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More "Fidgety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to struggle on a little farther, as it was possible that I might be close to some farm on the Serpentine; but it was difficult to move along. Tip seemed to be getting tired of this slow progress; he grew fidgety, and I fancied he had formed the base resolution of leaving me to myself. Suddenly he started off upon our traces, and I was alone without ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... his hand.—"Gammon," said he, "just cast your eye over this, will you? Really, we must look after Titmouse, or, by Jove! he'll be gone!" Mr. Gammon took the letter rather eagerly, read deliberately through it, and then looked up at his fidgety partner, who stood ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... winds sharp as a hundred needle-points. The good hunchback, well muffled up in his mantle, failed not to come, and trotted up and down to keep himself warm while waiting for the appointed hour. Towards midnight he was half frozen, as fidgety as thirty-two devils caught in a stole, and was about to give up his happiness, when a feeble light passed by the cracks of the window and came down towards ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... her handkerchief, but if she held her handkerchief to her eyes perhaps they would not be able to come out at all. It occurred to him that possibly she was sorry she had said, wicked things about father, and to comfort her, for it made him feel fidgety to see her cry, he whispered to her that he would not tell. But she stared at him hopelessly through her red eyelids, and he felt that he had not said the right thing. She called him her poor boy, and yet it appeared ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... endeavored to hide their agitation by laughing and talking quietly, and some affected to consider their nearest companion as more sure than themselves. Even Hamilton was not free from a little nervousness, and though he talked away to Vernon Digby, who was sitting by him, he cast more than one fidgety glance at the red-covered table, and perceptibly changed color when the class-room door opened to allow the long train of ladies and gentlemen to enter, and closed after Dr. Wilkinson, and a few of his particular friends, among whom ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... transparent, as if Vere's eyes would be able to see all that she must hide if they were together in the evening. And she resolved to go away. She made some excuse—that she wished for a little change, that she was fidgety and felt the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... tendency of their whole existence. Naturally, therefore, the provisions of Mrs. Errington's will surprised the world. Old gentlemen in Clubs stared upon the number of the Illustrated London News which announced the disposal of her money as they might have stared upon the head of Medusa. The fidgety seemed turned to stone as they read. The thoughtless gaped. As for the thoughtful, this will drove them to deep meditation, and set them walking in a maze of surmises, from which they found no outlet. One or two, religiously inclined, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... belonging to the Parliament House above thirty years ago as retained the ancient Scottish custom of a meridian, as it was called, or noontide dram of spirits. If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence assumed the honour of leading the band, when away they went, threading the crowd like a string of wild fowl, crossed the square or close, and following ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... bridle of the straying horse over his arm, and the animal trotted obediently by the side of the fidgety little Cossacks. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... her social chatter, while laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands. Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a fuss—and, really, such an active, busy young lady ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... in this world; and even the comforting effect of ROBINSON CRUSOE wore off, after Penelope left me. I got fidgety again, and resolved on making a survey of the grounds before the rain came. Instead of taking the footman, whose nose was human, and therefore useless in any emergency, I took the bloodhound with me. HIS nose for a stranger was to be depended on. We went all ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... grow fidgety at Mildmay's long stay below, I fancy," remarked Lethbridge. "But he need not; Mildmay is a sailor, and a navy man at that; and he may be trusted to take care of himself. He is very thorough in his methods, and you may depend ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "Yes, yes, Father, and play checkers with you too, like as not!" They explained to Betsy: "Your Uncle Henry is just daft on being read aloud to when he's got something to do in the evening, and when he hasn't he's as fidgety as a broody hen if he can't play checkers. Ann hates checkers and I haven't got ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... awful commotion in the captain's room; the fitful and violent soliloquies; the stamping of the captain up and down the floor; and the contusions, palpably, suffered by her furniture. The captain's temper was not very pleasant that evening, and he was fidgety and feverish besides, expecting every moment a note from town to apprise ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the greatest care of you, Mrs. Leigh," said Jack, heartily, grateful for a re-assuring nod from Bluebell in recognition of his contrite gallantry. The mare, tired of waiting, became fidgety to be off. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... they found how her eagerness to attract the attention of some one mightier made her unable to fix her thoughts on the friendly remarks that they were taking pains to make. In society she was absent-minded, fidgety, obviously on the look-out for a chance of drawing the biggest fish into her little net; but, wealthy as she was, she was not wealthy enough in an age of millionnaires, and not once during the whole of her career was a big fish simple enough to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... and carried a supply of provisions on a pack mule. The most conspicuous object of their pack was a keg labelled "dynamite." When the clerk placed this dangerous thing near the fire and sat on it, I became fidgety, but was reassured when subsequently I saw him draw the stopper and fill a bottle labelled "Old Crow" from it. They advised me to go prospecting and gave me much valuable information and kindly offered to sell me a prospecting outfit, "for cash," at ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... do, yet how dangerous, how terribly dangerous, with Victoria perhaps peeping from one of the tiny windows at the women's corner of the house, which looked on the court! They could not see her there, but she could see them, and if she were tired of travelling and dancing attendance on a fidgety invalid—if she repented her promise to keep the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... any class or type; there is no democracy of hands. Some hands tell me that they do everything with the maximum of bustle and noise. Other hands are fidgety and unadvised, with nervous, fussy fingers which indicate a nature sensitive to the little pricks of daily life. Sometimes I recognize with foreboding the kindly but stupid hand of one who tells with many words news that is no news. I have met a bishop with a jocose ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... right, than which nothing in the world could have been more cheerless, unless it was sitting at Mrs. Rathbawne's left. But the good lady's habitual complacency was plainly in abeyance, her customary volubility replaced by a fidgety reserve. The dinner, as a social achievement, was a distinct failure, save in so far as Mrs. Wynyard and Colonel Broadcastle were concerned. Several months before, Mrs. Wynyard had frankly announced that she had designs upon the Colonel. Latterly, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... note-book and too busy with his camera to give more than an occasional glance to the sacristan. Whenever he did look at him, he found him at no great distance, either huddling himself back against the wall or crouching in one of the gorgeous stalls. Dennistoun became rather fidgety after a time. Mingled suspicions that he was keeping the old man from his dejeuner, that he was regarded as likely to make away with St Bertrand's ivory crozier, or with the dusty stuffed crocodile that hangs over the font, began to ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... had fallen while she talked into something that might have been taken for a conscious temporary submission to her; he had uncrossed his fidgety legs and, thrusting them out with the feet together, sat looking very hard before him, his chin sunk on his breast and his hands, clasped as they met, rapidly twirling their thumbs. So he remained for a time that might have given his young friend the sense ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... fidgety again and began opening a drawer in the chest. Lavretsky sat still without ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "To think what ye've been through—yere husband near to dyin' afore yere eyes, and ye a-reskin' yere own life to save him—so Tom tells me. When Tom goes out a-fightin' red-skins I'm that fidgety I can't set still. I wouldn't let him know what I feel fer the world. But well ye know the pain of it, who ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... me as a fidgety, emphatic, feather-edged sort of bird; the two white quills in its tail which flash out so suddenly on every movement seem to stamp in this impression. My junco was a little nervous at first and showed her white quills, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... would mean for some, and perhaps all of them, the last great passage to the unknown or oblivion; the bated whispers in which they spoke; even Sir Henry's continuous and thoughtful examination of his woodcutter's axe and the fidgety way in which Good kept polishing his eyeglass, all told the same tale of nerves stretched pretty nigh to breaking-point. Only Umslopogaas, leaning as usual upon Inkosi-kaas and taking an occasional pinch of snuff, was to all appearance perfectly and completely ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... closely, and at last took a mouthful, after which they proceeded to eat greedily, their new masters patting their necks and talking to them while they did so. Then their saddles and bridles were put on, and they were led out of the stable and along the streets. At first they were very fidgety and wild at the unaccustomed sights and sounds, but their fear gradually subsided, and by the time they were well in the country ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... must have shaken its wings over me as I began it; and if it will but sit on the same spray while I go on towards the end, I shall rejoice exactly four-fold. The third paper went to Mr. Dilke to-day, and I was so fidgety about getting it away (and it seemed to cling to my writing case with both its hands), that I would not do any writing, even as little as this note, until it was quite gone out of sight. You know it is possible that he, the editor, may not please to have the fourth paper; but ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... answered the landlord. "I remember him well. Came in about five o 'clock in the afternoon of the 4th just after the London train arrived—and booked a room. He told me he expected to meet a gentleman from New York, and was very fidgety about fixing it up to go off in the tender to the Araconda when she came into the Bay. However, I found out for him that she wouldn't be in until next evening, so of course he settled down to wait. Very quiet, ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... Payne, "it's like anchoring to a thought. Thought is a fidgety thing, restless, perverse. It anchors itself very easily on to a grievance, or an unpleasant incident, or a squabble. Don't you know the misery of being jerked back, time after time, by an unpleasant thought? ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a dynasty! That alters the case. Perhaps he's a young man about town. There are young men about town, I believe, who have addresses at clubs and libraries, and sleep on doorsteps, or in the Park. Well, Hennessey, I see you are getting fidgety. You had better be off. Buy me some roses for my room on your way home. I'm expectin' someone to have tea with the poor victim of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... them I made some ointment of animal fat and flowers of sulphur, extracted with difficulty from some man's hoard, and told them how to apply it to some of the worst cases. The horse, being unused to a girth, became fidgety as it was being saddled, creating a STAMPEDE among the crowd, and the mago would not touch it again. They are as much afraid of their gentle mares as if they were panthers. All the children followed me for a considerable distance, and a good ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... turn caught the attention of even the fidgety Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the Fieldhead pew in Briarfield Church appeared peopled with a prim, trim, fidgety, elderly gentleman, who shifted his spectacles, and changed his position every three minutes; a patient, placid-looking elderly lady in brown satin; and two pattern young ladies, in pattern attire, with pattern deportment. Shirley had the air of a black swan or a white crow in the midst ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... see there's a new day," chuckled Mr. Dexter, his pale blue eyes twinkling. "And how do you find your Uncle Jase? Not what you'd call a fidgety man, eh? He ain't never stirred up about nothing, Jase ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... now as though they had been but yesterday. It was afternoon, in the glorious summer, and he had gone to Hester's home. Only the day before Hester had promised to be his wife, and he remembered how fidgety and uneasy and yet wondrously happy he was as he sat out on the big white veranda, waiting for her to put on her pink muslin dress, which went go well with the gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes. And as he sat there, Hester's maltese pet came up the steps, bringing in its jaws a ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... began to glint in a sky which was a mixture of soft grays and downy whites like a dove's plumage, when the islets on Millinokett's bosom became black dots on a slate-gray sheet, and no laden hunter with rifle and game put in an appearance, even Cyrus became fidgety ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... see the paper going beneath the master's eye, and made a few nervous grimaces. Radley read the correspondence pitilessly; and, with his hard mouth unrelaxed, turned first on Doe, as though sizing him up, and then on me. He stared at my face till I felt fidgety, and my mind, which always in moments of excitement ran down most ridiculous avenues, framed the sentence: "Don't stare, because it's rude," at which involuntary thought I scarcely restrained a nervous titter. After this ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... limits, and had a run nearly every day. Workmen came to put a railing and gate to the back verandah of his establishment, and Mrs Breen kept a fidgety watch upon his movements; but evidently the only son's will ruled, and he was more than faithful to his compact with Rose. She was able to see this from her commanding window, and to hear it from Bruce's mouth; and day by day her heart warmed towards Bruce's master. Many were ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... sir," he answers, and walks solemnly away. We begin to grow fidgety. Fifteen minutes since the soup, and no fish yet. Bunker swears he'll blow the head-waiter up in another minute. Just as he is quite ready for this explosion the fish arrives. All hail! I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... He seemed hurried and fidgety in his manner; which rather surprised me, as I knew he was a seasoned hand in these matters, and it contrasted unfavourably with the calm bearing of his antagonist, who by this time had thrown his hat on the ground, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... five o'clock!" She jumped up in pretended dismay. "And I promised Jim faithfully I'd be back by half-past four. He gets fidgety when I'm out of his sight for long—thinks I'm ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... will be said, old men are fretful, fidgety, ill-tempered, and disagreeable. If you come to that, they are also avaricious. But these are faults of character, not of the time of life. And, after all, fretfulness and the other faults I mentioned admit of some excuse—not, indeed, a complete one, but one that may possibly pass muster: they ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "O, Lord! these fidgety women!" exclaimed Esq. Camford, impatiently. "I hope you are not one of the sort, are you, Miss Orville? But come into the parlor here, while I go up and rouse ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... anxious, for the houses about there were what the papers call palatial—a word we have not much use for in our parts. I just stopped on the other side of the street and took a general survey before I attempted to go in, feeling more and more fidgety every minute, for that house just took me down with its sumptuousness. Such great windows, with one monstrous pane in a sash, and lace and silk and tassels shining through! The front was four stories high and ended off ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in embarrassment and motioned to a prim, thin-faced woman in the front room who came forward with fidgety shyness, begging the gentlemen to forgive her if she had done wrong, but there was something on her conscience and she ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... briskly-comical kindness of expression in his face, which it is not easy to contemplate for the first time without smiling at him. He is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally keeps his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat. All his movements are quick and fidgety. He appears to walk principally on his toes, and seems always on the point of beginning to dance, or jump, or run whenever he moves about, either in or out of doors. When he speaks he has an odd habit of ducking his head suddenly, and looking at the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... table alongside, she had not left it long. The footman departed, saying, in a magnificent undertone, that "her ladyship" should be informed, and left our hero to enjoy his sensations. Being one of those people whom suspense of any sort makes fidgety, he employed himself in looking at the pictures and china, even going so far as to walk to a pair of very heavy blue velvet curtains that apparently communicated with another room, and peep through them at a ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... am going for a run round the island. It makes me fidgety to sit all day with nothing to do, and I am always contented when I am under sail. As I shan't have time to come in tomorrow morning, for you know we start at nine, I thought that I would drop in this morning, even if the ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... toughest fibre, and she realised long before he did that the Oxford life as he was bent on leading it must end for him in premature breakdown. But, as always happens, neither her remonstrances, nor Mr. Grey's common-sense, nor Langham's fidgety protests had any effect on the young enthusiast to whom self-slaughter came so easy. During the latter half of his third year of teaching he was continually being sent away by the doctors, and coming ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... requested Malignon to hand her a white cashmere burnous that was hanging from the handle of a window fastening. Malignon rose to wrap the burnous round her shoulders, and they began chatting familiarly on matters which had little interest for Helene. Feeling fidgety, fearing that Pauline might unwittingly knock the children down, she therefore stepped into the garden, leaving Juliette and the young man to wrangle over some new fashion in bonnets which apparently deeply ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... creases from the nose to the corners of the mouth like other people, who experienced difficulty in eating because the food would somehow get between his gums and his cheek, who slept a great deal but was excessively fidgety while awake, who seemed to hear what was said to him a long time after it was uttered, as if the sense had to travel miles by labyrinthine passages to his brain, and who talked very, very slowly in a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the train that comes right on through [he wrote]. Don't take the one that goes to Woods Hole. Zoeth is so fidgety and nervous for fear you will make a mistake that he keeps me on pins and needles. Isaiah ain't much better. He swept out the setting-room twice last week and if he don't roast the cat instead of the chicken he is calculating ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... funny that we let the faults and mannerisms of other people affect us to such an extent. They are nothing to us, and yet a man can work himself into a perfect frenzy of temper merely by looking at or talking to another who has a fidgety way of moving about, a dainty manner of using his hands, or a general demean—or that is delicate and ladylike. Men like what the magazines call "a red-blooded, two-fisted, he-man." But the world is big enough to accommodate us all whether the blood in our veins ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... reviewed an unwieldy past, That like a feasted Mammoth, leisured and slow, Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff, Novel and fevering hallucinations Invaded my attention. So daylight When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house; As then the dreams and terrors of the night Decamp, so from my mind were driven All its own thoughts and feelings. Close ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... a model of sanity, When with the Holiday-seeker compared. Fidgety folly, and fussy inanity. These be the figments by which we are snared. Soon as you're drawn from your own cosy drawing-room, Far over flood, field, or foam—for your sins— Then, when your breast makes for vulturine gnawing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... I said, he went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction—at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... a wife, and Mrs. Proudie had given him nothing. Immediately after breakfast Mr. Robarts escaped to the Dragon of Wantly, partly because he had had enough of the matutinal Mrs. Proudie, and partly also in order that he might hurry his friends there. He was already becoming fidgety about the time, as Harold Smith had been on the preceding evening, and he did not give Mrs. Smith credit for much punctuality. When he arrived at the inn he asked if they had done breakfast, and was immediately told that not one of them was yet ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... feet. The bed was in the central part of the ward, near a window. For a moment the poor girl remained on it with her eyes closed, as though exhausted by being moved about so much. Then it became necessary that Pierre should be readmitted, for she grew very fidgety, saying that there were things which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... quality observable in the countess-dowager, apart from her great breadth, was her restlessness. She seemed never still for an instant; her legs had a fidgety, nervous movement in them, and in moments of excitement, which were not infrequent, she was given to executing a sort of war-dance. Old she was not; but her peculiar graces of person, her rotund form, her badly-made front of flaxen ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... appearance of truth in this statement; Mr. McSnagley's voice had a hollow resonant sound, and his eyes were nervous and fidgety. He had an odd trick, too, of occasionally stopping in the middle of a sentence, and listening as though he heard some distant sound. These things, which Mrs. Morpher recalled afterwards, did not, in the undercurrent of uneasiness about Aristides which she felt ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... everybody and everything, but unconscious all the time that he was doing so. He would not have been able in fact, to answer Diogenes a word, had not that worthy inquired of him what he had seen, when he presently drew in his head and returned to his fidgety ramblings about the room. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... quarter to eight Thea was dressed and waiting in the boarding-house parlor. She was nervous and fidgety and found it difficult to sit still on the hard, convex upholstery of the chairs. She tried them one after another, moving about the dimly lighted, musty room, where the gas always leaked gently and sang in the burners. There was no one in the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... had had a chance to get used to her face being so long and sort of pointed, and her eyes long too, and her black eyebrows running back almost into her hair, he liked every bit of her face. It looked so different from anybody else's. He noticed with an inward smile that she was fidgety under Mr. Bayweather's historical talk. He was the only person with any patience in that whole bunch. But at what a price had ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... writer has seen a grouse drum, appearing to strike its wings together over its back. But there is much difference of opinion on the subject, and young observers may settle the question for themselves. When preparing to drum he seems fidgety and nervous and his sides are inflated. Letting his wings droop, he flaps them so fast that they make one continuous humming sound. In this peculiar way he calls his mate, and while he is still drumming, the hen bird may appear, coming slyly ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... I'd go if he would bring me around here to let you know what had become of me, and so he did. Now, good-by, and I'll be sure to be present at the next meeting. I have to hurry because he'll get fidgety." ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... lonesome, nervous little lady, and at these times only a little more fidgety than ever. Sometimes she cried because of Kenneth, in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly, unsympathetic, well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very light of his weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... population, especially the upper classes. Going anywhere in broad daylight was dangerous, even going to the Baths of Titus from the Esquiline was risky. Anyone like Falco was certain to feel safer indoors. And the tense uncertainty of those twenty-four days made everybody restless, feverish, fidgety and morose: civil war between Severus and Pescennius Niger, lord of the East, was inevitable. How Clodius Albinus, in control of Gaul, Spain and Britain, would act, was problematical. We were all keyed-up, apprehensive ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... time, my dear," said Manvers kindly. And she did, by tumbling into his arms. Here, then, was a situation for the student of Manners; a brisk discharge of stones from an advancing line of skirmishers, a strictly impartial crowd of sightseers, a fidgety horse, and himself embarrassed by a ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... I hope mamma will come!" said Constance with a comical fidgety shake of herself;—"when I think of those greenhouses I lose my self-command. And the park!—Fleda, it's the loveliest thing you ever saw in your life; and it's all that delightful man's doing; only he won't have a geometric flower-garden, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... legate of Bithynia: the extant official correspondence between him and the Emperor during this governorship shows him still unchanged; upright and conscientious, but irresolute, pedantic, and totally unable to think and act for himself in any unusual circumstances. The contrast between Pliny's fidgety indecision and the quiet strength and inexhaustible patience of Trajan, though scarcely what Pliny meant to bring out, is the first and last impression conveyed to us by this curious correspondence. The nine books of his private ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... scale) touched lightly in its exploratory tour upon Dr. Surtaine's domed forehead. Following it thus far, the visitor's gaze rested. Dr. Surtaine brushed off the insect. He could not brush off the regard. Under it and his caller's continued silence he grew fidgety. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... though we had better than a tail hold, we were very ready to let go. But while there were plenty of good shots among us, our horses had now become wary, and could not, when free from ropes, be induced to approach within twenty yards of the bear, and they were so fidgety that accurate aim was impossible. We who had ropes on the old bear begged the boys to get down and take it afoot, but they were not disposed to listen to our reasons, and blazed away from rearing horses, not one shot in ten taking effect. There was no telling how long this random shooting ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... were reluctant to stay there, and it was nervous work on the black nights when the wind, dismal and weird, moaned through the encompassing forest, every shadow a crouching Bolshevik. Often the order came through to the main village to "stand to," because some fidgety sentinel in Upper Toulgas had seen battalions, conjured by the black night. So it was determined to burn the upper village and a guard was thrown around it, for we feared word would be passed and the Bolos would try to prevent us from accomplishing our purpose. The ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... you're a nuisance," she told him, as she accepted his aid with the fidgety impatience of a restless boy. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Dennis,' said Marshall, who was evidently fidgety. 'The room is rather warm. There's nothing in Vincent which irritates me more than those bits of poetry with which ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... are too deep for me, my good friend. All I know is that she is one of this new school, whom I take the liberty to call 'THE FIDGETY CHRISTIANS.' They cannot let their poor souls alone a minute; and they pester one day and night with the millennium; as if we shall not all be dead long before that. But the worst is, they apply the language ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... come to feel that being carried to hounds without much thinking about it is the cream of hunting, after all. I wonder what the ladies are at? Shall we go back and see?" Then they turned to the house, and Mr. Spooner began to be a little fidgety. "Do they sit altogether mostly all ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... a glass over a bargain) to call him by it, and a blow from the vermicelli maker's fist sent him headlong into a gutter in the Rue Oblin. He could think of nothing else when his children were concerned; his love for them made him fidgety and anxious; and this was so well known, that one day a competitor, who wished to get rid of him to secure the field to himself, told Goriot that Delphine had just been knocked down by a cab. The vermicelli maker turned ghastly pale, left the Exchange at once, and did not return for ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to rake the boulevard: there are no gusts to buffet you at corners: there are no draughts in the streets. The flow of sweet fresh air is rich and steady, but it is never stirred. A mile away you may see dust flying; storm and tempest savage the Pyrenees: upon the gentlest day fidgety puffs fret Biarritz, as puppies plague an old hound. But Pau is sanctuary. Once in a long, long while some errant blast blunders into the town. Then, for a second of time, the place is Bedlam. The uncaught shutters ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... acknowledgment to the fact that poor little, unintellectual Flossy was much more interested than herself. She gave herself up to an old and favorite employment of hers, that of looking at faces and studying them, when a sudden hush that seemed to be settling over the hither to fidgety audience arrested her attention. ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... James, who did not relish interruption, and was a thought fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table, snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse." Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... said Maria, desperately. "People are as they are brought up. My mother don't care for such fidgety notions. I speak to please her, and that ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... his old manner, convinced, apparently, that Candor must be postponed to a better age of the world. But the quarrel rankled in Shelldrake's mind, and especially in that of his wife. I could see by her looks and little fidgety ways that his further stay would be very uncomfortable. Abel Mallory, finding himself gaining in weight and improving in color, had no thought of returning. The day previous, as I afterwards learned, he had discovered Perkins Brown's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of you, Sir George, to break up your little holiday for the sake of an anxious, fidgety ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... book as he passed. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift the trunk into the back of the sleigh. When it was in place they stood side by side on the door-step, watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind his fidgety horse. ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... taking the voyage to restore his shattered nerves. From the first the captain disliked Henry. He was utterly unused to the sea and was nervous and fidgety in the extreme. He complained that at sea his genius had not a sufficient degree of latitude. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Cayhill, with the same air of wisdom. "A nice-minded young man stays away, if he sees that his feelings are not returned, or if he has no position to offer.—And another thing I'll tell you, Joan, though you do think yourself so clever. You don't need to worry if Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimes just now. At her age, it's only to be expected. You know very well what I mean. All girls go through the same thing. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... nest was shallow, only one could work at a time; and if Petro came back with his plaster before Eve had patted the last of hers into place, she would squeak at him in a fidgety though not fretful voice, as if saying, "Now, don't get in my way and bother me, dear." So he would have to fly about while he waited for her to go. The minute she was ready to be off, he would be slipping into her place; and this time she would give ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... isn't in the least fidgety," replied the doctor. "That is quite another thing. Some of the most nervous people I know have absolute quiet of manner. Mrs. Little's nervous system has been for several years under a terrible strain. When I was first called to her, I thought her trouble and suffering would kill ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... did not come home till nearly five o'clock and the four solemn young people on the front porch were getting decidedly fidgety before his roadster appeared at the curb and he jumped out and hurried up the walk. He said "Hello" to the four as he passed them and he was surprised, therefore, when he turned from his desk to see them enter the office and ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... to Mr. Chandler," she said a little disconsolately. "The very last words he said to me last night was that he'd be there at ten o'clock. I got quite fidgety as the time went on ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... doubted. If this peculiarity had been troublesome in the early stages of our acquaintance, it was doubly so when we met again, after the lapse of some years. For one thing, the dear ladies were older, and fidgety, foolish little weaknesses of this kind sometimes increase with years. Then I was older also, and if they had doubted their own powers of entertainment when I was a child, they would still less believe ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was added in a whisper, for if there was any one that Roy really disliked, it was his tutor's wife. She was a kind-hearted woman, but fidgety and fussy to the last degree, and was always in a bustle. Having no children, she expended all her energies on the parish, and there was not a domestic detail in any village home that escaped her eye. She had spoken sharply to the boys ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... Charmion came to my room, and we sat together by the fire and talked for three solid hours. As a rule, I get fidgety in the evening when talk is the only amusement, but I can sit and listen to Charmion for as long as she chooses to go on. She is—interesting! She says things in an interesting way, and has interesting things to say. I have met extraordinarily clever and well-informed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... proving him a laggard in his calling, to cast a damaging blemish upon his reputation. Liberally as he might lend himself to a friend, it could not be done at that sacrifice. After a minute or two of fidgety waiting for the song to end, Cuff's patience could endure no longer, and, cautiously hazarding a glimpse of his profile beyond the edge of the flat, he called in a hurried whisper: "Massa Rice, Massa Rice, must have my clo'se! Massa Griffif ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... waiting dragged slowly by. The boys became fidgety and restless. They imagined that something ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... the bad," he said to Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan. "He's nervous, he's fidgety, he talks in his sleep. There's ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the idle boys in the neighborhood collected around the pony-chaise, expressing, in the occult language of slang, their high enjoyment and appreciation at the appearance of "Ariel" in her man's jacket and hat. The pony was fidgety—he felt the influence of the popular uproar. His driver sat, whip in hand, magnificently impenetrable to the gibes and jests that were flying around her. I said "Good-morning" on getting into the chaise. Ariel only said "Gee up!" and started ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... her father was more than usually nervous and fidgety, and became alarmed lest there should be some sudden money difficulty, as any threat, however slight, of debt or involvement always made him ill. She sat down beside him, and putting her hand in his, as it rested on a table nervously fidgeting with ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... mind was of that flabby but fidgety kind which throws off ideas as a crab its shells, one after another—useless, imperfect moulds of itself. He came home to the mountain-hut in the first flush and triumph of authorship, bringing every newspaper-clipping in his pocket-book ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... be the Alderney cow or the poultry at the Home Farm, or a few fresh tiles on the roof of the pig-sty, which was decaying. A cart wanted a new pair of wheels or a shaft. One of the tenants wanted a new shed put up, but it did not seem necessary; the old one would do very well if people were not so fidgety. The wife or daughter of one of the cottage people was taking to drink and getting into bad ways. This or that farmer had had some sheep die. Another farmer had bought some new silver-mounted harness, and so on, through all ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the Sylph got within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... now became fidgety, and he hastened down to the Khoja's door, at which he knocked, and entering, said, "Good-day, Khoja Effendi. May I ask you to be good enough to restore to me my nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... no going to see the Queen. That on the present occasion was done simply by Mr. Monk. But on the Wednesday morning his name appeared in the list of the new Cabinet as President of the Council. He was perhaps a little fidgety, a little too anxious to employ himself and to be employed, a little too desirous of immediate work;—but still he was happy and gracious to those around him. "I suppose you like that particular office," ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... for them. On the table was the gilt-edged china. Mrs. Grant didn't notice it immediately, till she saw her husband smiling at her over his teacup; then she felt fidgety, and couldn't eat. She was nervous, and kept wondering what was behind her, whether it would be a ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... this seldom happened once to any man—could hardly happen more than once to any man. He had hired a carriage for her, not thinking it fit that Lady Ongar should be taken to her new home in a cab; and when he was at the station, half an hour before the proper time, was very fidgety because it had not come. Ten minutes before eight he might have been seen standing at the entrance to the station looking out anxiously for the vehicle. The man was there, of course, in time, but Harry made himself angry because he could not get the carriage ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... self-poised attitude and demeanour in your everyday life. Avoid a tense, strained, nervous, fidgety manner and an over-anxious appearance. Be easy, self-possessed and dignified in your bearing. Be courteous, thoughtful and quiet. Mental exercise and Will-Culture will enable you to acquire the proper carriage and demeanour. Stop swinging your feet and moving your ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... of mistress of this house—women full of sense, and who, with right guidance, would have made him perfectly happy. And now he flies in our faces and asks the boy down. I have had an idea for some little time that he has had something on his mind; he has been more nervous and fidgety than usual, and several times he has seemed to be on the point of saying something, and then changed his mind. Of course, one can understand it all now. No wonder he was ashamed to look us in the face when he was ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such impossible questions. Isabel watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... child. His innocence was more than virginal; his unworldliness simply inconceivable. He carried his heart on his sleeve, and invited you to observe what a soft, tender, and sensitive heart it was. He had the harmless vanity of a child who has a new frock on. He was fidgety and unhappy if anybody but himself was the centre of attraction; and guilelessly happy when he could talk and be admired and sympathized with. His conversation was nearly always about himself, or about the kings and princes and lofty personages who had graciously deigned to take ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... One morning the fidgety Sassenach swore He'd stand it no longer—he drew his claymore, And (this was, I think, in extremely bad taste) Divided ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... let's,' said Marjorie; 'Harry's in a fidgety mood and will be quarrelling with some one presently if he ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... nothing all day I often get fidgety, and I now fancy that Charlie or some of your family [are] ill. When you have time let me have a short note to say how you all are. I have had some fearful sickness; but what a strange mechanism ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... small poodle, the production of some unknown and disadvantageous cross with the true poodle. It has all the sagacity of the poodle, and will perform even more than his tricks. It is always in action; always fidgety; generally incapable of much affection, but inheriting much self-love and occasional ill temper; unmanageable by any one but its owner; eaten up with red mange; and frequently a nuisance to its master and a ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... youngest son was taken: Very rough and thick his hair was, Very round and red his face was, Very dusty was his jacket, Very fidgety his manner. And his overbearing sisters Called him names he disapproved of: Called him Johnny, 'Daddy's Darling,' Called him Jacky, 'Scrubby School-boy.' And, so awful was the picture, In comparison the others Seemed, to one's bewildered ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... them not to be scared, inasmuch as I was an intimate acquaintance of the General, for whom I carried Cape Cod. On the left side of the kitchen there stood at a great deal table an aged maid whose mien was somewhat fidgety. This visible nervousness was increased with the labour necessary to prepare the ponderous pile of soft dough-nuts she worked upon; which, she said, when ready (though of little substance) were intended ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... on the tip-toe of anticipation and suppressed excitement throughout Thursday and Friday, hoping for news concerning the decision of the Tribunal. But when Friday passed without my receiving any tidings I commenced to get fidgety and anxious. My feelings were not assuaged by hearing volleys ring out every morning, followed by a death-like stillness. These reports appeared to stifle the cries and groans of the prisoners a little while. To me the sounds presaged serious news. Apparently there were several prisoners condemned ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... to welcome the farmer, and was shy and fidgety as a girl who anticipates the visit of a promising youth, over his fat goose for next day's dinner, and his shrimps for this day's tea, and his red slice of strong cheese, called of Cheshire by the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was laid at once for breakfast; and whilst M. Jerome and the princess strolled away to talk of blighted hopes, Russia, serfdom, wedlock, and the conflagration of the Kremlin, Penelope made the necessary preparation; and I, in my character of a fidgety old gentleman, first advised and then assisted her. I am afraid the young damsel had designs upon my heart, for she put several questions to me on the state of vassalage in England; and when I developed succinctly the principles and advantages of our free ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... attempted to listen, to what was going on, was doubtful in the extreme. But still, as a rule, church had a soothing effect on her, the quiet and restfulness, the monotony itself, seemed to calm her fidgety querulousness; possibly even the sensation of her Sunday clothes and the admiring glances of the little school-children helped to smooth her down ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... the right sub-sector, almost completely levelling one of their communication trenches with heavy trench mortars during the preliminary bombardment, on account of which we had to stand-to, when back at our rest billets at Bailleulval. On another occasion we had a fidgety night owing to a gas alarm having been given. This however, proved but another case ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... bears from camp 323 degrees seven miles; a great deal of spinifex and abrupt creeks between camp and it, not a speck of gold visible but it appears to have undergone the action of fire; this is another day lost. Such detention makes me quite irritable and fidgety. ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... sit still—the hardest thing for some people to do; but I have noticed that you are not fidgety. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... cursing threats in low voices greeted Hambone on all sides, and his work that day was so fidgety, and he made so many mistakes in getting the ranges on the sights, that the Major performed the coup d'etat for which we were all anxiously waiting by transmitting as quickly as he could to headquarters his recommendation that he be retired, and Hambone, ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... they asked me to do bad things. I first heard about those things from a boy on the porch. I was 7 or 8. I was always thinking about it—what my mother said at that time, I mean. She did not explain it enough. I am always fidgety, always nervous. My hands and feet are always going. Whenever I would see a boy it would always come up in front of my eyes. It was mostly when I saw boys. If she had explained it more it would not have come up that ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... gate of the farm stood a cart into which two young calves had just been packed. Hastings was driving it, and Rachel Henderson, who had just adjusted the net over the fidgety frightened ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... morning in conversation and reading. They had to sit with their furs on. Nan looked like a little Esquimaux in hers, for her Uncle Henry Sherwood had bought them for her to wear in the Big Woods the winter before. Finally Bess declared she was too fidgety to ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... number, feeling awfully anxious, for the houses about there were what the papers call palatial—a word we have not much use for in our parts. I just stopped on the other side of the street and took a general survey before I attempted to go in, feeling more and more fidgety every minute, for that house just took me down with its sumptuousness. Such great windows, with one monstrous pane in a sash, and lace and silk and tassels shining through! The front was four stories high and ended off with the steepest roof you ever saw, just sloping ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... purser he bought shirts and collars and ties; and as he possessed no watch, returned barely in time to dress for dinner. He was not at all disturbed to learn that the inquisitive German, the colonel and his fidgety charges, had decided to proceed to Rangoon by rail. Indeed, there was a bit of exultation in his manner as he observed the vacant chairs. Paradise for two whole days. And he proposed to make the most of it. Now, his mind was ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... was a short silence. Marjory felt sure that the boy had something else to say, for he seemed rather fidgety, and got up and walked about the room, fingering things here and there, and clearing his throat several times. She kept silent to give him an opportunity to unburden himself. At last, rather red in ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands. Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a fuss—and, really, such an active, busy young lady couldn't look always as if she came ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... picking flowers for Mrs. Bilton's breakfast, though the ditch had nothing in it but stones and thorns. Li Koo made no comment. He never did make comments; and his silence and his ubiquitous efficiency made the twins as fidgety with him as they were with Mrs. Bilton for the opposite reason. They had an uncomfortable feeling that he was rather like the liebe Gott,—he saw everything, knew everything, and said nothing. In vain they tried, on that walk back as at other times, to pierce his impassivity with ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... me to hear. Then boys lived near me and they asked me to do bad things. I first heard about those things from a boy on the porch. I was 7 or 8. I was always thinking about it—what my mother said at that time, I mean. She did not explain it enough. I am always fidgety, always nervous. My hands and feet are always going. Whenever I would see a boy it would always come up in front of my eyes. It was mostly when I saw boys. If she had explained it more it would not have come up that way. I know a girl who does that thing. She's bad. She does it with boys too. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... contemplate for the first time without smiling at him. He is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally keeps his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat. All his movements are quick and fidgety. He appears to walk principally on his toes, and seems always on the point of beginning to dance, or jump, or run whenever he moves about, either in or out of doors. When he speaks he has an odd habit of ducking his head suddenly, and looking at the person whom he addresses over ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... and fidgety in his manner; which rather surprised me, as I knew he was a seasoned hand in these matters, and it contrasted unfavourably with the calm bearing of his antagonist, who by this time had thrown his hat on the ground, and stood with one foot on the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... living and a wife, and Mrs. Proudie had given him nothing. Immediately after breakfast Mr. Robarts escaped to the Dragon of Wantly, partly because he had had enough of the matutinal Mrs. Proudie, and partly also in order that he might hurry his friends there. He was already becoming fidgety about the time, as Harold Smith had been on the preceding evening, and he did not give Mrs. Smith credit for much punctuality. When he arrived at the inn he asked if they had done breakfast, and was immediately told ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... each one of his immediate family, then passed on to his distant relatives, then to his friends, then to his acquaintances. Whitey's nerves were pretty steady, as you know, but after about four hours of this, Little got him so fidgety that he thought he would fall off the horse. Finally he thought Little had changed the subject, and breathed a sigh ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... did not relish interruption, and was a thought fidgety in his natural temper, had laid down the paper on the table, snuffed the candle, and raised his spectacles on his brow. But I said to him, "Excuse freedoms, James, and be so good as resume your discourse." Then wishing to smooth him down, I added, by way ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... of dumb animals, or one so fidgety as to their welfare, I never came across; and this, I confess, prepossessed me in his favour. Every time the train stopped out jumped our fellow-traveller, and off he went to a certain van containing his treasures, from which he emerged with a very red face and a constantly-repeated apology ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... occasionally, I dare say, trying to entice her into some bit of toadyism that should betray any latent taint of falsehood inherited from poor time-serving Polonius. The Prince of Denmark would have been rather a fidgety husband, perhaps, but he would never have had recourse to a murderous bolster at the instigation of a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... see if Philip can Be a little gentleman; Let me see, if he is able To sit still for once at table: Thus Papa bade Phil behave; And Mamma look'd very grave. But fidgety Phil, He won't sit still; He wriggles And giggles, And then, I declare, Swings backwards and forwards And tilts up his chair, Just like any rocking horse;— ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... at the graveside, as the workmen silently went to work on the screws. The screws were rusted in their sockets; they grated as the men slowly worked them out. It seemed to Spargo that each man grew slower and slower in his movements; he felt that he himself was getting fidgety. Then he heard ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... of the pneumochair and swivelled his head upward till his glittering little eyes met Alan's. "You're not planning to go over the hill the way Steve did, are you? I can spot the symptoms. You look restless and fidgety the way ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... Grandeur that was Rome, by Mr. J. C. Stobart, of the English Cambridge. One greatest trouble about historical study is, that it allows you to see no great trends, but hides under the record of innumerable fidgety details the real meanings of things. Mr. Stobart, with a gift of his own for taking large views, sees this clearly, and goes about to remedy it; he does not wander with you through the dark of the undergrowth, labeling bush after bush; but leads ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Penelope, by no means abashed. "I went in a-purpose 'cos you didn't tell me what you wished to tell me once, and I was burning to know. Do you understand what it is to be all curiosity so that your heart beats too quick and you gets fidgety? Well, I was in that sort of state, and I said to myself, 'I will know.' So I went into your room and poked about. I looked under the bed, and there was an old bandbox where you kept your summer hat afore ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... being on it all day. One of mine with a bullet still in his chest, and some pneumonia, who seemed very ill when he was put on at Merville, said this morning he felt a lot better and had had the best night for five days! And my fidgety boy with the wound in his throat made a terrible fuss at being put off at Boulogne when he found he was the only one in his compartment to go and that I wasn't going ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... it was evident she had not changed her mind; for the happy man, Uncle Dozie, was there in full matrimonials, with a new wig, and a white waistcoat. The groom elect looked much like a victim about to be sacrificed; he was as miserably sheepish and fidgety as ever old bachelor could be under similar circumstances. Mrs. Creighton paid her compliments to the bride very gracefully; and she tried to look as if the affair were not a particularly good joke. Mr. Wyllys summoned up a sort of resigned cheerfulness; Miss Agnes and Elinor also endeavoured ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... passed, and none of us said any thing, and the little company of spectators grew fidgety, and Jack still ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... painful; but it was not that British grenadier who grew embarrassed and fidgety—it was the other party to the transaction. His gaze never shifted, his eyes never wavered—but I ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her claim is universally conceded; there is no shadow of doubt that she wrote the poem in question, and by becoming involved in any further complication on this subject she will simply make a laughing-stock of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... than once to any man. He had hired a carriage for her, not thinking it fit that Lady Ongar should be taken to her new home in a cab; and when he was at the station, half an hour before the proper time, was very fidgety because it had not come. Ten minutes before eight he might have been seen standing at the entrance to the station looking out anxiously for the vehicle. The man was there, of course, in time, but Harry made himself angry because he ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... persons who are ignorant of the construction of the skin, and of the influence which its treatment has on the health of the body. Persons deficient in such knowledge, frequently sneer at what they deem the foolish and fidgety particularity of others, whose frequent ablutions and changes of clothing, exceed their own measure ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Peter. "I just sat down on a rock near by, with my rifle across my knees, and watched him; and he grew so embarrassed and nervous and fidgety that he couldn't stand it any longer, and at last he sneaked off without completing his job and without either of ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... most particular man," said Meldon; "fidgety to a degree about having everything quite right, always worrying the life out of his servants, which is excellent for them, of course; but, well, if he was married"—he sank his voice again—"I expect his wife would consider herself ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... his support from one leg to the other,—they were slight as a young boy's,—and fumbled, as it were, with his feet; as I have seen a distinguished medical lecturer, of Boston, gesticulate with his toes. He played much with his whiskers, too, and his fingers were often in his hair—as a fidgety and vulgar man would bite his nails. From all of which I gathered that my new acquaintance was an intensely nervous person,—very sensitive, of course, and no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... slow work, Drummond," Lindsay said, as hour after hour passed. "I should not like to have anything to do with the king, just at present. It is easy to see how fidgety he is, and no wonder. For aught we know there may be only three or four thousand men facing us and, while we are waiting here, the whole Austrian army may have crossed over again, and be marching up the river bank to form a junction ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Edmonstone was fidgety and ill at ease, found fault with the dinner, and was pettish with his wife. Mrs. Edmonstone set Philip off upon politics, which lasted till the ladies could escape into the drawing-room. In another minute Philip brought in Charles, set him down, and departed. Amy, who ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... toast, has scarcely subsided, when a young gentleman in a pink under-waistcoat, sitting towards the bottom of the table, is observed to grow very restless and fidgety, and to evince strong indications of some latent desire to give vent to his feelings in a speech, which the wary Tupple at once perceiving, determines to forestall by speaking himself. He, therefore, rises again, with an ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Jose, with a shrug of the shoulders, "is just what is bothering me. However, we shall soon discover. Our men have had time to hide themselves, and the guide is getting fidgety. But I say, Jack, I wish I hadn't ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Rebel officer came in to superintend calling the roll. He was an undersized, fidgety man, with an insignificant face, and a mouth that protruded like a rabbit's. His bright little eyes, like those of a squirrel or a rat, assisted in giving his countenance a look of kinship to the family of rodent animals—a genus which lives by stealth and cunning, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... can drag Ira's gaze from that revolvin' exit door for more'n half a minute. There he stands, watchin' eager every couple that comes out; not excited or fidgety, you understand, but calm and in dead earnest. It got to be midnight, then half past, then quarter to one; and then all of a sudden there comes a ripplin', high-pitched laugh, and out trips a giddy-dressed fairy in a gilt and rhinestone turban effect with ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... their new masters patting their necks and talking to them while they did so. Then their saddles and bridles were put on, and they were led out of the stable and along the streets. At first they were very fidgety and wild at the unaccustomed sights and sounds, but their fear gradually subsided, and by the time they were well in the country they ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... say anything to my wife about my being poorly?" asked Jenkins, as they drew near to his home. "She'd be perhaps, for saying I should not go again yet to the office; and a pretty dilemma that would put me in, Mr. Galloway being absent. She'd get so fidgety, too: she kills me with kindness, if she thinks I am ill. The broth and arrowroot, and other messes, sir, that she makes me swallow, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... one of the tiny windows at the women's corner of the house, which looked on the court! They could not see her there, but she could see them, and if she were tired of travelling and dancing attendance on a fidgety invalid—if she repented her promise to keep the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nothing would change it. Whether or not he had hydrophobia we could not tell at the time, but we knew that strong and intense thinking about it would bring on symptoms. In the light of after happenings, however, there was no doubt of it. He got sick after we'd rounded the Horn, fidgety, nervous, and excitable, and, like the dog, he couldn't stay long in one place; but he wouldn't admit that the disease had developed in him until the little scar on his thumb grew inflamed and painful and he experienced difficulty ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... few fresh tiles on the roof of the pig-sty, which was decaying. A cart wanted a new pair of wheels or a shaft. One of the tenants wanted a new shed put up, but it did not seem necessary; the old one would do very well if people were not so fidgety. The wife or daughter of one of the cottage people was taking to drink and getting into bad ways. This or that farmer had had some sheep die. Another farmer had bought some new silver-mounted harness, and so on, through ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... morning, paying visits among his constituents, and at three o'clock he was to make his speech in the town-hall. Special places in the gallery were to be kept for Mrs Winterfield and her niece, and the old woman was quite resolved that she would be there. As the day advanced she became very fidgety, and at length she was quite alive to the perils of having to climb up the town-hall stairs; but she persevered, and at ten minutes before three she ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... serving-man, henchman and page Stand sniffing the duck-stuffing (onion and sage), And the scullions and cooks, With fidgety looks, Are grumbling and mutt'ring, and scowling as black As cooks always do when the dinner's put back; For though the board's deckt, and the napery, fair As the unsunned snow-flake, is spread out with care, And the Dais ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dozen white-eyed natives cautiously oozed through the Jungle, stimulating each other's nervousness by reassuring gestures. Certain that the trespasser on their dominion was incapable of mischief, they began to chatter, showing fidgety interest in the body, which they touched and poked fearsomely ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... other old ladies who have never ridden in a car, she was fidgety about her bonnet, and clung on to it, much to Pierrette's amusement. Nevertheless, Madame seemed to enjoy her ride, for just as we slipped down the hill into Beaulieu she suggested that we should go on to Nice and ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... and his eye steady and searching. He and M. de Villele were the very opposites in demeanour, though, after all, it was easy to see that the Englishman had the most latent force about him. One was fidgety, and the other humorous; for, with all his command of limb and gesture, nothing could be more natural than the expression of Mr. Canning, I may have imagined that I detected some of his wit, from a knowledge of the character of his mind. He left the impression, however, of a man whose natural powers ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cutaneous diseases. To pacify them I made some ointment of animal fat and flowers of sulphur, extracted with difficulty from some man's hoard, and told them how to apply it to some of the worst cases. The horse, being unused to a girth, became fidgety as it was being saddled, creating a STAMPEDE among the crowd, and the mago would not touch it again. They are as much afraid of their gentle mares as if they were panthers. All the children followed me for a considerable distance, and a good many of the adults made an excuse for going ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of that flabby but fidgety kind which throws off ideas as a crab its shells, one after another—useless, imperfect moulds of itself. He came home to the mountain-hut in the first flush and triumph of authorship, bringing every newspaper-clipping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... dress. They were so curious to see a real, live train robber, bless 'em, that they just wrapped blankets and sheets around themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking. They always show more curiosity and sand than ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... bar—they were for the most part mighty nice to look at, but very raw about racing. How long I might have gone on in this way I cannot say; but one morning I fell in with a fat, elderly gentleman, in shorts and gaiters, mounted on a dun cob pony, that was very fidgety and hot tempered, and appeared to give the rider a great deal ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... laughing and talking quietly, and some affected to consider their nearest companion as more sure than themselves. Even Hamilton was not free from a little nervousness, and though he talked away to Vernon Digby, who was sitting by him, he cast more than one fidgety glance at the red-covered table, and perceptibly changed color when the class-room door opened to allow the long train of ladies and gentlemen to enter, and closed after Dr. Wilkinson, and a few of his particular friends, among whom were two great scholars who had assisted ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the prey. At such periods alone might you behold any expression of anxiety in their faces. This disappeared entirely the moment that they were in possession of the victim. That imperturbable composure which distinguished them was singularly contrasted with the fidgety eagerness and nervous rapidity by which you could discover the latter; and I glanced over the operations of the two parties, as they were fairly shown in several sets about the room, with a renewed ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... really five o'clock!" She jumped up in pretended dismay. "And I promised Jim faithfully I'd be back by half-past four. He gets fidgety when I'm out of his sight for long—thinks I'm ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... "and as you know, Mr. Handy, I have had some experience in such matters. Don't you agree with me, Miss De la Rue?" The last inquiry was addressed to the "angel" star, who was standing by his side, apparently as nervous and fidgety as if she was about to undergo an examination ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... and said,—"Between you and me, sir, be it respectfully said, I am not sorry that our little confabulation should pass alone. Ladies are very delightful, very delightful, certainly: but they won't let one tell a story one's own way; they are fidgety, you know, sir,—fidgety, nothing more; 't is a trifle, but it is unpleasant. Besides, my wife was Master Clinton's foster-mother, and she can't hear a word about him, without running on into a long rigmarole of what he did as a ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... expected, he found Withers and Mr. Fulton far ahead of train time. They had been passed through the gates and were standing on the platform. Braceway noticed that, of the two, the father was standing the ordeal with greater fortitude and calmness. Withers was nervous, fidgety, and seemed to find it impossible to stand in any one place. He drew Braceway ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... be said, old men are fretful, fidgety, ill-tempered, and disagreeable. If you come to that, they are also avaricious. But these are faults of character, not of the time of life. And, after all, fretfulness and the other faults I mentioned admit of some excuse—not, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... boldly placed himself in antagonism to their enterprise. Nobody knew him, and the president, uneasy as to the result of so free a discussion, watched his new friend with some anxiety. The meeting began to be somewhat fidgety also, for the contest directed their attention to the dangers, if not the actual impossibilities, of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... got no nerves, John. I leave that for women with husbands to work 'em off on. I don't know what it is with this preacher. He's a good man accordin' to his lights, but he makes me fidgety a rumblin' away about his work and his creeds and things like a volcano that don't never blow up. I wish he'd let off a little steam once in a while, or spit out a few rocks and stones jest to liven up things ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... Jawleyford-armed china; but the contents of the dishes were bad, and the wine, if possible, worse. Most palpable Marsala did duty for sherry, and the corked port was again in requisition. Jawleyford was no longer the brisk, cheery-hearted Jawleyford of Laverick Wells, but a crusty, fidgety, fire-stirring sort of fellow, desperately ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... people who were at first inclined to be kind to her for Peter's sake, dropped off when they found how her eagerness to attract the attention of some one mightier made her unable to fix her thoughts on the friendly remarks that they were taking pains to make. In society she was absent-minded, fidgety, obviously on the look-out for a chance of drawing the biggest fish into her little net; but, wealthy as she was, she was not wealthy enough in an age of millionnaires, and not once during the whole of her career was a big fish ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... his jaw caused him to abruptly take advantage of a recent discovery; and while he was careful to couch his opinions in an undertone, he told Mr. Yollop what he thought of him in terms that would have put the hardiest pirate to blush. Something in Mr. Yollop's eye, however, and the fidgety way in which he was fingering the trigger of the pistol, moved him to interrupt a particularly satisfying paean of blasphemy by breaking off short in the very middle of it to wonder why in God's name he hadn't had sense enough to remember that ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... England child could ever gather. Only English larks and linnets, cowslips and hawthorn, were to be found in the toy-books and little histories read to him. "Everything was British: even the robin, a domestic bird," wrote the doctor, "instead of a great fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush." But when Peter Parley, Jacob Abbott, Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. Embury, and Eliza Leslie began to write short stories, the Annuals and periodicals abounded in American ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... long; but s'pose you met up with a dog that could. It'd make you feel sort of queer inside. Which I felt that way while Dan was lookin' at me. Not that he was threatenin' me. No, it wasn't that. He was only thoughtful, but I kept gettin' more nervous and more fidgety. I felt after a while like I couldn't stand it. I had to crawl out of bed and begin walkin' up and down till I got quieter. But I ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... didn't you say so before?" said Phelan angrily, at which the fidgety little brown son ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... "you are to sleep; but you needn't expect to be entirely exclusive, for every night when I feel cold or fidgety, I shall run in here and sleep with you. Is it ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... talking about old times?"—he said ... "one only tortures himself. One says to himself,—'Thou wert a young man then, but now thy last teeth have vanished from thy mouth.' And there's no denying it—the old times were good ... well, and God be with them! And as for those men—I suppose, thou fidgety child, that thou art talking about the accidental men? Thou hast seen a bubble spring forth on water? So long as it is whole and lasts, what beautiful colours play upon it! Red and yellow and blue; all one can say is, ''Tis a rainbow or a diamond!'—But it ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Form, as usual, went into the library to do their construing. Dr. Litter, according to his usual custom, walked up and down hearing them and asking questions, the form sitting at their desks, which ran round the room. The Doctor was a fidgety man, and was always either twirling his watch-chain or eye-glass, or rattling the keys, knife, and other articles in his trousers pockets. Being perfectly conscious of the habit, he often emptied the contents of his pocket ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... take the responsibility; and General Outram must turn up soon." Havelock turns and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... man. There were several people waiting, so I sat down. When the man they were talking to came out, it was Pete, that driller who put down the first well for us. He was glad to see me, and we had quite a talk, but I noticed he was fidgety. He said he was running a rig over near 'Burk,' and had a fishing job on his hands. With all the excitement and everybody running double 'towers' and trying to beat the other fellow down to the sand, it struck me as queer that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a perfect horror of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the Sylph got within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But once having been induced ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... way to the pavement, where something lay huddled against the wall of the house, and the coachman, torpid on his box behind the fidgety horses, started ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... stood in front of the line, fidgety with fear, in doubt whether to lay her suckling baby on the bench before she faced military justice. She laid it on the floor at her feet, hesitated, and then picked it up again and wrapped it in a corner of the red blanket that constituted her ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... settle his latitude, is more than I can tell. The longitude he must either have obtained by the Rule of Three, or else by special revelation. Not that the chronometer in the cabin was seldom to be relied on, or was any ways fidgety; quite the contrary; it stood stock-still; and by that means, no doubt, the true Greenwich time—at the period of stopping, at least—was preserved to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... a ridiculous nickname for him. One of them ventured (after a glass over a bargain) to call him by it, and a blow from the vermicelli maker's fist sent him headlong into a gutter in the Rue Oblin. He could think of nothing else when his children were concerned; his love for them made him fidgety and anxious; and this was so well known, that one day a competitor, who wished to get rid of him to secure the field to himself, told Goriot that Delphine had just been knocked down by a cab. The vermicelli maker turned ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... systematic, and deliberate in his habits and ways of doing business. A swift reader and a surprisingly swift writer, he was always occupied, and was skilful in using even the scraps and fragments of his time. No pressure of work made him fussy or fidgety, nor could any one remember to have seen him in ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... know why I should be thirsty. Are you, Aunt Mary? Ah! here it is. Don't disturb yourself, aunty; I've found it. It was in my bag, just where I'd put it myself. But all this trouble about Willis has made me so fidgety that I don't know where anything is. And now I don't know how to manage about the baby while I go after the water. He's sleeping soundly enough now; but if he should happen to get into one of his rolling moods, he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... black looks and cursing threats in low voices greeted Hambone on all sides, and his work that day was so fidgety, and he made so many mistakes in getting the ranges on the sights, that the Major performed the coup d'etat for which we were all anxiously waiting by transmitting as quickly as he could to headquarters his recommendation that he be retired, and Hambone, to our immense relief, was ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... any sort of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You can't reason ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... passed uneventfully. Each evening, about ten, Ambler Jevons came in to smoke and drink. He stayed an hour, apparently nervous, tired, and fidgety in a manner quite unusual; but to my inquiries regarding the success of his ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... that was hanging from the handle of a window fastening. Malignon rose to wrap the burnous round her shoulders, and they began chatting familiarly on matters which had little interest for Helene. Feeling fidgety, fearing that Pauline might unwittingly knock the children down, she therefore stepped into the garden, leaving Juliette and the young man to wrangle over some new fashion in bonnets which apparently deeply ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... before I could satisfy myself that our journey was more than begun, my horseless coach, and fifty more besides, had actually gone over them. I experienced a nervous palpitation at the heart as I proceeded from the outskirts of the city, and grew more and more fidgety the nearer I approached the din and noise of the prosperous seat of business. I could not account for the feeling, until I detected myself walking as briskly as I could, with my eyes fixed hard upon the ground, as though afraid to glance upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... more susceptible than their ancestors. He possessed, in consequence, an enormous physical magnetism, as we term it, over his fellow-citizens, apart from the natural influence of his talents and understanding. Fidgety men were quieted in his presence, women were spellbound by it, and the busy, anxious public contemplated his majestic calm with a feeling of relief, as well as admiration. Large numbers of people in New England, for many years, reposed upon Daniel ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... was the resort of such writers and clerks belonging to the Parliament House above thirty years ago as retained the ancient Scottish custom of a meridian, as it was called, or noontide dram of spirits. If their proceedings were watched, they might be seen to turn fidgety about the hour of noon, and exchange looks with each other from their separate desks, till at length some one of formal and dignified presence assumed the honour of leading the band, when away they went, threading the crowd like a string ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... side were the blank surfaces of the closed doors. To either end were the heads of four nervous animals, eight ponderous hulks of steel-shod horseflesh, high strung and fidgety, verging almost on panic under the unusual conditions they were enduring, and subject at any minute to new ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... her usual refreshments, or wear a new frock, on that particular night. Yet the occasion, despite its mild diversions, was distinctly epochal, in that it marked the reunion of Hyndsville. Even Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, for the first time, put in his decorative appearance, to The Author's fidgety surprise. He played a highly creditable game of bridge. And after a while he sang "Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms," so exquisitely that a hushed and rapturous silence fell upon everybody, and the old ladies and gentlemen present held their hands before ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... aroused the others; but we could not see the lights of the steamer, and turned to sleep. An officer passed out of the Fort, and I fancied he said to another man that the ship was in; but he only looked at us and passed on. Presently I felt more fidgety, and making a trumpet of my hands I called out to the Secretary, who answered back that the ship had been laying to three-quarters of an hour, and that we should have gone off when the gun fired. People are so lazy and indolent in ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... her master finally told Dora not to send Julian to him in this way to hear "Robinson Crusoe," because he was "tired of reading it to him." The nurse was a bit of a genius herself, in her way, and not to be easily suppressed, and when her charge became fidgety, and she was in a hurry, she made one more experiment with Robbie. Her master turned round in his chair, and for the first time in four years she saw an angry look on his face, and he commanded her "never ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... make everything right, and, as I sit on the foot of my bed, she places herself in front of me, with her back towards me. I begin my work, but she thinks that I want to see too much, that I am not skilful enough, and that my fingers wander in unnecessary places; she gets fidgety, leaves me, tears the breeches, and manages in her own way. Then I help her to put her shoes on, and I pass the shirt over her head, but as I am disposing the ruffle and the neck-band, she complains of my hands being too curious; and in truth, her bosom was rather scanty. She calls me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... on the south side, looked at his watch many times. A little man, mingling with the disreputable rascals on the north side, was similarly fidgety. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Lavish proceeded through the streets of the city of Florence, short, fidgety, and playful as a kitten, though without a kitten's grace. It was a treat for the girl to be with any one so clever and so cheerful; and a blue military cloak, such as an Italian officer wears, only increased the sense ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... studied the blue jerseyed youths of Canton in comparison with the dark red clad boys of Trumbull. It seemed to him that the Canton team was better drilled, the players moved with more snap and machine-like precision. Judd felt nervous and fidgety. ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... in the morning. The rector having some letters to write, has bolted himself into his study in despair, and defies his excitable friend from that stronghold, until the arrival of Mrs. Peckover with the deaf and dumb child has quieted the painter's fidgety impatience for the striking of twelve o'clock, and the presence of the visitors from the circus. As for the miserable Vance, Mr. Blyth has discomposed, worried, and put him out, till he looks suffocated with suppressed ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... farm stood a cart into which two young calves had just been packed. Hastings was driving it, and Rachel Henderson, who had just adjusted the net over the fidgety frightened creatures, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Turned its back on their warped bones. Even thus, Momentous with reproach, her grave regard Made me feel mean, cashiered of rank and right, My limbs that twelve good years had nursed were numbed And all their fidgety quicksilver grew stiff, Novel and fevering hallucinations Invaded my attention. So daylight When shutters are thrown back spreads through a house; As then the dreams and terrors of the night Decamp, so from my mind were driven All its own thoughts and feelings. Close she leant Propped ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the goat; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the fireside ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... daylight was dangerous, even going to the Baths of Titus from the Esquiline was risky. Anyone like Falco was certain to feel safer indoors. And the tense uncertainty of those twenty-four days made everybody restless, feverish, fidgety and morose: civil war between Severus and Pescennius Niger, lord of the East, was inevitable. How Clodius Albinus, in control of Gaul, Spain and Britain, would act, was problematical. We were all keyed-up, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... to be scared, inasmuch as I was an intimate acquaintance of the General, for whom I carried Cape Cod. On the left side of the kitchen there stood at a great deal table an aged maid whose mien was somewhat fidgety. This visible nervousness was increased with the labour necessary to prepare the ponderous pile of soft dough-nuts she worked upon; which, she said, when ready (though of little substance) were intended ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... ease and self-possession which can only be acquired by long habitual intercourse with well-bred persons, this surely is the wisest course that could be adopted, and a hundred degrees above that fidgety, jackdaw-like assumption of nonchalance with which the ill-bred amongst ourselves seek ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... one of the boys—it was little Jonathan—was recovering from an attack of scarlatina, and was very fidgety and uncomfortable, nothing but some kind of story would keep him quiet in ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... had been fidgety on the journey up, he was almost distracted on the journey down. If he found Eldred, what could he say? That it had been discovered that the book was a rarity and must be recalled? An obvious untruth. Or that it was believed to contain important manuscript notes? Eldred would ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... the tip-toe of anticipation and suppressed excitement throughout Thursday and Friday, hoping for news concerning the decision of the Tribunal. But when Friday passed without my receiving any tidings I commenced to get fidgety and anxious. My feelings were not assuaged by hearing volleys ring out every morning, followed by a death-like stillness. These reports appeared to stifle the cries and groans of the prisoners a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... exchanged glances—she in obedience to his fidgety heels. He had dug a hole in the gravel deep enough to bury a kitten. Her curtsey—it was almost that—to Lady Maria was very pretty. She drew in her suffering sister, almost embraced her. "Dearest, dearest!" she whispered. Sanchia, who was very pale, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... we all begin to grow fidgety, and take surreptitious looks at our watches, and then glance round at our companions to see if anyone is taking the first plunge. Hopeless quest! Nobody ever will be the first to begin to eat in a railway carriage. Why is it, I wonder? Are they afraid none of the others ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, "Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, "Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don't you try to behave?" Then she told me all about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had many roots. First, like many others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and sleek and drawn back straight from her low, white forehead and knotted together in the back, calling attention to a neck that was slim and beautifully proportioned. Pink and white and gold described her. She seemed to bristle with a sort of fidgety energy, as if she had so much youth and loveliness stored up in her that she had a tremendous time keeping it all ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Sterling, for a bit of business. I had an emotional moment yesterday and went off my head a bit. I stand by what I said as to keeping quiet, but—well, I'm like any other old maid who hates dust on her mantelpiece—I'm fidgety not to make some sort of a bluff at putting this thing on a ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... breakfast she speedily recovered her complacency and volubility. "I've always heard," she said, with her little cackling laugh, "that men would be extravergant, especially in some things. There are some things they're fidgety about and will have just so. Well, well, who has a better right than a well-to-do, fore-handed man? Woman is to complement the man, and it should be her aim to study the great—the great—shall we say ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... awakened with a start by the jangle and clamor of Tommy Garton's little alarm-clock, got up and dressed. At the lunch-counter the man who had been fidgety yesterday and was merely sleepy this morning set coffee and flapjacks and bacon before him. Before four he had saddled his horse, rolled into a neat bundle a blanket and a couple of quilts from the cot upon which he had slept ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... of wisdom. "A nice-minded young man stays away, if he sees that his feelings are not returned, or if he has no position to offer.—And another thing I'll tell you, Joan, though you do think yourself so clever. You don't need to worry if Ephie is odd and fidgety sometimes just now. At her age, it's only to be expected. You know very well what I mean. All girls go through the same thing. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... among the trees, Lasse rather fidgety. There was a whole street of dancing-booths, tents with conjurers and panorama-men, and drinking-booths. The criers were perspiring, the refreshment sellers were walking up and down in front of their tents like greedy beasts of prey. Things had not got into full swing yet, for most ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Tom came in alone, and I suspected that Perry had sent him. He was fidgety, ill at ease, and presently asked if I could see him a moment in my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 140; retract &c 607; fluctuate; pendulate^; alternate &c (oscillate) 314; keep off and on, play fast and loose; blow hot and cold &c (caprice) 608. shuffle, palter, blink; trim. Adj. irresolute, infirm of purpose, double-minded, half-hearted; undecided, unresolved, undetermined; shilly-shally; fidgety, tremulous; hesitating &c v.; off one's balance; at a loss &c (uncertain) 475. vacillating &c v.; unsteady &c (changeable) 149; unsteadfast^, fickle, without ballast; capricious &c 608; volatile, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
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