"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cebu, as the slightly overcast sky made the temperature quite endurable. The country passed on our drive was unusually fine, with its groves of palms and plantains; its tall cottonwood-trees by the road-side, the ripe pods on the bare branches bursting and showing the soft, white fluff within; its giant mango-trees with bonfires built beneath them, as a quick method of ripening the fruit for market. Then there were acres of corn and fields of rice ready for harvesting, proving conclusively, as some one ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... mean to tell me!" cried Sir Peter in a quieter voice, "that that little piece of dandelion fluff—that baggage—that city fellow's half baked, peeled onion of a minx is going to desert her husband? That's what I call it—desertion! What does she want to go back to her people for? She must go with him! ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... to how Tommy should be fed, and we finally decided that one should try to open the small hooked beak, whose point could just be detected protruding from a nest of fluff, while another held a piece of raw meat ready to pop in. It did not look an easy job, but we had scarcely set about it when Tommy himself solved the difficulty by plucking the meat out of our fingers and swallowing it. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... that was!" Beth observed. "Did you notice the sea? It was the sort of sea that might make one long to be a crab to live in it. Though a crab is not the animal that I should specially choose to be. I long to be a cat sometimes. To be able to fluff out my fur and spit would be such a satisfaction. There are feelings that can be expressed in no other way. And then to be able to purr! Purring is the one sound in nature that expresses perfect comfort and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... voice. She appealed to Elliott for corroboration on this point and Elliott grew almost interested trying to decide whether or not Chanticleer knew he was "Chanticleer" and not "Sunflower." There were also "Fluff" and "Scratch" and "Lady Gay" and "Ruby Crown" and "Marshal Haig" and "General Petain" and many more, besides "Brevity," so named because, as Priscilla solicitously explained, she never seemed to grow. They all, with ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... it all: the way her "waved" hair would fluff out and catch the light like a kind of halo, and each one of the nine organdie ruffles that were going to trim the bottom of her dress; she could even see the glossy, dark green background of potted palms—mother had promised to lend her two biggest ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... white spot of muslin fluff That down the diminishing platform bore Through hustling crowds of gentle and ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... reversed himself and rearranged his round, astonished features, when Alfred, beaming and buoyant, brought the bundle of fluff to a full stop ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... the bedroom of the Princess, and waited for nightfall; then, when the Princess had fallen asleep, it crept up on to her bed, and gnawed a hole in the pillow, through which it dragged one by one little down feathers, and threw them under the Princess's nose. And the fluff flew into the Princess's nose, and into her mouth, and starting up she sneezed and coughed, and the ring fell out of her mouth on to the coverlet. In a flash the tiny mouse had seized it, and brought it to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... save room that it is pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out, it would take up four or five ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... his alabaster flight Neath the full beams of the mistaken sun O'er gazing crowds, till at th' unwonted sight Some unexpected sportsman with a gun Brought down the bird, all fluff, mid sounding cheers: Mourn, maidens, mourn, and wipe the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... Fluff we used to call her? I don't understand you, father; surely Ellen would never part with ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... room and as he went he flew out quietly at somebody who was not there: "Uprightness? Knowledge of business, as that Philistine of an inspector says? I know why you're forcing your way in and insinuating yourself in here, you fluff-picker! Pretend to be as innocent as you like, I"—he made the gesture that meant: "I am one who know life and the species that wears long hair and aprons!" With this he turned toward the door, but his movement was not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... There were a number of small glass jars containing earthy substances, labeled "Pavement and Road Sweepings," from the principal thoroughfares and suburbs of London, with the sub-directions "for identifying foot-tracks." There were several other jars, labeled "Fluff from Omnibus and Road Car Seats," "Cocoanut Fibre and Rope Strands from Mattings in Public Places," "Cigarette Stumps and Match Ends from Floor of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50." Everywhere were evidences of this ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of doing knowingly ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... me kidnap you, Betty; go fluff and rose up a bit," he commanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determination which was as business-like as his management of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... skin rattled a little. A fluff of yellow, a spark of blue, and "Pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child from under the edge, and ducked back again out ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... heralded their arrival in the danger zone. From the earth the tiny white shell clouds have a fascination for the onlooker. More so perhaps, than for the man in an aeroplane, not many yards distant from the bursting shrapnel. The ball of fluff that follows the sharp "bang" is small at first, but unrolls itself lazily until it assumes quite a size. That morning the anti-aircraft gunners seemed unusually accurate. The third shell burst not far below the plane, ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... Family'!...Still....But why, Gora dear, do you depreciate yourself? It seems to me that you are just the type that a certain sort of man would appreciate—fall in love with. I've heard even American men who play about in society comment on your looks, different as you are from sport and fluff and come-hitherness; and you only need a few months' rest to look like your old self. I should think that a highly intelligent Englishman would find you irresistible, especially if you had shown your womanly side when he had holes in him. I've always had an idea that ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... a little more personal than Kate approved of, and she raised her parasol to conceal her annoyance. It was a brilliant little fluff of a thing which looked as if it were made of butterflies' wings. Roeder touched ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... by Caroline Darrah on the other side; he's savage when he's crossed. And tack in Payt opposite her. I invited Polly the Fluff for you—she is a dbutante and such a coo-child that she'll just ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have said more but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red hair above a ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... the trees and the forest grow deeper and darker. Now and then I heard, when all was still, from his nesting-place, the brave yet delicate notes of the song sparrow, singing in his dreams from out a happy, overflowing heart. Dear little fluff of feathers! ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... dies down, as, if you will allow my fancy, does he who has grown in uprightness to fine maturity, hale and beautiful to the last. Look at the remains of the three slips. The first is little more than black fluff; I can actually blow it away, poor rubbish! while the second and third are similar to each other, but the No. 3 is more compact, if I may so say, and this is what its excellence before burning ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his idea run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing. I'd never go out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading it, because it doesn't tell me anything about the stuff. It's just a bunch of fluff." ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... wondered to himself whether this might not be another cousin of whom he had never heard. The women doctors and nurses at home wore stout shoes and had pockets let in at the seams of their frocks, useful, doubtless, but with an unlovely tendency to yawn and show their contents. This girl was a mere fluff of pale yellow organdie which brought out the purplish ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... rooms had been pulled down, and where, decorated with ivy, the old spout formed a home for the snoring owls. By the aid of the long pole he brought out a young one to our view—a shy, soft, lovely, shadow-tinted creature, ghostly enough to behold, who felt like an impalpable mass of fluff, utterly refused to be kissed, and went savagely blinking back into his spout at the earliest possible opportunity. His snoring alarmed us ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... stride offset by a feminine cry-baby chin and the usual mediocre allotment of freckles on the usual mediocre nose! Mary Faithful was not pretty; she was a "good-looking thing," Trudy would usually conclude, glancing in a near-by mirror to approve of the way her fluff of pink tulle harmonized with her pink camisole ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... angry, bewildered men, and the vetturino, catching a glimpse of the flushed face framed in a soft fluff of brown hair, shook his fist and roared a ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... Leonie, as she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... she flew to the mirror to put it on. Her hair dissatisfied her, and she made it fluff out a little under the rich braid which crowned her brow. Finally, she ruthlessly tore a rose from her new hat and pinned it to her girdle as she had seen Jennie ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... They are expert in making guns and traps for small birds, and in making and using bird-lime. They make play guns of reed, which go off with a trigger and spring, with a cloud of ashes for smoke. Sometimes they make double-barrelled guns of clay, and have cotton-fluff as smoke. The boys shoot locusts with small toy guns very cleverly. A couple of rufous, brown-headed, and dirty speckle-breasted swallows appeared to-day for the first time this season, and lighted on the ground. This is the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... let her hand linger up at his cheek, head still back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in the ash-blond fluff of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will never brush off ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... out of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest little things—fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and there, like stray feathers that have stuck ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... Guts of your Hog clean scoured, then fluff them with beaten Spice and sliced Dates, sweet herbs, a little Salt, Rosewater, Sugar, and two or three Eggs to make it slide; so fill them, tie them up like Puddings and boil them; when ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... hunger and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but as I passed by one open porte-cochere, something, I know not what, made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... enough. Thou art a temporizing thing, mean heart. Down-drawn, thou pick'st up straws and wretched stuff, Stooping as if the world's floor were the chart Of the long way thy lazy feet must tread. Thou dreamest of the crown hung o'er thy head— But that is safe—thou gatherest hairs and fluff! ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... known as "German lined"—a highly absorbent, closely woven paper, having an even surface and no loose "fluff" to adhere to the specimens—is the most useful for ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... had found that feathers instead of down had been used, and they both had a great deal to say on the subject. It was, however, almost impossible to talk without coughing and choking, for their cottage was quite full of fluff and feathers floating about in the air. The children stood in the doorway, and explained their errand as well as ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... and walked rapidly across the room. She had made what in the light of recent events was a startling discovery. At first she had imagined that the long silken fluff was attached to one of the rings, but this her quick eyes had proved to be a mistake. On one of the slim fingers of the Countess was a thick ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... noses. But not noses on two legs, not burly pairs of gaiters, stuffed and voluble, not white meringues of chastity, not incarnations of co-respondence. Not proletariats, petitioners, president's, noses, bits of fluff. Heavens, what an assortment of bits! And aren't we sick ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... and Puff and Fluff, Stop always when they've had enough: They never come unwashed or late, They never crowd ...
— The Nursery, July 1877, XXII. No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and cobwebs. You will find, unless she is a phenomenal exception to the majority of young people, that she will not see when the soap-cup needs washing, or that there are finger-smears on the doors, and "fluff" in the corners. But with the blessed mother-gift of patience, point out to her, again and again, the seemingly small details, the "hall-marks" of housewifery, which, heeded, make the thrifty, neat ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... interest in everything. Every sound and every fresh sight arouses him instantly; his crest comes up, his feathers fluff out, and he is on tiptoe to see what will come next. He is remarkably discriminating among people, and takes violent likes and dislikes on the instant. Some persons, without any reason that I can discover, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... salmon-fly with a few frayed threads of cloth from his tunic. After a minute or two he was aware of Muskingon watching him with interest, and by signs begged for a feather from the young Indian's top-knot. Muskingon drew one forth and, under instructions, plucked off a piece of fluff from the root of the feather, a small quill or two, and handed them over. With a length of red silk drawn from his sash John, within half an hour, was bending a very pretty fly on the hook. It did not in the least resemble any winged creature ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an earthquake when she got up, and animals rolled off her in all directions. A poodle, two fox terriers, a toy Spitz, and a cat and kitten, had all been sleeping in the nooks her outline makes. They all barked in different keys, and between saying, "Down, Hector!" "Quiet, Fluff!" "Hush, hush, Fanny!" "Did um know it was a stranger?" etc., etc., she got in that she was glad to see me, and hoped you were better. When she stands up she is colossal! Her body dressed in the last fashion, and then the queerest face with no neck, and lemon-coloured ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... and broke his bonds. Each found his new wings, and set about shaking them out to full size and shape. Those of the rain-baby came quickly to their proper form, and away he flew to rejoice in perfect life. But though the other shook and shook, his wings would not fluff out. They seemed dried up; they were numbed ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... theater, at each interval between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a suspended frock ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... which was partially covered with ties and silk. The sick man's lungs were in the last stages of decay. He coughed and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist him in his paroxysms. The silken fluff from the ties was not good for his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers and wearers of the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... sick of her fussy ways. She made a simpleton of herself over those poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff. One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away from ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... honour in his own country," said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. "This filthy fluff will never brush ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... she's a lady friend of mine. Poor old Fluff, poor old girl! Don't scare her, Sheila. Can't ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... age nineteen, was a student. Being of an argumentative turn of mind, his college companions had dubbed him Philosopher. Tall, strong, active, kindly, hilarious, earnest, reckless, and impulsive, he was a strange compound, with a handsome face, a brown fluff on either cheek, and a moustache like a lady's eyebrow. Moreover, he was a general favourite, yet this favoured youth, sitting at his table in his own room, sternly repeated the question—in varied form and with increased bitterness—"Why ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... was simply waiting for the Main Fluff to come up from behind the Chrysanthemums and say, "We have ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... she carry that feather fan? How could Ella Linton hold it up to her face—hold her face down to it, flutter its fairy fluff upon her cheeks? It was the price of blood. Herbert Courtland had run a greater risk to obtain those feathers than David's mighty men had run to draw the water from the well. She had heard all about the insatiable savagery of the natives of New Guinea. Paradise? Who had named ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... harmony in her character. Poor Miss Ruth, she was evidently suffering severely, as she lay on her couch in front of the fire; her hair was unbound, and fell in thick short lengths over her pillow, reminding me of Flurry's soft fluff, but not quite so bright ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... minute he had to converse with his host, Lord Channelcliffe, and almost the first thing that friend said to him was: 'Who is that pretty woman in the black dress with the white fluff about it and ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... gently poked the red cradle with her finger; for the tiny mice were nestling deeper into the fluff with small squeaks of alarm. Suddenly she cried out: "Boys, boys, I've found the thief! Look here, pull out these bits and see if they wont ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... was forbidden in the great room, and the girls went on with their mechanical employment, turning out long seam after long seam of delicate stitches. The fluff from the work seemed to smother Connie that morning. She had inherited her mother's delicacy. She coughed once or twice. There was a longing within her to get away from this dismal, this unhealthy life. She felt ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... long and lanky, with yellow hair, so light that it resembled the fluff of a plucked chicken, so thin that he seemed bald. Besides this, he had enormous feet and the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long—ditto ditto my song—and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... thy cup will be, e'en were the virtue thine to stop the loom, Thine though the gift the willow fluff to sing, pity who will thy doom? High in the trees doth hang the girdle of white jade, And lo! among the snow the golden ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... dancing crazy, swoopy stuff, possible at lunar gravity, as Frank and Gimp entered. Her costume was no feminine fluff; cheesecake, of which she presumably didn't have much, was not on display, either. Dungarees, still? No, not quite. Slender black trousers, like some girls use for ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... gone. Here lately You bear your little self sedately. You've shed your rompers; you want dresses Prinked out with frillies; fluff your tresses; Delight your daddy, aunts, and mother; And sisterly set straight your brother. Your bib-and-tucker days abolished, Your manners and your nails are polished. One baby trait remains, thank glory! You're still a glutton for a story. Still, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... was waiting, with her dress hung over a chair. He flew to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thin vapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the heart. Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times more significant. It is the unseen ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... scarce dry of dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of bitterness. And the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there in the warmth of the August day, with its scent and murmur of full summer, while the pigeons cooed and dandelion fluff drifted by. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cords. A large brown circle like a bruise was strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers, mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the "poor smell" which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which no ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... that evening and referred to the report. Young Thomas gravely said that it was unfounded. The minister looked graver still and said he was sorry—he had hoped it was true. His wife glanced significantly about Young Thomas's big, untidy sitting-room, where there were cobwebs on the ceiling and fluff in the corners and dust on the mop-board, and said ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cubhood is not a matter of size only. As I look down at this glossy coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever a dirty yellow color, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as young cubs' coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time, used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... entire skin of the ostrich, from which the long wing-feathers have been pulled out. Mabelle has been given a beautiful little rug composed of the skins of thirty little ostriches, all from one nest, killed when they were a fortnight old, each skin resembling a prettily marked ball of fluff. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... hold of what would have been the Dodo's ear if he had had one, but which was in reality a sort of woolly fluff growing all ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... a rough time. Shock—" The door opened and a nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded quietly from the room. "Take it easy, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... up from behind, over the roof. He was carrying a piece of yellow-fluff, part of a lamp-shade, as far ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... these that sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired, brown-eyed, round, soft—just such a creature as ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... on account of the pretty speeches Mr. Burke made to her. She was from Rhode Island and visiting May Strudwick, who told her for mercy's sake not to pay any attention to speeches of that sort and to hold on to the Rhode-Islander, for Mr. Burke said the same fluff to all the girls who came to Twickenham, and as long as it was just eyebrows and things of that kind no harm was done. But she couldn't understand and went home sooner than she expected. I understand. It's lots of fun—the different ways of saying ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... egg and very rarely two. The chicks, which are hatched in January, are fed on the nest by the parent birds for almost seven months before they take to the sea and fend for themselves. Up to four months of age the chicks are beautiful white masses of downy fluff, but when we arrived on the scene their plumage was almost complete. Very often one of the parent birds was on guard near the nest. We did not enjoy attacking these birds, but our hunger knew no law. They tasted so very good and assisted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her; then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh. "We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only forty-six—I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low- spirited this morning; ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed! Wayland could see these airy ships between him and the silver moonlight, dropping seeds—seeds—seeds; seeds of fire flower and golden rod and hoary evergreen; shooting them out in tiny catapults; sending them up in dandelion fluff and sky rockets; catching and skimming the wind in airy canoes; tilting the winged sails to a whiff and sailing, sailing, dropping the seeds of life for a thousand years! And beneath the birches with the hundred eyes looking out from the chalky faced bark, and the poplars laughing and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... your face and brush all that fluff off your jacket. Then pluck up, and like a man go in to the captain; keep cool—you'll be cooler by that time—and tell him exactly how it all was; say you are sorry, and—Don't keep on shaking your head like that, sir; you'll be doing some injury ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... her head and shoulders in place of a jacket and hat. A colored cotton apron covers her skirt below the waist, and the short skirt displays stout stockings similar to Sarah's. She wears clogs, and the clothes—except the shawl—are covered with ends of cotton and cotton-wool fluff. Even her hair has not escaped. A pair of scissors hangs by a cord ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Henderson, approvingly. "Now then, the first thing to do is to make the mother go back into the coop. Here, Mrs. Biddy, take a bit of this nice corn." He flung out a kernel or two to the hen, whose feathers that had started up in a ruffle and fluff, at sight of Joel, now drooped, and ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... with the mallet and then draws the mallet across the string, each three or four times. The string strikes a small portion of the cotton, the fibre of which is scattered by the impact and thrown off in a uniform condition of soft fluff, all dirt being at the same time removed. This is the operation technically known as teasing. Buchanan remarked that women frequently did the work themselves at home, using a smaller kind of bow called dhunkara. The clean cotton is made up into balls, some ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... have escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark, warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but the agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That little wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek, wiped all other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across the gloomy hills she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and bright-eyed Satan, and the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... Down the steps tumbled a pink gingham frock and a fluff of yellow bobbed hair that proved to be four-year-old Ruth Baker. She lived next door to Sunny Boy, and her brother, Nelson, was already marking ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... named for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks from programs] 1. /vt./ To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility 'lint(1)' ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... on the Bowery, Blowing the fluff of night shelters Off bedraggled garments, And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... and blew imaginary fluff into space. Kerry stared down at him with an expression in which animal ferocity and helplessness ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... of it smote April to the heart. She pressed her fingers over her eyes and tears oozed through them, trickling down her face. When at last she looked again the stars were gone and the sky was blue as a thrush's egg, with a fluff of rose-red clouds knitted together overhead and a few crimson rags scudding across the Qua-Quas. A dove suddenly cried, "Choo-coo, choo-coo," and others took up the refrain, until in the hills and woods hundreds of doves were greeting the morning with their soft, thrilling cries. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... "a basket six miles high, even if you filled it up with cotton fluff, would weigh ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... stuff; What's fit for Pholoe, a fluff, Is not for Ibycus's wife— A woman at your time ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... beds was filled with feathers, which assured a soft, comfortable, cosy resting place, especially in winter. There were no springs. The flock bed so often mentioned was less downy but comfortable, being filled with bits of wool, rags, milkweed or cattail-fluff, the latter in abundant growth near the fresh waterways. This was the "next best bed" which was a sufficiently important item to be left to heirs. Thomas Gibson, in 1652, bequeathed to his daughter his "best flock bed, with rug (used for covering), bolster, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... women. 'Twas the fashion t' fish for un. An' 'twas a thing that was shameless as fashion. Most o' the maids o' Harbor had cast hooks. Polly Twitter, for one, an' in desperation: a pink an' blue wee parcel o' fluff—an' a trim little craft, withal. But Tim Mull knowed nothin' o' this, at all; he was too stupid, maybe,—an' too decent,—t' read the glances an' blushes an' laughter ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... their babies? Were their sons to be left on the bank by themselves, now that they had shaken the last fringe of down from their tails and lost the fluff from their heads? Did they need no older company, now that they looked like grown-up sandpipers except that their vests had no big ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... birds are the owls, and very wicked and ferocious some of them look. There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short, hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse that father owl has brought for them to eat. They have a very rough nest, merely a platform of pine-twigs thrown together in the fork of a fir-tree; but they are hardy little birds, and do not mind that ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... trumpets, and every oleander bush would be one blaze of the coarse carmine blossoms that are here called Mazza di San Giuseppe, or St Joseph's nosegay, and a very gaudy rank bouquet they make. But in spring-time the oleander can but display long greyish leaves and pods of snowy fluff, which is blown hither and thither like thistle-down on the air; and it is only in flaming summer that these regions are brightened by St Joseph's flower, or by the still more gorgeous masses of the mesembryanthemum, which clambers on all ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... beaucatcher^; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity^; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus^, moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c adj.; go against the grain. render-rough &c adj.; roughen, ruffle, crisp, crumple, corrugate, set on edge, stroke the wrong way, rumple. Adj. rough, uneven, scabrous, scaly, knotted; rugged, rugose^, rugous^; knurly^; asperous^, crisp, salebrous^, gnarled, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the tall guard gently extracted a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of Brion's pants. He cracked open the car door, and just as ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... a little, darkish room too, but it was smothered in white lace. The mother had seated herself again by the cupboard, and was drawing thread from a vast web of lace. A clump of fluff and ravelled cotton was at her right hand, a heap of three-quarter-inch lace lay on her left, whilst in front of her was the mountain of lace web, piling the hearthrug. Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... said, in a conversational way, as we went to the next tee, "that putting should be so ridiculously important. Take that hole, for instance. I get on the green in a perfect three; you fluff your drive completely and get on ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... You have put your love of beauty, your restrained love for color, and your exceptional sense of balance into the whole establishment. It is a man's house—things are made for use; the chairs will stand weight; the couches are not fluff; one can lean with safety on the tables. But everywhere the eye is satisfied. My bed is beautiful, French I fancy, yet it is comfort itself. The lamp beside my bed is a dull bit of bronze which does not poke itself into your sleepy ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... lonely—but not quite 'torture' to me, with the family so close, across the street," I answered him, and I went on whipping the lace on a piece of fluff I am making, to discipline myself because I loathe a needle so. "Please don't you worry over me, dear." I raised my eyes to his and I tried the common citizenship look. It must have carried a little way for he flushed, the first time I ever saw him ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to time. You know how I love Kate. There isn't any reason why she shouldn't marry me. There's no excuse for her holding me off the way she does. You've got to fix it for me—quick! Understand? This fluff talk about 'devotion' and 'some day' doesn't go. I want action. Now hold on! I don't mean to threaten—I've been square with you till now. Good gad, you don't realize what ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... white feather in his long spidery fingers. He placed it within a few inches of Peter's nose and watched the delicate edges riffle in the Dutchman's breath. Crossing to the table, he leaned over the white fluff and breathed the short German incantation over it. How it glistened in the firelight! He bent closer and closer as he whispered the magic words that Peter had taught him, his breath ruffling the feather, playing about in the fringed softness. He hung up the feather by ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... springless effectiveness with which she brought things to pass, when you would never have expected any result whatever; and she was gentle like her mother, and simple-hearted, with all her elusiveness. But she was not neat, like Mrs. Saunders; the house went at loose ends. Cornelia found fluff under her bed that must have been there a long time. The parlor and the dining-room were kept darkened, and no one could have told what mysteries their corners and set pieces of furniture harbored. The carpets, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... wor thowt to be quite enuff if one wor plainly an respectably donned, an if they had onny pride, it wor to know at ther underclooas wor cleean an sweet an fit to be seen, but nah it's all top finery an fluff they think abaat; but if they'd darn ther stockins an wesh ther shifts a bit ofter, asteead o' wantin to spooart new gaons an hats ivvery few days it ud seem em better. ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the enchanting manner ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... large mirror, and in front of this she laboured patiently for a full ten minutes, twisting her hair this way and that, and using the comb and brush vigorously. Now and then, as she worked, she became aware that a fluff of hair rolling down low over her forehead did amazing things to her face and brought her from Sally Fortune into the strange dignity of a "lady." But she could not complete any of the manoeuvres, no matter how ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... swuff, Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Thus we go, To and fro; Here and there, Everywhere, Born and bred; ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... equilibrium. Build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished for your occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon the material of which it is constructed. Take notice of the signs of decomposition going on in everything around you—the accumulation of fluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the seams. So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march of the law of progress, unfoldment, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... of which came to its meetings armed with musket and cutlass. Their tribunal was, of course, that of Judge Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by means ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of fluff off his left trouser leg ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... he had to bare his Soul to the Head of the Firm. This revered Fluff should have been known ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... notionate mothers hatching out broods under the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the "weedies" added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it, undeterred by indignant clucks from ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or king Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.— O for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah, me! And all that world at ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the hammock; and on and on I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff— But with always a half of my vision gone Over the top of the page—enough To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff Of your hair and your ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye |
