"Stepmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a Stepmother of the Stoniest sort—was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight and Alderman of London, that contracted with the Government to take us Transports abroad. Sure there never was a man, on this side the land of Horseleeches, that was so Hungry after money. Yet was his ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... held her own better than the inexperienced girl of nineteen, whose native wit and downright honesty of purpose were more than equal to all the diplomacy of thrust and parry to be gained by living in society. Her stepmother, who was apparently as good-natured as she seemed brainless, was prepared to be gushing, but that was nipped in the bud by the way Dawn extended her pretty, firm hand with the dimpling wrist and knuckles and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... your father is able to send some more money for you I might be able to manage it; but with your stepmother always ailing his money seems to be all wanted for doctor's bills and medicines. It ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... revenues, which amounted to about 15,000 francs, and out of which her husband allowed her and her daughter only 3,000 francs. M. Dudevant, it must be noted, had all along been living on his wife's income, having himself only expectations which would not be realised till after his stepmother's death. By the remonstrances of his wife and the advice of her brother he was several times prevailed upon to agree to a more equitable settlement. But no sooner had he given a promise or signed a contract than he revoked ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... are made that way. My stepmother, the only mother I've known, was like that," Lavendar went on, dropping suddenly again into personal talk, as they had done before. He and she, it seemed, could not keep barriers between them very long; every hour they spent together brought them more strangely into knowledge ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that of Lucy, by the deep blues and sober browns which alone looked fit to be seen with those beetle brows and sallow features. Her face looked many years older than that of her fair, fresh, rosy stepmother; nay, her father's clear olive complexion and handsome countenance had hardly so aged an aspect; and Gilbert, when he came home at Midsummer, declared that Sophy had ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... somewhat different stories in which the persecution of innocent wife proceeds from various persons. For instance, in the Italian legends Sta. Guglielma is persecuted by her brother-in-law; Sta. Ulila by her father and mother-in-law; and Stella by her stepmother. See D'Ancona, op. cit., pp. 199, 235, 317. A popular version, somewhat distorted, of the second of the above-mentioned legends may be found in Nerucci, No. 39; of the third in ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... motherless children, and after a while took to himself a wife, thinking thus to provide his children with a mother's care and love. This wife was called Hawea and had a boy by her former husband. This boy was deformed and ugly, while the twins were very beautiful. The stepmother was jealous of their beauty, and resented the universal admiration expressed for them, while no one noticed her boy except with looks of aversion. She was very considerate toward the twins when their father was present, but hated and detested them most violently. ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... men as they walked off toward the apiary, and when she turned to her stepmother her eyes were wet with sudden tears. "Fidus was almost impertinent to father, wasn't he? And father was so perfect to him! That is what I tell Fidus, when he talks like grandfather and says we are all going to the dogs—I tell him that at least ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... those haunted eyes—a little boy, terrified and forsaken. "Oh, I have no right to soil you with it. But I came back to tell some one about it—I had to, I had to. I had to wait until father and Audrey went away. I knew they'd hate to see me—she was my stepmother, you know, and she always loathed me, and he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake at night thinking that I might die, and that no one in England would ever care—no one would know how I had loved her. It was worse than ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had the credit of having once cured Antiochus, afterwards King of Syria. He was the grandson of Aristotle, and may be called the father of the science of anatomy: his writings are often quoted by Dioscorides. Antiochus in his youth had fallen deeply in love with his young stepmother, and was pining away in silence and despair. Erasistratus found out the cause of his illness, which was straightway cured by Seleucus giving up his wife to his own son. This act strongly points out the changed opinions of the world as to the matrimonial relation; for it was then thought ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Gloucester; the Queen of Wurtemberg as the girl-Princess Royal, with a dog. (She died in Wurtemberg about this time, 1828. She had quitted England on her marriage in 1797, and in the thirty-one years of her married life only once came back, as an aging and ailing woman. She proved a good wife and stepmother.) A youthful family group of an earlier generation was sure to attract a child—George III. and his brother, Edward, Duke of York, when young, shooting at a target, the Duke of Gloucester in petticoats, Princess Augusta (Duchess of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... enjoyed a college education, and had been offered a share in a good business in a city twelve miles away. He left Beulah because he hated it. He left because he could not endure his father's gentle remonstrances or the bewilderment in his stepmother's eyes. She was a newcomer in the household and her glance seemed to say: "Why on earth do you behave so badly to your father when you're such a delightful chap?" He left because Deacon Todd had prayed for him publicly at a Christian ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Virlaz at Leipsic for his guardian. Uncle Virlaz, however, deep in his furs, confined his guardianship to the safe-keeping of Fritz's silver marks, and left the boy to the tender mercies of this stepmother. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... their mild, kindly stepmother, who, on her side, was as devotedly attached to them as if they had been her own children. The Count noted this mutual attachment, which time only served to strengthen, and it filled his heart with joy and gratification. The family was, indeed, a happy one, and ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... seems to me," she continued, "as though I could see the dainty trim doll at this very moment before me. Well, is your beautiful stepmother still living? When they drove me out of the country she was just ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... slept, I did not rest. My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made "tired nature's sweet restorer" a stepmother to me. I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but on that night, Queen Mab, like Jehu, drove her horses furiously. Every possible kind of disappointment, vexation, and difficulty; every conceivable shape of things, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... well as a girl, but only a stepmother, and apparently a detail; for the girl has the money and the strength of will. The two are stopping in a pension near Madame de Blanchemain's house. The girl is a Miss McNamarra, with freckles and no ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... mother's side, she was the daughter of the late Lord Glendarroch, and step-daughter to Lady Hilton, who had become Lady Hilton within a year after Lord Glendarroch's death. Lady Alice, then quite a child, had accompanied her stepmother, to whom she was moderately attached, and who had been allowed to retain undisputed possession of her. She had no near relatives, else the fortune I afterwards found to be at her disposal would have aroused contending claims ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... seemed anything but temporary—a condition to be ended next week or the week after at farthest. Her father's illness turned out to be a lingering one, taking every last ounce of strength from his wife and his daughter; and after his death the little stepmother had collapsed for a while, with only Dosia to take the helm. Dosia had worked early and late, nursing, looking after the children, cooking, sewing, and later on, when sickness and death had taken nearly all the means of livelihood, trying to earn money for the immediate ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... the steam begins to advance, and, peering through it, you discern Aunt Elizabeth, Ona's stepmother—Teta Elzbieta, as they call her—bearing aloft a great platter of stewed duck. Behind her is Kotrina, making her way cautiously, staggering beneath a similar burden; and half a minute later there appears old Grandmother Majauszkiene, with a big yellow bowl of smoking ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a half interest if you'll let me, but I'll be doggoned if I'll marry a stepmother for Phoebe, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... animals, and an Irish Circe in the Rennes Dindsenchas called Dalb the Rough changed three men and their wives into swine by her spells.[1112] This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas. The children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel stepmother; Saar, the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the power of the Druid Fear Doirche when she rejected his love; and similarly Tuirrenn, mother of Oisin's hounds, was transformed into a stag-hound by the fairy mistress ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... had written to her stepson had produced a good effect, and when Romarino, shortly after, came home, in order to set up in business on his own account, the relations between him and his young stepmother were perfectly amicable. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... for the reception of a testimonial of royal approbation, seems sufficiently to prove the loyalty of the Philippines, and the little probability of their revolting, especially if the mother-country does not show herself wholly a stepmother to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... I turn me back, with eyes reverted To this stepmother world of daily life, As one by some long pleasant dream deserted, That wakes ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... home with joy, and she asked her consort, "Wherefore hast thou concealed thy children from me?" The king said, "I will do so no longer." And he sent messengers for his son, and he was brought to the Court. His stepmother said unto him, "It were well for thee to have a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world." "I am not yet of an age to wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him, "I declare to thee, that it is thy destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... with mind,—these are looked for, but hardly found; and the young scholar groans in spirit, and perhaps does as Milton did—quarrels with his tutor. But if he is wise he will, as Milton also did, make it up again, and get the most that he can from his stony-hearted stepmother before the time comes for him to bid her his ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... came to take my advice about a stepmother. I have a stepmother myself, and I am the very man to advise you. But suppose you and I agree on the person for the place, and the colonel ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Medon, and Podarkes resolute in war. Now the one, Medon, was the bastard son of noble Oileus, and brother of Aias, and he dwelt in Phylake, far from his own country, for that he had slain a man, the brother of his stepmother Eriopis, wife of Oileus. But the other, Podarkes, was the son of Iphiklos son of Phylakos, and they in their armour, in the van of the great-hearted Phthians, were defending the ships, and fighting ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts. The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions. Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... graze, but the girl sat down and began to weep. And the heifer said to her, "Tell me, dear little maiden, wherefore dost thou weep?"—"Alas! why should I not weep? My stepmother has given me this flax and bidden me unravel it, and reel it, and bleach it, and bring it back as cloth in the evening."—"Grieve not, maiden!" said the heifer, "it will all turn out well. Lie down ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... yore, a ballad of love and sorrow that once had served to stir a national hatred of France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into the mouth of a page, who pours out his heart to his stepmother. Just now it was simply the air that rose and fell. There were no words; the plaintive voice of the singer touched and ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... stood over the girl, but for some minutes spoke never a word. Marie lay on the sofa, all in a heap, with her hair dishevelled and her dress disordered, breathing hard, but uttering no sobs and shedding no tears. The stepmother,—if she might so be called,—did not think of attempting to persuade where her husband had failed. She feared Melmotte so thoroughly, and was so timid in regard to her own person, that she could not understand the girl's courage. Melmotte was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Italians work. They have naturally so large a capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of self- denial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and not in commonplace, handy, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... built by King Henry VIII. as part of the jointure of Queen Catherine Parr, who afterwards lived here with her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral. Here the young Princess Elizabeth came to stay with her stepmother, and also poor little Lady Jane Grey at the age of eleven. The history of the Manor House, of course, coincides with the history of the manor, which has been given at length elsewhere. Lysons, writing in 1795, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... respectable man. He's simply all respectability. Respectability's his god—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Always has been. He'd sacrifice everything to respectability—except the lovely Lobley. It's not respectable in a respectable family for a girl to leave home on account of her stepmother. And so he's in a state, if you please!... If he wanted to carry on with Mrs. Lobley, let him carry on with her. But no! That's not respectable. He's just got to marry her!" ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... immediate result had been the emigration of several thousand professors and students of German nationality to Leipzig, where a new university arose which was inclined to consider its Alma Mater, Prague, a stepmother. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... connected enough, but heartless and an utter snob. I suppose men are often blind to these hateful qualities before marriage; doubtless a clever, unscrupulous woman is able to hide her faults when she has the main chance in view. My stepmother was a good deal younger than my father, and I dare say on the whole made him, socially at any rate, a fairly good wife. Her one idea was social aggrandizement at any cost, and I unhappily was to fall ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... though her complexion had no brilliancy, only the clearness of health, and her features would not endure criticism, there was a wonderful lively sweetness about her fresh, innocent young mouth; and she had a tall lithe figure, surpassing that of her stepmother. She would have been a sonsie Border lass in appearance but for the remarkable carriage of her small head and shoulders, which was assuredly derived from her royal ancestry, and indeed her air and manner of walking were such that Diccon had more than once accused her ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stepmother, France, did not know it, at least the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the health of Freedom, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... and by siding with Dorothy she would be supporting her husband. Therefore she could not agree with the angry declamations of her stepmother. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... enough to him. It is true, she would have preferred his remaining in the first or second stages of behaviour; for his violent love puzzled and frightened her. Her uncle neither helped nor hindered the love affair, though it was going on under his own eyes. Frank's stepmother had such a variable temper, that there was no knowing whether what she liked one day she would like the next, or not. At length she went to such extremes of crossness that Alice was only too glad to shut her eyes and rush blindly at the chance of escape from domestic ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... wish our Stepmother were back, albeit we are soe comfortable without her! Mary, taking the Maids at unawares last Night, found a strange Man in the Kitchen. Words ensued; he slunk off like a Culprit, which lookt not well, while Betty Fisher, brazening it out, woulde ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... order to have a look at her face again. I should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very unpleasant for any bearer of that name. Still, Ravengar happened to be the man ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Gospeler. But her tongue was harder than her heart. Father and mother alike thought the wide world of their boy, though the child was brought up under an iron rod. Joan, too, loved her half-brother, Tom, very dearly, and took a pride only second to her stepmother's in the lad's progress and achievements. More than once, though only Joan and he knew it, she had saved his skin from punishment, and she worshiped him with a frank admiration which was bound to win Mrs. Tregenza's regard. Joan ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... They live solely by the wits of their stepmother, and if it were not for her, they would long ago have come to grief. Yes, she is a woman beyond words clever. Once upon a time there were three brothers—Peter, Alexis, and Jonah; but, unfortunately, Alexis got killed in a brawl. A fine, tall fellow HE was, whereas these two ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Sittmann's, also hastened to Tuebingen. Sittmann had been married once before he took Wilhelmine's sister to wife, and of this former union he had two gawky sons, who accompanied their father and stepmother to this ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... established and a supposed competent tutor was appointed, Booker Washington did not find that his course had ceased to be a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. His mother and stepmother were so poor that it was not thought that his services at the salt works could be altogether dispensed with in order that he might attend school. Then a kind of compromise was made, and without the work being entirely suspended, he was allowed ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... doin' here?" he asked himself, in surprise. He had not known that the boy was even in town, for he had been on the point of leaving to enlist in the navy. Family matters could not have detained him, for he was quite alone in the world since both his father and his mother were dead and his stepmother had married again. Under his great-uncle's gaze the lad opened his eyes with a start and sat ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... tree in the war-god's wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram, who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine Sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the land, their cruel stepmother, Ino, wished to kill them, that her own children might reign, and said that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the priest ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Miss Dora Bannister was driven to Cobhurst to call upon the young lady who had been taken sick, and who ought not to be neglected by the ladies of Thorbury. Dora had asked her stepmother to accompany her, but as that good lady seldom made calls, and disliked long drives, and could not see why it was at all necessary for her to go, Dora ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... kings and kingdoms to ruin. In England it appears, despite of Christianity and monastic discipline, in its most atrocious form after the death of Edgar. His eldest son, for some years his successor, was treacherously murdered by his stepmother (who wished to advance her own son to the throne), at a visit which he paid her as he returned from hunting. It was that Edward whose innocence and leaning towards the Church have gained him the name of Martyr. The son of the murderess did ascend the throne, but the guilt of blood seemed to cleave ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... saying, I was bred up here in the village—father and mother died very young, and I was left a poor orphan—well, bless us! if Thomas haven't kissed her!—to the care of Mrs. Score, my aunt, who has been a mother to me—a stepmother, you know;—and I've been to Stratford fair, and to Warwick many a time; and there's two people who have offered to marry me, and ever so many who want to, and I won't have none—only a gentleman, as I've always said; not a poor clodpole, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prince, Sibich induced him to enter a leaky vessel, which sank as soon as he was out at sea. Then, when the prime minister saw the third son, Randwer, paying innocent attentions to his fair young stepmother, Swanhild, daughter of Siegfried and Kriemhild, he so maliciously distorted the affair that Ermenrich ordered this son to be hung, and his young wife to be trampled to death under ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Salem. As the months and years went by, more and more people came to him whenever they needed a lawyer to advise them. For a long time he was poor, but little by little he paid off his debts. With his first big fee he bought a quarter section of land for his stepmother who had ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... once a little brother who took his Sister by the hand, and said, "Since our own dear mother's death we have not had one happy hour; our stepmother beats us every day, and, when we come near her, kicks us away with her foot. Come, let us wander forth into the wide world." So all day long they travelled over meadows, fields, and stony roads. By the evening they came into a large forest, and laid ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... The new stepmother quickly became very fond of Abraham, and encouraged him in every way in her power to study and improve himself. The chances for this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the situation. "It was," he once wrote, "a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... twelve when Lady Lundie rose blandly from the whist-table, and said that she supposed somebody must set the example of going to bed. Sir Patrick and Smith, the surgeon and Jones, agreed on a last rubber. Blanche vanished while her stepmother's eye was on her; and appeared again in the drawing-room, when Lady Lundie was safe in the hands of her maid. Nobody followed the example of the mistress of the house but Arnold. He left the billiard-room with the certainty that it was all over now between Geoffrey and himself. Not even the attraction ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the cold, so that they shouldn't splash the house. She'd half kill them if they made a mark on the floor, and the language she'd use! And one Saturday I can remember Garry, that was Bob's own girl, she ran off when her stepmother was going to bathe her—ran off without a rag of clothes on—can you remember, mother? And she hid in Smedley's closes—it was the time of mowing-grass—and nobody could find her. She hid out there all night, didn't she, mother? Nobody ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... covet a place where I can witness the grand tourney at Whitehall. It may suit your mood, Mary, to live always on this hilltop, with naught to see and naught to do; with no company but a cross-grained stepmother, and the cows and sheep. I am sick of it. Even a run down to the village is a change. Yes, I am going; one hour, and ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... another complication," Martius continued, after a pause. "The real cause of my stepmother's illness was Virgilia's declaration that she, too, has adopted the Christian faith. Where she heard about it, further than the things I taught her, I do not know. Thou seest, that the ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... Fanny Russell, the Colonel's grown-up daughter by his first wife, looked sad enough over the prospect of her father's departure at his age, with his shattered constitution, and over what was to become of herself, left behind with the frivolous, unreasonable young stepmother with whom Fanny had never been ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... me; whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... health was only one of the miseries of his estate at Oxford. There is reason to believe that Balliol College was in his day a stepmother to her Scotch sons, and that their existence there was made very uncomfortable not merely at the hands of the mob of young gentlemen among whom they were obliged to live, but even more by the unfair and discriminating harshness of the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few months ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... died paralytic from grief. Little child run over by railway waggon and horse, clapping its hands when the shadow passed away, leaving it unhurt. Little girl of six committing suicide from fear of a stepmother's wrath. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... had two children, a boy and a girl. The wife died, and the man married again. His new wife had an only daughter, who was both ugly and untidy, whereas her stepdaughter was a beautiful girl, and was known as Maiden Bright-eye. Her stepmother was very cruel to her on this account; she had always to do the hardest work, and got very little to eat, and no attention paid to her; but to her own daughter she was all that was good. She was spared from all ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... He pressed the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and, in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... O'Brien's daughter. Poor child, her love for me and all her affectionate treatment of me, must have made it seem likely enough to them that she was Esme, safely disguised as an important young personage, to travel with her stepmother. Bedr must have assured his employers that he was certain the pale girl was really Miss Gilder; so they thought the other one with me must be Esme. You can't laugh at my fears any more! And I ask you again, what do you think of me, to believe I'd ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... didn't find a mother nearer by, but I haven't any living of my own, except a stepmother, who wouldn't understand, and all the other mothers I know wouldn't qualify for the job any better. I've been looking at your picture and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... under her father's guardianship had gradually drifted almost out of the ken of her own mother. Her stepmother had done everything possible to make her life miserable, spying upon her and making it impossible to be alone long enough to write Schumann a letter. Now, in her loneliness, Clara turned to the woman whose flesh she was; and she found there ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... noble and beautiful maiden in Treguier, but, alas! she was almost friendless, for at an early age she had lost her father, her mother, and her two sisters, and her sole remaining relative was her stepmother. Pitiful it was to see her standing at the door of her manor, weeping as if her heart would break. But although she had none of her own blood to cherish she still nursed the hope that her foster-brother, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... light even to the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage, Ferdinand thought it diverting to ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... seems to set as severe tasks as the wicked stepmother in the fairy tales," said Mr. Cross. "She decrees that you are each to be given a small box of peas and beans and buttons mixed together, and that you are to sort them before you start to run the race. Will you please all kneel on the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake," Madame Merle replied. "She'll soon be sixteen, and after that she'll begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... my mother's stepmother, who wore high boots with a little tassel in front, belonged to an even older generation. He used to say: "If I could only live to see a Danish man- o'-war close with an English ship and sink it, I should be happy; the English are the most disgraceful pack of robbers in the world." He was so old ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... costly jewels. Now the peasants on this chieftain's estates were very poor—indeed, suffering absolute starvation, and there was no one to help them, for their lord had enough to do to fight his enemies, without feeding his humble friends; and his wife, Bridget's stepmother, was a hard, cruel woman. Poor little Bridget gave all her pocket-money, and sold all her little keepsakes, for their relief, and still they were starving. At last, she went to the armory and took down her father's idle, show sword, and had the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... she whispered as she stood in the perfumed darkness, with a wandering summer wind playing refreshingly round her, and tears from some hidden fount of sadness stole down her cheeks. "If he were my own child he could not be dearer to me. I remember my stepmother once told me so. 'My boy has two mothers, Dinah,' these were her very words. Well, he is my Son of Consolation," and Dinah heaved a gentle sigh, as though the motherhood within her, the divine maternal instinct inherent in all ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Mama Joy—my stepmother. I call her that. You see, father wants me to call her mama—he really wanted it mother, but I couldn't—and she's so young to have me for a daughter, so she wants me to call her Joy; that's her name. So I call her ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... Lightfoot well enough. This astounding stepmother had been her humble but faithful friend. Lightfoot was a ruling woman spirit wherever she was, and she knew it, though she bowed at all times to the rule of strength as the only law. Nevertheless she knew how to get her own way. With Moonface, everything was easy for her ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... not return to-night,' said the Phoenix. 'They sleep under the roof of the cook's stepmother's aunt, who is, I gather, hostess to a large party to-night in honour of her husband's ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... the course of the earlier years of his reign he removed every one of them from his path, beginning with his youthful brother-in-law Aristobulus (35), after whom came his old patron Hyrcanus II. (30), then Mariamne his wife (29), and finally his stepmother Alexandra (28), the daughter of Hyrcanus and the widow of Alexander Aristobuli. Subsequently, in 25, he caused Costobarus and the sons of Babas to be executed. While thus occupied with domestic affairs, Herod had constant trouble also ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... surprise of her husband, became the mistress of his captor and jailer, to whom she bore several children. What deepens the horror of this odious domestic tragedy is the fact that the wife of O'Neil, the daughter of O'Donnell, thus supplanted by her shameless stepmother, under her own roof, died soon afterwards of "horror, loathing, grief, and deep anguish," at the spectacle afforded by the private life of O'Neil, and the severities inflicted upon her wretched ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... to look out for my stepmother, too. She'd crown me with a chair if she thought I held out on her. Beans me about every ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... children's future is the guiding motive of her whole conduct. There was first the danger of their being left fatherless, a dire calamity in the heroic age. She could meet that danger by dying herself. Then followed the danger of a stepmother. She meets that by making Admetus swear never to marry. In the long run, I fancy, the effect of gracious loveliness which Alcestis certainly makes is not so much due to any words of her own as to what the Handmaid and the Serving ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... witan was held to settle the dispute[79]. Here the claim of Edward was fully admitted, and he was crowned and anointed by Dunstan, at Kingston, accordingly, in the year 975—to be sacrificed to the ambition of his cruel stepmother, in less than ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... sooner over than the stepmother began to display her bad temper. She could not endure the excellent qualities of this young girl, for they made her own daughters appear more hateful than ever. She thrust upon her all the meanest tasks about the house. It was she who had to ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... I had rather die. In vain does your stepmother try to take me into her confidence, and make me espouse her interests. I never could like her, and I have always been on your side. Trust me, I will do every thing to serve you. But, in order to serve you more effectually, I shall ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... Bedford. He was only nine years old when he lost his mother, whom he remembered to the end of his life with tender affection. He always spoke gratefully of the invariable kindness and affection of his father, who married again in 1803, and of his stepmother, but he felt that the shyness and reserve which often caused him to be misunderstood and thought cold were largely due to the loss of his mother in his childhood. He was educated at Westminster, but he was not robust enough to stand a rough life, and it ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... sun lovingly turning towards it. It is from this quarter that both Night and Sleep, issuing out at the close of day, spread themselves, as if, for robbing all living creatures of half their allotted periods of life. It was here that Sakra, beholding (his stepmother) the goddess Diti lying asleep in a state of pregnancy, cut off the foetus (into forty-nine parts), whence sprang the (forty-nine) Maruts. It is towards this direction that the roots of Himavat stretch towards the eternal Mandara (sunk in the ocean). ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... your poor, deluded mother fourteen. Our father, child, married again within the year, and so you see our acquaintance with the duplicity of men began at a very early age. Of course, we refused to live with a stepmother or to allow her to occupy our own dear mother's house. Left, then, upon our own responsibilities at so tender a period of our lives, it behooved us to conduct ourselves with the strictest of propriety, and I am most happy to say that we came triumphantly through the ordeal. Naturally, we being ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... was this man, and why was he performing these laborious journeys? Robert Dick, born in 1811, was the son of an excise officer, who gave his children a hard stepmother when Robert was ten years old. The boy's own mother, all tenderness and affection, had spoiled him for such a life as he now had to lead under a woman who loved him not, and did not understand his unusual cast of character, his love of nature, his wanderings by the sea, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... intercourse. He was wealthy, and we lived in a sumptuous house in the upper part of the city. This was when I was about ten years old. My father was twice married; I was the child of the first wife, who died when I was very young; my stepmother came five years later. She was the elder of two sisters, both beautiful women. The sister often came to visit us. I remember I liked her better than I liked my stepmother; in fact, I regarded her with that sort of romantic attachment that often is developed ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... to the General's daughter, Pauline, and her lover, the son of a soldier of the First Empire, who, by deserting Napoleon, had fallen under the Comte de Grandchamp's ban. The situation is, however, complicated by the guilty passion which Gertrude, the stepmother of Pauline and wife of the General's old age, feels for the lover of Pauline. The main interest of the drama lies in the struggle between these two women, every detail of which is elaborated with true Balzacian gusto and insight. We expect to see ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... no brothers and only one sister, Abigail, who died when she was fifteen. His mother also died when he was a lad of twelve, but his stepmother was always very kind to him. His own mother, however, was his idol and even to this day, President Coolidge carries in one of his pockets a gun metal case that holds a picture of his mother. Calvin's father, in speaking of his son, says that he was always a great hand to work. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... Her stepmother's evident preference for Maude had greatly offended the selfish Nellie, who coldly answered, "Don't trouble yourself, madam. It's not of the least consequence. But where is my father? He will welcome me, I ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... shivered miserably because the spring sun was not high enough in the morning to warm them, she fed with pap, and cherished in cotton-wool, and nursed and watched with eager, happy eyes. O blessed Ivy Geer! True Sister of Charity! Thrice blessed stepmother of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... been too much engaged, I suppose; and it's rather like him to have said nothing about it. How would you like a stepmother, Milly?' ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... stroke his moustache, succeeded in unwaxing one side of it so that it once more hung limply down his chin, whereat they renewed their boorishness. The elder Floud was now quite dangerously purple, and the cub on the couch was shrieking: "No matter how dark the clouds, remember she is still your stepmother," or words to some such silly effect as that. How it might have ended I hardly dare conjecture—perhaps Cousin Egbert would presently have roughed them—but a knock sounded, and it became my duty to open ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... air breathed by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, and the rest. "Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth too." In the gladness of getting back "from the dull confines of the drooping west," he writes a glowing apostrophe to London—that "stony stepmother to poets." He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud to find himself a citizen again. According to his earlier biographers, Herrick had much ado not to starve in that same longed-for London, and fell into great misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... see to whom he was speaking, and saw standing in the doorway a little thin woman, with a sharp, cross face, and dull, tired eyes, eyes which looked as though they never brightened, or lost their look of weary hopelessness. This was her stepmother. She gave no sign of welcome, no word of comfort to the child, yet, somehow, Jessie's heart went out to her a little. It might have been only that in her terror of her father, she was ready to cling to any one who might ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... college days he had spent a considerable amount of time at the Dean's house, and now, in the first year of his Instructorship, he was there more than ever. His own home in Ephesus, New York, being at the present time occupied by a stepmother for whom he had no particular affection and a father whose interests were in the drygoods rather than the scholastic line, he scarcely thought of himself as having a home other than that made for him by the Dean's wife. It was true that ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... had had few occasions for gratitude. The world had been a hard stepmother to him. It was years since he had known father or mother, and as long as he could remember he had been under the guardianship of a social outlaw, named Jack Morgan, who preyed upon the community whenever he got a chance. Whenever he was under the ban of the law, Julius had shifted for ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... had frequently to inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to a small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard. His stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a shade, intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the approach ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Tom Braddock. Her father lived in New York City and he was a very wealthy guy. She was 'is only child and 'er mother was dead. The old man, whose name was Portman,—Albert Portman, the banker,—was considering a second venture into matrimony at the time. Mary was eighteen and she didn't want a stepmother. She raised such a row that he sent 'er off to school so as he could do 'is courting in peace and plenty. She was a wayward gal,—leastwise she says so 'erself—and very impetuous-like. One day a circus comes to the town where she was attending school. The ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... coercion produced fresh agitation. Difficulties and dangers went on increasing, till a government arose which, all other means having failed, determined to employ the only means that had not yet been fairly tried, justice and mercy. The State, long the stepmother of the many, and the mother only of the few, became for the first time the common parent of all the great family. The body of the people began to look on their rulers as friends. Battalion after battalion, squadron after ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1610, and his early days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at another's chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in peace. She was continually putting her own children forward, and ill-treating the late 'anointed' son. The father gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse in this for the licentious ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Patty; and perhaps some day I will try. But now let me tell you what's been happening. While you were away, I had a call from that very charming stepmother of yours. And this was the burden of her visit. It seems that she and your father are invited to spend the week-end at a country house, and the question was, where to pack you away for safe-keeping while ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... talented pupils—a young Polish girl—made the first translation of the Sonnets into French. It was a wonderful and brilliant Paris which Mickiewicz entered. This was the time when the city was first called "the stepmother of Genius." Heine was here in exile, and Boerne. It knew the personal fascination and the denunciative writings of Ferdinand la Salle. It was the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas, Gautier, the Goncourt ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... that, the control of the children remained a constant subject of dissension. M. Dudevant was beginning to get into pecuniary difficulties in the management of his wife's estate. Sometimes he contemplated resigning it to her, and retiring to Gascony, to live with his widowed stepmother on the property which at her death would revert to him. But unfortunately he could not make up his mind to this course. No sooner had he drawn up an agreement consenting to a division of property, than he seemed to regret the ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... palace there were few kinsmen of her husband besides his younger brother Galeazzo, for the dynasty was not fruitful and was dying out. Even Camilla d'Aragona, Giovanni's stepmother, was not there, for she had left Pesaro for good in 1489, taking up her residence in a castle ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... statesmen, subtile wiles insure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure; Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug; Ev'n silly woman has her warlike arts, Her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts;— But, oh! thou bitter stepmother and hard, To thy poor fenceless, naked child—the Bard! A thing unteachable in world's skill, And half an idiot too, more helpless still; No heels to bear him from the op'ning dun; No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun; No horns, but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... had not gone to sleep, for very hunger, and so they overheard what the stepmother said to their father. Grethel wept bitterly, and said to Hansel, "What ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... welcome her daughter, prepared to show her the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, Prince Albert's sister-in-law and stepmother. The staircase was full of cousins. "It was an affecting but exquisite moment, which I shall ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... non-belief are dangerous. Hippolitus died because his stepmother was believed. Troy fell because Cassandra was not believed. Therefore the truth should be investigated long before foolish opinion can ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... moment they were gone, and I was looking longingly after them. God knows my father's house had never been more than a stepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to it and felt like a child who was being left ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... to the Cenarotti all that he had been; these ladies also were very kind and reasonable, but they too were women, and incapable of accepting a less perfect devotion. Indeed, was not his proposed marriage too much like taking her only son from the signora and giving the Paronsina a stepmother? It was worse, and so the ladies of the notary's family viewed it, cherishing a resentment that grew with Tonelli's delay to deal frankly with them; while Carlotta, on her part, was wounded that these old friends should ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... well remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog for this abnormality, Nature decreed that his life should begin to fail, almost ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... brother—a paragraph in Fashion, he could get one in. For fear of wounding her he did not ask if her brother was a decorative painter, employed by a firm, or an artist who exhibited pictures. Her father had married again. She did not like her stepmother, and that had determined ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Paris, and the partition of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers. Edward's position against France was further strengthened in 1279 by the death of his wife's mother, Joan of Castile, the widow of Ferdinand the Saint and the stepmother of Alfonso the Wise, whereupon he took possession of Ponthieu in Eleanor's name. Scarcely had he established himself at Abbeville, the capital of the Picard county, than the negotiations at Paris ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... become of me, if my good-natured royal godmother, who never forgot anybody, had not packed me into a carriage with some of the ladies who were accompanying Mademoiselle. That lady had a suit of her own, and went about quite independently of her father and her stepmother, who, though a Princess of Lorraine, was greatly contemned and slighted by ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... childhood, for the suggestion of "Dust Under the Rug," which was a successful experiment in a kindergarten to test the possibility of interesting little children in a story after the order of Grimm, with the wicked stepmother ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... Marastre... puisqu'une... There is here an elliptical construction never found in later French. Harsh stepmother nature (whom I call harsh) ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... together two families for once succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Heads. "This year 1740," says he, "though the weather throughout Europe had been extraordinarily fine," or fine for a cold year, "had already witnessed several Deaths of Sovereigns: Pope Clement XII., Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, the Queen Dowager of Spain [Termagant's old stepmother, not Termagant's self by a great way]. But that was not enough: unfathomable Destiny ventured now on Imperial Heads (WAGTE SICH AUCH AN KAISER-KRONEN): Karl VI., namely, and Russia's great, Monarchess;"—an audacity to be remarked. Of Russia's great Monarchess (Czarina Anne, with the big cheek) ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of my mother's garden was the happy-faced little pansy that under various fanciful folk-names has ever been loved. Like Montgomery's daisy, it "blossomed everywhere." Its Italian name means "idle thoughts"; the German, "little stepmother." Spenser called it "pawnce." Shakespeare said maidens called it "love-in-idleness," and Drayton named it "heartsease." Dr. Prior gives these names—"Herb Trinity, Three Faces under a Hood, Fancy Flamy, Kiss Me, Pull Me, Cuddle Me unto You, Tickle ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... noticeable to Mrs. Ansell, if not to the others, that one of these unexpressed wishes was the desire to see her stepmother. Cicely no longer asked for Justine; but something in her silence, or in the gesture with which she gently put from her other offers of diversion and companionship, suddenly struck Mrs. Ansell ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... few months—or was it a few weeks—after his mother's death, the father married again. The stepmother was no improvement on the mother. She had lofty ideas of discipline and being "minded." No doubt that little Stephen, crooked in eyes, crooked in body, short and swart, with brown, bare legs, was stubborn and wilful. He looked ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... arranged the children for the night, and now the stepmother had come up to kiss them and be kind. She was a conscientious young woman, full of a desire to do right, and she had determined not to be like ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The noverca, or unjust stepmother, who had neglected him for her own two children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and plenty in the morning. She did not beat him once, and told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... as it seemed, it was a great relief—a joy—to know that her own mother, her real mother, had been "nice." "She must have been nice or Lize would not have said so," she reasoned, recalling that her stepmother had admitted her ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... his face in a looking-glass that magnifies instead of in his ordinary mirror, he imagines that he is suddenly swollen and puffed with disease, and so is led lamenting to bed, leaving the coast clear for the nonce. Isabella, however, has made an assignation with Lodwick at the same time that her stepmother eagerly awaits her own gallant, and in the dark young Knowell is by mistake escorted to Lucia's chamber, whilst Wittmore encountering Isabella, and thinking her Lady Fancy, proceeds to act so amorously that the error is soon discovered and the girl flies from ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the distaste of the Marchioness de Bouille, the marshal's daughter, who found herself separated from her stepmother, and married to a man who, it was said, gave her great cause for complaint, the greatest being ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
