"Dawdling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saying that housewives set their kitchen clocks by Eddie's transits to and from the factory. At any rate, there was no end to the occasions when shiftless gossips, dawdling on their porches, were surprised to see Eddie toddle ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... (1863) is a typical example. Here the dramatist sketches a tragic incident arising from the conflict of two social classes, the petty tradesmen and the nobility. From the coarse environment of the first emerge honest, upright natures like Krasnov; from the superficial, dawdling culture of the second come weak-willed triflers like Babayev. The sordid plot sweeps on to its inevitable ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... she could not: she expected company to dinner; she believed their brother, Lord Robert(697) would dine with them: I thought that a little odd, as they had Just turned him out for Oxfordshire; and I thought a dinner no cause at the distance of four miles. In her grace's dawdling way, she could fix no time: and so on Friday, at half an hour after seven, as I was going to Lady North's, they arrived; and the sun being setting, and the moon not risen, You may judge how much they could see through all the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of that book?" at length asked a man who had been dawdling for an hour in the front store of Benjamin Franklin's newspaper establishment. "One dollar," replied the clerk. "One dollar," echoed the lounger; "can't you take less than that?" "One dollar is the price," was ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a child on a pony tore into the weed-grown drive leading to the great mansion on the hill, scaring a lone darky who had been dawdling ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... from Alt Moldova to Milanovacz, we calculated that we might reach Maidenpek, our destination in Servia, the same day by borrowing a few hours from the night, as an Irishman would say. However, it turned out that there was so much bargaining and dawdling about at Milanovacz before we could settle on a conveyance that we did not get away till six o'clock—too late a great deal, considering the rough drive we had before us. Immediately after starting we began ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... train started, and there I sat in my glory till we got to Annapolis, just the sleepiest town, crowded full of the oldest houses and the slowest people that I ever saw in my born days. Some colored persons were dawdling around the depot, and a few lazy white folks passing down the street, stopped to look at us as we got out of the cars. Especially my white hat and double-breasted jacket seemed ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... with such celerity that before the dawdling punchers had entered the bunk-house, Buck was out of sight among the bushes which thickly lined the creek. From here he had no difficulty in making his way unseen around to the back of the barns and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Hawbury had just finished his dinner, and was dawdling about in a listless way, when Dacres entered, quite unceremoniously, and flung himself into a chair ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... is a handsome girl, with good abilities, who has had the sense to make the most and best of herself instead of dawdling." ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... minutes after Lanier went out, and went silent but in unspeakable wrath, Paymaster Scott came dawdling in, and though but a casual visitor at the post, just back that day from a tour of the northward camps and forts along the Indian border, he saw at a glance that something had gone amiss. The colonel was laboriously waltzing; three or four couples were mechanically following ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... it's very jolly. Find I get a trifle mixed afterwards, though. And, between ourselves, I wouldn't mind—now and then, you know—just dawdling about among the shops and people, as you and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... tarnation doesn't that good for nothing bring in the milk?" grumbled Mr. Peabody. "I declare he gets later and later every morning. The balers will be over to start work at seven, and if he thinks he's going to spend half an hour dawdling over his breakfast after they ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I found D— at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive—but that is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... be no prospect of its increasing materially for some time. A pair of hands could be spared; if they remained in the business all the workers would be condemned to semi-idleness. The old man could stand nothing as little as what he called dawdling. The only thing that was lacking was that our hero should resist. He knew nothing of his brother's plans. The latter had wisely not initiated him into them, because he knew him too well to expect his support in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... I lifted her once more in my arms—the fourth time that day—and started. I cursed the narrowness of the Pearl Brook. I could almost have hopped across it, but by dawdling aslant the stream I had her sweet face near mine in the moonlight, and my arms round her proud body, for a couple of minutes. "Yokel blood or not," I thought, "this is something my Lord Brocton ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... With dawdling, laughing and good-comradeship we chose our bonbons, and getting back into the barouche we proceeded to crunch them as we drove on to Monceaux. It was like being children over again, with a slight sense of being out of bounds. I had never seen confectionery eaten wholesale in that fashion. Such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the others were doing, and whether they had begun their fight. If it had not been for Dodds, he might have been with them now, instead of dawdling away the whole ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... saved Christendom from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was, at that time, strangely dilatory and irresolute. It was in vain that William and Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. "The Emperor's ministers go on dawdling," so the King wrote to Heinsius, "not because there is any difficulty about the matter, not because they mean to reject the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up their minds to nothing." While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn out into ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... when they pierced the tender places between one's claws, and no delicious morsel behind the spears could make up for a swollen mouth that would be sore and smarting for days—so sore that its owner, unable to eat, might die from sheer starvation. So the Porcupine passed under the tree in safety, dawdling on purpose as he caught sight of the crouching figure ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... But I never yet knew the time when this sly baggage would not please herself for all her seeming yielding to others, and we were yet to have more pain from her than she from us in respect of that skirt. For ere we had got half way through the town she, dawdling behind to look first in this shop and then in that, gave us the slip, so that we were best part of an hour hunting the streets up and down in the utmost anxiety. Then as we were sweating with our exercise and trouble, lo! she steps out of a shop as calm as you please in a petticoat ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... on, Why are we dawdling? All the heads are up, Steepled on spikes above the Scottish Gate,— Some of the rebels rarely ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... us awfully cheerful," said Major Hunt, when dinner was over, and they were dawdling over coffee. "Stella and I were feeling rather down on our luck, I believe, when you appeared, and now we've forgotten all about it. Do you always ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... piping hot but magnificent; corridor, piazza, colonnade, and garden were empty of life, except for a listless negro servant dawdling here and there. Virginia managed to find a wheel-chair under the colonnade and a fat black boy at the control to propel it; and with her letter hidden in her glove, and her heart racing, she seated herself, parasol tilted, chin in the air, and the chair rolled noiselessly ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that," he said once ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... was emptiness When the birds left in the fall. But to fill it came late butterflies, Dawdling flocks of brilliant things In clouds of scintillating beauty, Covering every bush and flower. As silently as they came did they disappear And in their place came the music Of the katydid and ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... pish! what is the use of anticipating trouble? Your plan is certainly the right one, and the sooner that we see about carrying it out the better. Now it is quite evident that there is no place of concealment in this room, so there is nothing to be gained by dawdling here. Also, we know that it is useless to retrace our steps; and yonder is obviously the kitchen, and must therefore be avoided. That leaves us with no resource but to try the big door; so come along and let us see how far our luck will ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... dawdling; set down and be quick about it—sup up your porridge without letting a drop of it get on your clean pinafores, or ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... fashionable society, against which Christophe raged on account of Grazia's preferences. More than he they hated the spirit of prudence, the apathy, the compromise, and buffoonery, the things half said, the amphibious thoughts, the subtle dawdling of the mind between all possibilities, without deciding on any one, the fine phrases, the sweetness of it all. They were all self-taught men who had pieced themselves together with everything they ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... fought, had I not so skillfully prevented it! Santa Maria, I truly must have been inspired, to act like the dove with the branch of the olive when I flew between them; and the eyes of Jose were blazing; and Senor Jack—" There came the smile again, and the dawdling of the brush while she thought of those two. So the pretty senora was forgotten, after all, and left to shiver over her mending in the prairie schooner because Teresita was a spoiled child with more hearts than it is good for a girl ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a confirmed valtudinarian, a day-dreamer, who had wasted away his life in dawdling and maundering over Simple Poetry, and sighing over his unhappy attachment; no child, no babe, was more ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gathering a rare good time. Far off, and now near, the girls were singing their quaint wild songs. Thus heard, the rondinella sounds well: it is of the woods and deserts; strange, barbaric, oriental, bacchantic, what you please, save dawdling drawing-room and piano-ic. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that her uprooted thoughts could fasten on. She would go away, of course; and meanwhile, in order not to see him, she would feign a headache, and remain in her room till after luncheon. Then she and Andora would pack a few things, and fly with the child while he was dawdling about up-stairs in the studio. When one's house fell, one fled from the ruins: nothing ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... cause as effectually by their mismanagement. Galway staid at Madrid, where his soldiers indulged in such boundless licentiousness that one half of them were in the hospitals. Charles remained dawdling in Catalonia. Peterborough had taken Requena, and wished to march from Valencia towards Madrid, and to effect a junction with Galway; but the Archduke refused his consent to the plan. The indignant general remained accordingly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was not the kind of man who, as a rule, cared to dawdle about all day with women when there was any kind of sport to be had from hunting down to ratting; more especially was he disinclined for any such dawdling when Helen Romer was amongst the number of the ladies so left to be danced attendance upon. And yet he distinctly told himself that he meant to be devoted for this one day to the fair sex. All yesterday he had been crossed and put out; the men had been ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... fall you have out-grown that one too. You pant like a lizard when you run to catch a car. You cross your legs and have to hold the crossed one on with both hands to keep your stomach from shoving it off in space. After a while you quit crossing them and are content with dawdling yourself on your own lap. You are fat! ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... with the family, she had put herself so entirely at the mercy of circumstances, that she never seemed scandalised by their crazy unpunctuality, their wonderful free and easy ways, and customs of putting things to every use but the right, did not censure Grace or Lucy for dawdling and gossiping whole mornings away, and took it naturally when their mother inquired after her eldest brother by the alternate names of Festus and Frank, and when she mentioned Lance's disaster as his coup d'etat. And here was the last of these pleasant ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chateau need know nothing of passing trains—which pass, indeed, though the grounds are not large, at a very sufficient distance. I may add that the trains throughout this part of France have a noiseless, desultory, dawdling, almost stationary quality, which makes them less of an offence than usual. It was a Sunday afternoon and the light was yellow save under the trees of the avenue, where, in spite of the waning of September, it was duskily green. Three or four peasants, in festal attire, were strolling about. On ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... enough for me. Of course, we must go as it's settled; but you won't catch me staying dawdling about, looking at the same old things over and over again as I see two years ago. I shall be off and ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt
... The dawdling of the tailor not only made me lose the mid-day train, but delayed my arrival in Nice for twenty-four hours. I took the night train to Pisa, where I purposed catching the express from Rome. But the express came slouching along in ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Frenchified Spaniards and Portuguese who gobble the guisillo madrileno at Don Jose's in the Rue Helder, nor the half-French Cossacks amid the potrokha in the Restaurant Cubat, nor the Orientals with the waxed moustachios and girlish waists who may be observed at moontide dawdling over their cafe a la Turque at Madame Louna Sonnak's. These are the Frenchmen of Paris no more than the habitues of Back Bay are the Americans of Boston, no more than the Americans of ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... his quick movements into a comfortable, concentrated dawdling, chose a place by a big stone, and sat down without hurry. He turned himself, as if seeking a comfortable position, laid his hands side by side on the grey stone, and heavily sank his head upon them. And so for an hour or two he sat on, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... last of Venice," he exclaimed, "and I'm glad of it. One gets tired of dawdling about on a magnified frog-pond. One begins to long for the open sea." Miss Stickney looked gratified, and Kenwick felt himself once more ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... over to "The Happy Family" with us, and we all fell into rank again on the sidewalk, the boy not without embarrassment. Of this I made it my first duty to relieve him. We chatted of the weather and the theatre and hotels. When we had walked a short distance, we met Charles Edward dawdling along over to "The Sphinx" (however reluctantly) to call upon his precious elder sister. So we paired off naturally: Aunt Elizabeth and the doctor in front, Goward and I behind them, and Tom and Charles ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... selected. I'll give you five thousand dollars, but you'll never get another cent from me until you've learned what a fool you're making of yourself, and return to do what I want you to do. It won't be long! There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... alone for an hour or two. I had been in the habit of doing so at Elmsley, and I found nothing so effectual as this in subduing agitation, and recalling my mind to a state of composure. After making the tour of the grounds, walking round the lake, and dawdling some time in the shrubberies, I opened a small gate into a lane which led towards the common. This lane was scarcely wider than a path, and was only divided from the grounds of the villa by a ditch and a slight railing. I was intently occupied in examining an ant's nest, and the various ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... retorted, with decision, at the same time pushing back his chair and rising hastily; "I'll see to it that she doesn't. If the right man steps up and means business, all right; but I'll have no hangers-on or fortune-hunters dawdling about!" ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... clothed not in white, but in decent black, ever mourning their lost glory. But we are in a perfect duck of a hotel, covered with Virginia creeper, and as close by as can be. We arrived this afternoon, and have had an hour or two of delightful dawdling in the Abbey. Soon we are to have an early dinner, which we shall bolt if necessary, so that we may go in again by moonlight, before the moon escapes. I have dressed quickly, because I wanted to begin a letter to you. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that Mr. Woolsey declined this; for, as soon as he was gone, Walker, in a tremendous fury, began cursing his wife for dawdling three hours on the road. "Why the deuce, ma'am, didn't you take a cab?" roared he, when he heard she had walked to Bond Street. "Those writs have only been in half an hour, and I might have been ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there is one pupil in the class whose ability to lead is so strong that the others are overshadowed, it is sometimes well to let the work be done by small groups who use the table turn about. This plan stimulates a wholesome rivalry and discourages dawdling. ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... was no good dawdling; for her master was resolute and formidable. The room, like others in old-fashioned houses with thick walls, had a double door. He shut the one with a stern slam, and then the other; and though the honest maid loitered in the hall, and, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... until some three or four nights after this, when he came hurriedly into our room. It was quite late, but Mac was still at his Mathematics, while I was dawdling with my pipe and a volume of Sternberg's pleasant tales. Clarian walked directly up to Mac, holding out his hand, and saying, "I have come to ask your forgiveness, my dear Mac; I was wrong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... new sto'es!" murmured the girl. Negroes—the men in dirty dusters, the women in smart calicoes, girls in dowdy muslins and boy's hats—and mountain whites, coatless men, shoeless women—hung about the counters dawdling ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... say, squire. We don't want to go dawdling about in pretty places. We must go yonder for rest and water, say for a day or two, but the old prospector's map won't fit ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... swords whirling about his head, and the bayonets an inch from his breast, he does not go dreaming of scenes a hundred miles off, or think anything else than the one thing, how to keep a whole skin and wound an enemy. If Christian men will do their work in the dawdling, half-interested, and half-indifferent way in which so many of us promenade through our Christian service as if it was a review and not a fight, they are not likely to bring back many trophies of victory. You must put your whole selves into the battle. I said ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... turned the switches. "And, Morton," he added, when the butler brought the coffee, "get me a screwdriver or something to undo this box. Whatever the animal is, he's kicking up the deuce of a row. What is it? Why are you dawdling?" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... poor foolish morally dawdling old world to-day is that it is still hoping fondly it is going to be pulled straight into the kingdom of heaven by morally sterilized, spiritually pasteurized persons, by men who are trying to set the world right by abolishing the passions instead of by understanding them, instead of ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... without the piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid! How many fashionable women at the end of a long season would be ready to welcome heaven itself as a relief from the desperate monotony of dressing, dawdling, and driving! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Mr. Turner said promptly. "You must have an alarm clock. 'Twould be but a poor return for Mr. Wharton's kindness were you to come dawdling ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... said Ingram, with that dark light returning to his eyes. "Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that, while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... only for a few moments. I will try to tell you or rather to show you what she looked like, when I have ended my story. She enlightened me not a little. I saw how lame a thing my own journey was my leisurely dawdling back to my work. This girl came as it were on wings, with power in her heart and will, that would take no denial but God's. Her few words as we walked up and down the well-deck were words that burnt and shone in the cold dark. I am talking about things ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... for the first tired minute of her day. Sunday dinner was nearly over, and though, in one way, the best meal in the week for her because all her children were sure to be at home, it was apt to be pure purgatory on a hot day, with Sheba dawdling and grumbling and Rosalind spilling pea-soup on her Sunday dress, and Aunt Elsie's deafness increased by the weather to the ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... your letter— Can my answer reach you now? Fate has left me your debtor, You will remember how; For I went away to Nantucket, And you to the Isle of Orleans, And when I was dawdling and dreaming Over the ways and means Of answering, the power was denied me, Fate frowned and took her stand; I have your unanswered letter Here in my hand. This—in your famous scribble, It was ever a cryptic fist, Cuneiform ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... little room, the mere spaciousness of it seemed almost noble. She even liked it, when, about half past one in the afternoon, on matinee days, the chorus-girls of the show now drawing to the end of its run, began dawdling in, passing shrill jokes with Bill Flynn, the fireman, rummaging through the mail in the letter-box, casually unfastening their clothes all the while, preliminary to kimonos and make-up, gathering in little ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... his friend, Hugh became painfully aware of the weakness of his own slouching, pleasure-loving mind. It seemed to him that, in the intellectual region, he was like a dusty and ragged tramp, permeated on sunshiny days with a sort of weak, unsystematic contentment, dawdling by hedgerow-ends and fountain-heads, lying in a vacant muse in grassy dingles, and sleeping by stealth in the fragrant shadow of hayricks; while his friend seemed to him to be a brisk gentleman in a furred coat, flashing along the roads in a motor-car, full of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... habitual, corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the teatable is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. At the very least, it teaches them idleness. The everlasting dawdling about with the slops of the tea- tackle gives them a relish for nothing that requires strength and activity. When they go from home, they know how to do nothing that is useful, to brew, to bake, to make butter, to milk, to rear poultry; to do any earthly thing of use they are wholly unqualified. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... avowed opinions awaken in her any exertion to render herself more acceptable to him. When he had taken sufficient time to study her character, he decided that the inelegant mirth, and ungoverned vanity of Amaranthe were preferable to the dawdling insipidity of Claribel. After this decision Lionel ceased to be a visitor at ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... dawdling away the months in Mexico and California. For years he had felt, together with many other people, that a sea-voyage was the essential beginning of every journey; he had started round the world soon after leaving Cambridge; he had fished through Norway and hunted in ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... I did forget, just for a minute. He's not half bad, Monty isn't; and I guess he'll be useful to climb trees and pick cherries for us, or get flowers that we can't reach. Anyhow, we're fairly dawdling and almost quarreling, and all the time your father is getting further away. See! He's stopping before that house? I'll ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... too spirited and vigorous to spend your life dawdling in society. You yearn for action, for the broad, free life of the open. You're in love with this country ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... deferment, procrastination, postponement, respite, reprieve; retardation, retention, obstruction; dawdling, lingering, dalliance. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "drum ecclesiastic" beat to arms. In view of the impending danger that their scattered fellow-countrymen might come into mutual fellowship on the basis of their common faith in Christ, the Lutheran leaders at Halle, who for years had been dawdling and haggling over the imploring entreaties of the shepherdless Lutheran populations in America, promptly reconsidered their non possumus, and found and sent a man admirably qualified for the desired work, Henry Melchior Muehlenberg, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... from the States Panama city ranks still as rather a miserable dawdling village. But that is due chiefly to lack of perspective. Against the background of Central America it seemed almost a great, certainly a flourishing, city. Even to-day there are many who complain of its unpleasant odors; to those who have lived in other tropical cities its scent is like the perfumes ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... One of the Swahilis attached himself to us so unobtrusively that before we knew it we had accepted him as guide. In that capacity he realized an ideal, for he never addressed a word to us, nor did he even stay in sight. We wandered along at our sweet will, dawdling as slowly as we pleased. The guide had apparently quite disappeared. Look where we would we could in no manner discover him. At the next corner we would pause, undecided as to what to do; there, in the middle distance, would stand our friend, smiling. When he was sure ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... whether the worthy fathers of the convent share in the good things which they lavish on their guests; but they look as if they do. Those whom we saw bore every sign of easy conscience and good living; there were a pair of strong, rosy, greasy, lazy lay- brothers, dawdling in the sun on the convent terrace, or peering over the parapet into the street below, whose looks gave one a notion ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out another young woman from, the broad hammock in which she had been dawdling with half-alert ears through the foregoing conversation. "Spoken like a true Briton. What is this ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... "Don't you fash yourself, Mr. Malcolm,—I told Charles to unpack your Gladstone and put out your clothes ready for the evening. My mistress won't be dressed, you may take my word for it, for a good three-quarters of an hour. There is nothing like a committee for dawdling along, and keeping one standing on one leg as it were, like a pelican in the wilderness, or a stuffed goose, or anything you like to call it. Don't you let Mr. Malcolm hurry his dinner, Miss Anna, for there is nothing so bad for the digestion; a good digestion comes next to a good ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Dawdling in steamer chairs and looking upon the Michigan shore sat little mother of the country and big son of the city. The woman—the blessed silver-haired creature—forgot herself, and talked to the son as a ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... discuss a Greek folio while an ordinary man is dawdling or boggling over a pamphlet or ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... not hear it? Is it howling wind? The tram-car rattling o'er the stony street? The groans of M.P.'s wearily confined To the dull House when night and morning meet, Dragged to Divisions drear with dawdling feet? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... periods when they do just that thing, or appear to? Why, even the buds on the trees teach us the lesson. How many springtimes have you gone to your bed feeling that the season was late, and the trees were bare, and the fruits would all be backward, and Nature was dawdling along in a very wearisome fashion; and awakened in the morning to find that there had in the night been a gentle rain, and a movement of mysterious power among the buds and the grasses, and that now, in the morning ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... upon what they could do themselves. The two daughters of one workman kept a little poultry-yard "scientifically," and dressed themselves from its proceeds. Industry became more general. Instead of dawdling away whole evenings in gossip, they had some light employment, and worked as ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... superfluous lantern, bleary with a night of service, came dawdling up the side of the train, and the conductor hove in sight, watch in hand. "Four left Argenta on time," said he to the engineer. "What the mischief keeps her? She ought to have gone by five minutes ago. Who's ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... never forgets when she is really friends with a man. I know now you were telling me about Anne Charteris, for you have been in love with her all your life, Rudolph, in your own particular half-hearted and dawdling fashion. Perhaps that is why you have had so many affairs. You plainly found the run of women so unimportant that it put every woman on her pride to prove she was different. Yes, I remember. But that night I thought you were trying to make love to me, and I was disappointed in you, and—yes, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and future and became foolishly light-hearted. We were rushing towards the great battle where men were busy at my proper trade. I realized how much I had loathed the lonely days in Germany, and still more the dawdling week in Constantinople. Now I was clear of it all, and bound for the clash of armies. It didn't trouble me that we were on the wrong side of the battle line. I had a sort of instinct that the darker and wilder things grew ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... blood and proud birth, Leo was a youth most simple-minded. He knew that much was expected of him, and that he was destined to rule; yet so easily was he satisfied that his greatest happiness was to lie all day basking in the sun or dawdling through his father's park with his dog at his heels, the heels themselves in a very down-trodden state of humility, watching with languid gaze the movements of ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... pay for it with the health and strength that God gave you to use for Him. Instead of the satisfactory scourge and hair shirt of rising betimes next morning, try the more commonplace penance of going to bed in proper time the next night, without any dawdling. So many girls do things in a dreamy, dawdling way, that must be a sore trial to those about them: if a thing has to be done, you should do it in a quick, purpose-like way, and not waste your own time and ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious extent. My morning's work has not been wasted, since it has proved that he has the very strongest motives for standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for dawdling, especially as the old man is aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs; so if you are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo. I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... burst into tears; and then, as her husband jumped up to console her, started to scold the children furiously for dawdling over breakfast, when goodness knew, with their clothes in such a state, how long it would take to get ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... is practising, not amusing themselves or dawdling, and because it is an hour and half an hour, neither more nor less, and not an uncertain time, which is left to the performer's pleasure. To make any progress with music after you are grown up, you must ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... brought the wood, and hasn't come back himself. I'll just go and help him!" So off he went too, and never came back. And the third wolf was left sitting there, and at last he said: "I must really go and hurry them up. What are they dawdling all this time for!" And as soon as he was gone, he set off running and never so much as ...
— More Russian Picture Tales • Valery Carrick
... must first consider two geological facts. The first is that no dawdling modern Merced cut this chasm, but a torrent considerably bigger; and that this roaring river swept at tremendous speed down a sharply tilted bed, which it gouged deeper and deeper by friction of the enormous masses of sand and granite ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... is so much in the way if he is dawdling about a house all day long. You would begin to regard me as a nuisance, Sheila, and would be for sending me to play croquet with those young Carruthers, merely that you might get the rooms dusted. Besides, you know I couldn't work here: I must have ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... dawdling over this last chapter on purpose—and I have re-read the former ones and decided to rewrite one or two, but at best I cannot spread this out over more than six weeks, I fear, and then what excuse can I have for keeping her? I feel that she would not stay just to answer a few letters a day, ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... sagacious English saw that the policy of the French had undergone a revolution; that the policy of paltering and dawdling was ended; that in place of taking blows, blows were ready to be struck now; therefore they made ready for the new state of things by transferring heavy reinforcements to the bastilles of the south bank from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling, snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even Science grows weary at times in its limited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... with more leisure on week-days would perhaps have walked quicker than they did through the fresh sharp air of this Sunday morning; but to them there was a pleasure, an absolute refreshment in the dawdling gait they, one and all of ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... We can only guess the point in his reign at which Joash summoned the priests to his help. It was after his marriage (ver. 3), and considerably before the twenty-third year of his reign, at which time his patience was exhausted (2 Kings xii. 6). Some years were apparently wasted by the dawdling sluggishness of the priests, who, for some reason or other, did not go into the proposed restoration heartily. Joash seems to have suspected that they would push the work languidly; for there is a distinct tinge of suspicion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the fatigued and happy warrior laid himself down on the sofa, and put his yellow silk pocket-handkerchief over his face, and indulged in a snug little nap, of which the dreams, no doubt, were very pleasant, as he snored with refreshing regularity. The young men sate, meanwhile, dawdling away the sunshiny hours on the terrace, very happy, and Pen, at least, very talkative. He was narrating to Warrington a plan for a new novel, and a new tragedy. Warrington laughed at the idea of his writing a tragedy? By Jove, he would show that he could; and he began to spout some of the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the Russian, who was not Zeppelin's pupil, set to showing with vehemence that his "method" was a worthless one. He was barely started when a wiry American, in a high, grating voice, called Schilsky a wretched fool: why had he not gone to Berlin at Easter, as he had planned, instead of dawdling on here where he had no more to gain? At this, several of the young men laughed and looked significant. Furst—he had proved to be a jolly little man, who, with unbuttoned vest, absorbed large quantities of beer and perspired ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... dawdling in Duet Two, West Dormitory. Had Helen been inclined to lapse occasionally, or Ruth sunk under the worriment of mind which had borne her down since the day of the skating party on Triton Lake, Mercy Curtis kept the two ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... Oberhof were briskly hurrying back and forth with skimming-spoons or forks between the various cooking-places. If the guests were to find the food palatable, there could not be any dawdling over the skimming and turning. For in the large kettle over the hearth eight hens lent strength to the soup, and in the other twenty-three or-four pots, kettles, and pans there were boiling or roasting six hams, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Tom, you harness the horse right up, do you hear? Don't stand dawdling there, for I and mother ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... were ready for their strange journey in twenty minutes. There was no dawdling over dressing on this occasion. When they returned to the Madame's office Samuel was just bringing the dog-cart ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... at their height, for Mrs. Bartley never allowed dawdling, and with a severely respectful silence made the undressing as brief an affair as possible, brushing her hair till her head tingled all over, putting away the clothes with the utmost speed, and carrying off the candle as soon as she had uttered her grim "Good-night, my Lady," leaving Kate to ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be much better with Mrs. Hablot than dawdling about here and amusing themselves in the new Sunday fashion. Mind, I am not going to have them racketing about the house and garden, disturbing ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... half spoiled since he was ill. You mustn't mind his fidgets and dawdling ways. He'll get over them soon, and then I know you two ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... America at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling. There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and there over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the broad or pathetic staves and choruses of the convivial table; and there was no ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... is, twenty nights, leaving me all the mornings and three evenings in the week at my own disposal. Here we rush from place to place, at each place have to drill a new set of actors, and every night to act a different play; so that my days are passed in dawdling about cold, dark stages, with blundering actors who have not even had the conscience to study the words of their parts, all the morning. All the afternoon I pin up ribbons and feathers and flowers, and sort out theatrical adornments, and all the evening I enchant audiences, prompt ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... through his days I can hardly tell. At his lodgings he got up very late, and went to bed very late. He never read anything excepting occasionally a song-book lent him by Snap, or a novel, or some such book as "Boxiana," from the circulating library, and the Sunday Flash. Dawdling over his dress and his breakfast, then whistling and humming and looking out of the window, took up so much of every day as he passed at his lodgings. The rest was spent in idling about the town, looking in at shop windows, and now and then going to some petty exhibition—as ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... by Jamieson's months of anguish and illness, and angered by the indifference and dawdling of the captors in the face of his demand and threat. His heart was set upon punishment, now, not treaty. He felt that he was being played with. And he longed to find the red Sioux and thrash them soundly. A word about the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... spinning yarns about his experiences. Then we smoked a cigar on the pier, and so whiled away the time until eleven. If we had started then we should possibly have reached town before the mail had started, but as we were both tired of dawdling about, I proposed that we ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... three of the idlest weeks I ever spent, and there is still one to come: after which we go northward to Lancashire, and across the Border where my good old Mother still expects me; and so, after some little visiting and dawdling, hope to find ourselves home again before September end, and the inexpressible Glass Palace with its noisy inanity have taken itself quite away again. It was no increase of ill-health that drove me hither, rather the reverse; but I have long been minded to try this thing: and now I think ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... one, too," continued Flurry; but at this point I thought it better to say good-night. As it was, I found Allan had been waiting for me nearly half-an-hour, and pretended to growl at me for my dawdling, though in reality he was thoroughly enjoying his talk ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... became rich, and I've been dawdling about ever since. At first I enjoyed it, but now I'm bored ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward |
