat lacked feather and lace. His coat and breeches were but black drugget, shiny at each corner of him and rusty everywhere. His stockings were worsted, and darned even on his excellent calves. His shoes had strings where buckles should have been, and mere black heels—and low heels at that. As you know, he could walk at a round pace with them—a preposterous, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... "This darned library shut its doors," he would growl to himself, "just as the real dope was coming along. But there's been such a flood of it ever since that some leaked in in ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... the car. We're not rich, and I don't sport a car to go to lectures with, like Hoofy and a lot of other fellows, so ours always looks darned good to me when I get home. Mother understands how I'm crazy to drive the minute I can get my hands on the wheel, so without an invitation I put her into the seat beside me and took the driver's place myself. She settled down, same as ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... story teller, 'Dick come the possum over him; made b'lieve he was drunk, though he warn't, no more'n I ar; but he tuk darned good keer ter see the ole man get well slewed, he did. Wall, wen the ole feller wus pooty well primed, Dick stuck his arm inter his'n, toted him off ter the stable, and fotched out a ole spavin'd, wind-galled, used-up, broken-down critter, thet couldn't gwo a rod, 'cept ye got another ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it pours bad luck,—mother scolds because you did not sweep your room carefully; father threatens because of an approach to familiarity with the new young man over the way; brother frets because his stockings are not well darned; lessons all went wrong in the morning; your best friend said a careless word to you; you have broken the main-spring of your watch, and spilt coffee on your new dress,—why, these are all trifles! I know a ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... area bell, after giving the usual three knocks and a half to the brass lion's head on the door, it was opened by the boy Benjamin in a new drab coat, with a blue collar, and white sugar-loaf buttons, drab waistcoat, and black velveteen breeches, with well-darned ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... a' right!" stammered Zebedee, too dazed to take in the whole matter at once. "What is it, lad, eh? They darned galoots ha'n't a tracked 'ee, have 'em? By the hooky! but they'm givin' 't us hot and strong this time, Adam: they was trampin' 'bout inside here a minit agone, tryin' to keep our sperrits up by a-rattlin' the bilboes in our ears. Why, however ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... piano, open and inviting, showing evidence of constant use; shabby, comfortable chairs; a large desk with many pigeon-holes, very neat and business-like. Indeed, the whole room, despite its odd agglomeration of furnishings, was neat, meticulously neat, even to the spotless curtains, darned in many places by Jemima and the ladies of the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... equally clear. It was like closing his eyes one minute and opening them the next. He lay on a hospital bed, his head swathed in bandages. That seemed all right. He had been wounded in the charge against the Boche, and they had carried him to a field-hospital. He was darned lucky to have come out ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... was that these facts never clouded his convictions or discouraged him. He had a faith over and above the vain pomps and show of this world. He wore clothes so old they glistened along every seam, and little thin white ties, and darned shirts, and was forever stinting himself further for the sake of some collection to which he wanted to contribute. And all these made him an embarrassingly impressive figure when he looked out over the gew-gaws ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... understood?" said Johnny Byrd. "That I was going to marry you—because I kissed you?" And with that dreadful hostile grimness he insisted, "You knew darned well I wasn't proposing ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... till I seed him leanin' for'ard on his horse, clost to the track we oughter take. From this I suspicioned him; but, gettin' a leetle closter, I seed his gun an' fixin's strapped to the saddle. So I tuk a sight, and whumelled him. The darned mustang got away with his traps. This hyur's the only thing worth takin' from his carcage: it wudn't do much ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... on a zartin day Four-score o' the sheep they rinned astray: Says vather to I, 'Jack, rin arter 'm, du!' Sez I to vather, 'I'm darned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... or about it; or will think it a very perfect country, and be apt to regard any deviation from its general principle of flatness with extreme disfavour; as the Lincolnshire farmer in Alton Locke: "I'll shaw 'ee some'at like a field o' beans, I wool—none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards—all so vlat as a barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end—there's ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Miss Wingate as she blushed guiltily. "I—darned it." And she handed her handiwork over to Mother Mayberry with ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... keep running backwards and forwards leaving a few at a time. I've got something else to do. There's three pair of your socks in the basket waiting to be darned, ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... is real, life is earnest, and I'm not demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could—that is—would you—do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. Not pink, but not all grey either. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... one hundred and thirty-five years old. The showing did not disconcert him, however. He was interested, but he had told those stories so often and had come to believe each of them so implicitly that he could not doubt them in the aggregate. He simply exclaimed: "Well, I'll be darned! I feel like a ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... nevertheless, "A sacret's a sacret, though, and the ould lady had no right to tell it. It was the dead man's sacret too, and she's fouled the ould man's memory. If a person's done wrong, the best thing he can do next is to say darned little about it." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... as it meant anything, so he went in. Bannon, already in his shirt and trousers, stood with his back to the door, his face in the washbowl. As he scoured he sputtered. Max could make little out of it, for Bannon's face was under water half the time, but he caught such phrases as "Pete's darned foolishness," "College boy trick," "Lie abed all the morning," and "Better get an alarm clock"— which thing and the need for it Bannon greatly despised—and he reached the conclusion that the matter was nothing more serious than that Bannon ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... thirty dollars in my clothes," he told Percival, "but what made me so darned hot, he took my breastpin, too, made out of the first nugget ever found in the Early Bird mine over Silver Bow way. Gee! when I woke up I couldn't tell where I was. This cop that found me in a hallway, he says I must have been give a ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... two miles from Shelby, I should reckon. Perhaps we'd better get along. They told me in Greenbriar that the Grand Central Hotel in Shelby is a good place to stop at. That's why I wasn't anxious to get there. It sounds so darned like New York." ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... astonished. Then he lowered his gun. "The nerve uh the darned——Say! don't go off mad," he yelled, his anger evaporating, changing on the instant to admiration for the other's cold-blooded courage. "Yuh spilled all the whisky, darn yuh—but then I guess yuh don't know any better'n t' spoil good stuff that away. No hard feelin's, anyhow. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... extremely sensitive to tones, cocked an eye up at Bill before he deliberately peeled, from the roll he drew from his pocket, enough twenty dollar notes to equal the number of weeks Bill had worked for him. "And that's paying you darned good money for apprentice work," he informed him drily, a little hurt by Bill's lack of appreciation. For when you take a man from the streets because he is broke and hungry and homeless, and feed him and give him work and clothes and three meals a day and a warm bed to sleep in, if you ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... wasn't amused any longer, and he held the younger man back. "You're doing us a favor, and I'll be darned if I'll let you stick your neck out too far. You can't treat 'em yourself. Mars is tougher than Earth. You should live under Space Lobby and Medical Lobby here a while. Oh, maybe they don't mind a few fools ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... served every age and sex. But Martha's department was, perforce, the unwed male section. No self-respecting wife or mother would allow laundry-darned hose or shirts to reflect on her housekeeping habits. And what woman, ultra-modern though she be, would permit machine-mended stockings to desecrate her bureau drawers? So it was that Martha ministered, for the most part, to those boarding house bachelors living within delivery-wagon proximity ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... beautiful to look at. There were windows in deep notches, between gables where there was no look-out except at the pears on the wall, awkward windows, quite bewildering. A workman came to mend one one day, and could not get at it. "Darned if I ever seed such a crooked picter of ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... old clo'es amaist as weel as new." Carpets were darned and scoured and turned; the time-honored furniture was patched and polished; and their fair hands did not shrink from putting on a fresh coat of paint, or paper, now and then. Under severe pressure of temptation they parted with several pieces of old mahogany during ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... he, "I didn't use to take much stock in special Providence, or things being ordered; but I'm darned if I don't believe in them from this day. I was bound to stay where you put me, but I was uneasy, and wild to be in the scrimmage; and, if I had been there, I wouldn't have taken notice of a little red light that wasn't much behind the rear platform when we stopped. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... "Well, I'll be darned if I'm goin' to wait any longer," the first speaker whined. "I'm tired an' sleepy, an' want to go home. I wish to G— that Ben would do his own ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... true. Folks will pay a darned sight more to be amused than they will to be exalted. Look at the way a man shells out five bones for a couple of theatre seats, or spends a couple of dollars a week on cigars without thinking of it. Yet two dollars or five dollars for a book costs him positive anguish. ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... latter "so long that they came down to the garter;" his doublet was of leather, old and soiled; his shoes were heavy and slashed for the ease of his feet; his stockings of green yarn had been much worn, were darned at the knees, and without feet; and an old grey steeple-crowned hat, without band or lining, with a crooked thorn stick, completed the royal habiliments. The six brothers attended him with arms; two kept in advance, two followed behind, and one walked ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... there, a broad calladium leaf swayed majestically to and fro in a passing breeze, and the locusts sang shrilly in the trees overhead. Upstairs in her own room, Theodora rocked lazily, humming to herself while she darned her stockings. ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... trying my best," stated Johnson, "to varnish that spot for the past five minutes. But I'll be darned if I can ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... when she got off the train," he went on. "She dropped something. I picked it up, but she was so darned pretty as she stood there looking about I didn't dare go up an' give it to her. If it had been worth anything I'd screwed up my courage. But it wasn't—so I just gawped like the others. It was a piece of paper. Mebby you'd like it as a souvenir, seein' ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... ask our Nancy Wether I'd be sech a goose Ez to jine ye,—guess you'd fancy The etarnal bung wuz loose! She wants me fer home consumption, Let alone the hay 's to mow,— Ef you 're arter folks o' gumption, You've a darned long row ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the air was filled with yells and whoops; our tormentors rushed off pell-mell, the guards only remaining. I asked what was the meaning of this new outbreak; to which the trapper replied that he supposed it was caused by the arrival of a new lot of those "gosh darned ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... darned all right," said Sloane coolly, as he pocketed his stethoscope. "Come, let me help you up. We're going ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... pushing aside the curtains that concealed the foot of the wee stair; "I'd forgotten. Well, you'll meet him to-night, anyhow; he came on the five-five. Holly's a nice fellow, only he's so darned over-full of good advice that ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... the fashionable style of netting, with a pattern darned on it after it is worked. Make a foundation, on which work sixty-seven stitches. Repeat these, backwards and forwards, until a square is done, of as many holes up the sides as along the width. Remove the foundation, ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... considers that time is wasted on things that are not essential: "What we need," he has said, "are men capable of doing work. I wouldn't give a penny for the ordinary college graduate, except those from the institutes of technology. Those coming up from the ranks are a darned sight better than the others. They aren't filled up with Latin, philosophy, and the rest of that ninny stuff." A further remark of his is: "What the country needs now is the practical skilled engineer, who is capable ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... think I will. I have another field you know, in which I may be more useful. Cole here's a better technician than fighter—and a darned good fighter, too—and I think that an inexperienced space-captain is a lot less useful than a second-rate physicist at work in a laboratory. If we hope to get anywhere, or for that matter, I suspect, stay anywhere, we'll have to do a lot ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... of the church were covered. He was so charitable that he would have pawned himself to save an infidel from distress. His servants were obliged to look after him carefully. Ofttimes he would scold them when they changed unasked his tattered vestments for new; and he used to have them darned and patched, as long as they would hold together. Now this good archbishop knew that the late Sieur de Poissy had left a daughter, without a sou or a rag, after having eaten, drunk, and gambled away her inheritance. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions, even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably, after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated Hampton Court ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sat on the porch of Your Hotel, and, like the Greek Chorus, foretold the disasters that would befall, and prophesied nothing but evil for the entire enterprise. Even the urbane Jimmy became ruffled by her insistent iteration, and declared that she "put him in mind of a darned ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... who there maintain their ground with no surrender. His old blouse, patched with pieces of different shades, indicated the perseverance of an industrious mother struggling against the wear and tear of time; his trousers were become too short, and showed his stockings darned over and over again; and it was evident that his shoes were not ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... monument, the Stevenson monument, the Spreckles band stand, the place where the Vigilance Committee hung the unruly, and tonight I went to a dinner the Bohemian Club gave to the War correspondents. I made a darned good speech. Think of ME making a speech of any sort, but I did, and I had sense enough not to talk about the war but the "glorious climate of California" instead and of all the wonders of Frisco. So, I made a great hit. It certainly is one of the few cities that lives up to it's ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... always draw me afresh as if they were as young as the new children who keep the world from growing old. They haunt me, and if I miss them in heaven, I shall have one given me. On the floor was an old, old carpet, wondrously darned and skilfully patched, with all its colours faded into a sweet faint ghost-like harmony. Several spider-legged, inlaid tables stood about the room, but most of the chairs were of a sturdier make, one or two of rich carved ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... have quite a long wait. I've found it takes some little time to wake the head of the house and get him to the 'phone. And say, he's the darndest grouch I've ever tackled. Get's sore as a crab. But we've got him where we want him. He knows darned well if he kicks up a row, she'll quit and his wife couldn't get anybody in her place for love or money these days. I was sayin' only the other night—" Again lowering his voice: "Is this Plaza 00100? ... I want to speak ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... and wrung it effusively. He really did love Eleanor, you know. The only fault with him was his being so darned humble about it. He was eaten up with a sense of his own inferiority. And yet I could see he was just tingling to go to Morristown. Of course, I crowded him all I could, but the best I could accomplish was his promise to "think it over." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... cherry-tree was known in Asia in the year of Rome 680. Seventy different species of cherries, wild and cultivated, exist, which are distinguishable from each other by the difference of their form, size, and colour. The French distil from cherries a liqueur Darned kirsch-waser (eau de cerises); the Italians prepare, from a cherry called marusca, the liqueur named marasquin, sweeter and more agreeable than the former. The most wholesome cherries have a tender and delicate skin; those with a hard skin ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... "It's all so darned complicated that I don't rightly know which is the beginning. Well, see here . . . I collect scarabs. I'm crazy about scarabs. Ever since I quit business, you might say that I ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... gateway, the mare in the straightway Was shifting and dancing, and pawing the ground, The boy saw me enter and wheeled for his canter, When a darned great mosquito came ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... clothes and immaculate, exquisitely darned linen, call daily with small gifts of fruit and flowers, and send you messages from which you infer that the sun won't be able to shine properly until you come outside again. And there isn't a housekeeper of your acquaintance who hasn't got you on her ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... you to make up your mind to sell it at all. And then to hear these people talk about your wishing to sell it! Perhaps they think, too, we wish to live in a place like this; that we wish to have rugs that are darned, and chairs that are broken, and garments that are patches instead ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... it had contracted the dim, melancholy aspect which is the result of prolonged scarcity of money. Nothing had been spent on the place for years. Magdalen seemed to have faded together with the curtains, and the darned carpets, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... look after your business in his place. Now, madam, I wish it to be distinctly understood in the outset, that whatever transpires between us, so far as this business is concerned, must be kept strictly confidential, by no means, must this matter be allowed to leak out; if it does, the darned abolitionists (excuse me), may ruin me; at any rate we should not be able to succeed in getting your slave. I am ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and having a good time before the school gates were opened. While a prisoner, I did all sorts of odd jobs, patched, mended, darned, wrote letters, and chopped down two trees. The latter was a little out of my line, but the trees were eaten up with caterpillars, and as I could not get anybody to cut them down, I sallied forth and did it myself. My chef stood by and admired the job, but he would not assist ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... "Darned bad tower for a village of palaces!" he thought, not of the Tower of London, but of the tower of the Workhouse which he was now approaching. He thought he could design an incomparably better tower than that. And he saw himself ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... nothing. Here's my proposition. Give me ten per cent to act as your personal agent, and I'll guarantee that your total percentage for commissions will be less than at present, and that your prices will be doubled. Of course I can't do much while the police and others are so darned interested in me, so if you accept we'll just date the agreement ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the seat of the breeches held his gaze. It seemed so odd somehow that Nelson's breeches should be darned. It was the last thing he should have suspected of the hero of Aboukir Bay. He longed to put out his finger and feel it, that darn in Nelson's breeches. Was it real?—or was it a dream-darn? It was real; he could swear it. And it helped him. There was something comfortably ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Greer looked around the dim place with its little crowd of still, silent, armed men, and chuckled again. "Darned if it isn't as good as ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... darned," he said, thoughtfully, "if I can make head or tail of it! It would be funny if it wasn't that she's taking it so hard. She was in bed, and she had been crying—wouldn't ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... blower and bloat, a gas-bag and fanfaron, a Gascon and a carajo, alma miserabile, and a pudding-head, a sacre menteur and a verfluchte prahlerische Hauptesel, a brassy old blunder-head and a spupsy, un sot sans pareil and a darned old hoffmagander; a pepper-pot-pourri, a thafe of the wurreld and an owld baste, the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bewildered master withdrew with his armed men, he turned once more to the mob. "Come on! Step lively, now! No rushing! Take your turn. Every blasted one of you, I mean. What the hell are you hanging back for,—you? You were so darned eager to go a little while ago, what's the matter with you now? No one's trying to stop you. Here are the boats. Put up your guns and knives, and pile in. You're absolutely free to go, you swine. We'll be damned good and rid of you, and that's all we're asking. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... painted sides to the audience, for they were made only to be seen on one side. The acting was wonderful, excepting that sometimes they came out beyond the lamps, because the wires were a little too long. The doll, whose neck had been darned, was so excited that the place in her neck burst, and the money-pig declared he must do something for one of the players, as they had all pleased him so much. So he made up his mind to remember one of them in his will, as the one to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... But I do mean it about Thompson. There's no sense in saying there was nothing queer about the way he came back and was found dead—because there was! It was natural enough that the police couldn't trace him in Montreal, for I hadn't a sign of data to give them: but it's darned unnatural that I can't trace him in Caraquet. I've sieved the whole place upside down, and nobody ever saw Thompson after he left Billy Jones's that morning ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... were in the tower, the younger, timid, in spite of his great black eyes, hugging close to his brother. They resembled one another, but the elder had the stronger and more thoughtful face. Their dress was poor, patched, and darned. The wind beat in the rain a little, where they were, and set the flame of ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... service while I dressed the next morning. Having made my appearance as decent as possible, I walked across some fields to a small church. On the way home to dinner I noticed a stream which looked extremely tempting. Mrs. Riddles had spread a clean but much-darned tablecloth, and the roast pork was ready. During the meal, the rain, which had been threatening since yesterday, began to fall, but when it ceased at half-past three I borrowed a towel, and ran across the damp fields to the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... you have us do?" he cried, with a laugh that was more than half angry. "Do you think we're goin' to sit around this darned diagram of a town readin' temperance tracts, just because somebody guesses we haven't the right to souse liquor? Think we're goin' to suck milk out of a kid's feeder, just because you boys in red coats figure that ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... is how Jack got the name of 'Socks Smith,'" concluded Mr. Bishop, when the laughter had subsided. "For riskin' his life he got all those nice warm socks and a nickname that uster make him so darned mad that I suppose he's had a hundred fights on account of it, and I'm not certain he won't poke me in the jaw when he gets me alone for tellin' this ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul. She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar- cloths. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... yer givin' us?" returned Bobby, and, with an unmistakably superior air, he faced again toward the scene before them. "I can see the whole darned ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... I have made over my blue calico, and you would be surprised to see how well it looks; and my best frock, when it is washed and darned, will answer some time longer. And then Mrs. Grant has given me a ribbon, and when my bonnet is whitened and trimmed it will look very well. And so," she added, "I brought you some wine this afternoon; you know the doctor says you ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... worse of you for it, no, darned if I do. Fine pluck in a woman's what I admire. That ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... get sir-ing me, now," said the official sticking out his jaw. "This is a free country, and I'll have no darned cheek." ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... ha'n't done nothin' to it," said Philetus dismally,—there was teu on 'em afore I started, and I took and tied 'em together and hitched 'em onto the stick, and that one must ha' loosened itself off some way.—I believe the darned thing ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... and carried off to their mess, jabbering in high glee over their treasure trove. Any of us were ready to eat a piece of dog, cat, horse or mule, if we could get it, but, it was generally agreed, as Dawson, of my company expressed it, that "Nobody but one of them darned queer Lost Ducks would eat a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... it's twelve o'clock. You can't sleep here, you know. Say! ain't you got no sentiment? Lift up your muddled head; Have a drink to the glad New Year, a drop before you go— You darned old dirty hobo ... My God! Here, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... I was back again in the House. All those old days with Claremont and Trundle, the footer; and all that. We had a darned fine time. Make the most of it while ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... "They were darned afraid of their trade being interfered with, you see," explained her brother. "I believe you could use an all blue calico and of course there was no objection to making cotton cloth into underclothes; also you ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... did need it, but the boys have generally been able to see that one of those two days was election day. There's no necessity for Jim's putting in his paper—a character like that—no necessity at all—he'd much better be comfortable in bed. This time, I'm darned if the old boozer hasn't sworn off! Tells the boys he's on to their game, and there's no liquor in this town that's good enough to get him to lose his vote—wouldn't get drunk on champagne. He's held out for ten days already, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of her household single-handed. As her Counsel later described it,—and see all she did for him!—"She waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washer-woman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for his wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence." Thus Sergeant Buzfuz, duly "instructed." Not only was there Mr. Pickwick, but there was another lodger, and ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... around to yours. But I figured I'd better make sure the Brain was functioning properly." He grew confidential. "You know, that darned machine ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his thread-bare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of th' time suppose that would satisfy a man long. Only I was so darned tired I couldn't help wantin' t' rest. But I'm not so selfish ur s' narrow as to be satisfied with THAT. No, I'm not goin' t' spend m' ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... there was to come a change. No longer need the carefully sponged and darned black alpaca gowns flaunt their wearers' poverty to the world, and no longer would they force these same wearers to seek dark corners and sunless rooms, lest the full extent of that poverty become known. It had taken forty years of the most rigid economy to save the necessary ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... sacrifice. Hunger and want were traced upon her features in lines as legible as those of timidity and ascetic habits. Her clothing showed vestiges of luxury. It was of silk, well-worn; the mantle was clean, though faded; the laces carefully darned; in short, here were the rags of opulence. The two shopkeepers, divided between pity and self-interest, began to soothe their conscience ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a cunning little velvet glove," said Westley Keyts, in deep disgust as he left us. "It looks to me a darned sight more like a hand of mush in a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... ain't workin' fur a cent either, an' I drove round thinkin' I'd fetch Willie home with me to have a look at it. He's got a knack with such things an' I calculate he'd know what's the matter with it. Darned if I do." ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... foolishness in going to sleep that day; but let that pass, because perhaps it would have been worse if we had not been put on our guard; not but that it would take a d—d smart cannibal to eat Hiram Whitson. But this is what I am coming to: you, my boy, are a darned sight too fond of hearing your own tongue clack. Now, take a warning from me, and don't let a word of what has happened since we left camp for Pietermaritzburg pass your lips. I did all the shooting, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it; but, by the eternal ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... he murmured. "Now I wonder why both her an' my fat friend are so darned worried. Who were they lookin' for when they opened the door an' saw me? An' why did it get her goat when I asked where ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... went off. Or rather, was cut off. We may have missed the boat in getting anti-gravity, if there is such a thing, but our artificial gravity is darned ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... crinkling at the corners of his mouth—a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... thought of the Terror's face, his charming sympathetic manners, and his darned knickerbockers. It was only right that some of Lady Ryehampton's money should go to him; indeed that money ought to be educating him at a good school. It was monstrous that the great bulk of it should be spent on cats; ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... you do," Rufus remarked. "I am at a similar loss myself to understand you. My store of sensible remarks is copious on most occasions—but I'm darned if I ain't dried up in the face of this! Might I venture to ask what that venerable Chief Christian at Tadmor would say to the predicament in which I find my young Socialist ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Dodds was not content with doing all those things with such severity of love or duty. She was always telling herself what she intended to do, either at the moment or afterwards. "This pan needs to be scoured." "Thae stockings maun be darned." "This sark is as black as the lum, and maun be plotted." "The floor needs scrubbing." "Tammas's coat is crying, 'A steek in time saves nine,' and by my faith it says true;" and so on. Nor did it signify much whether ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; We think it's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints, Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth sha'n't be spiled," Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;— "Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, "It perfectly true is Thet slavery's airth's grettest ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... darned happy, either. They're too busy. Guess it's a good thing I went back to me grasshopper in the last verse. And now, ladies and gents, this is posituvely the last appearance of the noted electrocutionist, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... admitted, starting for the door. "I know you're a good chap at heart—top-hole, of course!—but I shouldn't have supposed you were as good as all that. I'll be darned if I should!" ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... downright sort of girl who never under any circumstances could trouble herself about dress. She wore her best Sunday frock, that was all, and her best hat, and her gloves were a little darned at the tips, but she looked like a lady and ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... decided that she would put on what she needed of them on the morrow, even though they were rumpled with long lying away. She even searched out an old pair of her own stockings and laid them on a chair with the other things. They were neatly darned as all things had always been under her stepmother's supervision. Further search brought a pair of partly worn prunella slippers to light, with ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... only had two or three times that amount we could run away and start again in New York, and not let Lulu make us over into a darned old ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... gosh, that's good! You, you darned gambler; you scum!" said Caleb, the brother who ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Captain he up and he says, says he, "That chap we need not fear,— We can take her, if we like, She is sartin for to strike, For she's only a darned Mounseer, D'ye see? ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... curtains, and pictures in the existing nurseries. They must be palaces compared with our great bare attic, where nothing was allowed that could gather dust. One bit of drugget by the fireside, where stood a round table at which the maids talked and darned stockings, was all that hid the bare boards; the walls were as plain as those of a workhouse, and when the London sun did shine, it glared into my eyes through the great unshaded windows. There was a deal table for the meals (and very plain meals they were), and two or three big presses painted ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "if this was in a novel I'd say that the lorry cut across my path deliberately. But as this is in real life and the lorry belongs to a firm of respectable grocers it can't be anything else but just my own darned bad luck." ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... glaring fiercely and embracing the whole party with a great, comprehensive roll, "you fellers is like a crowd o' coyotes around a bone. I 'lows Tresler ain't an a'mighty deal better'n a bone about now, but his lugs ain't deef. Y're jest a gorl-darned lot o' oneddicated hoboes." ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... up their tin cans, and one by one returned North—certainly wiser and, possibly, better men. It was peculiar to note the universality of southern sympathy among these traders. There was scarcely one among them who didn't think the war "a darned shame;" they were intensely sympathetic and all came from South of the Pennsylvania line. But the supporters, either of their principles, or their trade, were the few lucky negroes who could collect ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... foul of an awkward predicament, which is that there are some darned decent fellows among the officers of their army of occupation. There's more than a scattering of decent gentlemen who don't like dirt. I won't say they tell Feisul secrets, or disobey orders; but if you want to give a man a square deal there are ways of doing it ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... night, Mrs. Lee, and when it's very cold I put them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing, but when they don't bloom he says, 'What's the matter with the darned things?'—What do ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... "I'm a New Englander and I'm frank to admit that I've wandered a long way from the old ideals, like most of the New Englanders in America. But that isn't saying, gentlemen, that I'm not—not darned ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... fishing all day today and taik my dinner with me but of coarse i had to come back at one oh clock to feed that darned old sheep. i wish we lived in a ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... this was the one place in which he could make sure of finding quiet. The sisters sat on the log-bench before the house; and, without seeing them, Mahony knew to a nicety how they were employed. Polly darned stockings, for John's children; Sarah was tatting, with her little finger stuck out at right angles to the rest. Mahony could hardly think of this finger without irritation: it seemed to sum up Sarah's whole outlook ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... him, in a front pew, sat his mother, a dried little old woman, with beady black eyes and a pointed chin, which jutted out from between the stiff taffeta strings of her poke bonnet. She gazed upward, clasping her Prayer-book in her black woollen gloves, which were darned in the fingers; and though she appeared to listen attentively to the sermon, she was wondering all the time if the coloured servant at home would remember to baste the roast pig she had left in the oven. To-day was the Reverend Orlando's birthday, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... we ask. "Just one darned thing after another," the cynic replies. Yes, a multiplicity of forces and interests, and each of them, even the disagreeable, may be of real help to us. It's good for a dog, says a shrewd philosopher, to be pestered with fleas; it keeps ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... said he, "and have lost a great part of the only wind we've had in this darned latitude ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... that Edward appeared. His route was the very centre of the lawn. He was wearing a battered Panama hat, a much-darned brownish jersey, and his nether man—or rather boy, for Edward's years are but four—was encased in paddling drawers made of the same material as a sponge-bag. Black sand-shoes completed his outfit, and a broken shrimping- net trailed behind him. At the moment when Edward ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various |
