"Wormed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... round. Swiftly Kim took up the money; but for all his training, he was Irish enough by birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. What he desired was the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay close in the grass and wormed nearer ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... foot inside the tall porch he remembered; the Avocat was kept in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to time; the Cure never forgot, because when the young man went he lost not one of his flock but two; and Medallion, knowing something of the story, had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller's wife. Medallion knew that the closed, barred rooms were the young man's; and he knew also that the old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... slunk into the jungle; but once beyond the sight of the warriors he paused and listened intently. He could hear the voices of his escort as the men returned to the village, and when he was sure that they were not following him he wormed his way through the bushes to the edge of the river, still determined some ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Peter his due. He had wormed his way into the Rastall-Retford home-circle by grossly deceitful means. The moment he heard that Eve had gone to live with Mrs. Rastall-Retford, and had ascertained that the Rastall-Retford with whom he had been at Cambridge and whom he still met occasionally at his club when he did not see ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... They wormed their way forward, often crawling along. Both knew a good deal about traps and how they are set, and their common sense enabled them to see the most likely places for them. They kept to open ground, avoiding shrubbery ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... turned the corner; he whisked over the wall, back into the water pen. Shouts, curses, the sound of rushing feet without the wall. Pringle crouched in the deep shadow of the wall, groped his way to the long row of watering troughs, and wormed himself under the upper trough, where the creaking windmill and the splashing of water from the supply pipe would drown out the sound ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... barrels of the dusky grain The secret of whose framing in an hour Of diabolic jollity and mirth Old Roger Bacon wormed from Beelzebub." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... "you played on the patriotism of the senora until you wormed from her the treasure secret. Evidently rumors of it had spread from Mexican Indians to Japanese visitors. And then, Otaka, all jealousy over one whom she, no doubt, justly considered a rival, completed ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... poison that killed and left no trace behind it; and so she helped in this way profligate sons to get early possession of their inheritance, and depraved wives to another and younger husband. Desgrais wormed his way into her secret; she confessed all; the Chambre Ardente condemned her to be burned alive, and the sentence was executed in the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... from me the sum of fifteen hundred francs. All my youthful savings! And do you know why? To devote the money to charity! I am giving you a straight story. She wanted it for some poor people she was assisting—unknown to her husband. And my hard-earned money was wormed out of me by that silly pretense! Isn't it amusing, hein? Arsene Lupin done out of fifteen hundred francs by the fair lady from whom he stole four millions in counterfeit bonds! And what a vast amount of time and patience and cunning I expended to achieve that result! It was the first time in my ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... there, somewhere, and have it he would, if perseverance would avail. From Jamaica he sailed to Hispaniola. There his fluent persuasiveness came again into play. He met a very old man, Spaniard or Portuguese, who was said to know where the ship lay, and "by the policy of his address" wormed from him some further information about the treasure-ship. The old man told him that it had been wrecked on a reef of shoals a few leagues from Hispaniola, and just north of Port de la Plata, which place got its name from the landing there of a boat-load of sailors with ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tree, Bannister took immediate advantage of the lie of the ground to snake forward unobserved for another hundred feet. There was a dip from the foot of the tree, down which he rolled into the sage below. He wormed his way through the thick scrub brush to the edge of a dry creek, into the bed of which he slid. Then swiftly, his body bent beneath the level of the bank, he ran forward in the sand. He moved noiselessly, eyes and ears alert to aid him, and climbed the bank at ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... French Army, was convinced that he could do better work if he had a suit of civilian clothes; and as he had the confidence of the prison authorities, the suit was given him. He wore it around for a few days, wormed a little harmless confidence out of some of his countrymen, and then one day quietly walked out of the ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... that was for Helen, and hard work! The ground bore twigs and dead branches, which had to be carefully crawled over; and lying flat, as was necessary, it took prodigious effort to drag her body inch by inch. Like a huge snake, Dale wormed his ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... but each child sees that the other is of gentle blood, and women's wits be sharp and prying, and the maid will never rest till she has wormed out who ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Egypt, where the superstitions of a dateless past were embalmed in the hearts of the people hardly less effectually than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of the divine menagerie in their rock-cut tombs. The conception is well illustrated by a story which tells how the subtle Isis wormed his secret name from Ra, the great Egyptian god of the sun. Isis, so runs the tale, was a woman mighty in words, and she was weary of the world of men, and yearned after the world of the gods. And she meditated in her heart, saying, "Cannot I by virtue of the great name of Ra make ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... enough in the first place, and they lay about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little information. They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and unhappy. In such circumstances people ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it. Afterall they were in the heart of a great city. Their machines had burrowed straightforwardly into the grass and no threats of courtmartial could make them sit and look silly till help arrived and they were tamely rescued. So one by one they wormed their way out to fix the ignition, adjust the carburetor, or hack free the cogs which moved the tracks. And one by one their radios became silent and were not ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... followed Him, strangely enough feeling neither grief nor pain nor joy—only an unconquerable desire to see and hear everything. Though he had had no sleep the whole night, his body felt light; when he was crushed and prevented from advancing, he elbowed his way through the crowd and adroitly wormed himself into the front place; and not for a moment did his vivid quick eye remain at rest. At the examination of Jesus before Caiaphas, in order not to lose a word, he hollowed his hand round his ear, and nodded his ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... secret, of which I was myself at that time and long continued to remain utterly ignorant. Belmont, the man who had purposely thrown himself in my way, industriously made himself my intimate, informed me as I supposed of his private affairs and motives of action, inquired minutely into mine, wormed every intelligence I could give that related to myself out of me, designedly attached me to him by intellectual efforts of no mean or common kind (for he saw they delighted me, and they were familiar to him) Belmont, I say, possessed of a pleasing person, a winning aspect, and an address ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... gaudy colors; and men pushed up behind her, mostly men of swarthy countenance, who wore circlets of gold in their ears; and, brushing her skirts, seeking vantage points, ragged, ill-clad children wriggled and wormed their way deeper into the press. It was a crowd composed almost entirely of the foreign element which inhabited that quarter—and the crowd chattered and gesticulated with ever-increasing violence. She did ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... officer. His name was John Sharp—a sleek, keen-eyed, smooth-tongued individual, who never boasted or blustered, but who gave people the idea that at some time he had been a person of consequence. This man attached himself particularly to Arch Trevlyn. With insidious cunning he wormed himself into the boy's confidence, and gained, to a certain degree, his friendship. Arch did not trust him entirely, though. There was something about him from which he shrank—the touch of his white, ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... that, Alice, somehow or other,—for these women are always looking to anybody's business but their own,—wormed out his message in part, before I was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... on to another, and he very soon wormed my whole history out of me. "And your name is Peter Lefroy, is it? Then mine's Silas Flint, at your service. And now, as neither of us has anything to do, we'll go and help each other; so come along." Saying this, he led the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... some signs of a living occupant, but nothing save the fanning of the giant leaves of the banana, and the waving of the tall grass under the gentle breeze of the south wind, was seen to move. There was reigning the stillness of death—that awful omen of lurking danger. A few feet further he wormed his way, now crawling on all fours. Just in front of him was a foot-bridge across the river, made of a single stringer of poles and a hand-rail with which ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... scanning whatever lies hidden within the folds of the heart of childhood. He knew children through and through because he studied them from themselves and not from books. He associated with them on terms of the most intimate comradeship and wormed his way into their confidence with assiduous sympathy. Thus he became possessed of the inmost secrets of their childish joys and griefs and so became a literary philosopher ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... let me not make mischief. Poor lad! Why, girl, Fancy will not be bridled, Bless you, I wormed it out of him near ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... screen in his wife's rooms at midnight, and felt no need of an explanation. How like an Italian. But he is dead. And you forced your love on another man's wife, though you own she did not return it, wormed yourself into her rooms at night, and then—then—yes, I begin to see a grain of truth among these heaps of lies—then when by an evil chance, an extraordinary stroke of bad luck, there was danger of your being discovered, then ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... 'They wormed nothing out of me,' she said to her mistress at night, undressing her. 'But what a set they are! They've got such comfortable places, they've all their days and hours for talk of the doings of their superiors. They read the vilest of those town papers, and they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He had wormed this fact out of her by that time because Flora had got tired of evading the question. He had been very much struck and distressed. Was that the trust she had in him? Was that a proof of confidence and love? The very day before! Never given him ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... surprise, they loitered about the camp and in the trenches, or amused themselves by firing at the fort from behind stumps and logs. Some, in imitation of the French, dug little trenches for themselves, in which they wormed their way towards the rampart, and now and then picked off an artillery-man, not without loss on their own side. On the afternoon of the fifth, Montcalm invited them to a council, gave them belts of wampum, and mildly ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... sarcastic, though he brightened up wonderfully at funerals, reminded Robbie that disappointment is the lot of man on his earthly pilgrimage; but Haggart knew who were to be invited back after the burial to the farm, and was inclined to make much of his position. The secret would doubtless have been wormed from him had not public attention been directed into another channel. A prayer was certainly being offered up inside; but the voice was not the voice of ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... him than Average Jones jumped out of his chair stripped to his shirt, caught up the pepper-and-salt waistcoat, tried it on and buttoned it across his chest without difficulty; then thrust his arm into the coat which went with it, and wormed his way, effortfully, partly into that. He laid it aside only when he had determined that he could get it no farther on. He was clothed and in his right garments when the Reverend Mr. Prentice returned with ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on. Shamelessly I wormed my way into friends by the dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering lot of them, now that I had pried open ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... we wormed our way along a tunnel that had been roughly dug out of the shifting sand, and was shored up clumsily by means of wooden pillars and posts. Any moment, it seemed to me, we might be buried alive. We could not see an inch before our ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... swiftly down the hill, herself in deep study, and she summoned the Angel to the bar of her judgment. The Angel writhed and wormed, but it was no use, and at last with smile, violet eyes, and halo the Angel spoke the truth. Then a great light dawned for St. Hilda, and she played its searching rays on the Angel's past and he spoke more truth, leaving her ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... office,—"thus, then, this bookworm—this remnant of old heathen philosophy, who hardly believes, so God save me, the truth of the Christian creed, has topp'd his part so well that he forces his Emperor to dissemble in his presence. Beginning by being the buffoon of the court, he has wormed himself into all its secrets, made himself master of all its intrigues, conspired with my own son-in-law against me, debauched my guards,—indeed so woven his web of deceit, that my life is safe no longer, than he believes me the imperial dolt which I have affected to seem, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... sadly. The lawyer let the others depart; Rogron walked home with the Chargeboeufs, and when Vinet was alone with the old maid he wormed the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... only answer. "Got down; thought at first as you do, Mr. Carr, that man was the same, and was on right track. Went to work in my own way; was a countryman just come into a snug bit of inheritance, looking out for a corner of land. Wormed out a bit here and a bit there; heard this from one, that from another; nearly got an interview with my Lord Hartledon himself, as candidate for ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our fellows' secrets on purpose to get himself into favour by giving up everything he knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enrol themselves in a Society for making a set against him. The President ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... there was constraint on the part of the old lady, tears on the part of Agnes, and all father confessors heartily wished at the devil ten times a day on the part of Don Philip and his brother. At last he wormed the truth out of Agnes, who told her tale, and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... will, or wills, having abstracted them after my uncle's death, because he had hinted at being able to tell him how to find them, and had appointed the Sunday to meet him, but had failed to keep tryst, and had disappeared. All this had to be wormed out of Philipson, who spoke very reluctantly at first. And I suspect he is as big a rascal as the other, and was in a plot with him to destroy will Number 2, and prove will Number 1, only the other would not trust him, but wanted money down. The reason he did not keep his appointment is evident, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... to see, likewise, with what becoming indifference the matter of Shakspeare's indebtedness to others is treated by Mr. White in his Introductions. There are many commentators who seem to think they have wormed themselves into the secret of the Master's inspiration when they have discovered the sources of his plots. But what he took was by right of eminent domain; and was he not to resuscitate a theme ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... accomplish practically anything. Delhi and Bombay and Calcutta were full of clever lawyers. The point was, he must hurry. And he did not dare trust any one with knowledge of his secret, except Patali, who had wormed out some and guessed the rest, because of the obvious risk of Samson getting wind of it through spies and so forestalling him. He felt he ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... David wormed his way to the edge, peered down, and gasped. Below him, on the grassy slope at the foot of the scarp, was a figure clad in ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... shock Willems lost the faculty of surprise in the over-powering feeling of indignation. So it was Vinck and Leonard who had served him so. They had watched him, tracked his misdeeds, reported them to Hudig. They had bribed obscure Chinamen, wormed out confidences from tipsy skippers, got at various boatmen, and had pieced out in that way the story of his irregularities. The blackness of this dark intrigue filled him with horror. He could understand Vinck. There was no love lost between them. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... a little ragged fellow of perhaps thirteen, slipped swiftly under the very feet of the horses, and, unheeding the savage shouts of the driver, wormed his way rapidly through the crowd and vanished. As he did so, the lady who had so narrowly escaped injury, turned to ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... exposed from the Indians. The wooden walls were heavy and bullet-proof, and the door was capable of being barred so strongly at an instant's warning, that nothing less than a battering ram could drive it inward. The windows were too narrow to admit the passage of the most elongated redskin that ever wormed himself into the camp of an enemy. The structure was long and low, with an upper story, in which the cowboys slept whenever it was advisable ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... She nodded and wormed herself farther into the innards of the transmitters. A minute later she announced, "Full of it! And that's the one part we can't repair or replace, of course. Is it your ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... petitions, Knight of the order of Saint Louis, and officer of the Legion of honor. Once on the ladder of political success, his clever mind looked about for the means to maintain his foothold; for in the fortified city into which he had wormed himself, generals do not long keep useless mouths. So to his general trade of household drudge and go-between he added that of gratuitous consultation on ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Cautiously Garin wormed his way through the thick underbrush until, at last, he looked out into a clearing and at its edge the entrance of the Black Ones' Caves. Two tall pillars, carved into the likeness of foul monsters, guarded a rough-edged hole. A fine greenish mist ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... excitement was over, after Phaon had been brought up from the inn at Gabii to Praeneste, and there had the truth wormed out of him by the merciless cross-examination of Curio and Flaccus; after the freedman had been suffered to depart with a warning and threat to his prompters, after the captured gladiators had been crucified along the roadway leading toward Rome, and the wreck left in the atrium of the villa ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and slept, the sleep of total exhaustion, hoping that a rest would make the shimmering, indefinite picture hold still long enough for him to study it. And as he drifted into troubled sleep a greater and more pressing question wormed upward into his mind. ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... would come with the long hair of one who, having been brother to the red Indian for years, has wormed from his medicine man the choicest secret of his mysterious pharmacopaeia, and who would out of love for suffering humanity place this within the reach of all ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... two boys wormed their way through the jungle, expecting every second to hear the sounds that would indicate that the prisoner was missed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... located the three watchers, proceeded to give an exhibition of his prowess for the benefit of the lonely inmate of the Tower. Using as cover a drift of bracken, he wormed his way down till he was not six yards from Dobson, and Heritage had the privilege of seeing his grinning countenance a very little way above the innkeeper's head. Then he crawled back and reached the neighbourhood of Leon, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... beyond his strength to haul the heavy Doctor with his pressure diving suit through the restricted confines of the inner door, so Carnes wormed his way into the lock and with trembling fingers unscrewed the helmet of the Doctor's diving suit. The helmet clanged to the floor and Carnes scooped up his hands full of water and dashed it into the Doctor's face. There was no response and he was at his wit's end. He sprang for the radio ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... as well as the eighth, were incorporated in the Formula of Concord in order thoroughly to purify the Lutheran Church from Reformed errors concerning the Lord's Supper and the person of Christ, which after Luther's death had wormed their way into some of her schools and churches, especially those of Electoral Saxony, and to make her forever immune against the infection of Calvinism (Crypto-Calvinism)—a term which, during the controversies preceding the Formula ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... wormed the whole thing out of our sentry this afternoon. Fenley tried hard to send Farrow and Bates off on a wild-goose chase, but Farrow, quite mistakenly, saw the chance of his life and clung on to it. Had Farrow budged we could never ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Falkenberg is a man possessed of one idea—to upset the relations between France and England. For that purpose he has been paying secret visits to Paris for the last year. He has corrupted the Press here. He has wormed his way into the confidence of one or two of the Ministers. The thing is a perfect mania with him. He has taken it into his head that the articles which Kendricks has made me promise to write, and the first one of which appeared in Le Grand Journal yesterday—the one you read at dinner-time—are ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looked, and still look, at the essence or soul—at the object pure and simple. A book is a book for a' that. It may be imperfect, soiled, wormed, cropped, shabbily bound—all those things belong to its years; let it suffice that there is just enough of the author to be got in glimpses here and there to enable the proprietor of him in type to judge his quality and power. That is what such men as ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... that finally wormed its way into my master mind," cried Brotherton, laughing his big laugh. "That's what I said before I spoke. You are to drive into Prospect Township this evening—Hey, Grant," called Brotherton to the boy on the bench in the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there were many in the tent, and from the sounds they were in high excitement. At last he heard the girl's voice, and crawled around so that only the moose-hide divided them. Then burrowing in the snow, he slowly wormed his head and shoulders underneath. When the warm inner air smote his face, he stopped and waited, his legs and the greater part of his body still on the outside. He could see nothing, nor did he dare lift his head. On one side of him was a skin bale. He could smell ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... go," said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would not trust myself to speak again. But I wormed my way to a front place in the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man to cross the threshold that had been the Rubicon of my life. As I did so I uttered a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back heavily on my toes; in another second I saw the reason, ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... finished there didn't seem to be the ghost of a chance of a lion getting in; but at night, as I looked out, it seemed frail indeed. Some dry grass was piled inside, with blankets spread over it to prevent rustling; and when night came we three, myself and two gunbearers, wormed our way in and then pulled some pieces of brush into the opening after us. The rifles were sighted on the bait while it was still daylight and at a spot where the expected lion ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... fastened on the scene outside the window. His eyes seem to be searching as if for meanings that withhold themselves. Yet obviously there is no thought in his head. A mood has wormed its way through the columns of figures, columns of reports, and taken possession of him. This is bad for a financier. It is obvious that the umbrellas outside are for the moment something other than ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... suddenly, she sat bolt upright in bed. For an Idea concerning Mr. Bennet, no longer prefixed the Wonderful, had wormed itself into her brain without her having the slightest conception how it had got there, and now it presented ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Florizel had wriggled and wormed their way through the crowd to a front place, and ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... the still air a pleasant bubbling sound indicative of liquid being poured out of a glass receptacle, then a deep sigh, followed by a profound silence. Inch by inch I crawled over our barricade and slowly wormed my way along the ditch. At last I reached the Turkish barricade and cautiously slid my hand over the top until my fingers encountered Ibrahim's toque. Then I gave a gentle tug. Horror! he had the flap down under his chin. Unmanned for a moment I recovered, and I slowly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... general questions, but by degrees I got at everything about his family history and the small events of his boyhood. Some of the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a good bold face on my most audacious questions, and so I wormed out a great deal that was new concerning my subject. He had been written about considerably, and the public wouldn't have been satisfied without some new facts; and these I meant to have, and I got. No matter about many of them now, but here are some questions and answers that may ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... seeking in vain for inspiration. At last "there came up to him a stranger, in habit like a minister, in black coat and band, and who addressed the youth very courteously." He was mighty inquisitive, and at length wormed out the secret grief. "I have got a text from the Presbytery. I cannot for my life compose a discourse on it, so I shall be affronted." The stranger replied—"Sir, I am a minister; let me hear the text?" He told him. "Oh, then, I have an excellent sermon on that text in my pocket, which you may ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... at it!" Alix exclaimed with relish. She loved a struggle of any description, had prepared for this one with sleeves rolled to the elbows, and had put on heavy shoes and her briefest skirt. "Come on, Sweetums," she added, to the dog, who had somehow wormed his way into the dining room, and was beating the floor with an obsequious tail. She caught his forepaws, and he whipped his beautiful tail between his legs, and looked about with agonized eyes while she dragged him through a clumsy dance. "He's the darlingest pup we ever ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... all, had the most thrilling story to tell—of how he wormed a clew to Burleigh's hiding place out of a captured outlaw and beat up the party in a nook of the hills, nabbed the major asleep, but was warned that all the Birdsall "outfit" would rally to the rescue, and so sent a courier to Emory for "C" Troop, and, making wide detour to avoid the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a great god, a very great god—keen, bloodthirsty, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... noiselessly, Jack wormed his way to the rear and when he considered he must be in Tom Bodine's neighborhood he began whispering in a tone that could not be heard more than three ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... One of your men, who couldn't move, poor chap, because of a smashed leg and a broken arm, watched you crawl out of a great heap of stuff. He said that only your head was visible at first; but the way you wormed yourself through the mud was as good ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... and troubled period, not one appears to merit a deeper measure of infamy than Captain Warnesford Armstrong, the entrapper and betrayer of the Sheareses. Having obtained an introduction to John, he represented himself as a zealous and hard-working member of the organization, and soon wormed himself completely into the confidence of his victims. He paid daily visits to the house of the Sheareses in Baggot-street, chatted with their families, and fondled the children of Henry Sheares upon his knee. We have it on his own testimony that each interview with ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... had wormed this secret from him, on the afternoon of the attack, and when, next morning, he saw the anchorage deserted, he had gone to Silver, given him the chart, which was now useless; given him the stores, for Ben Gunn's cave was well supplied with goats' meat salted by himself; ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the top of the stairway, but was too far gone to rise to my feet. Nor could I rise upright on my knees. I crawled like any four- legged animal—nay, I wormed my way like a snake, prone to the deck. It was a matter of several feet to the doorway. I died a score of times in those several feet; but ever I endured the agony of resurrection and dragged Margaret with me. Sometimes the full strength I could exert did not move her, and I lay with her ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... man's son who infested the club; and, being a snob with a liking for noble nearnesses, Croesus Jr. had wormed himself into Storri's regards as far as Storri would permit. Croesus Jr., fond of display, bought a little steam yacht—one hundred tons. After two costly months of yachting, Croesus Jr., waxing thrifty and bewailing expense, laid up the yacht in a shipyard ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... but it is just the same thing as the usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an ABC book, every month, or even every week),—one of these gentlemen wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and he completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom I have mentioned, and one of whose Tales you have already read, I think, came from ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... ace of reaching it before his friends anticipated; for, very shortly after this conversation, he was guilty of the most detestable piece of knavery I ever heard of. He learned that an unfortunate young man from the country, into whose confidence he had wormed himself, was to receive 15,000 livres on his father's account; he invited him to supper, and, by the aid of two villains like himself, stripped him of his last sous. Not satisfied with this, he wrote the ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... car Eric was careful to let Sybil see that he was carrying the paper in his hand. She had scarcely wormed her way out of the traffic and shot free along the Melton road before she nodded towards the bulging strap of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... cover slightly torn and the edges soiled. A copy of the third edition of The St. James's Gazette had been placed on the tea-tray. It was evident that Victor had returned. He wondered if he had met the men in the hall as they were leaving the house, and had wormed out of them what they had been doing. He would be sure to miss the picture—had no doubt missed it already, while he had been laying the tea-things. The screen had not been set back, and a blank space was visible on the wall. Perhaps some night he might find him creeping ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... rapidly than usual, the three young hunters wormed their way over the top of the hill and joined the cowboy. In silence Todd pointed to a distance below them. There, on a sort of cliff on the hillside, were the deer, ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... a riddle to me, how the story of oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches; how ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... came from the corral, accompanied by the squeals of cattle, and informed them that brands were being blotted out. Hopalong longed to charge down and do some blotting out of another kind, but a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder and he silently wormed his way after Pie as that person led the way back to the horses. Mounting, they picked their way out of the grove and rode over the plain at a walk. When far enough away to insure that the noise made by their horses would not reach the ears of those in the camp they ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... from instinct. I felt this dislike and distrust for you from the first moment that I saw you. I know not how, or why, or in what manner, you are a villain, but I feel you to be one! I am convinced of it as thoroughly as if I knew it. You have wormed yourself into the bosom of my family. You have expelled me from the affections of my parents; and not content with this, you have stolen to the heart of the woman to whom my life was devoted, to have me driven thence also. Can I do less than hate ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... explanation. The fort was a Spanish fort. The felucca was a Spanish privateer, belonging to Porto Cabello, and her commander had adroitly managed to capture the pilot-boat just as we were about to fall into the jaws of the Guarda Costa. The commander of the felucca had furthermore wormed out of the unsuspecting Moncrieff all the secrets of his mission, and paved the way for the confiscation of our ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Slowly he wormed his way upward until his middle balanced on the edge of the top tier. A quick writhe placed him atop. Then he bent back, and his manacled hands felt around ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... red tongue dripping with saliva, warned him that mere mesmerism would be useless if he were to avoid a tussle. There was only one other exit besides the door, so without further ado he sprang for ... the open scuttle. He wormed his way successfully through the small orifice with some loss of dignity and greatly to the detriment of his Sunday trousers, flopped gracefully into the water with a splash, and, swimming to the gangway, clambered back on board again. Then, rushing to his cabin, he slammed the door and imprisoned ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... "So that boy has wormed his way into your confidence!" said Mrs. Pitkin bitterly. "After acting so badly that Mr. Pitkin was obliged to discharge him, he ran to you to ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... learned why—when she came in from the porch after Marston was gone. I saw she had wormed enough of the story out of him to worry her, for her face this time was distinctly pale. I would tell her no more than she knew, however, and then she said she was sure she had seen the Wild Dog herself that afternoon, sitting on his horse in ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... men examined their Sharps, and made ready to follow Jones. He slipped into the thorny brake and, flat on his stomach, wormed his way like a snake far into the thickly interlaced web of branches. Rude and Adams crawled after him. Words were superfluous. Quiet, breathless, with beating hearts, the hunters pressed close to the dry grass. A long, low, steady rumble filled the air, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Ireland. Doubtless if the constituencies had been left to their own devices they would have returned members responsive to the magnificent resolves of the people. But the Parliamentarians were astute manipulators of the political machine: they had for the most part wormed themselves into the good graces of the local leaders, and arranged for their own re-election when the time came. But there was nevertheless a considerable leavening of new members—young, enthusiastic and uncontaminated by the feuds and paltry personalities of an older generation. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... briskly. Two Indians lay wrapped in their blankets, sound asleep. Wetzel pressed the dog close to the ground, laid aside his rifle, drew his tomahawk, and lying flat on his breast commenced to work his way, inch by inch, toward the sleeping savages. The tall ferns trembled as the hunter wormed his way among them, but there was no sound, not a snapping of a twig nor a rustling of a leaf. The nightwind sighed softly through the pines; it blew the bright sparks from the burning logs, and fanned the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... moment or more nothing happened. Then all at once something gave, and Raffles swore an oath as soft as any prayer. And for the minute after that his hand went round and round with the gimlet, as though he were grinding a piano-organ, while the end wormed slowly out on its delicate thread of ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... wormed it out of me that we were off somewhere at Christmas. Then she never rested till she'd found out that we were going to Melbourne. After that she seemed as if she'd changed right away into somebody else. She was that fair ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... slow business, as it was being evacuated. Our little procession proceeded very slowly. Most of us walked. Jo drove with two of the Stobarts, watching from a seat of vantage the packed masses of people who wormed their way in and out between the ox carts. The road was blocked by some gigantic baking ovens on wheels. Hundreds of boys, big seventeen-year-old boys with guns, and little limping fellows from thirteen to sixteen, wearing bright rugs rolled over their shoulders, were dragging ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... like the mouth of a fiery cave, widening with every minute as though to swallow them. There was, indeed, a disconcerting crowd gathered round the chief entrance, but Robert was like a general, cool and vigorous, strung up to the finest pitch of cunning. He wormed his way under the ropes, he edged and insinuated himself between the idle and good-natured onlookers, with Cosgrave, tossed and buffeted, but still in tow, struggling in the backwash. At last they were through, next to the entrance, and in the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... but she let him lead her whither he would. And they came breathless to the rocky outcropping through which the pack trail wormed its way farther down the hill. There he let her stop, for he knew that they had passed around the upper edge of the fire, and were safe unless the wind changed. He helped her upon a high, flat-topped boulder ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Montreal, and commenced his studies at law there, with a view of qualifying himself for a seat on the judicial bench of Upper Canada, to which he was vain and ambitious enough to aspire. He at length got access to the Governor-General, Sir James Craig, into whose confidence he so wormed himself as to obtain a letter of recognition and recommendation to visit Massachusetts and other eastern States to ascertain and report upon the state of feeling there in regard to the sympathy of those States with England in case of war with England; but neither the British ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... without at least one visit to Debendra Babu's. Hiramani wormed all Kamini's little harmless secrets out of her and obtained enough knowledge of the girl's tastes and habits to serve ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... upon a plan. He would attract her attention, and reassure her by a smiling greeting from a greater distance. Silently he wormed his way back into the tree. It was his intention to hail her from beyond the palisade, giving her the feeling of security which he imagined the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... uneasy and said Jack Gedge was not there. He would have me believe at first he knew no man of the name; but I wormed it out of him that a month back a fellow had come and taken service with him as drawer and labourer, calling himself plain Gedge. But only a week ago, as this same fellow was bringing in the pigs, a handful of men had set upon him, with a magistrate's warrant, and arrested ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... promise me," continued Trevelyan, not deigning to notice Lady Rowley's interruption, "that she will hold no further intercourse with that snake in the grass who wormed his way into my house,—let her be humble, and penitent, and affectionate, and then she shall be restored to her husband and to her child." He said this walking up and down the room, and waving his hand, as though he were making a speech that was intended ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of which Captain Pott had so unmelodiously sung, had been driven out into the open, and were now doing a war-dance to a jazz tune. Into the domestic life of the Captain there wormed the most subtle microbe of all. Just what to do with it, or how to meet it, he did not know. But it continued to bob up at every meal time with ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... deceit, pluming himself upon keeping his word,—therefore he scarcely ever gave it. The secrets of others he kept as religiously as his own. He was even flattered by certain confessions and certain confidences; and there was no mistress, minister, or favourite, who could have wormed them out, even ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... greatly relished by Godfrey, who burst into a loud laugh. He secretly enjoyed poor Anthony's mortification; and, though he detested the old maid himself, he had successfully wormed himself into her good graces, by paying her some judicious compliments, in which the graces of her person and her youthful appearance had been the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Corfu; and, agreeably to their general spirit of intrigue, they had made advances to Ali Pacha, and to all other independent powers in or about Epirus. Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that ill-fated city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place with his overwhelming cavalry, before they could agree upon ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... wagons brought cargoes of furniture and decorations from Paris. Forty-eight hours before the arrival of Mrs. Scott, Mademoiselle Marbeau, the postmistress, and Madame Lormier, the mayoress, had wormed themselves into the castle, and the account they gave of the interior turned every one's head. The old furniture had disappeared, banished to the attics; one moved among a perfect accumulation of wonders. And the stables! and the coach-houses! A special ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of a German principality," says Capt. Brown, "the magistrates once thought it expedient to order all dogs that had not the mark of having been wormed, to be seized and confined for a certain time in a large yard without the walls of the town. These dogs, which were of all possible varieties, made a hideous noise while thus confined together; but a spaniel, which, as the person ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly wormed his way through the press to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... pondering much on the singular interview she had had with this singular man. Not a word that she had spoken to him had been intended by her to be received as true, and yet he had answered her in the very spirit of truth. He had done so, and she had been aware that he had so done. She had wormed from him his secret, and he, debarred as it would seem from man's usual privilege of lying, had innocently laid bare his whole soul to her. He loved Eleanor Bold, but Eleanor was not in his eye so beautiful as herself. He would fain have Eleanor ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... edge of the parade-ground, and was defying the regiment to come on. The regiment was not anxious to comply, for there is small honour in being shot by a fellow-private. Only Corporal Slane, rifle in hand, threw himself down on the ground, and wormed ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... D'Annunzio was made by men of the professional and intellectual classes I should say, having wormed my way in and out of that vast piazza gathering. The daily crowds before the poet's hotel were composed chiefly of youths, at school or college, others in working dress. The noisiest, most inflammable of all these mobs was that in the Costanzi Theater the evening of D'Annunzio's ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... name beneath that of a cheat and a traitor. . . . Yes! M. de Marmont," he reiterated with virile force, breaking in on the hot protests which had risen to the young man's lips, "no one but a cheat and a traitor could thus have wormed himself into the confidence of an old man and of a young girl! No one but a villainous blackguard could have contemplated the abominable deceptions which you have planned against ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the Captain. "I knew she would be anxious to receive her brother Charles on his landing, and as I had wormed out from her the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... black, and not too still; everything, in fact, was in the boy's favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the dense gloom of the forest. Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... army. Rome at this time was a place where there were wheels within wheels. While on the surface all was gay and peaceful, and old enemies hobnobbed with one another, daggers lurked under the olive branches, old feuds were not forgotten, plots were hatched, and secrets were wormed from comrades over the wine-cup. While I could not emulate the consummate ruse with which the Marchesa trimmed her sails to every possible wind I had my own little surprise to spring at the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... out, flat on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly and ludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to a stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he clambered to his feet again he saw ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... it carefully, then wormed his way through the bushes until he was within reach of the ruined plot. He stretched out his hand and pulled in a handful of the debris, examined it carefully and stuffed it ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... 'Soon.' 'Where would he go to get one?' 'To the Sarebus river.' I mention these particulars in detail, as I think, had their practice extended to taking the head of any defenseless traveler, or any Malay surprised in his dwelling or boat, I should have wormed the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... exerted all their strength, the mast rose perceptibly, and they heard a cry of pain from the seaman as he wormed himself from ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... When a young woman uses such language about a man, it is a certainty that she isn't voicing her true feelings, or that it isn't a normal love affair. So I wormed out of her that he had made ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... deep in thought, considering this knotty problem, an idea gently wormed itself into my mind, which I at once threw out again as being absurd and out of the question. This idea was—to hold the river bed and banks on each side of the drift! To give up all idea of command, and, ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... at last to a point where he lay down flat on his stomach and wormed himself along, keeping in the thickest shadow of woods and bushes. The night was bright, and although his own body was blended with the ground, he could see well about him. The sergeant was a very patient man. Life as a lumberman and then ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else—wormed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, to the shrouded ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... breath there was silence. The man wormed himself back into the shadows inch by inch, followed by the white face of the boy. Then there came shrilly from Jan's lips the mad shrieking of a name, and his knife flashed as he leaped at the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood |
