"Tablecloth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boldest of us 'held his breath for a time.' All at once Mr. C., at the further end from me, began to gurgle and groan like a person in an epileptic fit. Some one cried, 'Turn up the gas.' It was done, and we beheld the medium with his head twisted like a young laocoon in the folds of a red tablecloth. He disentangled himself with a disturbed, suffering air. The spirits were upon us, though why they should stifle their interpreter I could not quite see. The sceptics smiled sardonically. I suspected the lady in nankeen colour next me, and the dwarf and people immediately round both mediums. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... things you say," retorted Kitty, as she flicked the white tablecloth. "If mother and I hadn't such wonderful good health I suppose you'd come often enough here to give you real possession. Do you know, Mrs. Crozier," she added, with her wistful eyes vainly trying to be merely mischievous, "he once charged me five dollars for torturing me like a Red Indian. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... until he came to a place where he could peer through. There, sure enough, were five or six little boys and girls having a picnic. Some were in wading, skirts and trousers rolled up above the knees, while others were just spreading out a tablecloth on the mossy bank preparatory to setting their ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... her cheek, long, black eyelashes on a cheek of cream, with the faintest, the very faintest stain of carnation. She was drawing designs on the tablecloth with her fork. She started slightly, but if she felt any perturbation of spirit, she gave no sign further of it, and yet Hayden knew intuitively that he had said just the thing he should have been most careful ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Effie's brother Harry fished something out of his tea, which he thought at first was an earwig. He was just getting ready to drop it on the floor, and end its life in the usual way, when it shook itself in the spoon—spread two wet wings, and flopped onto the tablecloth. There it sat, stroking itself with its feet and stretching its wings, and Harry said: ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... was plucky and energetic. He lofted the bird out of the dish on to the tablecloth twice in the first minute. Stifling a mad inclination to call out 'Fore!' or something to that effect, he laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh, and replaced the errant fowl. When a third attack ended in the same way, Miss Beezley asked permission to try what she ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... so forlorn an appearance as battered and neglected finery of any kind; and elegant pitchers with their noses knocked off, cut glass with cracked edges, and fragments of artistic teacups and saucers on a tumbled tablecloth, have a peculiarly dismal appearance. In fact, we had really occasion to wonder at the perfectly weird and bewitched effect which one of our two Hibernian successors to the pretty Alice succeeded in establishing in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said; and began drawing with her finger on the tablecloth. He saw that her lips were trembling. A strong impulse worked in him, bidding him go to her again, kiss away her tears, and say—'Hang everything! Come with me to London, and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boundless amazement. His eyes were fastened upon the figures of two people on their way up the room, preceded by the smiling maitre d'hotel. Some words, or rather an exclamation, broke incoherently from his lips. He set down his glass hurriedly, and a stain of red wine crept unheeded across the tablecloth. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... robe, and pulled it off; then rolled Gorenflot in the tablecloth, and covered his head with a napkin, and hiding the monk's frock under his cloak, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... little sitting-room. It was furnished with a carpet of bright green thrown over a foundation of linoleum, a suite of stamped magenta plush, an overmantel, gilt cornices over the windows, a piano, a table covered with a gaudy tablecloth. On the walls were hung some oleographs. The lighting of the room was of gas with incandescent mantles. There had been, apparently, judging by an odour which still remained, a great deal of beer consumed in the apartment at one time ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... possession of this key while the mass was being celebrated, and entered the house. The priest's servant had laid the cloth in advance, so as to be free to attend mass, and the poor daft girl hurriedly removed the tablecloth and napkins and hid them in the manor-house. When mass was over the theft was detected at once, and caused very great surprise, the first thing noticed being that the linen alone had been taken. The priest was unwilling to let his ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer to a wooer's passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... holes in the tablecloth with the point of the pencil. "I can't conceive," she said, "why you gave Annalise ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to his house, he found the door locked, as he had left it, but he easily crawled in through a crack. He found everything of an enormous size. It did not look like the old place. He climbed up the leg of a chair and got on a table, by the help of the tablecloth, but it was hard work. He found something to eat and drink, and all his possessions were in order, but he ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... effect one of cultivated and restful harmony. The glass and linen on the table were perfect. There was nowhere the slightest evidence of any ostentation. Within a few feet of him, separated only by that little space of tablecloth and a great bowl of pink roses, sat Edith, dressed as he had never seen her before, a most becoming flush upon her cheeks, a new and softer brilliancy in her eyes, which seemed always to be seeking his. They drank champagne, to the taste and effects ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman, to stand so unflinchingly by Stimcoe. Stimcoe's books had gone into storage at the pawnbroker's; but in his bare "study," where he heard our construing of Caesar and Homer, stood a screen, and behind it an eighteen-gallon cask. A green baize tablecloth covered the cask from sight, and partially muffled the sound of its running tap when Stimcoe withdrew behind the screen, to consult (as he ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... which such savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel. It is not roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending to rough it. It is not roughing it to eat tinned food out of the tin when a plate costs a penny or two: it ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of trouble. She would not wear a pinafore; if it had been put on, she would burst the strings, and perhaps in throwing it away knock her plate of mutton broth over the tablecloth and her own dress. Then she fancied first one thing and then another; she did not like this or that; she wanted a bit cut here or there. Her mamma used to begin by saying, "My dear-r-Ramelia, you must not be so wasteful," and she used to end by saying, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... halted inside the threshold. Jean, looking ruddy and winsome in light print dress, with sleeves rolled clear of each plump fore-arm, was spreading great platefuls of hot cakes and desiccated fruits among the more solid viands on the snowy tablecloth. Geoffrey found it difficult to refrain from glancing wolfishly at the good things until his eyes rested upon Miss Savine, and then it cost him an effort to turn them away. Helen reclined on an ox-hide lounge. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... not done, anyway. Do you think the sun'll get round so as to shine on the table? I see it's creeping this way pretty fast, and they're all so scattered over the woods there's no telling when we will get every one here to eat. I see another tablecloth in your basket, Mrs. Ballard. If you'll be good enough to just hold that corner, we can cover everything up good, so, and then I'll walk about a bit and call them all together." And the kindly lady stepped briskly off through the woods, still ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... vice-president; the lieutenants, the purser, and officers of the marines were ranged along the tables, red jackets and blue, forming a pretty contrast; the table was laden with fruit and flowers from the island they had that morning left, while glasses and cruets sparkled on a tablecloth white as snow. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... a baize or bombazine table-cloth. And this tablecloth did he cut up, prompted by the devil, into stockings, for he was justly proud of his calves, the same having been admired by the co-eds of Cambridge. For all of these things, in after-years, Oliver did pray forgiveness and beseech pardon for such pride of the eye and lust of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... as the host styled it, combined dining-room and kitchen, for while in one corner stood a deal table with plates, cups, etcetera, but no tablecloth, in another stood a small stove, heated by an oil-lamp, from which issued puffing and sputtering sounds, and the savoury ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... played it, and that to perfection. It was no good troubling Zoe, who had vanished—a corner of the table would do quite well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty plates. But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down to her game it would be very nice of her if she would ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... a corpse. It's the most lively bit of writing ever done. There's enough fire in that book to singe your tablecloth." ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... flew through their share of clearing-up. It never weighed very heavily upon them; they usually began the process of piling and scraping dishes before they left the table, Rose whisking the tablecloth into its drawer as Norma bumped through the swinging door with the last dishes, and Kate halfway through the washing even then. Chattering and busy, they hustled the hot plates onto their shelves, rattled the hot plated ware into its basket, clanked saucepans, and splashed ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... I sha'n't! There's Charl Woollat, and Sammy Scribben, and Ted Gibsey, and lots o' young chaps; they'll wring anything for me if they happen to come along. But I can hardly trust 'em. Sam Scribben t'other day twisted a linen tablecloth into two pieces, for all the world as if it had been a pipe-light. They never know when to stop in ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... and Nuncey were alone in the kitchen, where the board had been cleared of all but the tablecloth and his own knife and fork. They cried out together upon his dilatoriness; but while his wife turned to fetch his dinner from the oven, Nuncey took a step forward, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though at the moment of putting them on a dim sense of something unfamiliar crossed his mind, it was not until he reached "The Fried Cat" that he became fully aware that he had carried off some one else's shoes. He turned up the soles, privately, underneath the low-hanging tablecloth, and by a brief examination convinced himself that the gaiters did not belong to him. The test was simple: his feet were unaccountably dry, and there were none of those breaks in the lower surface of their leather covering which he had so ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and then she set to work and laid a clean tablecloth in the sitting-room and set us down our meal—breakfast, or whatever it was. It wasn't so bad—corned beef, first-rate potatoes, fresh damper, milk, butter, eggs. Tea, of course, it's the great drink in the bush; and although some doctors say it's no good, what ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... describe, however, how the beauty of Hester Grazebrook survived the crude roses and the mauve tablecloth triumphantly. That it is a beauty that will be appreciated to the full in America I do not doubt for a moment, for it is only countries which possess great beauty that can appreciate beauty at all. It may also influence the art of America as it has influenced the art ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... orderlies had evidently prepared and served four or five meals to their officers. Each time they had set the table with fine linen and old china and then as soon as the repast was over had taken up the tablecloth by its edges and corners and had thrown it with the china, bottles, linen, tableware, dirty dishes, and remnants of food, into a corner of the room. At each succeeding meal the process had been repeated with a new setting of china and fresh linen from the nearly inexhaustible supplies with which ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... life, Carey," said the doctor, after a pause, "for it seemed to revive me to a sense of what was wrong, and I crawled from the dreadful pool in which I lay, to tear a strip from the tablecloth and staunch the bleeding, before I fainted away, to be revived again by hearing a horrible crash as if someone had slipped upon the wet stairs. The door was nearly driven in, but the fall continued, ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... flimsy a thing by which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl darkened his ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such sudden force that its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine streaked the white tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl. The sight of that stain recalled him to himself and to the manners he had allowed himself for ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... really ill. Her hand trembled so while she poured the breakfast coffee that she spilled some of it on the tablecloth. When Mr. Hamlin spoke to her sharply she burst into tears and left the room, leaving her father ashamed of himself, and the "Automobile Girls" so embarrassed that they ate the rest of their breakfast in painful silence. ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... first, but when supper was ready she put a Macgregor tartan holuku over it. The men were very active, and cooked the fowl in about the same time that it takes to pluck one at home. They spread the finest mat I have seen in the centre of the floor as a tablecloth, and put down on it bowls containing the fowl and sweet potatoes, and the unfailing calabash of poi. Tea, coffee and milk were not procurable, and as the water is slimy and brackish, I offered a boy a ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... add pinch of salt and one teaspoon of powdered sugar. Stir in slowly one cup of lukewarm water, and work until dough does not stick to the hands. Flour board, and roll, as thin as possible. Do not tear. Place a tablecloth on table, put the rolled out dough on it, and pull gently with the hands, to get the dough as thin as ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... pastoral visits, or attend to some other matters, and so arrange my forenoon work that I should be able to reach the Indian home, where that day we had announced to dine, about noon. Mrs Young would have her own train of dogs harnessed up about ten o'clock. In her cariole she would put dishes, tablecloth, and provisions, with everything else requisite for a comfortable dinner considering our limited circumstances. A faithful young Indian acted as her dog-driver, and soon she and her load were at the home of the expectant family, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... after a pause of some minutes, during which he seemed to be groping for words in the salt-cellar, having deliberately turned out its contents upon the tablecloth. "We were hungry after our long walk, and he ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... it all to me, Mr. Kling. And give yourself no concern. I am going to use everything we have: all our cups and saucers, no matter whether they are Spode, Lowestoft, or Worcester; all the platters, German beer mugs, candlesticks—even that rare old tablecloth trimmed with church lace. This is an entertainment to be given by a distinguished antiquary in honor of his lovely daughter"—and he bowed to each in turn—"the whole conducted under the management of his junior clerk, Mr. F. O'Day, who is very much ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... merchandise, which pays eight or ten per cent, to investing in vines or corn which will return but three. The peasant is not so foolish. From the moment he owns a piece of ground the size of a handkerchief, he wants to make it as large as a tablecloth. He is slow as the oxen he ploughs with, but as patient, as tenacious, and as obstinate. He goes directly to his object, pressing firmly against the yoke; and nothing can stop or turn him aside. He knows that stocks may rise or fall, fortunes be won or lost on 'change; but the land always remains,—the ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... meaning of Christ; which thing excites no less marvel than the sight, in contrast to it, of obstinacy, hatred, and treachery in Judas; not to mention that every least part of the work displays an incredible diligence, seeing that even in the tablecloth the texture of the stuff is counterfeited in such a manner that linen itself could not seem ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... snored themselves to death, in villages smashed to pieces by shell-fire, in troop trains overcrowded with wounded, in woods and fields pockmarked by the holes of marmites, and in the restaurants of Paris and provincial towns where, with an empty sleeve or one trouser-leg dangling beneath the tablecloth, he told me his experiences of war with a candour in which there was no concealment of truth; and out of all these friendships and revelations of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands before ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... end of the mantelpiece. Then she took the rest of the roses to the dining-room; but she postponed the arrangement of them until the table should be set, just before dinner. She was thoughtful; planning to dry the stems and lay them on the tablecloth like a vine of roses running in a delicate design, if she found that the dozen and a half she had left were enough for that. If they weren't she would arrange them ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... mend dis tablecloth," said Vic, "and I'll set here to do it—when I go upstairs I'll git yer ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... The white tablecloth was laid; the coffee percolator hummed its contented little song. The broiled chicken was delicious; and the browned potatoes. There was a grape jelly; Sir Peter ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... entered presently, and in removing the tablecloth inadvertently came between us. McClingan ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... been about to butter a piece of toast. The butter, jerked from the knife by the convulsive start which he gave, popped up in a semi-circle and plumped onto the tablecloth. He recovered ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... I turn my mind to you and your type of politics it is not wholly and solely through that trick of abstraction by which in moments of sorrow a man finds himself staring at a blot on the tablecloth or an insect on the ground. I do, of course, realise, with that sort of dull clarity, that you are in practise a blot on the English landscape, and that the political men who made you are the creeping things of the earth. But I am, in all sincerity, less in a mood to mock at the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sheet, promoted to the rank of tablecloth, covered the carpet, while ten cushions apologised for the absence of chairs. A bowl of roses, rigidly arranged in alternate lines of flower and fern, filled the room with fragrance. In front of each guest a snowy dome of rice, ringed about ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... the striped blue tablecloth over the porch table the next day at the noon hour, and clinking knives and forks, was questioned ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... portholes and rested on the red tablecloth and the glittering steel cutlery. For a centrepiece she had a half shattered clay flower-pot containing a geranium plant which she had picked up from the deck outside the woman's cabin. It was droopy and generally ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... papers, said nothing, refused to answer all questions, even those asked him by the respected President of the Republic, and, exhausted by his obstinate labours, took a few moments' sleep in his arm-chair in which nothing but the top of his little black head was to be seen above the green tablecloth. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... door, conversation languished. Even Skeet was quiet and seemed depressed. My ears were straining for any sound from in there. As I sat, hand dropped at my side, I suddenly felt under shelter of the screening tablecloth, cold, nervous fingers slipped into mine. Barbara wasn't looking at me, but I gave her a quick glance as I pressed her ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... down her knife and fork. She looked at her husband in vague alarm, while her fingers moved restlessly about over the tablecloth. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... continued Thurston. "He sits with his back to the door. I'll pop in first and throw this tablecloth over his head; then, while I hold him down, you chaps upset the things and put out the light. Then we'll rush out all together, and he won't know for ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... half diverted, half angry with the selfish one, as she handed her the tablecloth, which was put on one-sided, while the bread was cut in chunks. When May came in from the pantry, a butler's room as it used to be in the time of the old marquis, Helen was crying over a bleeding finger, which she had cut in her awkward ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... door when I knocked, and I was shown into a kind of sitting-room with a round table in the middle and furnished with Windsor chairs, two arm-chairs of the same kind standing on either side the fireplace. Against the window was a smaller table with a green baize tablecloth, and about half-a-dozen plants stood on the window- sill, serving as a screen. In the recess on one side of the fireplace was a cupboard, upon the top of which stood a tea-caddy, a workbox, some tumblers, and a decanter full of water; the other side ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... considering his size, was almost incredible, drew a chair toward him and took the vacant place at my table. My glass of wine and my plate were moved with smooth and marvelous haste to his vicinity. Under cover of the tablecloth a packet—I could not tell what it contained—was thrust into ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... instead of cloth. Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in no William Morris ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... him. His waist struck the edge of the massive oaken table, and most of his forward momentum was lost. He collapsed forward, his hands still grasping toward the surprised Englishman. His chin came down hard on the table top. Then he slid back, taking the tablecloth and the china and silverware with him. He lay unmoving on the floor. His wife did not even stir except when the ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis." He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sisters, who, though they could not speak the language as fluently as she, understood it very well and eavesdropped at every possible opportunity in order, they said, to improve their accents. "She's a tree. A plant. And plants are just vegetables." She stabbed her needle energetically through the tablecloth she was embroidering. ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... was on that very evening that Thekla came in for something. She stopped arranging the tablecloth and the flowers, as if she had something to say, yet did not know how to begin. At length I found that her sore, hot heart, wanted some sympathy; her hand was against every one's, and she fancied ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... a tablecloth like snow, and laid some dishes of fruit upon the table. Hector took a tender farewell of Daphne, and kissed her hand at least a dozen times. At last he tore himself away, with a promise that he would be with her at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Europa with Admiral Wemyss. Such a lunch as a lost voyager may dream of in the desert. Like roses blooming in a snowdrift, so puffs and pies and kickshaws of all rarest sorts appeared upon a dazzling white tablecloth, and then—disappeared. We too had to disappear and sail back to Mudros West again. Horses were waiting and I rode to No. 18 Stationary Hospital and made a thorough overhaul of it from end to end; then tea ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... after luncheon I poured myself out a glass of kvass, and then dropped the decanter, and so stained the tablecloth. ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... struck me that Marion—who was also dining with us that evening—was even stranger. For one thing, I regret to say, she was exceedingly rude to William. She does not like him, I know, but he was after all our guest, and she was not justified in remarking, when he upset his wine on the tablecloth, and knocked over an adjacent salt-cellar, 'If there's anything in the world I loathe, it is a ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... said, going to the window and peering round as much of the horizon as he could see, "it wasn't nothing but a little shakin' out of the tablecloth after breakfast." ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward, though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of piled railway-sleepers white with ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... M.M. Chapot, Moulin, and Grimault wrote standing. At certain moments the two Vice-Presidents mounted on the benches so as to be better seen from all points of the room. The table was covered by an old green tablecloth, stained with ink, three or four inkstands had been brought in, and a quire of paper was scattered about. There the decrees were written as soon as they were drawn up. They multiplied the copies, some Representatives became secretaries on the spur of the moment, and helped ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... I quite like a picnic. It is all very well, like most other arrangements, if everything goes right; but I sat between Sir Guy Scapegrace and the light-haired young gentleman, and although I could hear lots of fun going on at the other end of the tablecloth, where Cousin John and Mary Molasses and Captain Lovell had got together, I was too far off to partake of it, and my vis-a-vis, Lady Scapegrace, scowled at me so from under her black eyebrows, though I believe utterly unconsciously, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... head Our tablecloth we spread; A grain of rye or wheat Is manchet, which we eat; Pearly drops of dew we drink, In acorn cups, fil'd ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... did they find on the snow? We examined their white tablecloth and found a number of small beetles and other insects creeping up through it or crawling around over its surface. Thus Nature spreads her banquet everywhere ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Mr. Oakham thoughtfully tapping his nose with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses as he stared at the black pocket-book on the white tablecloth. "Speaking personally, it is proof of what I have thought all along, that a Penreath of Twelvetrees would not commit a robbery. Therefore, on that line of reasoning, one could argue that as Penreath did not commit the robbery, and the Crown hold that the murder was committed for the money, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... flat leather pocketbook and took an envelope from an inner flap, laying it before them on the tablecloth. His knowledge that they would not have believed him if he had not brought his proof was founded on everyday facts. They would not have doubted his veracity, but the possibility of such delirious good fortune. What they would have ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... instant he broke off, and dashing into the shack, seized the white tablecloth, scattering the supper dishes far and wide. With a rush he was at a point of rock which the dying sun flooded with a brilliant red light. In this radiance the boy stood, swinging about his head the white cloth until it circled five times, then dropped to his feet. Seizing it again, he held it ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... central tent, set beside a great wine sap just coming into bloom. Around it was a space of trodden earth, to one side a cheerful fire and a darky cook, in front a pine table, over which a coloured boy was spreading a very clean tablecloth. Out of the tent came a high, piping voice. "Good-morning, Hamilton! What is it? What is it?—An officer from General Jackson? All right! All right! glad to see him. Tell him to wait—Jim, you black idiot, what have I ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... he returned; "it will doubtless be a welcome contribution to the treasury of his majesty's colony. Mistress Wilton's diamonds also," he said meaningly; and then, turning to two of his men, "Williams, you and Jones bundle up the plate in the tablecloth, get what's on the sideboard too;" and laying his pistols down ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... entered the dining-room to find the table laid with tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the place, for there remained traces of the previous night's dinner and supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and as he sat holding his pipe in his hand, and drinking tea from a cup, he would have made a model for the sort of painter who prefers to portray gentlemen of the less curled ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... somewhat untidy room,—an old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe, cloudy and black, upon old-fashioned grey paper, some cardboard boxes, and a number of china ornaments, set out on a small table covered with a tablecloth in crewel-work. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... "John 's be'n in the house an hour, and ain't had nothin' to eat yet! Go in the kitchen an' spread a clean tablecloth, an' git out that 'tater pone, an' a pitcher o' that las' kag o' persimmon beer, an' let John take ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... prominently, I took it that the legitimate occupant of the place was a Roman Catholic. The furniture was of the simplest kind, consisting of a table in the centre,—upon which burned the cheap, tawdry, brass lamp that illumined the apartment,—a large, upturned packing-case, covered with a gaudy tablecloth, and serving as a table against the rear wall of the building, and three or four old, straight- backed chairs, that had evidently come down in the world, for they were elaborately carved, and upholstered in frayed and faded tapestry. A few more cheap and gaudy coloured prints adorned the ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... palace, when the King was at his dinner. The butlers and lackeys wanted to keep them out, but the merry monarch gave orders to let them in at once. He made the owl perch over the mantel piece, but told Puck to stand upon the dinner table and walk over the tablecloth. The pepper box was put away, so that he should not sneeze and the King carefully removed the mustard pot, for fear the little fairy fellow might fall in it and be drowned in the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... to say farewell forever to the only man I ever had, could or would love—a couriers' dining room, with grease spots on the tablecloth! However, there was no help for it, since I was facing the world with fifty francs, and could not afford to pay ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... to see, lamps were brought. They cast upon the table a strange, pale gleam beneath the great obscurity of space; and very soon a shower of gnats fell upon the tablecloth—the tiny gnats which immolate themselves by passing over the glass chimneys, and, with wings and legs scorched, powder the table linen, dishes, and cups with a kind of gray and ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... acquaintance, "but I am afraid I shall not be able to get down a morsel at this horrid mechanical hour of dining." He sat down, however, and did not show any want of appetite by his eating. He took upon him the carving of the meat, and criticised the goodness of the pudding, and when the tablecloth was removed proposed calling for some punch, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... mind at rest, she added her shrill protests of delight to Darden's more moderate assurances, and, leaving Audrey to set chairs in the shade of a great apple-tree, hurried into the house to unearth her damask tablecloth and silver spoons, and to plan for the morrow a visit to the Widow Constance, and a casual remark that Mr. Marmaduke Haward had dined with the minister the day before. Audrey, her task done, went after her, to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Golden Calf, Monsieur Aube's restaurant, things were very lively. The guests fairly swarmed in. The landlord ran busily to and fro, now in the kitchen turning over the roast, then again giving orders to the waiters, pulling a tablecloth here, uncorking a bottle there, and then again greeting new guests. On days like this the place was too narrow, and it always made Aube angry that he could not use the first story. The house belonged to an old man, who had ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot, brown sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue milk and a half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a bunch of stocks and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as though dropped and forgotten by the God of Love. Their faint perfume stole through the other odours. The old butler fixed his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mouthful, the monk, who was a great scholar, felt in his stomach a pain, and on his palette a bitter taste of poison that caused him to suspect that the Sire de Bastarnay had given them all their quietus. Before he had made this discovery Bertha had eaten. Suddenly the monk pulled off the tablecloth and flung everything into the fireplace, telling Bertha his suspicion. Bertha thanked the Virgin that her son had been so taken up with his sport. Retaining his presence of mind, Jehan, who had not forgotten the lesson he had learned as a page, leaped into the courtyard, lifted his ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... of the artistic temperament for otherwise he wouldn't have been so sympathetic nor would he have minded, as he so passionately did mind, his Uncle Charles's teapot dribbling on to the tablecloth—was sometimes swept by brief but tempestuous revulsions of feeling, and though he loved the Twinklers he did at this moment describe them mentally and without knowing it in the very words of Uncle Arthur, as those accursed twins. It was quite unjust, he knew. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... could feel himself drowned in her steady, honest gaze. He was tortured by the bliss of being so near her, and alone. The rest of the world seemed to shred away and leave them standing in that little island of light where the tablecloth gleamed under ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... deposited the enormous umbrella which she invariably carried in the finest weather, upon the clean white tablecloth, and, seating herself with a bump upon a chair, clasped two very hot hands upon her ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... the fire shovel doesn't burn a hole in the tablecloth and let the sugar run out and catch cold, I'll tell you about the piggies and ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... depressed, with an inward conviction that her sister's leaving Messrs Baines, Jones & Co. was her fault in the first instance, and she made a mental resolution to be more careful in the future what she said. However, Stella met her with no reproachful looks, but was calmly darning a tablecloth as if she had not just thrown up thirty-five shillings, or rather two pounds, a week, which meant a good deal to ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... swept the intervening stretch of tablecloth, and the deadly missiles glanced against the glass bottles and rattled among the pencils and penholders. Two men fell without a cry, and lay motionless with their ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... much to the right,' and surprised at my own mistake, I rapidly descended the hill. I was at once plunged into a disagreeable clinging mist, exactly as though I had gone down into a cellar; the thick high grass at the bottom of the valley, all drenched with dew, was white like a smooth tablecloth; one felt afraid somehow to walk on it. I made haste to get on the other side, and walked along beside the aspenwood, bearing to the left. Bats were already hovering over its slumbering tree-tops, mysteriously flitting and quivering across the clear obscure of the sky; a young belated hawk flew in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... he threw himself into a comfortable chair, after slopping whisky and water all over the tablecloth and dropping a large piece of ice on the floor which he kicked violently at the retreating servant at whom he had bellowed, giving a perfect imitation of a Prussian officer in a public restaurant when American ladies ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney |
