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Tidy   Listen
verb
Tidy  v. t.  (past & past part. tidied; pres. part. tidying)  To put in proper order; to make neat; as, to tidy a room; to tidy one's dress.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tidy" Quotes from Famous Books



... to Miss Gale; that young lady was now very happy. She had her mother with her. Mrs. Gale had defeated the tricky executor, and had come to England with a tidy little capital, saved out of the fire by her ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... reflected to the camera. When such a plate has been developed and fixed, as described in Section 121, we have the so-called negative (Fig. 83). The collar is very dark, the black tie and gray coat white, and the white tidy very dark. ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... useless. If women do that which is of no value, their work is honorable. If they do practical work, it is dishonorable. That our young women may escape the censure of doing dishonorable work, I shall particularize. You may knit a tidy for the back of an armchair, but by no means make the money wherewith to buy the chair. You may, with delicate brush, beautify a mantel-ornament, but die rather than earn enough to buy a marble mantel. You may learn artistic music until you can squall Italian, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... "looks just like a shop in Venice or Nice. How do you keep them so tidy? and where did you ever get ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... was a little boy who lived all alone with his parents in the heart of a deep wood. His father was a wood-chopper who worked hard in the forest all day, while the mother kept everything tidy at home and took care of Robin. Robin was an obliging, sunny-hearted little fellow who chopped the kindling as sturdily as his father chopped the dead trees and broken branches, and then he brought the water and turned the spit for ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... a tidy lot of money too, has Fillgrave. He's worth six thousand pounds, I suppose; now that's a good deal of money to put by in a little ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... for the corner of a scarf, spread, tidy or pillow-sham and is very popular, as it is effective though simply made. The fine stitches are point de Bruxelles, while the others are Raleigh, Sorrento and point Grecque bars. Plain or fancy braid, or a combination of both may be used in this design ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... the trouble to walk all the way down to Aldersgate here, to peep up the entry where I live, and so have an exact notion of my whereabouts? There has been plague in the neighborhood certainly; and I hope Jane Yates had my doorstep tidy for the visit." Does Milton, answering Hall's innuendo that he was courting the graces of a rich widow, tell us that he would rather "choose a virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... ginger in, before the fire here just put them in the bar, will ye? for well be having the jooge, and the Major, and Mr. Jones down the night, without reckoning Benjamin Poomp, and the lawyers; so yell be fixing the room tidy; and put both flip irons in the coals; and tell Jude, the lazy black baste, that if shes no be cleaning up the kitchen Ill turn her out of the house, and she may live wid the jontlemen that kape the Coffee house, good luck to em. Och! sargeant, sure its a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... obstinacy, always asserted that the room was tidy enough, and that he hated to live in a prim apartment. He said that he could lay his hand on anything he wanted, and that the seeming confusion was perfect order to him. Lucy gave up arguing on these grounds, but privately determined that when the honeymoon was over ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... receptions upstairs seemed duller than ever to her now, and her happiest evenings were spent in the tidy kitchen, watching Hepsey laboriously shaping A's and B's, or counting up on her worn fingers the wages they had earned by months of weary work, that she might purchase one treasure,—a feeble, old woman, worn out with ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... them," sighed Margaret. "They never shielded Henry. How hopeless it is to tidy away the past, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... I was born when I was very young and have been desperately tidy about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months here ought to put ballast into the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... afterward. There's a very brief athletic drill, followed by recall from the drill at 6.15 o'clock. At 6.20 mess call for breakfast is sounded. Right after breakfast comes police of quarters and premises. 'Police' is the Army term for cleaning up and making everything tidy. Then, just at 7 o'clock the bugler of the guard sounds sick call. The first sergeant of each company makes up the sick report, and a corporal marches the men out who need the doctor—the 'rain-maker,' we call him in the Army. Now, with all that happens up to this time the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... striven early and late over a crocheted tidy, spending long hours of her playtime in doing work to which her fingers were but little accustomed. She confidently expected a loving letter of thanks and praise, and could scarcely wait to open the envelope. ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... is, the incipient fermentation passed away almost as naturally and suddenly as it began. Old Cap'n Elihu Gray, who had made a tidy fortune in his voyages to the East Indies and retired to enjoy it in a snug farmhouse beside the Lirrapaug River, a couple of miles below the village, was reputed to be something of a freethinker, but he used to come up, every month, to one ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... Kate; and she went on with her work. She was knitting a "tidy," worth two pounds of sugar, or half a pound of tea, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton

... from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. The ground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi

... to-morrow is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll

... a certain mature and rather elderly precision in the ordinary affairs of daily life. His habits were almost unduly tidy and punctual; he answered letters by return of post, he never mislaid things nor tore up documents which he particularly desired should be preserved; he kept his gold in a purse and his change in a trousers-pocket, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... said. "Clear away the tea, tidy up the hearth, and let me read my chapter while the daylight lasts," and finishing her tea Morva did as she ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... with a rough sponge and a tin dipper to be used in bailing out the water. Always bail out the water after a rain and keep your boat clean and tidy. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... in her documents," he said gravely. "How much of it she owns will have to be determined by an attorney. But I guess," he added, looking down at Nan with a kindly smile, "that the property she holds here is worth a tidy sum, several thousand dollars at least. Of course the orange grove itself ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... 'it's making myself useful. Mrs. Molly, I've taken a fancy to your boy-baby,' she says, 'and I mean to make myself useful to him.' If you will believe me, Miss Jillgall has only let me have one opportunity of putting my own child tidy. She was late this morning, and I got my chance, and had the boy on my lap, drying him—when in she burst like a blast of wind, and snatched the baby away from me. 'This is your nasty temper,' she says; 'I declare I'm ashamed of you!' ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... Bend?" he observed, as he handed his new guest the change out of a one hundred dollar bill. "Wal, it's a tidy layout;—ninety-five dollars, mister; a dollar a drink. You'll find that c'rect—best ranch around these parts. Say," he went on, "the ol' blind hoss has hunched it together ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... Skinner," Easton said, taking the hand he held out. "I don't know that it was altogether your fault. My people at home are rather particular about our being tidy and that sort of thing, and when I came here and some of you rather made fun of me about it, I think that I stuck to it all the more because it annoyed you. I shall be going up for Sandhurst this term, and I am very glad to be on good terms with all ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... I shouldn't have known you!" exclaimed the good woman, surveying the boy with great satisfaction; for, though still very thin and tired, the lad had a tidy look that pleased her, and a lively way of moving about in his clothes, like an eel in a skin rather too big for him. The merry black eyes seemed to see everything, the voice had an honest sound, and the sun-burnt face looked several years younger since the unnatural ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... pushed open, and the doctor and Mrs. Carleton went in. The room was small, and furnished in the humblest manner, but the air was pure, and everything looked clean and tidy. In a chair, with a pillow pressed in at her back for a support, sat a pale, emaciated woman, whose large, bright eyes looked up eagerly, and in a kind of hopeful surprise, at so unexpected a visitor as the lady who came in with the doctor. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... plots have been provided for gardening, and provision made for the children's play, and pictures given to parents as prizes for tidy homes. Soap and clothes and medicines are given here also; a special series of lectures on diseases and the evils of drink has been started. A lecture a week is given—cholera, malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery have been touched on—lantern ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... up-stairs to Millicent, awoke her, and helped her tidy her hair. She bade her be sure and curtsey nicely to the Honourable John Ruffin, brought her into the sitting-room, and presented her to him. Millicent's big eyes were shining brightly from her sleep; ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... promise As faithfully as she might. She cooked, and washed, and mended, And kept things tidy and bright. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... of wind that soon began to puff and gust. The cloud stuff flying across the sky foretold us of a gale. By midday Arnold Bentham fainted at the steering, and, ere the boat could broach in the tidy sea already running, Captain Nicholl and I were at the steering sweep with all the four of our weak hands upon it. We came to an agreement, and, just as Captain Nicholl had drawn the first lot by virtue of his office, so now he took the first spell at steering. Thereafter the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... of the reefs that cut up the North Pacific, was halved between outfitter and crew. If the cargo amounted to half a million dollars in modern money—as one of Drusenin's first trips did—then a quarter of a million was a tidy sum to be divided among a crew of, say, thirty or forty. Often as not, the long-planked single-master fell to pieces in a gale, when the Russians went to the bottom of the sea, or stranded among the Aleutian Islands westward ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... made this flat tidy at last, and have had it cleaned and scrubbed. I have thrown away old papers and empty boxes, and can sit down and sniff contentedly. ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... the room, however, which were placed with an eye to attract attention, and these the Girl prized most highly: one was a homemade rocking-chair that had been made out of a barrel and had been dyed, unsuccessfully, with indigo blue, and had across its back a knitted tidy with a large, upstanding, satin bow; the other was a homemade, pine wardrobe that had been rudely decorated by one of the boys of the camp and in which the Girl kept her dresses, and was piled up high towards the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... had seen a smile more gracious than that upon her pale, careworn countenance.[13] He noticed that everything about the room was plain, but neat and tidy. Upon a shelf were the Bible, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and a volume of Reverend Mr. South's sermons. Robert remembered his father said Mrs. Adams was the daughter of Reverend Mr. Checkley, minister of the New South Meetinghouse, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... use me, mother," he had said when he got home, home being a small neat house on a tidy street of a little country town. "I tried every branch, but the only training I've had—well, some smart kid said they weren't planning to serve soda water to the army. They didn't want ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the alabaster vase which Denas had once thought beautiful beyond price. The snowy quilt and pillows, the carefully kept floor and chairs, the clothing washed and laid with sprigs of lavender in the tidy drawers—oh, what poetry and eloquence of untiring, undespairing mother-love were ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... whisking right through the centre of Arabi Pasha's earthworks. Near the battle-field is a little cemetery where the English soldiers killed in the battle were buried. The cemetery is kept green and tidy, and surrounded by a neat iron fence; amid the gray desert that begins at Tel-el-Kebre this little cemetery is the only bright spot immediately about. From Tel-el-Kebre to Suez the country is a sandy desert, where sand-fences, like the snow-fences of the Rocky Mountains, have been ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... are sheathed and the strife is done, And the cry of hounds is a call to men; When the straight-necked Wiltshire foxes run And the first flight rides on the grass again; May Top-o'-the-Morning, sleek of hide, Shod, and tidy of mane and tail, Light, and fit for a man to ride, Lead them once more in the White ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various

... stained-glass panels to the doors—he beheld the coming degradation of his country. He saw them, like great armies of white or red ants, creeping over the land, devouring all that was beautiful in it, or ancient, or redolent of grandeur. Bit by bit, street by street, the ignoble, the tidy, the pettiness of the parlour, was gaining upon splendour and renown, and the anticipation of the change cast a foreboding sadness over the beauty of his own ancestral home. It tainted even his unuttered pride in his son, who had been at Eton without expulsion, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... distinctly audible in our front, but although it increased as we progressed, it did not seem to be very heavy. A spy who was with us insisted upon there being "a pretty tidy bunch of bluebellies in or near Gettysburg," and he declared that he was in ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... sober-sides, had thrown himself heart and soul into the real estate business and had already made a tidy sum during the six months that had ensued since his discharge from ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... dreamland before this speech was ended. Miles slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and suited to the season of the year. He seated himself, and began to overhaul his purchase, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Grangemouth,' and Chief says, 'He'll get a job all right, all right.' Well, I was busy enough with my own concerns, and, as usual, there was a-plenty to do on the Corydon; but one evening I was up at Cully's Hotel talking to Miss Bevan, when in walks a smart, tidy-looking man of, say, forty-five, and calls for a bottle of Bass. I wouldn't have given him more than a passing glance if he hadn't looked me in the eye. 'Eh, lad,' says he. 'Will ye have a drink?' 'Croasan?' I said. 'Ah, it's me,' ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... from the Spaniard. They wouldn't want to go into action with a lot of bales and cases hamperin' their movements; but now that they've got everything snugly stowed under hatches, they're comin' down to try conclusions with us; and if they really mean business we've a very tidy little ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... to do before she got back to her unfinished dinner, and then Mrs. Williams hurried her through, that she might get the kitchen made "tidy." In the meantime Miss Williams departed, in all the glories of a fashionable toilet, for her afternoon promenade, her mother regarding her with much pride and complacency. It seemed the one object ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... not have been a very agreeable or cheerful piece of work to tidy the disordered house and take command of the domestic forces under any other circumstances; but now Grace found it a very nice diversion to prevent her thoughts from running too curiously on this future meeting. "After all," ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... found her way into a tidy little room, with a table in the window on which was a looking-glass and, (as Alice had hoped,) two or three pairs of tiny white kid gloves: she took up a pair of gloves, and was just going to leave ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll

... the water babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or foul), but leave the sea anemones and the crabs to clear away everything till the good, tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the water babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor shells and sea cucumbers and golden combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man's dirt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... beside the griddle at nightfall, and they tell stories about it that it may not be forgotten. A short while ago, they say, two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like a young woman, came to a farmer's house, and spent the night sweeping the hearth and setting all tidy. The next night they came again, and while the farmer was away, brought all the furniture up-stairs into one room, and having arranged it round the walls, for the greater grandeur it seems, they began to ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... between Beatrice, Mr. Barton, of Barton and Krogman, their lawyers, and himself, that took place several days after the funeral. For the first time he came into actual cognizance of the family finances, and realized what a tidy fortune had once been under his father's management. He took a ledger labelled "1906" and ran through it rather carefully. The total expenditure that year had come to something over one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Forty thousand of this had ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... the mainland to Lighthouse Island and one or two more small islands scattered about near the coast was a small but tidy little vessel that was really capable of better speed than most people gave her credit for. She was painted a sort of dingy white, and large black letters along her bow proclaimed her to be none other than the ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... to do is to tidy up his property and pacify the tenants," said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping voice. "They're not too pleased with the way they are now. The Major was rather short with some of them, now and again. There was Herlihy, and two of the Briens, was talking to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... communication with the town where they sell their corn, oil, vegetables, and wine, and easily getting confused with the lower class of artizans with whom they doubtless largely intermarried. These peasants whom we see in tidy kilted tunics and leathern gaiters, driving their barrel-laden bullock carts, or riding their mules up to the red city gates in many a Florentine and Sienese painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, were in many respects better off than the small artizans ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... things tidy here a little, and then I'll go. You couldn't give the that three months' pay now, could you? ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... much distracted! It is a provision of Nature that there should be some tidy ones, or what would the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reverend gentleman was all right. And he is. The light's burning—you can see it under the door—and he's praying away, steady as a steam-threshing machine. I doubt he's keeping the evil creature at arm's length, and I'm a tidy lot more hopeful than what I was an hour ago. The thing ain't strong enough to touch a man praying to God like what he can. But if prayers keep it harmless, then it's got ears ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... feeling too much the cause she had for strictures upon my personal appearance at the time, to take that opportunity of defending the general character of boyhood. So we surrendered at discretion, and went up-stairs to make ourselves tidy, receiving before the second gong visits of inspection from nurse, who had in the meantime tied up our nosegays for us, and placed the lace paper round the one I ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous

... marched back into the schoolroom. Old Dut, looking up from the books that he was placing in a tidy pile on ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... neat, a. tidy, orderly, trim, clean, cleanly; tasteful, trim, finished, artistic, nice, excellent, adroit; dainty; spruce; dapper, natty. Antonyms: dowdy, slovenly, slatternly, untidy, tawdry, gaudy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... on returning home, were sorely puzzled at the change that had taken place during their absence. To all appearance, a trick had been played on them, for, whereas their house had been left neat and tidy at dusk, there was now a pile of earth obstructing the main passage. However, they accepted the situation philosophically, and completed the rabbit's work by clearing the gallery and adding to the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... Cockneys be, Among your gardens tidy, If you would ask a maid to tea, D'ye call the girl "a lydy"? And if you'd sing of Mr. Fry, And need a rhyme to "swiper," Are you so cruel as to try To ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang

... I was struck by the tidy appearance of the children coming out of school. The usual verdict on peasant proprietors hereabouts was that they do not accumulate, neither are they in want. Very little, if any, beggary meets the eye, either in town or country. We then drove to the chteau, with its English grounds, of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... darted upstairs with alacrity, and having made himself approximately tidy smoked a morning pipe on the doorstep while his daughter got ready. An air of importance and dignity suitable to the occasion ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... resignation. She had a great deal to do that morning; for, innocent girl, she had no notion that it was quite possible to be too early at the Hall; her only fear was being too late. Then there were all the household cares to see to, and the dear babes to dress, and the place to tidy up, and breakfast to get ready, and, any how, she could not be abroad till half-past eight: so, to her dismay, it must be past nine before ever she can see Sir John. Let us follow her a little: for on this important day we shall have to take the adventures of our labourer's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... kinds; waters sounded, nightingales sang, and the cuckoo's full note boomed from the distant branches, but the village was miserable. The huts were built of slate-stones, of which the neighbouring hills seemed to be principally composed, and roofed with the same, but not in the neat tidy manner of English houses, for the slates were of all sizes, and seemed to be flung on in confusion. We were spent with heat and thirst, and sitting down on a stone bench I entreated a woman to give us a little water. The woman said she would, but added that she expected to be paid for it. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... lawyer wrote it on a scrap of paper and thrust it carelessly into a pigeon-hole of the old walnut desk. "Well, there ought to be a tidy sum coming to you, sir; yes, sir, a tidy sum. Lumber is fetching money just now, and you tell me ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... inveterate coaster could conceive a use for. But the good wife Molly, whose canny face bears the wrinkles of some forty summers, and whose round, short figure is so simply set off with bright plaid frock and apron of gingham check, in taste well adapted to her humble position, is as clean and tidy as ever was picture of mine Vrow Vardenstein. Nevertheless,—we know the reader will join us in the sentiment-that which gave the air of domestic happiness a completeness hitherto unnoticed, was a wee responsibility, as seen sprawling and kicking goodnaturedly on the white pillow of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... a baby three weeks old. But what a place for a baby! There were two windows, two feet by two feet, next to the street, so splashed on the outside and stained by the dust and mud that they admitted but little light. A tidy housewife might say, Why don't the woman wash them? How can she stop to wash windows, with a baby three weeks old and four helpless little ones besides, crying around her with hunger and cold? The floor had no carpet. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... always he refused to let Ishmael pension him off, and though as overseer he had a wage passing any paid in the county, and though he lived comfortably enough in his little cottage chosen by himself, with a tidy body who came in from the village every day to attend to his wants, he still showed all the premature ageing of the countryman. He had never married, and with age had taken many queer ways, one of them being a rooted dislike to having any woman except his sister ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... ones have walls of stone) with a thatched roof and a rough stone and mortar chimney planted against one wall. Inside is but a single room, well whitewashed, as is indeed the outside and exceptionally tidy; a bed occupies one corner, a sort of couch another, a rung ladder leads up to loose boards overhead which form an attic, a trap door in the middle of the room opens to a small hole in the ground where milk and ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... always imagined Frances did not know of her mother's efforts to tidy Gilbert, but very early in their engagement she began her own abortive attempts to make him brush his hair, tie his tie straight and avoid made-up ones, attend to the buttons on his coat, and all the rest. It would seem that for a time at any rate he made some efforts, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... bark, and fitting so ill that, if they had all cast their clothes into a heap, and then each snatched up whatsoever coat or gown came to hand, they could not have suited worse. Yet they were all clean and tidy, and the young people especially did look exceeding happy, it being with them a famous holiday. The young men came with their sisters or their sweethearts riding behind them on pillions; and the ordinary and all ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... of fragrant roses which adorned the center, how homelike, fresh, and beautiful it seemed! An air of comfort—American, southern comfort—pervaded the whole. The breakfast was brought in by a middle-aged negress, whose tidy appearance, and honest, happy, smiling face presented the best refutation of the gross slanders of our northern brethren. I would that her daguerreotype, as she stood arranging the dishes, could be contrasted with those of the miserable, half-starved seamstresses ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... round, the old woman tricked her pet daughter out finely, and took her to church, but to the old man's daughter she said, "Look to the fire, thou slut! Keep a good fire burning and get ready the dinner, and make everything in the house neat and tidy, and have thy best frock on, and all the shirts washed against I come back from church. And if thou hast not all these things done, thou shalt say good-bye ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... and Ella appeared together, ready for their expedition. Ella looked her best in a big motoring coat and a close-fitting hat, with a long blue veil. Allen was, for almost the first time since his arrival, shaved, washed and tidy. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... his popularity came on the following Saturday. The Saturday afternoon off was strictly observed on the rushes. The miners were nearly all batchers—that is, bachelors keeping house for themselves—and the tidy men amongst them needed one half-day for washing and cleaning and putting their tents in order. Only the more prodigal spirits cared to pay Mrs. Kyley's exorbitant rates for laundry work, and for the others who cherished a respect for cleanliness—the nearest the ordinary ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man who has seen strange ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... hand to put her arm about the girl. "To me she is—just right," she said, and in her voice there sounded the music of a great tenderness. "Youth is never tidy, Lady Grace; but there is nothing in the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... it. She felt if Uncle John could have heard Lucinda recite it—. Yet he might not think it meant him; he was not haughty, although he was a carpenter, and the beer he drank out of one of the children's mugs. But it troubled Druse. She thought of it as she sat one afternoon, gravely crotcheting a tidy after an East Green pattern, before it was time for the children to be back from school. It was a warm day in October, so warm that she had opened the window, letting in with the air the effluvia from the filthy street, and the discordant noises. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... asks nothing better than to be told what to do; and, generous and clever woman as she was, she had taken no undue advantage of his weaknesses. She had taken care of him as you take care of a cloak; she kept him brushed, neat, and tidy, looked closely after him, and humored him; and humored, looked after, brushed, kept tidy, and cared for, M. de Bargeton had come to feel an almost dog-like affection for his wife. It is so easy to give happiness that costs nothing! Mme. de Bargeton, knowing that her husband had no pleasure but in ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... wind gone round to that quarter? Well, I thought better of you than that you would like a fellow that can do nothing but draw, never shoots over his own moors, and looks like a German singer! But do put the room tidy; and if you must have the nursery down here, put it into the back room, for ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he must work. He would have a tidy sum by now if he had stayed with us. What is to be done? Artists have a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... remember that wigs an' ways never made a man yit. Ez I riccollec' Sam'l, he was pooty good ez men go. I should say he wouldn't be any more of a risk tew yew than I was tew Angy; mebbe less. He's got quite a leetle laid by, I understand, an' a tidy story-an'-a-half house, an' front stoop, an', by golly, can't he cook! He's ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... her was the comfort and arrangement of everything. Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house. And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... by the time my wife's mellow voice called, "Come to dinner"—how sweet her voice and summons were after long hours in the keen March wind!—we had a pile much higher than my head, and the place began to wear a tidy aspect. ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... a bit, you dirty little rascals. What can it be that sets you all a-gaping? Get home to your beds, get home, lazy rascals, Or you shall all have a tidy beating. ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... the living-quarters of the crew, kept spotlessly clean and tidy, yet Spartan-like in their simplicity. Two of the men were sound asleep in their bunks. Three more, who were playing cards at a plain deal table, glanced up from their game as the British lads passed by; but their interest ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... know the need of buying brains and to pay a tidy bit over the current market price for the most capable brains. And he had brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... sir,' returned Mrs Plornish. 'Father, dear, would you go into the shop and tidy the window a little bit before tea, your taste being ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Those second-floor people are not so tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their rubbish out ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... six-quart man. That was why he made, in odd moments of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair ornaments for profit, and was prettily crooked in such a matter as stealing another man's dog. Somebody had to pay for the six quarts, which, multiplied by thirty, amounted to a tidy sum in the course of the month; and, since that man was Dag Daughtry, he found it necessary to pass Michael inboard on the Makambo ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... Land. During this time Blanche was alone in the grounds, where the women work at their minor occupations, such as broidering and stitching, and often remained in the rooms looking after the washing, putting the clothes tidy, or running about at will. Then she appointed this quiet hour to complete the education of the page, making him read books and say his prayers. Now on the morrow, when at the mid-day hour the seneschal slept, succumbing to the sun which warms with its most ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... cottages—to Mrs. Symons's (daughter-in-law to the old widow living next door) who had an 'unwell boy,' then across a little burn to another old woman's, and afterwards peeped into Blair's, the fiddler. We drove back and got out again to visit old Mrs. Grant (Grant's mother), who is so tidy and clean, and to whom I gave a dress and a handkerchief; and she said, 'You're too kind to me, you're over kind to me, ye give me more every year, and I get older every year.' After talking some time to her, she said, 'I am ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... entertained of the becoming in a gentleman's toilette. Mrs. Cass had laughingly forewarned me that not only calico shirts but patch-work pillow-cases were an indispensable part of a travelling equipment; and, thanks to the taste and skill of some tidy little Frenchwoman, I found our divan-pillows all accommodated in the brightest and ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... a little cap placed somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... don object, Michael?" he added, with his customary consideration for the self-respect of all persons in his employment. Michael's color rose a little; he looked at me. "I am afraid the young lady will not find my room quite so tidy as it ought to be," he said as he opened ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... and down the steep streets, out among tidy fields, and back into the noisily sedate city again. We saw where Wolfe fell, where Montcalm fell, where Montgomery fell. Children played where the tides of war had ebbed and flowed. Mr Norman Angell and his friends tell us that trade is superseding war; and pacifists declare that for the future ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke

... but they were so tangled that the child called out at this awkward method of hairdressing, and the Kangaroo stopped. She then licked a black smudge off Dot's forehead, which was all she could do to tidy her. Then she started back a hop, and eyed the child with her head on one side. She was not quite satisfied. "Ah!" she said, "if only you were a baby kangaroo I could make you look so nice! but I can't do anything to your sham coat, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... "There may be a tidy bit of salvage money if you should get the vessel off, but I don't think you can do much. I had better stay out here and try to ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... on our go-to-meetings, and yaller kid-skins, and sot off. There was a purty tidy fixin of shrubs and statooary as we went in (but nuthin ekal to the Bowery Saloon, New York!), and stairs up and stairs down, and gals in opera clokes ascendin ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne

... the very heavens. They would never think of taking a man like you for a servant. Their servants are all young men, well dressed, wearing good cloaks and shirts, with well looking faces and their hair always tidy, the tables are kept quite clean and are loaded with bread, meat, and wine. Stay where you are, then; you are not in anybody's way; I do not mind your being here, no more do any of the others, and when Telemachus comes home he will give you a shirt and ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... he said. "Least I could do, it seems to me. I pulled quite a tidy bit from that inside information of yours; I did really. Awfully obliged, and all that. You seem to have a wide acquaintance among the officers. That captain chap tells us he knew your father—the sailor one you ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... between the aunt and nephew again. Ishmael assisted her in preparing their late afternoon meal of dinner and supper together, and then, when the room was made tidy and Hannah was seated at her evening sewing, Ishmael, for a treat, showed her his prize books; at which Hannah was so pleased, that she went to bed and dreamed that night that Ishmael had risen to the distinction of being ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... said Diggory, showing a heavy leathern bag. "No more toiling in this ruinous old hall, with scanty scraps, hard words, and no wages; but a tidy little homestead, pig, cow, and horse, your own. See here, Deb," and he held up a piece ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... farmers' gigs, which, on a Sunday afternoon, when the principal service was held, made quite a respectable show when drawn up in a line. By the side of it was a cottage, in which lived the woman who kept the place tidy, and her husband, who looked after the horses as they were unharnessed and put in the stable close by. The backs of the gigs were sheltered from the road by a hedge of lilacs, and over the gateway a gigantic elm kept watch and ward. The house in which we lived was also part of the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... of a pretty face doesn't cheer him like a ray of glad sunlight; so the glossy waves of golden hair are nicely combed, and the bright dress put on, to heighten, by contrast, the dimpled fairness of the neck and shoulders; then, the little white apron, to keep all tidy; then the Cinderella boots, neatly laced. I can see you, little pet! I wish I had you ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... tidy here, but at home your temptation is to plaster some neatly folded garment or sash over the recesses of an untidy drawer, or to use anything that comes to hand, any racquet, or croquet-mallet, or oil-can, or thimble; your own cannot be found—you take ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... when she is set free, and bring her here as best you can. And for that you will need all a strong man's strength."—He stepped back, and looked me up and down.—"There are not many folk that would take you for the tidy clean-chinned Deucalion now, my brother. Your appearance will be a fine armour for you down yonder in the city to-night when we wake it with our earth-shaking and terror. As you stand now, you are hairy enough, and shaggy enough, and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... so hardly used by the other gardener. The spring boxes for the verandah steps have been filled with pink and white and yellow tulips. I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... covered with new of the same colour. Generally speaking, it is desirable that the characteristics of an old book should be preserved, and that the new work should be as little in evidence as possible. It is far more pleasant to see an old book in a patched contemporary binding, than smug and tidy in ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... a matter of economy of time and toil as building a road. Almost every cottage has specimens of fine art on the walls in the shape of pictures "done" by Jane or Eliza, or embroidery upon lambrequin, portiere, or tidy. It occurs to Jane and Eliza as seldom as to their fore-mothers, that cooking is an art in itself, that may be "fine" to exquisiteness. In their eyes, it is an ugly necessity, to be got over as expeditiously as "the men-folks" ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... and baby to San Bernardino, for the winter, to work; this house Ysidro was but too happy to give to Alessandro till his own should be done. It was a tiny place, though it was really two houses joined together by a roofed passage-way. In this passage-way the tidy Juana, Ramon's wife, kept her few pots and pans, and a small stove. It looked to Ramona like a baby-house. Timidly Alessandro said: "Can Majella live in this small place for a time? It will not be very long; ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... remember you called it—of the difference made in your social life by her finally established, her perpetual, her inexorable participation: from that moment what have we both done but put our heads together over the question of keeping the place tidy, as you called it—or as I called it, was it?—for ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... the foot of the stair and led her to the dining-room. Another surprise! The room was not only large, pleasant, and airy, overlooking a beautiful garden, but it was neat and tidy, and the table was spotless, with fine damask, delicate china, and beautiful silver. The food was delicious—Elsie had taken her place perforce—and was particularly appetizing after ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... and brought a newspaper; for even in her excitement she was scrupulously tidy. She laid it on the table in front of the abbe, rather awkwardly with her left hand, and then, holding her right over the newspaper, she suddenly opened it, and let fall a little heap of stones and soil. Some of the stones had a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... take part in the general housework. Her duties are solely to care for the wardrobe of her mistress, to assist her at her toilette, to draw her bath, to lay out her clothes and keep her room tidy. But she does not sweep or dust the room or make the bed—these are the duties of the chamber-maid. If she is an accomplished maid she will probably do a great deal of sewing, and perhaps she will massage her mistress' hair and manicure her nails. But these duties are not to he expected; ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler

... abstract inquiry beyond Mrs. Zachariah's scope. "It is some people's nature to like to be tidy," she contented herself with observing; "and others do not care ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... was cooking, Jacob amused the children by showing them how to put things in order; the floor was swept, the hearth was made tidy. He shewed Alice how to wash out a cloth, and Humphrey how to dust the chairs. They all worked merrily, while little Edith stood and clapped ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... can't expect a man to sit in the house for ever," said the prodigal, stumbling in to his brother's favourite sitting-room, where everything was tidy and comfortable for the brief leisure of the hard-working man. The man who did no work threw himself heavily into the doctor's easy-chair, and rolled his bemused eyes round upon his brother's household gods. Those ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... cried jovially. "So this is my niece, Louise, is it? Well, to be sure! Abe didn't overpraise you. You be a pretty tidy craft." ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... was on time to-day. "I ken trust Her with Bartlett, you see," he remarked to his wife. "He won't leave tel she's all trig an' tidy for the next trip. I wisht I could ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... filial in disposition, with a nature as sweet as the daisies that grew in the green meadows about her home, and a mind as clear as the brook that rippled through them. Fond of pretty things in the house, a daintily set table, tidy rooms, and loving neatness and order, she was a good cook, a capable housekeeper and a charming hostess as well. She loved the flowers that bloomed each summer in the wide dooryard, and had enough romance to enjoy nature's moods at all times. She cared ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... since Mrs. Stanhope had sent her away the first time, and hastily packed a small hand bag with a few necessities, made a few changes in her garments, then went to see a fellow lodger whom she knew well, and where she felt sure she could easily get a check cashed, for she had a tidy little bank account of her own, and was well known to ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... be until noon giving us the facts. And if the robbers looted dad's office, even if they didn't get the safe open, they may have lit out with a tidy sum, and we ought to take the trail after 'em. That's what Buck came here for, likely! To get us on the chase from this end. Go ahead! Shoot!" he requested, meaning a verbal ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... of those three vessels in the north-east, sir," answered Needham promptly. "No doubt about that; I know her by the whiteness of her canvas. She must have had a pretty tidy breeze to get out so ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... want for BEAUTY is sometimes more neglected than other wants, but it is important, and we all have it and seek to satisfy it in some way or other. It may be at one time by a walk in the woods or fields, or at other times by cultivating flowers, by keeping our room tidy, by looking at pictures, or by exercising good taste in clothing. We also enjoy beauty in sound, as the song of birds or music ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... Mashutka had no gift for keeping herself spotless. When her hands were clean she could do nothing, but felt as if everything would slip through her fingers. If she was told to do her hair on Sunday, to wash and to put on tidy clothes, she felt the whole day as if she had been sewn into a sack. She only seemed to be happy when, smeared and wet with washing the boards, the windows, the silver, or the doors, she had become almost unrecognisable, and had, if she wanted to rub her nose ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... condition. "If you'd only a comb and a glass in your hand, you'd look distressingly like a cross-breed with a mermaid! You ain't subject to the whatdyecallems - the rheumatics, are you? Because, if so, I could put you on shore at a tidy little shop where you can get a glass of brandy-and-water, and have your clothes dried; and then mamma ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... "Everything tidy, sir," said Eitel, my second officer, and a Zenian. He was thin and very dark, like all Zenians, and had the high, effeminate voice of that people. But he was cool and fearless and had the uncanny cerebration of his kind; I trusted him as completely as I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... herself, lit a tire of some sticks she discovered in a cupboard, and put on the kettle. Then she cut a slice of bread and dripping for each of the children—the only eatables she could find—and after she had dressed Bertie's leg she began to wash up the tea things and tidy the room, not knowing very well what to be at, but hoping minute by minute to get Mrs. Vincent to speak ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ma hert greet tae see him," Mrs. Macfadyen said to me one day, "sae booed an' disjackit, him that wes that snod (tidy) and firm. His hair's turned white in a month, and he's awa' tae naething in his claithes. But least said is sunest mended. It's no richt tae interfere wi' another's sorrow, an' it wad be an awfu' sin tae misca' a young lassie. We maun juist houp that Flora 'll sune come back, for if she disna Lachlan ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... stairs we go; two storeys, three, four, five. As we reach the landing, a tidy young woman appears. She is holding her face in her hands and sobbing to break ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... New Zealand general. "You don't care a damn about the patients so long as you have all the beds tidy by the time the doctor comes around. I'm a general, I am, and you can't order ME about, and if you think I'm going to shave at this time in the morning you are jolly well mistaken. I am down with dysentery, and don't you forget it. I didn't get through the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... the canvas with one's head was to invoke a shower-bath. Soaking in wet weather and broiling in fine, it was anything but a paradise of cooks, yet it was wonderful how well the maid managed in it, and how neat and tidy she kept it. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... in different countries every variety of appearance—from that of a wild forest in which the greater portion of the trees are cacao, to the tidy and orderly plantation. In some of the Trinidad plantations the trees are planted in parallel lines twelve feet apart, with a tree every twelve feet along the line; and as you push your way through the plantation the apparently irregularly scattered trees are seen to flash momentarily ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... or whether I had to tear meat with my fingers. I could march in reserve more than twenty miles a day for day upon day. I knew all about my horses; I could sweep, wash, make a bed, clean kit, cook a little, tidy a stable, turn to entrenching for emplacement, take a place at lifting a gun or changing a wheel. I took change with a gunner, and could point well. And all this was not learnt save under a grinding pressure of authority and harshness, without which in one's whole life I suppose ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... from house to house, asking alms; but she was a well-formed woman, who did not show her serious illness. She kept herself tidy, too, and looked better in her poor rags than many who were better off. Had she carried her nursing infant, perhaps she might have succeeded better, but even the most compassionate housewives either turned her from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Cooley was interpreter and scout, and although he was a white man, he had married a young Indian girl, the daughter of one of the chiefs and was known as a squaw man. There seemed to be two Indian girls at his ranch; they were both tidy and good-looking, and they prepared us a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes



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