"Hunched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the night pleasantly in a noisy game of high-low-jack, and the next morning slept more soundly than he had slept for weeks, hunched upon a wooden bench in the boxlike station of a North Carolina junction. The express would have brought him to Jacksonville in twenty-four hours; the journey, as he took it, boarding any local that happened to be going south, and leaving it for meals or sometimes for sleep or often as ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Johnny hunched over the wheel and peered through the thickening pall of smoke and dust, reluctant to ease off his breakneck speed but knowing that they had to find Hetty—if she were alive. Neither man had said a word since the wagon raced from the ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet. Then, remembering that he was supposed to be suffering silently in his room, he hunched up to a sitting posture and regarded his ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... hunched the duke private—I see him do it—and then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... play! Didn't you get on to the message that blackguard received? He had a hunch from the prosecuting attorney who had been hunched by the general manager, who, as I happened to know, was severely, but very successfully hunched by Billy Watchem, to the effect that this man was innocent and must be released. It was the shadow-hand of old 'Never Sleep,' that did the ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... still nearer; she came to stand close beside him, erect and calm. She recited the names of her friends, the Girondins, whilst hunched there in his bath ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door, something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from wall to wall to give Maulbow—if the thing he held was a weapon and he actually intended to use it—as small and erratic a target as possible. Maulbow shouted angrily behind him. Then, as Gefty came up to the next cross-passage, ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... which had driven him there was removed. Often for weeks at a stretch he would not go at all unless it was necessary to get some tools or supplies for the farm. Then rather than take any of his men away from work, he would himself hitch up a team and drive the five miles. Sitting hunched over on the spring-seat of a big farm wagon, clad in overalls and a print shirt, with a wide hat tilted against the sun and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was indistinguishable from any other paisano on the road. This change in appearance was helped by the fact that he had grown a heavy ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... heard of thee," said Leh Shin, scratching his loose sleeves with his long, claw-like fingers. "But thy friend, the Burman, who spoke beforehand of thy coming, and who still recalls the mixture of his opium pipe, I cannot remember." He hunched his shoulders. "Yet even that is not strange. My house by the river is a house of many faces, yet all who dream wear the same face in the end," his voice crooned monotonously. "All in the end, from living in the world of ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... asked Ned of Jack, pointing toward Hans, who now sat on the sand with his knees hunched ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of the children of the desert, has been given his hump in order that he might bear his human burden better. This girl, who is homeless as the Arab, is my appointed load in life, and, please God, I will carry her on this back, hunched though it may be. I have come to see her, because I love her,—because she loves me. You have no claim on her; so I will take her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Bertie hunched his shoulders like a schoolboy. "Oh, get away, Nap!" he growled. "Yes—sorry I spoke. Now clear out and ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... eleven and hunched with a younger Kantor over an oilcloth-covered table, hunched himself still deeper in barter for a large crystal marble with a candy ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Lady Locke, looking at the hunched white figure facing her, and at the little shrewd eyes peering from beneath the shade of the big and aggressively garden hat. "What ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... own kind and only I understand it. It is new and I have to plan it out by thinking. The girls all think that because I have finer clothes and travel and am rich, that I think I am better than they are and am proud of it. Richness is not my fault, any more than a hunched back would be, and it is my duty to forget it whether they do or not. I ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... whispering obscene things Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands, Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick Man piled to smite the sun. And all around Are devils. One can laugh... but that hunched shape The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; That face — utterly evil, clouded round With evil like a smoke — it turns smiles sour! ... And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain And sweating ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... gone away with the doll and the donkey, you hunched up the blanket and the stiff white counterpane to hide the curtain and you played with the knob in the green painted iron railing of the cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey and went back ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... while Quade, with his bullish shoulders hunched forward and his fleshy red neck, rolling over the collar of his coat, leaned across the table in a tense and listening attitude. With his eyes glued to the aperture, Aldous strained his ears to catch ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the obscurity in the back of the store an old man's narrow bristling face peered, watchful as a cat, his body hunched up in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved, hunched herself up on her pillows until she was sitting reasonably straight, and clapped her hands. "Whist!" she called, softly. "Whist there, all ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... shoulders was hunched forward, giving a crude and ill-fitting set to his fashionably tailored, Fifth Avenue coat; he staggered slightly, and the flap of his collar protruded, while his tie, pulled out, sprawled over his vest; also his slouch hat, badly crushed and looking ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Greaser guard to see if they made any impression on him. However, the Mexican was either a perfect actor, or he did not understand what was said, for he gave no sign, and appeared to be in a brown study as he sat hunched up on the ground at the flap of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... of you eat supper, lots of supper. Billy arises first, filling his pipe. He hangs water over the fire for the dish-washing. You and Dick sit hunched on a log, blissfully happy in the moments of digestion, ruminative, watching the blaze. The tobacco smoke eddies and sucks upward to join the wood smoke. Billy moves here and there in the fulfilment of his simple tasks, casting his shadow wavering and gigantic ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... already the whole population of the village was on hand at the pit-mouth. The helmet-men had gone down to make tests, so the hour of final revelation was at hand. Women stood with wet shawls about their hunched shoulders, their faces white and strained, their suspense too great for any sort of utterance. A ghastly thought it was, that while they were shuddering in the wet, their men below might be expiring for lack of a few drops ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... into crooked lanes, and finally into ditches, and he never arrived at his goal. There in that library window nook it is cool in summer, and warm in winter. So he sits and dreams, holding an open volume, unread, on his knees. Some times he writes, hunched up in his corner, feverishly scribbling at ridiculous plays, short stories, and novels which later he will insist on reading to the tittering schoolboys and girls who come into the library to do their courting and ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Life-Saving Station. Phil went on with his letters, Ossie performed mysterious rites in the galley, with Han looking on interestedly from atop the dish-board, and Neil, exhausted by his labours as crew, reclined on the seat in the cockpit and stared sleepily at a blue and unclouded sky. Joe hunched himself on a seat on the bridge deck and studied his book on motor boating, becoming, if truth were told, more and more mystified as to the working of that remarkable affair that was click-clicking away ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... easily won; and though she did not absolutely reject him, gave him very slight hopes. Mr. Marvel, therefore, remained on his probation. Behind Mrs. Spurling stood her negro attendant, Caliban; a hideous, misshapen, malicious monster, with broad hunched shoulders, a flat nose, and ears like those of a wild beast, a head too large for his body, and a body too long for his legs. This horrible piece of deformity, who acted as drawer and cellarman, and was a constant butt to the small wits of the jail, was nicknamed the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... far, but had sat with his hands on his stick, a spectator of the women's humours. He was a little hunched man, twisted and bent double with rheumatic gout, the fruit of seventy years of field work. His small face was almost lost, dog-like, under shaggy hair and overgrown eyebrows, both snow-white. He had a look ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at us when we got back, then turned to Lomax again. The big chemist didn't look happy. He spread his hands toward us, and hunched his shoulders. "A fifty-times over-dose of chromazone in those tanks—fortunately none in the others. And I can't find a trace of it in the fertilizer chemicals or anywhere else. Somebody deliberately put it into ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... from the matter that engrossed her almost to the exclusion of every other thought, to peer intently out of the window across the valley at the bleak old farmhouse on the crest of the opposite ridge; and each time as she settled herself once more in the chair, hunched boyishly over the table edge, she only nodded her bright head in utter, undisturbed unconsciousness ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped one ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... drop his eyes, and evidently because he was unable to go on facing him; then he turned slowly and walked out of the room, but with a very different step. He withdrew quietly, with peculiar awkwardness, with his shoulders hunched, his head hanging as though he were inwardly pondering something. I believe he was whispering something. He made his way to the door carefully, without stumbling against anything or knocking anything over; he opened ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Yes." She hunched her queer burden more closely under her arm. "It isn't really mine," she explained. "But they were so unkind to it in the house that I had to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... did stand still he always seemed to be dancing on one foot. His face was clean-shaven, and his name was M. Tirande. He came into the living-room where I was sitting with Pauline. He walked round the room with his shoulders hunched up. Then he said, pointing to the baby, "Take him away. I want a talk with the goodwife." I went out into the yard, and managed to pass the window as often as I could. Pauline had not moved from her chair. Her hands lay on her knees, and she was bending her head forward as though she were trying ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... disapprovingly at her great-granddaughter, seated by her side in her utterly lax attitude. "Don't set so hunched up," she whispered to her in a sharp hiss. She did not want Mr. John Mangam, whom she regarded as a suitor of Sarah's, to have his attention called ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... in three weeks," remarked Silver, at which information the gross little lord simply hunched his fat shoulders. Much as Pine had done for him, Garvington hated the man with all the power of his mean and narrow mind, and as the millionaire returned this dislike with a feeling of profound contempt, the two met as seldom as possible. Only ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... legitimate persiflage and objectionable familiarity. An ignoramus of your particular class ought to confine his repartee to unqualified affirmation or the negative monosyllable." Whereupon he pulled his hat more firmly upon his head, hunched his shoulders in disgust, remembered his manners, and bowed to Miss Georgie Howard, and stalked out, as straight of back as the Indian whose blanket he brushed, and who may have been, for all he knew, a blood relative ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and as some manifestations of sulkiness, not inclined to encourage Anne in her intentions of introducing him generally, revealed themselves, she turned and led the way back to the car, where Armitage sat hunched, in no ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... At the word his hand dropped to the butt of his gun, his right shoulder hunched forward, and with one lightning smooth motion the weapon glided from the holster. Hardly had it left the leather when it was exploded. The hammer had been cocked during the upward flip of the muzzle. The first discharge was followed immediately by the five others ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... day, when he sat near the radiator, hunched up and reading, she passed through, and seeing him, wrinkled her brows. In the front room, where it was not so warm, she sat by the window and cried. This was the life cut out for her, was it? To live cooped up in a small flat ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the ledge beside her and sat with his legs dangling, hunched in the misery of returning strength. When full wakefulness was achieved he looked at her and found she had moved to the farther end ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... his men had been obliged to snuff out the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen. Each letter as it was set down had its whispered echo ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... said, "for even though you have hitched a body to your head we recognize you." They looked at Niafer, and all three laughed cruelly. "Was it for this hunched, draggled, mud-faced wench that you left us, you squinting old villain? And have you so soon forgotten the vintner's parlor at Neogreant, and what you ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... shadows did not appall Beatrice greatly to-day. The miles sped swiftly under her feet. Always there were creatures to notice or laugh at,—a squirrel performing on a branch, a squawking Canada Jay surprised and utterly baffled by their tall forms, a porcupine hunched into a spiny ball and pretending a ferociousness that deceived not even such hairbrained folk as the chipmunks in the tree roots, or those queens of stupidity, the fool hens on the branch. In the way of more serious things sometimes they paused to gaze down on some particularly ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... or Colorado! Peter knew what the doctor had in mind. Vast plains, unpeopled, pure, immutable in their calm; stars that came down at night and hung just over your head, making the darkness alive with their bright presence; a little cottage hunched against a hill, a candle winking cheerily through the window at the stars; the cries of night birds, the drone of insects, the distant howling of a coyote; far away on the boundary of your possessions, a fence of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the other, and Pa he always sings for all that is out, and when he braced himself and sang 'Just as I am,' Ma thought Pa's voice was tinctured a little with biliousness, and she looked at him and hunched him, and told him to stop singing and breathe through his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop a clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards Ma, and then he smelled Ma's cheese ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... He expected sympathy, but he hoped for dinner. When he saw he was to get neither, he hunched his lame hip; scratched his head, balanced ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... width, and across that MacVeigh would have to strike to reach the wooded country beyond. It was over there that he had the greatest hope of discovering a trail. After he had finished his supper he loaded his pipe, and sat hunched close up to his fire, staring out over the Barren. For some reason he was filled with a strange and uncomfortable emotion, and he wished that he had brought along one of his tired dogs to ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... in triumphant, glorious mirth, her plump shoulders hunched in very ecstasy, the child ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... a coward all his life because somebody cowed him when he was a boy. Dr. Slavens had put his hands down, and had stood with his shoulders hunched, taking the world's thumps without striking back, for so many years in his melancholy life that his natural resistance had shrunk. On that day he was not as nature had intended him, but as ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of his hand, warm and dry, but rather soft, as of a man who uses a pen too much; saw him following her uncle across the room, with his shoulders a little hunched, as if preparing to inflict, and ward off, blows. And with the thought: 'He must be jolly when he gives them one!' she turned once more to the darkness, than which he had said there was nothing nicer. It smelled of new-mown grass, was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spat—his loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Steena saw a flicker—a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the space ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... one side of the hymn book and Ma held the other, and Pa he always sings for all that is out, and when he braced himself and sang "Just as I am," Ma thought Pa's voice was tinctured a little with biliousness and she looked at him, and hunched him and told him to stop singing and breathe through his nose, cause his breath was enough to stop a clock. Pa stopped singing and turned around kind of cross towards Ma, and then he smelled Ma's cheese, and He turned ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... their shoulders hunched over the table, began reviewing the table of ratios, across the quadrangle in the examination hall Roger Manning stood in a replica of a rocket ship's radar bridge and faced ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... basket into which he had thrown the letters after entering the addresses in his ledger, and they moved off down the aisle. No movement came from Mr Rossiter's lair. Its energetic occupant was hard at work. They could just see part of his hunched-up back. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Hunched over on the jump seat with her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both hands, Kelly gave the senior ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... 'Deah, deah, they've fixed bayonets! Why, they're coming back. They've had someone hurt.' I looked again for a moment. The line of riflemen was certainly retiring, wriggling backwards slowly on their bellies. Two brown forms lay still and hunched in the abandoned position. Then suddenly the retiring Riflemen sprang up and ran for shelter in our donga. One lad jumped right in among us laughing and panting, and the whole party turned at once and lined the bank. First-class infantry ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... they are got together again and have marched out, there goes by on his horse a strange scarred old man with a foxy look, a swollen neck and head and a hunched figure. He is KUTUZOF, surrounded by his lieutenants. Away in the distance by other streets and bridges with other divisions pass in like manner GENERALS BENNIGSEN, BARCLAY DE TOLLY, DOKHTOROF, the mortally wounded BAGRATION in a carriage, and other ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Russ hunched over the keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... where two men were sitting—a tattered, gray, big old man, and, opposite him, his back to the bar, with his elbows spread out upon the table and his chin resting on the fists folded upon each other, some hunched up, stout, closely-propped gentleman in a gray suit. The old man was picking upon a dulcimer lying before him and quietly singing, in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... stationed himself outside O'Leary's where he could get an uninterrupted view of two streets. He stood hunched up against the jamb of O'Leary's door in the attitude of a corner loafer, with three parts of his body touching the wood—hip, shoulder, and cheek. For some time no one appeared in sight either useful or inimical to his plans, until ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... overpowering scheme of corruption and degradation. The Berlin conference was reaching a common meeting ground, the report said, with Russian, Chinese, and American officials making the first real progress in the week of talks. Hope rising for an early armistice on the Indian front. Suddenly he hunched forward, blinking in surprise as the announcer continued the broadcast: "The Secretary of State, David Ingersoll, was stricken with a slight head cold this evening on the eve of his departure for the Berlin Conference, and was advised to postpone the trip temporarily. ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... broken English, except one, who was German. She wore a reform dress, hunched up behind with unspeakable elastic things. You'd make allowances if you knew what I've gone through since the day before yesterday, when I found, after telegraphing a frantic appeal to my aunt in Scotland, that she's left home and they could give me no address. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... and four of the pilgrim forms disappeared swiftly into the spaces of shadow. Only Thibaut and Ren remained, standing masked and attentive, their eyes fixed upon the tower door. It opened and Noel le Jolys emerged, followed by, the slight, hunched figure in faded black velvet for whom the eyes of the conspirators were so eager. Noel ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stopped in front of the door, hunched its back, stretched its neck, opened its mouth, disclosed its teeth, spread its hind legs and ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... were in the Gardens we paid a call at the nest, taking care that no cruel boy should see us, and we dropped crumbs, and soon the bird knew us as friends, and sat in the nest looking at us kindly with her shoulders hunched up. But one day when we went, there were only two eggs in the nest, and the next time there were none. The saddest part of it was that the poor little chaffinch fluttered about the bushes, looking ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... at him with a faint derisive smile. His clothes were worn and shabby, he was badly in need of a shave and a wash. He sat hunched up in a corner of the carriage, the picture of mute ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... windows of the Lords. I walked, I remember, westward, and presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the dark, dimly lit barges round which the water swirled. Across the river was the hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln flared redly. Dimly luminous trams were gliding amidst a dotted line of lamps, and two little trains crawled into Waterloo station. Mysterious black figures ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... knocking about loose in his head. It was at this moment too that he saw one of the men around the boat step backwards suddenly, clutch at the air with raised arms, totter and collapse. He didn't exactly fall, he only slid gently into a sitting posture, all hunched up, and with his shoulders propped against the side of the engine-room skylight. "That was the donkey-man. A haggard, white-faced chap with a ragged moustache. Acted ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... his porch reading, just a little old gray shell of a man, all hunched up, and I walked up to him and I says: 'You'll pardon me, Mr. Stackpole, but I've come to ask you a question and then to show you something. Did you,' I says, 'ever know a man named A. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with the pungent odours of Killi-ka-nik. Both men and women were smoking it in pipes of red clay with reed stems, and they passed this sign of friendship from one to another in solemn fashion. All were clad in the parti-coloured blanket, and sat hunched upon their quarters more like beasts than human creatures, yet with that perfect air of dignity which the Indian ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... down upon them. A little distance off lay the lake in shimmering stillness. Nathaniel looked boldly at the sheriff now, and as his glance passed beyond him he was amazed at the change that had come over Neil. The young man's head was bowed heavily upon his breast, his shoulders were hunched forward, and he walked with a listless, uneven step. Was it possible that his magnificent courage had at last ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... the wheel, in a puddle of his own blood, lay old Ding-dong, grey and ghastly. His eyes were closed; his cocked hat with a rakish forward tilt sat on his nose. He lay with shoulders hunched, his legs spread helplessly along the deck before him, stubborn chin digging into ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... would have deliberately hunched his shoulders, turned his back, and read his paper. But his education was in sure hands. He had made rapid progress since the ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... It contained a Cafe Maure, into which I peered. In the coffee niche the embers glowed. One or two ragged Arabs sat hunched upon the earthen divans playing a game of cards. At least I should have my coffee after my tinned dinner. I was turning to go back to the Bordj when the extreme desolation of the desert around, now ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... Then she resumed the jumpers, took the rifle and crossed the 'track.' Jimmie, meanwhile, had stripped to trousers and the upper part of his bathing-suit, had donned his running shoes, set his feet in holes kicked in the ground for that purpose and bent forward, his back professionally hunched and in his hands the essential pieces of cork. Cecelia Anne gabbled the words of starting, shut her eyes tightly, fired the rifle into the air, threw it on the ground and set off after the swiftly moving Jimmie. Early in his first lap she was up to him. As they passed ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Where the south wind seldom wanders and the winters will not stay; Lurid wastelands, pent in silence, thick with hot and thirsty sighs, Where the scanty thorn-leaves twinkle with their haggard, hopeless eyes; Furnaced wastelands, hunched with hillocks, like to stony billows rolled, Where the naked flats lie swirling, like a sea of darkened gold; Burning wastelands, glancing upward with a weird and vacant stare, Where the languid heavens quiver o'er red depths ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of the little sitting-room. The leper was seated hunched on his chair just as she had seen him sitting often on a rock; he was surrounded with a ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Indeed, the only living creature within sight was a red-breast, hunched into a ball and watching her from a wintry willow bough; the only moving object a windmill half a mile away across the level, turning its sails against the steel-gray sky—so listlessly, they seemed ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was leaning against the wall of a smaller building, smoking and staring pensively across the moonlighted plain toward that portion of the United States where the Potreros hunched themselves ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... afterward Tim raises the car fare to ten cents, recking little of the lime burners' wrath and the high glances of Katy O'Hare at the hard little face and hunched ragged body as he drives on, clenching the reins in his fists. Divil a bit does he seek their goodwill or anybody's, knowing that there is profit to be made only from the fear that people have of him ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... man, weazened and bent, his unkempt head thrust forward from hunched shoulders. He dragged two grain sacks behind him, and he was so grotesquely bow-legged that the first sight of him always provoked laughter. This was old Pete the snow-packer, bound on his nightly trip to the hills. Outside his burros waited, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... clothes and oilskins, and was standing alongside the mate under the lee of the weather cloth in the rigging, by the time the watch got aft. They were the average crew of a sailing ship, men from every nation under the sun, and as they passed slowly round the capstan, their shoulders hunched to their ears, each man answered sullenly to his name. Not that they bore the second mate any ill-will, but Jack ashore spends his last weeks in riotous living and suffers a slow recovery for the first few days of the voyage. Besides the night was bitter ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... table beside him an old; carved coral rattle and a baby's dress precious with embroideries. These he had bought, he said, up in London, where he had had to go for a day to do business with the wine merchants. He had not seemed to listen to her thanks. But his hunched shape against the primrose light and the gleaming of his thick white fingers playing nervously with the fragile gifts spoke of a passionate concern for her. No doubt that concern was sincere. They told her after her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... set low on the hunched shoulders, moved from right to left threateningly as his gaze passed from one to another. If there were any objections ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... nights did Eudena sit alone by the fire on the ledge waiting, and in the night the beasts howled over the cliffs and down the valley, and on the cliff over against her the hunched hyaenas prowled black against the sky. But no evil thing came near her save fear. Once, far away, she heard the roaring of a lion, following the horses as they came northward over the grass lands with the spring. All that time she waited—the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... did I put it?" repeated The Author, rumpling his hair with both hands. "That's what I want to know, myself. I've looked everywhere in my room, and in Johnson's, and I can't find the thing. It's gone," and he stalked out, with his shoulders hunched to his ears. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... stood nearly in the middle of the road in the blaze of sunshine at the end of his own short shadow. And he stood with hands pushed into the opposite sleeves of his long coat, his head sunk between the shoulders, all hunched up in the flood of heat. From a distance he had the aspect of one ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Larpent when the latter sauntered up for a word with him a little later, but Larpent, knowing him, merely hunched his shoulders as his custom was and ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... but not without its evil implication; and I felt his eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in his sodden sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wheelhouse and the Captain slipped in, closing it tight behind him. It was pitch black and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to it. When they had, he could make out the shadowed forms of the OD, the first class quartermaster at the wheel, and the radarman hunched over the repeater, the scope a phosphorescent ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... meant to take for the success of this gigantic scheme, felt a sudden strange sense of fear creeping into his bones. Half an hour ago he had seen a man in what looked like the last stage of utter physical exhaustion, a hunched up figure, listless and limp, hands that twitched nervously, the face as of a dying man. Now those outward symptoms were still there certainly; the face by the light of the lamp still looked livid, the lips bloodless, the hands emaciated and waxen, but ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... midday rest, he went on his bicycle out to Morten with a message from Ellen. In Morten's sitting-room, a hunched-up figure was sitting with its back to the window, staring down at the floor. His clothes hung loosely upon him, and his thin hair was colorless. He slowly raised a wasted face as he looked toward the door. Pelle had already recognized him from his maimed right hand, which had only ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... hunched his shoulders and displayed white teeth happily. "I'm a pushover," he said. "Here I come. I like ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Watching Thing in the South—the hugest monster in all the visible Night Lands. My spy-glass showed it to me with clearness—a living hill of watchfulness, known to us as The Watcher Of The South. It brooded there, squat and tremendous, hunched over the pale radiance of ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... open with a vigour which sent her staggering into a chair, and stepped into the squalid, reeking room. Hunched up in a chair, opposite the woman, sat a ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... up, with his shoulders hunched and his head drawn in, as if he were expecting a tempest, saying to himself, meanwhile: "Whatever Gertrude may think about it, I'm sure I did the right thing in choosing the farm. I should have ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... at the young fellow sitting hunched upon another of the boxes that were the seats in this tent-jail, which was also the courtroom of the Vigilance Committee, and mechanically counted the slow tears that trickled down between the third and fourth fingers of each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the nerves ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the King retraced his steps, walking quickly, his head hunched between his shoulders, his baleful eyes looking neither to left nor right. As he passed out, the Duke of Anjou quitted the side of Madame de Nemours, and went after him. Then at last the suspended chatter of ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... nearest upjutting rocks and crouched behind them. Lucky I didn't rip open the spacesuit, he told himself. Three stones, evidently hurled in salvo, ticked off the top of the top of the rocks he was hunched behind. One of the stones ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... above as with blind-drawn feet they move Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... It amazed him that Teutoberg could endure so much punishment. His arm must be broken and he was terribly battered, yet here he came staggering back for more. Winford now hunched down and, like a crouching animal, advanced slowly toward his enemy. Suddenly he started a right almost from the deck straight for Teutoberg's chin. It connected. Teutoberg was lifted clear of the deck and hurled unconscious against the side of the ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... The familiar hunched figure of Polter advanced toward the microscope. And with him, his huge hand holding her wrists, was Babs. They were nearly fifty feet from me, but with the light over them I could see them clearly. Babs' slim figure was clad in a long skirted dress—pale ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... by what ways I went to do so, are things that are effaced completely from my memory. But I know that I came upon him in the library. He was sitting hunched in a great chair, his face ashen, his eyes fevered. At sight of me—the cause, however innocent, of all this evil—his brows grew dark, and his eyes angry. If he had reproaches for me, I gave him no time to utter them, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... leaping up, Ran through the doors and vaulted on his horse And fled: small pity upon his horse had he, Or on himself, or any, and when he met A cripple, one that held a hand for alms— Hunched as he was, and like an old dwarf-elm That turns its back upon the salt blast, the boy Paused not, but overrode him, shouting, 'False, And false with Gawain!' and so left him bruised And battered, and fled on, and hill and wood Went ever streaming by him till the gloom, That follows ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... hunched limply, in a sitting posture, over against the wall, one hand clamped tightly to his jaw, the other being elevated in obedience to a command that had to be thrice repeated before it found lodgment in his whirling brain. ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... up the stairway, he left a long and constrained silence behind him. From the mother's chair came a sound that hinted at secret weeping, and at last Tom Burton straightened his hunched shoulders and gazed across at young Edwardes, whose eyes were no longer ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... I had previously traveled it by night, on horseback, my pockets bulging with currency and my free hand holding a cocked revolver the entire distance of fifty miles. To make the journey by wagon with a companion was luxury. Still, the drizzle of rain was uncomfortable. May sat hunched up beside me, a rubber poncho over his shoulders and a Winchester rifle in its leathern case between his knees. I thought him a trifle off his guard, but said nothing. The road, barely visible, was rocky, the wagon rattled, and alongside ran a roaring stream. Suddenly we ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... of plenty a great American city like Chicago goes on showing a more or less cheerful face to the world while in nooks and crannies down side-streets and alleys poverty and misery sit hunched up in little ill-smelling rooms breeding vice. In times of depression these creatures crawl forth and joined by thousands of the unemployed tramp the streets through the long nights or sleep upon benches in the parks. In the alleyways off Madison ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... minutes Ben Todd, the editor, came in, long of legs and hunched of back, trailing his arms like an ape, his handsome bearded face lit up in pleasantness and his keen brown ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... springy pine needles, and squirrels and birds were everywhere. We walked past rows and rows of white tents pitched in orderly array among the pines, the canvas village of fifty or more road builders. By and by we came to a drab gray shack, weather-beaten and discouraged, hunched under the trees as if it were trying to blot itself from the scene. I was passing on, when the Chief (White Mountain) stopped me with ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to draw ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... his jowls were split like a wolf, and his teeth were sharp and yellow like a wild boar's; his beard was black and his whiskers twisted; his chin merged into his chest and his backbone was long, but twisted and hunched. [35] There he stood, leaning upon his club and accoutred in a strange garb, consisting not of cotton or wool, but rather of the hides recently flayed from two bulls or two beeves: these he wore hanging from his neck. The fellow leaped up straightway when ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... made no reply. He sat with his long body hunched up in the deep chair, a pair of brooding ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw some one drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick, and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood, that made him appear positively deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure. He stopped a little from the inn, and, raising ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a short time they had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes. They continued the treatment for some time longer, with the most satisfactory result, till Tom astonished them by jumping off the sofa, and standing up in the middle of the room. He rubbed his forehead, hunched up his left shoulder, and ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... humped, insignificant figure with close-cropped white hair beneath a huge hat. He drove all hunched up. His buckboard was a rattletrap, old, insulting challenge to every little stone in the road; but there was nothing the matter with the horses or their harness. We never held much with grooming in Arizona, but these beasts shone like bronze. Good sizeable horses, clean ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... The woman was hunched down in her chair, still wearing the cloak that she had worn in Trevison's office; the collar still up, the front thrown open. Her hair was disheveled; dark lines were under her eyes; she glared at Corrigan in an abandon ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... obviously a messenger from King George. Three minutes later the War Office doors swung open and two men came hurrying out. The first was the King's messenger, the second was Lloyd George. The latter's shoulders were hunched with haste, his hat was pressed deep and irregularly over his forehead, his face, set hard, was canted forward. He almost scrambled into the conveyance, and three seconds later the automobile was going at top speed for Buckingham Palace. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... temporarily, and that we would soon learn of their advance. Field headquarters had been set up in a house about two blocks away and there, after exchanging salutes, passwords, and assorted badinage, the captain led. The men in contact with the tanks, shoulders hunched, fingers rapid with pad and pencil, were sitting in a row by a wall on which had been tacked a large and detailed map ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... more. The old woman turned round in bed, so that she faced the crouching girl; her face was now in shadow, and Wilhelmine could not see whether the eyes were open or shut. She waited for what seemed hours in that hunched-up position. After some time, the even breathing recommenced, and Wilhelmine ventured to kneel up beside the bed, but now a fresh difficulty confronted her: to reach the other key, provided it lay beneath the pillow, she must pass her hand under that portion of the pillow upon which Frau von ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Donnegan to him? What was Donnegan but a worthless tramp? Without any answer to that last monosyllabic query, the brakie hunched forward, and began to work his way ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Tremayne, of Fletcher's Engineers, who sat at work at a littered writing-table placed in the window recess. He looked up sharply, sudden concern in the strong young face and the steady grey eyes he bent upon his chief. The sight of O'Moy's hunched attitude brought him instantly ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... lost in snowstorms or of ships that had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent, disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even to each other, and in the whispers that ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... a country road and you came upon a nice little boy, named Harry, one of your neighbor's sons, and Harry was sitting hunched up on a stump, sniffling and sobbing, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Upon enquiring the cause of his trouble, you learn that a bigger boy, Jake, had taken away Harry's apple. Strictly speaking, the apple didn't belong to either of them, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... boy capered alongside the caravan, aiming stones at the sparrows hunched up on the leafless branches of the hedges, or chasing the shy young rabbits that scuttered frightened to their burrows in the mossy bank by the roadside, as the piebalds plodded sedately on their monotonous way. The bear snarled behind his iron bars, the children crouched silently in a corner ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... down in the corner still as a mouse. Her thin knees were hunched close together. She held her poor bundle tightly. Her big black eyes grew larger and darker with wonder as she had her first glimpse of a fairyland, outside her own imagination, in the beautiful room and the group of lovely ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Gaddon hunched in the darkness of the rocket, waiting. He had counted the remaining minutes off, one by one. And he knew that finally the moment was ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... spectacle of destruction. The family had been gone for months, and so no pity mingled with the excitement. Not till the following day did the awful nature of the event break in its full horror upon the town. Among the ruins, in a closet which the flames had spared, they found hunched up in one corner, the body of a man, in whose seared throat a wound appeared which had not been made by lightning or fire. Spencer! Spencer himself, returned they knew not how, to die of this self-inflicted wound, in the dark corner of his grand but ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... ladder and found that he must wedge himself in on his back, his knees hunched up almost under his chin. To make it worse, cramped as those quarters were, he had to share them with the major. A transparent hood snapped down and ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... Bakuma squatting disconsolately by the fire listening to the hundredth repetition of his wonder working according to Mungongo. The outline of her rounded back and hunched shoulders, the bronze hands clasped beneath the chin and the misty brown eyes apprehensively regarding the trail was a sculpture of melancholy. He smiled as he reflected that the devils and witches of Chrysostom ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle |
