"Poking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spittin' fire for? That wa'n't nothin' I slipped in but my address, girl. When you need me call on me. 'The Liberty, 96.' Go right up in the elevator, no questions asked. Get me?" he said, poking the small purse into the V of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... laugh confoundedly, if he caught him at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he had done such a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he might indulge in a like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... a loud, glad snort of recognition, wheels herself around and then falls in alongside the front hack and gets ready to accompany us, all the time poking her snout over at me and uttering plaintive remarks in East Indian to me. Gents,' he says, 'you can see for yourselves, a thing like that, occurring right at the beginning of a funeral procession, is calculated to distract popular attention away from the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... everything looked so bright and fine, that the snowdrops and crocuses popped their heads out of the ground, and kept calling to one another across the gravel walk, "All a-growin' and a-blowin'," as the men who bring round the flowers. Two or three violets opened their little blue eyes, too, and poking at the dead leaves that were lying on them, kept trying to get a peep at the bright sun; for he had had a bad cold all through the winter, and had kept his head wrapped up in thick mists and clouds, only showing himself now and then; and when he did, his face looked ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back, the other with a galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arm's length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half a wig, both awry in opposite ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... and Jack were sitting at the breakfast table on the grass, talking idly and trying to think of excuses for not washing the dishes. Mamma Fuzzy and Baby were poking about in the tall grass. Suddenly Mamma gave a shrill cry and started back for the shed, chasing Baby ahead of her and slapping him on the bottom with the flat of her ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... and, with that strange duplex action of the human mind, he wished that it was his hair, and not her father's, that Miss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... took a seat before the fire, placed her bag and an old hat-box on the floor by her side and for a moment looked around the room, noticing everything. Then she took up the poker, commenced poking the fire, as if she wanted more heat to enable her to explain the chief object of her visit. The heat is now up to the degree required, the poker is laid aside, the old hat-box is in her lap, and aunt Mary is ready to talk business. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... to poke, to stir with a long instrument, JD. Comb.: pout-staff, anet fastened to two poles, used for poking the banks ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... lit the oven burners of the little gas cooking stove. I was not cold; but my feet were chilled in a quite extraordinary manner, as if they had been packed in ice. At last I took off my slippers with a view of poking my toes into the oven of the stove, and feeling my feet with my hand, I perceived that, in fact, they were not cold at all! But the sensation remained; there, I suppose, you have an odd case of a transference of something ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... of standing on one leg when he found it a failure. Perhaps he was thinking the thing over. He did not think to much purpose, for day after day for more than a week back came the adjutant to walk like a soldier on duty up and down, up and down, poking his head through the bars each time. Sometimes he did it a score of times, sometimes only two or three. After ten days he disappeared. Where is he? Has he gone to find a blacksmith among the adjutants? or have his brother ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... said Charlie, poking one with his rifle. The grass and twigs fell at the touch. "They've been deserted for years. But look over there—that used to be a yam patch, and ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... look like the others, somehow. He was older, for one thing. Perhaps it was his nearly bald scalp, perhaps the thick, bookish glasses in heavy brown frames. "What's that?" he asked mildly, poking a finger at the dealer kneeling in the sawdust on the floor. My Blackout victim was reaching out, trying to find something he could use to raise himself to his feet. His face was frozen in a fierce, unseeing stare as he mentally screamed at his eyes ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which divided the fields from the road, and basked in the heat. These walls were covered with grass and moss. The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I do not remember that I ever killed one. Heart and ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... set off to look for Grinsell's accomplice. Taper in hand he went quickly from room to room; joined by the squire's servants, he searched every nook and cranny of the house, examining doors and windows, opening cupboards, poking at curtains—all in vain. At last, at the end of a dark corridor, he came upon an open window some ten feet above the ground. It was so narrow that a man of ordinary size must have had some difficulty ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... things I love about you—as a brother," he answered with a funny sigh. And I wasn't sure whether he was poking fun at me or not. "But, as for Miss Van Buren, why couldn't she look upon van ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Patsy, swinging her feet and poking at the grass with a branch she had stripped of willow leaves; "I suppose that even if you are at the castle and I at Cairn Ferris we can always come here or meet at the alder grove—why, there ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... cookery; all round, a group of unclad little imps, as black as their mothers, lounged idly about, with their eyes firmly fixed on the chance of dinner. As Granville entered, the husband and father, poking in his head, shouted a few words after him. Another native outside kept watch and ward with a spear at the door meanwhile, to prevent his escape against ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... the dusty highway, its mistress would suddenly stop, vociferating at the top of her voice—"Muff! Muff! where are you, my incomparable Muff?" when the queer pet would bound up her dress like a cat, and settle itself down upon her arm, poking its black nose into her hand, or rearing up on its hind legs, to lick her face. They were an odd pair, so unlike, so widely disproportioned in size and motion, that Flora delighted in watching all their movements, and in drawing contrasts between the big ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... sentences, and with visible effort, for the surgeon was all the while poking and probing at the leg in a most uncomfortable manner, and De Berg was pale from pain and loss of blood. Oakley looked on with an expression of regret, and showed no disposition to the hasty ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... you on that aeroplane, Yermilich!... You'd be quite handy at it, wouldn't you!" the soldiers were poking fun at ...
— The Shield • Various
... presently, and a basket of fruit there. Poking about he contrived to disinter from various tins and ice-boxes some cold chicken and biscuits and a bottle of claret. These he wrapped hastily in a napkin which he found there, placed them in the basket ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... wretched, squalid by-street of the town, with as many smells as Cologne. I found the place when I was poking about one afternoon—a dingy little shop kept by a Jew who marvelously resembled Cruikshank's Fagin. He resurrected this picture from a rusty old safe, and I saw its value at once. It had been in his possession for several years, he told me; he had taken it in payment of a debt. The Jew was ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... poking fun now. Wait till I get through. Only for Tom, you would have found me at Ten Mile Gulch, hanging by the neck to the limb of that tree just ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... went to the ha-ha, and satisfied herself that at any rate the youngsters were amusing themselves, spoke a word to Mrs. Greenacre over the ditch, and took one look at the quintain. Three or four young farmers were turning the machine round and round and poking at the bag of flour in a manner not at all intended by the inventor of the game; but no mounted sportsmen were there. Miss Thorne looked at her watch. It was only fifteen minutes past twelve, and it was understood that Harry Greenacre was not to begin ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... thought to myself, I cannot be wrong if I address my friend POMPOSITY by his name, and speak to him in a chatty rather than in an inflated style. If I chose the latter, might he not think that I was poking fun at him by cheap parody, and manifest his displeasure by bringing a host of BULMERS about my ears? These considerations prevailed with me, and the result was the letter you received. But, O pectora caeca! I have learnt ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... yourself. I told the wife it was only a lover's quarrel most like. She's been worrying about you; but she didn't like to ask you what was the trouble. She ain't one of them unfortunate folks who can't be happy athout they're everlasting poking their noses into other people's business. But what kind of a rumpus was kicked up at the Gordon place, ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... strength and elegance. Emphasis is the soul of speech, it gives it its feeling and truth. Emphasis deceives less than words; perhaps that is why well-educated people are so afraid of it. From the custom of saying everything in the same tone has arisen that of poking fun at people without their knowing it. When emphasis is proscribed, its place is taken by all sorts of ridiculous, affected, and ephemeral pronunciations, such as one observes especially among the young people about court. It is this affectation of speech ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... am!" answered Lou, poking his laughing, powdered face from under the bed, and crawling out. And away they all followed the chase, Uncle Leonard kicking off his gluey slippers, and catching up a pair of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You shouldn't ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Turner boys and the Dickey boy is three of 'em," said the old man, "and Henderson's own boy, Davy—poor leetle feller!—and Buddy Hopper, and the Adams boy. They had a couple of guns, and they was all in this boat of Hopper's, poking round the marsh, and it began to look like rain, and got dark. Well, she was shipping a little water, and Hopper and Adams wanted to tie her to the edge and walk up over the marsh, but the other fellers wanted to go on round the point. So Adams and Hopper left 'em, and come ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... still and listened to Farmer Brown's boy poking around outside. He heard him exclaim: "Ah, I thought so!" and knew that he had found the tracks Jimmy Skunk had made in the snow. Unc' Billy almost chuckled again as he thought what a smart fellow he had been to step in Jimmy Skunk's tracks. And right ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess
... Mrs. Allen, now poking her night-capped head from beneath the blankets, and listening a moment attentively. "'Tis a sound of heavy carts drawn by oxen over frozen ground. Ay, I guess it is the new family, that bought out neighbor Williams, moving their goods. Just look out the window,—our yards join,—and see if there ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... unlike the Turkish nargileh, except that it has a straight stem instead of a coiled tube), and swallowing glasses of raw arrack every few minutes; they furthermore amuse themselves by trying to induce me to follow their noble example, and in poking fun at another young man because his conscientious scruples regarding the Mohammedan injunction against intoxicants forbids him indulging with them. About eight o'clock the Khan becomes a trifle sentimental and very patriotic. Producing a pair of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... however, are many harmlessly humorous jingles and rhymes which were sung in the synagogue, admittedly for the amusement of the children, and for the child-hearts of adult growth. For them, too, the Midrash had played round Haman, reviling him, poking fun at him, covering him with ridicule rather than execration. It is true that the earliest ritual reference to the wearing of masks on Purim dates from the year 1508, just within the Ghetto period. But this omission of earlier reference ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... here such an amount of the usual romantic machinery of the "grave-yard" school of poets—that school of which Professor W. L. Phelps calls Young, in his Night Thoughts, the most "conspicuous exemplar"—that one is at first inclined to think Smollett poking fun at it. The context, however, seems to prove that he was perfectly serious. It is interesting, then, as well as surprising, to find traces of the romantic spirit in his fiction over ten years before Walpole's Castle of Otranto. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to find Keith. She ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty, half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was why no-one could get on with her poking her nose into what was no concern of hers. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... tablespoonful of borax in the water, rung out her cloth, and washed out all the inside of the great box, poking a little stick into the corners, and scrubbing the shelves thoroughly, as well as the sides and bottom. Then she wiped them dry and the food was put in again neatly. There had been a small pan of charcoal in one corner, and this was emptied on a paper ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... Mondays. You cannot count those endless vials on the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cracked hickory nuts, interspersed with bits of sugar. Then I sat down upon the floor beside him, and began the business of taming him by getting him used to seeing me, cultivating his acquaintance by poking my finger between the bars, talking and singing to him, and endeavoring, by other ingenious devices, to make him feel at home. He scampered around the confines of his domicile, as in a treadmill, all the time I was thus employed, and could not be ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... kind, and was covered with long black hair which stood straight up on end; his pointed nose, bright brown eyes, and cunning little ears, set in the frame work of bushy hair, gave him a most sagacious appearance. And just now he was brimful of curiosity, pattering all over the room, poking his nose into a great pile of "Idol-Breakers," sniffing at theological and anti-theological books with perfect impartiality, rubbing himself against Raeburn's foot in the most ingratiating way, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... indeed, like a magpie, never still for a minute, fingering Katharine's hair, lifting the medallion upon her chest, poking her dark eyes close to the embroidery on her stomacher. She had a trick of standing with her side face to you, so that her body seemed very long to her hips, and her dark eyes looked at you askance and roguish, whilst her lips puckered to a smile, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Ishmael were driven out from the household of Abraham, they wandered by chance to this very spot, desolate and forsaken. While Hagar was diligently searching for water, more anxious to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem, whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim. As Ishmael grew to manhood ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... asked the old gentleman, who wouldn't let Phronsie get down out of his arms, under any circumstances; so there she lay, poking up her head like a little bird, and trying to say she wasn't in the least hurt, "where's everybody been not to know she'd gone?" he exclaimed, "where's Polly—and Jasper—and all ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... uncovered a little snake, languid from the cold. Perhaps he had been on his way to winter quarters and the frost had caught him unaware. Anyway, he was numb and Sarah, murmuring affectionate nothings to him, slipped him into her pocket and then spent a valuable ten minutes poking about among the leaves in the hopes of discovering another, believing implicitly that snakes "always go in pairs." However, if the snake had a companion, diligent search failed to uncover it and Sarah was forced to take her reluctant ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... religiously for three days. Then I contracted a slight attack of influenza, and in poking around the kitchen, doing one of the things I oughtn't at the time I shouldn't, a servant-girl tipped a pot of boiling pot-liquor over my right foot, scalding it rather severely. Aunt Helen and grannie put me to bed, where I yelled ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... was that in 1878 Baden-Powell passed the Garrison Class, taking a First Class and Extra Certificate (Star) for Topography. During the lectures he distinguished himself by making inimitable caricatures, for which he was sometimes taken to task by the authorities. Also he could not help poking fun at the examiners in the papers themselves. Asked, "Do you know why so-and-so, and so-and-so?" Baden-Powell would write an ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... exclaimed, "I've always been drawn toward that kind of life. A musket will be a little heavier than a gun, that's all; then I shall see different countries, and that will change my ideas." He tried to appear facetious, poking around the kitchen, and teasing the magpie, which was following his footsteps with inquisitive anxiety. Finally, he went up to the old man Vincart, who was lying stretched out in his picture-lined niche. He took the flabby hand of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bustling about the house like a country landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls tasks to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a prodigious clatter among the calabashes. Sometimes she might have been seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... damask snake is undulating up the lattice-work, poking its head through betimes to look at us. It does not seem in the least afraid, nor has it much reason to be, seeing that its kind are deemed the servants and confidants of Benten. Sometimes the great goddess herself assumes the serpent form; perhaps ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... would get up if she knew Cousin Edith were poking about downstairs," thought Gwen. "I know I ought to stay—but I can't, I can't! It means so much to pass that exam. It would be horrid to stop at home, too, with Bee in bed directing everything. If she were going away, and would leave me to it, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Meanwhile, after poking about in as much of the ruins as I could penetrate, I stepped out through a gap in one of the walls and found myself again on the path by which I had entered. I noticed that it still ran on farther north, as having ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... we went, and comin' to the turn I saw the amateur was holding back And poking into every hole he could To get her blocked, and so I pulled behind And drew the whip and dropped it on the mare — I let her have it twice, and then she shot Ahead of me, and Smithy opened out And let her up beside him on the rails, And ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... beneath my arm, and, standing there in the deep weeds and briers, we looked about the clearing. Even the Professor's care had long been missing. The roof of the cabin had fallen in years ago, and the end of a single log, poking through a mass of green, marked the stable from which the white mule had regarded me so critically. Yet the mountains rose above us, the same mountains; the same ridge sloped upward to the south, and above it was the ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... did not answer. He ran down to where Daddy Blake was poking among the green vines and bushes, trying to ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... extremely old woman, cadaverously pale and miserable looking, with dotage glistening in her inexpressive, rheum-distilling eyes, and attired in a blue cloak, that had been homely when at its best, and was now exceedingly tattered. She had been poking with her crutch among the bushes, as if looking for berries; but my approach had alarmed her; and she stood muttering in Gaelic what seemed, from the tones and repetition, to be a few deprecatory sentences. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... one all these strange and beautiful things are most human and delightful. Nevertheless, though the church would anywhere else claim all our attention for a whole morning, and an afternoon is easily spent poking about the hospital, it is not of the mere architecture, beautiful though it be, that one thinks on the way back into Winchester, across the meads beside the river which has seen and known both the Middle Age and this sorrowful time of to-day, but of that wondrous institution where poverty ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... you slip past me and go up stairs, to the room in front, and see if the man there can be gotten away. I want to size up the men in there. I can see them by poking my head out occasionally, ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Teddy, like Fate, grimly at their heels, steadily "pointing" them off the premises. We were a little anxious, therefore, as to how Teddy would take our little terrier, with his fussy, youthful self-importance, and eternal restless poking into other folks' affairs. But Teddy, as we might have told ourselves, had had a long and varied experience of terriers, and had nothing to learn from us. Yet I have no doubt that, with his instinctive ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... around and find out. Right now I'd rather be in old Gid's house, sitting with somebody on a bench—and I'm going back to-morrow. What fun is there in poking about this way like a couple of gawks? You even pull me away from the supper table to tramp up and down these streets. Hang it, I don't want to see people. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... mean to be rude," said John. "I only wanted to help you." He knelt by her side poking the fire industriously. "I only wanted to get a chance to talk to you," he added, in a low voice, barely audible to Mrs. Goddard ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... in literary circles than any other current matter. There was hardly a club-meeting or a dinner at which they were not discussed. "There was something so grotesque in the idea," said a correspondent, "of this ruthless Yankee poking among the revered antiquities of Britain, that the beef-eating British themselves could not restrain their laughter." The story of his Uncle William who "followed commercial pursuits, glorious commerce—and sold soap," and his letters on the Tower and "Chowser," ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... was until Richard had topped the first flight of steps. But then he came down to meet him in too much of a hurry, tripping, blundering the degrees, nodding and poking his head, with hands stretched out and body bent, like his who supplicates what he ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Murden, starting to his feet and poking his head out of the den; "we are all right ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... now reading Moore's Memoirs with considerable entertainment: I cannot say the result of it in one's mind is to prove Moore a Great Man: though it certainly does not leave him altogether 'The Poor Creature' that Mr. Allingham reduced him to. I also amuse myself with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with: I go on with it because it is a point in common with him, and enables us to study a little together. He and his wife are at Oxford: and his Pracrit Grammar is to be out in a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... work the day after. Some come to the grave now and again out of the world, and say a brief prayer, and a "God bless her!" With some men, she gone, and her viduous mansion your heart to let, her successor, the new occupant, poking in all the drawers and corners, and cupboards of the tenement, finds her miniature and some of her dusty old letters hidden away somewhere, and says—Was this the face he admired so? Why, allowing even for the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... What on earth are you poking up here for at this time of day?" was the matter-of-fact greeting. "You are to hurry up and come into our house and stay to dinner. Mother said you are allowed, so you needn't stop to ask permission; and, just think, the box ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... from police methods in this country. Too much red tape, habeas corpus and that sort of thing. What we want is to see that nobody bolts; the nearest we could get to it would be to collect the company and count them, so to speak. Nobody's left lately, except that lawyer who was poking about for antiquities." ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... one comes out and tells you that the golden hare is not here, don't believe it, but hold him fast." So she crept into the hole again and began to beat for game, and out came an old woman, who said to the youth, "What art thou poking about there for?"—And he said to her, "For the golden hare."—She said to him, "It is not here, for this is a snake's hole," and when she had said this she went away. Presently the girl also came out and said to him, "What! ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... apiece and looking very formidable so far aloft in the air. Each of these monsters was able to carry on a whole war by himself, for with one of his arms he could fling immense stones and wield a club with another and a sword with a third, while a fourth was poking a long spear at the enemy and the fifth and sixth were shooting him with a bow and arrow. But luckily, though the giants were so huge and had so many arms, they had each but one heart and that no bigger nor braver than the heart of an ordinary man. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... water more," declared Mrs. Blanchard, escaping from her reverie. "What's to be spent landlord must spend," she continued. "A little whitewash, and some plaster to fill them holes wheer woodwork's poking through the ceiling, an' you'll be vitty again. 'Tis lonesome-like now, along o' being deserted, an' you'll hear the rats galloping an' gallyarding by night, but 'twill soon be all it was again—a dear li'l ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... shouted Henry; while Sam was on his knees, poking out a species of cavern in the fire, where some symptoms of red embers appeared, which he diligently puffed with his mouth, feeding it with leaves and smaller chips in a very well practised way. "Sticks, Annie! Johnnie! Davy! get sticks, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dressed in the extreme of juvenility, with flowers and ribbons of all the colors of the rainbow. Her complexion was delicately heightened with rouge, and the loveliest tresses played about her cheeks. As she languidly sauntered through the former monkey house at the gardens, playfully poking the animals with her parasol, one seized it so vigorously that she was drawn close to the den; in the twinkling of an eye, a dozen little paws were protruded, off went bonnet, curls and all, leaving a deplorable gray head, whilst others seized her reticule and her dress, pulling it ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... his father, poking the fire, "is late to-night, Johnny, and will come home like a lump of ice. ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... were dressed in black, and with extreme simplicity; but their easy grace and composure, and the refined sentiment of their gentle faces, told at a glance they belonged to the high nobility. Publicola divined them at once, and involuntarily raised his hat to so much beauty and dignity, instead of poking it with a finger as usual. On this the ladies instantly courtesied to him after the manner of their party, with a sweep and a majesty, and a precision of politeness, that the pup would have laughed at if he had heard of it; but seeing it done, and well done, and by ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the wood is well on fire, cover with about six inches of coal, the smaller, or nut-coal, being always best for stove use. When the coal is burning brightly, shut up all the dampers save the slide in front of the grate, and you will have a fire which will last, without poking or touching in any way, four hours. Even if a little more heat is needed for ovens, and you open the draughts, this rule still ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... never know whether you're poking fun at me or not," sighed poor Mamma, so forlornly that I was sorry—for a whole minute—that I'd been born wicked; and I tied her tulle in a lovely bow at the back of her ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... laughed," said her twin brother, when he could speak. "But the idea of your poking at a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... retraced his steps past the seat where the little drama had taken place he saw an elderly gentleman poking and peering beneath it and on all sides of it, and recognised his ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... who he is—Jenny and me and you; and I'd propose that my niece goes down the coast in the motor boat with Giuseppe. They can cruise away to the west, where there's an easy landing here and there at little coves, and they may sight my brother poking about, or hid in some hole down that way. There are caves with tunnels aft that give on the rough lands and coombs behind. It's a pretty lone region and he couldn't hang on long there or find food for his belly. They can try that for a few hours and we'll go up aloft. Or else I'll ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... engines for draining the immense Haarlem lake, and then drove to it. Imagine a round tower with a steam-cylinder in its center; and the piston which works up-and-down, instead of working one great beam as they usually do, works eight, poking out on different sides of the round tower, and each driving a pump 6 feet in diameter. I am glad to have seen it. Then ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... lonesome; aren't you, Snoop?" asked Flossie, poking her finger in one of the cracks, to caress, as well as she could, a fat, black cat. The cat, like Dinah the cook, went with the Bobbseys on all their ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... ideal of home and of marriage that shows itself from the first in his writings, just here a line and there a sentence, which indicates how his thoughts ran, and how, whatever enjoyment he might take in poking cynicism at women in the abstract, he was full of a noble idea, a manly longing for that one woman, of whose soul and his own, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... poking about down there for?" he said, pushing his ugly old face into mine as he spoke. "You fool! if you had fallen you would have been drowned. No one could swim a stroke in that mill-race. And then there would have been another ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... must react, to judge their lives? We can tell who has gone through a legal ceremony and who refuses to do so. That is a nice convenient rule by which we can judge and condemn such people. But we cannot go poking into people's lives and studying their motives and judging their fundamental moral standards! No, you cannot. Why should you? This little set of iron rules makes it very easy to judge, does it not? But why do you desire it to be easy to ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... growled, "this is not kind. You are poking fun at me. I take the thing seriously; I listen to you, I obey you in everything, and then you mock me in this way. We find a clue, and instead of following it up, you stop to relate all ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... who of course knew nothing of the magic key, was already fumbling at the lock with a hairpin, and after poking at it for several minutes it flew back ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... he would escape us. My rifle barrel was hot as fire. My fingers were all thumbs. I jammed a shell into the receiver. My last chance had fled! But Copple's big, brown, swift hands fed shells to his magazine as ears of corn go to a grinder. He had a way of poking the base of a shell straight down into the receiver and making it snap forward and down. Then he fired five more shots as swiftly as he had reloaded. Some of these hit close to our quarry. The old grizzly slowed up, and looked across, and wagged his ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... witnesses, and I won't have 'em, confound it. This is between us as man to man; and don't you try to bring in no law on this, because you know law books. This is our own business and nobody else's. I'd knock my best friend out of the door if he come poking into my private matters. Why, man alive! this is sacred. That's it—an affair of the heart. Now be careful." His voice was high and angry and his self-control ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... not really any thought among us of poking fun at Edmund; we respected and admired him far too much for that; nevertheless, catching the infection of banter from Jack, we united in demanding, in a manner which I can now see must have appeared ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... was in the act of choosing a soft chop from the dish—an act accompanied by a great deal of prying and poking with that gentleman's own fork. My disillusioned compatriot had pushed away his plate; he sat with his elbows on the table, gloomily nursing his head with his hands. His companion watched him and then seemed to wonder—to do Mr. Simmons justice—how he could least ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... in cheek and, at the screwing noise again, poking Mr. Feist in the region of the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... was going to have a busy time of it. Until that evening I can truthfully say that I never knew what nervousness was; but scarcely had I entered the station when I felt suddenly depressed. I attributed the feeling to heat, and tried to pull myself together by poking fun at Herbert, whom I accused of wilfully keeping the trains late in order to shirk handling them. Every night Herbert gave me a written account of the trains handled during the day, and especially drew my attention ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... comforted laugh. "And truly, Phyllis, it has been a comfort to tell you all about it. It is hard to have to skimp like I do and it makes a girl nervous to have to keep looking down at her feet to be sure that a toe isn't poking out of the shoe since the last time she looked, also to know that the last inch of hem is let out of her dress and her legs are growing while she sleeps. I can take Douglass's old shirts and make shirt waists for me and aprons of ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... girl replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just a fancy. I guessed you wouldn't want him poking around." ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... flowers, of husbandry, of hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of every thing, with regard to which we had something to do. One would be trying to imitate a bit of my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or horses, a third poking over Bewick's Quadrupeds and picking out what he said about them; but our book of never-failing resource was the French MAISON RUSTIQUE, or FARM-HOUSE, which, it is said, was the book that first tempted DUQUESNOIS ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... sprang aft to drive back a gang of the pirates, who were attempting to board on our quarter. Two of the first paid dearly for their temerity, and were cut down by either the captain or Mr Gale. I got a long pike, and kept poking away over the bulwarks at every fellow I could reach. Several pistols were fired at me, but missed their aim; but at last the pike was dragged out of my hands, and thrown overboard. Unfortunately there was so little wind ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... table and—Well, did he blub? All I know is, the Rev. E. Taylor knocked at the door once, twice, thrice, and Todd heard him not. The house master came in and surveyed the bowed form of poor Gus with a good-natured smile, tempered with some scorn. He took the liberty of loudly poking Gus's decaying fire, whereat the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... coldly to Lisa (he had not expected that she would ask him to wait so long for an answer to his offer, and he was cross with her for it). Lavretsky followed him. They parted at the gate. Panshin walked his! coachman by poking him in the neck with the end of his stick, took his seat in the carriage and rolled away. Lavretsky did not want to go home. He walked away from the town into the open country. The night was still ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... little Amy, poking her head up from its nest to look at him. "All the girls say you are just splendid to me; that they never saw such a brother; and I don't believe they ever did, Jack," ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... get all wet," objected Hilda, "besides, it's so cold, Cricket," and she drew back further up on the beach, and stood poking her toes into the ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... and then the other of the great black oxen lightly with his goad. The huge beasts swayed from side to side, and finally succeeded in getting themselves and the cart in motion, while the farmer walked leisurely beside them, tapping and poking them occasionally, and talking to them in that mystic language which only oxen and their drivers understand. Down the sweet country lane they went, with the willows hanging over them, and the daisies and buttercups and meadow-sweet running riot all over the banks. Hilda stood ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... herself, Mrs. Scutts returned to the bedroom and, poking the tiny fire into a blaze, sat and pondered over ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... it," I said, sitting down on a fallen tree and looking up at her as she stood, tall and lithe, against an old pine, with her eyes averted. "I shouldn't have supposed you'd want an old fogy like myself poking about and spoiling the idyllic ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
