"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known as "German lined"—a highly absorbent, closely woven paper, having an even surface and no loose "fluff" to adhere to the specimens—is the most ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... Awful Baby's gone. Here lately You bear your little self sedately. You've shed your rompers; you want dresses Prinked out with frillies; fluff your tresses; Delight your daddy, aunts, and mother; And sisterly set straight your brother. Your bib-and-tucker days abolished, Your manners and your nails are polished. One baby trait remains, thank glory! You're still a glutton for a story. Still, Bitsybet, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... these that sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired, brown-eyed, round, soft—just such a creature ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... had been pulled down, and where, decorated with ivy, the old spout formed a home for the snoring owls. By the aid of the long pole he brought out a young one to our view—a shy, soft, lovely, shadow-tinted creature, ghostly enough to behold, who felt like an impalpable mass of fluff, utterly refused to be kissed, and went savagely blinking back into his spout at the earliest possible opportunity. His snoring alarmed us ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes and trickled ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... out a glistening white feather in his long spidery fingers. He placed it within a few inches of Peter's nose and watched the delicate edges riffle in the Dutchman's breath. Crossing to the table, he leaned over the white fluff and breathed the short German incantation over it. How it glistened in the firelight! He bent closer and closer as he whispered the magic words that Peter had taught him, his breath ruffling the feather, playing about in the fringed softness. He hung up ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... against the mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... annoyance, be it said, which he managed to hide—John seemed to attract young Kinloch almost as magnetically as he himself was attracted to Caesar. John had not the heart to shake off the frail, delicate child, who was christened "Fluff" after his first appearance in public. Fluff had taken the First Fourth and ingenuously confessed to any one who cared to listen that he ought to have gone to Eton. A beast of a doctor prescribed the Hill. And even the almighty ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... shawl over her head and shoulders in place of a jacket and hat. A colored cotton apron covers her skirt below the waist, and the short skirt displays stout stockings similar to Sarah's. She wears clogs, and the clothes—except the shawl—are covered with ends of cotton and cotton-wool fluff. Even her hair has not escaped. A pair of scissors hangs by a cord ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... roll, to braid, to puff; I planted hair-pins in my head as thick as bean-poles in a garden. Heavy braids—expensive but lovely—fell down the back of my head; fluff on fluff shaded my lofty forehead. I say nothing; but my literary success, great as it is, has not been more ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... down in the shade of a "bouillard," a sort of poplar with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the Loire (probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the spring of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its flower. The countess had recovered her august serenity; she half regretted the unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried aloud like Job, instead of weeping like the Magdalen,—a Magdalen without loves, or galas, or prodigalities, but not without ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... either side of it, on a Sunday morning, two very high shirt-collars, they towards the end of the week gaining a darker hue and an outward curve. On the top of the pumpkin was a round Spanish hat, the fluff of the catskin which composed it being long enough to make a dozen beavers. He wore, with considerable pride, round his neck a handsome silver call and chain. But with all his oddities, his enemies—and he had a few—were obliged to confess ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... others. Moreover, some two hundred poor men and women had dared the fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of doing knowingly ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door into the light. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... tumbled a pink gingham frock and a fluff of yellow bobbed hair that proved to be four-year-old Ruth Baker. She lived next door to Sunny Boy, and her brother, Nelson, was already marking time with ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... of dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of bitterness. And the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there in the warmth of the August day, with its scent and murmur of full summer, while the pigeons cooed and dandelion fluff drifted by. . ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Anton, "a basket six miles high, even if you filled it up with cotton fluff, would weigh ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... had proved a success; the field had in time been covered with cotton plants, which had burst first into a bright yellow blossom, and had then been covered with many balls of white fluff. The picking the cotton had been looked upon at first as great fun, although it had proved hard work before it was finished. Its weight had rather exceeded Mr. Hardy's anticipation. The process of cleaning the cotton from the pods and seeds had ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... 'lint(1)', named for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks from programs] 1. /vt./ To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... approvingly. "Now then, the first thing to do is to make the mother go back into the coop. Here, Mrs. Biddy, take a bit of this nice corn." He flung out a kernel or two to the hen, whose feathers that had started up in a ruffle and fluff, at sight of Joel, now drooped, ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... he continued, catching hold of what would have been the Dodo's ear if he had had one, but which was in reality a sort of woolly fluff growing all ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of fluff off his left trouser leg just above ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... those pawnshops! Those little secret stalls that put shame into you where none was before. The pawn man—why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime. That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a big bright grocers' calendar—the Death of Nelson—and if I could see it through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches—not fruit jam, you know, but raspberry flavour. It wasn't nice, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... are just the type that a certain sort of man would appreciate—fall in love with. I've heard even American men who play about in society comment on your looks, different as you are from sport and fluff and come-hitherness; and you only need a few months' rest to look like your old self. I should think that a highly intelligent Englishman would find you irresistible, especially if you had shown your womanly side when he had holes in him. I've always had an idea that ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... course, that of Judge Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by means ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of exultation down the river. The little bird gave her plumage a fluff, and watched anxiously. On came the Cardinal like a flaming rocket, calling to her on wing. He alighted beside her, dropped into her beak a morsel of food, gave her a kiss to aid digestion, caressingly ran his ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... face. In extreme cold, snow pulverizes dryly till steel runners drag as though slid through sand. Occasional overflows bar the stream from bank to bank, resulting in wet feet and quick changes by hasty fires to save numb toes. Now the air is dead under a smother of falling flakes that fluff up ankle deep, knee deep, till the sled plunges along behind, half buried, while the men wallow and invent ingenious oaths. Again the wind whirls it by in grotesque goblin shapes; wonderful storm beings, writhing, whipping, biting as they pass; erasing bank and ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... humming with a minimum of stress. We don't have world wars now because we work off our pugnacity by sailing into gym sluggers eight or ten times a week. And since our romantic emotions can be taken care of by tactile television we're not at the mercy of every brainless bit of fluff's calculated ankle appeal." ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... brushed up from the floor those bits of fluff which come from goodness knows where in the best regulated houses. Mabel, very hungry and exasperated at the long absence of the others at their breakfast, could not forbear to whisper suddenly ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... emerging as stated. He was covered with fluff and looked like a tortoise popping forth for a bit of ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... War-loans shriek for money; All work is at an end; It seems extremely funny There's any cash to spend; Yet still the tide of laces, The foam of fluff and silk Comes round in cardboard cases To lots of people's places ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... beside this gate, and was some distance from the house. Fluff, the pony, had a fine box stall with a window looking into the garden. Fluff belonged to Gilbert; but Gilbert had grown so tall that he thought the pony too small for his use, and on Winifred's last birthday had given her all right and title to the little gray pony, whose thick ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... sea with as little ado as he had entered. On the end of his spear twisted a fish. His fur, slicked flat to his strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air and fluff out while the sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands and feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal back into the water, where some shadowy things arose to tear ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... seconds and then remained passive with bright eyes glinting in the gloom. She was a dusky little creature, the primaries, the back of the head, neck, the shoulders, and tail being black, but when the wings were extended the grey fluff of the base of the tail was conspicuous. After a few minutes I put her back on the nest, and she clung, to it having no shyness or fear. I noticed that the beak was very short, the gape very large, the legs dwarfed, and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... not a big dog when I bought him, but just a little ball of orange-tawny fluff that I could carry with one arm. He cost me all the money I had saved up for a holiday trip to Passy. I had seen his father, a champion St. Bernard, at a dog-show, and felt that life would be well worth living with such ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and walked rapidly across the room. She had made what in the light of recent events was a startling discovery. At first she had imagined that the long silken fluff was attached to one of the rings, but this her quick eyes had proved to be a mistake. On one of the slim fingers of the Countess was a thick smear ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... a great courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her; then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh. "We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only forty-six—I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low- spirited ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... before sunrise, the base of the Sentinel 'was swathed in white—night's rumpled draperies not yet tossed aside. As the east glowed it stained the mist pink, and so warmed it that it parted into patches of luminous fluff which floated up and dissolved into crystalline air, and the great lumbering rock stood naked and bold ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... beaucatcher^; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity^; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus^, moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c adj.; go against the grain. render-rough &c adj.; roughen, ruffle, crisp, crumple, corrugate, set on edge, stroke the wrong way, rumple. Adj. rough, uneven, scabrous, scaly, knotted; rugged, rugose^, rugous^; knurly^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in the privacy of her own room, awaited the coming of her husband who seemed to her to prolong outrageously the game of billiards which made his excuse for sitting up a little longer than herself. She shook out her fluff of hair, and arrayed herself in a bewildering pink dressing-gown from beneath which she toasted some very pink toes before the fire. She knew what arguments told on the masculine intellect. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... economical way of extending the meat flavor that I think every young housewife should know it. Mary copied it from The Farmers' Bulletin, an article on the "Economical Use of Meat in the Home." The dumplings, as she prepared them from this recipe, were regular fluff balls, they were so light and flaky. I would add, the cook-pot should be closely covered while cooking or steaming these dumplings, and the cover should not be raised for the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... motives are mixed," said Emily, "and you mustn't think because they wear high heels and fluff their hair out over their ears that ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... true it was, the cook drank fast enough; Down went the drink out of the gourd, FLUFF, FLUFF: Alas! the man had had enough before: And then, betwixt a trumpet and a snore, His nose said something,—grace for what he had; And of that drink the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... I returned to the library with my heart beating and shut the door. Peter had disentangled himself from the sofa and was taking fluff off his coat with an air of happy disengagement; I told him with emphasis that I was done for, that my name would be ringing in the police news next day and that I was quite sure by the inspector's face that he knew exactly what had happened; ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... passed on our drive was unusually fine, with its groves of palms and plantains; its tall cottonwood-trees by the road-side, the ripe pods on the bare branches bursting and showing the soft, white fluff within; its giant mango-trees with bonfires built beneath them, as a quick method of ripening the fruit for market. Then there were acres of corn and fields of rice ready for harvesting, proving conclusively, as some one suggested, that the natives ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... wore; and, when it had done its work, he washed her thoroughly in soap and warm water, in spite of her teeth, claws, and yowls. Kitty was savagely indignant, but a warm and happy glow spread over her as she dried off in a cage near the stove, and her fur began to fluff out with wonderful softness and whiteness. Jap and his assistant were much pleased with the result, and Kitty ought to have been. But this was preparatory: now for the experiment. "Nothing is so ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and now I felt both my hunger and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but as I passed by one open porte-cochere, something, I know not what, made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... in almost all respects, sees in this unearthed "old master," "gem of antiquity," or chef d'oeuvre of Italian art, nothing but the interior of a dirty brown box with a rolling ball of fluff resting in ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... surface are burnt off; with gas all the loose fibres are burnt off. This is brought about by the gas flame passing straight through the cloth. It is not necessary to describe the gas singeing machine in detail. Singeing machines should be kept scrupulously clean and free from fluff, which is liable to collect round them, and very liable to fire. Some machines are fitted with a flue having a powerful draught which carries off this fluff, away ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... warrant for that—yet as high as ye haud him, as I was saying, I hae been serviceable to Rob ere now;—forbye a set o' pearlins I sent yourself when ye was gaun to be married, and when Rob was an honest weel-doing drover, and nane o' this unlawfu' wark, wi' fighting, and flashes, and fluff-gibs, disturbing the king's peace and disarming ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of it smote April to the heart. She pressed her fingers over her eyes and tears oozed through them, trickling down her face. When at last she looked again the stars were gone and the sky was blue as a thrush's egg, with a fluff of rose-red clouds knitted together overhead and a few crimson rags scudding across the Qua-Quas. A dove suddenly cried, "Choo-coo, choo-coo," and others took up the refrain, until in the hills and woods hundreds of doves were greeting ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... you, Betty; go fluff and rose up a bit," he commanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determination which was as business-like as his management of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... naked figure lay in the golden sunlight, translucent, like an angel carved in alabaster. But on the shoulder-blades lay shadow, deep shadow—no, not shadow, a fluff ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... "Fluff and puff! what does that matter?" says Manuel. "There is no law against a widow's remarrying forthwith: and widows are quickly made by any champion about whom the wise Norns are already talking. But I must not tell you about that, Niafer, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... around the grounds with me, at sunset," she explained, in intervals of cajoling the grumpy mass of fluff to descend. "And he ran ahead of me, to-day, to the edge of the path. That must have been when ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... dignity and beauty of some monumental tomb and carved effigy in old Greyfriars kirkyard. Only less strange was the contrast between the marks of poverty and toil on the dead man and the dainty grace of the little fluff of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... We have seen, in an earlier chapter, {28} what we find there; let us retell the story. Under the outer wrapper, which is as stout as our woven stuffs and, moreover, perfectly waterproof, is a russet eiderdown of exquisite delicacy, a silky fluff resembling driven smoke. Nowhere does mother-love ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... with little or no smoke, and it gradually dies down, as, if you will allow my fancy, does he who has grown in uprightness to fine maturity, hale and beautiful to the last. Look at the remains of the three slips. The first is little more than black fluff; I can actually blow it away, poor rubbish! while the second and third are similar to each other, but the No. 3 is more compact, if I may so say, and this is what its excellence before burning would ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... herself,—she was so strong. The glance of her cold blue eyes, hard as steel, was forever roving over the furniture and under it, and you could as soon have found a tender spot in her heart as a bit of fluff under ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... you," she said, "I can never forget." Then she sank back among the white fluff of lace and fur. "I only learned this morning," she went on, after a minute, " who sat beside me all that night and bathed my arm, and gave me ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... acts, he piled out over ladies' knees and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... said the poulterer sceptically, when his fellow-tenant bade him good-bye; and parodying the sacred aspiration—"Next year in Manchester," he cried, in genial mockery. The fowl-plucking females laughed heartily, agitating the feathery fluff ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... anti-aircraft shell heralded their arrival in the danger zone. From the earth the tiny white shell clouds have a fascination for the onlooker. More so perhaps, than for the man in an aeroplane, not many yards distant from the bursting shrapnel. The ball of fluff that follows the sharp "bang" is small at first, but unrolls itself lazily until it assumes quite a size. That morning the anti-aircraft gunners seemed unusually accurate. The third shell burst not far below the plane, and two bits of the projectile ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped with the most resounding pops in all my experience—popped a tubful, and Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of fluff and sweetness. He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made an especial ball, in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was printed in red letters: "How can this heart be mine, yet yours, unless our hearts are one?" ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... atmosphere has that absolute transparency, the distance that clearness which follows a great downpour of rain; but a thick pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray fluff, which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and below all this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by pursuing each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth, shaking from their paws ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... civil because the Trowbridges respect them very much; but it was difficult when the man said that England was the most immoral and decaying country in the world, and his wife echoed him. He is a smug old fellow with a fringe of grey fluff growing out all round under his chin; and his upper lip, very long and shaved, is like the straight cover you see on mantelpieces in ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... from the other side of the stream watched the little procession, Calvin in the lead with the load, the Judge straight and slim with his fluff of white hair, the three little dogs ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... be, e'en were the virtue thine to stop the loom, Thine though the gift the willow fluff to sing, pity who will thy doom? High in the trees doth hang the girdle of white jade, And lo! among the snow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the angry, bewildered men, and the vetturino, catching a glimpse of the flushed face framed in a soft fluff of brown hair, shook his fist and roared a ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... is cunning, The long, lean cat is fleet, The nimble one is made for fun, The fluff-ball one is sweet, The Persian pussy's splendid, The Maltese kitty, too, But the special kind I have in mind Is best of all the crew. He's not too quick and frisky, Nor is he slow and fat; He's soft and warm and fits my arm, And he's ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... shows unbounded interest in everything. Every sound and every fresh sight arouses him instantly; his crest comes up, his feathers fluff out, and he is on tiptoe to see what will come next. He is remarkably discriminating among people, and takes violent likes and dislikes on the instant. Some persons, without any reason that I can discover, he salutes on ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... seemed for a moment as though she must yield to the temptation. The boa—the boa was in the lower drawer. Reluctantly, remorsefully, she opened the drawer and took it out in her hands. Fluff and feathers, fluff and feathers—nothing more than that! But oh, how soft, how smooth, how yielding, how serpentine! With a violent effort she steadied herself, and looked round for her scissors. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... The albatross lays one egg and very rarely two. The chicks, which are hatched in January, are fed on the nest by the parent birds for almost seven months before they take to the sea and fend for themselves. Up to four months of age the chicks are beautiful white masses of downy fluff, but when we arrived on the scene their plumage was almost complete. Very often one of the parent birds was on guard near the nest. We did not enjoy attacking these birds, but our hunger knew no law. They tasted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... six little hens looking admiringly at their every movement. At such times they would dance and hop with great delight; and the little hens, in a circle round them, watched their hops and steps with absorbed interest. Immensely pleased with himself, the young dancer would fluff out his feathers, so as to look as big as possible, and after strutting about, would suddenly shoot out a leg and a wing, first on one side and then on the other, then spring high into the air, and do a sort of step ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... you know, and punishes his Scotch no end, but a topping fellow underneath. I don't know who the bit of fluff is that they're fighting about, but you can wager a quid to a bob that Dick thought he was doing her ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Caroline Darrah on the other side; he's savage when he's crossed. And tack in Payt opposite her. I invited Polly the Fluff for you—she is a dbutante and such a coo-child that she'll just ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... no honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will never brush off ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... he exclaimed, and his eyes sparkled with eagerness and excitement, "I call that splendid; I shall be a rich man one of these days, and then you will see what I shall do for you, and Fern, and Fluff." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a little wind. Under her arm she held a distaff of dark, ripe wood, just a straight stick with a clutch at the end, like a grasp of brown fingers full of a fluff of blackish, rusty fleece, held up near her shoulder. And her fingers were plucking spontaneously at the strands of wool drawn down from it. And hanging near her feet, spinning round upon a black thread, spinning ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... of birds are the owls, and very wicked and ferocious some of them look. There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short, hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse that father owl has brought for them to eat. They have a very rough nest, merely a platform of pine-twigs thrown together in the fork of a fir-tree; but they are hardy little birds, and do not mind that at all. Close by is ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of meeting fairies with their skirts out ready for the dance - a veritable fairy ballet. Nothing could be more lovely than this remarkably treated tree. The rich yellow fluff that will soon appear, lasting for some four to six weeks, will be one note of the yellow chord to be struck in this court-pansy, daffodil, albizzia, the orange and the yellow background of niches. (This floral ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... Van Deuser regarded the apparition which greeted her at luncheon with open disapproval. This new Miss Philura, with the prettily flushed cheeks, the bright eyes, the fluff of waving hair, and—yes, actually a knot of fragrant violets at her breast, had given her an unpleasant shock of surprise. "I am sure I hope you can afford all this," was her comment, with a deliberate adjustment of eyebrows and glasses calculated to add ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... cone seed! Wayland could see these airy ships between him and the silver moonlight, dropping seeds—seeds—seeds; seeds of fire flower and golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults; sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years! And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the chalky faced bark, and the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... earthquake when she got up, and animals rolled off her in all directions. A poodle, two fox terriers, a toy Spitz, and a cat and kitten, had all been sleeping in the nooks her outline makes. They all barked in different keys, and between saying, "Down, Hector!" "Quiet, Fluff!" "Hush, hush, Fanny!" "Did um know it was a stranger?" etc., etc., she got in that she was glad to see me, and hoped you were better. When she stands up she is colossal! Her body dressed in the last fashion, and then the queerest face with no neck, and lemon-coloured hair parted down the ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... lifts her hand behind his shoulder to urge Mariane to resistance: this time he catches her; but just as he swings his shoulder to give her the promised blow, she stops him by changing the intent of her gesture, and carefully picking from the top of his sleeve a bit of fluff which she holds carefully between her fingers, then blows into the air, and watches intently as it floats away. Orgon is paralysed by her innocence of expression, and compelled to hide his rage.—Regnier, Le Tartuffe ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... spun their own threads, and the first room was like what Annie had seen before in cotton factories, with a faint smell of oil from the machinery, and a fine snow of fluff in the air, and catching to the white-washed walls and the foul window sashes. The tireless machines marched back and forth across the floor, and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with a broken thread, spliced it, and ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... tall guard gently extracted a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of Brion's pants. He cracked open the car door, and just as delicately threw ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... substantial and cup-shaped, having a diameter of about 31/4 inches by 21/4 inches in depth, lined inside with fine grass, the soft fluff from the willow when in seed, ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... entire skin of the ostrich, from which the long wing-feathers have been pulled out. Mabelle has been given a beautiful little rug composed of the skins of thirty little ostriches, all from one nest, killed when they were a fortnight old, each skin resembling a prettily marked ball of fluff. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... perspiration. The astronomer-royal of Cape Town, Sir T. Maclear, who had considerable experience of the bush when measuring an arc of the meridian, justly remarked to me on the advantage of frequently turning the watch-pocket inside out, to get rid of the fluff and dust that collects in it and is otherwise ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... wolf bore Henry even farther back than the voice of the owl, and his preternaturally acute senses took on an edge which the modern man never knows in his civilized state. He heard the fluff of the owl's feathers as it moved and the panting of the wolves in the valley below. Then he saw the leader walk from the low mound and take a slow and deliberate course along the slope, with the others following in single ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fluff! No, I cannot like mutton with the wool on! It is a shame, though, good creature as she is! I only wanted to make out the philosophy of the wearied, worried condition that her conversation is so apt to bring on in me. I can't think it pure wickedness on my own ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cottage by Fo'c's'le Head. He had full measure o' the looks an' ways that win women. 'Twas the fashion t' fish for un. An' 'twas a thing that was shameless as fashion. Most o' the maids o' Harbor had cast hooks. Polly Twitter, for one, an' in desperation: a pink an' blue wee parcel o' fluff—an' a trim little craft, withal. But Tim Mull knowed nothin' o' this, at all; he was too stupid, maybe,—an' too decent,—t' read the glances an' blushes an' laughter they flung ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... delicious! So is the Snowy! I simply could not exist without them; they are the guiding stars of the corridor, don't you know? What are you about, Fluffy? What are you doing with the Snowy's togs? She has not come back, no!" clasping her hands in ecstasy. "Don't tell me the Snowy has come back, Fluff!" ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... far corner, sheltered by long green curtains, stepped a graceful almost childishly slim figure in a bronze-green Norfolk suit and close-fitting hat from beneath which curled a fluff of bright golden hair. Von Herman stared ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... birds lilted their spring songs. The atmosphere was fresh and redolent of clean earth; odd shell-holes you came across were, miracle of miracles, grass-grown—a sight for eyes tired with the drab stinking desolation of Flanders. A more than spring warmth quickened growing things. White tendrils of fluff floated strangely in the air, and spread thousands of soft clinging threads over telephone-wires, tree-tops, and across miles of growing fields—the curious output of myriads of spinning-spiders. There were quaintly restful visits to the front line. The Boche ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... envelopes; and a Parliamentary Whip of last year and a stationery bill of the year before; and several bills of my employer, not to mention a cheque for ninety-seven pounds which I suppose he would like me to send to the bank; and a great deal of fluff and a pipe or two and four or five stamped letters which it is now too late to post. That is all there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... charming harmony in her character. Poor Miss Ruth, she was evidently suffering severely, as she lay on her couch in front of the fire; her hair was unbound, and fell in thick short lengths over her pillow, reminding me of Flurry's soft fluff, but not ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... doubtless by some movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... morning's mail: many bore foreign postmarks, and not a few were emblazoned with rampant crests sunk in little dabs of colored wax. She wore a morning gown of soft white flannel belted in at the waist. Covering her head and wound loosely about her throat was a fluff of transparent silk, half- concealing the two nests of little gray and brown knots impaled on hair-pins. These were the chrysalides of those gay butterfly side-curls which framed her sweet face at night and to which she never ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... how each new litter That came to Flip or Fan Grew finer and grew fitter With tea-leaves in the bran; We learned which stalks were milky And which were merely tough, What grass was good for Silky And what was good for Fluff. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... "I Forgot" laughed as he heard her, but Jean's mamma did not laugh. She knew about "I Forgot," and she laid her hand tenderly on Goldie's little body, all thin under the fluff of feathers. ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... and she's a lady friend of mine. Poor old Fluff, poor old girl! Don't scare her, Sheila. Can't you ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... her eyes and let her hand linger up to his cheek, head still back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in the ash-blond fluff of her hair. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... The feathers had come out through a ragged hole in one corner of it; Nora, in the shock of hearing of Lady Purcell's arrival, trod on the corner of the bed and squeezed more of the feathers out of it. A gush of fluff was the result, followed by a curious and unaccountable movement in the bed, and then from the hole there came forth a corpulent and very mangy old rat. Its face was grey and scaly, and horrid pink patches adorned ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a car drawn by panthers, was quite beardless, with not even a vestige of fluff on his face, had horns, was crowned with grape-clusters, his hair tied with a fillet, his cloak purple, and his shoes of gold. Of his lieutenants, one was short, thick-set, paunchy, and flat-nosed, with great upright ears; he ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... off his cap, he put down his basket and knelt to open it and out popped the littlest, drollest fluff of ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... been pretty hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a—little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms—if only for a single day—? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to shine all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches—! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... answered Mike, snipping a piece of fluff off his judgeship's shoulder. "There's a white-bearded old guy, two or three swell gents with tall hats, Counselor Tutt and an attorney named Chippingham, besides that pretty Miss Wiggin; and they ain't speakin' none ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... cubhood is not a matter of size only. As I look down at this glossy coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever a dirty yellow color, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as young cubs' coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time, used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her mouth with the back of her paw. Every time my mother had to wipe her mouth she used ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson |
