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More "Parlour" Quotes from Famous Books



... chairs in the parlour and real Brussels," she anticipated. Peter affected to think it unlikely that she could be spared by the highly mythical person who was to carry her off to keep house for himself. Somehow Peter could ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... iron her own gown. No, ma'am, please to ring the bell when you require anything; otherwise you will ruin my servants.' Much ashamed of my ignorance on this higher plane of English custom," continues the Idealist, "I crept back to my parlour and laughed heartily as I looked round the dirty, wretchedly furnished room, and reflected on the abyss set by prejudice between the ground-floor and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... household was thrown into consternation by the scandalous behaviour of her black cat, Caesar, who chose suddenly to terminate a long and outwardly respectable career as Miss Carpenter's familiar by having kittens under the horse-hair sofa in the parlour. Incidentally this indelicate and ungentlemanly behaviour temporarily unloosed the hinges of Miss Carpenter's reason, so that my supper suffered that evening, and for several days she wandered round the house with blank and witless eyes. Perhaps I should have ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... of Uncas, did he?" resumed the trapper, without regarding the slight interruptions of the bee-hunter, which amounted to no more than a sort of by-play. "And what thought he and said he of the lad, in his parlour, with the comforts and ease of the settlements ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... progress of science and to smile at the crudity of its early experiments and theories. In Bolt Court we pause to see a great man die. Here especially Dr. Johnson's figure ever stands like a statue, and we shall find his black servant at the door and his dependents wrangling in the front parlour. Burke and Boswell are on their way to call, and Reynolds is taking coach in the adjoining street. Nor is even Shoe Lane without its associations, for at the north-east end the corpse of poor, dishonoured Chatterton lies still ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... better man might have been envious: this was Abraham Cowley, an old college friend of the duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and owed his entrance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar at Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his mother's parlour window a copy of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.' He eagerly perused the delightful volume, though he was then only twelve years old: and this impulse being given to his mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses. His 'Poetical Blossoms,' published whilst ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... Tuesday morning, Booth elected to chaff his friend on the progress of his campaign. They were seated opposite to each other in the almost empty parlour car. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... watched for his advantages, and pressed the Abbe with increasing success in proportion as he was more disturbed by passion. The conversation grew warmer, and was broken off by M. de Foncemagne's rising from table and passing into the parlour, where no one was tempted ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... that's the fun of it. That's what made him so excited. He was in the parlour all the time I was playing. But we might as well have ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... panes and glowed in the heart of green bottle-glass. Out in the street men shouldered past her, talking blithely; and in distant kitchens cups clinked and ware clattered, and every house—every house from garret to parlour, seemed to her a home happy and gleeful. A home; and her home! She stood at the thought and cursed them; cursed them, and like the echo of her whispered words the solemn boom of a cannon ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... sleeps up in the room, and she has a lodging at the turnkey's. First house there,' said Tip, pointing out the doorway into which she had retired. 'First house, sky parlour. She pays twice as much for it as she would for one twice as good outside. But she stands by the governor, poor ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... October day, 1882, behind the grating of the Carmel, I saw my beloved Pauline, now become Sister Agnes of Jesus. Oh, how much I suffered in that parlour! As I am writing the story of my soul, it seems to me that I ought to tell you everything. Well, I acknowledge that I hardly counted the first pains of this parting, in comparison with those which followed. I, who had been accustomed to talk with my little Mother ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... consulting room, while, of the other two, one served as a sleeping apartment for himself and his pupil, Mr Richard Maitland, the third being sacred to Polly Nevis, a sturdy and willing, but somewhat untidy person, who discharged the united functions of parlour maid, housemaid, chamber maid, cook, and scullery maid to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... a negotiation with Johnny, the host, who, to our great joy, took up a candle, and led the way into a sort of back parlour, with a promise that we should have our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... each took a hand. Malvina was still standing where the Professor had left her. It was very absurd, but the Professor felt frightened. He went into the kitchen, where it was light and cheerful, and started Mrs. Muldoon on Home Rule. When he returned to the parlour Malvina was gone. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... "Cruithne," with his seven sons, and the Picts? Were they of Gothic descent and tongue, as Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck maintained in rather a notorious dispute in the parlour at Monkbarns? or were they "genuine Celtic," as Sir Arthur Wardour argued so stoutly on the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... I must have a corner, must we not? So when my brother's friends are in the parlour he allows us to sit in his room. 'Tis a great favour, I can tell you; the ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... purpose, and turned again on her fascinated auditor. "Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I'm tellin' ye? Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!" And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes' wants in the front parlour. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from a web perfecting press, yet it is only a country newspaper, and knowing this we refuse to put on city airs. Of course we print the afternoon Associated Press report on the first page, under formal heads and with some pretence of dignity, but that first page is the parlour of the paper, as it is of most of its contemporaries, and in the other pages they and we go around in our shirt sleeves, calling people by their first names; teasing the boys and girls good-naturedly; tickling the pompous ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... that period of my residence in London. The front parlour was my sitting-room. Very small, very low in the ceiling, very poorly furnished—but, oh, so neat! I looked into the passage to see which of Lady Verinder's servants had asked for me. It was the young footman, Samuel—a civil fresh-coloured person, with a teachable look ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... I'll lose none. I tell ye again, ye'll go quickest by going leisurely. Come in... take a chair..." He threw open the door of a parlour. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... 'ere most awful go." We are both going mad with the strain of the situation, when in walks the engineer's brother from the Eclaireur. He seems intensely surprised to find me sitting in his friend the planter's parlour after my grim and retiring conduct on the Eclaireur on my voyage up. But the planter tells him all, sousing him in torrents of words, full of the violence of an outbreak of pent-up emotion. I do ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... bar, opened the gate, which admitted them through an archway into a square court, surrounded by buildings. Opposite to the arch was another door, which the serving-man in like manner unlocked, and thus introduced them into a stone-paved parlour, where there was but little furniture, and that of the rudest and most ancient fashion. The windows were tall and ample, reaching almost to the roof of the room, which was composed of black oak; those opening to the quadrangle were obscured by the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell over me through his parlour window as I explored the maze of streets east and west in solitary leisurely walks without chart and compass. Till I began to write that novel I had written nothing but letters, and not very many of these. I never made a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... both leaders in social life, one of them a physician, who had suddenly lost every spear of hair. I was invited by the unfortunate physician and his wife to dine with them. And, in his own home, I noticed in their parlour a portrait of him before his experience. He had been blessed with magnificently thick black hair, a handsome face, adorned with a full beard and moustache. It was an April evening and the weather was quite warm, and after dinner the doctor removed his wig, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... stout figure of Maria Ivanovna into a tiny parlour, and from the next room came the screams of a baby, sounding cross and peevish, which filled him with disgust. They cut ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... boats and barges, and by a road below my terrace, with coaches, post-chaises, wagons, and horsemen constantly in motion, and the fields speckled with cows, horses, and sheep. Now you shall walk into the house. The bow-window below leads into a little parlour hung with a stone-colour Gothic paper and Jackson's Venetian prints, which I could never endure while they pretended, infamous as they are, to be after Titian, etc., but when I gave them this air of barbarous basreliefs, they succeeded to a miracle: it is impossible at first sight not ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... their foreparts were burned away by the near approach of the candle, which his short-sightedness rendered necessary in reading. At Streatham, Mr. Thrale's valet had always a better wig ready, with which he met Johnson at the parlour door when dinner was announced, and as he went up stairs to bed, the same man ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... a Northern burr which made, Herrick glance curiously at her, came bustling into the flagged passage to greet them, and when she had taken their order for tea she ushered them into the parlour ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... outside of the walls. The best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired; and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the house, with ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... the day the Gardens (probably so styled on account of the complete absence of horticultural embellishments) are as silent as the tomb; there is no sign of life except in the mornings, when a solemn butler or a uniformed parlour-maid appears for a moment at the door like some creature of the sea coming up ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... fast disappearing. One of my near relatives was locked into a first floor parlour in Whitechapel, without hat or shoes, to prevent his going to hear Mr. Whitefield; but, at the risk of being turned out of doors by his parents, he escaped out of the window, by clinging to the rain water-pipe, and enjoyed the public ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... arrived here safe. It is a wonderful place, a small city of palaces amidst hills, rocks, and woods, and is full of fine people. Please to carry upstairs and lock in the drawer the little paper sack of letters in the parlour; lock it up with the bank book, and put this along with it—also be sure to keep the window of my room fastened and the door locked, and keep the key in your pocket. ...
— Letters to his mother, Ann Borrow - and Other Correspondents • George Borrow

... in the little parlour when Miss Coleman came down does not belong to my story, which is all about Diamond. If he had known that Miss Coleman thought Mr. Evans was dead, perhaps he would have managed differently. There was a ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... caught hold of the railing of the stoop, and dragging himself to his feet, limped into the parlour. "It's an age since we've sung any of our duets, Phil," he called; "let's have some now. Nora, play 'O wert thou in the cauld blast,'—that's one of our favourites." And in a minute or two they were singing away with all ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... tells us this story in the late autumn evenings. Now the harvest is in, huge haycocks shelter the gable, the honey is strained and put by in jars, the apples are ripened and stored; the logs begin to sputter and sing in the big parlour at evening, hot cakes to steam on the tea-table, and the pleasant lamp-lit hours to spread themselves. Indoor things begin to have meaning looks of their own, our limbs grow quiet, and our brains begin to work. The moors beyond the window ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... people feel that there had always been Conneely's Hotel in Killesky. If the old people remembered Julia Dowd's little public-house with its thatched roof, the low ceiling and the fire of turf to which you could draw a chair while you had your drink, the little parlour beyond which was reserved for customers of a superior station, they ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... without fear of soiling it. A strong deal table, two wooden-seated chairs, and a small easy couch, which had been removed from one of the bedrooms upstairs, were all the movables which this room contained. The other front room had been fitted up as a parlour; but what might be the style of its furniture was now unknown, for no eye had beheld the contents of that room for nearly seventeen years, during which it had been hermetically sealed, even to the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... told me the following story, although a joke against himself. He and Corney Grain were sharing a cottage on the river. A man called early one morning to discuss affairs, and was talking to Corney in the parlour, which was on the ground floor. The window was open. The other entertainer—the man who told me the story—was dressing in the room above. Thinking he recognised the voice of the visitor below, he leant out of his bedroom window to hear better. He leant too far, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... thought I heard something fall in the parlour, and the passage-door being directly after shut to in a still manner. I loaded the pistols, thinking that thieves had broken into the house, and pushed up the sash to shoot ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... small beer, but golden Rodney—might draw forth an ode from a teetotal Chancellor of the Exchequer. August winds up in a blaze of gladness for the reaper. On ordinary evenings he sits stolidly in the dingy parlour and consumes mysterious malt liquor to an accompaniment of grumbling and solemn puffing of acrid tobacco, but the harvest supper is a wildly luxurious affair which lasts until eleven o'clock. Are there not songs too? The village tenor explains—with a ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... took off his heavy shoes, stole past the back door, and so round the clerk's house to the front. Very softly indeed went he, creeping by the wall, and emerging at last round the angle, by the window of the best parlour. Here, most excessively to Mr. Pike's consternation, he came upon a lady doing exactly what he had come to do—namely, stealthily listening at the window to anything there ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... to such persons as these, who are in America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was not would be immaterial to any practical man. As a matter of fact, however, between socialism of this negligible kind—this sheet-lightning ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... up into the manager's parlour. It might have been a court of justice, or a dentist's surgery, or the cabinet of an insurance doctor, or the room at Fontainebleau where Napoleon signed his abdication—anything but the thing it was. Happily Mr Lovatt had a manner which ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... all the chilly discomfort of the farmhouse parlour, unused, save on state occasions—a funereal gloom which no sunlight could pierce, a mustiness which savoured almost of the grave. One by one they obeyed the stern forefinger of Gideon Strong, and took their seats on comfortless ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... this gap the Romans passed from their moored fleets to the fortified settlements above. It was at one time possible to descend by another opening higher up the cliff to a ledge called "Puck Church Parlour." This is now inaccessible except to seabirds. The well-known view of the "Seven Sisters" is taken hereabouts and the disused "Belle Tout" lighthouse stands up well on the western slopes of Beachy Head, looking no distance ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... place, very courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... dear," interrogated Mr Potts, humbly, as soon as the door was closed. But Mrs Potts made no reply, until she had led her husband to such a distance from the parlour as she imagined would prevent Mr Rainscourt from being roused by the high pitch to which she intended to ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... this intense cold, to which many Canadians and others have occasionally recourse, is—at least to my feelings it always appeared—infinitely worse than the disease. On entering, for instance, the small parlour of a little inn, a number of strong, able-bodied fellows are discovered holding their hands a few inches before their faces, and sitting in silence immediately in front of a stove of such excruciating power, that it really feels as if it would roast ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... mud-stained cloak, 'Twas he! Our Ocean-Shepherd! Walter Raleigh! He brushed me passing, and with one vigorous thrust Opened the door and entered. At his heels I followed—into the Mermaid!—through three yards Of pitch-black gloom, then into an old inn-parlour Swimming with faces in a mist of smoke That up-curled, blue, from long Winchester pipes, While—like some rare old picture, in a dream Recalled—quietly listening, laughing, watching, Pale on that old black oaken wainscot floated One bearded oval face, young, with deep eyes, Whom Raleigh ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... so much depended. Lord Egremont called at Carew's house on his way, and Haydon, who saw him go in, relates that 'Dear Mary and I were walking on the leads, and agreed that it would not be quite right to look too happy, being without a sixpence; so we came in, I to the parlour to look through the blinds, and she to the nursery.' Happily, the patron was favourably impressed by the picture, and promised to give L600 for it when it was finished. In order to pay his models Haydon was obliged to pawn one of his two lay-figures, since he could not ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... that she might sleep under the influence of an anodyne. Poor Tom! it was not the reception he had figured to himself, and after he had laid her down, and left her to Cora and to Katty to be undressed, he returned to the parlour, and stood over the sinking wood-fire in dejection and dreariness of heart—wrung by the sufferings he had witnessed, with the bitter words (too late) echoing in his brain, and with the still more cruel thought—had ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gladly enough. She could not bear to think she had hurt any one's feelings, even any one she did not particularly like. Mrs. Bennett led the way into her parlour, where Penelope had never been before. It held all the treasures she was most proud of, and the window was full of geraniums, fuchsias, and hanging baskets of 'Mothers of Thousands,' blocking out most of the light. While ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... The little parlour at "Lawn Cottage," the name of their new home, soon became the scene of frequent reunions among choice spirits, whose aspirations went higher and deeper than the external and visible. In closing around Mr. Markland, they seemed to shut him out, ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have to care about is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlour, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw any thing that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Heston, in the little square parlour of a country inn where the floor was only polished boards, and where long wooden trestles ran on two sides of ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... shops almost generally exhibit displays of articles calculated for the approaching period, unexampled in brilliancy, taste and costliness, and including nearly every item suitable to the drawing room, the parlour, or the boudoir. The local papers contain numerous advertising announcements of "Valentines;" the walls are occupied with printed placards of a similar character, and the city crier, by means of a loud bell and an equally sonorous voice, proclaims the particular ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... safe from being hounded down for the rest of his life, when I saw a woman walking on the beach ahead of me. I came up with her before long, and as I passed her she turned her head and I saw she was one of two girls that we had seen in the landlady's parlour one afternoon. The landlady was a good, decent Scotch woman, and had taken a fancy to both of us (particularly to Jim—as usual). She thought—she was that simple—that we were up-country squatters from some far-back place, or overseers. Something in the sheep or cattle line ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... They went into a parlour with its window open, upon the window-sill a pigeon mourning among pots of wallflowers and southernwood that filled the entering air with sweetness. A room with thin-legged chairs, with cupboards whose lozens gave view ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... are almost invariably heroes to them. It was, therefore, excessively discomposing to her that, during the following week, in the very height of apparently cloudless domestic tranquillity, the housemaid and the parlour-maid should in one black hour successively demand an audience, and successively, in the floods of tears proper to such occasions, give warning. Inquiry as to their reasons was fruitless. They were unhappy: one said she ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... stone, though some people would say that my present manner of travelling is much the most preferable, riding as I now do, instead of leading my horse; receiving the homage of ostlers instead of their familiar nods; sitting down to dinner in the parlour of the best inn I can find, instead of passing the brightest part of the day in the kitchen of a village alehouse; carrying on my argument after dinner on the subject of the corn-laws with the best commercial gentlemen on the road, instead of being glad, whilst sipping a pint ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... agitation as the raindrops smote the little pools between the cobbles and ricochetted with a multitudinous hiss. Now and again a gust of wind swept across, and the rain rattled against the windows. On the opposite side of the square one of the houses gaped curiously, with bedroom and parlour exposed to view, as though some one had snatched away the walls and laid the scene for one of those Palais Royal farces in which the characters pursue a complicated domestic intrigue on two floors at once. That house, with its bed exposed to the rain dripping ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... the precedence to one or the other, we will descend from the elevation of Northwood, amidst the din of music from the Club House, and the hum of promenaders on the beach, and ensconce ourselves in the snug parlour of "mine host" Paddy White, whom we used to denominate the Falstaff of the island. Though from the land of shillelaghs and whiskey, Paddy is entirely devoid of that gunpowder temperament which characterizes his country; and his genuine humour, ample obesity, and originality ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various

... deuise, carried him away into another house a little way off from the great hall of the Paracoussy, and continued their weepings and mournings by the space of two long houres: in which meane while the Indians ceased not to drinke Cassine, but with such silence that one word was not heard in the parlour. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... these simple democratic cars are inscribed with the word "White," whereby nine million people are excluded. But to this original even-handed treatment there was speedily added a more sumptuous type of car, the parlour car, accessible to extra dollars; and then came special types of train, all made up of parlour cars and observation cars and the like. In England nearly every train remains still first, second and third, or first and third. And now, quite outdistancing the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the rug at the foot of the stairs. He hastened along, the passage. Mrs. Wilson ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... provident supply. But all the answer she got from the offended Jamie was a bitter rejoinder, "Weel, then, neist time they sall get nane ava!" On another occasion a family from a distance had called whilst my uncle and aunt were out of the house. Jamie came into the parlour to deliver the cards, or to announce that they had called. My aunt, somewhat vexed at not having been in the way, inquired what message Mr. and Mrs. Innes had left, as she had expected one. "No; no message." She returned to the charge, and asked again if they had not told him anything ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... her parlour, working on a dress, the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... down the treasure. With a cloth he dusted the feathers and tenderly wiped the eyes. "A first-class animal for fifty cents," he said—"and durable. He'll last a lifetime if you be careful of him—keep him in the parlour just to ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... long Parliament began, 1641, the Sceptre fell out of the figure of King Charles in wood, in Sir Thomas Trenchard's hall at Wullich, in Dorset, as they were at dinner in the parlour: ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... language which are used by the terrestrial animals of this kingdom. He desired the ostler to take his horse in tow, and bring him to his moorings in a safe riding. He ordered the waiter, who showed them into a parlour, to bear a hand, ship his oars, mind his helm, and bring alongside a short allowance of brandy or grog, that he might cant a slug into his bread-room, for there was such a heaving and pitching, that he believed he should shift his ballast. The fellow understood no part ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against the frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped in and went toward the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... after the wonderful rejoicing which the homecoming of Amaryllis had been the occasion of at Ardayre, she was sitting waiting for her husband in that exquisite cedar parlour which ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... epoch in their young lives; they both remembered the date was the eighteenth of October. He pointed to the silver calendar on the chimney-piece, to which the parlour-maid attended. "This is the eighteenth again," Ted said. "There aren't two eighteenths of October in ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... happy childhood. From the time that he was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a piece of bread and batter in his hand. A very clever woman, who then lived in the house as parlour-maid, told how he used to sit in his nankeen frock, perched on the table by her as she was cleaning the plate, and expounding to her out of a volume as big as himself. He did not care for toys, but was very fond of taking his walk, when he ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... a fine town with ships in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day; I wish from my heart I was far away from here, Sitting in my parlour ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... possibility of getting his Royal Highness to sign such a document, but as he himself was leaving the country for good at any rate, he did not mind adding a little forgery to his other necessary arrangements. Paper and seal were easily accessible in the parlour, where the Duke often kept Eben waiting for hours. He was an expert in other people's penmanship, and the princely scrawl would not present the least difficulty to him. Still, in case of accident, it would be as well to keep back the document till the last ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... time Miss Whichello was seated in a little private parlour off the bar, illuminated by an oil-lamp. This Bell turned up, and then she noticed that her visitor looked anxious and ill at ease. Once or twice she attempted to speak, but closed her mouth again. Bell wondered ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the family arrived, Mary and Alice and their brother Mark, a young man of thirty, who looked hard-working and reticent, and had large moustachios. They stopped almost on the threshold as they perceived there were strangers in the parlour, then they recognised their long-lost sister; but, embarrassed by the presence of the strange gentleman, as well as by the startling fact of her presence, they stood hesitant and rather shame-faced. Cleo smiled at them encouragingly, whereupon her sisters came tripping over and ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... parlour favours Ij sombre labourer realisation odour honour fulness commonweal bo Amyntas Becke Blackstable Castilian D'you d'you de Dona Farrowham Howlett lol Losas Lucido Monnickendam one's Ously Sodina Tercanbury ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... hold her hand as they parted at the parlour door, but she drew her fingers out of his clasp and said, "Good-night; thank you," as if he had been one of her mother's ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... "Carmen rented her back parlour this afternoon," he was saying—Carmen being their own moniker for their landlady Miss Carmelita Sisson. "To a female. What do you know about it? Carmen hates 'em round the house. Too nosey, she says. But the room's been vacant since spring, and roomers in summertime are as ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined ... which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]

... playfellows come along, For if my mother sees me at the gate, She'll cause my blood to fall." She show'd me an apple as green as grass, She show'd me a gay gold ring, She show'd me a cherry as red as blood, And so she entic'd me in. She took me in the parlour, She took me in the kitchen, And there I saw my own dear nurse A picking of a chicken. She laid me down to sleep, With a Bible at my head, and a Testament at my feet; And if my playfellows come to quere for me, Tell them ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... her sister's lifetime. I held up a screen, and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very offensive; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlour, and enjoy her orange as she liked best. And so it was in everything. Miss Jenkyns's rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal. In all things else Miss Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... gentleman very fairly, if she betook herself to the house which he would be the least desirous of entering of any in the county. So she got a little bedroom for herself behind the sitting-room, and just over the little back parlour of the chemist, with whom they were to lodge. There was somewhat of a savour of senna softened by peppermint about the place; but, on the whole, the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... Lord, what shall we do? There's my brother Foresight and Sir Sampson coming. Sister, do you take Miss down into the parlour, and I'll carry Mr Benjamin into my chamber, for they must not know that they are fallen out. Come, sir, will you venture yourself with me? ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-legs, playing with brass furniture. But the room looked snug and ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... medallion portrait of Oberlin bears the touching inscription that for fifty-nine years he was "the father of this parish." Then we drove back as we had come, stopping at Foudai to rest the horse and drink tea. We were served in a cool little parlour opening on to a garden, and, so tempting looked the tiny inn that we regretted we could not stay there a week. A pleasant pastoral country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or Foudai, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... lamps, and is horrified to learn that they are seldom, if ever, prosecuted. He is shocked at the cabins, and the rocks, and the beggar children, and the lack of trees; at the lack of logic, also, and the lack of shoes; at the prevalence of the brogue; above all, at the presence of the pig in the parlour. He is outraged at the weather, and he minds getting wet the more because he hates Irish whisky. He keeps a little notebook, and he can hardly wait for dinner to be over, he is so anxious to send a communication (probably signed 'Veritas') to ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... either, if they don't enclose their cards. Nearly every day there is a guessing match in the back parlour. It's poor form to send ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... shall be very please to acomodate you for a fortnight. You can have a good sized bedroom, parlour and dining room for 3 guineas per week including everything else. I shall expect ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... said till they went down into the parlour. Though it was only eleven o'clock, Miss Harold was putting on her bonnet to go away: and there was a plate of bread ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau

... supplied by the crass stupidity of the EMPEROR'S minions. Even when full credit is given to Brent for letting his bath overflow so as to flood the public salon and render it untenable, it was surely unwise of Mrs. Sanderson to offer her private parlour for the use of the boarders on the very day set apart for the execution of her plans which were centred in this room. It was also gross carelessness on the part of her son, when he had Brent, with hands up, at his mercy, to place his own revolver on the table and to use, in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... him back the conveyance, 'just clap in the words, "and Thimble," will you be so good; and I'll have the two mottoes painted up in the parlour ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... of its beauty, Civilised Man sweeps it out of existence. It is the fate everywhere of lyre-birds, of humming-birds, of birds of Paradise, marvellous things that Man may destroy and can never create. They make poor parlour ornaments and but ugly adornments for silly women. The world is the poorer and we none the richer. The same fate is overtaking all the loveliest spots on the earth. There are rare places which Primitive Man only approaches on special occasions, with sacred awe, counting their beauty inviolable ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... laid on the parlour table—ham, sardines, a whole pound of butter, and such a large johnny cake that it looked like an advertisement for somebody's baking-powder. But the Primus stove roared so loudly that it was useless to try to talk above ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... patient, cheerful, vigorous, healing ways of the great Scotch doctor, who limps around on his broken leg to minister to the needs of other folk. I see the little group of nurses and physicians gathered on Sunday evening in the doctor's parlour for an hour of serious, friendly talk, hopeful and happy. And there, amid the murmur of Abana's rills, and close to the confused and glittering mystery of the Orient, I hear the music of a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... hurried her on till she reached a door opening into the Mother's reception-room. Catching the child to her heart, she kissed her twice, lifted the dead darlings from her apron, and, pushing her gently into the small parlour, closed the door. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which, after He had reviewed a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... who arrived in his own car, was shown by the manservant into the waiting-room and then into the parlour, where the mother superior came to him at once. Without delay or preamble of any sort he put his questions to her, in the presence of Don ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... his plate, and, by way of experiment, touched its tail with his finger. To his horror, it was immediately transmuted from an admirably fried brook trout into a gold-fish, though not one of those gold-fishes which people often keep in glass globes, as ornaments for the parlour. No; but it was really a metallic fish, and looked as if it had been very cunningly made by the nicest goldsmith in the world. Its little bones were now golden wires; its fins and tail were thin plates of gold; and there were the marks of the fork in it, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... will not spread through the house; it is a bad time for fever.' I see he does not like that, he frowns, he mutters maledictions. I profess myself ready to conduct him through my poor premises; I lead him through the parlour, which he had not sense to admire, to the kitchen, to our own apartment, my cherished one. All the time my heart flutters like a wounded dove. I cry in my soul, 'All depends on the wit of that child. If she had but gone with Prudencia to ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... at all! What I do I'd as lief do in your own royal parlour! (Blows whistle; two dark-skinned men come in with vessels.) Give me here those ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... says the local medical officer, "can keep a pig in the parlour if they keep it clean." The necessity of keeping the parlour clean for the sake of its guest will be easily understood by those who appreciate the fastidious taste ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various

... she had always retired to her room in the loft after supper on Sunday to wrestle with her labours; but as her mother grew into years, the girl had adopted the habit of working in the parlour. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... that evening. Ethne went into her farm-house and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coals with that stillness of attitude which was a sure sign with her of tense emotion. The moment so eagerly looked for had ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... that had turned the cellar, with its mud floor, into a dormitory capable of giving bed space to twenty or twenty-five Galicians, and still left room for the tin stove on which to cook their stews. Upon his advice, too, the partitions by which the cottage had been divided into kitchen, parlour, and bed rooms, were with one exception removed as unnecessary and interfering unduly with the most economic use of valuable floor space. Upon the floor of the main room, some sixteen feet by twelve, under Rosenblatt's manipulation, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... bachelor dinner-parties to hard-drinking young men, for whom Anty was well contented to cook; and when they—as they often, from the effect of their potations, were perforce obliged to do—stayed the night at Dunmore House, Anty never showed herself in the breakfast parlour, but boiled the eggs, made the tea, and took her own ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety, And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds. But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a menial situation, So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as even answer a bell. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... consisted of two parts: in one was the parlour and beside it old Zhmuhin's bedroom, both stuffy rooms with low ceilings and multitudes of flies and wasps, and in the other was the kitchen in which the cooking and washing was done and the labourers had their meals; here geese and turkey-hens ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... woman smiled discreetly and showed her into a large parlour, the door of which she ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... contents had been carried. He also inquired where the key had been found. The habitual frankness of Deerslayer prevented any prevarication, and the conference soon terminated by the return of the two to the outer room, or that which served for the double purpose of parlour ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... tools being made, I daily carried on my business; eighteen days I allowed for enlarging my cave, that it might serve me, not only for a warehouse, but kitchen, parlour, and cellar. I commonly lay in the tent, unless the weather was rainy that I could not lie dry. So wet would it be at certain seasons, that I was obliged to cover all within the pale with long poles, in the form of rafters, leaning against the rock, and loaded them with flags and ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... a hill, and the stable is in the garret. There is a broad stone staircase on the outside of the house, by which you enter into the several apartments. The kitchen is at the bottom of the hill, a bedchamber above that, the parlour (where we dined) is the third storey, and on the top of the hill ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... every night to foregather in some hotel's parlour with his crony, the mate of the barque Cicero, lying on the other side of the Circular Quay. Late at night I would hear from afar their stumbling footsteps and their voices raised in endless argument. The mate of the Cicero was seeing his friend on board. They would ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... his counting-house Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour Eating bread ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness of that place which oxen and wain-ropes could not drag you to behold. You, who do not even know its situation on the map, probably denounce sensational descriptions, stretching your limbs the while in your pleasant parlour on Beretania Street. When I was pulled ashore there one early morning, there sat with me in the boat two sisters, bidding farewell (in humble imitation of Damien) to the lights and joys of human life. One of these wept silently; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... recognised the different doors and knew the rooms within them, but they seemed inhospitably closed against him, and he went and stood in the cold hall. But the man was watching for him, and led him into a small parlour. Then it was explained to him that Mr. Kennedy's state of health did not admit of late dinners. He was to dine alone, and Mr. Kennedy would receive him after dinner. In a moment his cheeks became red, and a flash of wrath crossed his heart. Was he to be treated in this ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Corcoran's house. Donal and his wife seated in two comfortable armchairs by the parlour fire. The parlour is well furnished, and Kitty is busy dusting, as visitors are expected. Donal is a man of about fifty-six years, and his wife is a little younger. Donal is reading a copy of the Galway Examiner, and his wife is ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien

... his dignity. The dignity was suffering a good deal; was it right, he asked himself, that he, the man of the house, should have the menial task of watching jam while Julia talked business with some one in the parlour? He did not know what business this person had come on; he had seen him arrive a few minutes back, had even heard his name—Mr. Alexander Cross—but that was all he knew about him; Julia had taken ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... time I heard the window below us open softly, and I knew the burglar was entering the parlour from the side porch. I counted twenty, which I had figured would be the time required for him to reach the dining-room, and then, when I was sure he must have seen the silver shining in the glass case, I slowly pulled on the steel cable and raised case and silver to the hall above. ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler

... next to mine, were evidently held in great esteem, and my hostess displayed them with the reverent pride of a good New England woman showing her parlour. There were three of them, opening one into the other. In each there was the invariable platform covered by rugs, and big Chinese vases ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... her guide into a parlour, redolent of stale cigar smoke, with oilcloth on the floor and varnished walls, an abode even more horrible than Hassan's lair. Joseph closed the door carefully behind him, and made no apology for his dishabille. He simply ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal perfection. This feeling continued during many generations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... moment she had lifted the latch at a small cottage and entered. It was a little better than a workman's house, but not much; there were two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, and that was all. To the front of the little house was the tiny parlour, at the back an equally tiny kitchen. Upstairs was a bedroom for Ruth and a bedroom for her grandparents. Mr. and Mrs. Craven did not keep any servants. The moment Ruth entered now her grandmother put her head out of the ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... pleasant evening was to sit in the bar-parlour of the Sun Inn and drink interminable hot rums. He had fixed up a room for himself at the inn and offered Boundary a share, but the colonel preferred to sleep alone. He secured lodgings in the town, and making an excuse to the captain returned to his room early. He had purchased all the newspapers ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... Dolly very much. I think it was overhearing me singing one of the hymns that made Uncle John take notice of me at last. He used to shut himself in his study, and I scarcely ever saw him from one week's end to the other; but one day as he was going up-stairs I had been singing, and he came into the parlour, and, taking me on his knee, asked me to sing the hymn over again. I was a little nervous at first, but grandmamma had always told me to do the best I could when asked to repeat or sing a hymn, and I did so now. I suppose the words of the hymn pleased him, ...
— Bluff Crag - or, A Good Word Costs Nothing • Mrs. George Cupples

... water, and some biscuits. I had been seated a very short time only, when the quick, consequential step, and sharp, cracked voice of Dr Lee sounded along the passage; and after a momentary pause at the bar, his round, smirking, good-humoured, knavish face looked in at the parlour-door, where, seeing me alone, he winked with uncommon expression, and said aloud: 'A prime fire in the smoking-room, I see; I shall treat myself to a whiff there presently.' This said, the shining face vanished, in order, I doubted not, that its owner might confer ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... said; 'it's time to begin thinking of tea.' Whereupon they rose to their feet and walked a long way into the country in search of an inn, and finding one they had tea in a garden, and afterwards they dined in a sanded parlour and enjoyed the cold beef, although they could not disguise from themselves the fact that it was a little tough. But what matter the food? It was the close intimacy and atmosphere of the day that mattered to them, and they returned to Leamington thinking of the day that had gone by, a ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... party in a parlour? Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,— Some sipping punch, some sipping tea, But, as you by their faces see, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... a greater air of comfort than Owen expected to find. In the oak panelled parlour into which Mr Fluke led him a cheerful fire burned brightly, although the spring was well advanced, while a white cloth was spread ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... thing, but in you; and until you understand this, you will keep gaping and shrinking, and saying, 'It is impossible.' Some folk, when looking out of a three or four storey window, feel as if they were going to fall. This is their own fault, not the fault of the window, for that is just like a parlour window, where they have no sensation of the sort. A man sits peaceably enough on the top of a tall, three-legged stool, and could hitch himself round and round, and then get up and stand upon it erect for half a day, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved, as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than a singing-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he espied a sideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate flutter through an open window into the parlour, he would follow upon the excuse of recovery, and, once admitted, would carry off as much silver as he could conceal. None other ever attempted so graceful an artifice, and yet Audrey's journey to Tyburn is even more memorable than the story ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... my horse; another showed me across the broad hall, with its hunting whips and trophies on the wall, to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... farther. I chanced to pick up the Tales of a Traveller some years ago with a view to an anthology of prose narrative, and the book flew up and struck me: Billy Bones, his chest, the company in the parlour, the whole inner spirit, and a good deal of the material detail of my first chapters—all were there, all were the property of Washington Irving. But I had no guess of it then as I sat writing by the fireside, in what seemed the spring-tides of a somewhat pedestrian inspiration; nor yet ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... freely of these comestibles, we made the adjournment to a luxuriously upholstered parlour, circled with plush-seated chairs and adorned with countless mirrors, and there we began to beg the question at issue, to-whit, "To what extent has Ibsen (if any) contributed towards the cause of Female Emancipation?" which was opened by a weedy, tall male gentleman, with ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... got into a taxi and drove to Shepherd Street, Mayfair. He sent up his card by the parlour maid with the request that Miss Craven would grant him an interview. He was asked to wait and was kept waiting the best part of three quarters of an hour while Auriole completed her toilet. When at last she entered she did not show the least enthusiasm for his presence but asked ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... we'l withdraw into the Parlour: And if these honest Friends will be pleased to drink what our House affords, they ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... seamen, to whom I gave a gratuity, and I was met by Mr. Trevannion, who showed me into a large and well-furnished bed-room, which he told me was in future to be considered as my own. I passed away the afternoon in arranging my clothes, and did not go down to the parlour till supper-time, where I found Miss Trevannion, who congratulated me upon my having changed my occupation to one more worthy of me. I made a suitable reply, and we sat down to supper. Having described this first great event in my life, I shall ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... a collector seeks include objects of utility and ornament. Many of them are associated with household work, and quite a number of one-time kitchen and culinary utensils, as well as those which were once cherished in the best parlour or withdrawing-room, are found places among such curios. During the last few years domestic architecture has passed through several stages of advancement. The stiff and formal Georgian houses, the painful Victorian villas, and some of the earlier attempts ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an old oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar's Head, a little man with a red nose, and an oilskin hat. When I came away he was sitting there still!—not a man LIKE him, but the same man—with the nose of immortal redness and the hat of an undying glaze! Crayon, while there, was on terms of intimacy with ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... the light of candles placed in floating nutshells. Even the practice of leaping through the fire survives in a modified form, for in northern Germany it is not uncommon for people on St. Martin's Day or Eve to jump over lighted candles set on the parlour floor.{83} In the fifteenth century the Martinmas fires were so many that the festival actually got the name of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... capable of giving bed space to twenty or twenty-five Galicians, and still left room for the tin stove on which to cook their stews. Upon his advice, too, the partitions by which the cottage had been divided into kitchen, parlour, and bed rooms, were with one exception removed as unnecessary and interfering unduly with the most economic use of valuable floor space. Upon the floor of the main room, some sixteen feet by twelve, under Rosenblatt's manipulation, twenty boarders ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... yard at the back of the house. He had guinea-pigs, of course, then he had three rabbits and a pair of dormice and a canary; and he had some pigeons. They were rather a bother to him, because they had a nasty habit of flying down the parlour chimney, where sometimes they stuck for two or three days, and at last flew out all black and sooty into the room. Widow Dumpty used to be rather angry and spoke crossly when this happened, and then Little Dumpty used to get up and go out and feed his ...
— Humpty Dumpty's Little Son • Helen Reid Cross

... wild impulse drove him to seek "fresh fields and pastures new." The black trackers (who were brought on the scene on Saturday afternoon) have found his tracks in Mr. A——'s flower garden close to the parlour window, and also around Mr. H——'s homestead. The trackers aver that he is accorpanied by a large kaugaroo dog. It is a matter of congratulation that he has so far failed in effecting an entrance to any habitation. The police are scouring the neighbourhood and though the thunderstorm of Saturday ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... Domum betrayed itself in their dismal features. Nor had they been expelled, for though their looks might favour the supposition, they talked about the hour they should get back that evening, and wondered if Mrs Ashford would have supper ready for them in her own parlour. And it was equally plain that, whatever their destination might be, they were not starting on a truant's expedition, for the said Mrs Ashford presently came out and handed them each a small parcel of sandwiches, and enjoined on them most particularly to keep well buttoned up, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... visiting the church. A tablet with medallion portrait of Oberlin bears the touching inscription that for fifty-nine years he was "the father of this parish." Then we drove back as we had come, stopping at Foudai to rest the horse and drink tea. We were served in a cool little parlour opening on to a garden, and, so tempting looked the tiny inn that we regretted we could not stay there a week. A pleasant pastoral country rather than romantic or picturesque is the Ban de la Roche, but close at hand is the lofty Donon, which may be climbed from Rothau or Foudai, and there ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... many years past he has read sermons to himself whenever he has failed in going to church. I have seen the volumes there on the table in the parlour when I have been with him. Did ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... is in the parlour hovering over a gas stove. She has false hair, false teeth, false jewelry, and the dry, crabbed, inquisitive manner of the idle who are entrusted with authority. She is there to direct others and do nothing herself, to be cross and make ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... poverty. A great variety of calendars hung on the wall. Every store in town it seems had sent one this year, last year and the year before. A large poster of the Winnipeg Industrial Exhibition hung in the parlour, and a Massey-Harris self-binder, in full swing, propelled by three maroon horses, swept through a waving field of golden grain, driven by an adipose individual in blue shirt and grass-green overalls. An enlarged picture of John himself glared grimly from a very heavy frame, on the ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... dark passage; and, as he groped along the wall, his hand brought down patches of old lime, and was caught in spiders' webs almost as strong as if the spinner had meant to go a-fowling. When they had got into the parlour, he saw that the building was indeed a ruin; there was not a whole pane of glass in the window, nor a plank of wood in the damp floor; and the fireplace, without fire, or grate to hold it, looked like the entrance to a burying-vault. John, however, walked ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... fire, in his first-floor front, early on the evening for which he had invited Mr. Pickwick, and Mr. Ben Allen the other. The preparations for the reception of visitors appeared to be completed. The umbrellas in the passage had been heaped into the little corner outside the back-parlour door; the bonnet and shawl of the landlady's servant had been removed from the bannisters; there were not more than two pairs of pattens on the street-door mat; and a kitchen candle, with a very long snuff, burned cheerfully ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... trying on a hat which Ally Hawes, with much secrecy, had trimmed for her. It was of white straw, with a drooping brim and cherry-coloured lining that made her face glow like the inside of the shell on the parlour mantelpiece. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... The strangers' house is a fair and spacious house, built of brick, of somewhat a bluer colour than our brick; and with handsome windows, some of glass, some of a kind of cambric oiled. He brought us first into a fair parlour above stairs, and then asked us, "What number of persons we were? and how many sick?" We answered, "We were in all (sick and whole) one and fifty persons, whereof our sick were seventeen." He desired us to have patience a little, and to stay till he came back ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... girl, dressed daintily in a faded muslin, with an organdy kerchief crossed over her swelling bosom, flashed upon Carraway's delighted vision like one of the maidens hanging, gilt-framed, in the old lady's parlour. That she was the particular pride of the family—the one luxury they allowed themselves besides their costly mother—the lawyer realised upon the instant. Her small white hands were unsoiled by any work, and her beautiful, kindly face had none of the nervous dread which ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... landlord's chief interest is the sale of liquor. Under his roof you may, if you choose, eat and sleep, but what you are expected to do is to drink. Yet, even for drinking, there is no decent accommodation. You will find what is called a bar-parlour, a stuffy and dirty room, with crazy chairs, where only the sodden dram- gulper could imagine himself at ease. Should you wish to write a letter, only the worst pen and the vilest ink is forthcoming; this, even in the "commercial room" of many an inn which seems to depend upon ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... production has been copied literally from a broadside posted against the 'parlour' wall of a country inn in Gloucestershire. The verses are susceptible of two interpretations, being Catholic if read in the columns, but Protestant if ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... told you so," but his tongue said nothing, which was nice of it; and the Prince did all the complaining as we sat on perfectly new chairs, in a perfectly new parlour, with a smell of perfectly new plaster in the air, and plu-perfectly old newspapers on the table. According to him, Joseph was an absolutely unique villain, with a combination of deceit, treachery, procrastination, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... came, and then, to his great delight, he found that instead of being banished to a room somewhere away upstairs, he was to be put in a curious bed, that filled a corner of the parlour in which the family sat. Bert had never seen anything like that bed before. It looked just like a closet, but when you opened the closet door, behold, there was a bed, and a very comfortable one, too. Just behind the parlour, with a door between, was the best bedroom, which ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... the money, I opened it; it was very closely written, and evidently Virginia had much to communicate to me. I forgot for the moment Bessy and Bramble, thought only of Janet, and put the letter to my lips as I walked away, that I might go home and read it. I hurried past Bessy, who was in the parlour, and went up the stairs into my bed-room, where I took my letter out of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... will stand half an hour this evening at preparation speaking when you were forbidden to. Ewans, go to the parlour." ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... dust! dust! dust! Carpet, curtain, window, floor; Right, left, thrust, thrust— Clouds are rising more and more! Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— Kitchen, parlour, passage, stair; Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— That's what I'm obliged to bear! Dust, dust, dust, dust, In the lofty attic found; Dust, dust, dust, dust, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... which was of a square form; and these dragons spouted out water clearer than rock crystal. This delicious place gave me a charming idea of the conquest I had made. The two little slaves conducted me into a parlour magnificently furnished, and while one of them went to acquaint her mistress with my arrival, the other tarried behind, and pointed out to me the ornaments of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... shew your attention to business, and a due sense of the honour they do you. It would be proper also that your wife hold the door open; your ushers be all ready to bow as they pass; and that your best looking boys be called into the parlour. ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous

... appointed hour, as the clock of the Abbey was striking, they gave three gentle knocks at the door of the house. It was immediately opened by Tony, who held a candle in his hand, closed the door quietly behind them, and then led them into a parlour. ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... doorway of the inn watched him as long as they could see the white line of his silvery ruff gleam through the dusk, and then, going back to the parlour, sat down to wait for his return. To most of them it was a matter of only passing interest. They were curious to know how much the dog's training would benefit his master, under the circumstances, if he should be lost. But to the Little Colonel it seemed ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason? There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when you've no meat, and, by thunder, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... certainly remarkable—given, it must be confessed, to a certain amount of fluctuation—and she danced divinely, which gift must not be counted as a parlour-trick; she was slow in her movements and quiet in her manner until she talked of horses or anybody she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring out, also she would gesticulate as her mother had been wont to do, until the climate, maybe, of a northern country ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... that hospital, I went to another one three blocks away. This was a remarkable institution that had been maintained by wealthy Americans living in France before the war. I was assigned to a room on the third floor—a room adjoining a sun parlour, overlooking a beautiful Old World garden with a lagoon, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... philosophizing and world-despising in the solitudes of this place, whither I am retired to pass and mourn the absence of my worthiest friend. Here is wood and water, meadows and mountains, the Dryads and Hamadryads; but here's no Mr. Pepys, no Dr. Gale. Nothing of all the cheer in the parlour that I taste; all's insipid, and all will be so to me, till I see and enjoy you again. I long to know what you do, and what you think, because I am certain you do both what is worthy the knowing and imitation. On Monday ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... wondered a great deal how he came there, and I hoped that he was wondering the same sort of thing about me. In fact, I laid myself out to produce such a result. That is to say, I took some pains to show myself as little like the common or parlour lady's-maid as possible. I never took so much pains to impress any human being, male or (far less) female, as I took to impress that mere chauffeur—the very chauffeur I'd been lying awake at night dreading as the most objectionable ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... are so bad, you see, Miss Mohun,' she added, as she ushered them into a somewhat stuffy little parlour, carpeted and bedecked with all manner of knick-knacks, photographs, and framed certificates of various societies of temperance and providence on the gaily-papered walls. The girl lay on a couch near the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from dinner time, and Mr Morrice, who having received an invitation for the evening, was so much delighted with the permission to again enter the house, that he made use of it between six and seven o'clock, and before the family had left the dining parlour. He apologized with the utmost humility to Cecilia for the unfortunate accident at the Pantheon; but as to her it had been productive of nothing but pleasure, by exciting in young Delvile the most flattering alarm for her safety, she found no great difficulty ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... consciences and private parlour Allowed the demon of religious hatred to enter into its body Behead, torture, burn alive, and bury alive all heretics Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient Contained within ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... far from home. The same thought passed through the old pedlar's mind, but it was too late to retreat, so they silently followed their new host and his brother. They went down a passage and into a room, half kitchen, half parlour, ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... pervading odour of dust and decayed leather. The girl, after shutting the bolts behind her, led the way cautiously, and, crossing a passage at the rear of the shop, opened a door upon a far more cheerful scene. Here, in a neat parlour hung with old prints and mezzotints and water-colours, a hanging lamp shed its rays on a China bowl heaped with Warwickshire roses, and on a white cloth and a table spread ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... tea with Davies and his wife in their back parlour when Johnson came into the shop. Davies, seeing him through the glass-door, announced his approach to Boswell in the spirit of Horatio addressing Hamlet: "Look, my Lord, it comes!" Davies introduced the young ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... posting inns on the road, is not only substantial, but almost handsome. A broad coach way, cut through the middle of the house, leads into a spacious, well-kept, clean yard, and on each side of the coach way there are bay windows looking into the street,—the one belonging to the commercial parlour, and the other to the so-called coffee-room. But the coffee-room has in truth fallen away from its former purposes, and is now used for a farmer's ordinary on market days, and other similar purposes. Travellers who require the use of a public sitting-room must ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... deigns to stoop. The essays on Domestic Life, on Behaviour, on Manners, are examples of the attention that Emerson paid to the right handling of the outer conditions of a wise and brave life. With him small circumstances are the occasions of great qualities. The parlour and the counting-house are as fit scenes for fortitude, self-control, considerateness, and vision, as the senate or the battlefield. He re-classifies the virtues. No modern, for example, has given so remarkable a place ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... appearance, and particularly in those dialects of the English language which are used by the terrestrial animals of this kingdom. He desired the ostler to take his horse in tow, and bring him to his moorings in a safe riding. He ordered the waiter, who showed them into a parlour, to bear a hand, ship his oars, mind his helm, and bring alongside a short allowance of brandy or grog, that he might cant a slug into his bread-room, for there was such a heaving and pitching, that he believed he should shift his ballast. The fellow understood no part ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... in his counting-house Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour Eating ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... guide into a parlour, redolent of stale cigar smoke, with oilcloth on the floor and varnished walls, an abode even more horrible than Hassan's lair. Joseph closed the door carefully behind him, and made no apology for his dishabille. He simply ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... account of how the burglary was committed, which he afterwards explained to the witnesses. When the L500 was all brought, Wild and White carried it to Turner's house, and threw it down on the floor of his parlour, promising to bring the rest of the money and the jewels the next day. White then objected that the men who had them would not come into the city, and it was arranged that they should bring them to Betty Fry's house in the Minories, an appointment being made to meet at the Blue Boar on the afternoon ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... spot, sir," answered Gaffney promptly. "Lancaster Gate itself, sir. Close by there, convenient pub, sir—stands back a bit from the road. Bar-parlour, sir—quiet corners. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... Ah, how I recollect, in the back parlour," said Miss Susannah, her memory unconsciously wandering back to the love incidents of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... a footlights favourite; wore her mane in plaits and a star-spangled bearing-rein and surcingle to improve her fig-u-are; did pretty parlour tricks to the strains of the banjo and psaltery. N'est-ce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... she was aware, had just entered the carriage-drive, and after having rung, was now standing under the white "Queen Anne" porch; Mitchell, the rosy-cheeked and still half-trained parlour-maid, was audible in the act of "answering ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... hither," said the knight. And a considerable space of time again elapsed ere the eloquence of the abbot, half chiding and half soothing, prevailed on the lady, in her adopted character, to approach, the parlour, in which at last she made her appearance, with a countenance on which the marks of tears might still be discovered, and a pettish sullenness, like that of a boy, or, with reverence, that of a girl, who is determined upon taking her own way in any matter, and equally ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... she took up a piece of needle-work, and a minute or two later put it down again. A glance through the glass of the door leading into the small parlour revealed Mrs. Gimpson, with a red shawl round her shoulders, asleep in ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... was very fond of the man whom he had just found done to death. In that case—but here his musings were cut short by the fact that the Inspector had touched the bell in the portico of number seven, and that the door had opened, to reveal a smart and wondering parlour-maid, who glanced with surprise at ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... you'll live in. Think on the grand parlour that you'll sit in all the day with a servant to wait on you and naught but ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... "They know I shall be at home to nobody else now," said Lady Eustace. But Frank Greystock had hardly regained his self-possession when Miss Macnulty hurried into the room, and, with a look almost of horror, declared that Lady Linlithgow was in the parlour. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... no, I know what ladies and gentlemen, and ladies' and gentlemen's YOUNG ladies and YOUNG gentlemen are, pretty well, dears, I can tell you! Don't I know all about the shiny hair and smiling faces of the little pets in the parlour, and how they leave parlour-manners behind them sometimes, when they run to the kitchen to Cook, and order her here and there, and want half-a-dozen things at once, and must and will have what they want, and are for popping their fingers ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... itself more obtrusively upon me, that for some inconceivable reason I was the laughing-stock of everybody I met, when, just as I turned once more into the High Street I observed two midshipmen approaching on my own side of the way, and some half a dozen yards or so behind them a certain Miss Smith, a parlour boarder in the ladies' seminary opposite my father's house—a damsel not more than six or seven years my senior, with whom I was slightly acquainted, and for whom I had long cherished a secret ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk.[573] It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... window when you came up the road, and I said to masel', 'There's Miss Melville, and she'll be wanting her tea,' so I awa' and popped the kettle on. Bring your gentleman in. He's a new face, but he's welcome. Ye'll pardon the parlour being a' of a reek wi' tobaccy, but Mr. Laidlaw and Mr. Borthwick cam' in and had a cup o' tea and a bit of a crack. They were both bidding at the roup and some business thegither. I think Mr. Laidlaw means to buy Cornhaven off Mr. Borthwick and give it to his son John, wha's ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... fellow-servants, known technically amongst us as the 'parlour-maid,' was also, but not equally, attached to her mistress; and merely because her nature, less powerfully formed and endowed, did not allow her to entertain or to comprehend any service equally fervid of passion or of impassioned action. She, however, was good, affectionate, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... understand that I could not hope to be welcomed by you on the terms we now are on, and too, in your parlour there are guests, your husband—I have never had you even a little bit to myself at ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... away, a mad dog infected the kennel, and nine setters, and two Skye terriers were obliged to be killed, Black York alone remaining. "From the moment," says York's master, "I took him from the kennel to the parlour, he cut all low connections; on the human race his affections seemed to be concentrated, and on one occasion, he gave a marked instance of his fidelity and intelligence. His mistress had gone with her maid to the beach to bathe, and a ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... huge ledgers and journals, ostlers were then to be seen grooming horses, and accompanying their work with the peculiar hissing sound without which it appears that operation cannot be carried on. Mr. Small wood occupied the shop at the corner, and his parlour windows, on the ground floor, looked upon Bull Street, the window sills being gay with flowers. It was a very different shop to the splendid ones which has succeeded it, which Wilkinson and Riddell have just secured to add to ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... philosopher in him. The harshness of the parlour is revenged at night in the servants' hall. The coarse rich man rates his domestic, but there is a thought in the domestic's brain, docile and respectful as he looks, which makes the matter equal, which would madden the rich man if he knew it—make him wince as with a shrewdest twinge of hereditary ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the front door and the mother called out if anybody were in? As there was no reply they went into the parlour. On the floor, surrounded by a whole forest of flowers, stood a black coffin with silver feet and in the coffin lay a young girl with a bridal ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... disappointment awaited her. She was usually shown into the right-hand parlour at once, and she relied on the bit of colour afforded by her scarlet cloak to give life to the modest shades of her spring colours of pale fawn and tender green. But servants were setting the dinner table in the right-hand parlour; and Conall and Rahal ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... age, and for our long intimacy. I have known it since first I knew myself. The antique bookcase—the solid chest of drawers—the solemn sofa, all substantial as ever, and looking, as at first, the immoveable and natural properties of the domestic parlour. My mother has her eyes upon me, and they are full of tears. My father and the minister are building up my fortunes, are fixing in the sandy basis of futurity an edifice formed of glittering words, incorporeal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... me is spacious and airy enough, and has a huge barred window that overlooks the main thoroughfare. In these respects, at least, my quarters resemble an ordinary Cuban parlour in a private house. But the only articles of furniture are a couple of hard benches and a straw mattress; and although a Cuban parlour has a barred window, a brick floor, and white-washed walls, it has also a few cane-bottomed chairs, an elegant ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... the Price mansion up on Ophir Avenue. And that evening Henrietta had in a few friends to listen to the poet recite his verses and tell anecdotes about himself. About five or six ladies in the parlour and their menfolks smoking out on the front porch. The men didn't seem to fall for Wilfred's open-road stuff the way the ladies did. Wilfred was a good reciter and held the ladies with his voice and his melting blue eyes with the long lashes, and Henrietta was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... Entering a parlour, with a clean, sanded floor, (prettily herring-boned, as the housemaids technically phrase it,) furnished with red curtains, half a dozen beech chairs, three cast-iron spittoons, and a beer-bleached mahogany table,—Spriggs tugged at the bell. The host, with a rotund, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... very clean nor very dirty, tumbled noisily about the remains of a tennis court or played base-ball in the dusty road. Ominous sounds arose from the parlour piano, where a gaunt maiden lady rested one spare hand among the keys while the other languidly pawed the ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... for a moment, hoping Mason would come. Suddenly he remembered with confusion that he was directly in range of those disdainful eyes in the parlour, and he beat a hasty retreat toward the old mill that stood by the falls. The roar of the turbulent water over the granite rocks had a soothing effect on the soul of the man who knew he was a criminal, yet could not for the life of him tell what his crime had been. Then he wandered ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room after their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don't know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native element," the great ocean ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... square box of a brick cottage, which he had been buying slowly for the past ten years and would probably never own. In its parlour, gaudy with cheap, new furniture, Ramon confronted Catalina Archulera. She was clad in a dirty calico dress, and her shoes were covered with the dust of long tramping, as was the black shawl about her head and shoulders. Once he had thought her pretty, but now she looked ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an old oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar's Head, a little man with a red nose, and an oilskin hat. When I came away he was sitting there still!—not a man LIKE him, but the same man—with the nose of immortal redness and the hat of an undying glaze! Crayon, while there, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... into a tiny and spotless parlour, with woolwork footstools, where after a moment or so they were joined by Miss Redstone, the little old lady whom Janet had seen at the window, but whose face was now ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas

... reasonable desires and inclinations. This abuse reigns chiefly in the country, as I found to my vexation, when I was last there, in a visit I made to a neighbour about two miles from my cousin. As soon as I entered the parlour, they forced me into the great chair that stood close by a huge fire, and kept me there by force till I was almost stifled. Then a boy came in great hurry to pull off my boots, which I in vain opposed, urging that I must return soon after dinner. In the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... upstairs here, gentlemen," said Miss Whiteaway, "belike you may do better in the parlour, where I had prepared for some friends of mine with ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... evening in country quarters always is. How comfortable the wood fire that flamed and sputtered on the parlour hearth, how inviting the meal of tea, new-laid eggs, homemade breads and jams, honey and hot scones spread out upon a spotless cloth around a centre piece of daffodils and early garden flowers. For a rejected suitor I felt singularly cheerful; for a blighted being I made a most excellent meal; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... appearing at home with new clothes might create suspicion, and cause unpleasant inquiries, she refrained. When thoroughly cleaned, Tottie and baby were wrapped up in shawls and set down to a hearty tea in the parlour. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... orchards and potagers. On the left, at a stone's throw from the road, stood a little pink-faced inn which reminded him that he had not breakfasted, having left home with a prevision of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the inn he found a brick-tiled parlour and a hostess in sabots and a white cap, whom, over the omelette she speedily served him—borrowing licence from the bottle of sound red wine that accompanied it—he assured she was a true artist. To reward his compliment ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... ordeal, but in the end I persuaded her to accompany me to the cedar parlour, where the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... yet comfortably warm atmosphere pervaded the place, meals were always punctual and her admirable Scotch cook never served up a dish which, whether plain or ornate, was not, in its way, perfectly prepared. A couple of deft and noiseless parlour-maids attended to and anticipated the wants of her guests, from the moment they entered her hospitable doors till when, on their leaving them, their coats were held for them in the most convenient possible manner for ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... against my principle, which was to frequent only the dearest inns; and the misadventure that befell me was sufficient to make me more particular in the future. A large company was assembled in the parlour, which was heavy with clouds of tobacco-smoke, and brightly lighted up by a roaring fire of coal. Hard by the chimney stood a vacant chair in what I thought an enviable situation, whether for warmth or the pleasure of society; and I was about to take it when the nearest of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... whom the landlord bore as he had never borne with a guest before, for Arthur found fault with the rooms, which he likened to bath-tubs, and fault with the smells which came from the river, and fault with the smoke in the parlour, but made ample amends by the money he spent so lavishly, the scores of photographs he bought, and the puffs he wrote for the San Francisco papers, extolling the valley as the very gate of heaven, and the hotel as second only to the Palace, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... which this event took place, the strapping young man and the little active youth sat together at the open window of a comfortable though small parlour, enjoying a cup of tea. The view from the window was limited, but it possessed the charm of variety; commanding as it did, a vista of chimney-pots of every shape and form conceivable—many of which were capped with those ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... Harry's chariot was preparing, as he had fixed the conclusion of his visit for that evening. After an interval of half an hour the servant brought word that the carriage was ready. Sir Harry, who was a young man of little ceremony, bowed en passant before the parlour ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... word. Before the middle of the day she had almost made up her mind that she would keep the letter entirely to herself. It was well, she thought, that he had not seen it, and no good could be done by showing it to him. But he had been in the breakfast-parlour before her, had seen the envelope, and had recognised the handwriting. They were sitting together after lunch, and she was just about to open the book of sermons with which, at that time, she was regaling him, when he stopped her with a question. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... University Trial Eights must have suggested the blue ribbon which the University Crew wear on their straw hats. Thus the diabolical forces of heredity were roused to fever-heat, and the great-great uncle, with his blue ribbon, whose photograph hung in GEORGE's home over the parlour mantelpiece, became a living force ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... since your lordship interrogates me—I looked, idly and imprudently, into that rich buffet; and I saw, unless the haze of the weather has come into the parlour, or my sight is the worse for last night's reading, no fewer than six silver pints. Surely, six tables for company are ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... the little parlour, and placed chairs; while Mrs Dean, after a humble courtesy, went ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... dyes, And bronzed my hair, and darkled in my eyes. And as the morning trails the skirts of night, And dusky night puts on the garb of morn, And walk together when the day is born, So we two glided down the hall and stair, Arm clasping arm, into the parlour, where Sat Vivian, bathed in sunset's gorgeous light. He rose to greet us. Oh! his form was grand; And he possessed that power, strange, occult, Called magnetism, lacking better word, Which moves the world, achieving great result Where genius fails completely. Touch his hand, It thrilled ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... was a picturesque inn, standing on the bank of the river Severn. It was much frequented in the summer by fishermen, who spent their days in punts and their evenings in the old oak parlour, where a picture in boxing costume of Mr Joe Bevan, whose brother was the landlord of the inn, gazed austerely down on them, as if he disapproved of the lamentable want of truth displayed by the majority of their number. Artists also ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... proceeded as usual to the parlour; and now Mary was amply rewarded for the sacrifice of her own taste, if sacrifice it could be called, by the surprise and pleasure visible in her husband's countenance as he looked around, and by the affectionate kiss which he imprinted upon ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... across the Green to the post office, instead of wondering why the postmistress had sent for her, and why Miss Horn waited for her by the house door at the side, or why she looked at her like that, with a sort of yearning pity and fear. She followed her into the parlour behind the ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... always went wrong upon the shoulders. She was great on tucks. But she was cheap, and she was Sybil-like in her mysterious assurance. So she supported herself and her mother; while May and Sally did the rough basting and all sorts of odd jobs in the room behind the parlour. Here were the big cutting-out table, the treadled sewing machine, three or four chairs, many fragments of material, several half-made garments, and, upon the walls, a number of coloured prints from fashion papers. In such surroundings Sally spent ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... tarried on and on amid tumultuous scenes for another twenty-four hours, awaiting the taking of proper steps by Mr. Bryan, that more precious time was lost. Hour after hour, within the refuge of our hotel parlour, itself a most depressing chamber, I sat, my hands clasped, my charges clustered about me, our trunks packed, our lesser belongings bestowed for travel, awaiting word from him. None came. I am loath to make the accusation direct, but I must tell you that I never had from Mr. Bryan ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... works by the little masters of Holland, and some more admirable examples of the English Eighteenth Century School. Faithful to my promise, I pronounced every one of them to be little gems, unsurpassed by anything in the private collections of America or Europe. We passed into the drawing-room and parlour with the same success. In the latter apartment the Colonel, grasping my arm, said impressively: "Now you will see our great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you. I have never lent ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... bolt and bar, opened the gate, which admitted them through an archway into a square court, surrounded by buildings. Opposite to the arch was another door, which the serving-man in like manner unlocked, and thus introduced them into a stone-paved parlour, where there was but little furniture, and that of the rudest and most ancient fashion. The windows were tall and ample, reaching almost to the roof of the room, which was composed of black oak; those opening to the quadrangle were obscured ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... frequent repetitions as above, we can exert our attention strongly on other objects, and the concatenated circle of motions will nevertheless proceed in due order; as whilst you are thinking on this subject, you use variety of muscles in walking about your parlour, or in sitting at ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... in the year 1618. His mother, by the interest of her friends, procured him to be admitted a King's scholar in Westminster school[1]; his early inclination to poetry was occasioned by reading accidentally Spencer's Fairy Queen, which, as he himself gives an account, 'used to lye in his mother's parlour, he knew not by what accident, for she read no books but those of devotion; the knights, giants, and monsters filled his imagination; he read the whole over before he was 12 years old, and was made a poet, as immediately as a child is ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow street that led to the river. The interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where Madame Aubain sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. On ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... the sitting-room doors, and through the keyhole of the parlour we heard a noise of some one moving, and then in a soft whistle the tune of the "Would ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs Elysees. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the literary salon; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... lunch was over the next day the front door bell tingled, and presently the parlour-maid knocked, and came in with a card ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... love with a B because he's Boschy," said Sammy lightly: "I'll take him to Berlin—or say, Bapaume to begin with—and feed him on Substitutes. . . . Do you know that parlour-game, Yarrell dear? Are you a performer at Musical Chairs? Were you by any chance brought up on a book called What Shall We do Now? The fact is—" Sammy, who could be irreverent, but so as never to offend, stole a look at Otway—"we're a trifle hipped in the old log cabin. I started ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... fixedly and strangely at me as I spoke, pushed past me and entered the inn. "Truly," said I aloud, "it is surely Swinehurst to which I have come, since the same means the grove of the hogs." So saying I followed the fellow into the bar parlour, where I perceived him seated in a corner with a large chair in front of him. Four persons of various degrees were drinking beer at a central table, whilst a small man of active build, in a black, shiny suit, which seemed to have seen much service, stood before the empty fireplace. Him ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of the day his whole temper on the subject of certain fitnesses had changed. At Jersey Villas (it was near midnight, and Mrs. Ryves, scratching a light for her glimmering taper, had said: "Oh, yes, come in for a minute if you like!"), in her precarious parlour, which was indeed, after the brilliances of the evening, a return to ugliness and truth, she let him stand while he explained that he had certainly everything in the way of fame and fortune still ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... disguised in wide bauti and carrying preposterous muffs. The Correr Museum contains a number of his paintings and also his book of original sketches. One of the most entertaining of his canvases represents a visit of patricians to a nuns' parlour. The nuns and their pupils lend an attentive ear to the whispers of the world. Their dresses are trimmed with point de Venise, and a little theatre is visible in the background. This and the "Sala del Ridotto" which hangs near, are marked by a free, bold handling, a richness of ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... must come inside and see my invaluable Brigida. She is, as usual, fatiguing herself with our accounts." The old lady led the way into the darkened parlour. It was small and rather stiff. As one's eyes became accustomed to the dim green light one noticed the incongruity of the furniture: the horsehair chairs and sofa, and large accountant's desk with ledgers; the large Pleyel grand ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... that, so he carried it; which was a much more serious token of kindness, in him, than footing the bill. It was but a little way, however, to the hotel. We were in the hall, and I was just taking my sugars from Preston to carry them upstairs, when I heard Aunt Gary call my name from the parlour. Instinctively, I cannot tell how, I knew from her tone what she wanted me for. I put back the package in Preston's hands, and walked in; my ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... approached the door. His surprise manifested itself aloud, yet did he not forget a becoming reverence to the stranger, as he invited him into the only apartment, besides his workshop, of which the roof could boast. It served for parlour, bedchamber, and kitchen; where the presiding deity, Grim's helpmate, carried on her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... third flat in Howe Street one, Thomas Dimsdale, was going through his period of probation in a little bedroom and a large sitting-room, which latter, "more studentium," served the purpose of dining-room, parlour, and study. A dingy sideboard, with four still more dingy chairs and an archaeological sofa, made up the whole of the furniture, with the exception of a circular mahogany centre-table, littered with note-books and papers. Above the mantelpiece was a fly-blown mirror with innumerable cards and notices ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... turning to Roderick, "but we'll give you another invitation." She looked disappointed, and a little inclined to pout, but she waved her hand as she ran down the steps and joined the group of lace and flowers now fluttering down the side-walk towards the ice cream parlour. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... burthen of depression, it was strange to return home to so different a tone of spirits when she found Aubrey installed in Ethel's room as his parlour, very white and weak, but overflowing with languid fun. There was grief and sympathy for the poor Wards, and anxious inquiries for Leonard; but it was not sorrow brought visibly before him, and after the decorous space of commiseration, the smiles were bright ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... persecutor, breathing noisily through the criticised organ. He was a chivalrous man, a warm admirer of the sex, but he was conscious of a wish that it was in his power to give Mary what he would have described as "hers." She was one of the parlour-maids, a homely woman with a hard eye, and it was part of his grievance against her that his Maggie, alias Celestine, Mrs. Pett's maid, had formed an enthusiastic friendship with her. He had no evidence to go on, but he suspected Mary of using her influence with Celestine to urge the suit ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the operating-room; the patient, cheerful, vigorous, healing ways of the great Scotch doctor, who limps around on his broken leg to minister to the needs of other folk. I see the little group of nurses and physicians gathered on Sunday evening in the doctor's parlour for an hour of serious, friendly talk, hopeful and happy. And there, amid the murmur of Abana's rills, and close to the confused and glittering mystery of the Orient, I hear the music of a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... to have science, or physiology, or anything up-to-date here," said Cicely, as, in company with the rest of the third form, she took possession of the panelled parlour that was to ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... divided into two tenements. It is a two-storey dwelling, with a garden, is built of brick, with wooden beams, musters nine rooms—though a question arises whether some of them ought not rather to be described as closets; the porch in which Milton may have breathed the summer air is gone, but the parlour retains the latticed casement at which he sat, though through it he could not see. His infirmity rendered the confined situation less of a drawback, and there are abundance of pleasant lanes, along which he could be conducted in ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... wounds in attempting to defend her relation. According to the circumstances that appeared, this unnatural wretch had cut the throat of her aunt and benefactress with a case-knife, then dragged the body from the wash-house to the parlour; that she had stolen a watch and some silver spoons, and concealed them, together with the knife and her own apron, which was soaked with the blood of her parent. After having acted this horrid tragedy, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... privy opens. There is a door at the outer end of the passage, and in it a hole which is considered necessary for air. The floor and ceiling are of wood, and in the former are several crevices and holes. There is a space between the ceiling of the parlour beneath and the floor of the prison-room above, which is so filled with fleas and dust that in summer time it cannot be got rid of by any cleanliness. The privy is a dark winding recess, about 6 feet from front to back, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... wives of the fishermen, had gathered at the "Anchor" as soon as it was known that the smack had gone out to a wreck, in order that they might be at hand to render any assistance which might be required. They were all collected in the bar-parlour; and two of them now rose, in obedience to "mother" Salmon's summons, and following her upstairs, took over from Sam their patient; and, shutting the door, lost not a moment in applying such restoratives and adopting such measures as their experience ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... morning to the close and dingy parlour at the back, Glory had looked about her as one who had expected something she did not see, whereupon Mrs. Jupe, who was at breakfast with her husband, threw up her little ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... in which he lodged his pace involuntarily slackened. While still some distance off, his eye sought out and distinguished the windows of the room in which Esther awaited him. Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the yellow gaslight within. The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall-door either. In some apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp he passed, to find comfort in assuring ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... and put out his shining lips towards Liza's little head. But the kiss did not follow. The doors of the hall, of the dining-room, of the parlour, and of the drawing-room all slammed, and Groholsky flew into the drawing-room like a whirlwind. He was pale and trembling. He was flourishing his arms and crushing his expensive hat in his hands. His coat fluttered upon him as though it were on ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... led me round the shore among the mules and donkeys to his house. Like all the houses of the hamlet, it was on the European or, to be more descriptive, on the American plan. The parlour was fitted with the usual furniture and ornamented with the portraits of Kamehameha the third, Lunalilo, Kalakaua, the queen consort of the isles, and Queen Victoria. There was a Bible on the table, other books stood on a shelf. A comfortable bedroom was placed at my service, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front of her, looking up at him with ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... Street that evening, saw Dicky a little way in front of him. He noticed that the financial agent was an object of considerable interest to the people of Harmouth. Men stood at shop doors and street corners, women (according to their social standing) hung out of bedroom windows or hid behind parlour curtains to look after him as he went. Here and there Rickman caught sullen and indignant glances, derisive words and laughter. Evidently the spirit of Harmouth was hostile to Dicky. A Harden was a Harden, and Sir ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... allow it because she said that no one but I need ever know. She would creep home through the fields soon after sunrise and her sister would let her in. The old man would be sleeping heavily.... The end of it was that I let her go up to my room while I lay on the sofa in the little parlour. The horsehair bolster was deucedly hard, but I was young, and when I did get off I slept well. When I woke it was nearer eight than seven, and I had just scrambled up when my landlady came in. One ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... he complained of his long immersion in the sea, and certainly when he told his story to Mr. and Mrs. Lovyes as they sat over their breakfast in the parlour at Merchant's Point, he spoke with such huskiness as I never heard the like of. Mr. Lovyes took little heed to us, but went on eating his breakfast with only a sour comment here and there. I noticed, however, that Mrs. Lovyes, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... careful of his clerical dress, which is of smoothest black; and remembering how essential are gold-framed spectacles, arranges and re-arranges his with greatest care. He is a great admirer of large books with gilt edges and very expensive bindings. They show to best advantage in the southern parlour library, where books are rarely opened. To say the Elder is not a man of great parts, is to circulate a libel of the first magnitude. Indeed, he liked big books for their solidity; they reminded ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... I loosed him into the parlour." The staff remained for a moment in melancholy silence, then resumed. "He says he's your ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... easily upset. If I tumbled over it once I tumbled over it a dozen times. I got hold of it at last and carried it about with me. I thought I would use it to hit the cow—that is, when I had found the front-door. I knew it led out of the parlour, but could not recollect its exact position. I argued that if I kept along the wall I should be bound to come to it. I found the wall, and set off full of hope. I suppose the explanation was that, without knowing it, I must have started ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... tavern, where unlimited joint and vegetables could be obtained for half-a-crown. The old-fashioned boxes into which the guests edged themselves had not been removed, and about the mahogany bar, placed in the passage in front of the proprietress's parlour, two dingy barmaids served actors from the adjoining theatre with whisky-and-water. The contributors to the Pilgrim had selected a box, and were clamouring for food. Smacking his lips, the head-waiter, an antiquity who ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... done to the savoury repast, Miss Katherine intimated that a good fire had been kindled in the Franklin stove in the parlour, and, in honour of the ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... I don't ask you then. Fash. Sir, I hope you'll find this letter an authentic passport. [Gives him a letter.] Sir Tun. Cod's my life, from Mrs. Coupler!—I ask your lordship's pardon ten thousand times.—[To a SERVANT.] Here, run in a-doors quickly; get a Scotch coal fire in the parlour, set all the Turkey work chairs in their places, get the brass candlesticks out, and be sure stick the socket full of laurel—run!—[Turns to TOM FASHION.]—My lord, I ask your lordship's pardon.—[To ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... larder at the world's end. The exquisite trout of the Tarn, here called the Tar; game in abundance and of excellent quality; a variety of fruit and vegetables-such was the dainty fare displayed in the tiny back parlour leading out of the kitchen. Soup in these parts, it must be confessed, is not very good. In other respects we fared as well for our five francs per diem, including lights and attendance, as if at some big Paris hotel ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... brethren should, their love ever having materially diminished, however angrily the contest divided them. The colonel in scarlet, and the general in blue and buff, hang side by side in the wainscoted parlour of the Warringtons, in England, where a descendant of one of the brothers has shown their portraits to me, with many of the letters which they wrote, and the books and papers which belonged to them. In the Warrington family, and to distinguish ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sure for all the time that's pass'd: Her tongue is like a scarecrow in a tree, That clatters still with every puff of wind. I have so haunted her from place to place: About the hall, from thence into the parlour, Up to the chamber, down into the garden, And still she rails, and chafes, and scolds, As if it were the sessions-day in hell. Yet will I haunt her with an open mouth, And never leave her till I ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... work of imagination; scarcely knew one tune from another; and had never looked with pleasure at any picture, but one, a portrait of her own respected father, which still occupied the place of honour in their little parlour, nearly covering one side of the wall. This painting, to speak frankly, was anything but a valuable work of art, or a good likeness of the worthy minister. The face was flat and unmeaning, entirely devoid of expression or relief; the body was stiff and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... trembling I peeped into the study of the late poor master of the house, and there found a bundle of quills and some ink; and, leaving money in his desk to the full value of the things I took, I carried my writing-tools into the great front parlour, and set myself to ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the first entry, and knocked at a parlour-door. Might I come in? I might, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... says, "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there; for I remember when I began to read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works." The delight in Spenser wakened all the music in him, and in 1628, in his tenth year, he wrote a "Tragical ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... lived a harmless life during the three years of his sojourn in the Val de Travers. As he could never endure what he calls the inactive chattering of the parlour—people sitting in front of one another with folded hands and nothing in motion except the tongue—he learnt the art of making laces; he used to carry his pillow about with him, or sat at his own door working like the women of the village, and chatting with the passers-by. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... loss what to do, and led the lady with evident uneasiness to a chair in the entrance hall. "If you will give me leave," he then said, "I will attend you into the parlour, and order you ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... annually expended in the purchase of Valentine presents. At the time of writing (February 2.) the shops almost generally exhibit displays of articles calculated for the approaching period, unexampled in brilliancy, taste and costliness, and including nearly every item suitable to the drawing room, the parlour, or the boudoir. The local papers contain numerous advertising announcements of "Valentines;" the walls are occupied with printed placards of a similar character, and the city crier, by means of a loud bell and an equally sonorous voice, proclaims ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... northern part of the European Russian empire. And here we will mention the remarkable fact, that the peasant on the Wolga, on the Oka, and on the Moskwa, speaks the same pure Russian which is heard in the parlour and from the pulpit. Vulgar and corrupted branches of this dialect, are those of Suzdal and Olonetzk, the last of which ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... Master, it is an apt song, and archly sung by modish MAUDLIN. I'll bestow a bucolic Cockney's wish upon her, that she may live to marry a Competitive Dairyman, and have good store of champion cups and first prizes stuck about her best parlour. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various

... said there was an inn there where refreshments could be obtained, my brother declared that he felt quite hungry, and insisted upon our having a second breakfast. We were therefore rowed ashore, and were ushered into the parlour of the inn as if we were the lords of the manor and sole owners, and were very hospitably received and entertained. The inn was appropriately named the "Ship," and the treatment we received was such ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor









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