"Matronly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gloria come in. Mrs. Clandon is between forty and fifty, with a slight tendency to soft, sedentary fat, and a fair remainder of good looks, none the worse preserved because she has evidently followed the old tribal matronly fashion of making no pretension in that direction after her marriage, and might almost be suspected of wearing a cap at home. She carries herself artificially well, as women were taught to do as a part of good manners by dancing masters and reclining boards before these were superseded by the modern ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... as she went by me, and marked, under the meek expression assumed by the Virgin, a more characteristic one of severe resolution. She was, however, a queenly woman, in the ripest stage of maturity, but she bore herself, in the part she had taken, with a matronly grace something too ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... yielding to, the pleading of his own rough image; newly-married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened; matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and beset by troops of rosy grandchildren; withered Dots, who leaned on sticks, and tottered as they crept ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... ludicrous in draughtsmanship, depicting the Miracles of the Redemption, Moses burying the Egyptian, and sundry other passages of the text. In one a king was praying in the Temple to an exploding bomb intended to represent the Shechinah or divine glory. In another, Sarah attired in a matronly cap and a fashionable jacket and skirt, was standing behind the door of the tent, a solid detached villa on the brink of a lake, whereon ships and gondolas floated, what time Abraham welcomed the three celestial messengers, unobtrusively ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... (veteran) 130; firstling; doyen, father; primogeniture. [Science of old age.] geriatrics, nostology^. V. be aged &c adj.; grow old, get old &c adj.; age; decline, wane, dodder; senesce. Adj. aged; old &c 124; elderly, geriatric, senile; matronly, anile^; in years; ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime; gray, gray-headed; hoar, hoary; venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated; advanced ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... quickly and find that Candida has just come in, and is looking at them with an amused maternal indulgence which is her characteristic expression. She is a woman of 33, well built, well nourished, likely, one guesses, to become matronly later on, but now quite at her best, with the double charm of youth and motherhood. Her ways are those of a woman who has found that she can always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so frankly and instinctively without ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... Harcourt, who had astonished her father by her marvelous intuition of the nice requirements and elegant responsibilities of their position; and had thrown her mother into the pained perplexity of a matronly hen, who, among the ducks' eggs intrusted to her fostering care, had unwittingly hatched a graceful ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... very Bibles and prayer-books. There are such things as education and culture—not to speak of good birth. You yourself, Dr. Millar, are fairly well born and well connected for a professional man." She instanced this with an imperceptible bridle and toss of her matronly head, which hinted broadly, "If it had not been so, Jonathan, I should never have been Mrs. Millar." The movement threatened to deposit her cap on the carpet behind her, but she recovered it in time, and took up the thread of her discourse ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... if you will make room in the library," she replied with unaffected simplicity. The library was occupied by a number of matronly ladies and elderly gentlemen—all of the guests who were not participating in the dance. Lizzie bowed her head slightly, and passed to the harp, now silent in one corner. Without hesitation she seated herself before it, and the slender ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... by day, could not but be remarked after a lapse of many years. The darker hair, the softer complexion, the suave smile into which the merry laugh of girlhood had little by little subsided, the more composed mien, replete with matronly dignity, the refinement of air and attitude insensibly resulting from long continued instinctive imitation, the superior development of figure—all these, as they were improvements in her former self, were also just so many effective disguises upon which she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pass every day, with their sere trees all round, their rough gardens of bright dahlias and chrysanthemums draggled by the autumn rains—in these there are, do not doubt it, still Nencias: magnificent creatures, fit models for Amazons, only just a trifle too full-blown and matronly; but with real Amazonian limbs, firm and delicate, under their red and purple striped print frocks; creatures with heads set on necks like towers or columns, necks firm in broad, well-fleshed chest as branches in a tree's trunk; great ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... cannot be often that these are redeemed by the treasure-trove of a great sin. When her confession was over the woman came and sat down on the same bench with me, where her broad-brimmed straw hat was lying. She seemed to be a country woman, with a simple, matronly face, which was solemnized and softened with the comfort that she had obtained by disburdening herself of the soil of worldly frailties and receiving absolution. An old woman, who haunts the cathedral, whispered to her, and she went and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this time a slight change in her manner was noticed by the few who saw her more frequently. Her apparently invincible girlishness of spirit had given way to a certain matronly seriousness. She applied herself to her household cares and the improvement of the hacienda with a new sense of duty and a settled earnestness, until by degrees she wrought into it not only her instinctive delicacy and taste, but part of her own individuality. Even ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... course of the next day Lightmark had the privilege of a confidential interview with the mother of his adored. Mrs. Sylvester had fully armed herself for the occasion, and presented an edifying example of matronly affection ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Hawaiian songs she had learned from Mercedes, and soon, to her accompaniment, all were singing: "Aloha Oe," "Honolulu Tomboy," and "Sweet Lei Lehua." Saxon was genuinely shocked when some of them, even the more matronly, danced hulas on ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... was now full of guests, friends of the bride and of her father's family. The eight young ladies who were to attend her to the altar, had arrived early in the afternoon, each chaperoned by her mother, aunt, or some matronly friend. These had all been ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... come over Lady Fulkeward—a change, sudden, mysterious and amazing to many of her former distinguished friends with "pedigrees." In her husband's lifetime her hair had been a soft silver-gray; her face pale, refined and serious; her form full and matronly; her step sober and discreet; but two years after the death of the kindly and noble old lord who had cherished her as the apple of his eye and up to the last moment of his breath had thought her the most beautiful woman in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... any thing that can tell me of your 'introuvable' friend Lafontaine. This is not for myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country—a showy "citizeness" of Zurich, embonpoint and matronly, married to one of the portly burghers of the city, and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing, wool-spinning, and cheese-making; a mother, surrounded a la Francaise with a host of Orlandos, Hyacintes, Aristomenes, and Apollos—pretty children, with the Frenchman developing in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and matronly, the birds will sing fitfully or cease altogether, the pastures will turn brown, and the haymakers will find the hay half cured as it stands waiting for ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... white playfellow near my own age. Mary 'Liza "was not fond of playing," although she would do it when we had company who could be entertained in no other way. As a rule, when not engaged with lessons and chemises, she took care in a matronly way of Dorinda, Rozillah's successor, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... a handsome, impulsive, kind-hearted woman of forty five; her arched, dark eye-brows and a wonderful natural complexion gave her a fictitious air of youth—slightly discounted by a comfortable and matronly figure. Some declared that her round face, short nose, and large eyes produced a resemblance to a well-to-do pussy cat, but this was the voice of envy. She had a clever maid, dressed well, and with the exception ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... journey to the land of the Dakotas to witness an anniversary gathering of their Woman's Missionary Society. You enter the great Council Tent. It is thronged with these nut-brown women of the plains. A matronly woman welcomes you, and presides with grace and dignity. A bright and beautiful young maiden—a graduate of Santee or Good Will—controls the organ and sweetly leads the service of song. And oh how they do sing! You cannot understand the words, but the airs ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... from a pale, nervous girl, had expanded into a strong, hale, buxom woman. The glow of health was on her cheek, the sparkle of innocent mirth shone in her eye. There was one among the sisters who gleefully asked me to guess at her age. She was a sweet, fresh-complexioned, matronly woman. "Not more than fifty, good mother," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... next morning Farfrae might have been discovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction, Elizabeth-Jane sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur—the victorine of the period—her complexion somewhat richer than formerly, and an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one "whose gestures beamed with mind" made becoming, settling on her face. Having herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser troubles of her ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... with you," returned Phillis, naughtily, "for he talked to no one else. And you are so young-looking and pretty that of course no one could be surprised if he did." But though Mrs. Challoner said, "Oh, Phillis!" and looked dreadfully shocked in a proper matronly way, what was the use of that, when the mischievous girl burst out ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to broad male feet, The "Happy Garden Seat," Invaded now by the non-smoking sex, Virginal scruples vex, And matronly anathemas assail. Alas! and what avail Man's immunities of time or place? The sweet she-creatures chase From all old coigns of vantage harried man. In vain, how vain to ban Beauty from billiard-room or—Morning Bus What use to fume or fuss? And yet, and yet indeed it is no joke! Where ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... please—answering to the honoured and historic name of the Miss C—— A——'s of Balnamoon. At table I was exceedingly funny, and entertained the company with tales of geese and bubbly-jocks. I was great in the expression of my terror for these bipeds, and suddenly this horrid, severe, and eminently matronly old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. "You give me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!" I had very nearly left two vices behind me at Glenogil—fishing and jesting at table. And ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... haven't introduced us to any but the Kentons. But I dare say they are the best. The judge is a dear, and Mrs. Kenton is everything that is motherly and matronly. Boyne says she is very well informed, and knows all about the reigning families. If he decides to marry into them, she can be of great use in saving him from a mesalliance. I can't say very much for Miss ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... present moment, Esclairmonde had never felt the slightest call to take a permanent place there. Now however the cloister, even if it were open to her, presented a gloomy, cheerless life of austerity, in comparison with human affection and matronly duty. And most vivid of all at the moment was the desire to awaken the tender sweetness that slept in those steady gray eyes, to see the grave, wise visage gleam with smiling affection, and to rest in having one to ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy, imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within the door and bay ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of a dollarless experience, they might justify the wisdom of her objection. In this gracious fashion did Mrs. Hanway-Harley sanction the union of her only daughter Dorothy with Mr. Richard Storms; after which she folded her matronly hands in resignation, bearing meanwhile the manner of one who will face the worst bravely and hopes that others are prepared ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Yet in spite of all her losses and misfortunes, she had gained so much in corpulency, that it was with the utmost difficulty she could squeeze herself into the doorway of their hut, although it was by no means small. The widow Zuma was a very good-looking person of matronly appearance, and her skin ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Jupiter, was haughty, jealous and inexorable; a goddess of dignified and matronly air, often found with ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 'orrified rayther; but as for young Arrers-and-'Arts, He turned up his nose at the old 'un, whilst all the gay donas and tarts, Not to mention the matronly mivvies, were arter the boy with the bow, Plainly looking on TOLSTOI and IBSEN as crackpots, and not in ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... we were conducted was a picturesque, comfortable-looking building, constructed of wood, with a low pitched roof, and wide long verandah, up to which a flight of broad steps led us. We found a matronly-looking dame, with a bevy of young ones, standing in the verandah, evidently wondering at the number of guests Mr Praeger was bringing to the house. They were all activity on hearing the state of the ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... who were better pleased to act as faithful and provident stewards of the bounty of Heaven, than, like greedy whirlpools, to absorb every thing within their reach. He contrasted their circumspect liberality with her thoughtless waste; the matronly sobriety and tempered magnificence of their attire with her new fangled fickleness and wanton costliness; their modest dignified courtesy with her wayward perverseness; their gravity with her lightness, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Antonio; and her words did really sound like sweet music. He would not let her leave him again. The beggar-woman had disappeared from the steps of the Franciscan Church, and in her stead people saw Signor Antonio's housekeeper, dressed in becoming matronly style, limping about St. Mark's Square and buying the requisite provisions for ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of however long duration, conclusively fatal against a wife; for we meet Helen, after a twenty years' elopement, again the quiet, hospitable mistress in the Spartan palace, entertaining her husband's guests with an easy matronly dignity, and not afraid even in Menelaus's presence to allude to the past—in strong terms of self-reproach, indeed, but with nothing like despairing prostration. Making the worst of this, however, yet even in this respect the Homeric ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... for it, and after Henry had scraped together more Money than you could load on a Hay-Rack, an Unfortunate Thing happened. His Wife began to Fail. She was now Forty, but the Fair and Fat did not go with it. At that Age some Women are Buxom and just blossoming into the Full Charm of Matronly Womanhood. But Henry's Wife was Gaunt and Homely and all Run Down. She had been Poorly for Years, but she had to keep up and do the Chores as well as the House-Work, because Henry could not afford to hire a Girl. At last her Back gave out, ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... letter which the housekeeper had written to her—to see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent old woman. She found herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity, whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical resistance to the deteriorating influence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Conny, her elder sister, who by virtue of her seniority and the fact of her having reached the mature age of ten was rather prone to giving herself certain matronly airs of superiority over the others, which they put up with in all good faith, albeit they were most amusing to outside onlookers. "You are always imagining something terrible is going to befall everybody, instead ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... garb. Then there was a Southern woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn't ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... blue or white all the time. One day two weeks ago Dad and I went to Los Angeles to buy clothes for her. I don't believe I ever had quite such a good time in all my life. 'Twas just like shopping for one's very own child. I put my hair up high for the occasion, and endeavored to look matronly, but I guess I failed, for when I saw a ravishing pink dress and said, "I guess it's too small for my little girl," the stupid clerk laughed ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... scaffold, from haymow to haymow, she leaped defiant. She pulled out the hay from under the very noses of the astonished cows, to see if, perchance, some inexperienced pullet might there have deposited her golden treasure. With all four-footed beasts she was on the best of terms. The matronly and lazy old sheep she unceremoniously hustled aside, to administer consolation and caresses to the timid, quaking lamb in the corner behind. Without saddle or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally stealing glances of admiration ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... to the tea tabouret, where a matronly maid was busying with the service. The fragrant odor of tea permeated the room. Hare paused at his desk. Lines suddenly appeared on his bronzed face. He gazed for a space at the calendar. The day was the fifteenth of July. Should he go back there, or should he give up the expedition? ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... that she wishes it,' said Sister Constance, who had been a wife before she was a Sister, and saw that it was matronly tact and tenderness that the crisis needed; 'but I'll tell you what you can safely and naturally do. Go in and fetch Cherry's folding chair, and call the children to carry her appurtenances down to the garden. That will make a break, and Wilmet can take advantage ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prettiness had developed into matronly comeliness. Her fair complexion and pink cheeks had lost none of their freshness. Her smooth auburn hair was as soft and bright as it had been when she had braided it preparatory to a Barlingford tea-party in the days of her spinsterhood. She was a pretty, weak little ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... aesthetic value, still it does not adequately serve the more everyday ends of life in a modern industrial community. Even that large and substantial body of well-bred, upper and middle-class women to whose dispassionate, matronly sense of the traditional proprieties this relation of status commends itself as fundamentally and eternally right-even these, whose attitude is conservative, commonly find some slight discrepancy in detail between things as they are and things as they should be in this respect. But ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... die they must. Gay-colored finches, the gold and the green, graced the window in little brown bob cages; while mice of all colors, from the burnt sienna-colored dormouse, who was more than half asleep within the skin of an apple which it had scooped out, to the matronly white mouse, who was sitting composedly amid a progeny of thirteen young ones, attracted groups of little gazers, every now and then dispersed by the larger terrier, who ran out amongst them, snarling and threatening, but doing them no harm. "Come in, old ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven hundred acres across up yonder, and paid for it; but they cheated us out of it. Sells was ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Joyce was now and whom she had married, for of course she had married. Did she too live somewhere down there in the valley, the matronly, contented mother of lads and lassies? He could see her old home also, not so far from his own, just across a green meadow by way of a footpath and stile and through the firs beyond it. How often he had traversed that path in the old days, knowing that Joyce would ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... different house-doors as she sat behind her muslin curtains, looking as fresh and healthful as ever, and scarcely more matronly, except that her air of self-assertion had become more easy and less aggressive now that she was undisputed mistress ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she said, in her most matronly manner, "kindly remember that a woman past her first youth always prefers to sit with ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... usual thanks for these kindnesses, and just as this came painfully to the sensibilities of the thoughtful, Barton uncovered his head and said the few needed words in a clear, steady voice, with such grace, that matronly women would gladly have kissed him; and young maidens noticed, what they had observed before, that there was something of nameless attraction in his ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... of the lodge in the deer-park, rising straight in the clear air, and cheerfully suggestive that some tiny family, not too large for the building, were at breakfast within. It might even be the deer themselves; and Helen smiled at her whim, almost laughing outright as a picture arose of a matronly doe preparing coffee, while a solemn buck sat in his easy chair before the fire, reading his morning paper and now and then glancing at his wife ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... brought her should be allowed to sleep off the effects of an exhausting journey. Only Shakespearean dramatic power could have ascribed sleep to this doll, who was a similitude of Struvvel Peter in the collected poems of that name just published. Still, Dolly gave all of herself that this matronly preoccupation could spare to Dave. She very soon suggested that they should make a joint visit to old Mrs. Picture upstairs. She could carry Struvvel Peter in her arms all the time, so that his sleep should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the commencement of the levee. The party in the piazza consisted chiefly of women. Madame L'Ouverture was there—like, and yet unlike, the Margot of former years—employed, as usual—busy with her needle, and motherly, complacent, tenderly vigilant as of old; but with a matronly grace and dignity which evidently arose from a gratified mind, and not from external state. Her daughters were beside her, both wonderfully improved in beauty, though Genifrede still preserved the superiority there. She sat ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser. She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would take her for ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... a charming picture by Garofalo, Joseph is caressing the Child, while Mary—a rather full figure, calm, matronly, and dignified, as is usual with Garofalo—sits by, holding a book in her hand, from which she has just raised her ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... them together—the mother of his children, and the woman who had already won his heart away from her. The shapely lady, with her queenly ways, her vivacity, her graceful adaptiveness to persons and circumstances, was sharply contrasted with the matronly figure, homely manners, and unresponsive mind of his wife. He pitied his wife, he pitied himself, he pitied his children, he almost pitied the dumb walls and the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... splendor of their dress; but neither palace now shelters any of their magnificent race. The edifice on our right was exclusively occupied by a noble Viennese lady, who as we heard, —vaguely, in the right Venetian fashion,—had been a ballet-dancer in her youth, and who now in her matronly days dwelt apart from her husband, the Russian count, and had gondoliers in blue silk, and the finest gondola on the Grand Canal, but was a plump, florid lady, looking long past beauty, even as we saw her from ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... hostelry of Mr Pritchard without meeting any adventure worthy of being marked down. I went into the little parlour, and, ringing the bell, was presently waited upon by Mrs Pritchard, a nice matronly woman, whom I had not before seen, of whom I inquired what ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of a good and heroic woman; and that she reciprocated the regard which makes her nephew so emphatic in her praise may be conjectured from the fact that, when he made his debut as a candidate for the honours of the State, she emerged from her habitual seclusion, laid aside for a time her matronly reserve, and, in order to assist him in his canvass, faced for his sake the rustic impertinence and ambitious turbulence of the crowds who thronged the Forum and the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... babies born upon it. Twelfth or thirteenth hand, a vagabond, botched bedstead, type of all the furniture in Ginx's rooms, and in numberless houses through the vast city. Its dimensions were 4 feet 6 inches by 6 feet. When Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs. Ginx, who was, you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it, there was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were forced to find resting-places for all the children, it not seldom happened that at least one infant was perilously wedged between the parental bodies; and latterly ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... take up his old habits again with the Harrowbys. He found the patient constancy of his friend Josephine not a disagreeable salve for a wounded heart and broken life; albeit poor dear Joseph was getting stout and matronly, and took off the keen edge of courtship by a willingness too manifest for wisdom. Sebastian liked to be loved, but he did not like to be bored by being made overmuch love to. The things are different, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... London, earning eighteen shillings a week by hard work, and increasing her income by occasionally going out on the streets in the evenings. She haunts a quiet side street which is one of the approaches to a large city railway terminus. She is a comfortable, almost matronly-looking woman, quietly dressed in a way that is only noticeable from the skirts being rather short. If spoken to she may remark that she is "waiting for a lady friend," talks in an affected way about the weather, and parenthetically introduces her offers. She will either lead a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of it when he appeared. The way they all rushed at him with little shrieks of laughter, talking together, excited as girls! "Though they're all years older than I am!" Ethel angrily exclaimed, as she sat there matronly and severe. She eyed her husband narrowly, and at first with keen satisfaction she saw how annoyed and embarrassed he was. But the moments passed, and he grew relieved, more easy and more natural, his voice taking on its usual tone, blunt and genial. ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... younger than she really was, though she made no attempt to disavow her age. Matronly dignity was visible in every movement, and the charm of her manner lay, not in a youthful endeavor to be pleasing, but in the effort of age to please others, considering their wishes, and at the same time demanding ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... at her child, and put its little hand to her lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it into mine. There was something in the action, and in the light pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... fission bomb. The way ahead was blocked by people lining the way on a cross street. The cars beeped, and nobody heard them. With stiff, jerky motions Sean O'Donohue got out of the enforcedly stopped car. It had seemed that he could be no more incensed, but he was. Within ten feet of him a matronly black snake moved along the sidewalk with a manner of such assurance and such impeccable respectability that it would have seemed natural for her to be carrying ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... perceived that our hostess was decidedly an elderly woman. She was neither haggard, nor worn, nor gray; she was simply coarse. The "soul" which Theobald had promised seemed scarcely worth making such a point of; it was no deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of lip and brow. I should have been ready even to declare that that sanctified bend of the head was nothing more than the trick of a person constantly working at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was a trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James |
