"Impish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chuckle, was to convey fear to the beholder of his work. It was an impish trick, and it brought him unwittingly ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... could not for a moment get Mrs. Arlington out of his mind. More than once, stealing a covert glance across the table, it seemed to him that Malvina was regarding him with a mocking smile. Some impish spirit it must have been that had prompted him. For thousands of years Malvina had led—at all events so far as was known—a reformed and blameless existence; had subdued and put behind her that fatal passion of hers for change: in other people. What madness to have revived it! And no Queen Harbundia ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the shrewdness of observation that never needed to look twice, the same colourless brows and lashes and insignificant features; but she possessed one redeeming point which Nick lacked. What with him was an impish grin of sheer exuberance, with her was a smile of rare enchantment, very fleeting, with a fascination quite indescribable but none the less capable of imparting to her pale young face a charm that only the greatest artists have ever been able to depict. People were apt to say of Olga Ratcliffe ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a right to do as she likes, I hope, Quilp,' said the old lady trembling, partly with anger and partly with a secret fear of her impish son-in-law. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... about them all is, that they help the good and wise people to do things better; but they love to plague and punish the dull folks, that are stupid, or foolish or naughty. In impish glee, they lure the blockheads, or in Dutch, the "cheese-heads," ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... General, ever has its ups and downs, And you must take the better and the worse As impish chance or destiny ordains. Come near and warm you here. A glowing fire Is life on the depressing, mired, moist days Of smitten leaves down-dropping clammily, And toadstools like the putrid lungs of men. [To his Lieutenants.] Cause them so stand to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... parted in an alert smile, his blue eyes sparkling. He seemed to enjoy the game in which he was engaged, to be brimming over with self- confidence, to anticipate success, to relish his foretaste of combat with a sort of impish delight. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... "You are positively impish in your mood to-day!" exclaimed Lady Engleton. "What should we do without our Great Majority, as you call it? It is absolutely necessary to put some curb on the wild impulses of pure reason"—a sentiment that Hadria greeted with chuckles ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... recently published Life of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the collaborators do not allude to that curious vein of impish humour which at times possessed him, turning him into a sort of big rollicking schoolboy. There was one episode which I can give with Tree's actual words, for I wrote them down at the time, as a supreme example of the art of "leg-pulling." Amongst the members of the "Grill-room ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... girl's face when you throw down her hat and coat in your eagerness to get your own first. You will then, doubtless, have an excellent opportunity to form a correct idea of the meaning of physiognomical. Then you may come and tell me whether you consider her character an angelic or impish one." ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... started on the jump. The boys cheered her from the corner of the house, having bashfully remained in the background. Even Margaret Llewellen and her impish brother, Bob, appeared and shrilly ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... first they heard nothing in return. Then came a strange sound from the cabin, and for one brief instant a dark, impish face showed itself at the broken window. Then the face disappeared and a stone came whizzing toward the lads' heads. They ducked just in time, or one or the other might have been ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... and pelting her like hail-stones, for all her dodging. There were feverishly red apples, gnarly green apples and the golden sweets, the favorites of her childhood, all of them turning into goblins as she approached, and leering up at her out of impish eyes which nevertheless bore a startling resemblance to those eyes in whose depths she had once seen only the reflection of her own loyalty. It was small wonder that Persis woke unrefreshed. "I declare," she mused, as she twisted her hair into the unyielding knob, highly in favor ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... the window stood a robin red-breast; the impish bird had its head turned to one side, and was peeping into the room: "Come out," it chirped, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the disputants with evident interest. To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward over ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... habit of writing to strangers on the subjects next his heart. Once he approached Miss Felicia Dorothea Browne (afterwards Mrs. Hemans), who had not been encouraging. Now half in earnest, and half with an impish desire for dialectical scores, he printed a pamphlet on 'The Necessity of Atheism', a single foolscap sheet concisely proving that no reason for the existence of God can be valid, and sent it to various personages, including bishops, asking ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... it. The lady smiled in a decidedly disagreeable manner. I am not timid, but I would rather write a vaudeville in three acts than to be obliged to make a declaration to her if she had that impish smile on her lips. She has a way of protruding her under lip-ugh! do you know you are terribly slender? Will you let me cut the band of your trousers? I never could dance with my stomach compressed ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the two she had dropped in upon. The water flew in all directions, and Migwan fled over the rocks to avoid being drenched. Medmangi and Nyoda also came up thirsting for vengeance, but Sahwah escaped by swimming under water around the dock and clambering out on the rocks. She made an impish grimace at Migwan, who was standing on the rock where she came up. Migwan leaned over and put a streak of soap on her face, Sahwah promptly caught Migwan by the feet and pulled her off the rock into the water. Struggling, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Creole. "We combad the fiah fiend. You fine that building ve'y pitto'esque, Mistoo Itchlin?" He jerked his thumb toward the prison, that was still pouring forth its clouds of impish wings. "Yes? 'Tis the same with me. But I tell you one thing, Mistoo Itchlin, I assu' you, and you will believe me, I would 'atheh be lock' outside of that building than to be lock' inside of the same. 'Cause—you know why? 'Tis ve'y ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... crows came sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... looking up at her from the gay oval of her garden. She hung over the window-sill. She looked directly down upon him, foreshortened to a face, and even with the distance and the broad glare of noon between them she recognized his aspect—his gayest, of diabolic glee. There lurked about him the impish quality of the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Then an impish sprite of mischief whispered in her ear and her eyes danced merrily. On that chance meeting with Cora and Linda in the hall Cora had told her and Grace that they were staying in a suite of rooms on the third floor, and had asked them to come to see ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... horn, the light instantly reappeared. All was stir and confusion amid the impish troop—and presently afterwards a number of coal-black horses, and hounds of the same hue, leashed in couples, were brought out of one of the side passages. Among the latter were two large sable hounds ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Nancy Simms dusting the Baxter parlor, pausing to stand admiringly before a picture on a white-and-gold easel, that cherished picture of a house with mother-of-pearl puddles in front of it. A derisive and impish amusement flickered like summer lightning across her face, and with an inscrutable smile she mocked the mother-of-pearl puddles and her old admiration of them. She lifted her eyes to the painting over Berkeley Hayden's ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... around it, bearing an inscription which would inform admiring tourists that here was the desk at which the brilliant author had been wont to sit when grinding out heart-throb stories for the humble Post. He took an impish delight in my struggles with my hero and heroine, and his inquiries after the health of both were of such a nature as to make any earnest writer person rise in wrath and slay him. I had seen little of Blackie of late. My spare hours had been devoted to the work ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... fast asleep in the early morning beside the open grave and empty coffin of little Wang Tai. There were wise men abroad, and they said that little Wang Tai, through imperfect medical skill, had been interred alive, and that Romulus and Moses, by means of their impish pranks, had brought her to life after raising her from the grave. But wherefore the need of all this talk? Is it not enough that these two brigands were whipped and sent back into servitude, and that when the little yellow woman from Asia had ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... never enjoyed. Timmy also always knew how to manage his delicate, nervous father. John Tosswill realised that Timmy might some day grow up to do him credit. Timmy really loved learning, and it was a pleasure to the scholar to teach his clever, impish, youngest son. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... till it guttered and flickered in its pool of melted tallow, and the shadows it threw upon wall and ceiling seemed instinct with an impish life of their own, as though they were dark spirits from the pit come to mock the final hours of the life that was ebbing away ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the utmost care and was so sure of them that I felt that I could walk blindfold and pick them up. But when I came to the spot the ball was not there. This experience became so common that at last the conclusion forced itself upon me that the golf ball had a sort of impish intelligence that could only be met by a superior cunning. I suspected that it deliberately hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it, it took a fiendish delight in dodging you. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the situation with her own eyes, fairly felt the clutch of it upon his own heart. She or some impish power acting through her agency had certainly made a mess of things. Her father's happiness destroyed; Rush's partnership broken; and the whole Hickory Hill project ruined unless some one could be found to buy into it in Graham's place; ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was becoming unbearable when the blessed doorbell rang and delivered us, and Miss Josephine St. Michael entered with John Mayrant. He wore a most curious expression; his eyes went searching about the room, and at length settled upon Juno with a light in them as impish as that which had flickered in my own ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... house by the Weiss Thor, from which Graetz the wizard and his wife had been burned out by the fury of the populace. Twenty years of artistic labor had made this place what it now was. And the little impish maid who used to break unexpectedly upon the workmen of Thorn from behind doors, or who clapped hands upon their shoulders in dusky recesses, scaring them out of their wits with suggestions of witch-masters ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... where he was in charge of the two guns and birds, and started off with his net in pursuit of the butterfly. The creature fluttered away with Frank in full pursuit. Hither and thither it flitted, seemingly taking an impish delight in tantalizing Frank, settling on a spot where a gleam of sunlight streamed upon the bark of a tree, till Frank had stolen up within a couple of paces of it, and then darting away again at a pace which defied Frank's best attempts to keep up with it until it chose to play ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... the dressing-room to herself presently, for she did not have to appear until the second act, and as she sat there, reading over her part, the call boy put in his head with an impish grin. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... mood of impish frolic gives a new turn of saucy gait. In the jovial answer, chorussed in simple song, seems a revel of all the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... feet planted firmly on the rug, and poured out a flood of pompous platitudes. Faith heard not a word. She was really not listening to him at all. But she was watching his long black coat-tails with impish delight growing in her brown eyes. Mr. Perry was standing VERY near the fire. His coat-tails began to scorch—his coat-tails began to smoke. He still prosed on, wrapped up in his own eloquence. The coat-tails ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there was a cheery "Yo-ho!" and up came a black, impish-looking boy of about my own age, kicking, struggling, and tearing at the rope round ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... the night goes on and the dance is o'er, And the merry girls are homeward gone, But I see it all in my sleep once more, And I dream till the very break of dawn Of an impish dance on a red-hot griddle To the screech and scrape of a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... impression never to be effaced—the snowed-up hut surrounded by a great expanse of white, the rather surprised look an the dogs' faces, the sniffing at one's knees and the wagging of tails as one approached to pat their heads, the twitching of the ponies' ears and nostrils, and the rather impish attitude the fitter animals adopted, the occasional kick out, probably meant quite playfully, and above all the grins on the faces of the Russian grooms. Yes, we were all smiling when the sun came back, even the horizon smiled kindly at us from the north. The Barne ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... besides eating a great deal. Concluding that it was a changeling, the peasant sought the advice of his neighbours, who suggested that he should take it on a pilgrimage to a neighbouring shrine of the Mother of God. While he was crossing a brook on the way an impish voice from under the water called out to the infant, whom he was carrying in a basket. The brat answered from within the basket, "Ho, ho!" and the peasant was unspeakably shocked. When the voice from the water proceeded to ask the child ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... replied, "I mistook the apartment: ye cannot suppose, most worthy commander of this enchanted and impish conservatory, that, of my own free will, I would choose such company. Where is the sinner?"—Dalton desired Springall to show him to the room ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... took her extended hand, to mumble something unintelligible enough to pass for her name, looking at her with an admiration purposely open in the hope of distracting her attention, but the ruse was of no avail. She only smiled into his face with impish delight. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... after Arline had gone to her room and Manley had returned to the "office" that Val suddenly picked up her hairbrush and, with an impish light in her eyes, began to pile her hair high upon her head. With her lips curved to match the mockery of her eyes, she began hurriedly to dress. Later, she went down to the parlor, where four women from the neighboring ranches were sitting stiffly and in ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... ground floor to the upper story, visible above the wide staircase. After four years of legal tenebration it was obvious that the ambassador's intention was to celebrate the Armistice as well as the visit of his King to Paris with an almost impish demonstration of the recaptured right to extravagance, obliterate the dry economical past. The ambassador's country might be intolerably poor after the war, but like many other prudent nobles he had invested money ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... had a real licking before," he muttered as Bob, thus rudely jerked out of the circle of his own impish mental processes, shot ahead. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... until he went to bed and lay staring into the darkness that the mental tumult subsided and the moral tumult began. The questions that he had resolutely kept in abeyance all evening began to dance in impish insistence before him. What right had he to take Shields's place, when he had said exactly the things that Shields had been fired for saying? Did he want to go the way Shields had gone, compromising with his conscience in order to keep his job, ashamed to face his ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... one phase of Rachel's nature which is rather sinister. She was absolutely hard. She seemed to have no emotions except those which she exhibited on the stage or the impish perversity which irritated so many of those about her. She was in reality a product of the gutter, able to assume a demure and modest air, but within coarse, vulgar, and careless of decency. Yet the words of Jules Janin, which have been quoted ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... performed, the child lay exposed to all their machinations. Baptism was the armour of the infant against the assaults of Satan and his angels, against the cunning of the wanderers from elfin-land, the fairy-sprites, with their changelings and their impish tricks. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to have laughed so hard and so long over an impish trick that came from ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... too, of Wee Jaikie, who was having the red-letter hour of his life. His fragile form moved like a lizard in places where no mortal could be expected, and he varied his duties with impish assaults upon the persons of such as came in his way. His whistle blew in a man's ear one second and the next yards away. Sometimes he was moved to song, and unearthly fragments of "Class-conscious we are" or "Proley Tarians, arise!" mingled with the din, like the cry of seagulls in ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Teddy, the cause of it all. How he hated himself for yielding to that impish impulse that had so often gotten him into trouble! Now, all he could think of was that somebody would be killed, and it would be his fault and his alone. His heart was full ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... live!" said Sir Pertinax, scowling also. "Here will I, and with great joyance, cleave me thine impish mazzard and split thee to thy beastly chine. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the dictatorial director; or, what's the use without Miss Reid? They will learn a few points of the game before he gets through with them. I wouldn't miss that try-out for a good deal." Jerry was deriving an impish satisfaction from the prospect of the Sans' encounter to come with ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the day. "Cheer up, ma! Cherries are ripe." She snapped her fingers, swayed her lithe body, and undulated gracefully to the piano, where she brought both hands down on the keys with a crash, and played ragtime with feverish fury for five minutes. Then, her impish nature asserting itself, she literally smashed out the opening bars of the Wedding March from Lohengrin, and shouted with glee when her mother, a finger in each ear, fled ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... it was similar, though far more difficult to detect in detail for description. I saw the smaller vegetable growth as impish, half-malicious. Even the terraces sloped ill, as though their ends had sagged since they had been so lavishly constructed; their varying angles gave a queerly bewildering aspect to their sequence that was unpleasant to the eye. One might wander among their deceptive lengths and get lost —lost ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... pouting ever so slightly, and the soft brown hair was parted in the middle and drawn back from an exquisite forehead. The dark brown eyes were the girl's chief charm. They danced and sparkled in impish mischief, and had a way of shooting sudden glances which made themselves felt as keenly as arrows. And crowning it all was a sweet grace and womanliness which was good to see. From that hour my opinion ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... customers were in such a rush to catch trains for their Main Line suburbs that they seldom remained long enough to give conductor and orchestra a well-deserved ovation. So nobody ever quite knew whether the dead-pan Stoky was in earnest or moved by an impish sense of humor when, following the usual thin smattering ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... face half hidden under a wavy mass of red-brown hair. Unlike the others, she had been docked—and in contrast to their heavy eyes and sleep-puffed features she was alert and lively. She flashed him an impish grin, revealing clean ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... to disport themselves in the light and air, the three rushed into the wood, making the silence that reigned there ring with their voices and innocent shouts of laughter. Virgen del Amporo! how they jumped! how they laughed! What impish tricks those little mad things were up to! For the greater enjoyment of the innocent games that their youthful retrogression demanded, they threw off their mantillas, let their hair loose, took off their gloves, cast aside fan and parasol, did all that youth could suggest, and were as pranksome ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... did Duc and Comte both declare that they had never fought a duel; and when, in the absence of proof, the Regent insisted that their bodies should be examined for the convicting wounds, the impish Richelieu came triumphantly through the ordeal as the result of having his wounds covered with pink taffeta ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... to take leave of the newly-wedded pair, and to wish them God-speed. There is often deep sorrow under the surface of merriment at such partings. It is the moment when young brothers and frivolous cousins perform impish pranks, while the parents, and maybe the bride, are feeling the keen pang of separation. Paper confetti are a harmless substitute for rice, which is not soothing to receive in the eye or ear. The throwing of ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... to present his misery in embodied form, he produced a note-book and tried to concentrate his attention upon the items therein recorded. Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee before him, defying inspection. But at the foot of the column, like soldiers waiting to shoot a prisoner, stood four formidable units unquestionably pointing his ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... taken Mrs. Langworthy's measure, found an impish joy in murdering the proprieties for her especial benefit. She said "Damn" upon occasions when Mrs. Langworthy was there to hear; she rode her horse at a gallop into the yard and right up to the veranda when Mrs. Langworthy was there to see, swinging down as her mount jerked to standstill, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... some, mayhap, to set up the button as rival to the safety pin in service to humanity. But our homage bends toward the former. Not only was it our shield and buckler when we were too puny and impish to help ourselves, but it is also (now we are parent) symbol of many a hard-fought field, where we have campaigned all over the white counterpane of a large bed to establish an urchin in his proper gear, while he kicked ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... straight passage, led downward to those very caverns under earth which the pirates had dug for their treasuries. Now, as we passed out, I saw others in a throng enter the Sarrasin's presence chamber, but I could scarce see them clearly, and beside this throng of visitors leapt, I thought, that very impish ugly devil, the ape that men called the familiar of the Lord of Rouen, that he named Folly, the which I had set eyes on at the house at Blanchelande. Yea, it ran chattering with many a mow and grimace, and though I saw not those that entered, I was well assured that my Lord ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... that, in the absence of Major Carew, there was no one but himself to receive them. He was evidently a trifle shy and embarrassed, stammering a little as he offered his services to superintend the pitching of their camp, with eyes that would wander from the elder cousin to Diana's small, impish, alluring face. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... on a celebration to-night: an unpremeditated, freakish, impish, essentially harmless celebration, with a faint flavour of mischief in it because he had Nan in the back of his head all the time. He played up to Mrs. Morrell with exuberance, with honestly no thought except that he was having a whacking good time, and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... every head turned squarely in my direction. Their eyes are closed to a mere black line; through this crack they are watching me, evidently thinking themselves unobserved. The spectacle is weird and grotesque, and suggests something impish and uncanny. It is a new effect, the night side of the woods by daylight. After observing them a moment I take a single step toward them, when, quick as thought, their eyes fly wide open, their attitude is changed, they ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... improve with every game. Greg and I are plugging hard at the game in the little time that the West Point routine allows us for practice. From what I have heard of your game, I think it likely that you and good, but impish old Dan, are playing against the very position that Greg and I hope to hold in the annual Army-Navy ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... of sphinxlike mystery. The very faces of the gargoyles, impenetrable and calm, or grinningly grotesque, gave the fancy visible outward expression. One monster in particular, with twisted horns and impish tongue lolling forth between wide, inhuman teeth, seemed to look upon him with peculiar and malicious amusement. He experienced the spiritual depression which sometimes seems to emanate from inanimate things, that ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... a fork of this arm hangs a round, black, trumpet-shaped, hard rubber tube. This last is the receiving instrument. It is taken from its arm and held close to the ear. The answers are heard in it as though the person speaking were there concealed in an impish embodiment of himself. Meantime the talking is done into a hole in the side of the box, while the receiver is held to the ear. This is all that appears superficially. An operation incredible has its entire machinery concealed in these simplicities. It is difficult to explain the mystery of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... sadly lumbered on toward Stickleford. Next day she was calmer; but the fits were still upon her; and her will seemed shattered. For the child she appeared to show singularly little anxiety, though Ned was nearly distracted. It was nevertheless quite expected that the impish Mop would restore the lost one after a freak of a day or two; but time went on, and neither he nor she could be heard of, and Hipcroft murmured that perhaps he was exercising upon her some unholy musical charm, as he had done upon Car'line herself. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the man?" Stefan wondered, thrusting his hands into his pockets. "He was leisurely enough till he had seen the picture. I tell you what!" he exclaimed. "Did you notice his expression when he looked at it? I believe the chap is in love with you!" He turned his most impish and mischievous ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... in an entirely opposite direction to Mo?" I argued, seeing that a crowd of grinning impish-looking carriers had gathered around ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... to bed showed him Monsieur Dudu on the terrace path, enjoying the moonlight apparently, but, Hugh strongly suspected, bent on mischief, for his head was very much on one side and his claw very much stuck out, in the way which Jeanne declared made him look like a very impish raven indeed. ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... Coach's" pupils as he crossed the Cathedral Close, where the calm silence of the old place ought to have quelled the angry throbbing in his veins; but it had an opposite effect, and the cries of the jackdaws which clung about the mouldering tower sounded like impish derisive laughter. ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... interested him much less than old brocade and lighted wax candles, which inspired him with a solemnity that widened his eyes and narrowed his features. He looked on a new, and never-before-imagined, life. And he was grave to excess, though, later, I found plenty of the London child's impish nature ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... eldest son with a fierce "How dare you, sir?" and gave him a shake and blow. Robin stood with a sullen look on his face, and hands in his pockets, and his brothers followed suit. Armine hid his face in his mother's dress, and burst out crying; but Jock stepped forth and, with that impish look of fearlessness, said, "I did it, Uncle Robert! I wanted to make Aunt Ellen laugh. Did she laugh, mother?" he asked in so comical and innocent a manner that, in spite of her full consciousness of the heinousness of the offence, and its general unluckiness, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were women, who mocked at and reviled the unfortunate Englishman, screaming like so many furies, spitting at him, and gloating over his miserable plight, as is the custom of a certain grade of womankind all over the world. Inspired by the example of their elders, a swarm of impish children added their shrill cries to the tumult, let fly an occasional blunt-headed arrow at the helpless captive, or darted between the legs of the guards in their efforts to strike him. Finally the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was a small, slender girl, too childish, too impish, to think of as a "young woman." She had a little oval face with a pointed chin. It was pale, but not washed-out, and her lips were red. An obstinate, impudent mouth, Roger thought. As for her eyes—he had never seen such great eyes in ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... up an impish face at her as she retreated. Then he entered the church himself to inspect progress, returning immediately to take up his position of sentry again. About noon Anderson passed on his way to ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hours of afternoon when the children are once more upon the street, you regret your illness. Here they come trooping by threes and fours, carrying their books tied up in straps. One would think that they were in fear lest some impish fact might get outside the covers to spoil the afternoon. Until the morrow let two and two think themselves five at least! And let Ohio be bounded as it will! Some few children skip ropes, or step carefully across the cracks of the sidewalk for fear they spoil their suppers. Ah!—a ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's characteristics ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... excellences the world will in some saner mood rediscover; hold, in direct opposition to Rio, that Rafaelle improved steadily all his life through, and that his noblest works are not his somewhat simpering Madonnas and somewhat impish Bambinos (very lovely though they are), but his great, coarse, naturalist, Protestant cartoons, which (with Andrea Mantegna's Heathen Triumph) Cromwell saved for the British nation. Probably no one will agree with all this for the next ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... to that?" laughed the impish Joy for it was no secret that Bob Evans had lost his heart to the Arizona girl from the first time he met her. His heart was hers to crush or treasure as she saw fit. But at present Kit preferred to hold on to her girlhood and not allow the thought of love and ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... distressing, the sense of dull despair and unwarranted disaster which hung over the place. It was as though impish and pagan forces, or malign ones outside life, had committed a crime of the ugliest character. On Monday, the day he saw me, he was well. On Tuesday morning he had a slight cold but insisted on running out somewhere without his overcoat, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... merfolk^; siren; satyr, faun; manito^, manitou, manitu. possession, demonic possession, diabolic possession; insanity &c 503. [in jest, in science] Maxwell's demon. [person possessed by a demon] demoniac. Adj. demonic, demonical, impish, demoniacal; fiendish, fiend-like; supernatural, weird, uncanny, unearthly, spectral; ghostly, ghost-like; elfin, elvin^, elfish, elflike^; haunted; pokerish [U.S.]. possessed, possessed by a devil, possessed by a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... human nature. In one hand she holds a divining-rod. "She says to the emigrants," observed Powers, "'Here is the gold, if you choose to take it.'" But in her face, and in her eyes, very finely expressed, there is a look of latent mischief, rather grave than playful, yet somewhat impish or sprite-like; and, in the other hand, behind her back, she holds a bunch of thorns. Powers calls her eyes Indian. The statue is true to the present fact and history of California, and includes the age-long truth as respects ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of religion from Johnson's down to that of the latest dictionary agree on this one point, that it is concerned with man's relations to the unknown. Yes, God is the Unknown, and theology is the science of ignorance. Earl Beaconsfield, in his impish way, once said that where our knowledge ends our religion begins. A ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... influence of the approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity. Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... abundantly as the spring poppies were doing on the mountain side. Her sullen sweetness was very close to him. The rapid rise and fall of her bosom, the underlying flush in her dusky cheeks, the childish pout of the full lips, all joined in the challenge of her words. Mostly it was pure boyishness, the impish desire to tease, that struck the audacious sparkle to his eyes, but there was, too, a masculine impulse he did ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... away the exception I have taken to his verse. Had that been destined to exhibit the humanity which we seek, some promise of it would surely be discoverable; for he was a full-grown man at the time of that unhappy tumble on the ice. But there is none. It is all sheer wit, impish as a fairy changeling's, and always barren of feeling. Mr. Birrell has not supplied the explanatory epithet, so I will try to do so. It is "donnish." Cambridge, fondly imagining that she was showing right appreciation of Calverley ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... queer conception of the proprieties. He may think that you come to see me." A radiant smile leaped into her face, transforming its strange sombreness into absolutely impish mirth. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... brought him a fellowship at Merton if he had been willing to take Holy Orders, "I may take them indeed; but how believe they have been given me?" quoth he to the Warden with a tilt of one eyebrow. Whereat the Warden, aghast, wrote him off as a youth unreasonable, impracticable, and impish. Many others had the same opinion of Harry Boyce before the world was done with him. Few of them saw in his antics the uncertain spasms of too tender a conscience. But ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... from which a pair of good-humoured eyes peered out at her, through the shining glasses of his copper-rimmed spectacles, like two little lights in the dark. She had gone down those three steps, looking round shyly, afraid of getting dirty; had explained her business to that impish little chap; and had then hastily fled from that hell. Now it seemed to her that those two eyes had looked at her so kindly; and she wondered how any one could live in such a hole and be a Christian creature ... and yet ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... some Archangel Weber. I laugh out loud. Polyphemus, who has been regarding me with his one bantering eye from Carlotta's corner on the sofa, leaps to the ground and grotesquely curvets round the room in a series of impish hops. Heigh, old boy? Do the pulsations of the music throb in your veins, too? Come along and let us make a night of it. To the Devil with sleep. We'll go together down to the cellar and find a bottle of Pommery, and we will drink to Life and Youth and Love and the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... revelry! But you are to consider my own situation and its necessities; also a certain lightheartedness, eminently Gallic, which forms a leading trait in my character, and leads me to throw myself into new circumstances with the spirit of a schoolboy. It is possible that I sometimes allow this impish humour to carry me further than good taste approves: and I was certainly punished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jostled. She turned to find young John Drew Dominick Murphy, a protege of the school, and an intimate acquaintance of her own, regarding her with impish delight. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... manifest distress in breaking this news to me, and even in my evil mood I could not add intentionally to her pain. As for it cause, however, he sat absolutely unmoved. I think, indeed, from the blue light in his great eyes (which was absolutely impish), that the situation whetted his appetite. I did not deign another glance at the little wretch, as I went out, discomfited, but I felt that he ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned—he will not be so eager for another stripe from that same stick!—It was his cousin, Seniha Hanum—Satan devour her!—who made this marriage. Always she hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley |
