"Toying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not milk, in case Youwarkee could not suckle it. Indeed, I had leisure enough for indulging such reveries; for, having laid in our winter stores, my wife and I had nothing to do but enjoy ourselves over a good fire, prattling and toying together, making as good cheer as we could; and truly that was none of the worst, for we had as fine bread as need to be eaten; we had pears preserved; all sorts of dried fish; and once a fortnight, for two or ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... almost entirely to the English-speaking part of the people. The Gallic and Indian blood of the Hunters disdained such poor toying with a single cherry and drank and danced and drank and danced again with an abandon, an ardor and full surrender to the hour characteristic alike of the strength of the heads, the lightness of their heels and the contempt of any ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... excess, did they not know that the laws of God and man forbid such outrage. Again, they would think little even of those laws, were not the law borne out by the sanction of punishment. A law that may be broken with impunity is taken to be the toying of a legislator not in earnest. Men here are as children. A child is cautioned against lying. He reckons little of the caution: he tells a lie, and a flogging ensues. Thereupon his mind reverts to what he was ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... hear?" said Lord Buntingford, toying with his cigarette, in the depths of a big chair, and watching his ward with eyes of evident enjoyment. "You've got a Bolshevist to look after—a real anarchist. I'm ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... doubt, of your early life and training in the wilds where people must live by their wits for self-preservation if for nothing else." He paused that he might the better collect his thoughts. She guessed what was coming and began toying with her fan, an arch smile playing about her delicate, sensitive mouth as she regarded him out of the corners of her large ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... him. I always sit with my back to the light, which has the double advantage of obscuring my own features and lighting up the features of those whom I am addressing. He sat opposite me, straight as an arrow. One hand was gloved; he was toying gently with the other glove. But he was a fine fellow. Fairly tall, square shouldered, not a bit stout, but clean cut from head to spur, I thought I should not like to meet him in a wrestling bout, or try a collision over a football. He had a mass of black hair, glossy ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... eternity at the first act of a fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in my worst moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream that Hell was so horrible. I live, like a hairdresser, in the continual contemplation of beauty, toying with silken tresses. I breathe an atmosphere of sweetness, like a confectioner's shopboy. Commander: are there any beautiful ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... fame he had once coveted; obscure in spite of learning, hopeless in spite of love, fruitless and joyless in his life, calamitous and shameful in his end,—surely such is no palliative of crime, no dalliance and toying with the grimness of evil! And surely to any ordinary comprehension and candid mind such is the moral conveyed by the fiction of 'Eugene Aram.'"—[A word to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be trusted than the sterner of these two young fellows. Ducking now and again, for somehow he could not help it, turning his eyes anxiously every few minutes in the direction of the enemy, his fingers locking themselves about his rifle and toying nervously with the buttons of his tunic, Henri did indeed, at that moment, look ill at ease, to say the least of it. And yet he too smiled as that shell burst, and, turning a moment later, smiled once more as he pointed ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... of this until next morning, when, as he was toying with one of the maids, he heard a voice from the window, "Johann! Johann! I will give thee the diamond." And looking up, there was Sidonia. So the knave ran to her, and swore he was only jesting with the maid in the court, for that ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... indignation, bitterness, were in his heart, but he choked it all down, and his eyes were fixed full upon the staff-officer, who, seeing him alone, came rapidly back to meet him. Something of the old reckless, dauntless manner reasserted itself as they reached speaking distance. The adjutant was toying nervously with his sword-knot. Despite all Gleason's insinuations, despite official papers that had been going to and fro, he felt it impossible to believe the allegations against Mr. Ray, and his unbelief was never so pronounced as at this moment when they came together. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... deliberately in a light-minded, even frivolous, manner, toying airily with a sugar biscuit, as he leaned back in his chair, which stood opposite to Madame Sagittarius's. To his great surprise his well-meaning remarks were received with every symptom of grave dissatisfaction by his illustrious companions. Madame Sagittarius threw ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... the furniture was properly arranged, the rooms neatly decorated, the supper prepared, and the guests invited. The latter assembled on the evening in question, and awaited in expectant pleasure the interesting ceremony of marriage. The bride, bedecked in veil and silken gown, and nervously toying with the flowers in her hair, sat in the adjoining room. Nothing was lacking but the groom. For some strange reason he had been delayed. An hour passed, and the guests, as well as the bride, were becoming restless. But they were all doomed to disappointment. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... chimney-pots, which flew harmless over the heads of the crowd, invariably struck me," said Mr. O'CONNOR, toying with the bandage over his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... a moment, as if overcome by a sudden emotion over which he had no control. Jefferson remained silent, nervously toying with a paper cutter. Seeing that his words had made no effect, Ryder thumped his desk with his fist ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... social vices inside that fair, honest face; the diplomacy and duplicity of fashion were unknown to her guileless heart, she was solid worth in every way, even while she sat under the broad leaves of rare branches, toying with her silver spoon, and listening to the earnest voice beside her. The wavy, chestnut braids that bound her shapely head, were natures own great gift to her, and had never been stowed away in idleness during the hours of her deshabille: the little tide of pink that ebbed and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... to a place on the arm of Gaynor's chair, her hand, whose well-kept beauty caught and held King's eyes for a moment, toying with ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... the window on horseback, and with a heavy sigh Mrs. Murray dropped her head on her hand, compressing her lips, and toying abstractedly with the sugar-tongs. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... caressing sobs began To mellow into words, and then there ran Two bubbling springs of talk from their sweet lips. 740 "O known Unknown! from whom my being sips Such darling essence, wherefore may I not Be ever in these arms? in this sweet spot Pillow my chin for ever? ever press These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess? Why not for ever and for ever feel That breath about my eyes? Ah, thou wilt steal Away from me again, indeed, indeed— Thou wilt be gone away, and wilt not heed My lonely ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... your whole future,—your profession, your good name, McKay. You're risking your mother's heart for the sport of a girl who is simply toying ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... changed to a studied indifference. He rubbed his hands together gently, toying with a ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... 'ri'. You go t'sleep 'ere wi' me. W'll put yo' t' ri's. Y'll 'av' a luvly dress t'morro', an' a go' time. Wait t'l y'see the young man we'll find y' t'morro'. Now go t'bed." Those twining fingers ceased toying with the girl's hair and deftly slipped a protecting hook from an all-too-easy eye in the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... splendid book, Dick," said the little chatterbox, toying with the leaves of her dainty volume, and glancing at the tasteful engravings. "All the school-girls are raving about it, and saying how ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Give over toying with thy sorrow Which like a vulture feeds upon thy heart; Thou shalt, in the worst company, to-morrow Feel that with men a man thou art. Yet I do not exactly intend Among the canaille to plant thee. I'm none of your magnates, I grant thee; Yet if thou art willing, my friend, Through ...
— Faust • Goethe
... garden full of posies Cometh one to gather flowers; And he wanders through its bowers Toying with the wanton roses, Who, uprising from their beds, Hold on high their shameless heads With their pretty lips a-pouting, Never doubting - never doubting That for Cytherean posies He would gather ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to rise and stand poized, as one may say, for departure, I caught Adrian's eyes, with a gleam in their deep depths. He was, at the moment, toying with the bowl of roses. He took one out, and while the Leading Lady was talking, he eged his way toward my box. There, standing very close, aparently by accident, he droped ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... interrupted our pleasures. I thought he must have gone out, and I told Zenobia my opinion, whereon she overwhelmed me with caresses. Feeling at my ease, I set her free from her troublesome clothes, and gave myself up to toying with her in a manner calculated to arouse the exhausted senses; and then for the third time we were clasped to each other's arms, while I made Zenobia put herself into the many attitudes which I knew from experience as most ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... cheeks in the fur of her mother's sable muff with which she was toying, and gave a sidelong glance at Mrs. Conwell's face. The study of it assured her that there was no use in "begging off" this time; so she silently laid down the muff and ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... jeweller's brushes, a wash-leather "stump," and a little bottle of liquid, all waiting to be used in various ways for the removal of any accidental impurities which might be discovered on the coins. His frail white fingers were listlessly toying with something which looked, to my uninstructed eyes, like a dirty pewter medal with ragged edges, when I advanced within a respectful distance of his chair, and stopped to make ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... when engaged in amorous toying with a hen, if perchance he espies another cock at hand, immediately quits his female, and opposes himself to his rival, so did the ravisher, on the information of the crabstick, immediately leap from the woman and hasten to assail the man. He ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... picked up almost the last crumb, toying with it in desperation, when a voice spoke apparently from the head of the stair. The Ranger turned his head to answer, and at the instant a paper pellet was crushed into my hand. Instinctively my fingers closed over it, and as the guard turned back ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... her father reached the vestibule to find Edward Cossey standing with his face to the mantelpiece and nervously toying with some curiosities upon it. He was, as usual, dressed with great care, and his face, though white and worn from the effects of agitation of mind, looked if anything handsomer than ever. As soon as he heard them coming, which owing to his partial deafness he did not do ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... lips, and shot a glance at La Fosse, who was deep in the mysteries of his volume. Then he drew towards him a sheet of paper, and, taking a quill, he sat toying ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... smiling, Zephyrs, wander, Thro' the groves of verdant green; Toying with the lilac yonder— Here, with the rose ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... great-uncle, Thomas Clarkson Verity, whose society and conversation awakened the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good omen, moreover,—toying for the moment with kindly superstition—that the book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman—to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... tokens enough that she loved him; but he durst not yield to her passion, for fear he should repent it, and therefore he shunned to be alone with her, as much as she sought the opportunity to be alone with him. She had so great a custom of toying and jesting with the miserable Schacabac, whenever she saw him, that one day she happened to do it in presence of her husband. My brother, without taking notice that he observed them, (so his stars would have ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... talker and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a fall. When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical. I am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is absolutely safe, but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches with wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders. Abide with ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... moments she delayed to answer, toying with her fork in thoughtful abstraction. In fact, her love for the young astronomer beside her was contending with the old desire to control her husband and to make him a figure in the world. In the inmost recesses of her heart she knew that she ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... his, departure she sat quietly at the table, toying idly with the rich food in front of her. Absorbed in her own thoughts she paid no attention to what was transpiring around. She was singularly depressed that evening, she knew not why. It was very foolish, for she had every reason to feel elated. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... can snub HARCOURT—and does. Shall HARCOURT go for him? Shall he take him up in his powerful arms and tear him to pieces with delighted teeth? A moment's pause, whilst HARCOURT, towering at table, toying nervously with eyeglass, looks down on Chairman who has just ruled him out of order. Shall he? Struggles with his suddenly awakened wrath, gulps it down, turns aside ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... himself appropriately. There is no suggestion of mawkishness in his discourse. Our Ferdinand, however, is distinctly spoony. There went no poetic irony to his creation, and he has no saving sense of humor. He never seems, like Romeo, to be toying with hyperbole in an artistic spirit, but it is all dead earnest. Such a love-lorn youth must expect to recruit his admirers chiefly from the ranks of the very young. And yet there are times, just as in the case of Karl Moor, when Ferdinand's rhetoric becomes impressive from sheer titanic force. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... with which he was toying with a thoughtful smile, held it up that the light might strike through its rose and pearl, then crushed it ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... tradition, savoring anything but the odor of sanctity. With the warning of La Masque fresh in their mind, both looked at him earnestly. His gay livery was that of Lord Rochester, and became his graceful figure well, as he marched along with a jaunty swagger, one hand on his aide, and the other toying with a beautiful little spaniel, that frisked in open violation of the Lord Mayor's orders, commanding all dogs, great and small, to be put to death as propagators of the pestilence. In passing, the lad turned his face toward ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... group. Slavin, in silent comprehending sympathy, laid a huge hand on the other's shoulder to steady him. In customary British fashion, the O.C. and the Inspector strove to mask their emotions under an exaggerated grimness of mien, only their eyes betraying their feelings. The former, toying with his sweeping, fair moustache in agitated fashion, gazed drearily around the sick-room till his stern, yet kindly old eyes finally came to rest upon a framed scriptural quotation which was hanging on the wall above the head of ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... he, who, maddened by the General's triumphantly familiar way of toying with Miss Betty's fan between two dances, attempted to propose to her during the sunrise waltz. Having sung "Oh, believe me" in her ear as loudly as he could, he expressed the wish—quite as loudly—"That this ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... withdrew her eyes and looked across the table with an expression which Nicholas Colcord could have interpreted had he not been engrossed with Sybil Latham. Evelyn studied him with admiring tenderness as he lounged in his chair, toying idly with a fork, smiling at something his partner was saying, while her mind ran lovingly over the dominant traits of a personality which was so strong, so keenly alive, so sensitive to decent, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in such spirits as since we came here," returned Edith, toying with the silken tassels of her rich robe. "You know he was always so silent and reserved in our former home, Sylva. But sometimes I fancy there is something unnatural in his manner. One moment he will laugh ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... this time. "Kill you," he told her. "Not your husband. I want him as an envoy, to go back and tell the others to clear off." He rocked back and forth in his wheelchair, toying with the gleaming, ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg
... found the princess thoughtful, one elbow resting on a little table, her beautiful blond head bathed in light from the lamp. She was toying with a letter which lay on the table-cloth. When d'Arthez had seen the paper distinctly, she folded it up, and stuck ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... on another. The proletariat rose up and destroyed it. To mobs anything beautiful is offensive. Palaces looted, banks, museums, houses. The ignorant toying with hand grenades, thinking them sceptres. All the scum in the world boiling to the top. After the Red Day ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... of my conclusions at the time," Marlow went on impatiently. "But don't think for a moment that Mrs Fyne in her new attitude and toying thoughtfully with a teaspoon was about to surrender. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... this morning, as a forerunner of many that may come soon. I found sitting on a doorstep, apparently too weak to move, a young fellow of the Imperial Light Horse—scarcely more than a boy—his stalwart form shrunken by illness. He was toying with a spray of wild jasmine, as if its perfume brought back vague memories of home. I learned that he had been wounded at Elandslaagte and again on Waggon Hill. Then came Intombi and malaria. He had only been discharged from hospital that morning. ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... were glittering on Anne's eyelashes; one of her hands was toying nervously with something hidden (possibly Sir Patrick's letter) in the bosom of her dress. "I thank him with my whole heart," she said, in low, faltering tones. "But it is best that he should not ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... short the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the Yuzbashi fell to toying with his wife, and thrusting and foining at her cleft,[FN373] her solution of continuity, and she wriggled to and fro to him, and bucked up and down, after which he tumbled her and both were in gloria.[FN374] This lasted until near mid-afternoon when he arose and went forth to the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... closer to me then, with that soft sinuousness of a woman, and I believed she might have kissed me had I not held back, toying ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... But engaged himself as herd-boy, Passed his days among the meadows, And his nights 'mid lively maidens, Sporting with the charming maidens, Toying with ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... consists of similar trees—alike in age and character for all the difference in soil—the one tree that does not leave the flat being the tea or melaleuca. In some places the jungle comes down to the water's edge, the long antennae of the lawyer vine toying with the rod-like ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... thought and lofty feeling—for a man who possesses all the analoga of genius, is yet so delightful, and its moral influence so grand and salutary, that we must allow it great praise. The childish love-toying with the glove and Aunt Tertsky in the first act should be omitted. Certain whole scenes are masterly, and far above anything since the dramatists of Eliz. & James the first.' Note on fly-leaf of annotated copy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... She was toying with her cup, and for once her eyes avoided him. "You should hardly think, Dave," she ventured,—"you should hardly conclude that—what has been, you know, gives you the ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... at once, and when benches were reared against him, after the women had huddled into a corner, and every thing was in sad confusion, he ran to me, and leaped on my neck, gasping and yelping; but finding that I was angry, and in no mood for toying, he planted himself on end so suddenly, in the middle of the floor, close by the fire, that all our hands were stayed, and no one could find in his heart to strike the poor dumb brute, he sat so quiet and motionless. "Sneezer, my boy, what have you to say—where have you come from?" ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own death, but he could not ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... had gone to their rooms, Lloyd sat a long time toying with the silver scissors, before writing her note of acknowledgment. The sheath was of hammered silver, and around the name was a beautifully wrought design of ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... now. The great game was three-quarters over. Bartlett had put up a wonderful fight against a much better team, and lost. The Penningtonites were just toying with them now, playing ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... indeed, very curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... who made me so. That toying with my own dear child, I think not on his shivering limbs, His manners ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... mother of Annette, a little girl of remarkable beauty, sitting at her side, playing with her left hand. Annette is fair, has light auburn hair-not the first tinge of her mother's olive invades her features. Her little cheerful face is lit up with a smile, and while toying with the rings on her mother's fingers, asks questions that person does not seem inclined to answer. Vivacious and sprightly, she chatters and lisps until we become eager for her history. "It's only a child's history," some ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... said Louise, "he was afraid he should be beaten and scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why, where is the harm?" she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien's hair. "What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose that my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much? Dear boy, lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a greater interest than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... well-feigned astonishment, still toying with the Duchess's temper. "Is the poor actress so honoured in a duchess's thought? Your grace ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... of untold wealth, tempered by a profound sorrow, for some cause which remains unmentioned, but which is possibly internal. He is first displayed "pacing a sombre avenue of ilex and arbutus that reflected with singular truth the gloom of his countenance," and "toying sadly with the jewelled hilt of his dagger." He meditates upon his loveless life and the burthen of riches. Presently he "paces the long and magnificent gallery," where a "hundred generations of Di Sornos, each with the same flashing eye and the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... would accept the crown, but that he would rule in the interests of his subjects, and that he would in no case consider a divorce. Angry words were spoken. Napoleon crushed in his hand a watch with which he had been toying, hissing out that thus he would crush wills which opposed his. "I defy you to commit a crime," retorted Lucien. Before parting there was a half reconciliation, and Napoleon requested that at least his brother's eldest daughter might be sent to Paris ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... examination. The American captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, or some such article. The case was one of no interest; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from natural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining the body, were at first inclined to think that the man had not been ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Soeur Angelique, toying caressingly with the wavy brown hair tossed over his forehead. "Now I hope we shall see more of our Phebe again. What ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... almost hollow cheeks, tanned brown by the blazing suns of the southern desert, his hair cropped close to his shapely head, his gray-blue eyes, large, full and steady, fixed unswerving upon her. Leaning on his elbow, one lean brown hand was toying with the sun-bleached ends of his mustache, the other, with the class ring gleaming in the moonlight, lay idly on his knee. Lacking stature, size or weight, the physical attributes that make a man impressive, he looked the picture of the young athlete, firm ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... But otherwise she left no doubt as to her wishes concerning him. Once she came into the saloon for breakfast before the rest of the party had taken their places. Dan was in his accustomed seat at the head of the table; he arose and wished her good-morning. She replied faintly, and then she sat toying idly with her rusk, her eyes for the most part fastened upon Dan, who had resumed his breakfast as though oblivious of her presence. She seemed trying to make up her mind to speak; but she failed. When Dan arose, bowed slightly, and left the saloon, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... the room again until summarily dismissed by the ruling power, I stood guiltily by the doorway with a look of sullen helplessness on my face, toying half indifferently with the ends of a pink ribbon that was fastened artistically to my frock. Suddenly, the unforgiving baby sent forth a fresh volley of screams, and the irate mother turned towards me with a new and awful ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... have astonished him to learn that his father, lolling there so easily and toying with a toothpick, shared that constraint. Yet it was so. Captain Vyell did not understand children. Least of all did he understand this son of his begetting. He could be kind to him, even extravagantly, by fits and ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 'Know, O Shaykh Nasr, that I never will forsake him.' The Shaykh believed in her oath and said to Janshah, 'Thanks be to Allah, who hath made you arrive at this understanding!' Hereupon the Prince rejoiced with exceeding joy, and he and Shamsah abode three months with Shaykh Nasr, feasting and toying and making merry."— And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... itself master of the situation. And so in five days, while King Leopold was still writing wary recommendations and temperate praise, the prize which had been deemed lost was won, and the Queen who had foredoomed herself to years of maidenly toying with happiness and fruitless waiting, was ready to announce her speedy marriage, with loyal satisfaction and innocent fearlessness, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... night in the Cafe de la Source, when Fil de Fer had been treating him to brandy and trying to get him to tell his story; I remember his suddenly turning his one eye in the direction of us men, and launching himself upon a long flight of rhetoric. I can see him still—his unwashed red hand toying with the stem of his liqueur-glass, or rising from time to time to push his hair from his forehead, over which it dangled in soggy wisps, while, in a dinner-table tone of voice, he uttered these ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... inscribed upon the heart of a wise king, as I have counselled ever. Yet, this once, seeing that this maiden is wholly unlike all other women, it might be well to let her bask in the rays of glory rather than turn her unsatisfied away——.' The Vizier paused expectantly. The Sultan remained looking down, toying with the pearl and turquoise sheath of the dagger stuck in his girdle. 'A strange tale,' he said at last, 'it interests me not, although I feel an unknown Power that forces me to listen to thy words. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... pistol on the table, and put the key of the safety-box beside it. Then he sat in grim silence for a full minute, toying idly with a pair of handcuffs which he had taken ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... spacious hall; I thought of a room with an ample chimney set round with painted tiles, and I pictured myself kneeling upon the bearskin rug before a blazing fire, with my head upon my mother's knee and her fingers toying with my hair. For that moment I forgot even my dear love, and I would have given all the world just to be a ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... in a guttural note of disappointment. And there and then I saw him toying with a ruby ring, not worn upon one of his fingers, but held lightly ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... be mad," exclaimed Bellward, toying impatiently with his weapon, "you let him escape through your fingers before! I know his type. A man like him is only safe when he's dead. And ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... can be quite as serious in its effects upon the mind and health as the other two forms of nervousness. Twitching the face, biting the nails, wetting the lips, blinking the eyelids, continually toying with something, being in perpetual motion and never relaxing, always changing from one thing to the next, being forever on the rush, never accomplishing anything, are common faults of both teacher and pupil. We call them mannerisms or tricks of personality. They are readily imitated ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... the three girls repaired to the dining car and seated themselves at a table directly across the aisle from their new acquaintance. J. Elfreda sat toying with her knife and fork, an impatient frown on her smug face. "These people are the limit," she grumbled. "It takes forever to get anything to eat. If I'd ordered it yesterday, I'd have some hopes of getting it to-day." Then, apparently forgetting the existence of the three girls, she sat ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range over, the miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean hands among the sliding, shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles the great carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters played with in the great game between angels ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gamut ranging. There my astral body slides and skims, Choriambic melodies exchanging With the apolaustic cherubims; Weaving in a polyphonic pattern Harmonies that mock at clefs and bars; Toying with the shining rings of Saturn, Throwing star-dust in the eyes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... down in the hammock which I had vacated, and toying with the tin box—a proceeding that was so extraordinarily cool that it made me shiver—'I have been looking for you for ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... popes and of decrees limiting their prerogatives. And, moreover, the council was the first authority invoked by the heretic himself. Adrian might have been willing to risk such a synod, but before he had time to call one, his place was taken by the vacillating and pusillanimous Clement. Perpetually toying with the idea he yet allowed the pressure of his courtiers and the difficulties of the political situation—for France was opposed to the council as an imperial scheme—indefinitely ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man, once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... down, murmured something to my father, bowed loftily to Louise, passed me without a sign, and went out. In a moment, Lu's voice, a quick, sharp exclamation, touched him; he turned, came back. She, wondering at him, had stood toying with the amber, and at last crushing the miracle of the whole, a bell-wort wrought most delicately with all the dusty pollen grained upon its anthers, crushing it between her fingers, breaking the thread, and scattering the beads upon the carpet. He stooped with her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... by your tone," said Cavalier, who had till now remained silent while toying with his pistol, "you seem to be in command here; have we changed, parts without my ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... naturally spend together, apart from all observers, furnish people of tolerable moderation with such ample opportunity for the enjoyment of either passion, that, if they love, they can support being a few hours in company without toying, or if they hate, without ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... on the other side of the dining-room, by Hannah, and she watched the two incessantly with that half merry contemptuous look, toying with her own food, and apparently waiting for their acting to cease and David to put on his true character. She never doubted for an ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... meets with a fellow, her sweetheart; he carries her into a public-house, and while they are toying in there the girl plays about with me in her hand, sometimes in sight, sometimes out of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... as much mixed up as Auntie is," he replied slowly, while he gave Allie's hand a consoling pinch, as it lay on the table, toying with her fork. "I don't want to leave the doctor, and the boys, and all, and this place has been immense fun; but, as long as I can be with you people, I don't mind much else, and, if we go to St. Paul, I can stay with you till I'm ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... The woman was toying with a bunch of grass, winding the slim green blades around her pale fingers, and she ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... men toying with the idea of bringing off our men not see that thereby the Turks will be let loose somewhere; not nowhere? Do they not see that if they are feeling the economic pinch of keeping their side of the show ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... who should be there waiting for him but his wife, Mrs. Henrietta Templeton Price, recognized leader of our literary and artistic set. Or I think they call it a 'group' or a 'coterie' or something. Setting at Lon's desk she was, toying petulantly with horrid old pens and blotters, and probably bestowing glances of disrelish from time to time round the grimy office where her scrubby little husband toiled his days away ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... pen; I leave my chair and seat myself on the bearskin beside the ample fireplace and begin toying ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the man across the table, noting his pale cheeks and the dark rings beneath his eyes. Hugh had misrepresented the facts; he was not eating at all. Instead, he was merely toying with his fork, making uncertain circles in the layer of brown, gravy which covered the plate, his cheek resting on the other hand, a faraway look of distress in his eyes. They were directed at the ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... have her fair and witty, Favouring more of Court than City, A little proud, but full of pity, Light and humorous in her toying, Oft building hopes and soon destroying... Neither too easy nor too hard, All extremes ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the right above the white gate now. The keeper's cottage is in sight, built against a ledge of rock, up to which wide rough steps have been cut in the sandstone. Ruth looks down at the gate below. He is waiting—the dreadful man is waiting there, as she expected; and Balaam, toying with a fern, is at that moment coming round the corner. She sees that he takes in the situation instantly. There is but one way in which they can have fled, and he knows it. In a moment he comes halting and pounding up the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... the Plaza, entering the Eldorado gambling house. There he ordered a drink, gulped it, made, more quietly, a survey of the room. He scanned the players carefully. Spear sat at one of the tables, toying with a pile of chips and stroking his chin reflectively ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Mr Welles, with a complacent smile, toying with his gold chatelaine, "I really could not have visited you sooner, under the circumstances in ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... If Paul Patoff had been a warm-hearted man, he could not have been at that very moment making conversation for his cousins in the drawing-room, laughing and chatting, his eyeglass in his eye, his bony fingers toying with the flower Chrysophrasia had given him. It struck me that neither Mrs. Carvel nor her sister could have known of the interview, or they would have manifested some feeling, or at least would not have behaved just as they always did. I asked ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... smile of her day's joy with him had not yet faded from the face of earth. It was the hour vulgarised in drawing-room ballads as the 'gloaming.' They sat very near to each other; he held her hand, toying with it; and now and again their eyes met with the look that flutters before flight, that says, 'Dare I give thee all? Dare I throw my eyes on thine as I would throw myself on thee?' And then, at last, came the inevitable moment when the eyes of each seem ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... could turn this here," murmured the journeyman, toying with the handle that moved the bed. It was an exaggeration, but ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... looked at Sharrkan and found him lost to existence, and he lay for a while stretched at full length and prone among the maidens.[FN191] Then he revived and, remembering the songs, again inclined to mirth and merriment; and the twain returned to their wine and wassail, and continued their playing and toying, their pastime and pleasure till day ceased illuminating and night drooped her wing. Then the damsel went off to her dormitory and when Sharrkan asked after her they answered, "She is gone to her sleeping chamber," whereto he rejoined, "Under Allah's ward and His good guard!" As soon as it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... this is it, you can sit toying there, And playing with that female wanton boy, Whiles my AEneas wanders on the Seas, And rests a pray to euery billowes pride. Iuno, false Iuno in her Chariots pompe, Drawne through the heauens by Steedes of Boreas brood, Made Hebe to direct her ayrie wheeles Into the windie countrie ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... The Duke sat back, toying with his cup. "It is true," he mused, "that Menstal is the key to the border. And the small garrison there has proved expensive and ineffective." He tapped the cup on the table, then set it down and looked about the apartment. Finally, he looked up ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... dim light from the shaded windows he had not at first seen the girl. She was seated on a footstool, her hands on her father's knee, her fond face gazing up into his, and that strong, bony hand of his resting on her head and toying with the ribbon, the "snood," as he loved to call it, with which she bound her abundant tresses. At sound of the doctor's voice, Janet, ever apprehensive of ill, had come forth from the dining room, silver brush and towel in hand, and stood at the doorway, gazing austerely. She could ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... sudden and marvelous consciousness of all life being changed at a stroke, of doors that had swung wide between all the old and all the new, Mary Burton walked as in a daze, her fingers toying with the gems about her neck. But before she had taken many steps the man laid a hand on her arm and halted her. When she turned he caught her by her shoulders and his words came tumultuously and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... refined, purified: it appropriates, indeed, language due only to the divine, it almost simulates idolatry; yet it belongs to the best part of man's nature. But in the lower and average characters, it is not so respectable; it is apt to pass into mere toying pastime and frivolous love of pleasure: it astonishes us often by the readiness with which it displays an affinity for the sensual and impure, the corrupting and debasing sides of the relations between the sexes. But however it appears, it is throughout ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... thick glasses magnifying his red-rimmed eyes, his speech a painful effort, stood leaning against a mud-guard with his hands in the pockets of a shabby raglan. A great bearded sailor, with the clear eyes of youth, prowled restlessly about, absently toying with an enormous blue-steel revolver, which never left his hand. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... excuse. Thus if a tradesman, with whom your social relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in Numismatics and are a Collector of Coins; and he may possibly believe you. But if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being overloaded ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... first thought of everyone is, naturally, for his own life, there is no history in this war that can be written that can recount the number of occasions when the seeming first thought of men was to do for their pals, utterly regardless of their own safety. For sheer toying with death and taking chances in situations that did not seem to offer the slightest hope or chance of getting through, the Great War discloses feats of valor with which nothing can compare that comes out of the mist of "Days of old ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... pipers, but up the steps was borne by the cool, sweet air the fairy music; and lured on by it step by step they travelled down the fleecy stairway. When they were little more than half way down there came mingled with the music a sound almost as sweet—the sound of waters toying in the still air with pebbles on a shelving beach, and with the sound came the odorous brine of the ocean. And then the children knew that what they thought was a plain in the realms of cloudland was the sleeping sea unstirred by wind or tide, dreaming ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... concerned about you," Weirmarsh said, seated cross-legged at his writing-chair, toying with his pen and looking into the girl's ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... church forbids it; but—I do not dance in Lent. After all," shrugging her shoulders, "we can confess, you know, and when we are old it will suffice to repent and be devout. I shall begin to be excessively devout," (toying with a jet cross on her necklace)—"the day I find ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive apartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinum chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he had ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... ascertain whither she would lead him—to Paradise or to the limbo of hell—to a gibbet or to an abode of love. Anything was a glean of hope to him in the depth of his misery. The lady strolled along the bank of the Loire towards Plessis inhaling like a fish the fine freshness of the water, toying, sauntering like a little mouse who wishes to see and taste everything. When the page perceived that Jacques de Beaune persistently followed his mistress in all her movements, stopped when she stopped, and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... with me beside the fire." Forthwith Walkyn obeyed and stretching himself on the grass fell to toying with the haft of his axe and scowling ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... to like," quoted the Devil to the collier. For what difference between them, but that the one has more wrinkles and years upon his head than the other? Otherwise, the brightness of their hair, toothless mouth, weakness of body, love of mild, broken speech, chatting, toying, forgetfulness, inadvertency, and briefly, all other their actions agree in everything. And by how much the nearer they approach to this old age, by so much they grow backward into the likeness of children, until like them they pass from ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... countenance was still severe—that Connie was never so attractive as when, in the freshest of white dressing-gowns, propped among the lace and silk of her ridiculous pillows and bedspreads, she was toying with the coffee and roll which Annette brought her at eight o'clock, as she had been accustomed to bring it since Connie was a child. Mrs. Hooper had clearly expressed her disapproval of such habits, but neither Annette nor Connie had paid any attention. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... toying, Eager for enjoying, What Muse can say How sweet our Play, What Numbers tell The Joys we feel? Happy Lovers only know ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... years old, brother to the bride,—and the other a girl of the same age, or something younger, whom he calls 'his wife.' The real bride and bridegroom are not more devoted than they: he all love and attention, and she all blushes and fondness, toying with a little bouquet which he gave her this morning, and placing the scattered rose-leaves in her bosom with nature's own coquettishness. They have dreamt of each other in their quiet dreams, these children, and their little hearts have been nearly broken when the absent one has been ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... suddenly and stood toying with his big watch passing it back and forth through the loop he made of its heavy chain, his gaze steady and earnest ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Joyce's innocent demonstrativeness—inseparable from herself—which some men might not understand, and the doctor was but human after all. She had seen her toying with his watch-chain while arguing against following his advice for the good of her health; leading him by the hand to visit her baby in its crib; seizing the lapels of his coat in a moment of eager excitement. On each of these ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... but adapted as the index-heading; and William Harvey, the Shakespearian illustrator, was requested to undertake a design to replace it. This, though yet more graceful than Browne's, was less suitable than ever. Babes like amorini toying with Punch's cap and baton, bells and mask, were very pretty and charming, but a good deal too much in the style of Rubens or Stothard; and what was thought more unsuitable still was the price. Mr. Birket Foster has borne ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... fooling and toying sometimes go that I know nothing a young woman has to be more cautious of; so far had this innocent girl gone in jesting between her and I, and in talking that she would let him lie with her, if he would but be kinder to me, that at last she let him lie with her in earnest; and so empty was I ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... all the time it was as if the rattlesnake was conscious of the dreadful power he held over his victim. Its arrowy head and long neck were started silently toward him, as if threatening instant destruction; and then, like the cat toying with her victim, it was withdrawn again, and the spell deepened and increased. A strange whirl passed through the mind of the boy. By a violent attempt to call in his wandering thoughts he gathered an idea of the mortal danger impending over him, ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... Mr. Labouchere. Even our country cousins are aware that the Member for Northampton is less an ornament of general society than the oracle of an initiated circle. The smoking-room of the House of Commons is his shrine, and there, poised in an American rocking-chair and delicately toying with a cigarette, he unlocks the varied treasures of his well-stored memory, and throws over the changing scenes of life the mild light of his genial philosophy. It is a chequered experience that ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... cooling bath of delicate tints and shades. I think of all the green things I have loved—of malachite in matrix and table-top; of jade, not factory-hewn baubles, but age-mellowed signets, fashioned by lovers of their craft, and seasoned by the toying yellow fingers of generations of forgotten Chinese emperors—jade, as Dunsany would say, of the exact shade of the right color. I think too, of dainty emerald scarves that are seen and lost in a flash at a dance; of the air-cooled, living green of curling breakers; of a lonely light that gleams ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... leading. This indolence. This constant toying with danger. This empty life. This sham of adventure-love that you affect. It will get you nothing. I know! I, too, thought it was a great lark at first, and I played with fire; and you know just what happens to the children ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... highest product of the Metaphysical School was Crashaw, and Crashaw was a Shelley manque; he never reached the Promised Land, but he had fervid visions of it. The Metaphysical School, like Shelley, loved imagery for its own sake: and how beautiful a thing the frank toying with imagery may be, let The Skylark and The Cloud witness. It is only evil when the poet, on the straight way to a fixed object, lags continually from the path to play. This is commendable neither in poet nor errand-boy. The Metaphysical ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... look at my beneficiary, and I had an impression that Mr. Chelm might feel his legal conscience prick him, and so spoil the plot, if I were not within earshot. When the interview took place, however, the lawyer took a mild revenge by toying with his visitor a little at first, as though about to give an unfavorable answer; and I shall never forget Mr. Prime's expression when the true state of the case was made known to him. After sitting in silence for a moment as though endeavoring to grasp ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... pavement and protected from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of them sat officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise shell canes, which could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned Balashev to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... these ladies who are no better than they should be, was music from old heads and old hearts. The "other lips and other hearts whose tales of love" should have been told ardently through fiddle and clarinet are toying with the great harp of a thousand strings that plays the dance of death. That is the music the young men are playing in Europe today. But in Paris, busy, drab, absent-minded Paris, the music that should be made from the soul of youth, crying into reeds and strings and brass is an echo, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... the boy in the closest of embraces and enjoyed the effect of our happy vows to a point that might be envied. Nor had all the ceremonies been completed, when Ascyltos stole stealthily up to the outside of the door and, violently wrenching off the bars, burst in upon me, toying with my "brother." He filled the little room with his laughter and hand-clapping, pulled away the cloak which covered us, "What are you up to now, most sanctimonious 'brother'?" he jeered. "What's going on here, a blanket-wedding?" Nor did he confine himself to words, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... they had to remain on the level of accepted or rejected axioms. I wasn't about to devote much time to them when the whole fascinating field of subatomic mirror numbers was just opening up; certainly not because a few sensational journalists were toying with dead-end notions. For that matter the newsplastics weren't either and quickly went back to the regular mathematical ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... overcome her timidity. Quite accidentally she stood toying with a bud that she had picked from the flower-bordered roadway. She turned as Sundown jingled up and met him with a murmur of surprise and pleasure. He swung from his horse hat in hand and advanced, bowing. Anita flushed and gazed ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... his wife should bee, First be he true, for truth doth truth deserve; Then be he such, as she his worth may see, And, alwaies one, credit with her preserve: Not toying kynd nor causelessly unkynd, Nor stirring thoughts, nor yet denying right, Nor spying faults, nor in plaine errors blind, Never hard hand, nor ever rayns (reins) too light; As far from want, as far from vaine expence, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and could bring an English army to the gates of Edinburgh ere Douglas could leave the skirts of Carintable to oppose them. Your royal son loves my poor deserted girl, and hates the haughty Marjory of Douglas. Your Grace may judge the small account in which he holds her by his toying with a common glee maiden even in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... gate she stooped to pick a flower, which she held for a moment to her face; then, toying lightly with it in her fingers, she slipped the latch and continued along the path leading down into the ravine. It was dark and cool down there, with a touch of dampness in the grass, and the balm-of-Gileads across the stream sent a fine moist fragrance through the air. To ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, a French boy singing love-songs, in that glorious gallery, while twenty great courtiers and other dissolute persons were gaming at a large table, a bank of at least L2,000 in gold before them. Six days after all was in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... down on the table between her thumb and forefinger, and Lanfear noted the translucence of her long, thin hand in the sunshine striking across the painted iron surface of the garden movable. The translucence had a pathos for his intelligence which the pensive tilt of her head enhanced. She stopped toying with the cards, and looked at the addresses ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... the last information with a sort of quiet assurance that conveyed the idea, without her saying it directly, that any such venture was somehow doomed to failure, that desecrators were merely toying with fate. ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... but acutely try a tender conscience to be accused, in a practical country like ours, of keeping aloof from the work and hope of a multitude of earnest-hearted men, and of merely toying with poetry and aesthetics. So it is with no little [90] sense of relief that I find myself thus in the position of one who makes a contribution in aid of the practical necessities of our times. The great thing, it will be observed, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the spot where the thief had been captured, Zeppa chanced to be sitting, idly toying with the branch of a tree which he had fashioned into a rude staff wherewith to climb ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... Middleton sat plunged in abstraction, toying with the three kinds of dessert he had ordered, as he meditated upon the words of the emir. At last rousing himself, he had finished the marrons glacees and was about to begin upon a Nesselrode pudding, when he heard himself addressed, and looking up saw before him a young woman ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... this was regular, Birchard?" asked Eugene, toying with his check lovingly. He had just finished figuring that it was worth something like ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... tongue, while it made little squeaks and chatterings, evidently delighted, though its mournful old man's visage still had the same piteous expression. There was something most grotesque and almost weird in the sight of Peregrine's queer figure toying with its odd hands which seemed to be in black gloves, and the strange language he talked to it added to the uncanny effect. Even the Doctor felt it as he stood watching, and would have muttered 'Birds of a feather,' but that the words were spoken ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expected and immediately proposed a walk to our garden the next day. Accordingly we went there the next morning; she had contrived that we should remain alone the whole day, which she employed in preparing me for those favors she meant to bestow; not as another woman would have done, by toying and folly, but by discourses full of sentiment and reason, rather tending to instruct than seduce, and which spoke more to my heart than to my senses. Meantime, however excellent and to the purpose these discourses ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Tales was toying pensively with spectral forms and "dark ideas," Edgar Allan Poe was penetrating intrepidly into trackless regions of terror. Where Hawthorne would have shrunk back, repelled and disgusted, Poe, wildly exhilarated by the anticipation of a new and excruciating ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... diabolical plan, conceived far down in hell amid the thick blackness, and brought up by the arch-fiend himself, who sat there, toying with the hideous thing, and with his cloven foot beating a merry tune on the death's-head and cross-bones ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... minute, the girl's fingers toying with the flap of the haversack, her eyes gazing across the river. He thought they ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again." Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... I am even too good-natured—over good-natured, Susan Talbot. How now," at some sound below, springing to the little window and flinging it back, "you lazy idle wenches—what are you doing there? Is my work to stand still while you are toying with yon vile whelp? He is tangling the yarn, don't you see, thou purblind Jane Dacre, with no eyes but for ogling. There! there! Round the leg of the chair, don't you see!" and down flew a shoe, which ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forth in fold of woven gold, and crowned with forest-flowers; And scented with the sandal, and gay with gems of price— Rubies to mate his laughing lips, and diamonds like his, eyes;— In the company of damsels,[1] who dance and sing and play, Lies Krishna, laughing, toying, dreaming ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... elbow and responded languidly to his companion, half heeding, toying with his hands, and strumming on the table with his fingers, which were white, and supple, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... with edge-tools! The hospital is not to be coquetted with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid. Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life, sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and misery will come, in its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... his orders; we fell in among the long line of carriages, and in due time made our way to the salon, where Madame le Duchesse de Longueville sat enthroned in all the glory of her fair hair and beautiful complexion, toying with her fan as she conversed with the Prince of Marsillac, the most favoured at that time of a whole troop of admirers and devoted slaves. She was not an intellectual woman herself, but she had beyond all others who I ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge |
