"Spry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the side of the house in answer to the call for Jasper. A large checked apron almost covered her blue dress and a clean white headcloth concealed her hair. Despite her advanced age, she seemed to be quite spry. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Bobby Bobolink often met a spry gentleman who lived there. His name was Ferdinand Frog. And being a tailor, he always took special notice of everybody's clothes. For himself Mr. Frog preferred a dark green suit, somewhat spotted, and a white waistcoat. And since he spent a great deal of his time in the water, ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... they looked about, according to their attitudes, without finding any thing more than the signs of the manner in which the poor lord fell, and of these the constable pulled out a book and made a pencil memorial. But presently Jacob, a spry sort of man, cried, 'Hulloa! whatever have I got hold of here? Many a good craw-fish have I pulled out from this bank when the water comes down the gully, but never one exactly like this ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Acknowledge, admit, confess, own, avow. Active, agile, nimble, brisk, sprightly, spry, bustling. Advise, counsel, admonish, caution, warn. Affecting, moving, touching, pathetic. Agnostic, skeptic, infidel, unbeliever, disbeliever. Amuse, entertain, divert. Announce, proclaim, promulgate, report, advertise, publish, bruit, blazon, trumpet, herald. Antipathy, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... fact is," answered Mr. Silas Peckham, "Miss Darley, she's pootty much took up with the school. She's an industris young woman,—yis, she is industris,—but perhaps she a'n't quite so spry a worker as some. Maybe, considerin' she's paid for her time, she isn't fur out o' the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's,—that is, if so be she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her work in the daytime. Edoocation is the great business ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... hereabouts to turn any thing out of doors, ma'am, expected or not; and I calcurlate there'll be room in the house for a young 'un or two if they ain't over noisy. Come, little gal, give a jump, and let's see how spry you are." ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Church or State arrives. A man once very upright in his principles and policy begins to bend. You cannot understand it. He goes down lower and lower, until he gets his hands away down on his knees. Then a spry politician or ecclesiastic comes up behind him, puts his hand on the bowed strategist and springs clear over into some great position. Good thing to have so good a man in a prominent place. But after a while he ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... against you, and perhaps the only thing to be done is to put the helm down a little, and set the sails shaking again before they can be trimmed properly. It was just at such a time that I came on deck, as above mentioned. Being near eight bells, the watch on deck had been not over spry; and the consequence was that our big maincourse was slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... very long before you're home again and everything'll seem wonderful and bright and new to you, mother," he said. "And don't you worry about me, for I'm getting along fine. I can hobble around quite spry with this crutch. And Tom and Arthur are on deck, you know. We'll behave ourselves and not get into any mischief, and by the time you're home again we'll have done all the planting. Good-bye, good-bye! I'll write to you ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... said the housekeeper, taking one handle of the trunk. "You go first, Herbert, You're young and spry, and can ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... cut out the cattle, boys," advised Old Billee, as he spurred along with the youngest rider. For though this veteran more than doubled the years of the boy ranchers, he was almost as "spry" as any of them. "Cut out the cattle, and we'll look ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... of the dock Fresh and spry as a fighting-cock, Feathered with sails and spurred with steam, Heading out of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... blowing off the top of a tree. "Now for the chase!" said Ayrault. "There would be no excuse for losing him." Quickly pushing their raft to shore and securing it to the bank, the three jumped off. Thanks to their rubber boots and galvanic outfits which automatically kept them charged, they were as spry as they would have been on earth. The ground all about them, and in a strip twelve feet wide where the mammoth had gone, was torn up, and the vegetation trodden down. Following this trail, they struck back into ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Jim, who also contemplated the prodigy, "that big, chunky, awkward-lookin' things are sometimes ez spry ez you. They say that the Hipperpotamus kin outrun the giraffe across the sands uv Afriky, an' I know from pussonal experience that the bigger an' clumsier a b'ar is the faster he kin make you scoot fur your life. But he's the real Dutch, ain't he, Paul, one uv them fellers that licked ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... provincial town, But now before his iron mace go horse and rider down. Ho, Robert Elsmere! count thy beads; lo, champion of the fray, With brandished colt, comes Felix Holt, all of the Modern day. And Silas Lapham's six-shooter is cocked: the Colonel's spry! There spurs the wary Egoist, defiance in his eye; There Zola's ragged regiment comes, with dynamite in hand, And Flaubert's crew of country doctors devastate the land. On Robert Elsmere Friar Tuck falls with his quarter-staff, Nom De! to see the clerics fight might ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... floor the boy an' me not quite loaded, but Jack were as spry as a rat terrier. He dodged an' rushed in an' grabbed holt o' the club an' fetched the cuss a whack in the paunch with his bare fist, an' ol' Red Snout went down like a steer under ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... come purty nigh backin' into the ditch that time, gals," he cackled. "All right now, ain't ye? That there leetle gal is some spry. Ginger ain't shown so much sperit ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... guess I am somebody now'days. The time you was in jail, I thought the family had a mighty slim chance o' countin'; but I tumbled into base-ball, an' I was pretty strong in my arms an' pretty spry on my feet, an' little by little I kind o' came to give the family ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... formidable array of pint pots, with the contents of which the men in blue had been refreshing themselves. On a packing-case in the middle of the room sat Short, his billycock hat set far back on his long, greasy hair, smoking a clay pipe with imperturbable calm; whilst little M'Dermott, spry as ever, watched the proceedings, pulling faces at the policemen behind their backs, and "kidding" them with extraordinary tales as to the fearful explosive qualities of certain ginger-beer bottles which were ranged on a shelf. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... no good in the mills after he's fifty," she said. "You see, Miss, it's all piece-work, and a man has to be most terribly spry and active. The strain is something awful, day after day, in the noise and bad air, and having to keep your eyes fixed on your work for ten hours at a stretch; and he wears out fast. Then he has to take a job where he can't make so much. And when he's about fifty ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... clumsy," Simon Screecher told him bluntly. "If I'm going to hunt with anybody after this I'm going to choose someone that's as spry as I am. There's no sense in my working for you. Here I've toiled all night long and I'm still hungry, for I've given you a third ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... myself a second-hand, elderly, but still spry think-mobile with only a slight inclination to stutter, and a pompous-looking eraser with a little fringe of black whiskers on its chin, and I'm beginning to begin, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... to help. "Father," he cried, at last, "I know one way we can save a good bit of money every year: I can leave school, and I could go out to work. I know Farmer Vinning would give me a job; he said he wished he had a boy half as spry as I am, and— and then I could bring home my wages every week to mother." And for the moment Paul could not see what hardship people found in being economical. But his father only shook ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... that some one must go, the spry lad darted out of the door, and reappeared a few minutes later with a ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... as a dumpling, and ever so fat, In running and climbing he's spry as a cat, And if the long ladder should happen to break, And he should fall down, what a crash it ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... started being ashamed of myself I shouldnt have time for anything else all my life. I say: I feel very fit and spry. Lets all go down and meet the Grand Cham. [He goes to the hatstand and takes down ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... you want to go camping, do you?" said he. "Sit down and let us talk it over. I think the young lady is all right. She looks spry enough, and I expect she could eat pine-cones like a squirrel if she was hungry and had nothing else. As for you, madam, you don't appear as if anything in particular was the matter with you, and I should think you could stand a Number Three camp well enough, and be all the better ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... you are half-way down the other side of the island, or exactly opposite this point; then strike directly into the timber, and so make a short-cut back here. In that way you will reach this place again as soon as I, for the island isn't more than three hundred yards wide just here. Be spry, now, and remember that the safety of your raft depends largely upon the promptness with which we get those other ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... are not free from danger. Great sea-serpents or sharks sometimes make it hot for them, but they are watchful, spry, and being "Folks," with power to think and plan, can generally look out for themselves ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... bring her through. They brought the little one and showed her to me, and she seemed so different from what she was when we went away. Then she could run about camp climb out and in the wagons, and move about so spry that she reminded one of a quail. Now she was strangely misshapen. Her limbs had lost all the flesh and seemed nothing but skin and bones, while her body had grown corpulent and distended, and her face had a ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... a sad comin' it was for her, as I could see in her face. 'What are you wearin' yo' Sunday best for, Mr. Doolittle?' asked Mr. Jonathan, spry as a cricket. 'It's a fine weddin' I've been to, Mr. Jonathan,' I answered, 'an' I've seen two lovin' hearts beatin' as one befo' Mr. Mullen at the altar.' Then Reuben Merryweather's gal called out right quickly, 'Whose weddin', old Adam?' an' when I replied, 'Abel ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... said the second clerk to the lifted man, restraining both his arms. "No, you stay right here. He didn't do a thing to you, you just stepped a little too spry and sort o' ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... be a sight-seer that morning. When he entered Buckingham Palace Road, the strains of martial music banished the gaunt specter called into being by the red cotton banner. A policeman, more cheerful and spry than his comrades who marshaled the procession shuffling towards Westminster, strode to the center of the busy crossing, and cast an alert eye on the converging lines of traffic. Another section of the ever-ready London crowd lined up on the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... out with all our canvas spread to a lively northeast breeze—and I realised once more how good the sea was for all manner of men, whatever their colour, for we all livened up and shook off our land-laziness again, spry and laughing, and as keen as the jib stretching out like a gull's wing into the rush and ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... comin' to you one of these days, Miss, and that's what I was wantin' to speak to ye about. I understand, of course, that when you get there you'll be wantin' younger blood to serve ye. My feet ain't so spry as they once was, and my old hands blunder sometimes, in spite of what my head bids 'em do. So I wanted to tell ye—that of course I shouldn't expect to stay. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... the young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were like blue-steel ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Una Callingham, whose connection with the so-called Woodbury Mystery is now a matter of historical interest. The mysterious two-souled lady possesses, at present, all her faculties intact, as before the murder, and is indeed, people say, a remarkably spry and intelligent young person; but she has most conveniently forgotten all the events of her past life, and more particularly the circumstances of her father's death, which is commonly conjectured to have been due to the pistol of some unknown lover. Such freaks of ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Cornish family, for several generations owned the estate of Pool Park in the parish of Saint Judy, in the county of Cornwall. Captain Philip Sleeman, who married Mary Spry, a member of a distinguished family in the same county, was stationed at Stratton, in Cornwall, on August 8, 1788, when his son ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... & rede, er schyne[gh] ful schyr agayn e su{n}ne. 28 Flor & fryte may not be fede, er hit dou{n} drof i{n} molde[gh] du{n}ne, For vch gresse mot grow of grayne[gh] dede, No whete were elle[gh] to wone[gh] wo{n}ne; 32 Of goud vche goude is ay by-go{n}ne. So semly a sede mo[gh]t fayly not, {a}t spry{n}gande[4] spyce[gh] vp ne spo{n}ne, Of at p{re}cios perle wyth-outen ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... the big ambulance. He was spry as a cat. In ten minutes he knew all that was under the hood, had tested the levers, looked at the oil and gasoline ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... creetur in his talk, and I've heerd a smart young man that's one of my boarders say, he believed he had a lid to the top of his head, and took his brains out and left 'em up-stairs sometimes when he come down in the mornin'.—About his ways, he was spry and quick and impatient, and, except in a good company,—he used to say,—where he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round in one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... fishes and frogs. Dere was allus plenty of fishes and rabbits. Our good old hound dog was jus' 'bout as good at trailin' rabbits in de daytime as he was at treein' 'possums at night. I was young and spry, and it didn't seem to make no diff'unce what I et dem days. Big gyardens was scattered over de place whar-some-ever Marster happened to pick out a good gyarden spot. Dem gyardens all b'longed to our Marster, but he fed us all us ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... become pretty spry, but the kitten was spryer, and she could not catch it, and had to give it up. Then ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why The Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow, or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only—how ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Sammy," Tumm resumed, "on the swilin' v'yage in the spring o' the Year o' the Westerly Gales. I mind it well: I've cause. The Royal Bloodhound: a stout an' well-found craft. An' a spry an' likely crew: Sam Small never lacked the pick o' the swilin'-boys when it come t' fittin' out for the ice in the spring o' the year. He'd get his load o' fat with the cleverest skippers of un all; an' the wily skippers o' the fleet would tag the ol' rat through the ice from ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Johnny up an' down, swing him all aroun', Oh, swing Johnny up an' down, swing him all aroun' Fa' you well, my dahlin'." Had to laff at ole man Johnson, he 's a caution now, you bet— Hittin' clost onto a hunderd, but he 's spry an' nimble yet; He 'lowed how a-so't o' gigglin', "I ain't ole, I 'll let you see, D'ain't no use in gittin' feeble, now you youngstahs jes' watch me," An' he grabbed ole Aunt Marier—weighs th'ee hunderd mo' er less, An' he spun huh 'roun' de cabin swingin' Johnny lak de res'. Evahbody laffed ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... ain't. And reason why's this. He's bin out with the Fletchers' boat all the day. There's a great take o' mackerrow expected shortly, and the Fletchers they're on the look out; they're always that spry to the main-chance, as you know, deary. Not as I'm one to blame they; people has got to be sharp ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... sure Lem Horn's silver!" David exploded excitedly. "I never would have thought of un bein' that! Andy's wonderful spry thinkin' things out, and he's mostly always ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... retired from the stage. It's wuss than the circus, my lad. The temptations are greater and there ain't so much honor among the people you're thrown with. The stage is surrounded by a pack of wolves just as vicious as Bob Grand ever was, and a girl's got to be mighty spry to dodge 'em." ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... zoo o' Monday we got drough Our work betimes, an ax'd a vew Young vo'k vrom Stowe an' Coom, an' zome Vrom uncle's down at Grange, to come. An' they so spry, wi' merry smiles, Did beaet the path an' leaep the stiles, Wi' two or dree young chaps bezide, To meet an' keep up Easter tide: Vor we'd a-zaid avore, we'd git Zome friends to come, an' have a bit O' fun wi' me, an' Jeaene, an' Kit, Because ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... round to folks, then?" said Mrs. Salter. "The houses are pretty scattering in these parts; he'd be a spry man if he could ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... was to leap away from the midshipman's prostrate body. Despite the bear's lumbering body and shambling gait he can be spry enough ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Oxford? How would they alter the tone? We shall see. It will be an interesting struggle. Shall we hear of six- shooters in the High?—of hominy and flannel cake for breakfast?—will undergrads look 'spry?'—will they 'voice' public opinion? . . . I forbear: my American vocabulary is limited. Outre mer, outres moeurs, as Mr. Walkley might say in some guarded allusion to Paul Bourget. . . . I shall be sorry to see poker take the place of roulette, and the Christ Church meadows ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... flannel suit and a red tie. If it hadn't been for that touch of red too, he sure would have looked ghastly; for there was about as much color in his face as there was in his white buckskin shoes. But he steps up spry and active and shoves out a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... fast growing dark when Joe Welling came along the station platform toward the New Willard House. In his arms he held a bundle of weeds and grasses. In spite of the terror that made his body shake, George Willard was amused at the sight of the small spry figure holding the grasses and half running along ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... busybody. Yes, Sir, she certainly is a busybody. If there is anything going on in her neighborhood that she doesn't know about, it isn't because she doesn't try to find out. She is so small and spry that it is hard work to keep track of her, and she pops out at the most unexpected times and places. Then, before you can say a ...
— Mrs. Peter Rabbit • Thornton W. Burgess
... wonderful how young he looked, and how happy he was, and how spry his step, as the two turned into William Street and so on to the cheap little French restaurant with its sanded floor, little tables for two and four, with their tiny pots of mustard and flagons of oil and red vinegar,—this last, the "left-overs" of countless bottles of Bordeaux,—to say ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... faith, spight, wreathe, wrath, broth, froth, breath, sooth, worth, light, wight, and the like, whose primitives are either entirely obsolete, or seldom occur. Perhaps they are derived from fey or foy, spry, wry, wreak, brew, mow, fry, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... me to introduce her," said Zhmuhin, "is the mother of my young cubs. Come, Lyubov Osipovna," he said, addressing her, "you must be spry, mother, and get something for our guest. Let us ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... morning, however, all things seemed to have altered. Mrs. Warren was up spry and early. She called Connie to come and help her, but she desired Ronald to lie ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... thoughtless careless little beast. One day he went to sleep with his beautiful long tail hanging straight out behind him. Along came Mistress Puss carrying a sharp knife, and with one blow she cut off Mr. Rabbit's tail. Mistress Puss was very spry and she had the tail nearly sewed on to her own body before Mr. Rabbit ...
— Fairy Tales from Brazil - How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore • Elsie Spicer Eells
... he says; "it's a fancy o' mine. You see, me gone, there's nothing to 'amper 'er—nothing to interfere with 'er settling down as a quiet, respectable toff. With a 'alf-brother, who's always got to be spry with some fake about 'is lineage and 'is ancestral estates, and who drops 'is 'h's,' complications are sooner or later bound to a-rise. Me out of it—everything's ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... kind o' help me climb in. I ain't so spry as I was once. You better give me a real boost. But, land! I mustn't talk. I wouldn't git a mite of air into that ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... that this is going to lead to trouble," she said once more. Rusty Wren said, "Nonsense!" He was overjoyed at the prospect of having a spry young helper. And he hurried out to tell Mr. Chippy's son that he might start ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father's servant before I could toddle, and after my father's death (Pons and I ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... for a few months on the Yuba," Seth said, "but then I went to sinking. I worked with some mates first, and then I bossed a mine down Grass Valley. It was held in shares. I only had a few, but I was spry and handy, you see, and I worked up till I got to be boss, or what you would call manager. The lode paid well for a while; then it fell off, and I got to longing for the sea again; so I just chucked it up, and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... worm down through the rocks till you come to a little scrub-oak tree and a big granite bowlder. They'll give you shelter to cross the ridge into a deep ravine that leads here where I am. You'll be out of sight all the way up once you hit the ravine. I'd—I'd worm along pretty spry if I was you, going down as far as the scrub oak—say, about as swift as a rattlesnake strikes—and pray any little prayers you happen to remember. And say, Pringle, before you go ... I'm rather obliged to you for coming up here; risking taking cold and all. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... quit of this confounded Babel yet—and you must want somebody badly. So I send Rupert down. He'll do everything you want, better in fact than I could, for he is young and spry, and as good a boy as lives. He will see to everything, and you can get off as soon as you like. I think he had better go along all the way; his mother wit is worth a dozen stupid couriers, even though ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... Aldershot? Dr. L—— highly approves of the air of it, but at present he thinks lying in bed the only safe course. Do thank dear Aunty next time you write to her for her goodness, and tell her that in my present state I should make her seem quite spry and active. A thousand thanks for the Pall Mall. I do not neglect one word of what you say; but I need hardly say that ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... placing knives, forks, and plates on the table, under Miss Hepsy's directions. A glad smile crept to her eyes at sight of Tom; it seemed ages since he had gone out. She looked timidly at her uncle as he shook hands with her, remarking she was a pale-faced thing, and needed work and exercise to make her spry. Then the company sat down, and Tom, if Lucy did not, did ample justice to Miss Hepsy's cookery. It was an unsociable, uncomfortable meal. Aunt and uncle ate, as they did everything else, as if for a wager, and were finished before ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... "if I'm in for an adventure I may as well be spry about it. Andrew'll be home by half-past twelve and if I'm going to give him the slip I'd better get a start. I suppose he'll think I'm crazy! He'll follow me, I guess. Well, he just shan't catch me, that's all!" A kind of anger came over me to think that I'd been living ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... But, spry as I am for one of my settled habits and sedate character, I found myself passed by Mr. Gryce; and when I would have accelerated my steps, he darted forward quite like a boy and, without a word of explanation or any acknowledgment of the mutual ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... a cousin to the Pine-squirrel,' said OLD-man, 'and you will hunt and hide as he does. You will be spry and your living will be easy to make if you do as ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... price on everything, so's you won't be bothered what to charge. There's some things I don't ever git, because folks buy too many of them and it's sich an everlasting bother keeping them in stock. But you're young and spry, and maybe you won't mind jumping about for every Tom, Dick and Harry. But, remember," she added in parting, "don't git expensive things. Folks in that neighborhood ain't got no money to fool away. Git as many things as you can for a cent ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... That is to say, I invented them and I saw that they were carried out. You see, the suspicions of your police obliged me to be particularly spry.' ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Tommy just in time. He turned tail and ran for his life; and he was so spry, though he was quite a fat, elderly gentleman, that he reached his hole and whisked down out of sight just as Tommy was ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... here are crazy in your treatment of the Japanese. You think they're civilized because they dress in good shape, and can put up a mighty spry imitation of Western ways. But they ain't. They're the greatest menace to Europe that has yet come up on the tape. Do you believe they want China to wake up and organize before they're ready to take hold? No, sir. Anyhow, that ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... we'd been 'vestin' our money in real estate?" asked Johnny, almost impatiently, and speaking rather indistinctly because of his mouth being so filled with candy. "We've got a place we bought of Dickey Spry, an' you can stay with us ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... me. My time's up. I'm an old man. I'm only keeping you back. Without me you've got a chance; with me you've got none. Leave me here with a gun. I can shoot an' rustle grub. You boys can come back for me. You'll find old Jim spry an' chipper, awaitin' you with a smile on his face. Now go, boys. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... stretched beyond the brook, tempting Miss Kitty Cat to explore it. At that hour of the morning there were many birds twittering among the trees. And spry chipmunks were frisking about in search of their breakfast. Miss Kitty Cat just naturally began to think ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... clothed and tightly tucked in against the cold like the child, who vied with each other in catching up the lumps of coke that were jolted from the load, and filling their aprons with them; such old women, so hale, so spry, so tough and tireless, with the withered apples red in their cheeks, I have not often seen. They may have been about sixty years, or sixty-five, the time of life when most women are grandmothers and are relegated on their merits to the cushioned seats of their children's homes, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... feelin' pretty spry now, but you'll be as meek as a baby calf in a little while. In this section a bridegroom is treated ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... worse than traveling. We shall go three times as fast when we get light to help us as in the dark; besides, we have got to look for some place where we can double on them. We shan't find that till we are out of this valley. We shall have to be pretty spry if we are going to get away from them; they will come along fast when they once take up the trail. It has taken us six hours to get down here; it won't take them three. Well, I hope we shall get on the move an hour or two before they do. If they wait until daylight ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... venerable James Montgomery, whose pupil he had been during the short time that the poet conducted a school. Mr. Vickers took me to visit the poet at his residence at The Mount. A short, brisk, cheery old man, then seventy-one, came into the room with a spry step. He wore a suit of black, with old-fashioned dress ruffles, and a high cravat that looked as if it choked him. His complexion was fresh, and snowy hair crowned a noble forehead. He had never married, but resided with a relative. We chatted about America, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Hillo! There's Old WILLIAM! He's out on the scoot. The artful Old Hand! Hope he'll like what he looks on! He slated this nag as a peacocky brute, Whose utter collapse they've been building their books on. How now, my spry veteran? Only a boy On a three-legged crock? Well, I own you are older, And watching your riding's a thing to enjoy; There isn't a Jock who is defter and bolder; Your power, authority, eloquence—yes, For your gift of the gab is a caution—are splendid; But—the youngster may teach you a lesson, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... chap," said Mr. Seabury. "Before we came down here he was as spry as I could wish, but now he does just as the Mexicans do. He sleeps every chance he gets. But come on in. I know you must be tired ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... received a dozen slaps from his companions, all of whom were waiting for just such an opportunity. This is the object of the game—to catch a boy with his queue down his back. Some of the boys, more spry than others, would move away to a distance, and then as though all unconsciously, allow their queue to hang down the back in its natural position, depending upon their fleetness or their agility in getting out of the way or bringing the queue ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... spry old lady for her age. If you don't believe it just try to catch her. But spry as she is, she isn't as spry as she used to be. No, Sir, Granny Fox isn't as spry as she used to be. The truth is, Granny is getting old. She never would ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... it," remarked Thad; for that was an expression often used among the boys, Davy being such a spry chap, and usually ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... "Your High and Mighty Spry and Flighty Majesty," remarked the Captain respectfully, "it occurs to me that the weapons of the Pinkies are superior to our own. What we need in order to oppose them successfully is a number of sharp sticks which are longer than ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... that girl! All day she would set round the house, with her hair down, fixing over a lace waist or making fudge, and not appearing to care much about life. Come night, when the party was due to return, she would spry up, trick herself out in something squashy, with the fashionable streamlike effect and a pretty pair of hammock stockings with white slippers, and become an animated porch wren. That seemed to be the limit ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... masses, fat but spry; although ignorant, very shrewd in her business of selling dried fruit. At the beginning of the Restoration she lived in Paris on rue Perrin-Gasselin, where she fell prey to the usurer Bidault—Gigonnet. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... of his books, And loved by his usher and master; But naughty Jack Spry, he got a black eye, And carries his ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... answered the Minister, 'I will take the furniture and the ghost at a valuation. I come from a modern country, where we have everything that money can buy; and with all our spry young fellows painting the Old World red, and carrying off your best actresses and prima-donnas, I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... minutes to keep my word the same as ever,—'n' father's black bow too. But laws, he was n't after no bow!—I very quickly found out as all as he was after was the funeral, f'r it seems as they was uncommonly spry with it. He told me right off as they had it pretty prompt too, for he says when it comes to buryin' a wife there 's no need for a man to go slow, 'n' so he had all Meadville up with the lark 'n' out ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... 'bresh,'" returned the boy, doggedly. "YOU might get through, ef you war spry, but not your hoss. Where do you want ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... this ingenious theory your objection might have carried force; for I didn't have a fact to stand on, as you observe. I conjectured round pretty spry, too. Reckon it took me all of half a second—while them two warriors was giving me the evil eye. I'll tell you how it was." He related the story of the shooting match and the lost bet. "And to this unprovoked design against an inoffensive stranger I fitted the only possible ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "You saw how spry a creature he is, and if he should happen to drop down upon us from the branch of a tree, those sharp claws of his would play ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... I am pleased to see you so spry," said Grannie. Her voice felt quite choking when she entered the big, luxurious house. "I'll be able to keep it up fine," she murmured to herself. "Lor', I'm a sight better; it was the air of that place that was a-killin' ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... same. We do not mind giving our time and our money, Or facing March blasts, or the floods of July; But till nettles bear grapes, Sir, or wasps yield us honey, You won't get snubbed men to pay up and look spry. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... em," said Uncle Moses, turning his eyes benignantly upon the two boys. "They seem to me jest now to be oncommon spry—arter it all. They don't look very nigh death, as far as appearances go. No harm's done, I guess; an so, I dare say, we'd best jest ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... from his earliest boyhood; who at fourteen had been present in four pitched battles with the Danes, and who, while yet scarce twelve years old, had charged the Danish line at the head of his guards and shot down the stout Danish colonel, who could not resist the spry young warrior. His mother was a sweet-faced Danish princess, a loving and gentle lady, who scarce ever heard a kind word from her stern-faced husband, and whose whole life was bound up ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... mighty old now, but I used to be pretty spry. I used to go 60 miles out on de Gulf o' Mexico, as 'terpreter on dem big ships dat come from France. Dat was 'fore I done forgot my French talk what I was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Chirpy asked Mr. Cricket Frog, when he came back to the duck-pond the following day and found that spry little gentleman waiting for him on a lily-pad. ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... basket with sudden energy, she exclaimed: "Why won't this do? Here is some sea-moss which I was taking to an old woman who lives a little further down the road. She makes some stuff which she calls farina out of it, and grieves bitterly that she is no longer young and spry enough to gather it for herself along the shore. My basket is full of this moss, and if we could wet it in the brook down yonder, we might sponge off the things with it, and then dry them with big leaves, backed up by those newspapers ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the mark, Tubby," he was informed. "The inn-keeper said one man told him that, while the bridge was wrecked, a few of the steel beams still hung in place, so that any one who was fairly spry might manage to make his way over from one side to the other. A number had done it, including the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... haired, but as fresh as a daisy and as spry as a cricket. His cheeks were as ruddy as Spitzenberg apples and his only wrinkles were the laughter wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. And such eyes! They were big and clear, and so bright that Bob could only look ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... chief. And don't you think this affair is going to be a circus. I tell you it is going to be a hard job. There ain't a dozen white men as have been over that country, and we shall want to be pretty spry if we are to bring back our scalps. It is a powerful rough country. There are peaks there, lots of them, ten thousand feet high, and some of them two or three thousand above that. There are rivers, torrents, and defiles. I don't say there will be much chance ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. It was welcomed as of good augury, for instance, that in the stately Hotel Majestic, where the spokesmen of the British Empire had their residence, monocled diplomatists mingled with spry typewriters, smart amanuenses, and even with bright-eyed chambermaids at the evening dances.[1] The British Premier himself occasionally witnessed the cheering spectacle with manifest pleasure. Self-made ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... vote and about 86 per cent. of the men, as some of the latter are in the mines or out of the State for various reasons. Among the Republican leaders are Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Gates, Mrs. Cherdron, Mrs. Jannette A. Hyde, Mrs. Cannon, Mrs. Wolstenholm, Mrs. Loufborough, Mrs. William Spry, Mrs. Reed Smoot; Mrs. Martha B. Keeler of Provo and Mrs. Georgina G. Marriott of Ogden. The Democratic party has had among its leading women Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Alice Merrill Horne, Mrs. Cohen, Mrs. Hayward, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... way out toward the crude dog-corral, and the way he leaped the brook bore witness to the fact that he was still vigorous and spry. The door of the pen was made of boards hung on wire. As Belllounds opened it there came a pattering rush of many padded feet, and a chorus of barks and whines. Wade's surprised gaze took in forty or fifty dogs, mostly hounds, browns and blacks and yellows, all ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... men were about to start trouble, for already had the one they knew to be Si Kedge gained his feet, as he seemed a little more spry than his partner ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... of his time. Mrs. McGee was a handsome, stately lady, about thirty years of age, brunette in complexion, faultless in figure and imperious in manner. I think that they were of Scotch descent. There were four children, Emma, Willie, Johnnie and Jimmie. All looked at me, and thought I was "a spry little fellow." I was very shy and did not say much, as everything was strange to me. I was put to sleep that night on a pallet on the floor in the dining room, using an old quilt as a covering. ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... trots out nimbly to the rim of the arena, glares aggressively at the empty space ahead of him, shakes his mighty head, and every line of his lithe frame says "Ready!" He is not like our British bulls, heavy and ponderous, but spry and agile as a terrier, twisting on his own axis like a small rater in stays. He was not goaded or tortured before the entry, to make him savage, as the historians of bull-fights would have us believe—there is no necessity. It is almost the finest part of the spectacle, this first entry, and ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... do you mean by getting up like this? I thought, forsooth, you were so sick you had need of a nurse, to take a few more shillings out of my pocket, and here you are at five o'clock, up and spry. Well-a-day, I never did come to the bottom of you. Deep waters, they ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Jim. He was certainly spry enough now. Mike was just setting the blazing match to the kindling when he reached the group around the stove. At the front stood the little boys, and in a twinkling Jim had pushed them one this way, one that, in order to stand directly in ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... little man, not much more than five feet in height. His shoulders were bent with the infirmities of age—they judged him to be over seventy—but his movements were spry, and they had already seen by the way he handled his boat that he was not lacking in dexterity. There was a suspicious redness about his nose that was explained by Lester's hint about his fondness for a certain black bottle. But his ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... least three of these dummies will have something to do with the development of Cowperwood's story, they may be briefly described. Edward Strobik, the chief of them, and the one most useful to Mollenhauer, in a minor way, was a very spry person of about thirty-five at this time—lean and somewhat forceful, with black hair, black eyes, and an inordinately large black mustache. He was dapper, inclined to noticeable clothing—a pair of striped trousers, a white ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser |
