|
|
|
More "Curtsy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you!" cried Benita in Spanish. Then, in spite of her stiff joints, she made a deep, old-fashioned curtsy. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... so airy a welcome soon showed a discontented curve not to be belied by the merry words that issued from them, and when we would have escorted her across the fields to her father's house, she made a mocking curtsy, and wandered away with the ugliest old crone who mouths and mumbles in the meeting-house. Did she do this to mock us or him? If to mock him he had best take care, for beauty scorned is apt to grow dangerous. But perhaps it was to mock us? Well, well, there would be nothing new ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... might have been somebody else—a real Excellency—or heaven knows what! Or, what is worse in your new magnificence, you might have forgotten one of your oldest, most humble, but faithful subjects." She drew back and made him a mock ceremonious curtsy, that even in its charming exaggeration suggested to Paul, however, that she had ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... the moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed my bit of pasteboard to the usher; and hearing 'Miss Hamilton' called in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a graceful and elegant, but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged to suit the semi-royal, semi-ecclesiastical occasion. I had not divulged that fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's carpet quite threadbare in front of the long mirror, ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere for thy sake, Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; 90 But thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... two long benches made of split logs. Abe led Nat down the length of the front bench. Each girl rose and made a curtsy. Nat bowed. Each boy rose and bowed. Nat returned the bow. Abe kept saying funny things under his breath that the schoolmaster could not hear. But the children heard, and they could hardly keep ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... into an exaggerated curtsy, thus adroitly avoiding the Duke's outstretched hand and ready lips. His feeble legs failed, he stumbled forward and pitched into the arms of Elmur, who set him upright with a gentle skilfulness that almost cheated the eyes of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... of curtsy and offered him her slender fingers; which, as well as the rest of her hand, he took and held. Its shapeliness together with her beauty of face and figure were instantly swept ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy. "But I think you gave me this by mistake; and now is my only chance to give it back. I am going home in a ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... said that all the country-folk took her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, 'come back at last,' and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were spoken. One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help about ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... get on very well with poor people, George. It's very dreadful, I know, but there!—I'm not Lady Maxwell—and I can't help it. Of course, with the poor people at home in our own cottages it's different—they always curtsy and are very respectful—but Mrs. Matthews says the people here are so independent, and think nothing of being rude to you if they don't ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to her. She regarded it, clasped it in the hand which was against her bosom, and at length dropped a curtsy, though without speaking. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... rap at the minister's door first, of course; and when Mrs. Fairbanks opens the door I shall make my best curtsy, like this:" and Faith took a bit of her skirt in each hand, and bent in a very pretty curtsy indeed; "and I shall say: 'Good-morning, Mrs. Fairbanks. My Aunt Prissy will be very happy if you and the minister will come to her quilting bee to-morrow ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... its flying pigtails swayed and swung, and the pink legs darted in and out. Backward, forward, right glide, left glide, two skips sidewise. Her breath was almost gone, but she rallied her forces for a grand finale. With a curtsy to the bedpost and hands all around, she dashed into the rollicking ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... and not a little stench, to the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies; and you are a little blamed for letting him out alone. He has sunk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... is my cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." SHAKESPEARE, Much Ado ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... mouches, little moon and star-shaped beauty spots, on their faces; square cut bodices, lace stomachers, paniers over brocaded skirts with lace panels; feet encased in high heel satin slippers with jewelled buckles; and gracefully managing their ostrich feather fans as they curtsy to their partners; the latter wearing wigs also powdered white, long coats of brocade, elaborately embroidered waistcoats with lace jabots, satin knee breeches, silk stockings and a garter with jewelled buckle on the right ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... dotes on him!" signed pretty Mistress Polly after she had bobbed her curtsy to my lady. "The brave deeds he did for love of her! Rescued her from those murderers over in France and brought her to England safe and sound, having fought no end of them single-handed, so I've beard it said. Have you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Silly boy!" said she, with her forefinger up; and then when I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and was ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... proud Southern woman said sincerely, with a curtsy. "Some day the 'rebel scout' may thank you also for me and mine." And with a smile that augured friendship when that brighter day should come she passed out of his sight among ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... dropped a stately curtsy, and, taking her candle, went away through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon him and remained ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... death and such dismal bugbears from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... early, and got up and went out into the garden, and, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... her. 'What do you wish with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where you ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... got to curtsy, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... you are,' retorted Miss Squeers with a low curtsy, 'almost as witty, ma'am, as you are clever. How very clever it was in you, ma'am, to choose a time when I had gone to tea with my pa, and was sure not to come back without being fetched! What a pity you never thought that other people might ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... spare yourself the trouble, my lord," she retorted, sweeping him a curtsy. "I can guess what it is, without ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... D****N. With a face (once divine), and a figure still smart, And a grace that defies even Time's fatal dart, Dame D****n advanced, made her curtsy, and smiled: Truth welcomed the fair, the grave, witty, and wild; All, all gave their votes, and some said they knew That her numbers by no measure equall'd ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and I have done," said Rose.—"To Eveline, whom I love, and who loves me, I can speak freely—but to the Lady of the Garde Doloureuse, the proud Norman damsel, (which when you choose to be you can be,) I can curtsy as low as my station demands, and speak as little truth ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... she reached the foot of the steep hill which led up to her home. The artist gentleman was there as usual, a pipe in his mouth, and a palette on his thumb, painting busily: as she hurriedly dropped a curtsy in passing, Lilac's ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Mrs. John and the somewhat awesome Maria—to whom Grandpa and Grandma Burton never could learn not to curtsy—arrived; and almost at once Grandma Burton discovered that not only "farm things," but such precious treasures as the hair wreath and the parlor—set were auctionable. In fact, everything the house contained, except their clothing and a few crayon ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... worth my while, With such small gear to give myself concern: Indeed I've not the necessary bile; My natural temper's really aught but stern, And even my Muse's worst reproof's a smile; And then she drops a brief and modern curtsy, And glides away, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Ingmarsson. In the rickety chaise over yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, fox here comes ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... a dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not "Mademoiselle" after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to indulge ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... ground," says she. "You don't know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik's wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and moujiks' huts. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... his chair and breathed deeply, slowly—and Miss Sarah appeared that moment in the doorway, pinker of cheek and more tremulous of lip than her brother had ever seen her before. She dropped Allison an old-fashioned curtsy, which was an exceedingly frivolous ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... her uncle at Smithfield Market. They then went very lovingly together to an inn upon the paven stones, where Moll asked very readily at the bar if Mr. Tompkins (which was the name of her uncle) was there. The woman of the house made her a low curtsy and said he was only stepped over the way to be shaved, and she would call him. She went accordingly and brought the grave old man, who as soon as he came into the room said, Well, Mary, is this thy husband? Yes, sir, answered she, this is the person I have ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... than that His Majesty might mention—quite casually, of course—to the Prince that he had just given a decoration to Mrs. Poppit of Tilling. And it would make me feel very awkward to think that that had happened, and I was not somewhere about to make my curtsy." ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and to my surprise after taking it she made me an elaborate curtsy. It rather upset me, for I had thought we had got on very well together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... pulled the gate towards herself and, crushed behind it, curtsied to Thomas Batchgrew. This curtsy, the most servile of all Western salutations, and now nearly unknown in Five Towns, consisted in a momentary shortening of the stature by six inches, and in nothing else. Mrs. Tams had acquired it in her native village ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... empress excelling in that inclination of the body which the Russian ladies substitute for the curtsy, and which he justly regards as very becoming, the empress adding dignity and grace. He describes Orloff as an herculean figure, finely proportioned, with a cheerful eye, and, for a Russian, a good complexion: Potemkin as having stature and shoulders, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... dunna ye may t' squoire a curtsy, wench, an thonk him," said Tetlow, nudging his pretty wife, who had turned away, rather embarrassed by the free gaze of the squire. Nicholas, however, did not wait for the curtsy, but went away, laughing, to overtake Richard Assheton, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to her sleek hair and some flicker of a girlhood that had its modicum of grace, flared up in the swift curtsy with which she acknowledged ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... pleased Prince Charming?' And Madame von Eisenthal swept him a deep curtsy with a killing glance ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of something to say to him just to show him there was another side to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr. Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... l'Empereur who had so terribly put her out in the gardens. This was done so suddenly, that Katie's presence of mind was quite insufficient to provide her with any means of escape. The Frenchman bowed very low and said nothing. Katie made a little curtsy, and was equally silent. Then she felt her own arm gathered up and put within his, and she stood up to take her share in the awful performance. She felt herself to be in such a nervous fright that she would ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... came running up in an instant and opened the doors. "What are your graces' orders?" she asked, dropping a curtsy and scraping ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Servants, and idle fellows, of which this Town, says she, is too full: At the same time, Whether she knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I staid till I saw them all marched ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face. In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech,—a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which, certainly, no other orator that ever lived could have made. "My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant, and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my words, if so that any be Known guilty here of incivility: Let what is graceless, discompos'd, and rude, With sweetness, smoothness, softness, be endu'd. Teach it to blush, to curtsy, lisp, and show Demure, but yet full of temptation, too. Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, Unless they have some wanton carriages. This if ye do, each piece will here be good, And graceful made by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... do you Of course I shall be pleased and" (making him a little curtsy) "honored, as one ought to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Henrietta's tone conveyed restraint, even comparative reverence—who never for an instant forgot she once had reigned over some microscopic court out in the far Colonial wilderness, nor allowed you to forget it either. Her glance half demanded your curtsy. Still she was the "real thing" and, in that, eminently satisfactory—genuine grande dame by right both of birth ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was a vain one. The man smiled quizzically at Nora, who acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away the banshees of her childhood. Nora hated scenes, and Courtlandt had the advantage of her in his knowledge of this. Celeste remained at the piano, but Nora turned as if to ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... stood out even in this more sickly type of a barbarous autocracy. It is the fashion at present, at least among some who take the name of "philosophical Radicals" in vain when they curtsy before a Machiavellian tyrant, to dwell with admiring pride upon the philanthropic character of Alexander the Benevolent. All the cardinal virtues are his. He is the Liberator of the Serfs, the Deliverer of Downtrodden Nationalities, the Educator ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as she had read about—from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house was to be ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was introduced to Duprez and Macfarlane, she gave them each a quaint, sweeping curtsy, which had the effect of making them feel the most ungainly lumbersome fellows on the face of the earth. Macfarlane grew secretly enraged at the length of his legs,—while Pierre Duprez, though his bow was entirely Parisian, decided in his own ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... thousandth-part of the unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit in his presence, or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to curtsy? Very well, then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda: say I'm eccentric, say I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will hide under the scullery table, fling myself in the moat, lock myself in the keep, let the portcullis fall ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... said Miss Deborah, who had dropped her nephew's arm, so that she might be more cautious about the mud, and who lifted her skirt on each side, as though she was about to make a curtsy,—"he's right: a woman ought to think just as her husband does; it is quite wrong in dear Helen not to, and it will bring unhappiness. Indeed, it is a lesson to all ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... any member of the royal family, not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... toad-stools, supposed to be clouds. On the stage stood a girl of eighteen, (the handsomest in Kinesma), in hoops and satin petticoat, powdered hair, patches, and high-heeled shoes. She held a fan in one hand, and a bunch of marigolds in the other. After a deep and graceful curtsy to the company, she ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... King? I would rather he ploughed the fields for bread than served your King. Here he is. Good-bye, Monsieur d'Argenton, may you find all well at Valmy; good night, Monsieur La Mothe, we shall meet again in the morning, or is it already the new day?" and with a smiling curtsy to each she was gone. To Stephen La Mothe it seemed a cold good night after all that had come and gone between them that day, the misunderstood question in her work-room, the shadow of death in the Burnt Mill, and, above all, their nearness as ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the door with a smile of welcome upon his rugged features and a handshake and a pleasant word for everyone. His daughter Susan greeted the men with a little curtsy and kissed the girls upon the cheek. Susan was not pretty, though she was strong and healthy; her laughing blue eyes assured a sunny disposition, and she numbered ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... cried a silver-toned voice from a passage outside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The next instant a lovely face appeared at the door, its owner tripped into the room, made a comical curtsy, and ran up to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... could not possibly stay, it would bore my father stiff, as he hated sitting up late; also I was not dressed for dancing and had no idea there was going to be a ball. When supper was over, I made my best curtsy and, after presenting my father to the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... their ridiculous titles which you young people call dancing nowadays. Fox-trot, indeed! And bunny-hug. And rag-time. I never heard such names in my life! We danced the Highland schottische, and the quadrille, and Sir Roger de Coverley. And do you remember your famous curtsy, Esther? And how Madame made you show off ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... she answered, ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... said, and the man's nerves tingled as she rose and swept him a graceful curtsy. She had never looked more beautiful, never so desirable as at that moment. He had conquered so often and so carelessly that he could ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in a rude ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and, being used to this decoy, had her cue perfect, made me a kind of half curtsy, and asked me to walk up with her; and accordingly showed me a neat room, two pair of stairs backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I was to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress, who she was sure would be vastly ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... near enough to hear his words. Rosalind tripped past her three fellow-students with an airy little nod and the faint beginning of a mocking curtsy. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... of the two of us was the more dumbfounded; but this I do know; that I was still speechless and fair witless when she swept me a low-dipped curtsy and gave ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become," said Desire with a profound curtsy and a bewitching tone ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... so," he said. "I suppose there must be lucid intervals, now that Norah is grown up, or imagines she is—not that she seems to me a bit different from the time when her hair was down. Still I suppose I must bring her to town, and let her make her curtsy at Government House, and do ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... said Laura, with a curtsy, not quite so large as those that grow in dancing schools, but, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... shall ride in the lead, Thereafter shall follow the steward and priest, The people shall all be bid to the feast! Pages so courtly shall guide your steed, And beautiful flowers be strewn at your feet, The peasant shall bow to the ground like a weed, His wife shall curtsy to you as is meet! The church bell shall ring to the countryside: Now rides Olaf Liljekrans home ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... decent loaves in a row on the communion table every Sunday morning, which were provided by a charitable bequest for the benefit of the poor widows of the parish. If the widows did not attend service to curtsy for them, the loaves were given to any one who liked to take them. Old Clerk Briscall baked them himself. He kept a small village shop about two miles from the church. He was also the village shoemaker. A curious ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... silent, his memory dwelling in scenes of the dimming past, while Donald's thoughts were busy with the story which he had just heard. The inherent difference between her personality and that of the average mountain girl was explained. The curtsy which she—a three-year-old baby—had made Big Jerry, seemed to indicate that she had been a flower of city hothouse culture before being transplanted to the wilds, and there growing up, in outward semblance at least, in conformity with her ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... has a sort of grande dame look about her—the sort of woman you can imagine in a powdered wig and a crinoline, curtsying to the queen." She scrambled up, and, snatching a paper fan from the shelf, swept Esther a graceful curtsy ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if she ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... exceeding picturesqueness, the evident content, and helpfulness, and industry of these little creatures, was delightful to look at and to think of. In conversation they were at once very civil and respectful (Bessy dropping her little curtsy, and Harry putting his hand to the lock of hair where the hat should have been, at every sentence they uttered) and perfectly frank and unfearing. In answer to our questions, they told us that "Father was a broom-maker, from the low country; that he had come to these parts and married ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... and de hoss come a-bringing Marse Tom down de road. Mammy drap everything in the dust and grab her apron to drap a curtsy. She 'low—'Git dat hat off dat head and bow your head ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... lounged with them to the door of the house in which they lodged, when his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... came round to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his button-hole, slid her arm around his neck ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... said she with equally elaborate politeness. "I would make you a curtsy if I were standing up, but you wouldn't wish me to rise for the purpose. Did you not see, though, anything at all like the ruins of a Roman ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I, and "aha!" murmured she, With as pretty a curtsy as ever you 'd see; "Won't you pause?" I inquired; "I don't mind," said her mien, So we looked, side by side, from ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... was going up Pippen Hill, Pippen Hill was dirty; There I met a pretty Miss, And she dropped me a curtsy. ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... Fibsy appeared. He was a strange little figure, and showed a shy awkwardness at the grandeur of his surroundings. He bobbed a funny little curtsy to Ruth, whom he already adored, and with an embarrassed nod, included the rest of us in ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... whispering, if it is any where allowable, may perhaps be indulged the fair sex at church, where the conversation can only be carried on by the secret symbols of a curtsy, an ogle, or a nod. A whisper in this place is very often of great use, as it serves to convey the most secret intelligence, which a lady would be ready to burst with, if she could not find vent for it by this kind of auricular confession. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... half-mile of road from the station to the village, and gave a grateful shade. The gardens of the cottages were bright with June flowers, and the broad village street, lined with low, irregular buildings, picturesque, but not at all from neglected age, seemed to be dozing in the still, hot air. A curtsy at the lodge gates, a turn of the Squire's wrist, and they were bowling along the well kept road through ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... for the hostess was no sooner asked the question than she readily agreed; and, with a curtsy and smile, wished them a good journey. However, lest Fanny's skill in physiognomy should be called in question, we will venture to assign one reason which might probably incline her to this confidence and good-humour. When Adams said he was going to visit his brother, he had ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... Gresham, I am under more than ordinary obligations to you; I am indeed," and Miss Oriel stood still in the path, and made a very graceful curtsy. "Dear me! only think, Lady Margaretta, that I should be honoured with an offer from the heir the very moment he is legally entitled to ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... shouted out to her to stop till he came up. She beckoned acquiescence, and slackened her pace into a slow movement. The Laird turned the corner quickly, but when he had rounded it the maiden was still there, though on the summit of the brow. She turned round, and, with an ineffable smile and curtsy, saluted him, and again moved slowly on. She vanished gradually beyond the summit, and while the green feathers were still nodding in view, and so nigh that the Laird could have touched them with a ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... quarter to four Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when riding out, she met a poor old woman walking along the road, who made a curtsy and was going on, when the queen had her stopped, and cried: 'You are a very impertinent person; don't you know that I am the queen? And how dare you not make ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... sweeping bow and great assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in his house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, quoted his exact words, making him welcome to ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Mrs. McGregor, making a quaint English curtsy, "and it's scandalized enough I am to see my boy here racing at you as if he was a wild beast and forgetting all the etiquette I've taught him. He had a nice speech ready to say but where it is ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... befitting His Majesty's chosen representative. How did the seigneurs rank among themselves and with the leading English-speaking people? Who were to dance in the state minuet? Should dancing cease when the bishops came in, and for how long? Was that curtsy dropped quite low enough to her viceregal self, and did that debutante offer her blushing cheek in quite the proper way to Carleton when he graciously gave her the presentation kiss? How immeasurably far away it all seems now, that stately ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... In the main hall Alresca's housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went on ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers. You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"—She took a grape skin from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.—"So, for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a piebald; and bless my ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... me, Sir!" replied Amelia. "This is pretty indeed! But you need not thus affront me, because Miss Charlotte is your favourite!" So saying, and bestowing a contemptuous curtsy on him, she left him with an affected air ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... grammar when she went to school. Why do you let her wear that white cap? all the old ladies that I know wear black lace caps, with ribbons. I thought I should laugh outright when she made that little dip of curtsy." ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun's lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging and ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... Cerise relaxed to allow a quaint smile to flit across it. She returned Fogerty's bow with a deep curtsy. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... higher, laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying over the nature of his forgotten mission ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... leaving US, the commander-in- chief(128) most courteously bowed also to M. d'Arblay, and the princesses all came up to speak to me, and to curtsy to him ; and the Princess Elizabeth cried, "I've got leave! and mamma says she won't wait to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... mine," returned Patty, dropping a pretty curtsy. Then they all went to the drawing-room, where Patty was praised and applauded ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... to her feet and bobbed a curtsy. She was never lacking in respect to white people of proper quality; but Major Carteret, the quintessence of aristocracy, called out all her reserves of deference. The major was always kind and considerate to these old family retainers, brought up in the feudal atmosphere now so rapidly ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a better effect, nor more prepossessing in favor of the performance to follow, than the bow or curtsy at the opening the dance, made with an air of dignity and freedom. On the contrary, nothing is more disgustful than that initial step of the minuet, when auckwardly executed. It gives such an ill impression as is not easily removed by even a good performance in ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... years passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... unless they're crocodile ones. Please to recollect in future, my dears, when you speak to me, that you're addressing a member of the Upper School! You're only little Junior girls! Ta-ta!" and with a mock curtsy, in process of which she nearly dropped her pile of books, Gwen retired laughing from the Fourth Form to take her place and try her luck among ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... association with surrounding things, and took my leave. I went away the more gratified that I had a chance of lifting my cap to a matron, dark-haired and comely, (who, I was sure, at a glance, had once been the maiden of Benjie Westham's "troth-plight,") and receiving a handsome curtsy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... at the gate. A tall handsome man stepped from the coach and came up the walk. Betty felt as if she could neither move nor speak. She remembered, however, all that her mother had taught her, and she made a low curtsy as ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... before their father. They put their feet together. Kit made a bow, and Kat bobbed a curtsy. ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wooded seclusions pricked by manorial chimneys or on lodges and gray park walls, while somewhere beyond these last lurked the thatch of contented cottages, at the doors of which, when a member of "the family" passed, women and children would curtsy and ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," vanished in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... up with a laugh. "Peter," she said, "you're Mid-Victorian. You are actually proposing to me upon your knees. If I could curtsy or faint I would, but I can't. Every scrap of me is modern, down to Venns' cami-knickers that you wouldn't let me talk about. Let's go and eat kippers; I'm dying for them. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... ladies. The blood was let, and the doctor rode away. Joab and the culprit Selim went on Rand's errands to the town and to the home on the Three-Notched Road. Mammy Chloe, in white apron and kerchief and coloured turban, presented herself with a curtsy, delivered kindly messages from the ladies of the house, and sat down with her sewing in the little adjoining room. The morning advanced, sunny and peaceful, with vague sounds, faint laughter from distant rooms, droning of bees, and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... They then went very lovingly together to an inn upon the paven stones, where Moll asked very readily at the bar if Mr. Tompkins (which was the name of her uncle) was there. The woman of the house made her a low curtsy and said he was only stepped over the way to be shaved, and she would call him. She went accordingly and brought the grave old man, who as soon as he came into the room said, Well, Mary, is this thy husband? Yes, sir, answered she, this is the person ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... was an arch-jade, and, being used to this decoy, had her cue perfect, made me a kind of half curtsy, and asked me to walk up with her; and accordingly showed me a neat room, two pair of stairs backwards, in which there was a handsome bed, where Martha told me I was to lie with a young gentlewoman, a cousin of my mistress, who she was ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... at the palace gate; a knot of people, a small crowd, perhaps, collects to salute me and gape at the horses and livery. I sweep up the stoop, lined by my own, and the Countess's, servants. The bronze doors open. The Countess advances with stately curtsy; a few words sub rosa, and I—fly into the arms of love, while faithful Lucretia mounts guard at the street side, and Her Ladyship's spy glasses cover ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... have, I'm sure you've never forgotten the droll way that Mademoiselle Folly stepped out upon a stage in her quaint green frock and made her frightened curtsy. Can you recall her low ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... up and stepped to the platform. A smile curved her mouth, and she carried her pink chin high. As she received her gift, she paused for one moment to drop a dainty curtsy and to thank Santa Claus, a proceeding which filled all the other girls with envy, since they had omitted it. Then she proudly took her seat, the long, thick package in one hand. It was wrapped in brown paper ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... small and innosent fish with sharp hooks. father whispered to me that is a hell of a reeson for keeping a man starving to deth and i laffed but nobody paid attension to me. well they all shook hands with the minister and Cele made a curtsy and sed tea is ready and we all marched out into the dining room mother and the minister first, then father and Aunt Sarah and then Keene and Cele and then the little ones and Georgie and i come last as i always do when there aint ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." SHAKESPEARE, Much ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... most reverend sir. I thank you," said Grace, with a curtsy. "Now sit you down, I pray, for presently I have a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought to have ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... says she. "You don't know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik's wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and moujiks' huts. Off ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... him!" signed pretty Mistress Polly after she had bobbed her curtsy to my lady. "The brave deeds he did for love of her! Rescued her from those murderers over in France and brought her to England safe and sound, having fought no end of them single-handed, so I've beard it said. Have you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... my becoming his wife. How I laughed behind their backs! It would have been time enough to turn rebellious when the offer came—which I was quite sure never would come—to make them and him a low curtsy, and say, 'You are very kind, but I must decline the honour.' Did you get any teasings on your side, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... at the Palace, nothing can be more likely than that His Majesty might mention—quite casually, of course—to the Prince that he had just given a decoration to Mrs. Poppit of Tilling. And it would make me feel very awkward to think that that had happened, and I was not somewhere about to make my curtsy." ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... high-road for a little while, and then she reached the foot of the steep hill which led up to her home. The artist gentleman was there as usual, a pipe in his mouth, and a palette on his thumb, painting busily: as she hurriedly dropped a curtsy in passing, Lilac's heart beat ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... "You've only got to curtsy, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: I've known the day when brats, not quite Thirteen, got fifty pounds a night; Then why not ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere for thy sake, Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, Find where, scarce yet unmoving, lies, Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise; 90 But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies; and you are a little blamed for letting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... state cannot, we here see, be safely entrusted to maternal affection, or to the domestic charities of high life. The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... leaving the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... more gratified than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the new-married pair at church, honoured the bride with a smile and a profound curtsy, in presence of the rector, the curate, the clerk, and the whole congregation of the united ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... at the bottom of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers. You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"—She took a grape skin from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.—"So, for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a piebald; and bless my ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Charming?' And Madame von Eisenthal swept him a deep curtsy with a killing glance ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Miss Deborah, who had dropped her nephew's arm, so that she might be more cautious about the mud, and who lifted her skirt on each side, as though she was about to make a curtsy,—"he's right: a woman ought to think just as her husband does; it is quite wrong in dear Helen not to, and it will bring unhappiness. Indeed, it is a lesson to all of us," ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Mrs. Littlefield's pretty drawing-room, amid music, lights, and talk, Miss Crowe was sweeping a grand curtsy before a tall, sallow man, whose name she caught from her hostess's redundant murmur as Bruce. Five minutes later, when the honest matron gave a glance at her newly started enterprise from the other side of the room, she said to herself that really, for a plain country-girl, Miss Crowe did this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... very much obliged to you, miss," said the old dame with a curtsy. "'Tis kind of you to say that can stand over till Maggie's better. She just dropped off for a bit of sleep, and thought as how she would be safe like, seein' that we don't get no mor'n four or five of them things in a week these days—not but what there's more ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... amount of ferment in the fashionable world. Lady Lufton, as she retreated back on to Dr. Easyman, curtsied low; she curtsied low and slowly, and with a haughty arrangement of her drapery that was all her own; but the curtsy, though it was eloquent, did not say half so much,—did not reprobate the habitual iniquities of the duke with a voice nearly as potent as that which was expressed in the gradual fall of her eye and the gradual pressure of her lips. When she commenced her curtsy she was looking full ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the lady of the house the most perfect and unexceptionable curtsy, regarding her all the time with an air that seemed to say, "I wonder if she knows how to return it, poor ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... moves away with an august curtsy. I can't tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, "How do you do?" as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Avenel, father," said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high birth the due homage which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... from it. It's only a little matter of four or five hundred pounds, sir,' said Susy, dropping him an awkward little curtsy, which he thought most charming. 'The money is in the bank, and earns no interest, and I thought I would like to invest it where ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... going up primrose Hill Primrose Hill was dirty; There I met a pretty Miss, And she dropped me a curtsy. ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... at the door with a smile of welcome upon his rugged features and a handshake and a pleasant word for everyone. His daughter Susan greeted the men with a little curtsy and kissed the girls upon the cheek. Susan was not pretty, though she was strong and healthy; her laughing blue eyes assured a sunny disposition, and she numbered her suitors by ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the unwelcome hat therein and closed his fingers over it. "The explanation for all this," she went on, making him a curtsy, "is very simple. We have been invited to spend ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... ladies had risen from their seats as their father entered, each made a deep curtsy as her name was mentioned, and Harry bowed deeply in return. Mademoiselle Marie was two years at least older than himself, and was already a young lady of fashion. Jeanne struck him as being about the same age as his sister Fanny, who was between fourteen and fifteen. Virginie ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... you're Mr. Bracken, Mrs. Bracken's husband?" she said. There was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. There was a shake in her knees, also. Suppose this strange man should be a burglar? The thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. But the strange man nodded curtly and Mary Rose laughed ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Nugent, as her ladyship treats many other people, sometimes noticing, and sometimes pretending not to know her, according to the company she happened to be with. One day they met in some fine company—Lady Langdale looked as if she was afraid of committing herself by a curtsy. Miss Nugent waited for a good opportunity; and, when all the world was silent, leant forward, and called to Lady Langdale, as if she had something to communicate of the greatest consequence, skreening her whisper with her ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Haughtons is reached, and the carriage rolls through the wide open gates. At the pretty lodge door stands the keeper and his wife, he pulls off his cap while she curtsies low, their future mistress tosses them a gold bit at which more curtsy and bow. What a magnificent avenue through the great park, the oak and elm mingling their branches and interlacing their arms overhead, through which a glimpse of blue heavens with golden gleams of sunlight are seen. A turn ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as she had read about—from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... by the hand and they moved toward the door. Polly turned just as they were passing through the door and made her quaint and graceful curtsy, saying, "I am glad I came, and I guess we will be ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... lowering &c. v.; depression; dip &c. (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion[obs3]; reduction. overthrow, overset[obs3], overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bit of curtsy and offered him her slender fingers; which, as well as the rest of her hand, he took and held. Its shapeliness together with her beauty of face and figure were instantly swept up ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... and fifty guineas a-night, "that such a sum should be paid to a woman to stand a long time like a goose on one leg, then to throw one leg straight out, twirl round three or four times with the leg thus extended, curtsy so low as nearly to seat herself on the stage, and spring from one side of the stage to another, all which jumping about did not occupy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... says she, 'and what are you at work upon?' The word miss was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she took up one of the hands. 'Nay,' says she, 'the child may come to be a gentlewoman for aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman's hand,' says she. This pleased ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... high. When rebuking me, she can pronounce a single word, my name, "Augustus!" in a tone that renders further remark needless; and you should see her eye when she says of certain newcomers in our society, "I don't know them." She can make her curtsy as appalling as a natural law; she knows also how to "take umbrage," which is something that I never knew any one else to take outside of a book; she is a highly pronounced Christian, holding all Unitarians wicked and all Methodists vulgar; and once, when she was talking (as ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant and full ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... more. He called her in tones of command, entreaty, expostulation, and impatience. At last he shouted to her menacingly. She placed her thumbnail against the tip of her nose; spread her fingers; and made him a curtsy. He uttered an imprecation, and returned angrily to the house, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... girl," said Maggie, dropping another low curtsy, and holding her little tambourine in the most beseeching attitude; "and you are Flora, ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible, straight down and straight ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing short ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... peculiar. She never comes down into the courtyard now to dance with us. She used to. Then I used to watch out of the window, and run down. It was so jolly, playing with her. We used to go round and round her and sing! 'We all bow to Hanne, we curtsy all to Hanne, we all turn round before her!' And then we bowed and curtsied and suddenly we all turned round. I tell you, it was jolly! You ought ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I am under more than ordinary obligations to you; I am indeed," and Miss Oriel stood still in the path, and made a very graceful curtsy. "Dear me! only think, Lady Margaretta, that I should be honoured with an offer from the heir the very moment he is legally entitled ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing, swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and silver petticoat between thumb and forefinger of each hand and slowly sank, making the lowest, stateliest curtsy that I ever bowed beside; and I heard a low, running murmur sweep the bright, jeweled ranks around us as we recovered and passed on, ceding our place to others ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr Dunshunner, welcome to my humble tabernacle. Let me present you to Mrs Sawley"—and a lady, who seemed to have bathed in the Yellow Sea, rose from her seat, and favoured me with a profound curtsy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... you young people call dancing nowadays. Fox-trot, indeed! And bunny-hug. And rag-time. I never heard such names in my life! We danced the Highland schottische, and the quadrille, and Sir Roger de Coverley. And do you remember your famous curtsy, Esther? And how Madame made you show off ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... his memory dwelling in scenes of the dimming past, while Donald's thoughts were busy with the story which he had just heard. The inherent difference between her personality and that of the average mountain girl was explained. The curtsy which she—a three-year-old baby—had made Big Jerry, seemed to indicate that she had been a flower of city hothouse culture before being transplanted to the wilds, and there growing up, in outward semblance ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Beguine who inhabits it, but of the saint to whom she may have devoted it—the house of St. Stephen, the house of St. Donatus, the English or Angel Convent, and so on. Old ladies in black are pacing in the quiet alleys here and there, and drop the stranger a curtsy as he passes them and takes off his hat. Never were such patterns of neatness seen as these old ladies and their houses. I peeped into one or two of the chambers, of which the windows were open to the pleasant evening sun, and saw beds scrupulously ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see any display of pocket handkerchiefs. No, I can't say I'm shedding tears myself unless they're crocodile ones. Please to recollect in future, my dears, when you speak to me, that you're addressing a member of the Upper School! You're only little Junior girls! Ta-ta!" and with a mock curtsy, in process of which she nearly dropped her pile of books, Gwen retired laughing from the Fourth Form to take her place and try her luck ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... affected to whisper; but her whisper would have been audible to a dozen, had a dozen been there—"I mustn't forget to wish you joy about Sir Lionel. Good morning to you, Miss Gaunt," and then Mrs. Leake dropt an old-fashioned gracious curtsy. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... out of it," said West. "I've told Semple so—though perhaps it ought not to go further just yet. I'd enjoy," said he, "just such work as yours. There's none finer. You'd like me immensely as your royal master, I suppose? Want nothing better than to curtsy and kowtow when I flung out a gracious order?—as, for instance, to shut up shop and go and take ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the brook just then, and she ran to check him up; not an easy task for little hands, as he preferred to nibble the grass on the bank. But she did it cleverly, smoothed the ruffled mane, and, dropping another curtsy, stood aside to ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... Mount Klack by an Ingmar Ingmarsson. In the rickety chaise over yonder the Ingmar Ingmarsson who had lived during her childhood had driven to church. She remembered that every time he had passed by her and her mother on their way to church, the mother had nudged her and said: "Now you must curtsy, Stina, fox here ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... them, one at a time, as we came to them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun's lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... a curtsy, not quite so large as those that grow in dancing schools, but, nevertheless, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... she stood staring at her with her arms stuck in her sides, and her wide mouth distended from ear to ear, with a grin so truly uncouth and comic, that Mrs. Lyndsay could scarcely restrain her laughter; with a downward jerk of her broad shapeless person, meant for a curtsy, she burst out in ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... dainty curtsy, and I could only try and hide the pain which this last cruel stab had inflicted on my heart. So she was not "Mademoiselle" after all, and henceforth it would even be wrong to indulge in dreams ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sociable, affable. Crack, chat, instant. Craig, rock. Cranreuch, hoar-frost. Craw, crow. Creeshic, greasy. Croon, loll, murmur. Crouche, crucifix. Croun, crown. Crouse, proud, lively. Crowdie, porridge, breakfast. Crowlin, crawling. Crummock, crooked staff. Crump, crisp. Cryne, hair. Curchie, curtsy. Cutty, short. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... and once Orderly to Garth himself—brings out her ain bottle from the spence—a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not inelegant curtsy—for she had, we now learned, been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... to let the question go unanswered, although it seemed to him rather rude. The woman unlocked the door of the little wooden house, which was plain and ugly, and did not even boast a veranda, then, dropping a curtsy to Nealie, she stood back for them ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... Madame Cerise relaxed to allow a quaint smile to flit across it. She returned Fogerty's bow with a deep curtsy. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... think of something to say to him just to show him there was another side to it. Not that he gave a damn. Some other time would do. The red face turned with a great attentiveness toward the hoarsely oracular Mr. Warren, his eyes dropping a furtive curtsy in the direction ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... thoughtless boys whitch were ketching small and innosent fish with sharp hooks. father whispered to me that is a hell of a reeson for keeping a man starving to deth and i laffed but nobody paid attension to me. well they all shook hands with the minister and Cele made a curtsy and sed tea is ready and we all marched out into the dining room mother and the minister first, then father and Aunt Sarah and then Keene and Cele and then the little ones and Georgie and i come last as i always do when there aint enny wirk ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... door opened and I saw a tall, thin girl of nineteen, in a long muslin dress with a gilt belt from which, I remember, hung a mother-of-pearl fan. She came in, dropped a curtsy, and flushed crimson. Her long nose, which was slightly pitted with smallpox, turned red first, and then the flush passed up to her eyes and ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... it will be business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily, measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Jan found herself silently whispering, "Curtsy while you're thinking—it saves time," but ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... are, sir," declared Mrs. McGregor, making a quaint English curtsy, "and it's scandalized enough I am to see my boy here racing at you as if he was a wild beast and forgetting all the etiquette I've taught him. He had a nice speech ready to say but where it ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... and "aha!" murmured she, With as pretty a curtsy as ever you 'd see; "Won't you pause?" I inquired; "I don't mind," said her mien, So we looked, side by side, from the Bridge ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... greet a Duke, for such I hear you are become," said Desire with a profound curtsy and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... sir." Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off on ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc., performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and sat ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... continued without any more exciting occurrences; and when the girls reached the farm they were greeted by Mrs. Miles, her two big boys, and the farmer himself. Here Harris dropped a curtsy and disappeared. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... peruke. William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... repeated to-day, for the Queen's birthday. On Thursday they go to the play; on Friday the Queen gives them a ball and dinner at her house; on Saturday they dine with the Princess at Kew, and return for the Opera; and on Wednesday—why, they make their bow and curtsy, and sail. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... idle fellows, of which this Town, says she, is too full: At the same time, Whether she knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, should give her a civil Salute, she should curtsy and be humble, nevertheless. Her innocent forsooths, yess, and't please yous, and she would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumpkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I staid till I saw them all marched out to take Coach; the brother ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... excelling in that inclination of the body which the Russian ladies substitute for the curtsy, and which he justly regards as very becoming, the empress adding dignity and grace. He describes Orloff as an herculean figure, finely proportioned, with a cheerful eye, and, for a Russian, a good complexion: Potemkin as having stature and shoulders, but being ill limbed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... which it was charming to hear how my friend Samuel WOULD speak, what he called French, to a lady who could not understand one syllable of his jargon—the mutual hackney-coaches drew up; Madame la Baronne waved to the Captain a graceful French curtsy. "Adyou!" said Samuel, and waved ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and is held once a year for the purpose of presenting debutantes, brides and ladies whose husbands have recently been promoted, or raised to the rank of nobility. They pass one by one before the throne, curtsy profoundly to each of their majesties, while the grand chamberlain mentions their names, and then leave the imperial presence by a side exit. No one kisses the empress's hand, as is the case with Queen Victoria in England, nor ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his button-hole, slid her arm around his neck and kissed ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... him her hand, with a sort of curtsy. It was a pretty greeting, although somewhat mannered; and Dick felt himself among the gods. She led him through the kitchen to a parlour, and ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vacation they met on the street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... I have explained everything to madame—and she expects you!" She flitted past him to the door, threw it open and dropped him a pretty, impertinent curtsy. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... knowed so long to make scandal iv me before me neighbors,' she says. 'Mrs. Scanlan,' says he, 'we want th' boy. I'm sorry, ma'am, but he's mixed up in a bad scrape, an' we must have him,' he says. She made a curtsy to thim, an' wint indures. 'Twas less than a minyit before she come out, clingin' to th' la-ad's ar-rm. 'He'll go,' she says. 'Thanks be, though he's wild, they'se no crime on his head. Is there, dear?' 'No,' says ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... With curtsy to each other / went full many a maid, The knights a willing service / unto the ladies paid. After the greeting sat they / adown upon the green; Knew many then each other / that hitherto had ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Mistress Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town treasures, which little country girls, sick or well, dearly ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... one by one, each with his bow or her curtsy. Mammy paused a moment to deliver her pronunciamento. "Don' you fret, marster! I ain' gwine let er soul tech one er my chillern!" Julius followed her. "Dat's so, marster! An' Gawd Ermoughty knows I'se gwine always prohibit jes' de same care ob de ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... disappointed; for the hostess was no sooner asked the question than she readily agreed; and, with a curtsy and smile, wished them a good journey. However, lest Fanny's skill in physiognomy should be called in question, we will venture to assign one reason which might probably incline her to this confidence and good-humour. When Adams said he was going to visit his brother, he ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher and I'll use it.... And when Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance—advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, thread the needle, and back to your place—Fezziwig "cut" so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... know what to do? You give your card to the aide-de-camp, he passes it on and spreads out your train, and you walk right up to His Excellency; he kisses you on both cheeks, you curtsy, and, at the far door, two aides-de-camp pick up your train and place ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... sank into an exaggerated curtsy, thus adroitly avoiding the Duke's outstretched hand and ready lips. His feeble legs failed, he stumbled forward and pitched into the arms of Elmur, who set him upright with a gentle skilfulness that almost cheated the eyes of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... banish the idea of death and such dismal bugbears from their minds. "Mais, songez, Mademoiselle," quoth he, interrupted in some observation rather better worth hearing, "que tout le monde ne possede pas votre force de caractere;" a compliment to which the young lady assented with a grateful curtsy. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... "Servo suo"; the humble words were as much her daily use as Padre nostro or Ave Maria. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh "Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip; but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for nothing, went away to find the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and the man's nerves tingled as she rose and swept him a graceful curtsy. She had never looked more beautiful, never so desirable as at that moment. He had conquered so often and so carelessly that he could not think of ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... is the beginning of infinity. Even the dirtiest coal-boat that lies beached in the harbour, a mere hulk of utilities that are taken away by dirty men in dirty carts, will in a day or two lift itself from the mud on a full tide and float away like a spirit into the sunset or curtsy to the image of the North Star. Mystery lies over the sea. Every ship is bound for Thule. That, perhaps, is why men are content day after day to stand on the pier-head and to gaze at the water and the ships and sailors running up and down the decks and ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... trouble, my lord," she retorted, sweeping him a curtsy. "I can guess what it is, without your ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... very church in which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, and exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by English Independents. Moreover, I am a Doctor too. Agnes and Janet, get up this moment and curtsy to his Reverence! John and Charles, remember the dream of the sheaves! I descended from kilts and Donald Dhus? Na, na, I won't ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... not stop at the men's workshop. She finds the steward, bobs her curtsy to him, and gives up her fowl and eggs, and then she hurries off to the women's part of the house, to gossip with the serfs there. The Franks used at this time to keep the women of their household in a separate quarter, where they did the work which was considered ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... who was a very rare church-goer, had been to Mrs. Hackit to beg a bit of old crape, and with this sign of grief pinned on her little coal-scuttle bonnet, was seen dropping her curtsy opposite the reading-desk. This manifestation of respect towards Mr. Gilfil's memory on the part of Dame Fripp had no theological bearing whatever. It was due to an event which had occurred some years back, and which, I am ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... her tone, "there are other things to talk of. Will you please take a chair, sir," and she dropped a curtsy. "Didn't I tell you, Jack," she said, laughing at the astonishment in Jack's face, "that when you congratulated me on getting my post here and called me Miss Hardy, that the time would come when I should say, Sir to you. It has come, Jack, sooner than we expected, but I knew ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... I had lost all remembrance of the text from which she had deduced her melodious sermon. There was, I thought, more mechanical tact than expression in her performance, but it was enthusiastically applauded for all that; and with an awkward curtsy—much like Sydney Smith's little servant-maid Bunch's "bobbing to the centre of the earth"—the red-cheeked little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... better representation of the character. It was well dressed, and turned out a first-rate bit of acting—very far superior to any amateur performance I ever saw, and, with practice, would have equalled that of any actress on the stage. Her very curtsy was comedy itself. When I recovered my breath a little, I was able to attend to the dialogue which was going on, which was hardly less ridiculous than the strange disguises round me. "Now, Miss Hardcastle," (Marlow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... ducking suddenly with a quaint curtsy. Her voice was shrill and piping, but softened somewhat by age. "Is dis yere whar Mistuh Ryduh lib, suh?" she asked, looking around her doubtfully, and glancing into the open windows, through which some of the preparations for the evening ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the child took hold of her arm in fear of losing her balance. "That was a 'thank-ye-ma'am,'" she said, as the wagon suddenly bounded over a little hillock. "Didn't you see what a pretty curtsy ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... best, if I could keep myself clear until Monday, the 7th of April. But in case that day should be too late for the beginning of your brief visit with a deference to any other engagements you have in contemplation, then fix an earlier one, and I will make "Little Dorrit" curtsy to it. My recent visit to London and my having only just now come back have thrown me a little behindhand; but I hope to come up with a wet ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... cottage set back a little way from the road. A young woman, with a pale face and sad-looking blue eyes, was standing at the gate with a baby in her arms. As the phaeton drove up, a faint colour came to her white face; she dropped a little curtsy and was turning away, but stopped when the old lady called to her. The young woman approached, with an air of timidity, of passive obedience, which was ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... for troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy. "But I think you gave me this by mistake; and now is my only chance to give it back. I am going ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... impetuosity, drew up her slender height, and made him a curtsy, a flower bending buoyantly to the breeze, and springing ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... the Captain were sitting side by side, and the Gulab, when she had finished the song, had swept her sinuous lithe form back in a graceful curtsy in front of the two, and, as if by accident, a red rose had floated to the feet of Captain Barlow. Surely her soft, dark, languorous ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... meeting a young Englishman fresh from the old country, and full of its prejudices, was entertained by him with reflections on race, and condolences at having to associate with half-castes. At last he inquired how long she had been in the country? Making him a stately curtsy, she answered— ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... moment came when, Lady Baird having preceded me, I handed my bit of pasteboard to the usher; and hearing "Miss Hamilton" called in stentorian accents, I went forward in my turn, and executed a graceful and elegant but not too profound curtsy, carefully arranged to suit the semi-royal, semi-ecclesiastical occasion. I had not divulged the fact even to Salemina, but I had worn Mrs. M'Collop's carpet quite threadbare in front of the long mirror, and had curtsied to myself so many times ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... gate. A tall handsome man stepped from the coach and came up the walk. Betty felt as if she could neither move nor speak. She remembered, however, all that her mother had taught her, and she made a low curtsy as the gentleman ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... moment she returned, dropped him a bit of curtsy, and informed him that her mistress ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... to curtsy," said Nell, laughing softly. "But one can't curtsy on a horse, alas! Please let me off with a bow," and she bent low in the saddle, with all a girl's pretty irony. "But don't be sparing of those same hints, please. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... and got under the low roof. The rain fell in torrents; the sky was completely overcast. In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network of fast-falling drops. Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov was vanishing. A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook herself, said with a curtsy: 'Out of the rain, good lady,' and with many sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well. Elena put her hand into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into her face, yellow and wrinkled now, though once handsome. 'Thank you, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... lodged, when his mistress, perceiving, by the countenance of her comrade, that she was on the point of desiring him to walk in, checked her intention with a frown; then, turning to Mr. Pickle, dropped him a very formal curtsy, seized the other young lady by the arm, and saying, "Come, cousin Sophy," vanished in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... would rather he ploughed the fields for bread than served your King. Here he is. Good-bye, Monsieur d'Argenton, may you find all well at Valmy; good night, Monsieur La Mothe, we shall meet again in the morning, or is it already the new day?" and with a smiling curtsy to each she was gone. To Stephen La Mothe it seemed a cold good night after all that had come and gone between them that day, the misunderstood question in her work-room, the shadow of death in the Burnt Mill, and, above ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... many sad days that have been spent in service, and now so very few of the employers are to be seen; and when they are with us we feel that we are still respected by them, for there is the usual welcome—for they would look back the same as we do on days that are gone by. In our young days the curtsy was fashionable; you would see every man's daughter bobbing whenever they met the lady or gentlemen or when they met their teacher. The custom is gone now, and we wonder why; but the days are changed, and some call it education that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... premium"——So saying, he entered the parlour and made his bow to Mrs. Dods, who, seeing what she called a decent, purpose-like body, and aware that his pocket was replenished with English and Scottish paper currency, returned the compliment with her best curtsy. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... my cousin's duty to make a curtsy, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy, and say, "Father, as it pleases me." ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... so that any be Known guilty here of incivility: Let what is graceless, discompos'd, and rude, With sweetness, smoothness, softness, be endu'd. Teach it to blush, to curtsy, lisp, and show Demure, but yet full of temptation, too. Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, Unless they have some wanton carriages. This if ye do, each piece will here be good, And graceful made by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, 'come back at last,' and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were spoken. One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help about the cart, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to the door. He met the landlady just entering with a basket of eggs in her hand. She dropped him a curtsy. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... much her daily use as Padre nostro or Ave Maria. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh "Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip; but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for nothing, went away to find ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... astonishment, on being told that Taglioni was paid a hundred and fifty guineas a-night, "that such a sum should be paid to a woman to stand a long time like a goose on one leg, then to throw one leg straight out, twirl round three or four times with the leg thus extended, curtsy so low as nearly to seat herself on the stage, and spring from one side of the stage to another, all which jumping about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Wentworth gave a second glance at her as he dropped languidly into a chair, and asked Elsworthy if there was any news. Mrs Elsworthy, who had been telling the adventures of the holiday to her goodman, gathered up her basket of eggs and her nosegay, and made the clergyman a little curtsy as she hurried away; for the clerk's wife was a highly respectable woman, and knew her own place. But Rosa, who was only a kind of kitten, and had privileges, stayed. Mr Wentworth was by far the most magnificent figure she had ever seen in her little life. She looked at him with awe ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the new-married pair at church, honoured the bride with a smile and a profound curtsy, in presence of the rector, the curate, the clerk, and the whole congregation of the united parishes of Waverley ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... she, with her forefinger up; and then when I tried to lay hands on her again, she gave a little dainty curtsy, and was off ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had risen from their seats as their father entered, each made a deep curtsy as her name was mentioned, and Harry bowed deeply in return. Mademoiselle Marie was two years at least older than himself, and was already a young lady of fashion. Jeanne struck him as being about the ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... and the clanging of the garden bell opportunely broke up the gathering, and sent the girls hurrying helter-skelter along the terrace in the direction of the house. Irene paused for a moment to look back at the sea and the sky, and the distant twinkling lights, and to curtsy to the crescent moon that hung like a good omen in the dome of blue. There was a scent of fragrant lemon blossoms in the air, and she trod fallen rose petals under her feet. Suddenly a remembrance of the desolation of Miss Gordon's garden in a February ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... as she came some minor French refrain and tapping at the uncared for window as she passed. She might have been attractive once, and Crabbe was not a very young man now. Some graces she must have had; a way of catching at the side of her skirt, suggesting a curtsy; plenty of fair hair and a child's smile playing at the corners of her mouth—not so foolish then. But wise or foolish, she had been another man's wife, unless he had encountered her in her ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... him—Continental fashion—a bit of curtsy and offered him her slender fingers; which, as well as the rest of her hand, he took and held. Its shapeliness together with her beauty of face and figure were instantly swept up by ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... much obliged to you, miss," said the old dame with a curtsy. "'Tis kind of you to say that can stand over till Maggie's better. She just dropped off for a bit of sleep, and thought as how she would be safe like, seein' that we don't get no mor'n four or five of them things in a week these ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the girl, with a curtsy, "de baby 's be'n oryin' an' frettin' fer Miss Rena, an' I 'lowed she mought want me ter fetch 'im, ef ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of the gravest scandals of our present penal system the ease with which a girl who makes a pretty curtsy to the court, and who appears to be shamefaced when giving her evidence, is believed by the judge or magistrate. The dangers involved in this are obvious to many, especially to those who have much to ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing short of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... lift your eyes from the ground," says she. "You don't know what to ask. I am tired of being a peasant woman and a moujik's wife. I was made for something better. I want to be a lady, and have good people to do the work, and see folk bow and curtsy to me when I meet them walking abroad. Go back at once to the fish, you old fool, and ask him for that, instead of bothering him for little trifles like bread troughs and moujiks' huts. Off ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... his snug little place of business, with the face and the heart of a school-boy. When Bobby, draggled by three days of wet weather, came in for his dinner, Mr. Traill scanned him critically and in some perplexity. At the end of the day's work, as Ailie was dropping her quaint curtsy and giving her adored employer a shy "gude nicht," he had a sudden thought that made him ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... back a little way from the road. A young woman, with a pale face and sad-looking blue eyes, was standing at the gate with a baby in her arms. As the phaeton drove up, a faint colour came to her white face; she dropped a little curtsy and was turning away, but stopped when the old lady called to her. The young woman approached, with an air of timidity, of passive obedience, which was as pathetic as ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, Mozart—distinguished ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden, trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its cheerfulness has ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold. Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax exhibition; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... absently before him; but the lady was quick-eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge-keeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... out into the garden, and, turning a corner suddenly, he came upon a little person in a large white cap, with a large white apron on, in which she was gathering sweet pot-herbs, thyme, and basil, and mint, and savory, and sage, and marjoram. She stood up and dropped a curtsy. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... He was a strange little figure, and showed a shy awkwardness at the grandeur of his surroundings. He bobbed a funny little curtsy to Ruth, whom he already adored, and with an embarrassed nod, included the rest of us in a ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... (She sits down after an awe-stricken curtsy to Burgoyne, which he acknowledges by a dignified bend of ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... the empress excelling in that inclination of the body which the Russian ladies substitute for the curtsy, and which he justly regards as very becoming, the empress adding dignity and grace. He describes Orloff as an herculean figure, finely proportioned, with a cheerful eye, and, for a Russian, a good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... unjust a cause?" "Mr. Burke saw me," she says, "and he bowed with the most marked civility of manner." This, be it observed, was just after his opening speech, a speech which had produced a mighty effect, and which certainly, no other orator that ever lived could have made. "My curtsy," she continues, "was the most ungrateful, distant and cold; I could not do otherwise; so hurt I felt to see him the head of such a cause." Now, not only had Burke treated her with constant kindness, but the very last act which he performed ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off on ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of external manners could have attained. It was too slight to seize upon at the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stand up there in the crosstrees and deal with them, one at a time, as we came to them. And so I did, with the gratifying result that when the sun's lower rim had reached to within a finger's breadth of the western horizon the Mercury slid out past the southern edge of the reef and made her first curtsy as she once more dipped to the swell of the open ocean, having triumphantly negotiated and overcome every one of the difficulties of that endless rock-bound channel. I sprang into the topgallant rigging and shinned ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... Hall of the Haughtons is reached, and the carriage rolls through the wide open gates. At the pretty lodge door stands the keeper and his wife, he pulls off his cap while she curtsies low, their future mistress tosses them a gold bit at which more curtsy and bow. What a magnificent avenue through the great park, the oak and elm mingling their branches and interlacing their arms overhead, through which a glimpse of blue heavens with golden gleams of sunlight are seen. A turn in the road and the grand entrance is before them, on either side of which ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... forward and curtsy as she had done before, but she held Silas's hand in hers and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... made the lady of the house the most perfect and unexceptionable curtsy, regarding her all the time with an air that seemed to say, "I wonder if she knows how to ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... N. lowering &c v.; depression; dip &c (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion^; reduction. overthrow, overset^, overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion^, genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude^, pitch, precipitate. overthrow, overturn, overset^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the grimness faded from the wrinkled old face, and the housekeeper, for this her appearance proclaimed her to be, bowed in a queer Victorian fashion which suggested that a curtsy might follow. One did not follow, however. "I am sure I apologize, sir," she said. "Benson did not tell ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... William must have had a very large business. One likes to think that Major Washington dealt with Sewell, and it is not difficult to imagine on ball evenings Mrs. Carlyle's maid rushing in, making a hasty curtsy and breathlessly demanding Madam's wig; or perhaps Mrs. Fairfax's maid presents Mrs. Fairfax's compliments and "Please, will Mr. Sewell come at two o'clock to dress Mistress Fairfax's hair?" Nor, is it difficult to picture William, when the shop day is ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... Betty alighted at last, entered the wicket-gate, and approached the small, weather-stained, brick house. She made her curtsy to madam, asked the Vicar's blessing—though he was not twenty-five years her senior and scarcely so wise—hugged the little girls, particularly sick Fiddy, and showered upon them pretty tasteful town ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of Avenel, father," said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high birth the due homage which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... very well with poor people, George. It's very dreadful, I know, but there!—I'm not Lady Maxwell—and I can't help it. Of course, with the poor people at home in our own cottages it's different—they always curtsy and are very respectful—but Mrs. Matthews says the people here are so independent, and think nothing of being rude to you ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enthusiams. I have seen sons and daughters stand in complete surprise as their mother's knitting needles softly beat time to the song she was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the hand-clapping as she made an old-fashioned curtsy at the end of a German poem. It was easy to fancy a growing touch of respect in her children's manner to her, and a rising enthusiasm for German literature and reminiscence on the part of all the family, an effort to bring together the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the dusty high-road for a little while, and then she reached the foot of the steep hill which led up to her home. The artist gentleman was there as usual, a pipe in his mouth, and a palette on his thumb, painting busily: as she hurriedly dropped a curtsy in passing, Lilac's heart ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... Bracken, Mrs. Bracken's husband?" she said. There was a tremble in her voice as she slipped from the davenport and bobbed a curtsy. There was a shake in her knees, also. Suppose this strange man should be a burglar? The thought was enough to make the voice and knees of any little girl tremble and shake. But the strange man nodded curtly and Mary Rose laughed tremulously. "I thought perhaps you were a burglar," ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... and folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair, turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod. Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I made him my curtsy and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... lost all remembrance of the text from which she had deduced her melodious sermon. There was, I thought, more mechanical tact than expression in her performance, but it was enthusiastically applauded for all that; and with an awkward curtsy—much like Sydney Smith's little servant-maid Bunch's "bobbing to the centre of the earth"—the red-cheeked little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... find that you have come among a set who are quite prepared to accept you as a friend." Here she made a little curtsy. "And now I have to offer my sincere apologies for the little proposition I am about to make." It immediately occurred to her that M. Le Gros had betrayed her. He was a very civil spoken, affable, kind old man; but he had betrayed her. "M. Le Gros happened to mention that you were anxious to draw ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... stench, to the real joy of most of the women present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy, indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body says it would never have happened if you had not retired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... more than a child. But she knew that a year can effect an enormous alteration in a girl in her late teens—sometimes seeming to transform her all at once from immature girlhood into gracious and charming womanhood. Lady Doreen had "come out" since Ann had met her, made her curtsy at Court and taken part in her first London season, and it was not difficult to imagine her, delicate though she might be, as extremely attractive and invested with a certain ethereal grace and charm peculiarly ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... hands I rudely repulsed her. 'What do you wish with me?' exclaimed I to her. 'Ah! you are a woman, and of a sex I abhor, and can no longer tolerate; the very gentleness of your look threatens me with some new treason. Go, leave me here alone!' She made me a curtsy without uttering a word, and turned to go out. I called to her to stop: 'Tell me at least,' said I, 'wherefore— how—with what design they sent you here? how did you discover my name, or the place where you ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... her head in merry glee, sprang up, and with a triumphant curtsy and a "No, you don't, sir—not this time," joined her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... know, by indirect hints, that Lionel Verner might be expected to—to—solicit the honour of my becoming his wife. How I laughed behind their backs! It would have been time enough to turn rebellious when the offer came—which I was quite sure never would come—to make them and him a low curtsy, and say, 'You are very kind, but I must decline the honour.' Did you get any teasings on your ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, and exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by English Independents. Moreover, I am a Doctor too. Agnes and Janet, get up this moment and curtsy to his Reverence! John and Charles, remember the dream of the sheaves! I descended from kilts and Donald Dhus? Na, na, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... disturbed the silence of the dawn. Soon the haze lifted, leaving the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... something, and to my surprise after taking it she made me an elaborate curtsy. It rather upset me, for I had thought we had got on very well together and were quite free and easy in our talk, very much on a level. But she was not done with me yet. She followed to the gate, and holding out her open hand with that small gift in it, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... him, and sees his honorable friend slipping into the place he has manoeuvred for at the expense of manliness, truth, consistency, and honesty, does he not conjugate the verb valoir negatively? When Madame Favorita has made her last curtsy for the night behind the foot-lights, has thrown off her tawdry frippery, and sits in her lonely chamber, glowering at the image of the young rival who has won all the applause,—when she bemoans her waning charms and the wearisome life which has lost its sparkle, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... be! How much dey do make ob us up to de house! De leopard hab change him spots, an' we hab change our skin! W'at 's de use o' bein' free, w'en we's w'ite folks a'ready? Tell me dat!" said Aunt Zoe, turning on her witheringly, rising from a deep curtsy and smoothing down her apron. "Tell ye w'at, ye Debil's spinster!" added she, with a sudden change of tone, as Flor began to mimic one of Miss Agatha's opera-tunes and with her hands on her hips slowly balance up and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Depression. — N. lowering &c. v.; depression; dip &c. (concavity) 252; abasement; detrusion[obs3]; reduction. overthrow, overset[obs3], overturn; upset; prostration, subversion, precipitation. bow; courtesy, curtsy; genuflexion[obs3], genuflection, kowtow, obeisance, salaam. V. depress, lower, let down, take down, let down a peg, take down a peg; cast; let drop, let fall; sink, debase, bring low, abase, reduce, detrude[obs3], pitch, precipitate. overthrow, overturn, overset[obs3]; upset, subvert, prostate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Dunshunner, welcome to my humble tabernacle. Let me present you to Mrs Sawley"—and a lady, who seemed to have bathed in the Yellow Sea, rose from her seat, and favoured me with a profound curtsy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... here's Madam Beaumont's man, Martin, called in a flustrum while you was away, to say madam must have the nicest of our fish, whatsomever it might be, and a john-doree, if it could be had for love or money, for Tuesday."—Here the woman, perceiving Miss Walsingham, dropped a curtsy. "Your humble servant, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Compliments, until the day came that she was to meet her uncle at Smithfield Market. They then went very lovingly together to an inn upon the paven stones, where Moll asked very readily at the bar if Mr. Tompkins (which was the name of her uncle) was there. The woman of the house made her a low curtsy and said he was only stepped over the way to be shaved, and she would call him. She went accordingly and brought the grave old man, who as soon as he came into the room said, Well, Mary, is this thy husband? Yes, sir, answered she, this is the person I have promised to bring ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Captain were sitting side by side, and the Gulab, when she had finished the song, had swept her sinuous lithe form back in a graceful curtsy in front of the two, and, as if by accident, a red rose had floated to the feet of Captain Barlow. Surely her soft, dark, languorous ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... small. Life came into everything; the Channel leapt and (because the wind was across the tide) the little waves broke in small white tips: in their movement and my own, in the dance of the boat and the noise of the shrouds, in the curtsy of the long sprit that caught the ridges of foam and lifted them in spray, even in the free streaming of that loose untidy end of line which played in the air from the leach, as young things play ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Watch, and once Orderly to Garth himself—brings out her ain bottle from the spence—a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not inelegant curtsy—for she had, we now learned, been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think she said, Corfu. One of the children ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... flitting about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in your neighborhood; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind boxes in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's crest and livery, and call him "Sir;" those silent women address the female servants as "Mum," and curtsy before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons. Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, silent, poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the world of darkness, and hunger, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bobbed her curtsy. Was this the man she was to be so dreadfully afraid of? Her whole charming little face broke into ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... for more I made her a curtsy, and walked out of the room. I found the dressing-room where I had left my cloak, fully determined to go home at once, if I could only get the carriage. I had to wait some time, however, and whilst I sat alone the door opened and Rachel Leonard came ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... timing her steps to the soft jingle of her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was plenty of applause from all save the two monks. They eyed her with a displeasure they took no trouble to conceal; and when she tripped lightly over to them and extended her tambourine for an offering they ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... fashionable houses is to allow children as soon as they are old enough, to come into the drawing-room or library at tea-time, as nothing gives them a better opportunity to learn how to behave in company. Little boys are always taught to bow to visitors; little girls to curtsy. Small boys are taught to place the individual tables, hand plates and tea, and pass sandwiches and cakes. If there are no boys, girls perform this office; very often they both do. When everybody has been helped, the children are perhaps ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... a flying and de hoss come a-bringing Marse Tom down de road. Mammy drap everything in the dust and grab her apron to drap a curtsy. She 'low—'Git dat hat off dat head and bow your head ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... every moment to send the train off the line. These sudden turns and jerks had the effect of making us all rather uncomfortable, and poor Baby and I felt quite sea-sick. The sensation was the same as when the ship makes a deep curtsy and seems to leave you behind as she dips ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... been somebody else—a real Excellency—or heaven knows what! Or, what is worse in your new magnificence, you might have forgotten one of your oldest, most humble, but faithful subjects." She drew back and made him a mock ceremonious curtsy, that even in its charming exaggeration suggested to Paul, however, that she had already made ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... and wakes him up at midnight: "I'm with you," And away he goes, tumbles on his homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Garden with the young fellows. When he used to frequent Garrick's theatre, and had "the liberty of the scenes", he says, "all the actresses knew me, and dropped me a curtsy as they passed to the stage." That would make a pretty picture: it is a pretty picture in my mind, of youth, folly, gaiety, tenderly surveyed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shocked, therefore, at finding the lithe, dashing ensign transformed into a corpulent old general, with a double chin; though it was a perfect picture to witness their salutations; the graciousness of her profound curtsy, and the air of the old school with which the general took off his hat, swayed it gently in his hand, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Patty, dropping a pretty curtsy. Then they all went to the drawing-room, where Patty was praised and applauded till she blushed ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... was agreeably disappointed; for the hostess was no sooner asked the question than she readily agreed; and, with a curtsy and smile, wished them a good journey. However, lest Fanny's skill in physiognomy should be called in question, we will venture to assign one reason which might probably incline her to this confidence and good-humour. When Adams ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... placed the unwelcome hat therein and closed his fingers over it. "The explanation for all this," she went on, making him a curtsy, "is very simple. We have been invited to ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
Copyright © 2025 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
