"Nervously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now?" said the doctor, entering the hall. "What, Tom, my boy, what is it?" as he saw the poor child, white, cold, almost sick with apprehension, with every pulse throbbing, and looking positively ill. He took the chilly, damp hand, which shook nervously, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... one found them in, but one always knew them. One felt comfortable with them at once; comfortable and placid. Whatever else Mrs. Bilton might be feeling she wasn't feeling placid. That was evident; and it was because she too wasn't with her own kind. With her eyes fixed nervously on Mrs. Bilton who was talking on happily, Anna-Felicitas reasoned with herself in the above manner as she pushed back the letter, instead of, as at the back of her mind she felt she ought to have done, tearing ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... sickle and advanced with an apologetic leer. Emma and May, wreathed in smiles, protested nervously that they had known the work was too much for Vandy, and begged us to think no more of it. As we followed the latter round to the quondam drive, they waved a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... chair, looking up wistfully at Pyne, who was standing behind her. His jaw hardened, and his glance sought the white hand upon which the costly gems glittered. He coughed nervously. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... in gray, and as he walked he whipped a thin cane nervously. They began to stroll soon after they had hurried past the stoop, and were sauntering leisurely when they turned into ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... you what I'll do. If you'll agree not to molest us further I'll turn the girl over to you and make each of you a present of one hundred dollars," went on Arnold Baxter nervously. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... youngish, very merry, somewhat pallid, whilst its eyes never ceased to express a sentiment at once lively, intellectual, and amiable. This was the Abbe Scarron, always laughing, joking, complimenting—yet suffering—and toying nervously with a small switch. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... does his-is my bank stock; and on the respectability and behavior of my customers, who are of the first families, depends my dividends. Madame Flamingo wouldn't-gentlemen, I am no doubt known to you by reputation?-soil the reputation of her house for uncounted gold." This she whispers, tripping nervously over the soft carpet up the hall, until she reaches mid-way, where on the right and left are two massive arched doors of black walnut, with stained glass for fan-lights. Our guardian (she has assumed the office) makes a significant motion with her left hand, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... in rough, short accents, digging nervously at the wet ground. The other, tall and gaunt, his face drawn and half-averted, stood listening. By his side was Owd Bob, scanning his master's countenance, a wistful compassion deep in the sad gray eyes; while close by, one of the parson's ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... her a grateful smile. "That's just like me to leave it. Alicia said I was sure to do just that," he laughed nervously. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... not, from the moment of her appearance at the hostess's end of the long receiving-line, the senator's wife had been marked and followed in her slow progress through the rooms by a thin-faced man who seemed to be nervously trying to hunch himself into better relations with his ill-fitting dress-coat, an eager gentleman whose hawk-like eyes never lost sight of the little lady with her hand on Gantry's arm. Only the senator saw and remarked ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred thousand words if I choose. I can't get over the habit of crowding the story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into a descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder, expecting to find Norberg stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand. Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police reporter's story of a fire four minutes before the paper is due ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... be seen, do not modify the tendency of the large family to be degenerate. We may connect this phenomenon with the disposition, often shown by nervously unsound and abnormal persons, to believe that they have a special aptitude to procreate fine children. "I believe that everyone has a special vocation," said a man to Marro (La Puberta, p. 459); "I find that it is my vocation to beget superior children." He begat four,—an ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... heed to the dressing process after all and let Morton have her way in everything, starting nervously when the 'phone bell rang, or anyone tapped at ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... wish to be married is also great, but very different. Theirs is to submit themselves fully and frankly to the physician's examination and advice. He may decide that it is safe to marry a person of stable temperament, but not one who is nervously unstable. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Dr. Eben's coming before tea. It was very late when he appeared, valise in hand, and said in a formal tone to Hetty, who met him at the door, in fact had been nervously watching for him ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... late King interfered and stopped even the confiscation of the paper. The least monarchical of us must, I think, admit that here we have a good illustration of the distinction between a man sure of his reputation and a cur nervously alarmed for his. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... More than once his tongue appeared along their verges as he nervously moistened them. His small eyes had brightened with an excited look, but he spoke very slowly, and to Laurelia it ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... has widened out considerably; and he is as pleasant, cheery, and spoiling for a fight as ever; but he has a preoccupied manner, and a most peculiar set of new habits, which I find are shared by the Engineer. Both of them make rapid dashes to the rail, and nervously scan the river for a minute and then return to some occupation, only to dash from it to the rail again. During breakfast their conduct is nerve-shaking. Hastily taking a few mouthfuls, the Captain drops his knife and fork and simply hurls his seamanlike form through the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... by an attack of spirit rappings. A brisk series of sharp faint taps, of a kind I never heard before, resounded from all the furniture of the room. {265} While the disturbance continued, the spectre drummed nervously with his fingers on his knee. The sounds ended as suddenly as they had begun, and he expressed his regrets. "It is a thing I am subject to," he remarked; "nervous, I believe, but, to persons ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... gradually lowered down. When he had got some hundred fathoms or so, he began to feel queer, and look down, down, down. Nothing could he see but darkness visible. He questioned his guide as to how far they were from the bottom, cautiously and nervously. "Oh," said the Swede, "about a mile." "A mile!" replied the Cockney: "shall we ever get there?"—"I don't know," said the guide. "Why, does any accident ever happen?"—"Yes, often."—"How long ago was the last accident, and what was it?"—"Last week, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the seats before him inclined one to another, wagged and nodded; there was a gentle buzz of voices. Behind him, the doors opened and shut, letting in all who were outside: they pressed forward expectantly. On his left, a row of girls tried to start a round of applause and tittered nervously at their failure. Schilsky had come down the platform and commenced tuning. He bent his long, thin body as he pressed his violin to his knee, and his reddish hair fell over his face. The accompanist, his hands on the keys, waited ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... irregular force, as evidenced by the varying volume of the pulse. At this time, with or without cardiac pain, which upsets the rhythm of the heart, the patient becomes frightened at the feeling of impending demise, and the cerebral reflexes begin to add to the cardiac difficulty. The breathing becomes nervously rapid, besides that which is due to the rapid heart. The chill of fear is added to the already contracted peripheral vessels, and the surface of the body becomes cold, the extremities sometimes intensely so. Next it seems ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... heard the car go in, and the slamming of the stable door, followed by Dick's footsteps on the walk outside. Lucy was very pale, and the hands that held her sewing twitched nervously. Suddenly she stood up and put a hand on ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Martian had not guarded itself, only Curtis. Sitting with its back to Stern had really invited attack. The mind-reading ability was just something that Stern had nervously imagined. ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?" exclaimed Arthur Dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart—a gesture that had grown involuntary with him. "Think for me, Hester! Thou ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sooner or later, and if a Senate vote of abandonment had come simultaneously with insurrection, the situation would have been extremely complicated; it would have been difficult for the Oriental not to have believed that the invader was nervously beating a retreat. The Nebraska Regiment was at Santa Mesa, guarding its front. Americans were frequently insulted, called cowards, and openly menaced by the insurgents. In the evening of Saturday, February 4, 1899, an insurgent officer came with a detail of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... and the material of his coat. Of the others he commenced to make a close and minute investigation. It was a curious fact, however, that notwithstanding his recent searching examination, he looked once more nervously around the saloon before he settled down to his task. For some reason or other, there was not the slightest doubt that for the present, at any rate, Mr. Hamilton Fynes was exceedingly anxious to keep his own company. As he drew nearer to his ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her yellow hair shone with unusual lustre; her step was so buoyant she scarcely seemed to touch the ground at all; she was all shy smiles; and as she came, with her slender white right hand she played with the new ring she wore on her left, fingering it nervously. But anyone more ecstatically happy than she seemed it is impossible to imagine. Menteith could not take his eyes off her. He seemed to gloat over every item of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... nervously, and with quivering lips. Aubrey took her hand, and pressing it, said, after ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poor cook," she agreed, nervously; "but if I didn't keep her I don't know what she would do, she's so awfully deaf! She ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... he killed in me the capacity for that kind of love. It is not in me." She turned her strenuous face to the sea and was silent. "It is not in me," she repeated after a while. "I have but one feeling, and that is for my boy. It is growing on me absurdly, too." She laughed nervously. "I used to be conscious of other people in the world, but now, if I see a boy or man, I see only what George was or will be at his age; if I read a book, it only suggests what George will say of it. I am like one of those plants ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes. Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the back-drop for ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... race question are being discussed is such a gathering possible in the South. There is a loud rap: the hum of voices ceases. The individual who gives the signal stands at a small table at the end of the long narrow hall. One hand rests upon the table, with the other he nervously toys with a gavel. He is a tall, lean, lank, ungainly chap, whose cheek bones as prominent as an Indian's seem to be on the eve of pushing through his sallow skin. A pair of restless black eyes, set far apart, are apparently at times ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... alone together. There was a long silence. Seated beside an open window, Dolores, to conceal her embarrassment, fixed her eyes upon the park and the fields that lay quiet and peaceful in the bright moonlight of the clear and balmy summer evening. Philip, even more agitated, paced nervously to and fro, seeking an opportunity to utter the avowal that was eager to leave his lips. At last, he summoned the necessary courage, and, seating ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... entered, on the tips of his toes, with his hands fumbling nervously about in the breast of his kaftan; for the poor fellow's hands were resinous to a degree. Wash and scrub them as he might, the resin would persist in cleaving to them. His awl, too, was still sticking in the folds of his turban—sticking ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... it's an errand—an important one," begged Cordelia, nervously, as Genevieve darted into ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... not sleep there," observed the farmer nervously. "I couldn't sleep in the same room with one ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... orthographic nor linguistic. The guests arrived punctually as bidden, and their hostess, clad in her most splendid attire, received them with her most gracious manner. There was nothing to foretell the fate that awaited them. Her tall, awkward daughter stood nervously by her side. Mr. Upjohn, too, kept there valiantly for a time, then his round, ample figure and jolly face disappeared somewhere, under chaperonage of Mrs. Bruce, his latest admiration. But no one ever thought of Mr. Upjohn ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... against the wall and watching us. Out of her weather-beaten, time- furrowed old face looked a pair of dark eyes, red-rimmed and blurred with much weeping. She was rubbing her distorted old hands together nervously as she watched us. It was inevitable that I should get into conversation with her, and discover that this wreck had been, for years, her home, that she had lived there all alone, and that everything she had in the world—her furniture, her clothing, and her savings—had ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... without picks, lying on our knees to do it, and afterward drive wedges under the roof to loosen the mass. It was hard work, and, entirely inexperienced as we were, we made but little headway. As the day wore on, the darkness and silence grew very oppressive, and made us start nervously at the least thing. The sudden arrival of our donkey with its cart gave me a dreadful fright. The friendly beast greeted us with a joyous bray and rubbed its shaggy sides against us in the most companionable ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... her, curled down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and passive ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... moment that the carriage and horses were announced. He offered the princess his arm; she accepted it, and as they went down the stairs, looked up in his face again, and fancied that she saw a gleam of triumph in his eyes. A little nervously she seized a moment when the restive horses were being quieted, before they stepped into the carriage, and ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... materials?" asked Justice Goodrich, nervously, as a stone broke through one of the window panes and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... was always nervously apprehensive of a clash between these two. Ann had red hair and the nature which generally goes with red hair. She was impulsive and quick of tongue, and—as he remembered her father had always been—a little too ready for combat. She was usually as quickly remorseful ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... panic of excitement. His face paled, he blinked with incredible rapidity, his lips twitched, and he clasped his thin, bloodless hands nervously. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... interchange of compliments, the woman I had decided was the maid had sat down, as though her legs were unable to sustain her, and was nervously clasping and unclasping her hands; even her mistress ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... explanation of that theft, or I'm a sinner!' cried Dave, jumping up and beginning to pace the floor nervously. 'Carl, old man, I'll never chaff your "bump of imagination," after to-day. I'm ready to begin work ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the steamer, amongst the crowd, he bustled about, never still for a moment, "dragging his anchors," in nautical speech, gesticulating, making friends with everybody, and biting his nails nervously. He was one of those original beings whom the Creator invents in a moment of fantasy, and of whom He ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... be along soon," the captain said soothingly, to Charley, who was nervously pacing back and forth, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... von Habelschwert, standing over the group and nervously twirling his fierce moustache, shuddered and groaned. It was bad enough that his young, but pig-headed Hohenzollern should play at all with children who were neither high, nor well-born; but that he should only be admitted to play with them on terms passed ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... made them," she gasped, nervously, "and I left some behind!" but her alarm put fresh energy into her tired feet, and, in spite of the heat and her weariness, she ran, and ran madly, she did not know or care whither, as long as she got lost. Wherever she saw a way, she took it; the ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... catch myself sitting staring at the fire for hours together, dreaming myself away—a useful way of employing the time. But at least it makes it slip unnoticed by, until the dreams are swept away in an ice-blast of reality, and I sit here in the midst of desolation, and nervously ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Jane, nervously anxious to terminate a colloquy that she perceived was an ordeal for him. "Go at once and fetch me a report of ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... shrinking little figure looked pathetic enough, as glancing in at the taxi, and finding it empty, she realized who might be awaiting her under her mother's eye. He remembered his grandchild, and made up his mind, as she slid nervously in, that no matter what happened he would keep this innocent child ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... elaborate carving stand in a wilderness of nettles and long grass. Not a semblance of a path anywhere. To walk about is positively dangerous. Ruined tombstones, and broken slabs which appear to cover family vaults, trip you up at every step. Every yard of progress is made with difficulty, and you move nervously among the tall rank nettles in momentary fear of dislocating your ankle, or of being suddenly precipitated into the reeking charnel house of some defunct Mayo family. The Connaught dead seem to be very exclusive. Most of the ground is enclosed in small ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... heir, if Elizabeth died without issue. Elizabeth, as we know her, would never have granted these terms, but Mary's ministers, Lethington then in England, Lord James at home, tried to hope. {200b} Lord James had heard Mary's outburst to Knox about defending her own insulted Church, but he was not nervously afraid that she would take to dipping her hands in the blood of the saints. Neither he nor Lethington could revert to the old faith; they had pecuniary reasons, as well as convictions, which ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... from school; besides, I was promoted to their nobler companionship by occasionally acting as long-stop or short-stop (stop of some sort was undoubtedly my title) in insufficiently manned or boyed games of cricket: once, while nervously discharging this onerous duty, I received a blow on my instep from a cricket ball which I did not stop, that seemed to me a severe price for the honor of sharing my brothers' manly pastimes. A sport of theirs in which ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was Crosson's gruff comment. But there was uneasiness in his tone, for Drury had set Irene to wringing her hands nervously, and Crosson felt a trifle uncomfortable himself. Twilight always made him susceptible to emotions that daylight blinded him to, as to the stars. He remembered that boyhood emotion now in his pulpit, and his shoulder-blades twitched; an icy finger seemed to have written something ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Grace did not reply. She only began nervously sweeping together the debris of leaves and flowers which encumbered the table, on which the newly arranged flower-vases were standing. Then she arranged the vases with great precision on the mantel-shelf. As she was doing it, so many memories ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... faith, sir knight,' said he laughing, but rather nervously, 'this reminds me more of the adventures which in childhood I have heard related by pilgrims and pedlars at the chimney-corner, than aught I ever expected to meet with in the real ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... on," a woman passenger said nervously. "Lord, I thought we were finally through with those ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... and clouds obscured the moon. Then the wind freshened to a storm, and lifted the waves on the channel, and roared in the cypress forests above Pera and Scutari. Under the light sails already set, the ship tugged hard at her cable. Yet the boat did not return. The captain walked the deck nervously, and finally gave orders to weigh anchor, when just as our bark, freed to the wind and the current, sprang forward on her long voyage, the boat for which we were looking shot suddenly under the prow, and in an instant our mysterious comrade stepped in upon the deck from the bow-chains. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... of it," she begged, a little nervously. "I must do as he wishes. We will hope that he says yes, ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fugitive, nervously shifting his feet and preparing to spring. "We'd 'a' been fighting by this time ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... waving his bloodstained sword, rushes through the passage in despair, followed by his co-religionists, and by the menagerie keeper, who goes to the gladiators. The gladiators draw their swords nervously. ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... far earlier than our usual hour. I had never seen the children so affected before. Winnie and Bobsey even began to cry with fear, while Mousie was pale and trembling. Of course, we laughed at them and tried to cheer them; but even my wife was nervously apprehensive, and I admit that I felt a disquietude hard ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... laugh nervously, and said: "Such things are to be seen only in the operetta . . . ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... retreat, and sets himself up to reconnoiter on some overhanging branch, scrutinizing every movement you make with ludicrous solemnity. Gathering courage, he ventures down the trunk again, churring and chirping, and jerking nervously up and down in curious loops, eyeing you all the time, as if snowing off and demanding your admiration. Finally, growing calmer, he settles down in a comfortable posture on some horizontal branch commanding a good view, and beats ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of multitudinous little patterings. They had been coming, I was aware, for a long time, and in my sleep they had first become audible. I sat there nervously wide awake as though I had not slept at all. It seemed to me that my breathing came with difficulty, and that there was a great weight upon the surface of my body. In spite of the hot night, I felt clammy with cold and shivered. Something surely ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... years this cellar was his favorite retreat. He littered it with tuning-forks, magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tin trumpets, and cigar-boxes. No one outside of the Sanders family was allowed to enter it, as Bell was nervously afraid of having his ideas stolen. He would even go to five or six stores to buy his supplies, for fear that his intentions should be discovered. Almost with the secrecy of a conspirator, he worked alone in this cellar, usually at night, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... listened with her eyes cast down, her hands nervously picking at the edge of the tablecloth. But he was not mistaken in her. She had wherewith to meet him, and her gaze was honest, without coquetry ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... him mit me," was the awkward reply of Otto, nervously anxious to escape saying anything which would give his captor a clue to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Ling nervously replied, "comes from lot N. deg. 15, under 'shan', (to correct); so it's the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... at him, startled. "I caught a terrible cold," she said, laughing nervously. "I'm not used to ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... children stopped a dozen paces from Stephane and formed in a group, the little ones hiding behind the larger. All of them fumbled nervously with the ends of their belts, and kept their heads down, awkward and ashamed, with eyes fixed upon the ground, but casting sidelong glances at the great leather purse which danced ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... finding himself close by, and knowing his way, he went nervously into his father's cabin, where a lamp hung beneath the sky-light, but it was turned down very low. The place was empty, and all seemed very dark and lonely, but he could hear the crew stumping about and making strange noises as if busy preparing to start. Then he started, for the ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... transport me to such a realm! Indeed, had I not committed some fatal mistake, and left that trusty servant behind, and had not some wizard of the night stepped into his place? A slight splashing in-shore broke the spell and caused me to turn nervously to the oarsman: "Musquash," said ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... leg over the other nervously. Long Lauchie sighed, and Store Thompson murmured, "Undeniable, undeniable." But Big Malcolm sat staring at the speaker as if fascinated. Praying Donald's life of stern piety, and his knowledge of the laws governing human action, had often enabled him to foresee events, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... flash, leading us through a high growth of rushes across the flats. So I was both recognized and remembered from the previous night. The thought was not displeasing. The wind moaned dismally through the reeds. I did not know that I had been glancing nervously behind at every step, with uncomfortable recollections of arrows and spear-heads, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... interrupted Lady Wentworth, laughing nervously. She did not want to be left out of the conversation entirely, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... head, and his lips framed, but he did not utter, 'Thank you.' Emily nervously began reading aloud the page before her, full of the jingling recurring rhymes about Sir Thomas of Kent; but I saw Ellen surreptitiously wipe away a tear, and from that time she was more ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... papa, she's a bogie, I am sure," cried the child, clinging to him more nervously than ever. "Sophie always tells me a bogie will come for me if I am naughty, and I was naughty just now because Sophie pulled my hair, and I was cross, and cried ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, tapped the pavement nervously with his cane, and ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... said, though a trifle nervously. "Or are you in a hurry?" It had startled her to find the man of whom she had at that moment been thinking ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... one studied in a Michigan Avenue club entrance. His right arm is crooked as if he were about to place his hand over his heart and bow. His left arm hangs with a slight curve at his side. His feet should be together, but they shift nervously. His head is turned to the left and slightly raised—like a movie actor ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Meanwhile, Amelia followed nervously in the track of Enoch's talk with cousin Josiah, though her mind kept its undercurrent of foolish musing. Like all of us, snatched up by the wheels of great emergencies, she caught at trifles while they whirled her round. Here were "soldier-buttons." All the other girls had collected ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... the rifle holster in place. Still talking, and with McAlpin glued to his elbow, de Spain vaulted into the saddle, caught the lines from Bull's hands, and steadied the Lady as she sidestepped nervously—McAlpin following close and dodging the dancing hoofs as he looked earnestly up to catch the last word. De Spain touched the horse with the lines. She leaped through the doorway and he raised a backward hand to those ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... people and making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O'Neill had come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice with his father and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come to the door and he had heard his father say something about ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Ingham-Baker nervously, "the brains have all gone to the other brother, Henry. It is ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... paper toward par value, Sherman nervously awaited business hours on January 2, 1879, (since the first fell on Sunday) to see whether there would be such a rush of holders of paper who would wish gold that his slender stock would be wiped out. New York, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... like it," said Owen nervously. "I don't like the idea of doing too much. We've got one big piece of work to do that concerns her." He nodded in the direction of the cabin. "Dye mean to say we can't get a poor half-breed cook off this boat without killing him? Why not ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... the case," replied the Doctor, nervously. "Some are born absent-minded, some achieve absent-mindedness, and some ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... acquainted with this little salon, where he had more than once seen Marsa seated at the piano playing her favorite airs. He remembered it all so well, and, nervously twisting his moustache, he longed for her to make her appearance. He listened for the frou-frou of Marsa's skirts on the other side of the lowered portiere which hung between the two rooms; but ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his chin, which means "no" in gesture language. He threw pieces of the bread and the rind of the cheese to his dog. Nino caught each fragment in the air with a snap that would have lamed a horse for a month. The woman glanced nervously at the animal, each time she heard his ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... trying to speak quite naturally, but conscious of a shrinking embarrassment which made her cheeks nervously flush. 'The door was open, so I came right in. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... (nervously, and with the air of a man fearful of getting into trouble).—"You know very well, Mr. Bodman, that my servant came to Dunkirk only to buy and truck away horses; and that you then, by chance, entered into talk with him, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and such things were not uncommon then. However, the tones were repeated, and I hurried in the direction from whence they proceeded. I shall never forget the sight which met me. A boy about ten years of age lay unconscious over a dead trumpeter, and his small hands were nervously clutched about the trumpet. It was plain that he had blown the notes I had heard and then fallen to the ground in a faint. I took the poor little fellow in my arms; all around lay the bodies of many French soldiers, and the terrors of the neighborhood had no doubt been too much for the little ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... dissimilar. One on the right sitting with back to the door, turned uneasily as though fearing that the portal stood open, and that, on the threshold, might appear a stranger, or perchance the King's officer. Another, clad in a suit of gray velvet, drummed nervously upon the table, while the third, who seemed to be the eldest of the four, frowned darkly. To him the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... of Smolny, in the chill dark, we first saw the Red Guard-a huddled group of boys in workmen's clothes, carrying guns with bayonets, talking nervously together. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... couple of bookshelves, well stored, and a panel with a ship upon it—a brig in full sail—carved in high relief and painted. My eyes, however, were not for these, but for a man who sat at the table, poring over the charts, and lifted his head nervously to blink at me. It ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... curiosity I awaited the Colonel's next words, but, a cigarette held nervously between his fingers, he stood staring at Harley, and it was the latter who broke that peculiar silence which ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... courtier like Buckingham found it useful to cultivate the good-will of the more ardent sectaries. The Civil War had left an ample crop of bravos, who were to be hired for any outrage, and whose excesses added to the restless uneasiness that prevailed, and that made men nervously apprehensive of revolution. The religious enthusiast, and the blustering cut-throat of Alsatia, were equally open to the persuasions of any turbulent faction which sought to defy the law. The forces of order ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Prissie. She glanced nervously at Maggie, who had taken up a book and was pretending to read. "He came and he spoke to me. He was very, very kind, and he made me ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... amid a breathless suspense; hundreds of pencils kept pace with the roll-call, and nervously marked the changes on their tally-sheets. The Lincoln figures steadily grew. Votes came to him from all the other candidates—4-1/2 from Seward, 2 from Cameron, 13 from Bates, 18 from Chase, 9 from Dayton, 3 from McLean, 1 from Clay. Lincoln had gained 50-1/2, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... pacing the floor restlessly, nervously. She had come here with no fixed purpose, nothing beyond the indefinite determination to defy and thwart the man who had entrapped her. She had never for a moment feared for her safety, or doubted her ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... above a whisper. "I don't think he's as ill now as he would have us believe." She nodded toward the closed door. "We ought to ask him to move over to the Hut with Swimming Wolf now. . . . Ellen—I'm growing dreadfully afraid of him. . . . Oh!" She started nervously at a sound ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... insistence, he wrote down every word. Then he said nervously that orders had come from Survey. The Army wanted everybody out of the Boulder Lake area. Vale was to have been ordered out. The workmen were ordered out. Lockley was to get out of the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... mistake," she said; "you have not given me a chance to speak." Her hands dropped nervously by her side. There were fierce, rebellious thoughts in her heart, but she dare not give them utterance. "What have I done to deserve all this?" she asked, trying to assume a tender tone ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... him. He was, he reflected as he looked at him, the very last person whom he did want. And then Bunning had most irritating habits. There was that trick of his of pushing up his spectacles nervously higher on to his nose. He bad a silly shrill laugh, and he had that lack of tact that made him, when you had given him a shilling's worth of conversation and confidence, suppose that you had given him half-a-crown's ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... well for the purposes of the hoaxers that Mr. Pucker's trepidation prevented him from making a calm perusal of the paper; he was nervously doing his best to turn the nonsensical English word by word into equally nonsensical Latin, when his limited powers of Latin writing were brought to a full stop by the untranslatable word "bosh." As he could make nothing of this, he gazed appealingly ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "Sir Bishop," he said nervously, "I begin to fear that perhaps after all I am unworthy. Now about those Articles of Religion: I may perhaps have given some of them a conjectural and commentating assent. Possibly I ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... the age of thirty-one, Carlyle married Jane Welsh, the only child of a deceased physician of Haddington, who had some little property in expectancy from the profits of a farm in the moorlands of Scotland. She was beautiful, intellectual, and nervously intense. She had been a pupil of Edward Irving, who had introduced his friend Carlyle to her. On the whole, it was a fortunate marriage for Carlyle, although it would have been impossible for him to have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... not speak for some minutes. The lion below them paced nervously back and forth. The third figure in the tree was hidden by the dense shadows near the stem. He, too, was silent—motionless as ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... soldiers gathered up their dead and wounded, they went each their own way along the ravine, now blue with the evening fog. Those in the rear kept looking back at the enemy, suspiciously eyeing them, and nervously clutching with their hands the cold muzzles ...
— The Shield • Various
... strange reception, but Brion was beginning to realize that Dis was a strange planet. The other man chewed at his lip nervously while Brion sat, relaxed and unmoving. He didn't want to startle him into pulling the trigger, and he kept his voice pitched low as ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... her mind felt suddenly relieved from an unpleasant responsibility. She went to her husband, who was nervously playing at the piano, and kissed him, almost reverently. It had been a temptation from which he had saved her. They talked that evening a good deal, planning what they would do if they could get over to Europe for a year, calculating how cheaply they could go. It was an old subject. Sometimes ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... rat, who seemed to want to say something to the Doctor, now crept forward timidly along the rail, watching the dog out of the corner of his eye. And after he had coughed nervously two or three times, and cleaned his whiskers and wiped ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... before, slipped through the back window, while the crowd, led on by Kitty McQueen, seethed in front, and making a bolt for it to the "'Sosh," was back in a moment with a handful of small change. "Dinna toss ower lavishly at first," the smith whispered me nervously, as we followed Jess and Willie into the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie |
