"Old woman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indignation, pursued his way towards his mother's cabin to ask her blessing upon his marriage. On his presenting himself there, both the old woman and Oonah were in great delight at witnessing his safe return; Oonah particularly, for she, feeling that it was for her sake Andy placed himself in danger, had been in a state of great anxiety for the result of the adventure, and, on seeing him, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... But the old woman who was the object of the farmer's suspicion, seemed only busied about the drover, without paying any attention to the flock. Robin, on the contrary, appeared rather impatient ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... doubt about her case being a pretty hard one. She was quite old and decrepit when the war set her free, and, at the time of our story, she was still older and stiffer. Her former master had gone to the North to live, and as she had no family to support her, the poor old woman was compelled to depend upon the charity of her neighbors. For a time she managed to get along tolerably well, but it was soon found that she would suffer if she depended upon occasional charity, especially after she became unable to go after ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... about Californy. Then again he says he hasn't seen me for years. Merciful man! I see it now—the other fellow was an impostor!" exclaimed Miss Deborah, jumping, to her feet in excitement. "What did he want to deceive an old woman for?" ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... King hath a tender heart for distress, and now I think on it, 'tis possible, if thou didst so disfigure thyself, thou wouldst gain his reply the quicker. We will mottle thy face with leprous spots and cover thee with old woman's clothes, placing a hump upon thy shoulder. And no one shall be privy to our scheme but his Grace, and my lord of Buckingham, if they are to attend us." Janet felt satisfied with the turn ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the assistance of my two friends, though with considerable difficulty, it was in the end deposited there, upon a miserable pallet of straw, over which we threw a tattered blanket. On returning, I found the guest-room deserted: the old woman to whom the tavern belonged—the mother, as I afterwards found, of my female companion—was hastily clearing away the drinking utensils, and preparing for an immediate removal to the only apartment ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... he said, rising, 'when you are an old woman with children to harass you and make your life worth living, you will probably look back with thankfulness to this moment. For you have done that which was your ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... darling, will you not? There, there, that's a dear," and she took from her handkerchief a cornet of pink paper containing two little cakes and a grape, and offered it me with a trembling hand. I could not look the kind old woman in the face, but, turning aside, took the paper, while my tears flowed the faster—though from love and ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... has been managed,' he exclaimed when they had seated themselves. 'You remember the fairy tales in which the old woman bids some one go to a certain place and do such and such a thing and something is sure to happen? "And it befell just as the ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... beyond the city limits, and had been located the day before by Turk, whose joy in being connected with such a game was boundless. Other disguises, carefully chosen, helped them on to the Grand Duchy, Quentin as the gray-bearded man, Savage as the old woman. The suffering of Dorothy Garrison during that wild night and day was the only thing that wrung blood from the consciences of these ruthless dare-devils. Philip Quentin, it must be said, lived years of agony and remorse while ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the summer of the present year Miss Dinah Groom was found lying dead off a field-path of the little obscure Wiltshire village which she had named her "rest and be thankful." At the date of her decease she was not an old woman, though any one marking her white hair and much-furrowed features might have supposed her one. The hair, however, was ample in quantity, the wrinkles rather so many under-scores of energy than evidences of senility; and until the blinds were down over her soul, she had looked into and across the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... to Haworth, their walks were directed rather out towards the heathery moors, sloping upwards behind the parsonage, than towards the long descending village street. A good old woman, who came to nurse Mrs. Bronte in the illness—an internal cancer—which grew and gathered upon her, not many months after her arrival at Haworth, tells me that at that time the six little creatures used to walk out, hand in hand, towards the glorious wild moors, which in after days ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... beheld the old man's daughter, and perceived that she was very beautiful. He felt his breast beat with a new emotion, but said nothing. He took care to get home before his grandmother, and commenced singing as if he had never left his lodge. When the old woman came near, she heard his drum and rattle, without any suspicion that he had followed her. She ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... it is Fedya!" came through the half-opened door the voice of Marfa Timofyevna in the next room. "Fedya himself!" and the old woman ran hurriedly into the room. Lavretsky had not time to get up from his seat before she had him in her arms. "Let me have a look at you," she said, holding his face off at arm's length. "Ah! what a splendid fellow you are! You've grown older a little, but ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... met by a corresponding gain; and, indeed, as a rule, people did not consider her separately. The generality were inclined simply to accept her, in relation to her aunt, Lady Garnett, with whom she had lived since she was a girl of sixteen, as any other of that witty old woman's impedimenta—her pug Mefistofele, or her matchless enamels, or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not help thinking that she would ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... went with Edward, Earl of Oxford, to view these MSS. at a barber's shop next door to the Bull Head Tavern, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, when we were carried up two pair of stairs, and an old woman asked 300 pounds for the MSS., which was thought exorbitant, but which would have been given, if she would have declared any lawful title to us ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... all the attention we've given 'er, too," said Pyecroft. "What a greedy old woman!" To Moorshed: "Signal ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... told of the Sibylline Books. An old woman came to Tarquinius Superbus and offered to sell him, for an extravagant price, nine volumes. As the king declined to pay the sum demanded, the woman departed, destroyed three of the books, and then, returning, offered the remainder at the very same sum ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... heard of Monsieur Malin's arrival he has been gloomy," replied the old woman. "But it is getting damp ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... had once been white. "Here you be," he says; "put you away for a matter of twelve year and more, and you bide your time; you know you will come back again; you are not in any hurry. Even the clerk dies; but you die not, you bide your time. Everything comes again. The old woman shall give you a taste o' the suds and the hot iron. Thus we go up and thus we go down." Then he takes up the old book, musty and damp after twelve years' imprisonment. "Fie," he says, "thy leather is parting from thy boards, and ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... who did this miracle wished to declare, by the manifest token of his eyes, that the young man was to be cruel in future, in order that the more visible part of his body might not lack some omen of his life that was to follow. When the old woman, who had the care of his draughts, saw him showing in his face signs of little snakes; she was seized with an extraordinary horror of the young man, and suddenly fell and swooned away. Hence it happened that Siward got the widespread name ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... like a shower bath; I was both chilled and stunned by so unexpected a shock. The old woman, on my renewing my inquiries, took me up stairs, to a small, wretched room, to which the damps literally clung. In one corner was a flock-bed, still unmade, and opposite to it, a three-legged stool, a chair, and an antique carved oak table, a donation perhaps from some squire in the neighbourhood; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... woman, attracted her attention. Josephine approached. It was an old negro woman from a neighboring plantation, and she was telling the fortune of the young negro women of M. Tascher de la Pagerie. No sooner did the old woman cast her eyes on Josephine than she seemed to shrink into one mass, whilst an expression of horror and wonder stole over her face. She vehemently seized the hand of the young maiden, examined it carefully, and then lifted up her large, astonished eyes with a ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... would be an euphemism to speak of enjoying the fresh air in such a neighbourhood. The house at which I stopped was a six-roomed "cottage," but whilst I stood on the doorstep, waiting to gain admittance, at least fourteen persons passed in and out. At last a wizened old woman, scrutinising me suspiciously, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... eatin' it, too,—if I want to; an' I want little pink-an'-white sugar pep'mints hung in bags. Samuel, can't you see how pretty a bag o' pink pep'mints 'd be on that green tree? An'—dearie me!" broke off the little old woman breathlessly, falling back in her chair. "How I'm runnin' on! I reckon I am in ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... settlement. At the doors of huts groups of women turned to look after him, warbling softly, and with gleaming eyes; armed men stood out of the way, submissive and erect; others approached from the side, bending their backs to address him humbly; an old woman stretched out a draped lean arm—"Blessings on thy head!" she cried from a dark doorway; a fiery-eyed man showed above the low fence of a plantain-patch a streaming face, a bare breast scarred in two places, and bellowed out pantingly ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... so early, my dear?" the old woman, their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... was, that although never old woman took more trouble to collect and blow up with her bellows the embers of her decayed fire, than Captain MacTurk kindly underwent for the purpose of puffing into a flame the dying sparkles of the Baronet's courage; yet two days were spent in fruitless conferences before he could attain the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the reporter, as he could think of no plausible explanation, but his thoughts were diverted by the old woman, who demanded: ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... followed by Margaret and Doucebelle, she found her petitioners awaiting her. Most unsuspicious, harmless, feeble creatures they looked. The old man had tottered in as if barely able to stand; the old woman walked with a stout oaken staff, and was ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... upwards of an hour with the old bedridden mother of the tenant of Helpholme. "God bless you, my darling!" said the old woman as she left her; "and send you some one to make your own path bright and happy through the world." These words were still ringing in her ears with all their significance as she saw John Broughton waiting for her at the first stile which she had ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... concerts, and well-attended soirees, where play ran high. Her female friends were all handsome; no old woman had ever appeared within her precincts. She was not jealous; in fact, she would have thought jealousy an admission of inferiority. She had known Coralie and La Torpille in their lifetimes, and now knew Tullia, Euphrasie, Aquilina, Madame du Val-Noble, Mariette,—those women ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... off the train at Salton you've snarled and snapped and beefed and imposed on my hospitality, and it's got to stop. I don't need you; I don't care for you; I think you're a renegade four-flusher, bluffing on no pair, and if I had known what a nasty little old woman you are I'd never have opened negotiations with you. Now, you chirk up, Boston, and smile and try to be a good sport, or I'll work you over and make a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Zitze, a hare ran across the road before us, which they say bodes no good. Well-a-day! When we came near Bannemin I asked a fellow if it was true that here a mother had slaughtered her own child from hunger, as I had heard. He said it was, and that the old woman's name was Zisse; but that God had been wroth at such a horrid deed, and she had got no good by it, seeing that she vomited so much upon eating it that she forthwith gave up the ghost. On the whole, he thought things were already going rather better with the parish, as Almighty God had ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... wholly ignorant on the subject, though I have consulted every farmer's wife in the neighborhood on the matter. They all say that cream will go to sleep sometimes, though it usually wakes up after a few hours.* [I have since been told by an old woman conversant with sleepy cream, that a quart of milk nearly boiling hot will wake it up.] Perhaps, after all, we were too impatient, and should not have given in after only nine hours' churning. With this solitary exception our butter-making ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... she says] I will not go into reflections, but write of my young days. How all these things come back to me, a lone old woman who longs for, and yet is afraid of death. If I could only be sure, be sure! Is it possible there is no other state of being? Oh, God, it is too ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... young girl was indifferent to her commands, she tried to exasperate Chia with stinging words, hoping thus to compel him to depart. But her visitor's nature was so gentle that his anger could not be provoked, and the only result was to make him more amiable in his behavior to the old woman, who in her impotence ended ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall; There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in her little hood and kerchief, and trim high-heeled shoes. She was greatly surprised to find how near she had been to her friends during these last few days of her captivity, and when Madge obeyed the summons to the door, the old woman absolutely smiled to see her safe, and the little terrier danced about her in such transports that she begged to take him ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wandering among those rocks; a fall from one of them would break your bones; besides, the Skinners have fled to those heights, and should you fall in with them, they would revenge on you a sound flogging they have just received from me. Better return, old woman, and finish your nap; we ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... he would have been if he hadn't come to me. I've been revising my opinion of Majendie to-night. Between you and me, our friend the Canon is a very dangerous old woman. Don't you go and believe ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... hasn't returned my visit yet. I don't know whether he will,—and I don't much mind whether he does or not. That old woman is there, and she is very bitter against me. I don't care about the people, but I am sorry that I ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... nothing ailed her, but she could not. Suddenly a tremendous pity for her aunt came over her. She had not thought so much about that. But now she looked at things from her aunt's point of view, and she saw the pain to which the poor old woman must be put. She saw no way of avoiding the giving her the pain, but she suffered it herself. She went up to Aunt Maria ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... this led, but Mrs. Keith went on: "As you have found out, I'm a frank old woman and not afraid to say what I think. Well, considering how attractive you are, there's a way out of the difficulty, and I believe it's the best one. You ought to marry; it's ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... hard with the poor man, and he could not do much; and besides, he had a younger daughter, who had lost all her limbs, and was forced to be tied in a wicker chair, to keep her up in it; which (having expended much to relieve her) was a great pull-back, as the good old woman called it. And having been a year in arrear to a harsh landlord, who, finding a good stock upon the ground, threatened to distress the poor family, and turn them out of all, I advanced the money upon the stock; and the poor man has already paid ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... approached six o'clock in the evening; and as I had eaten no breakfast, and as my spirits were raised, my appetite for dinner grew uncommonly keen. At length the old woman came into the room with two plates, one spoon, and a dirty cloth, which she laid upon the table. This appearance, without increasing my spirits, did not diminish my appetite. My protectress soon returned with ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Campbell of Glenure in the hanging wood south of Ballachulish. Stevenson could not learn who "the other man" was—the real murderer in the romance. I know, but respect the Celtic secret. The fatal gun was found, very many years after the deed, by an old woman, in a hollow tree, and it was not the gun ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must give him everything, everything, everything! I told her I should be thankful to come second. But why, when everything's turned out just as one always hoped it would turn out, why then can one do nothing but cry, nothing but feel a desolate old woman whose life's been a failure, and now is nearly over, and age is so cruel? But Katharine said to me, 'I am happy. I'm very happy.' And then I thought, though it all seemed so desperately dismal at the time, Katharine had said she was happy, and I should have ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... having been born an Athenian, he affected too much to appear one in his language. Should a letter seem too Attical; still better, since it was by discovering Theophrastus, who was no Athenian, that a good old woman of Athens laid hold of a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bowen was too alarmingly near the Salem witch times when Minister Parris and Judge Hawthorne had come so nigh putting the Devil to rout by hanging an old woman or two and squeezing poor Giles Cory to death. He knew what the Law could do to those wicked negro-mancers if they went about predicting things in a wicked way. And what a bore it might become to have a negro-mancer foretelling ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... to be useful, and Margaret used to declare that she witnessed scenes as good as a play in her room, where the little dexterous scholar, apparently in jest, but really in sober, earnest, wiled instruction from the old woman; and made her experiments, between smiles and blushes, and merrily glorying in results that promised that she would be a notable housewife. Whether it were novelty or not, she certainly had an aptitude ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the old, old one of the old woman who saw a hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence and then said: "My! ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... in his big, hoarse voice. "Why, I can't fight, and you know it! I can't fight so much as an old woman! ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... the section had to meet separately as a result of specialisation, the reason for which he found in the want of proper scientific education in schools. And this was the fault of the universities, for just as in the story, "Stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, and so the old woman can't get home," science would not be taught in the schools until it is recognised by ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Persephone, and transport her to the lower world in order that she might become his wife. Indignant with Zeus for having given his sanction to the abduction of his daughter, and filled with the bitterest sorrow, she abandoned her home in Olympus, and refused all heavenly food. Disguising herself as an old woman, she descended upon earth, and commenced a weary pilgrimage among mankind. One evening she arrived at a place called Eleusis, in Attica, and sat down to rest herself near a well beneath the shade of an olive-tree. The youthful daughters of Celeus, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... mean Mother Bougne. You, workmen yourselves, mock at an old woman wrecked by work. But you're right. She ought to be here. I'll go and fetch her. Only to look at her would be an argument on our side. [She goes out ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... thing as divination, or soothsaying, or prophesy, or fortune telling in this world. It is all coarse imposture, that can deceive only the weakest mortals. You know that, of course, Ryland. It follows, then, that this old woman could have had no knowledge of what was going to happen unless she was in league with conspirators who had planned to kidnap or ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... terminated one fine morning in consequence of a temporary valet having tied his neckcloth too tightly: he was hung in front of Newgate jail, for a highway robbery, in which he acquired but little glory and less profit,—for he only shot an old woman's poodle dog, and stole a leather purse full of halfpence. My mother was a very pretty waiting woman at an ordinary tavern; one night she abruptly stepped out and sailed for America, carrying with her my unfinished self, and the silver spoons. I saw you—admired you—made ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... no human natur'? Last Tuesday they come to Dan Norris's, five mile down the creek, an' old man Norris he was in the barn makin' a ladder, an' Dan he was gone for the cow. A painted Tory run into the kitchen an' hit the old woman with his hatchet, an' she fetched a screech, an' her darter, 'Liza, she screeched, too. Then a Injun he hit the darter, and he kep' a-kickin' an' a-hittin', an' old man Norris he heard the rumpus out to the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the assembled stomachs were impatient; for on the appearance of the register of mortgages—who had no defect except that of having married for her money an intolerable old woman, and of perpetrating endless puns, at which he was the first to laugh—the gentle murmur by which such late-comers are welcomed arose. While awaiting the official announcement of dinner, the company were sauntering on the terrace above the river, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... easels into afternoon position, and brought out glasses and plates for the ladies, who lunched in the anteroom. And then a looker-on in a Parisian atelier des dames would readily have understood the words, "He's gone, girls!" even were that looker-on deafer than the deafest old woman who ever mistook a thunder-clap for one of her lord's champion snores. In the anteroom conversation ran during lunch in various channels. Some of the ladies discussed the ever-absorbing topic of the price of living, and boasted of marvellous exploits in the way of economy. Other and fewer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... time I was the least bit afraid—However I was a silly old woman. Do look at her talking to your mother. Oh, of course, you were looking at her already. You weren't listening to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... An old woman in a red cloak was passing a field in which a goat was feeding. What strange transformation suddenly took place?—Answer: The goat turned to butter (butt her), and the woman ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... touch on my head, and a voice just above me, saying: "He's alive anyhow, thank GOD!" and sitting up among the beans I found that it was dark and foggy, but a lamp at some distance gave me a pretty good view of an old woman who ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... suburbs of the city, he proceeded, towards evening, to the point where the soldier lay concealed, and to which he had been directed with unerring accuracy. On reaching the house in which the fugitive was said to be hidden, he found but an old woman, who seemed neither alarmed nor surprised at his arrival. Upon whispering a word in her ear, however, a look of intelligence stole into her eyes, and putting on her bonnet and cloak, in the deep dusk, she motioned him to follow her, having closed and locked to door behind her. ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... The old woman hesitated. She saw that the doctor knew more than he intended to tell her. Her curiosity and her fear that some other complication had arisen—one which he was holding back—got the better of her judgment. If it was anything about her bairn, she could not wait until the morning. She ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... upon the melancholy object of my raving desire; her shape, her gait, her motion, every step, and every movement of her hand and head, had a peculiar grace; a thousand times I was tempted to approach her, and discover myself, but I dreaded the fatal consequence, the old woman being by; nor knew I whether they did not expect the husband there; I therefore waited with impatience when she would speak, that by that I might make some discovery of my destiny that night; and after having tired herself a little with walking, she sat down on a fine seat ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... right has an old woman, with silver spectacles on her long, thin nose, to enlist any man among the awkward squad which compose her muster roll? Who can derive inspiration from the boney hand, which is coaxingly laid on your shoulder, and trembles, not from agitation or love, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the shadow, crouched down and doubled up over his basket. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she took him into her den, where there was a pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close to the cat that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... conversation between Joe and Cecile broke so dismally, and was so bitterly cold, that the old woman with whom the children had spent the night begged of them in her patois not to leave her. Joe, of course, alone could understand a word she said, and even Joe could not make much out of what very little ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... warmly by the hand. "You shall lodge in my house," he said, "if you can be satisfied with humble fare and my plain ways. I am not a married man, but I have a good old woman who looks after me, and she will look after you too, and you can come and go ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... movements were quick, and I have always been told that my gestures were never awkward, my demeanour was never unfinished, as is the case so often with lads at school. Outwardly I was attractive; and the old woman, who had married two husbands merely for their looks, delighted in feeling that she had the power to retain me by her side at an age when most boys avoid old people as if they ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Idris to Stas, "quail's eggs could not crack in those housings. The old woman will ride with the little lady to serve her day and night.—You will sit with me, but can ride near her ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... it? Through one last wave: blood of corrupt Sansculottists; traitorous or semi-traitorous Conventionals, rebellious Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my Etre Supreme I have become a bore; with my Apocalyptic Old Woman a laughing-stock!—So stalks he, this poor Robespierre, like a seagreen ghost through the blooming July. Vestiges of schemes flit dim. But what his schemes or his thoughts were will never be known ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... hardly had the cavalier entered the house, when the clock struck eight; and ten minutes afterwards a lady, followed by a servant armed to the teeth, approached and knocked at the same door, which an old woman immediately opened for her. The lady raised her veil as she entered; though no longer beautiful or young, she was still active and of an imposing carriage. She concealed, beneath a rich toilette and the most exquisite taste, an age which Ninon de l'Enclos alone could have smiled ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... American short story. But the Englishman, not understanding this, will think the other man is boasting, and reflecting on the insufficiency of the English effort. The English soldier is very likely to say something like, 'Oh, you'll be wanting to get home to your old woman before that, and asking for a kipper with your tea.' And it is quite likely that the American will be offended in his turn at having his arabesque of abstract beauty answered in so personal a fashion. Being an American, he will probably have a fine and ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... that leeches should wrap their words in mist, and pretend to derive knowledge from the stars; but when you bid Richard Plantagenet fear that a danger will fall upon HIM from some idle omen, or omitted ceremonial, you speak to no ignorant Saxon, or doting old woman, who foregoes her purpose because a hare crosses the path, a raven croaks, or a ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... on it. Against the wall hung, framed and glazed, an officer's commission. Around this were arranged some bark pictures,[30] representing the "Taking of Kustrin" and of "Otchakof,"[31] "The Choice of the Betrothed," and the "Burial of the Cat by the Mice." Near the window sat an old woman wrapped in a shawl, her head tied up in a handkerchief. She was busy winding thread, which a little, old, one-eyed man in an officer's uniform was ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... she drew encouragement. She had made an afternoon call on Mrs. Westlake. She was for the first time invited up-stairs, and found the suave old woman sewing in a white and mahogany ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... sure of that, sir," answered the Tin Woodman. "A while ago the crooked Sorcerer who invented the magic Powder fell down a precipice and was killed. All his possessions went to a relative—an old woman named Dyna, who lives in the Emerald City. She went to the mountains where the Sorcerer had lived and brought away everything she thought of value. Among them was a small bottle of the Powder of Life; but of course Dyna didn't ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a very old woman when she died. She always had a perfect command of English, and when she was sufficiently drunk, could sometimes be induced to tell the story ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Dorcas laid Stephen, now sleeping peacefully, down in the oaken cradle in the old woman's flagged kitchen. Then she ran off to join the others assembled at a little distance from the orchard gate. By this time a few more children had joined them: two or three girls, and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... iron tool with which he could break the seal of the cover, and took a hammer and chisel with him. With the aid of these instruments he broke through the leaden seal; but scarcely had it given way, when the lid opened, and a blue curling smoke arose from it, and from the midst of it issued a hideous old woman in a strange dress. She carried a crutch under her left arm, and held another in her right hand. She limped over the side of the vessel, and hobbling towards the astonished ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... are rickety and filthy. We go in at two places to sample the tenantry. In the first we find an old Irish woman who lives here with her two boys. She keeps house for them in two little rooms. Everything is poverty-stricken and dirty. The poor old woman is a wreck in body and in mind. She has buried seven daughters. She says, "I've buried a good flock. Too much trouble broke my very life out of me." We go in at another door. Here is an English woman; she has two children and keeps ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... not in the least embarrassed by numbers, sending a large and beguiling smile to yet a further hand-maiden, who passed enviously through the speise-salle with a basin of soup. It was only when Dicky stalked across to the old woman who sold sausages and biscuits behind a counter, and pointed indignantly to the person who held all the available table service of the Strasbourg railway station on his knees, that we obtained ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the tree),—it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, they call it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... mendacious but courtierlike victim of the accident. Wellington also, Lady Shelley records, "after wounding a retriever early in the day and later on peppering the keeper's gaiters, inadvertently sprinkled the bare arms of an old woman who chanced to be washing clothes at her cottage window." Lady Shelley, who "was attracted by her screams," promptly told the widow that "it ought to be the proudest moment of her life. She had had the distinction of being shot by the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... this time the Irishman's heart was torn with conflicting feelings, and although, from the mere force of habit, he could jest with the old woman when she paid her daily visits, there was no feeling of fun in his bosom, but, on the contrary, a deep and overwhelming sorrow, which showed itself very evidently on his expressive face. He groaned aloud ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of Man, an Old Woman, is sitting on the chair. She speaks in an even voice, addressing ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... course, the same percentage, which makes it a very profitable addition to the estate. Immediately opposite to this building is a small shed, which they call the cook's shop, and where the daily allowance of rice and corn grits of the people is boiled and distributed to them by an old woman, whose special business this is. There are four settlements or villages (or, as the negroes call them, camps) on the island, consisting of from ten to twenty houses, and to each settlement is annexed a cook's shop with capacious cauldrons, and the oldest wife of the settlement ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... spoke very simply, but there was a note of deep sadness in her voice, and Blanche told herself that she had been wrong in regarding her as simply a dull, conventional, greedy old woman. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... was visiting one of his poorer parishioners, an old woman, afflicted with deafness. She expressed her great regret at not being able to hear his sermons. Desiring to be sympathetic and to say something consoling, he replied, with unnecessary self-depreciation, "You don't ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... there sat dona Pepita, poor old woman, heaped in an armchair, the wrinkles of her features moistened with tears and her two hands clutching a rosary. Cupido was trying vainly to cheer her with ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... been estimated that at least thirty thousand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed in Scotland, perished in 1722. "She was an innocent old woman, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet—a circumstance attributed to the witch having been used to transform her daughter into a ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... burning in the enormous fireplace; the white walls and ceiling were yellow in the light of the flame. No candles were needed, and none were there. The supper table was set, and with its snow-white tablecloth and shining furniture, looked very comfortable indeed. But the only person there was an old woman, sitting by the side of the fire, with her back towards Ellen. She seemed to be knitting, but did not move nor look round. Ellen had come a step or two into the room, and there she stood, unable to speak or to go any further. "Can that be Aunt Fortune?" she thought; "she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and a line on one side and his figure is razed.[19] His uniform is the color of the ground; it is not so much pretty as the French Poilus who are the color of the sky. And his hat is tied, like a bonnet of old woman, with a shoe-lace in the back. But I love him all of same. He take me on his knees and say: "Parlez vous francais" and he begin to recite the verb "avoir," because he know nothing more of French. And so I say I know very well the American and I talk at him and he laugh very strong. ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... did in Caliban. There are Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch. If the prophet cease from dictating, the amanuensis, rather than be idle, employs his pen in jotting down some anecdotes of his master, how he one day went out and saw an old woman, and the next day did not, and so came home and dictated some verses on this ominous phenomenon, and how another day he saw a cow. These marginal annotations have been carelessly taken up into the text, have been religiously ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the professor enthusiastically. "We'll start and—No, we won't. Egypt is my motto, and much as I should like to have you for a companion, no, sir, no. As the old woman said, 'Wild horses sha'n't drag me from my original plans and unfinished work.' I must get back to the sand. I'd give anything ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... thing we shall not stop here much longer. I must confess I don't fancy the country—and Mary is downright homesick. She wants to get back to her parish affairs; she's afraid some rheumatic old woman needs coddling with jelly and wine, and that sort of thing. I've promised to hurry through the business here, and take her home. But I mean to see that Pine Ridge fence in place before I go; or, at least, see it ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... old woman of the moor that you did sleep half the year in your fatherland, then your claims ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... with him from Ghent two Flemish valets, an old woman, and a young apprentice; the latter, a youth with a gentle, pleasing face, served him as secretary, cashier, factotum, and courier. During the first year of his settlement in Tours, a robbery of considerable amount took place in his house, and judicial ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... an old woman, "who would ever have thought that the Evil Spirit would choose our old town ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... cousin, and a man of a very warm temper. In activity and skill, he was next to Jonathan. 4. David, and his mother Rachel, the first a hopeful young man of about twenty, and the latter a good-natured old woman, who had the care of our clothes and linen, and kept them clean and in good order. Besides these four families, we took with us a boy, Okkiksuk, an orphan, about sixteen, whom Jonathan had adopted, ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... Arras, was it not?—I remember an old woman, a very old woman, leaning on her cane as she peered from her cellar door within a hundred yards of the smoldering cathedral. I wonder if she still lives, for Arras will be struggling back ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... snatching at his hat and staff: "Come—come! But Sophy should not learn that you have been here—that I have gone away with you; it might set her thinking, dreaming, hoping—all to end in greater sorrow." He bustled out of the room to caution the old woman, and to write a few hasty lines to Sophy herself—assuring her, on his most solemn honour, that he was not now flying from her to resume his vagrant life—that, without fail, please Heaven, he would return that night or ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... proceed along the road, and coming round the corner the great black retriever runs up to the old woman with the most friendly intentions, but to her intense confusion, for she is just in the act of dropping a lowly curtsey when the dog rubs against her. The young gentleman smiles at her alarm and calls ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... in them are often as picturesque as their habitations. Here you will find an old woman with her lace-pillow and bobbins, spectacles on nose, and white bonnet with strings, engaged in working out some intricate lace pattern. In others you will see the inmates clad in their ancient liveries. The ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... his own. Mats had been already spread on the ground; rugs made of quilted cotton, for sleeping upon, piled in a corner; vases of flowers placed about the room, and all made ready for occupation. An old woman, followed by two young girls, came forward and saluted to the ground. They were slaves, whom the chief had appointed to wait ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... lad, you seem of an age when robbing a garden or an old woman's fruit-stall would befit you better, if so be you must turn thief, than taking his Majesty's mails upon his highway from a stout and grown man. So be thankful, then, you have met with one who will not shed blood if he can ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... passage, stepped down from rock to rock till he reached a sort of cavern. Entering it, he perceived a lady, young and handsome, as well as he could discover through the signs of distress which agitated her countenance. Her only companion was an old woman, who seemed to be regarded by her young partner with terror and indignation. The courteous paladin saluted the women respectfully, and begged to know by whose barbarity they had been subjected to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... fact, that old woman, being a friend of Rita's aunt, allowed the girl to come into the garden whenever Allegre was away. But Allegre's goings and comings were sudden and unannounced; and that morning, Rita, crossing the narrow, thronged street, had slipped in through the gateway in ignorance of Allegre's ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... this district which are not able to boast a professor of the healing art, in the person of an old woman who pretends to the power of curing diseases by "charming;" and at the present day, in spite of coroners' inquests and parish officers, a belief in the efficacy of these remedies appears to be undiminished. Two preliminaries are given, as necessary to be strictly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... a garden, which consists mostly of fruit trees, and for his open liking for old-fashioned foods, which he collects, including fly grubs and locusts. I was not able to observe his curing procedures, but they were described to me by another informant, a seventy-five-year-old woman, considered one of the most progressive of ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... It is easy to see that for years the Baron's life has been a mere rising up and going to bed again, day after day, without a thought beyond that of piling up coppers. He eats the same food as his two servants, a Provencal lad and the old woman who used to wait on his wife. The rooms ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Lyndsay. He is such an old woman. I wonder he does not ask your permission to let him wash ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... boys!" yelled old Dunbar in that sickeningly optimistic voice. Like a hysterical old woman's. "Just about in ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... who could not help thinking that in seven years' time Miss Dunstable would be almost an old woman. "Seven days is enough to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... tell you what we can do with the pennies," said Aunt Elizabeth. "We will buy a lot of little dolls, and you can help dress them. I will have a great big shoe at my table, in which we can have the old woman who had 'so many children she ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... 17th," repeated the girl, more to herself than to the voluble old woman; "and it was on the 16th that the Premier made his ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... it matter to you? You remind me of the old woman who beat her cat, and then cried when it ran away. If you want me to stay at home, you had ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... camp, where I found all the coloured people of Groen Doorn that were captured by the Germans. Two old women who were too weak to walk all the way were left half-way without either food or water; one of the two was a cripple, and the other an old woman between sixty and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... massive gates of iron grill-work had rusted and settled upon their hinges until they were firmly imbedded and immovable in the ground. The girls stopped and were examining the intricacy and beauty of the design in the wrought iron-work, when an old woman came hobbling along the road towards them. Doris shivered; in fact, all of the girls trembled in spite of themselves: for the creature, thin, tattered, and old, reminded them ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... who had been so kind to the widow and her child from the first moment they came to lodge in the room opposite to hers—good old woman, with a heart as noble and true as the finest lady's in the land—a gentlewoman in every sense, though not of the form or manner in which we are accustomed to associate that word. Years ago she had been a servant in a farmhouse, where she was valued and esteemed by all as a sincere though ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... deal with the rider and his steed. "How to pass a carriage," "How to lose your way," "How to travel on two legs in a frost," are among the best of these. Another clever print shows the rider of a pulling animal with a mouth of cast-iron just clearing an old woman's barrow; while among the larger prints we have "Richmond Hill," "Hyde Park," "Coxheath Ho," and "Warley Ho," and his inimitable print of a "Riding House," published by ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... Bodach-an-dun, or the Ghost of the Hill; and many other examples might be mentioned. The Ben-Shie implies the female fairy whose lamentations were often supposed to precede the death of a chieftain of particular families. When she is visible, it is in the form of an old woman, with a blue mantle and streaming hair. A superstition of the same kind is, I believe, universally received by the inferior ranks ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... are thinking," said Lady Randolph blandly. "You are saying to yourself, that horrid old woman, who never had a child, how can she know?—and I don't suppose I do," said the clever Dowager pathetically. "All that sweetness has been denied to me. I have never had a little creature that was all mine. But when I was your age, Lucy, and far older than you, I would have given anything—almost ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... out her hands to Stephen, as he knelt down by her. "Take an old woman's blessing, my good youth," she said. "Right glad am I to see thee once more. Thou wilt not be the worse for the pains thou hast spent on the little lad, though they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to remember is this: Joe Kipp had his Mandan mother with him until she died. I have seen her, too, a very tall, old woman, and wild as a hawk. Joe built her a little cabin all her own, where no one else ever went. In her little cabin she spent her last years as she had lived in her earlier days among the Mandans, making moccasins for Joe, decorating tobacco ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... elder sister had everything thought out in advance. There was an old Mexican woman, a pure Aztec Indian, at a ranchita belonging to Las Palomas, who was an expert in Mexican drawn work. The mistress of the home ranch had been a good patron of this old woman, and the next morning we drove over to the ranchita, where I secured half a dozen ladies' ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... has called my old woman hence From the strife (where she fit mighty free). It's a nickel a line? Cond—n the expense! For wealth is now little ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... strange and violent illness, which, after three or four days of acute suffering, brought him to the grave. During his illness he was constantly and zealously tended by his wife, but he displayed great aversion to her, declaring himself bewitched, and that an old woman was ever in the corner of his room mumbling wicked enchantments against him. But as no such old woman could be seen, these assertions were treated as delirious ravings. They were not, however, forgotten after his death, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ——, a very tiresome woman, a day or two after, who had been to see this ceremony, and was most devoutly edified by the humility and charity of the ladies. She told me a very old woman put out her foot to her, thinking she was one of them, and begged her to be very careful, as she had got some sores produced by the itch; but as it formed no part of her Protestant duty, she turned her over to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the speech and action of an old woman was worth seeing and hearing. The little boy laughed, and Uncle Remus smiled good-humoredly; but Aunt Tempy looked at the old African with open-mouthed astonishment. Daddy Jack, however, cared nothing for any effect he might produce. He told the ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... Berlin, and the celebrated man of science. Separated by as wide an interval as they are, we shall yet find, if we look closely, in each case the same pathetic tokens of the still uneliminated striae of our poor humanity. The woman is not an old woman, for she has a "small young" family, which, had she lived, might have been increased: notwithstanding which, she has suffered from hemiplegia, "partial paralysis." The professor, too, has had not one, but two, large families, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... ordinary wear was damp from the blowing mists which presaged the coming rain. In order to save the skirts of it, in which the precious and mysterious pockets were, the judge had gathered them up about his waist, as an old woman gathers her skirts on wash-day. He sat in the saddle, holding them that way with one hand, while he handled the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... observations as I was with the literary allusions of the landscape. We sat and smoked on stiles, broaching paradoxes in the decent English air; we took short cuts across a park or two where the bracken was deep and my companion nodded to the old woman at the gate; we skirted rank coverts which rustled here and there as we passed, and we stretched ourselves at last on a heathery hillside where if the sun wasn't too hot neither was the earth too cold, and where the country lay beneath us in a rich blue mist. Of course I had already told him what ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... well in their way, my dear. I am a wicked old woman, who like to have everything gay. I never go out of town till everything is over, and I never come up till everything begins. We have a nice place down in Scotland, and you must come and see me there some autumn. And then we go to Rome. It's a pleasant way of living, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... feasts and arrange the tables in the following manner. It is the peculiar work of the boys and girls under twenty to wait at the tables. In every ring there are the suitable kitchens, barns, and stores of utensils for eating and drinking, and over every department an old man and an old woman preside. These two have at once the command of those who serve, and the power of chastising, or causing to be chastised, those who are negligent or disobedient; and they also examine and mark each one, both male and female, who excels ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... ringing all the time, day and night. Here it is, late at night. All the lights in the street are out, and I am still on the run. Often I make a mistake and enter the wrong house. Yes, old woman, I do. (Exit through the door ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... better let well enough alone," replies the old man. "Africy don't seem as neighborly as Phippsburg and Machiasport. I'll chance it as far as Philadelphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... faithfully attended to on both sides. During two years the animal came to the town to feed, and did no injury to any one. The holy man had tamed, in a similar manner, at Carinola, a fox that stole all the poultry of a poor old woman, and from which she received no injury afterwards. Similar traits are found in the lives of many saints, whose acts are admitted to be authentic and certain, by the most talented critics. St. Athanasius remarks, in the life of St. Anthony, that wild animals ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... of talking; there ain't anything like a good puff to steady a man's nerves. Was a time when I didn't need it, but them times are gone, and the least little job on hand upsets me. Wonder how much that old woman left behind." ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... "you're always bound to stick up for her! Look here, old woman," he added, in a lower tone, but which Lyle could hear, "have you been tellin' that girl anything? She don't own me for her daddy lately, I notice; now, if you've been puttin' her or anybody else onto anything of the kind, I can tell you you'll be damned sorry for it before ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour |
