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More "Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was with Moses, he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spoke repeatedly in my presence of the harm done by social drinking, and what influence women could exert for or against the custom. So I declined wine upon general principles when it was offered by the courtly host. No verbal comment was made upon my singular conduct, but the pert fifteen-year-old son of the house took occasion to drink my health with a dumb grimace, and beckoned the butler audaciously to fill up his glass, and a distinguished clergyman, whose parishioner ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... The pert messenger made no reply, but patted his ear with the fingers of his left hand, as much as to say, "I ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement of the wisdom of what ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... nonsense every second word, With fustian from exploded plays, They celebrate her beauty's praise; Run o'er their cant of stupid lies, And tell the murders of her eyes. With silent scorn Vanessa sat, Scarce listening to their idle chat; Farther than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent; And said, she valued nothing less Than titles, figure, shape, and dress; That merit should be chiefly placed In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste; And these, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... magnificent," murmured the bullet-headed Jean, who was not, like his friend, enamored of the pert Lisette. "I have never seen so splendid an Englishwoman, never! nor one who had so ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fluttered over her hat, to the shining tip of her walking boots; and she gave a complacent little sigh, as she said to herself: "I don't see but I look as much like a traveler as any of them. I'm sure I don't feel in the least confused. I'm glad I'm not as ridiculously dressed as that pert-looking girl in brown. I should call it in very bad taste to wear such a rich silk as that for traveling. She doesn't look as though she had a single idea beyond dress; probably that is what is occupying her thoughts at this very moment;" and Ester's speaking face betrayed ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment every sentry is chipping his pert, querulous challenge until the disturbers of the peace are close upon him, then diving headlong into ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... it, this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much so. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... old graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead carcass. The worms will close their mortgage on it ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... each other, sober city girl, pert town girl, bucolic country girl,—a hundred fundamental differences rampant between them, yet each fervid, adolescent young mouth tamed to the same monotonous, drolly exaggerated expression of complacency ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... already; I feel myself turning into a fond, faithful, rational, humble, meek-spirited wife! Alas! I must now turn my head into a museum, and hang up all my smart sayings inside my brain, there to petrify, as warnings to all pert misses. Dear Mary! if ever I am good for anything, it will be ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... prates Of matters far beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... "8. Viola (pertinax—pert); I want a Latin word for various studies—failures all—to express its saucy little stuck-up way, and exquisitely trim peltate leaf. I never saw such a lovely perspective line as the pure front leaf profile. Impossible also to get the least of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... quickly as it had risen. But the foreign soldiers were forced to acknowledge that their tactics and stout battalions would be almost powerless, hemmed in those streets, against this new and unknown mode of warfare. In fact, the Florentines looked on the Frenchmen with a certain pert assurance, as if they would say, "We shall see!" For, having now regained its liberty, this people thought itself master of the world, and almost believed that there was nothing left for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fast girls talked as loud as possible and laughed in a corresponding style in spite of the sick man. They must have been on a picnic, from the way they talked. One in a short dress complained that she had not seen her sweetheart. A pert little miss of thirteen cried, "You can bet your head I never went to any place where I did not see one of my sweethearts." One of about seventeen, a perfect beauty, declared she would die of thirst. "So will I! and I don't want to die before I get a husband!" exclaimed her ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... himself to the boys, who did not seem to be at all afraid, and were by no means so excited as he was. Their astonishing courage called forth the unbounded admiration of the troopers, and the pert answers they gave to the questions that were asked ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... a jackknife (corporals are always borrowing), and sliced the cheese,—each slicing bringing forth a pert remark from the on-lookers as to the ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... share! Nay every breath of it is mine, Whene'er it breathes on thee; for I am thine. But pardon now—if I have seemed sometime Impatient, glib, too pert for things sublime, Remember that I meant not so to sink; Forgive your Glycera, when you come ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... if I told Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books are generally bad. Also I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of brand-new, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... concerning the lively Judith: "Surely you remember her, Jeff. She used to come here selling blackberries when she was a kid—a little barefooted girl and as pert as you please even then. After old Dick Buck died she used to trap rabbits and bring them here for sale and sometimes fish. It always made me mad for Aunt Em'ly to encourage her by making Mother buy the things. I think poor persons should be taken care of all ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... will have to put up with what he can get," returned the pert girl, with a disdainful ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... damoiseaux would have perfect and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become "pert," as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the room, feeling as if the raven of his dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached out his hand with the demand, "Consultation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... foot to latt him understand that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... narrow scull, 25 Go home, and preach away at Hull, No longer to the Senate{5} cackle, In strains which suit the Tabernacle; I hate your little wittling sneer, Your pert and self-sufficient leer, 30 Mischief to Trade sits on thy lip, Insects will gnaw the noblest ship; Go, W———, be gone, for shame, Thou dwarf, with ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... to London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... coolies?—you can't hear them with the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... in this country, where so many different sorts of trees and plants grow, that a man coming from almost anywhere in the world will find something that carries his heart back home. Besides the daisies we have the sparrows, just as pert and neat as our own sparrows, yet other things are odd. Yesterday we saw a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders; he wore a striped garment hanging down on each side of his neck, and even the sheep did not seem quite the same as ours. It ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spaniel, bred with all the care That waits upon a favourite heir, Ne'er felt correction's rigid hand; Indulged to disobey command, In pampered ease his hours were spent; He never knew what learning meant. Such forward airs, so pert, so smart, Were sure to win his lady's heart; Each little mischief gained him praise; How pretty were his fawning ways! 10 The wind was south, the morning fair, He ventured forth to take the air. He ranges all the meadow round, And rolls upon the softest ground: When near ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the ceremony he would have used for a grand duchess—or Miss Patricia Adair—offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny, good-humored, rather pretty face and ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit associates for women who have ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tongue were wonderfully good on that hot hungry day, and still better were the strawberries that succeeded them; and oh! what mirth went on all the time! Kate was chattering fastest of all, and loudest—not to say the most nonsensically. It was not nice nonsense—that was the worst of it— it was pert and saucy. It was rather the family habit to laugh at Mary de la Poer for ways that were thought a little fanciful; and Kate caught this up, and bantered without discretion, in a way not becoming towards anybody, especially one some ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in consequence, and his little pert nose is tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's for so many ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... economist, born in Logie Pert, near Montrose, the son of a shoemaker, bred for the Church; was a disciple of Locke and Jeremy Bentham; wrote a "History of British India," "Elements of Political Economy," and an "Analysis of the Human Mind"; held an important lucrative ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... their associates and friends; but young people especially are susceptible to the influence of example. And it is a painful but well known fact that young people are much more easily and quickly influenced by bad example than by good. One frivolous, vain, forward, pert young girl, coming for a season into association with a company of young people, may in a few short weeks make her impress on the manners and conversation of the whole of them. Her slang expressions ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... me!" he exclaimed. "Am I to be brought up at every second by a pert schoolgirl when I am expounding the mysteries of life? What have your twopenny-halfpenny science primers to do with the grand secret of toddy? I tell you we must catch it at the cooling point; and then, Violet—for you are a respectful ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... have been now describing affect the gravity of the lion; those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown, and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard plasters the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish whether the patient ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... other girls whom she knew there, and had a gay time. She introduced Lemuel to them, and after a few moments of high civility and distance they treated him familiarly, as Statira's beau. Their talk, after that he was now used to, was flat and foolish, and their pert ease incensed him. He came away bruised and burning, and feeling himself unfit to breathe the refined and gentle air to which he returned in Mr. Corey's presence. Then he would vow in his heart never to expose himself to such things ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... birds from the South appear with a few short notes of spring, and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter, now lead the singing with their cheery "I told you so" notes, till robins and blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious singing make ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... meadows were beautiful at this season with their summer snow of daisies—not dead-white snow either, for it was broken by patches of yellow buttercups, crow's-foot, lady's-finger, and vetch, and by the crimson clover flowers and the rusty red of sorrel, and the black pert heads of the nib-wort plaintain, whose black upon the white of ox-eye daisies has the rich tone ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... comes we shall have a great volume of goods to export, there is no reason why the bill on London should not retain much if not all of its old prestige and supremacy in the marts of the world. For we must always remember that finance is only the handmaid of industry. She is often a pert handmaid who steals her mistress's clothes and tries to flaunt before the world as the mistress, and so she sometimes imposes on many people who ought to know better, who think that finance is an all-powerful influence. ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... whom he had despised with all the strength of his young vanity. By to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do him noa harm—a cantankerous yoong rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It burnt into ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... about it; the blamed thing grips me now and then if I work too hard and cut out a meal," he said. "I'll fix you up for the rest of the day, but won't answer for your feeling pert to-morrow." ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... figure in the place. It was rather abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to tremble before him, and was ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he thought; but Lucy pitied him plunging there, and cut all short by a way of her own. "Oh, Mabel, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... pert, miss, correcting your own mother? Do I ever catch you reading of your Bible? But you seem to know so much about it, perhaps you have met some ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause which he ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Sir," I hear you cry, "This wild bombast is rather dry: I hate your d——n'd insipid song, That sullen stalks in lines so long; Come, give us short ones like to Butler, Or, like our friend Auchinleck[7] the cutler." A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne'er write verses tripping pert and short: Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you're really in the wrong; To make a line that's good, I say, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... boat's keel grated on the sand, the midshipman in command leaped ashore. He was a particularly small and pert midshipman, a smart conceited vigorous little fellow, who delighted to order his big men about in the voice of a giant; and it was quite interesting to observe how quietly and meekly those big men obeyed him, just as one sometimes sees ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... native country. She can't tell the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans. And she didn't know why we came over here, and why it was not the same God in England, and if all the gods in India were idols. Chilian, you shouldn't encourage her irreverence. It looks pert in a child." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... almost too much for the endurance of any neighbour. Since it had become an ascertained fact that Lord Hampstead had admired the girl, Marion's popularity in the Row had certainly decreased. Mrs. Duffer believed her no longer to be handsome; Clara had always thought her to be pert; Mrs. Demijohn had expressed her opinion that the man was an idiot; and the landlady at the "Duchess of Edinburgh" had wittily asserted that "young marquises were not to be caught with chaff." There was no doubt ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... diamond; then softly and sweetly down the scale once more. Along the shore, too, there is life; guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern are busy there; the wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. But when the sun has set, may come the cry of a loon from some hill-tarn; a melancholy hurrah. That is the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... good bit of things in the world that we never see," he said to his companion. "The Squire's son is a pert ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... light that issued from two girandoles on the mantel-piece of figured marble, all lent their cheering aid to make complete the radiant picture of a happy home. But Montague sat nervous with anxiety. "Mother won't be a minute!" said a pert little fellow of some seven summers, who played with his hands as he sat on the sofa, and asked questions his emotions forbid answering. On an ottoman near the cheerful fire, sat, with happy faces, the prettily dressed figures of a boy and girl, older in age than the first; while by the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... solid man or so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... wit, Kingly poore flout. Will they not (thinke you) hang themselues to night? Or euer but in vizards shew their faces: This pert Berowne was ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made but scholars must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gerald's gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke let the sledge go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a bend, he pitched both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for them both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, to be laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew he would be making ironical, playful remarks as he wandered in hell—if he were in the humour. And that pleased her immensely. It seemed like a rising above the dreariness of actuality, the monotony ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her—only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan—the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... for their wine with the mirth which it qualifies them to produce. Full of this opinion, they crowd with little invitation, wherever the smell of a feast allures them, but are seldom encouraged to repeat their visits, being dreaded by the pert as rivals, and hated by the dull as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to herself in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... mother scrub the kitchen-floor on her knees, rather than face the irony of maternity and ask the assistance of the seventeen-year-old pert chit with bangs, who strums a mandolin in the little front parlor, gay with its paper flowers, six plush-covered chairs ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sunshine of the morn, A Butterfly, but newly born, Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings, all glorious to behold, Bedropt with azure, jet and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... condition to go back to the house, and so did not return until it was time for supper. He found a good meal awaiting him, and his wife on hand as pert as ever. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... had your imagination, Granny Snodgrass, I'd make molasses taffy out o' moonshine," remarked a pert miss. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... large coarse habit; and De Walton, imagining that his discomposure was the consequence of guilty fear, called upon him to remember the duties which he owed to England, the benefits which he had received from himself, and the probable consequence of taking part in a pert boy's insolent defiance of the power of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... my pert wisehead! Knowest thou not, that he who mocks the words of the wise goes straight to hell, as happened to that disciple who laughed at the Rabbi Jochanan when he said that precious stones should be set in the gates of Jerusalem, three ells long and three ells broad? ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... exhibition, and the person making it happened to be fascinating. She might have offended the taste of certain people—Ransom could imagine that there were other Boston circles in which she would be thought pert; but for himself all he could feel was that to his starved senses she irresistibly appealed. He was the stiffest of conservatives, and his mind was steeled against the inanities she uttered—the rights and wrongs of women, the equality of the sexes, the hysterics of conventions, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... until the train snorted into the shed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart little hat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... church-wardens and constables and other such officers, guided by the prudence of litigious attorneys and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns, and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hair-dressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull, uninstructed men, of useful, but laborious occupations,) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but if her face were equal to her figure, to hide it was cheating mortals out of a pleasure. The other was a maid, a pert little baggage who ordered us ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... the shoes appeared to have come in pairs of twos. Never was there such a collection of boots in couples. Strange it was, also, to see how many little secrets these rows of candid shoe-leather disclosed. Here a pert, coquettish pair of ties were having as little in common as possible with the stout, somewhat clumsy walking-boots next them. In the two just beyond, at the next door, how the delicate, slender buttoned kids leaned over, floppingly, to rest on the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... at break-neck speed and burst into the private sitting-room. There stood Polly, with her head up, looking pert indignation and surprise, and before her stood Greenacre, discoursing in his ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... church, but Mary thought the church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he resembles those naughty little boys who will not learn A, lest they ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... his paws and proceeds to chip it up for the pale, unripe seeds at its core, all the time keenly alive to possible dangers that may surround him. What a nervous, hustling, highstrung creature he is—a live wire at all times and places! That pert curl of the end of his tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting through the shell of a nut, is expressive of his character. What a contrast his nervous and explosive activity presents to the more sedate and dignified life of the gray squirrel! One of these passed ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Saucy and pert beside her walked the little brownie Marie, looking for all the world like the bobbing daffies in her white basket. One wanted to sing the old nursery rhyme: "Daffy-down-dilly has come to town," for they were nodding a friendly greeting from her hat, and seemed to lend their golden ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... minute, now, till I've done a little chance of business," cried the constable, creeping out from a corner of the barn, where the husked ears had been piled, and planting himself, like a pert exclamation point, before the old man. "I've got to make a levy on this corn heap," he said; "the oxen out yonder, and sundry other goods and chattels about the Old Homestead. I want to do everything fair and above board, so just wait to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... had been invited besides those whom the maid mentioned. But Miss Beaufort continued from seven o'clock until ten, the period at which the ladies left the table, the annoyed victim of the insipid and pert compliments of Lord Elesmere. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance. A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it could not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her apron for ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... wit, kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... utterance of the words of the litany and the acts of prostrate devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquante; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to confess ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... amiable woman's prattle deserted her when she found herself in the cold stone hall with the great portraits and the lack of all modern frippery. It was so plainly a man's house, so clearly a place of tradition, that her pert modern speech seemed for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... her as though not fully aware whether she intended to be pert. In truth, the Lady Alexandrina was rather in the dark on the subject. It was almost impossible, it was incredible, that a fatherless, motherless, doctor's niece should be pert to an earl's daughter at Greshamsbury, seeing that that earl's daughter ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... marries another sister—likes her, takes another—likes her, marries her mother—likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... o' a angel, 'r a bird, 'r a little, bobbin' rose." He sighed, uncrossed his shaggy knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he added. "Such a pert, little haid! And—and a cute face! And ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... are right, my dear," responded the old lady. "It is better for old folks to keep their fingers out of young folk's pies. But what did that pert miss mean about Anne's father being an actor? I had an ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... self-conscious when she first encountered him in this attire; perhaps she was afraid of his contrasting her appearance with that of Miss Burgoyne. If he did, it was certainly not to Nina's disadvantage. No; Nina was much more distinguished-looking and refined than the pert little doll-like bride represented by Miss Burgoyne; she wore the gorgeous costume of flowered white satin with ease and grace; and her portentous white wig, with its feathered brilliants and strings of pearls, seemed to add a greater ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight—a tiny, turf-loving ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... liberal be with those you meet E'en though they may offend, And wish them well as on they go Till all the journey end. Sometimes we think our honor's hurt When some one speaks a little pert; But never mind, just hear the good, And ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a pretty creature, with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot briefly explain to you the character and situation of the persons on the stage with him. The first (a dialogue between Quick and Mrs. Mattocks [Footnote: Isaac and Donna Louisa.]), I would wish to be a pert, sprightly air; for, though some of the words mayn't seem suited to it, I should mention that they are neither of them in earnest in what they say. Leoni takes it up seriously, and I want him to show himself advantageously in the six lines beginning ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... me to get into bed if you like," she said. "The muggy day has made me wonderfully drowsy, and I'll be glad to lie down. It's only that. I'll be as pert as ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream. We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place of honour sat Mpeso Birimba, a petty chief of Suko Nkongo; a pert rascal of the French factory, habited in a red cap, a green velvet waistcoat, and a hammock-shaped tippet of pine-apple fibre; his sword was a short Sollingen blade. The visit had the sole object of mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lo! the pert Fanny, hitherto so ready with her answers, began to cry bitterly. The words really pricked her conscience, and to be scolded is one thing, to be severely and solemnly reproached is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever, as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip or her tongue, but she was too much put out and vexed to try ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... had he not pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal what portal I enter, since I'm to be render'd immortal: So clysters applied ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise, Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... play the secretary, Flora Harris the daughter. Tom Curtis was to portray the role of the stern father, while Lillian Seldon played a pert maid and Alfred ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Ingo! At the age when so many small boys are pert, impudent, self-conscious, he was the simplest, happiest, gravest little creature. His hobby was astronomy, and often I would find him sitting quietly in a corner with a book about the stars. On clear evenings we would walk along the road together, in the mountain hush that was only broken ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... ignorant of anything ever I heard of," interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... does yo' tink I could sit up dar an' tell dat precious chile we had chicken when I knew her little stomack was jes' groanin' for chicken? No, 'deed. Do I am deaconess, I'd rather be burned for a lie. So I jes' answers as pert-like as pos'ble. 'Law, honey, we jes' had mutton like ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... one fat finger doubtfully, and after some coaxing, gave the pert green leaves a quick dab. They drooped and the child ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the conscious expression of mechanism, is not merely a necessity in the Life of Reason, it is a safeguard. Piety, in spite of its allegories, contains a much greater wisdom than a half-enlightened and pert intellect can attain. Natural beings have natural obligations, and the value of things for them is qualified by distance and by accidental material connections. Intellect would tend to gauge things impersonally by their intrinsic values, since intellect is itself ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... have been the common property of all generations of critics. One would scarcely ask for originality in such a case, any more than one would desire a writer on ethics to invent new laws of morality. "We require neither Pope nor Aristotle to tell us that critics should not be pert nor prejudiced; that fancy should be regulated by judgment; that apparent facility comes by long training; that the sound should have some conformity to the meaning; that genius is often envied; and that dulness is frequently beyond the reach of reproof. "We might even ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... first on the list of performances, was determined to do the thing in style. Bertha and Carmel between them evolved a poster. It was painted in sepia on the back of one of Dulcie's school drawings, sacrificed for the purpose. It represented the profile of a rather pert looking young person with a tip-tilted nose and an eye several sizes larger than was consistent with the usual anatomy of the human countenance. Lower down, in somewhat shaky lettering, was set forth ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in her fourteenth year, though by some considered even prettier, was far less pleasing—pert, forward, and conceited as she had been in her early childhood; she was tall for her age, and with her perfect self-possession and grown-up air and manner, might be easily mistaken for seventeen. She had already more worldly wisdom than her sweet, fair niece ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Simon," said a voice, which strove to drown in an artificial squeak the pert, conceited tone of Oliver Proudfute. "But a sight of thy lovely daughter had been more sweet to us young bloods than a whole vintage ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... to answer, but the pert Andrew was beforehand with him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with certain verses of the Bible; and when he had said these words, every thief, whether he ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... uncomfortable perch. A humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, airy little character that we had so often seen flirting with the flowers. He was evidently a humming-bird in adversity, and whether he ever would hum again looked to us exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent out to have him taken in. When the friendly hand seized ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a weekly paper, called the North Briton. This ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and this time I was made sensible of it by a sudden dig in the ribs, from the elbow of my pert brother. For the present, I could only resent the insult by pressing my foot upon his toes, deferring further vengeance till we got ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... greeted with some merriment, for the doctor said it with much enthusiasm. Then Dominick began to give an account of their adventures, interrupted and corrected, not infrequently, by his pert brother Otto, who, being still afflicted with his South-Sea-island appetite, remained unsatisfied until the last slice of toast, and the last muffin, and the last wedge of cake had disappeared from ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... a good old thing—Aunt Soph. Forever sending a spray of sweeping black paradise, like a jet of liquid velvet, to this pert little niece in Seattle; or taking Adele, sister Flora's daughter, to Chicago or New York, as a treat, on one of her buying trips. Burdening herself, on her business visits to these cities, with a dozen foolish shopping commissions for ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... married, has two children, is growing stout, and always refers to her lord and master as 'He,' never by any accident pronouncing his name. Second, Julia; sixteen, flaxen-haired, lithe, not ungraceful, self-possessed, and perhaps a little pert. She is unmarried; but, having fed her mind with no more solid aliment than country gossip, no sensible man could talk to her five minutes. Third, Laura; eighteen, black hair, with sharp outlines on the temples, eyes heavily shaded and coquettishly managed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... been here on this bare reef six days, with the breakers all around us, and do not know whether we shall get off or not. We amuse ourselves every morning with looking at the pert little birds, as queer as the boobies, though quite different from them, that sit and nod to each other incessantly, and give each other little hits with their bills, as if these were their morning salutations,—a rough way of ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... like young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I could ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... morbid sentiments of the feebler sort. And we see one legitimate result in that flightiness of the feminine mind which, in a lower stratum of current literature, displays inaccurate opinions, feeble prejudices, and finally blossoms into pert vulgarity. But instances of perverted license increase our obligation to Mrs. Child, Mrs. Stowe and to others whose eloquence is only in deeds. Of such as these, and of her whom we may now associate with them, it is not impossible some unborn historian may write, that in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... in an atmosphere Of tender and low-breathed sighs; But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear To the soul of the enterprise; "You beg so pert for the kiss you seek It reminds me, John," she said, "Of a poodle pet that jumps to 'speak' For a crumb or ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... forward; fish for compliments; give oneself airs &c. (assume) 885; boast &c. 884. render vain &c. adj.; inspire with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... rose to the housekeeper's lips was checked by the return of Madame de Fondege, followed by a servant-girl with a turn-up nose, a pert manner, and who carried a lighted candle in ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... young woman's faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... afraid of my wanting the character," cried Julia, with angry quickness: "I am not to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious, little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form." And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting small ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... when Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 23rd of January, 1516. Cabot returned at once to England, having probably obtained leave of absence. Eden tells us that the following year Cabot was appointed with Sir Thomas Pert to the command of a fleet which was to reach China by the north-west. On the 11th of June, he was in Hudson's Bay at 67-1/2 degrees of latitude; the sea free from ice spread itself out before him so ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... dear child his vacant prattle heard In wonder, and believed it lore profound: And ever after, when in solemn church, (The very church I have before me now!) Or household prayer, these words were touched upon, Pert visions would intrude of gabbling fowls Mid splashing water, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... visualize her, as he might visualize something remembered, or conceived of in imagination—a lovely young girl, slender and clothed in something loose and filmy, with flowers in her honey-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a pert, cheerful face, a wide, smiling mouth and an impudently up-tilted nose. He realized that this image was merely a sort of allegorical representation, his own private object-abstraction from a reality which his senses could never picture ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... pretty speech, but the "Good Night! Good Night! my dear, sweet, pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... own purse being empty—without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the sake o' these younkers here such men as love killin' Injuns oughter keep clear o' the settlements an' do their stent on t'other side the Ohio. Old Cornstalk's powerful keen to git them fellers. When he hears they're here at the creek he's likely to strike quick an' mighty pert. Wal, if they come an' I can make it hand-grips with 'em I 'low there'll be some new Injuns ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Anger now, my Lady; the Gentleman's sorry you see, I'll marry my pert Huswife to morrow for this.—Maundy, see the Gentleman safe out:—ah, put me to Bed; ah, this Night's Work will kill me, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... came back half-dead, and we asked no questions until she told us. She's been sick and fretful since, but I guess there's nothing you can do. When we can't keep a sick woman who has done good work for us a while we'll give up the business. She'll be pert again directly." ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... arms around his neck, his crisp hair against my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it. Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the limit. He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly crept a beauty that surpassed ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... deceased Baronet's, laughed at the silly talk, as he called it, and said that her Ladyship was about to make Mr. Gamecock her bailiff. Mr. Howlet, the solicitor from the neighbouring village, shook his head, looked "wondrous wise," but said nothing; and that pert gentleman, Mr. Sparrow, reported that he had peeped in at the window one day, and knew more than he chose to tell. So matters went on for a time. At last, one fine day Mr. Howlet was seen to drive up to the Hall, and take in with him a large document. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded attention anywhere. The white ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... on the face, which made them look about them. Miller was so inquisitive, and his observations were so unlike those of a bona fide purchaser, that the dealers soon began to suspect he did not intend to be a customer. One of them being in consequence rather pert in his replies, Miller once more allowed his indignation to get the better of his judgment, and he abused the fellow in terms more violent, if possible, than those he had addressed to the master of the slave ship. He had some difficulty to avoid getting into a very serious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... exists amongst any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would marry an odious painted actress off a booth, where very likely he wants to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... impudence and stupidity. Heavens! added he, could she have the vanity to imagine that the genteel garb you had put her in, could raise her to such an equality, as to make me hesitate one moment if I should give the balance of merit on her side, and quit the amiable Melanthe for the pert charms of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... enlightenment which has left me in lasting possession of the fact that criminologists are generally more ignorant than criminals. Among the starved and bitter, but quite human, faces was one head, neat but old-fashioned, with the powder of the 18th century and a certain almost pert primness in the dress which marked the conventions of the upper middle-class about 1790. The face was lean and lifted stiffly up, the eyes stared forward with a frightful sincerity, the lip was firm with a heroic firmness; ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, those eager, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... tightened to suggest something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert! ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thou weep'st in stone, poor Lady, o'er thy Chief,[42] That huge-limb'd Porter, spell-struck there, stands sharer in thy grief. Pert Cynic, scorn not his amaze; all savage as he seems, What graceful shapes henceforward may whiten his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... return to the palace amazement reigned throughout the Court at such a sudden and extraordinary change. Whereas formerly they had been accustomed to hear her give vent to silly, pert remarks, they now heard her express herself sensibly ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much harder to ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... have made to this pert speech was cut short by a loud cry of pain or terror from the old half-dismantled barn on the other side of the road. All eyes were at once turned in that direction, and beheld Joe Fairthorn rushing at full speed down the bank, making for the stables below. Mark, Gilbert ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... not he? But things were unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so understandingly aware—so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds lustily, unevenly—an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... replied the domestic, with pert familiarity, and took her time in arranging the shade of the lamp. When she returned from the door it was to announce, smilingly, that Mr. Cobb wished ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two sharp, shrill, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents must be dribbled into ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... or the aged. It was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... time-honoured old age. There is in their wisdom a perfume of the past, homely and ancient-fashioned like a whiff of pot pourri, wondrous soothing withal to olfactories agitated by the patchoulis and jockey clubs of modern pretenders and petit- maitres, with their grey young heads and pert intelligence, the motto of whose ignorance is "Connu!" Were a dose of its antique, mature experience adhibited to the Western before he visits the East, those few who could digest it might escape the normal lot of being twisted round the fingers of every rogue they meet from Dragoman ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shrug, then rose and went over to the window. "Oh yes, it was funny; but I think she must be a rather pert little thing. I don't want ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... had received overnight, I presented myself at the office of the Daily Gazette in good time on the morning after my interview with the editor. A pert boy showed me into the news-editor's room, after an interval of waiting, and I found myself confronting the man who controlled my immediate destiny. He was dictating telegrams to a shorthand writer, and, for the moment, took no notice whatever of me. I stood at the end of his table, hat in ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... and smiled back. Their eyes held and Mike liked what he saw—pert elfin features; shining chestnut ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami: Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... you, hussy? Well, I think I'll take pretty good care of you. Here, Humphrey, I leave this lady in your care. Now you may walk about the garden, Miss Pert; but Humphrey shall go with you wherever you go. So mind, honest Humphrey, I am obliged to go abroad for a little while; let no one but yourself come near her; don't be shame-faced, you booby, but keep close to her. And now, miss, ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... though yet in manhood's bloom, 70 Adopting arts by which gay villains rise, And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud; A pert, prim, prater of the northern race,[16] Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face, Stood forth,—and thrice he waved his lily hand, And thrice he twirled his tye, thrice stroked his band:— At Friendship's call (thus oft, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... rank and spotless virtue half the insolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, a lady of the House of Querouaille, whom our rude ancestors called Madam Carwell. She was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a task it is to quench her flame; And who falls short of furnishing a course Up to his brawny predecessor's force, With utmost rage from her embraces thrown, Remains convicted as an empty drone. Thus often, to his shame, a pert beginner Proves in the end a miserable sinner. As for our youngster, I am apt to doubt him, With all the vigour of his youth about him; But he, more sanguine, trusts in one and twenty, And impudently hopes he shall content you: For though his bachelor be worn and cold, He thinks the young may ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... it is devoid of interest," he continued, ceasing his thoughts for a moment, to listen to the piece of modern music which the choir was just then rendering. "Ah, who will take on himself to proscribe that pert mysticism, those fonts of toilet-water which Gounod invented!... There ought indeed to be astonishing penalties for choir masters who allow such musical effeminacy in church. This is, as it was this morning ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks an' cartridge-box, I guess as how I inteend to make ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... cherished through college with a sort of detached yet affectionate admiration. He had loved to draw her—around his room had been a dozen sketches of her—playing golf, swimming—he could draw her pert, arresting profile ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... forgot his master's presence and shut his notebook with a bang, 'Congratulate you, sir,' says he, quite pert to Maskew; 'you are the landlord of the poorest pothouse in the Duchy ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... day, and I mentally kneel at their feet, but gold always has counterfeits. The real inventor, made by the Deity to carry out his plans, is modest, silent, broodin' over his great secrets, away from the multitude where angels minister to him. But Jabez wuz loud, boastin', arrogant, his pert impudent face proclaimin' the great things he wuz goin' to do, but never did. He wuz in love, too, or what he called love, with a girl that wuz a prime favorite of mine, sweet little Rosamond Nickleson, she and I wuz such great friends she ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... demand the sacrifice of Raleigh as the price of his own devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of the other. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... "budgerighars." I admired the blue wren so much—a tiny birdeen with tail and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured, but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the peculiarity of two feathers ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... mighty funny about that," declared Mrs. Hopkins, contemptuously. "The girl's too pert and forward for anything. I told 'Rast not to fool with her, or ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... are pert and deceitful, for you have kept secret from me that which I had a right to learn; also you have too good an opinion of your own looks, which as I tell you now for the last time, are nothing compared ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... heavily after a while. He lingered round the bookstall looking at the books and papers till a pert girl behind the counter asked him if he wouldn't like a chair; but when Hobbs, who was never rude and consequently never suspected rudeness in other people, raised his hat and said, "No, thank'ee, Miss, I be all right standing," even the pert girl ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... want me," he groaned out, "'fore the boarders come! She use' t' come up t' Pa's an' act up real pert an' comical; maybe if she hadn't, I'd 'a' noticed her more! Ah! if I'd only been content t' see it then, I might have saved her. I was only up t' Maud Grace's limit, but I was allus a-thinkin' I was more, an' then when she took t' the boarders I got ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... his neck, his crisp hair against my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it. Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the limit. He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly crept a beauty that surpassed that ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... go, wondered if she would ever see them again, with their pert caps, the bare knees of them—the strong swing ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... that I did not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... insistently; whereupon Letty said, with her pert brightness, thinking all the time of the house, "I'm not going to make you vain. Besides, I ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... young girl, or very young woman. It is one of the prettiest words in the Nipponese language; it seems almost as if there were a little pout in the very sound—a pretty, taking little pout, such as they put on, and also as if a little pert physiognomy were described by it. I shall often make use of it, knowing none other in our own language that conveys ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he was splendid,' said pretty, pert Larkspur. 'So dark and so grand, with that gay cloak of gold; But he tried once to kiss me, the impudent fellow, And I got offended; I thought ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... acquired, but are rather, like beauty and talent, the gift of Nature. That ease and grace will certainly run great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive gaucherie of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert composure of a citizen. ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... vanity. By to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do him noa harm—a cantankerous yoong rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... French clock on the table sounded the hour of midnight briskly, with a pert, insistent clamor, and at the same instant a boisterous and unruly knocking answered it from outside the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... eaten my oats, I looked round. In the stall next to mine stood a little fat gray pony, with a thick mane and tail, a very pretty head, and a pert little nose. I put my head up to the iron rails at the top of my box, and said, "How do you ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... education will produce all female excellencies. The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by their gestures that they hardly think themselves ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... has pretended to be, how easy it would be for her, without violating her oath, to put him on his guard against the trap that has been laid for him! In the scene with Lady Milford she appears as a pert little pharisee, caustic, sententious and philosophical beyond her years; so that one wonders why a girl that knows so much should not know more. She herself has just cast her lover off, after meeting his passionate entreaties ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharme; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cecile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry-colour, enormous as a Paul Neron; clustering white shoulders, grouped ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... postscript. To another brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk at Hamburg, the English correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at Marseilles has the French. For the Italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to Jew-German,—the other languages having been cut off from him,—and, by means of his frightful ciphers, brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents into a hearty laugh ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus now wakes, and wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'T ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... a mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the hussar as strange that the tutor, who was a strongly-built ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... no better than harboring wizards. And I know not, of the two, which is the more like to bring us to the gallows," replied Tirechair, taking up his halbert. "I will go my rounds over by Champfleuri; God protect us, and send me to meet some pert jade out in her bravery of gold rings to glitter in the shade like ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... strange, but all the shoes appeared to have come in pairs of twos. Never was there such a collection of boots in couples. Strange it was, also, to see how many little secrets these rows of candid shoe-leather disclosed. Here a pert, coquettish pair of ties were having as little in common as possible with the stout, somewhat clumsy walking-boots next them. In the two just beyond, at the next door, how the delicate, slender buttoned kids leaned over, floppingly, to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... for me from Unterwald? What of my father? 'Tis not to be borne, Thus to be pent up like a felon here! What have I done of such a heinous stamp, To skulk and hide me like a murderer? I only laid my staff across the fingers Of the pert varlet, when before my eyes, By order of the governor, he tried To drive away my handsome ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... we think, Miss Pert. You are suspected, as I said; and, I should infer from your manner, not without good cause. Are you willing that I should search your person for evidence to ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... propriety; she only knew what was thought vulgar or genteel at Suxberry House; and the authority of Mrs. Suxberry (for that was the name of her schoolmistress) she quoted as incontrovertible upon all occasions. Without reflecting upon what was wrong or right, she decided with pert vivacity on all subjects; and firmly believed that no one could know or could learn any thing who had not been educated precisely as she had been. She considered her mother as an inferior personage, destitute of genteel accomplishments: her mother considered ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... box, Pops up boldly again! What does he mean by thus frisking about, Now up and now down, and now in and now out, And all done quicker than winking? What does it mean? Why, 'tis plain—fun! Only Fun! or, perhaps, The pert little rascal's been drinking?— There's a cider-press yonder all say on ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... she make me good-looking, then? They say it's sinfu' to be a witch—if so, how comes grandmother Demdike to be one? Boh ey'n observed that those folks os caws her witch are afeard on her, so it may be pure spite o' their pert." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rose." He sighed, uncrossed his shaggy knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he added. "Such a pert, little haid! And—and a cute face! And she was ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... was all that. I don't know if I make myself clear at all.... You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only that—Lord, no! It was a great deal more than that, and it was ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... think well of him? But, then, he is an editor, and authors always have a sort of affinity for gentlemen of the press," says a pert young creature, twisting her head on one side, and ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... unsound. The religious demagogue belonged to a petty dissenting sect, no doubt; and he was trying for his wretched little Shibboleth. But you may have seen the like, even with leading men in National Churches. And I have seen a pert little whipper-snapper ask a venerable clergyman what he thought of a certain outrageous lay-preacher, and receive the clergyman's reply, that he thought most unfavorably of many of the lay-preacher's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... was tired of the house, tired of the frozen garden, tired of scolding the slovenly girl who pottered around all day in a boudoir cap and slovenly wrapper. Tired of Anna's rebellious face and pert answers. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... would have been quite unremarkable, but the laughter-loving mouth and pointed chin wholly redeemed it from the commonplace. She was a little brown thing like a woodland creature, and her dainty air and quick ways put Scott irresistibly in mind of a pert robin. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... dense covert of maple and beech: or, with a startling call, a red-crested cock of the woods would beat his white-striped wings from spur to spur, as though he were keeping close to the long swells of an unseen sea. Several times, a pert flicker squatting like a knot to a dead limb or the crimson plume of a cock of the woods, as plain as a splash of blood on a wall of vivid green, tempted him to let loose his last load, but he withstood them. A little later, he saw a fresh bear-track near a spring below the head of a ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... words, the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to scan, They sink ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... girl, And the witty girl, And the girl that bangs her hair; The girl that's a flirt, And the girl that is pert, And the girl ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Farnshaw the axiom became a living truth. While the rest of her family suffered and magnified their sufferings, she, by a vivid imagination, placed herself in the path of fortune and obtained the thing she demanded. The simple country schoolhouse that year, dreary and cheerless enough to the pert Miss who had come out from Topeka to teach there, and incidentally to collect twenty-five dollars a month from the school board, was to be the scene of the initial change in Lizzie ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... had almost given up looking—but he was coming! She knew be would come. Coming at a breakneck pace—he must be pretty anxious, too. The schoolma'am recovered a bit of control and revolved in her mind several pert forms of greeting. She would not be too ready to forgive him—it would do him good to keep him anxious and uncertain for a while before ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... not infrequently have accused American children of being "pert," or "lacking in reverence," or "sophisticated." Those of us who are better acquainted with the children of our own Nation cannot concur in any of these accusations. Unhappily, there are children in America, as there are ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... out so young Wid a look in its face like a sassy tongue, Den it grows light-headed wid self-conceit Wid a flighty ol' age, for full defeat. An' it ain't by itself, pert chillen, in dat— No, it ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Gentleman have comfortably kept good Company, and had their Reckoning always paid, only by shewing a broad Blade, and cherishing a fierce Pair of Whiskers. Good Manners must certainly die with Chivalry; for what keeps all the pert Puppies about Town in Awe, but the Fear of being call'd to Account? Don't you know that there are a Set of impertinent Wretches, who are always disturbing publick Assemblies with Riots and Quarrels, only upon a presumption of being hinder'd ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... present stage it was any improvement. I am not at all sure strangers considered Jack a prepossessing child, she was so awkward and overgrown, but I liked her droll face immensely. Fred was always finding fault with her and snubbing her, which brought him nothing but pert replies; then he would entreat mother to send her to school, but somehow she never went. Dot could not spare her, and mother thought there was plenty of time, so Jack still roamed about at her own sweet will; riding Dapple ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... count's head valet, was serving coffee for the benefit of all the retainers. And while the company sipped the fragrant beverage which had been generously tinctured with cognac, provided by the butler, they all united in abusing their common enemy, the master of the house. For the time being, a pert little waiting-maid, with an odious turn-up nose, had the floor. She was addressing her remarks to a big, burly, and rather insolent-looking fellow, who had been added only the evening before to the corps of footmen. "The place is really intolerable," she was saying. ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... A pert, petulant young clerk, continually fooling with the mate, swearing at the stevedores and laboring men, who regard him ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... out one fat finger doubtfully, and after some coaxing, gave the pert green leaves a quick dab. They drooped and the ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... with the Consideration of poor and publick Whores. The other Evening passing along near Covent-Garden, I was jogged on the Elbow as I turned into the Piazza, on the right Hand coming out of James-street, by a slim young Girl of about Seventeen, who with a pert Air asked me if I was for a Pint of Wine. I do not know but I should have indulged my Curiosity in having some Chat with her, but that I am informed the Man of the Bumper knows me; and it would have made a Story for him not very agreeable to some Part of my Writings, though I have ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... pinched, or as skinny, or flourished such spare arms, or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as if he partook ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an eminent Oxford don, who is now a bishop. He had entered the room of Dr. Pusey, at Christ Church, and saw, as usual, the library table covered with books of divinity and learned tomes; but on the top of these was perched, in pert, cock-sparrow fashion, that shilling railway book that had recently been published, with the spectacled face of the Oxford Freshman on the cover. My friend told me that Dr. Pusey held up the book to him and said, that he had not only ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... inferior, holding down the superior being by force of brute strength and responsible for all her faults. And she wanted the smoothness of manner known as good breeding. Though a gentlewoman by birth, she gave one the impression of a pert chambermaid matured ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... an hour and gone away to any other? Hast thou not thyself written concerning me (Exod. xxxiii. 11), 'His servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the Tabernacle?'" As a punishment for this pert reply, which must have distressed and confounded his master, Joshua's power of brain was immediately weakened, so that he forgot three hundred Halachahs, and seven hundred doubts sprang up to perplex him. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the poreblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp at night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling Hall, For thee, fair Justice, welcome all! Thus though my noon of life be passed, Yet let my setting sun, at last, Find out the still, the rural cell, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear, Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore, His anguish doubled by his own 'encore!' Squeezed in 'Fop's Alley,' jostled by the beaux, Teased with his hat, and trembling for his toes, Scarce wrestles through the night, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... been awaiting his chance. "Another? Really! We're guests, Sheila, do you hear that?" He looked at Mandleco with immense disdain, gave a pert tilt of his head and surveyed the room with a grimace of distaste. "And just how long are we to ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... first open'd the ball with the Plover; Baron Stork in a waltz was allow'd to excel, With his beautiful partner, the fair Demoiselle;[12] And a newly-fledged Gosling, so fair and genteel, A minuet swam with the spruce Mr. Teal. A London-bred Sparrow—a pert forward Cit! Danced a reel with Miss Wagtail and little Tom Tit. And the Sieur Guillemot[13] next perform'd a pas seul, While the elderly bipeds were ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... that was half a prayer, and the pert secretary did the first thing that was familiar since he was seen with the company—he laid his hand on Don Ruy's shoulder and felt that the horse lost was as a brother lost, and Chico had a fancy of his own to caress it, and even burnish the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... understand that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will please your ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... women now? Tell an English creve that Miss Maria is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty, pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given ces dames a position in ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... from detailing the particulars of his amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a weekly paper, called the North Briton. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... given her for filling his water-bag. They both hoped to pull wool off dead sheep and make some more money that way. They had quite made up their minds about what they wanted to get: it must be house plants for ma; but still they both wished they could get some little thing for pa. They were not pert or forward in any way, but they answered readily and we all drew ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... my mother remembered that if she did not see herself that my bed was well aired I should certainly lose the use of my limbs, and therefore disappeared with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, who seemed to think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I told my father of my ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning he wondered what three amusing characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Coelebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out a little pocket volume, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... be careful!" Sam called. "You'll slide off and fall down in the alley if you don't look out. I come pert' near it last time we was up there. Come on down! Ain't you goin' to ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... breast-high to the worshipers. She is crowned with tinsel and garlanded with paper flowers; she has a blue ribbon about her tightly corseted waist; and she wears an immense spreading hoop. On her painted, silly face of wood, with its staring eyes shadowed by a wig, is figured a pert smile; and people come constantly and kiss the cross that hangs by a chain from her girdle, and utter their prayers to her; while the column near which she sits is hung over with pictures celebrating the miracles she ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... have been a speech both stupid and pert in the mouth of another; but Donnegan knew how to flavor words with a touch of mockery of himself as well as another. There were two manners in which this speech could have been received—with a wink or with a smile. But it would have been impossible to hear ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... ashamed to find how many names of classics (and more than their names) you have introduced me to, that before I was ignorant of. Your commendation of Master Chapman arrideth me. Can any one read the pert modern Frenchify'd notes, &c., in Pope's translation, and contrast them with solemn weighty prefaces of Chapman, writing in full faith, as he evidently does, of the plenary inspiration of his author—worshipping his meanest scraps and relics as divine—without one sceptical ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, with an extra-fashionable bonnet on, and also treated us ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... event occurred. It concerned Susy's pony. Percy Eastman said he was called Wings "because he hadn't any feet." Susy was vexed at this remark, and Prudy, taking her part, said, "Percy is such a pert boy;" adding next moment, "What is pert?" ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... ghastly. Don't tell me any more about it." He wandered across the room, pulling a leaf from the azaleas, stopping at the window for a long look out. The wind was blowing some riotous young clouds over the sky like inarticulate shouts. There was an arrogant bird in the elm; there were pert crocus-buds in the window-boxes. The place was full of foolhardy little dare-devils who trusted their fate and might never find it out. After all, that was the way to live—as long as one was allowed. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... my Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat hardly echoed the note ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she gave him ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this bare reef six days, with the breakers all around us, and do not know whether we shall get off or not. We amuse ourselves every morning with looking at the pert little birds, as queer as the boobies, though quite different from them, that sit and nod to each other incessantly, and give each other little hits with their bills, as if these were their morning salutations,—a rough way of asking after each ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... she had written, "for I thought to teach my lady a lesson or two; but I find her very pert and obstinate. I do not understand, my dear son, how you could have wished to make her your wife; and yet I will grant that she has a taking way with her; she seems to fear nothing but her own superstitions and folly, but I am very happy to think that all is over between ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Nobody particular, I should think. Wasn't it a pity they didn't have Lady Langham for the Faerie Queen? I do call it absurd the way Sir Cyril Meres has put that pert, insignificant cousin of his forward in quite half the pictures—and when he might ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... this kind is the life of that extraordinary couple, Harry Tersett and his lady. Harry was, in the days of his celibacy, one of those pert creatures who have much vivacity and little understanding; Mrs. Rebecca Quickly, whom he married, had all that the fire of youth and a lively manner could do towards making ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... shrewdness, which they do not bring with them, but no way improves their own quick native wit and natural national humor. Of course there are exceptions; but the majority of them, after a short stay in America, contrive to combine their own least desirable race qualities with the independent tone of pert familiarity, the careless extravagance, and the passion for dress of American girls of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... "Such is the fate of beggars. They must wander far and take abuse. It is true that I am ragged, but I am not unclean. Once I was rich and had my own palace. I often gave to beggars and I had many servants. But it pleased the gods to make me poor. Thou pert woman, surely the queen, Penelope, never taught thee, and thy bad conduct will not ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... that pert way. It sounds like insolence. That will not do, Mr Herrick, if you wish to get on in your profession. Now, sir, your orders were to stop by the landing-place, with the boat in charge, ready for my return, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, the effect ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... placing the highest powers of the state in church-wardens and constables and other such officers, guided by the prudence of litigious attorneys and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns, and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hair-dressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober incapacity of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the frequent connection of energy and smallness in women is a thing which all may verify in their own circles. In daily life, who is the really formidable woman to encounter?—the black-browed, broad-shouldered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as a man's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no more biceps than a ladybird, and of just about equal strength with a sparrow? Nine times out of ten, the giantess with the heavy shoulders and broad black eyebrows is a timid, feeble-minded, good tempered person, incapable of anything harsher than a mild ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... monotony of red brickwork and sombre timber. On each side of the body of the church there are four neat-looking three-light windows; at the western end there is a beautiful five-light window, but its effect is completely spoiled by a small, pert-looking, precocious organ, which stands right before it. At each end of the transept there are circular lights of condensed ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... summer's end, And firefly, hedge-shrew, lobworm, pray, How fare they? No bidding me then to—what did Zanze say? "Pare your nails pearlwise, get your small feet shoes 15 More like"—what said she?—"and less like canoes!" How pert that girl was!—would I be those pert, Impudent, staring women! It had done me, However, surely no such mighty hurt To learn his name who passed that jest upon me: 20 No foreigner, that I can recollect, Came, as she says, a month since, to inspect Our silk-mills—none ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner of all traveling ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with envy of one who was in a position to be unkind to Zuleika. "Happy maid!" he murmured. Zuleika replied that he was stealing her thunder: hadn't she envied the girl at his lodgings? "But I," she said, "wanted only to serve you in meekness. The idea of ever being pert to you didn't enter into my head. You show a side of your character as unpleasing ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... parted from his young friend, he proceeded along the Strand in an unusually grave mood, shaking his head to such a degree, as he reflected on the precocious wickedness of the rising generation, that a very ragged and pert specimen of that generation, observing his condition, gravely informed him that there was an hospital for incurables in London, which took in patients with palsy and St. Wituses' dance ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... my Gossip lately, to send you a good little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... did not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's tent, but the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... an insolent lifting of his brows and a sidelong look at Tressan; and Tressan registered in his heart a vow that when he should have come to wed the mother, he would not forget to take payment for that glance from her pert son. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... magnificent! simply magnificent," murmured the bullet-headed Jean, who was not, like his friend, enamored of the pert Lisette. "I have never seen so splendid an Englishwoman, never! nor one who had so much ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... lady!" he ordered. "Your mother and I will discuss this matter without any of your pert suggestions or exclamations. I'm far from pleased with you, Jane. I told you to shut that door, and you disobeyed me. For that, you shall suffer due penance. Six months in Port Agnew, my dear, to teach you obedience ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... be—a mere Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause which he has ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... became broader. "I hoped you might come across on that before the evening was over. Has your very recent edition the one in it about: 'Jane was saucy, Jane was pert'?" ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... looked set down for a minute, but nought ever daunted her for long. She was as pert a little maid as ever I knew, and but little deserved her name of Meliora. (Ah me, is ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... operation of time is now to deposit shabbiness upon shabbiness. But it's for the most part a patient, sturdy, sympathetic shabbiness, which soothes rather than irritates the nerves, and has in many cases doubtless as long a career to run as most of our pert and shallow freshnesses. It projects at all events a deeper shadow into the constant twilight of the narrow streets—that vague historic dusk, as I may call it, in which one walks and wonders. These streets are hardly more than sinuous flagged alleys, into which ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... it will be only for a few days," Morgan replied, smiling a little at the pert sufficiency of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... but the pert Andrew was beforehand with him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with certain verses of the Bible; and when he ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the baggage has a pert je ne sais quoi; she reads plays, keeps a monkey, and is troubled ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... not remember what it was. Suddenly a robin on the fence burst into adjurations of a robust sort, and Marietta, without meaning to, spoke. She had always said since her childhood that a robin bewitched her—he was so happy and so pert. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... it was with Moses, he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... marry? Should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth Echo, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... strawberries that succeeded them; and oh! what mirth went on all the time! Kate was chattering fastest of all, and loudest—not to say the most nonsensically. It was not nice nonsense—that was the worst of it— it was pert and saucy. It was rather the family habit to laugh at Mary de la Poer for ways that were thought a little fanciful; and Kate caught this up, and bantered without discretion, in a way not becoming towards anybody, especially one some years her elder. Mary was good-humoured, but evidently ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... engaged in these deep thoughts as we glided onwards. Josiah wuz wrestlin' with his hat brim, he would have acted pert and happy if it hadn't been for that. At my request he had bought a straw hat to cover his eyes from the sun and preserve his complexion, and so fur is that man from megumness that he had got one with a brim so broad that it stood out ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... too, when their sweethearts came along, and seen—oh, yes, many, many things have I seen, and many, many things have I heard of those fair young ladies of quality. She belongs to them, and she likes that good-for-nothing, pert little Susy Hopkins! Yet it don't matter to me. Susy shall have my good graces if she has secured those of ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... was amazed by the speed of the thoroughbreds, who ran so easily, yet with a long, reaching stride that ate into the miles. To Pete they seemed more like excellent machines than horses—lacking the pert individuality of the cow-pony. Stall-fed and groomed to a satin-smooth glow, stabled and protected from the rains—pets, in Pete's estimation—yet he knew that they would run until they dropped, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the peacocks; in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly virgins; in which rogues will sometimes triumph, and honest folks, let us hope, come by their own; in which there will be black crape and white favours; in which there will be tears under orange-flower wreaths, and jokes in mourning-coaches; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of desiring her to recall Jenny, professed a satisfaction in her being dismissed, saying, she was grown of little use as a servant, spending all her time in reading, and was become, moreover, very pert and obstinate; for, indeed, she and her master had lately had frequent disputes in literature; in which, as hath been said, she was become greatly his superior. This, however, he would by no means allow; and as he called her persisting ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... said Sheffield; "it makes me laugh to think what I have done, when a boy, to escape dancing; there is something so absurd in it; and one had to be civil and to duck to young girls who were either prim or pert. I have behaved quite rudely to them sometimes, and then have been annoyed at my ungentlemanlikeness, and not known how to ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a button on his desk and presently an office boy—a mop of auburn curls, a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers—hurried up ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead carcass. The worms will close their mortgage ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... another one opening right before me. Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the dogs, after a feed on blubber, suddenly died; and there was left me only 'Reinhardt,' a white-haired Siberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, like a cat's. Him, too, I had to kill on coming ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... pink flannel, her feet in dilapidated slippers, and her hair in curl-papers along her forehead. Although she saw that her visitor was quite a stranger to her, she did not offer to rise, but simply raising her pert, faded, but still ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... know. It's a mighty pert piece of work. I've a mind it's some slick white fellar, with ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... caused something of a real sensation. Mrs. Sumnet-Ives mentally put the speaker down as "a pert little chit." Grove Evans was amused, for he disliked Carp. Mrs. Randall catalogued it as another ebullition of Mary's queerness; even her uncle, despite an affection that accepted everything Mary did as right and proper, felt himself ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... to be out of this place in half an hour, less. The fact is, Cyrus Carve has been extremely—er—pert. He's paid me a month's salary and I'm off at once. In under thirty minutes I shall ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... maid's pert "good-morning" seemed to be in very bad taste and to properly reprove her he assumed a grave, dignified air out of which he was promptly startled by Zoie's even more ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... was growing fast. The sweet corn waved and rustled whenever a breeze swept it. The beets and carrots sent their pert tops a little higher each day. The cabbages began to puff their heads out as if they felt of some importance in the world. And the potato vines were actually pretty, with their white blossoms amid the green leaves. Farmer Green was very proud of his potatoes. He said, in Mrs. Ladybug's hearing, ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... there been nothing more to contend with than the ordinary verbal persecution. But late in the afternoon, when he had grown weary from the strain of the day, his special tormentor, a burly Irishman, took occasion, in passing, to push him rudely against a pert and slattern girl, who also was foremost in the tacit league of petty annoyance. She acted as if the contact of Haldane's person was a purposed insult, and resented it by a ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... brushed and smoothed out his handsome blue coat and made himself as pert and smart-appearing as possible. He had been so worried lately that he hadn't taken much care of himself, which is very unusual for Sammy Jay. Now, however, he felt so much better that he began to think about his looks. When he had finished dressing, he started for the alders beside the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... could do it tip-top; why not he? But things were unquestionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in a straight line-in fact, it didn't go very fast anyway. The black eyes before him framed by that impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so understandingly aware—so "damned handsome" he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds lustily, unevenly—an unusually vicious jerk, and snap went the old oar! Off the seat he tumbled, and, with land-lubber's ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... One pert young king, in the search of glory, kindled again the lurid flames of war. Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, influenced by romantic dreams, abdicated the throne and retired to the seclusion of the cloister. Her cousin, Charles Gustavus, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... yo' tink I could sit up dar an' tell dat precious chile we had chicken when I knew her little stomack was jes' groanin' for chicken? No, 'deed. Do I am deaconess, I'd rather be burned for a lie. So I jes' answers as pert-like as pos'ble. 'Law, honey, we jes' had mutton like yo'r ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... within about four acres of garden, surrounded by a very high, red-brick wall. It is one of those houses of which there used to be scores within the immediate neighbourhood of London—of which there still are dozens, although, alas! they are yearly disappearing to make room for gay rows of pert, upstart villas, whose tawdry flashiness ill replaces the sedate respectability of their last-century predecessors. But, uncoveted by the contractor's lawless eye, untouched by the builder's desecrating hand, Walpole Lodge stands on, as it did a hundred years ago, hidden ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the country town of Toomsville lifted itself above the cotton and corn, fringed with dirty straggling cabins of black folk. The road swung past the iron watering trough, turned sharply and, after passing two or three pert cottages and a stately house, old and faded, opened into the wide square. Here pulsed the very life and being of the land. Yonder great bales of cotton, yellow-white in its soiled sacking, piled in lofty, dusty mountains, lay listening for the train that, twice a day, ran out to the greater ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... or as skinny, or flourished such spare arms, or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expedition, when Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 23rd of January, 1516. Cabot returned at once to England, having probably obtained leave of absence. Eden tells us that the following year Cabot was appointed with Sir Thomas Pert to the command of a fleet which was to reach China by the north-west. On the 11th of June, he was in Hudson's Bay at 67-1/2 degrees of latitude; the sea free from ice spread itself out before him so far that he reckoned upon success ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Knickerbocker days." But the truth is, odious though the millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the "I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present writer has seen something of this element; in the decade from 1865 to 1875 it was still extremely active. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... ain't feelin' any too pert right now, and I'll take a hop out o' you if you don't ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... expression, the night, the accustomed routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these baulk others, they do not baulk me. The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... so far from contributing to the ease of the king, to his wealth, or his dignity, that they render both his supreme and his subordinate authority perfectly ridiculous. It was but the other day, that that pert, factious fellow, the Duke of Lancaster, presumed to fly in the face of his liege lord, our gracious sovereign, and, associating with a parcel of lawyers as factious as himself, to the destruction of all law and order, and in committees leading directly to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... small though it has been, was one of the most influential of publications. It was in every home. From it the children learned their A, B, C's. In it were pert rhymes expressing the theology of the people, such as "In Adam's fall, We sinned all"; and the set of biblical questions beginning with "Who was the first man?" The prayer of childhood, "Now I lay me down to sleep," is in its pages. Of songs, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... just as they do at home. There is something strange and yet familiar in this country, where so many different sorts of trees and plants grow, that a man coming from almost anywhere in the world will find something that carries his heart back home. Besides the daisies we have the sparrows, just as pert and neat as our own sparrows, yet other things are odd. Yesterday we saw a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders; he wore a striped garment hanging down on each side of his neck, and even the sheep did not seem quite the same as ours. It was some time before we discovered why, and then ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... is devoid of interest," he continued, ceasing his thoughts for a moment, to listen to the piece of modern music which the choir was just then rendering. "Ah, who will take on himself to proscribe that pert mysticism, those fonts of toilet-water which Gounod invented!... There ought indeed to be astonishing penalties for choir masters who allow such musical effeminacy in church. This is, as it was this morning at the Madeleine, when I happened to be present at the interminable ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... followeth, which a worshipful priest and a parson told me lately. He said that there were dwelling in Oxford two priests, both masters of art, of whom that one was quick and could put himself forth, and that other was a good simple priest. And so it happened that the master that was pert and quick, was anon promoted to a benefice or twain, and after to prebends and for to be a dean of a great prince's chapel, supposing and weening that his fellow the simple priest should never have been promoted, but be alway an Annual, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... anxiety. "They might, you know," whispered Mrs. Bob, "be after that brood of our cousin's beyond the brook; but no, they've stopped—they are throwing something into the water, and there's that good-for-nothing Nip with them, so we may go back to the nest." But they did not go, for there was that pert Jennie Wren fluttering about, as bold as anything, actually peeping into the bait gourd, and, goodness gracious! she has stolen a worm and flown off with it; what impudence! And listen, there's Cardinal Grosbeak singing ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... little pert Egyptian knocker, with a long thin face, a pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue with your government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions, and consider themselves ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... shrubbery—the tree which bore the great white Bigareau cherries; and it was quite time they were picked, for some were split right down the side from over-ripeness, while the sparrows had been attacking others, and had committed sad havoc amongst them—the little pert rascals having picked out all the finest and ripest for their operations, and then, after taking a few bites out of the richest and sweetest part, they commenced upon another. As for Harry, who was not at all a particular youth, he used to make a point of choosing the sparrow-picked cherries— ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... and blooming, with their hands in Miss Polly Hatch's. What splendid children they were, she thought, looking wistfully at their eager faces. Any father, any mother in the world, might be proud of them. Fanny, the elder, was like an angel in her white fur coat and pert little cap, with her short golden curls like bunches of yellow silk on her shoulders, and her blue eyes, as grave as a philosopher's, beaming softly under her thick jet-black lashes. She was not particularly bright; she was, for her age, an unconscionable snob; but no one could deny that she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... does in conversation, their utter worthlessness. The Gold of Chickaree is a continuation of Wych Hazel, and the two stories are as much alike as two halves of a slate pencil. Wych Hazel herself is rich and insufferably pert; her lover, Rollo, Dane, Duke, or Olaf, as he is called indifferently, is rich and in his ways 'masterful.' The earlier novel ends with the engagement of these two, and here is described their sudden marriage, which they forebore announcing even to their ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... taught and nothing understood; where airs, graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, is the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Dolores, thinking of those days of her mother when she was the pet and plaything of the guests, incited to say clever and pert things, which then were passed round and embellished till she neither knew them nor ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smile and said in his cheery voice: 'My name is Oliver Whyte, sir.' My heart went out to him after his hearty greeting, and we soon became fast friends. Then he introduced me to his dear old wife, and a pert little kid—" ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... "Pert—impudent—all over the young courtier," said the doctor thoughtfully; "but I like the boy for his father's sake. Yes, all that was good and true. Now then, what will he say to me this time? I moved him a little yesterday, and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the young ones, after they had been hopping about the branches a week or so, and papa had grown less madly anxious if one looked at them, they appeared bright and spirited, dressed in the subdued and tasteful hues of their mother, with pert little crests and dark beaks. They were not allowed on the grass, and they waited patiently on the tree while their provider shelled a kernel and took it up to them. The cardinal baby I found to be a self-respecting individual, who generally waits in patience his parents' pleasure, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... my faith I think Burnett'd have done it, only she pipes up, sweet and pert as you please: 'Mr. Auctioneer, will you kindly proceed with the sale in the customary manner? I've other business to attend to, and I can't afford to wait all night on men who don't know their own minds.' And then she ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... K.—"Look at my pert wisehead! Knowest thou not, that he who mocks the words of the wise goes straight to hell, as happened to that disciple who laughed at the Rabbi Jochanan when he said that precious stones should be set in the gates of Jerusalem, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... beguile; Now, Fustian Epic, aping Virgil's Stile; To Virgil like, to Indian Clay as Delf, Or Pulteney, drawn by Jervase, to Herself: Rheams heap'd on Rheams, incessant, mayst thou blot, A lively, trifling, pert, one knows not what! Form thy light Measures, nimbler than the Wind, Whilst heavy lingring Sense is left behind; With all thy Might pursue, and all thy Will, That unabating Thirst, to scribble still, Giv'n ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... play, perhaps even that she despised him for writing it. He half turned to Lady Poynter, but she was deep in conversation with her nephew. For a time he, too, concentrated his attention on the quail; but every one else was talking, and, though Barbara's challenge was too pert to be taken seriously, he felt that half-praise from her was more valuable than the adulation of women like Mrs. Shelley who were content to worship success for its ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... prescription on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills ought to do a lot for Helen May.) ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... was deserted all that afternoon, for Psyche sat in the orchard drawing squirrels on the wall, pert robins hopping by, buttercups and mosses, elves and angels; while May lay contentedly enjoying sun and air, sisterly care, and the "pretty things" she loved so well. Psyche did not find the task a hard one; for this time her ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... of me as being shy or morose. But this was because I masked my troubles, though quite unconsciously, under a camouflage of sarcasm and sallies of wit, or, at least, what seemed to pass for wit among my immature acquaintances. With grown-ups, I was at times inclined to be pert, my degree of impudence depending no doubt upon how ill at ease I was and how perfectly at ease I wished to appear. Because of the constant need for appearing happier than I really was, I developed a knack for saying things in an amusing, sometimes an epigrammatic, way. I recall one remark made long ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents must be dribbled into the reader's intelligence, ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... do you approve of her?" cried Miss Tramore, who was inferior to her niece in capacity for retort and whose limitations made the girl appear pert. ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... leaving Harrietta was a good one. It would have to be, for she was of that almost extinct species, the devoted retainer. Irish Mary wasn't the kind of maid one usually encounters back stage. No dapper, slim, black-and-white pert miss, with a wisp of apron and a knowledgeous eye. An ample, big-hipped, broad-bosomed woman with an apron like a drop curtain and a needle knack that kept Harrietta mended, be-ribboned, beruffled, and exquisite from her garters to her coat hangers. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... will. A putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... Knowledge, 'how beautiful the human eye is. The eyes of many of the lower animals are, doubtless, very beautiful. You must all have admired the bold, fierce, bright eye of the eagle; the large, gentle, brown eye of the ox; the treacherous, green eye of the cat, waxing and waning like the moon; the pert eye of the sparrow; the sly eye of the fox; the peering little bead of black enamel in the mouse's head; the gem-like eye that redeems the toad from ugliness, and the intelligent, affectionate expression which ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... you are not," laughed his companion. "He has as many cares as a fish has scales. And one, the greatest. That pert young Antyllus was over-ready with his tongue yesterday at Barine's. Poor fellow! He'll have to answer for it to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... glare with which the majestic woman received this answer, might have embarrassed a less pert opponent, but it had no effect upon Lavinia: who, leaving her parent to the enjoyment of any amount of glaring at she might deem desirable under the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... no more Anger now, my Lady; the Gentleman's sorry you see, I'll marry my pert Huswife to morrow for this.—Maundy, see the Gentleman safe out:—ah, put me to Bed; ah, this Night's Work will kill ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... play off little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because she hated ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and sunk on that terrible day, when the heroic champion of Britain concluded his work and died. I never heard but one individual venture to say a word in disparagement of Nelson's glory: it was a pert American, who observed, that the British admiral was much overrated. "Can that individual be overrated," replied a stranger, "whose every thought was bent on his country's honour, who scarcely ever fought without leaving a piece ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the place. It was rather abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... while at Briarwood Hall," she said, in her quick, pert way, "you'll learn that that's the only way to do with Old Dolliver. Make your bargain before you get into the Ark—that's what we call this stage—or he surely will overcharge ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, with an extra-fashionable bonnet on, and also ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... many a time would come And tell me where to shear, for she had played In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride To keep them in their beauty. Plague I say On their new-fangled whimsies! we shall have A modern shrubbery here stuck full of firs And your pert poplar trees;—I could as soon Have plough'd my father's grave ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... purer fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. By dimpled brook and fountain-brim, The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim, Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove; Venus ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
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