"Alertly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her chicks went across the road before him. The little yellow balls ran briskly forward on their wiry legs, darting at invisible insects, turning their shiny black eyes about alertly and filling the air with their sweet, thin pipings. Nathaniel stopped to watch them, and as he noticed the pompously important air with which one of the tiny creatures scratched the ground with his ineffectual little feet, cocking his eye upon the spot ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... another impression also—that the Queen of England is intensely and alertly mental—alive to her finger tips, we should say in America. She has always been active. Her days are crowded. A different type of royal woman would be content to be the honoured head of the Queen's Guild. But she is in close ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... woke it was broad day, and a bloom of early light lay on wood and garden and on fields and farms for miles away. The comparative common sense that daylight brings even to the sleepless drew him alertly to his feet, and showed him all his companions standing about the lawn in similar attitudes of expectancy. There was no need to ask what they were expecting. They were waiting to hear the nocturnal experiences, comic or commonplace or whatever they might prove to be, ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... cannot intelligently act in concert and alertly; cannot willingly submit themselves to a rigid discipline; cannot exercise authority with confidence and weight; and cannot lead so that others may follow, unless all are animated by the same idea. And they are not likely to sacrifice their lives for that idea ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... impulse to give chase, the adventurer swung alertly into the narrow passage and opened the door to Stateroom 29. The room was dark, but as he fumbled for the switch, the door in the forward partition was thrust open and the girl's slight figure showed, tensely poised against the light ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... very well the role of power behind the throne, left it to Violet to reply. And Miss Browne, who carried an invisible rostrum with her wherever she went, now alertly mounted it. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... must have been—a change had come over her. There was a glad tranquillity about her now which was as a tonic to him. She was no longer given to dark utterances which he could not understand. She was devoted to him in a gentle, almost maternal fashion—studying his needs and moods alertly and affectionately. Something of the old tempestuous ardor was gone, but that, of course, was natural. Harboro did not know the phrases of old Antonia or he would have said: "It is the time of embers." She was softly solicitous for him; still a little wistful at times, to ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... did not fail to keep each of his enemies covered. He was watching most alertly for any sign of rebellion on the part of ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... of the string on his hand. His senses are avenues of knowledge not because external facts are somehow "conveyed" to the brain, but because they are used in doing something with a purpose. The qualities of seen and touched things have a bearing on what is done, and are alertly perceived; they have a meaning. But when pupils are expected to use their eyes to note the form of words, irrespective of their meaning, in order to reproduce them in spelling or reading, the resulting training is simply of isolated ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... leaned against the walls of the Campanile, gray and phantom-like in the moonlight, and, singing softly to herself, was surprised at discovering several little lizards lying about on the stones, their heads held alertly in the air as if entranced by the sound of her voice. She, too, experimented with the varying sounds, and from time to time, and evidently looked back upon the experiment as one of rare ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... gentlemen of this company is to be seen one who looks strikingly like Emile Zola, or the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan slightly gone to seed. All these charming folk make of looking at old-fashioned pictures a very busy occupation, and also in effect a rather mundane occupation, as though they were alertly considering the possibility of making a selection from among a variety ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank was that he had had some sort ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... her pointing. Instantly his expression became furious. And one by one his ears stood up alertly. "It's him!" he shouted. "Oh, wait till I get my hands on him!" Then heaving hard at the barrel, he raced ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Highness," said Ahmed Ismail. Like the rest of his countrymen, he had a keen love for a story. And the love was the keener when he himself had the telling of it. He sat up alertly. "In that house lived an Englishman of high authority. He escaped when Delhi was seized by the faithful. He came back when Delhi was recaptured by the infidels. And there he sat with an English officer, at his window, every morning from eight to nine. And every morning from eight to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... tumbled earthward together. Then after an instant of flurry and noise, Bruce felt Mahan's fingers on his shoulder and heard the stark appeal of Mahan's whispered voice. Instantly the dog was a professional soldier once more—alertly obedient ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... looked thick as syrup, of a deadly menacing green. Sometimes we saw a loathsome crocodile lying with his nose just out of water, or heard the snorting blow of a hippopotamus coming up for air. Then the thicket forced us inland again. We stepped very slowly, very alertly, our ears cocked for the faintest sound, our eyes roving. Generally, of course, the creatures of the jungle saw us first. We became aware of them by a crash or a rustling or a scamper. Then we stood stock listening with all our ears for some ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... doom. The beating of the waves against the boat's side came gently under the rasping, crunching complaint of timber against timber in combat. The schooner's sails flapped softly in the light breeze. Zeke, watching and listening alertly, despite bewilderment, heard the roaring commands of a man invisible, somewhere above him, and guessed that this must be the captain of the schooner. He saw the crew of The Bonita clambering one after another at speed, up the anchor chain at the bow of the destroyer. He realized that flight ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... at him as he moved about investigating, not excitedly, alertly, full of the necessary business of escape. "Looks bad, don't it?" she said gravely. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... summons of the telephone cut him short. Emma's head came up alertly. She glanced at her wrist-watch and gave a little ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... drawing near to the village and passing round the wood. At its corner, the sudden shape of a woman arose against the sportive sunbeams that outlined her with light. Alertly erect she stood, before the faintly violet background of the wood's marge and the crosshatched trees. She was slender, her head all afire with fair hair, and in her pale face we could see the night-dark caverns of great eyes. The resplendent being gazed fixedly ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... World War wireless proved of inestimable value. Airplanes, instead of flying aimlessly, kept in constant touch with headquarters. Bodies of troops moved alertly and intelligently. Ships at sea talked freely, over hundreds of miles. Scouts reported. Everywhere its ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... of the multitude, the grief of the Abbot, the exultation of the enthusiastic Magdalen, were all mistimed and unnecessary. Howleglas, mortally wounded as he was supposed to be, sprung alertly up from the floor, calling aloud, "A miracle, a miracle, my masters! as brave a miracle as ever was wrought in the kirk of Kennaquhair. And I charge you, my masters, as your lawfully chosen Abbot, that you touch no one without my command—You, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... you're right. Was that the bell?" she asked, breaking off and listening alertly. "For two days I've been looking for a cable from my nephew. I sent him one nearly three days ago, but there has been no reply. That's one ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... inner door of the court. An attendant came forward at his nod, bearing a heavy package done up in Crown canvas and sealed. At the same moment a smart-looking young man answered to the name of Samuel Owthwaite and stepped alertly ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague threat in that poise, as if at ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton |
