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More "Prying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said, "and you may have been mistaken, for the light is waning fast. It were ill for anyone I caught prying about here. But come in, sir knight; my hovel is not what your lordship is accustomed to, but we may as well talk there as here ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... ran. The barn stood very close to uncleared woodland, and the banks ending the woodland showed a decidedly rocky exterior. Appleman, chasing a woodchuck one day, had seen him scurry into a hole in this rocky surface, and prying away with a handspike had unloosed a small mass of rock and discovered a cave; not much of a cave, it is true, but one of at least twenty feet in length and eight or ten in breadth, and full six feet in height. This discovery occurred a year or ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... heavy and as she went on it became heavier. She meant to carry it slung across her shoulder on a stick as soon as she was well away from the prying eyes of Echo's inhabitants. Later, if she felt tired, she could easily hide it behind a bush along the road and send one of her father's cowboys after it. The road was very dusty and carried the wind-blown traces of automobile tires. Some one would surely ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... prying dark lantern and his prodding nightstick, soon reached the space under the table, and the ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... yelled the enraged man. "What right have you to be prying into my affairs? I hired you to do copying work for me, not to roam about ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... atmosphere so dense with clouds that it is conceded that her time of rotation and the inclination of her axis cannot be determined. She revealed one of the grandest secrets of the universe to the first seeker; showed her highest beauty to her first ardent lover, and has veiled herself from the prying eyes of later comers. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... me full, Gangs of the prying gull That shriek and scrabble on the riven hatches! For roar that dumbed the gale, My hawse-pipes guttering wail, Sobbing my heart out through ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... the corner of the chapel while the others prayed. Every pulse tightened—her whole nature leapt again in defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay—a tyrannous power that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time to be prying into secret things—things it should never, never know—and never rule! Yes, she did understand ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to approach Ruth. Ruth had been courteous, but distant. She wanted no prying into her affairs; no seekers after confidences; no discoverers of her identity. For gossip spreads, and one does not know what spot ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... luxury it was to be alone—to know that no prying eyes looked upon her grief; no harsh voice, with unfeeling common-place, tore open the deep wounds of her aching heart, and ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... of Sunnyside, Was known as a taster, far and wide; Picking and licking, spying and prying, Each bottle and dish with her fingers trying. Dangerous practice! dreadful little fact is! Once almost poisoned, and very near dying. Little Miss Baster, of Sunnyside, Has got some poison in paper tied; Harmless she deems it, yes, she must taste, Like sugar seems it, ah! but 'tis paste. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing down upon both ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To be sure they had to reckon ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hand into a basin of water, which stood by her, and muttering between her teeth some words, which I could not hear, she threw some water in my face, and exclaimed, in a furious tone, "Wretch, receive the punishment of thy prying curiosity, and become ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... ones even come to our islands. It is there, far from the prying eyes of their own Sagoths, that they practice their religious rites in the temples they have builded there with our assistance. If you live among us you will doubtless see the manner of their worship, which is ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... begin flapping again, you may continue your stalk, but at the slightest noise, the noble buck will be off like a flash of lightning. You should never go out in the forest with white clothes, as you are then a conspicuous mark for all the prying eyes that are invisible to you. The best colour is dun brown, dark grey, or dark green. When you see a deer has become suspicious, and no cover is near, stand perfectly erect and rigid, and do not leave your legs apart. The 'forked-parsnip' formation of the 'human form divine' ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... there are tales enough told of his chats with child-maids in the Park, to ascertain the amounts of their wages, and with lounging footmen in Grosvenor Square, to learn how many guests had dined at a house the day previous. His curiosity seemed bent upon prying into small things; for secrets that involved serious matters he appeared to care nothing. "Pooh, pooh, Sir, don't tell me; I happen to know!" That phrase was continually coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... and bids the cloudy mists recede. Prepar'd already, Jove the nymph had chang'd, And in a lovely heifer's form she stood. A shape so beauteous fair,—though sore chagrin'd, Unwilling Juno prais'd; and whence she came, And who her owner asks; and of what herd? Her prying art, as witless of the truth, To baffle, from the earth he feigns her sprung; And straight Saturnia begs the beauteous gift. Embarrass'd now he stands,—the nymph to leave Abandon'd, were too cruel;—to deny His wife, suspicious: shame ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the end of the board with the mallet, and then he got the wedge under and pried. Ruth pulled. Stephen kept hammering and prying, and Ruth held on to all he gained, until they slipped the wedge along gradually, to where the board was nailed again, to the middle joist or stringer. Then a few more vigorous strokes, and a little smart levering, and the nails loosened, and one good wrench lifted ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... all that scene. After years of acquaintance with the tinker he had not yet ventured a question as to his life history. The difference of age and a certain masterly reserve in the old gentleman had seemed to discourage it. A prying tongue in a mere youth would have met unpleasant obstacles with Darrel. Never until that day had he spoken freely of his past in the presence ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... you mean by coming here and saying this sort of thing? You're becoming a perfect old woman. You spend your whole time prying into other people's affairs. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of the Imperial city, that if, when HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the path with ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... that, should any one come to pay Mammy a visit, it will not be suspected that you are here. You see, I took precautions for your safety, and they were not unnecessary. Some of the gentry who inhabit this island would not scruple to stick a knife into you, if they thought that you were prying into ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... his beautiful bride on her wedding night so many years before. In the next scene two servants appeared with orders to clean out and remove the old chest from the landing. Hippy and Jessica, as the two mischievous prying servants, enacted their part to perfection. Hippy carrying a broom and dust pan, did one of the eccentric dances, for which he was famous, while Jessica, armed with a huge duster, tried to drive ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... they followed a well-worn road running due north from the village. This was to conceal their true line of march from the knowledge of the curious villagers. But when they were well away from the place, and safe from all prying eyes, they swung to the east and marched straight through open country for the foot-hills, plainly in view a score of ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... reader will understand that this is done in order to darken the tumbler, and induce the bee to settle down on the honey so much the sooner. To one who understood the operation and its reason, the whole was simple enough; but it was a very different matter with men as little accustomed to prying into the habits of creatures as insignificant as bees. Had deer, or bisons, or bears, or any of the quadrupeds of those regions, been the subject of the experiment, it is highly probable that individuals could have been found in that attentive and wondering crowd, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the country in a perpetual state of disorder." Mr. Gayer notes [434] that the criminally disposed members of the caste take contracts for the watch and sale of mangoes in groves distant from habitations, so that their movements will not be seen by prying eyes. They also seek employment as roof-thatchers, in which capacity they are enabled to ascertain which houses contain articles worth stealing. They show considerable cunning in disposing of their stolen ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Long engagements are fearful strains, and our social license of questionings renders them wellnigh intolerable to men and women, who naturally shrink from speaking of matters which are to them so sacred. Ray declared that she should not be harassed by any such torturing talk and prying and questioning as that which has to be undergone by almost every girl whom civilized society fancies to be engaged. She could never doubt him for an instant, he felt assured, and he—well, he couldn't begin to realize his blessed fortune at all, so she must excuse ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... good lady gospodyni!' he cried, tapping at the door. He was afraid to open it lest he should be suspected of prying ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... water-soaked equipment, his men were plodding wearily through the mud, marching slowly and steadily upon Huntsville. While Tom had been riding through the night, Mitchel's men had slept on the flooded ground between Shelbyville and Fayetteville. Now they were prying the heaving wagons from the mud holes, while the cavalry swept out on the flanks to clear the country of enemy scouts. Skirmishers were advancing through the woods and over the hills, protecting the troops, ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... narrated here transpired, Brandur had grown prosperous and very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along the highway ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... three-legged stool, and a spinning-wheel. A caldron is suspended above a peat fire, smouldering on the hearth. There is only one window, and a thick curtain is drawn across it, to secure the inmate of the hut from prying eyes. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... times when he had received a postal money order. But she did not know from whom the letters came, nor even whether they were sent from the city or from some other town. Winkler received other letters now and then, but his landlady was not of the prying kind, and she had paid very ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... seen with great uneasiness what he called the liaison of des Lupeaulx with Madame Rabourdin, and his silent wrath on the subject was accumulating. He had too prying an eye not to have guessed that Rabourdin was engaged in some great work outside of his official labors, and he was provoked to feel that he knew nothing about it, whereas that little Sebastien was, wholly or in part, in the secret. Dutocq was intimate with Godard, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... I say all kinds of news, no—I make a mistake, it is only such news as is of an exciting or startling nature to break up the monotony of life. Hence those indiscreet questions which provoke answers more indiscreet still; those rash revelations made by thoughtless young ladies, those prying efforts to discover things which only exist perhaps in their own imagination, and of which they should ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... were cleared of weeds, the walks and flower-beds laid out with care, and then the neighbors looked to see her cut away a few of the multitude of trees which had sprung up around her home. But this she had no intention of doing. "They shut me out," she said, "from the prying eyes of the vulgar, and I would rather it should be so." So the trees remained, throwing their long shadows upon the high, narrow windows, and into the large square rooms, where the morning light and the noonday heat seldom found ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... that he looks like a Canary at a little distance, but not when you are near by," said the Doctor. "The Canary has a short, thick, cone-shaped bill suited to cracking seeds, while the Yellow Warbler has the slender bill necessary for prying into small cracks and crannies for insects. This Warbler also has light rusty streaks on his yellow breast. Do you remember having ever seen, a Canary ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Other prying ingenious Men make other conjectures, as to this mazing Controversy thus Vossius delivers himself; The Antients cannot be reconcil'd, but I rather incline to their opinion who think Bucolicks were invented either by the Sicilians or Peloponesians, for both those ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... ought to follow his fellow down the mysterious river that defines the boundary between the known and the unknown, and charge him professionally till his soul has fled, and then charge a per diem to the county for prying into his internal economy and holding an inquest over the debris of mortality. I therefore hail this movement with joy and wish to encourage it in every way. It points toward a degree of enlightenment which ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... existence of both has a personal interest inasmuch as they prove that Luis de Leon was enabled to carry out a long cherished design by means of which he hoped, as he declared at Valladolid, to counterbalance the indiscreet prying of Fray Diego de Leon. La Perfecta Casada (1583) and De los nombres de Cristo (1583-1585) likewise have their roots in Scripture. La Perfecta Casada is avowedly based on the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... men walked back, without interchanging another word, to the gate of the manor-house. Tyrrel opened it with a swing. Then, once within his own grounds, and free from prying eyes, he sat down forthwith upon a little craggy cliff that overhung the carriage-drive, buried his face in his hands, and, to Le Neve's intense astonishment, cried long and silently. He let himself go with a rush; that's the Cornish nature. Eustace Le Neve sat ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... unfortunately fell into the company of a man who, under the pretence of being his most zealous friend, became, though perhaps unwittingly, the instrument of his utter ruin. For his appearing ever disconsolate and melancholy gave the countryman an opportunity of prying into the cause of his concern, which he soon discovered to be the narrowness of his circumstances. As we naturally find ease in communicating our afflictions to others, so Johnson was ready enough to inform him of the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the fact that it was not Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might have been expected to feel the opposite. He did not want to analyze the reason for this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at prying into his sensations. He felt as though he wanted to make haste to forget something. In the following days he became convinced of Mitya's guilt, as he got to know all the weight of evidence against him. There was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and her mother, for instance, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... leading to marriage. That, she would have admitted, was a woman's natural destiny, but one didn't pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses bubbled ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon. But few in the South realized the importance of supplying the North with correct information about actual conditions. The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating. "Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South was proud and refused to be catechized. From the Northern point of view, the South, a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was of course, not to be considered as quite normal and ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... my own again once more, As doubtful that my former trance Could not as yet be o'er. A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, Sate watching by the cottage wall. The sparkle of her eye I caught, Even with my first return of thought; For ever and anon she threw 810 A prying, pitying glance on me With her black eyes so wild and free: I gazed, and gazed, until I knew No vision it could be,— But that I lived, and was released From adding to the vulture's feast: And when ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had carried her domestic discipline to excess, had paid dearly for it, and no doubt was desisting and would henceforth desist from that kind of thing. Enough allowance can hardly be made in our day for the delicacy society felt about prying into one of its own gentleman or lady member's treatment of his or her own servants. Who was going to begin such an ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and he felt quite satisfied that the two boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would happen to them—what accident was no business of his, he argued. They had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might have been capsized and drowned while they ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... had come to look for a letter which she believed had arrived for me from Germany. Good, brave Amante! Not a word about me. M. de la Tourelle answered with a grim blasphemy and a fearful threat. He would have no one prying into his premises; madame should have her letters, if there were any, when he chose to give them to her, if, indeed, he thought it well to give them to her at all. As for Amante, this was her first warning, but it was also her last; and, taking the candle out of her ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... myself pleased with your passion; confident of your integrity, and so well convinced of my own discretion, that I should not hesitate in granting you the interview you desire, were I not overawed by the prying curiosity of a malicious world, the censure of which might be fatally prejudicial to ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... a garden with its gate; behind extended an orchard planted with leafless saplings, with a water-mill. The orchard-wall was low and could be scaled with relative facility; no danger threatened; there were neither prying neighbours nor dogs; the nearest house, a marbler's workshop, was more than ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... emigrants went forward, driving their heavily laden wagon by day and sleeping at night by the camp. After they had passed the region of roads and bridges they had to literally hew their way; cutting down bushes, prying their wagon out of bog-holes, building bridges or poling themselves across streams on rafts. But, in defiance of every obstacle, they ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... dawn by a glorious white burst of early sunshine. As a rule, the excellent soul liked to lie abed till the last available moment; but that morning she was up with the sun. When dressed she drew a letter from a secret casket with manifold precautions as though she were surrounded with prying eyes, and, placing it in her reticule, hastened forth to seek the little lonely disused churchyard by the shore. She afterwards remarked that she could never forget in what agitation of spirits and with what ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... few scattered jewels, the sly old dog has spirited away his vast stealings! My work was all in vain, save the vengeance!" And the oily Ram Lal, in the zenana, drew a willing beauty of Cashmere to his bosom, and hid his face from the chatterers of street and shop. He was safe from all prying eyes ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... They stood looking in this way for some minutes; at last, in a whispering voice, the Owl said, 'What are you who presume to look into my repose? Pass on upon your way, and carry elsewhere those prying eyes.' ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... molecular inquiry,' with stars in place of atoms, mighty spheres in place of 'dust,' 'the firmament above' instead of 'the firmament beneath.' In fact, the astronomer, in sweeping with his telescopic eye the 'blue depths of ether,' is, as it were, some Lilliputian inhabitant of an atom prying into the autumnal structure of some Brobdignagian world of saw-dust; organised into spiral and other elementary forms, of life, it may be, something like our own. The infinite height appears, in short, like the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... had distorted and ruined his life as an artist, she had saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... left together, and were soon driven by the advancing sun to the deep shade of a lime-avenue, which, starting from the back of the house, ran for half a mile through the park. Here they were absolutely alone. Lady Mary's prying eyes were defeated, and Helena incidentally remarked that Mrs. Friend, being utterly "jacked up," had been bullied into staying in bed ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... companion, "and a famous one, Mr. Renault, for he drove certain wild cattle at a headlong gallop from the pastures at Saratoga—he and I and another drover they call Dan'l Morgan. We have been strolling here among these graves, a-prying for old friends—brother drovers. We found one drover's grave—a lad called Cresap—hard by the arch there ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the dead. Tryon waggled the levers to no avail, then flung himself out of the car and got busy with the crank. Not a move. Druro then got out and had a go at the crank. No good. Thereafter, the two made a thorough examination of the beast, but poking and prying into all its secret places booted them nothing. As far as the eye of man could see, nothing was wrong with the thing but sheer obstinacy. It was more from habit than a spirit of inquiry that Druro finally gave ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... it for prying open bureau drawers." To Bella, the maid, who appears at the door in answer to ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... the village Mrs. Pendyce found herself, for the first time since she had begun this practice, driven by her own trouble over that line of diffident distrust which had always divided her from the hearts of her poorer neighbours. She was astonished at her own indelicacy, asking questions, prying into their troubles, pushed on by a secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised how well they took it—how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they were doing her good. In one cottage, where ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake. Women may be more likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover their balance when the novelty is worn off. No amount of science will entirely change their emotional nature; and besides, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking—and suddenly they fell on something—a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin—a steel hatpin—that was ten ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... a violent start, and looked down rather savagely at the adventurous child who had discovered his hiding-place. 'What d'ye come prying here for?' he ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... evening during the summer at Romford in Essex, and were known by the name of the Bowling-Green Club. These men seeing one day the character of Leviculus, the fortune-hunter, or Tetrica, the old maid: another day some account of a person who spent his life in hoping for a legacy, or of him who is always prying into other folks' affairs, began sure enough to think they were betrayed, and that some of the coterie sate down to divert himself by giving to the public the portrait of all the rest. Filled with wrath against the traitor ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... thought the matter over, he planted the tree behind his barn, saying to himself: "Prying thieves will not think to look for ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... penetrate them. The tops alone of the castle towers could be seen, and these only from a distance. Thus did the fairy's magic contrive that the princess, during all the time of her slumber, should have nought whatever to fear from prying eyes. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... his gems, and canker'd as his coins, Came, cramm'd with capon, from where Pollio dines. 350 Soft, as the wily fox is seen to creep, Where bask on sunny banks the simple sheep, Walk round and round, now prying here, now there, So he; but pious, whisper'd first ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... that the story of the captain's adventure was already pretty well known in the public places of the town, and as a visit of the marshal from Boston was a very extraordinary event in a place usually so quiet, a prying character who was upon the spot asked him if he was not looking for Captain E——. Upon receiving an affirmative reply,—"That's the man," said he, "you have just spoken to." The marshal started in pursuit and the captain had called ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... of rest and security is one's own room! How instinctively in grief or joy one turns to it, to hide from prying eyes one's inmost thoughts, one's hopes, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... it an easy matter to turn me from prying into his private affairs. I had just been reading my paper. "Shall Autocrats Rule Us?" was the subject of the editor's heavy work for the evening and it stirred me up. That fellow used "strong and powerful" language, as our dominie used to say when he was preaching and got two feet away from ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... either of these plans. If I fired the cannon it would bring a posse of curious, prying people to the island, and probably I should be taken away to St. Peter Port upon a coroner's quest. If I buried the man I should always shun that part of the island, and should have a constant memorial of ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, after his ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins!" ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. "Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits! Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred, low-bred! 'Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed stomachs that were well ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... trunk, and could supply Pilar with materials. The next afternoon they set to work. They established themselves in the middle of a great meadow, committing thereby an extreme act of trespass, and making their way to it over a ditch, a low wall, and through a blackberry hedge. Here no prying eye would annoy them, their sole and most discreet spectator being Fido, and he was ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Avoid all prying; what you're told, keep back, Though wine or anger put you on the rack; Nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, Nor court the Muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'Twas thus the Theban brethren jarred, until ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... lower surface of the ceiling. After floors and ceilings are out, it is a simple matter to loosen all paneling and remove it in large units. Wherever possible whole room-ends go intact. The stairway is also taken out as a unit, especially the more elaborate one in the front hall. Prying loose the old wide flooring is a difficult operation. The original hand-wrought nails have rusted fast and if too much leverage is used, the boards split. Men used to such work salvage the old flooring ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... contrite tear, For past faults to atone— For wasted talents, misspent life, She's gone before God's throne! Prying that wilful, wayward heart That leaned on gods of clay, For calmer, holier death than hers With solemn ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... allow this herd of I don't know what to call them, to incommode her with their senseless clamor. I protest, she is nearly fainting; she has been gasping for breath the last five minutes. Be off, ye fussy, curious, prying, peeping, pressing-round fellows; or, I promise you, you shall be visited with his majesty's ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... did write that letter? What does it prove but what I say,—that somebody has been prying and spying into my affairs? How came the colonel by it, if not ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... was casting about, as though eager to find some place of concealment where they could stow the ship away and so prevent prying eyes from making a disastrous discovery—disastrous at least to those plans upon which Jack was depending for the successful ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... now was of deeper rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... take it, I suppose I must give it to you," said Mrs. Chatterton, with evident reluctance handing the box designated, very glad to think she had but a few days before changed the jewels to another repository to escape Hortense's prying eyes. In making the movement she gave a sweeping glance out the window. Should she dare to scream? Michael was busy on the lawn, she knew; she could hear his voice talking to one of the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... were really confessors, appointed for every block, to inquire of all—young and old—concerning the most intimate details of their lives. The printed catechism given to these confessors was so indelicate that it was suppressed in later years. These prying inquisitors found opportunity to gain information for their superiors about any persons suspected of disloyalty, and one use they made of their visitations was to urge the younger sisters to be married to the older men, as a readier means of salvation than union with men of their own age. That ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... identification of the epiglottis, too deep insertion of the laryngoscope must be carefully avoided lest the spatula be inserted back of the arytenoids into the hypo-pharynx. 8. Exposure of the larynx is accomplished by pulling forward the epiglottis and the tissues attached to the hyoid bone, and not by prying these tissues forward with the upper teeth as a fulcrum. 9. Care must be taken to avoid mistaking the ary-epiglottic fold for the epiglottis itself. (Most likely to occur as the result of rotation of the patient's head.) 10. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... into the king's presence, he would, after all, have most satisfactorily accomplished his mission; and he forthwith proceeded, with all the craft and subtlety of which he was master, to urge upon them the desirability of an immediate visit to king M'Bongwele, who, averse as he was to the prying visits of strange men, would, he assured them, be highly gratified at the honour of having as his guests the four Spirits ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... a former husband or an admission of a pseudonym. Aunt M'riar was glad to accept matters as they stood, merely disclaiming excessive astonishment and suggesting that she might easy have guessed that Mrs. Prichard had been married more than once. She was not—she said—one of the prying sort. But she was silent about the cause of her amazement; putting the name in a safe corner of her memory, to grapple ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the vats is death—as if nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... signal BARELY AUDIBLE in the speaker WITH the VOLUME control FULL ON. A small snap button cap is located in the end of the receiver case beside the antenna lead connection. Remove the snap button cap by prying with ...
— Delco Manuals: Radio Model 633, Delcotron Generator - Delco Radio Owner's Manual Model 633, Delcotron Generator Installation • Delco-Remy Division
... out a boat to examine the strange craft, and report upon her character. Jones saw her coming, and resolved to throw her off the scent. Accordingly, by skilful seamanship, he kept the stern of the "Ranger" continually presented to the prying eyes in the British boat. Turn which way they might, be as swift in their manoeuvres as they might, the British scouts could see nothing of the "Ranger" but her stern, pierced with two cabin windows, as might be the stern of any merchantman. Her sides, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the treasures which the Romans had hidden. The Caesars became to them magical man-gods. The poet Virgil became the prince of necromancers. If the secrets of Nature were to be known, they were to be known by unlawful means, by prying into the mysteries of the old heathen magicians, or of the Mohammedan doctors of Cordova and Seville; and those who dared to do so were respected and feared, and often came to evil ends. It needed moral courage, then, to face and interpret fact. Such brave men as Pope ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... ravine became distinctly audible. By some fancy of Judge ——, who built it, the house had no less than seven outside entrances. At intervals I would hear burglars at one of the doors, then at another, nearer or more remote: the prying of levers, the sound of boring, the stealthy footsteps, the carefully-raised window, the heavy breathing of an intruder. Then came the appalling sense of some strange presence, where no outward indication of such presence could be perceived, followed by gliding shaddos revealed by the occasional ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... of coughing made Pierre turn, and he started on perceiving Cardinal Sarno, whom he had not heard enter. Standing in front of that map, he felt like one caught in the act of prying into a secret, and a deep flush overspread his face. The Cardinal, however, after looking at him fixedly with his dim eyes, went to his writing-table, and let himself drop into the arm-chair without saying a word. With a gesture ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it said that any Christian who passed Bojador would infallibly be changed into a black, and would carry to his end this mark of God's vengeance on his insolent prying. The Arab tradition of the Green Sea of Night had too strongly taken hold of Christian thought to be easily shaken off. And it was beyond the Cape which bounded their knowledge that the Saracen geographers had fringed the coast of Africa with sea-monsters and serpent ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... things so unpleasant. Not that I care as much about them as I used to; but still, one has to be careful. People are so prying, always wanting to know things," she glanced around nervously, "but let's not talk about them. I don't understand things yet. How did you find me, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... our adventurer did not stay long; but something in the air of Baltimore pleased him, and he lingered about there for several weeks, prying into every thing and getting acquainted with everybody that was accessible. Among others for whom the Yankee seemed to take a liking, was a Dutchman, who was engaged in manufacturing an article for which there was a very good demand, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... name of pieces of character, although we cannot look for very delicate characterization from the poets of a nation in which vehemence of passion and exaltation of fancy neither leave sufficient leisure nor sufficient coolness for prying observation. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... has been grossly libelled; she is vain, frivolous, and fond of admiration, but nothing more. For a whole fortnight I have been prying into her life, but I can't hit upon anything in it to give us a pull over her. The debt may help us, however. Does her husband know that she has ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... The young lady, having rummaged her pockets in vain, expressed some surprise at the loss of her purse; upon which her attendant gave indications of extreme amazement and concern. She said, it could not possibly be lost; entreated her to search her escritoir, while she herself ran about the room, prying into every corner, with all the symptoms of fear and distraction. Having made this unsuccessful inquiry, she pretended to shed a flood of tears, bewailing her own fate, in being near the person of any lady who met with such a misfortune, by ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... visit, the nature of my business, how long I intended to stay, did I have a place to stay arranged for, and if so, where and through whom. It looked for all the world as though they had something to conceal; Czarist Russia couldn't beat that for keeping track of people and prying into their business. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... room, in a white frame cottage on the hill overlooking the Spencer furnaces, Anna Klein, locked away from prying eyes, sat that same Christmas evening and closely inspected a tiny gold wrist-watch. And now and then, like Audrey, she ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was he to meet her without envious eyes looking on; or stealthy ears of prying women, listening at keyholes to catch every word? And out on the desert, gliding smoothly along in the best hired automobile in town, where better could he give expression to those surging confidences which ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in the morning, but must be up early, to bother the household. He was only a kind of half-uncle, after all, for he had married my father's sister; yet be assumed great authority on the strength of this left-handed relationship, and was a universal intermeddler and family pest. This prying little busybody soon ferreted out the truth of the story, and discovered, by hook and by crook, that I was at the bottom of the affair, and had locked up the donkey in the smoke-house. He stopped to inquire no further, for he was one of those testy curmudgeons with whom unlucky boys ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... thorough experimenting dissipated this illusion. Ferrier reported that after a partial ablation of the front lobes in intelligent monkeys, "instead of, as before, being actively interested in their surroundings and curiously prying into all that came within the field of their observation, they remained apathetic or dull, or dozed off to sleep, responding only to the sensations or impressions of the moment, or varying their listlessness with restless and purposeless wanderings to and fro. They ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... birds!—say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The God of Nature is your secret guide! While deep'ning shades obscure the face of day To yonder bench, leaf-shelter'd, let us stray, Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, And all the fading landscape sinks in night; To hear the drowsy dor come brushing by With ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... chests of plunder. She was their guardian, as it were, would have defended and befriended them to the last; and also we, the Three Black Crows and myself, had no right under heaven, nor before the law of men, to come prying and peeping into this business—into this affair of the dead and buried past. There was sacrilege in it. We were ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... difficulty in sending it crashing downward. The body plunged through the thick underbrush at the bottom of the gorge, where I knew it would be completely hidden, even in the glare of daylight, from the prying eyes of any troopers riding hard upon our track. With a branch, hastily wrenched from a near-by tree, I carefully raked over the track, so that, as far as I could determine in the dim light, all outward trace of my ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... is something in your thought you hold from me. Have the lewd, prying eyes, the slanderous mind Of public envy, spied herein some mischief? What hast thou heard? By heaven, if one foul word Have darkened the fair fame of my white dove, Naples shall rue it. Let them not forget The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... deliberately, saying no more to the buccaroos; thus they saw he would never leave the room till they did. As he had taken his chair the first, so was the boy bound to quit it the last. The game of prying fork-tines staled on them one by one, and they took to songs, mostly of love and parting. With the red whiskey in their eyes they shouted plaintively of sweethearts, and vows, and lips, and meeting in the wild wood. From these they went to ballads of the cattle-trail ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... a little sketch of such matters as can alone concern the public in any way. Into private domestic History no person possessed of a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy to witness the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for filthy lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the English noble, a castle—which so fences ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... were spent in searching every foot of ground, and prying even into the open vaults of several broken graves; for at first they had taken a wrong direction in the gloom. Quickly, however, seeing that he was in error, Arvina turned upon his traces, and was almost immediately successful; for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... expectation gratified. For, whatever may be urged by Ministers, or those whom vanity or interest make the followers of ministers, concerning the necessity of confidence in our governours, and the presumption of prying with profane eyes into the recesses of policy, it is evident that this reverence can be claimed only by counsels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, when every eye and every ear is witness to general discontent, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... that he had been meddlesome; and he was stung with a sudden sense that it was not honorable to have pushed his questions upon Forsythe. Gifford's relentless justice overtook him. Had he not given Forsythe the right to insult him? Would not he have protected himself against any man's prying? Gifford blushed hotly in the darkness. "But not to use Lois's name,—not that! Nothing could justify ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... came a road-runner up from the lower valley, peeking and prying, and he never had any patience with the water baths of the sparrows. His own ablutions were performed in the clean, hopeful dust of the chaparral; and whenever he happened on their morning splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... thoroughly, and does not want a guide. We did, and had one. We both join in thanks. Do you remember a Blue-Silk Girl (English) at the Luxembourg, that did not much seem to attend to the Pictures, who fell in love with you, and whom I fell in love with—an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty—where ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... paid no heed. Just now she cared not what the future might hold, she must get beyond all prying eyes immediately, and see what that letter contained. She ran along the sodden pathway, splashing unheedingly through the mud and snow, and repeating to herself, over and over again, that he must be living, he must be, after all. Without waiting to take off her wet shawl, and all unheeding Polly's ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... zealously, flattering such as would listen to his flattery, whispering religious twaddle into the ears of foolish women, ingratiating himself with the very few clergy who would receive him, visiting the houses of the poor, inquiring into all people, prying into everything, and searching with the minutest eye into all palatial dilapidation. He did not, however, make any immediate attempt to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Seraphina the remembrance of the other letter—Otto's. She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling, and burst into the Prince's armoury. The old chamberlain was there in waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her distress, struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down the room, called down curses on the prying fools who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine, drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the bell and ordered Rogers to give him ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... think he cared for you, dear?" asked Fanny, presently. "I don't mean to be prying, but ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... not in that Aethiopian hill, which Plinie affirmeth to burne more then all the former? And to conclude, why not in the mountaine of Vesuuius, which (to the great damage of al the countrey adioyning, & to the vtter destruction of Caius Plinius prying into the causes of so strange a fire) vomiting out flames as high as the clouds, filling the aire with great abundance of pumistones, and ashes, & with palpable darknesse intercepting the light of the sunne from al the region therabout? I wil speake, & ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... knew. The telegram came, and I—Oh," she interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking before ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... son. I will answer when the lids of darkness come down over the prying eyes of day. In the meanwhile, know that I ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... already stated respecting the "taboo" may give some idea of how submissive and habitual is their sense of the power of the Divinity, and how entirely they conceive themselves to be in his hands; as well as what a constant and prying superintendence they imagine him to exercise ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... nor Jupiter we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... his rifle, and alone, or followed by one attendant only, he disappeared into the forest, only to emerge therefrom at sunset. What he saw there he never spoke of. Sure it was that he must have seen strange things, for no prying white man had set foot in these wilds before him; no book has ever been written of that country that lies around the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... role could not be made in Hendrik. Miss Wimple was distressingly sensitive for the safety of her protegee from scandalous discovery. Even she herself could not expend any considerable portion of Mr. Osgood's advance without arousing surmise and provoking dangerous prying. Besides, how should she get the money for the check?—to whom dare she confess herself in possession of it? Of course, there was a conclusive impossibility. Nevertheless, something must be done at once to put Madeline at least in travelling trim; for the things of which—to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sill of an attic-window I found a Minie-ball. Prying it out with my knife, and holding it up to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... insinuation! She would send in her resignation at once! She would get "the boys" to write an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb,—Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Government as a purely personal institution,—and she would find out who it was that had put them up to this prying, crawling impudence! It was probably that wall-eyed old wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Crossing, who was jealous of her. "Remind her of their previous unanswered communication," indeed! Where was that communication, anyway? She remembered she had sent it to her admirer at Hickory Hill. Odd ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream of a home together—home together, however little, just four walls to love each other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to make them afraid. How that home was to be compassed was far from clear in either of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be brought about by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... mysterious in his manner; his looks are too prying for an indifferent observer," continued young Wharton thoughtfully, "and his face seems familiar to me. The recent fate of Andre has created much irritation on both sides. The rebels would think me a fit subject for their plans should I be so unlucky as to fall into their hands. My visit to you ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... drip was eerie enough to his strained senses, waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... the leading Patriots, and more than all, of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had no secrets from me, I learned with correctness the views and proceedings of that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the court, and eager in prying into its councils and proceedings, gave me a knowledge of these also. My information was always, and immediately committed to writing, in letters to Mr. Jay, and often to my friends, and a recurrence to these letters now insures me against errors of memory. These opportunities of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... into his own hands the keys of the gates after they had been locked; but a night came in which the portals were noiselessly opened and a band of soldiers burst into the house. They divided into parties, ranging each room in turn, prying into every recess, bursting doors that barred their entrance, stabbing the attendants, some in their sleep, others as they ran to meet the invaders. At last Hiempsal was found crouching in a servant's room; he was slain ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... have an early date: Of her beware; for all who live below Have faults they wish not all the world to know, And she is fond of listening, full of doubt, And stoops to guilt to find an error out. "And now once more observe the artful Maid, A lying, prying, jilting, thievish jade; I think, my love, you would not condescend To call a low, illiterate girl your friend: But in our troubles we are apt, you know, To lean on all who some compassion show; And she has flexile features, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... a melodramatic tableau, I was disappointed. I had always figured the inside of the Pillar House as full of treasures, for they told tales of the old whaler's wealth. My prying eyes found it bare, like a deserted house gutted by seasons of tramps. A little fire of twigs and a broken butter-box on the hearth made a pathetic shift at domestic cheer. Minister Malden sat at one side of it, his back to me, his face half-buried in his hands. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... believed that his secret consisted in the flux which he employed to make the metal melt more readily; and it leaked out amongst the workmen that he used broken bottles for the purpose. Some of the manufacturers, who by prying and bribing got an inkling of the process, followed Huntsman implicitly in this respect; and they would not allow their own workmen to flux the pots lest they also should obtain possession of the secret. But it turned out eventually that no such flux was ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... but so well in his head as you and I be,—just pretending like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be two guineas for you ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... this more clearly than the "honor system" that came into vogue in William and Mary College. The Old Oxford system of espionage which was at first used, gradually fell into disuse. The proud young Virginians deemed it an insult for prying professors to watch over their every action, and the faculty eventually learned that they could trust implicitly in the students' honor. In the Rules of the College, published in 1819, there is an open recognition ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... thousand ruses to reach his side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a secret so ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... perhaps they would have found the real reason of their discontent, and, turning their anger against themselves, would have done penance for having come to the exorcisms led by a depraved moral sense and a prying spirit." ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... three leagues from here. The very first evening there, we two rode out, with our cloaks about us. He likes to commune with nature, and gather curious flowers which he pastes in a book and labels with Latin names. But this time he was interested in peons, yet as he had a delicacy about prying into his host's business, we rode until we left Las Palmas behind us. His Majesty would gaze on the hills and look at the sunset, and he talked to me of a poetic calm about them which made him long for he knew not ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly after ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the habits of the stranger; and he concurred with his informant in the opinion that there was something in his proceedings which was curious and perhaps mysterious. Still, he did not think it advisable to encourage the prying and suspicious disposition of the youth, and spoke to this effect in the reply which finally dismissed the subject. Ned ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... humiliating and servile in being forced to soap and water three times a week under penalty of having your name read out before a tittering schoolroom—Absent from Bath! It vaguely recalled medieval days and such abominations as the inspection of ears and the prying intrusion of governesses! ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Hampton. Then he laughed. "You are like the rest, Bud. Trevors is a gentleman, and you try to make him a crook. Such a scheme as you imagine is absurd and ridiculous. And I won't go prying with ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Adah, with rather a spiteful look at Miss Warren, "I'm glad I've not got a prying disposition. I talked with you half the afternoon and did not ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... which a stubble of beard had begun to bristle. But the girl carried an icy bucket into her shack and reinforced its forward wall with blanket and rubber coat, not as a protection against the knife-edged sharpness of the air but against prying eyes. Then she bathed ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... turn may be as ruthlessly driven from the earth by another race of yet unknown beings, of an order infinitely higher, infinitely more beloved, than we. On me, perchance, the eternal obloquy of the execution of God's doom may rest, for being the first to lead the way, with prying eye and trespassing foot, into regions so fair and so remote; but being guiltless alike in act or intention to shed the blood of any human creature, I must accept ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... effects of transplanting and a long winter journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself disagreeable, I put him into his cage again, first having to chase him all about the room to catch him, and prying him up at last from between a picture and the wall, where he had flown and settled down in his struggle to get out. For my Cheri is not in the least tame. He is an entirely uneducated bird. I have seen canaries sit on people's fingers and eat from their tongues, but Cheri flies around ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... o'er his, and the small mouth Seemed almost prying into his for breath; And, chafing him, the soft, warm hand of youth Recalled his answering spirits back from death; And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe Each pulse to animation, till beneath ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... arms, and looking like a dragon; "and pray, sir, what business has such a one as you to think you see? And pray, ma'am, will you be pleased to speak—perhaps, ma'am, he'll condescend to obey you—ma'am, will you be pleased to forbid him my dairy? for here he comes prying and spying about; and how, ma'am, am I to answer for my butter and cream, or anything at all? I'm sure it's what I can't pretend to, unless you do me the justice ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... little boy," said Gertie, prying her fingers away from those other detaining ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale in a kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit, Wisconsin. I've learned my lesson all right. There's a fellow there waiting ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... too apparent to be disguised. The prying republic of which a great school consists soon found me out: there was no shifting the blame any longer upon other people's shoulders,—no good-natured maid to take upon herself the enormities of which I stood accused in the article ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... which she had found while looking for Gaga's cocoa. With this tin in her hand she hastened back to her room, closing the door as silently as she had opened it. The tin was quickly laid among her clothes, right in the corner of her dressing-case, hidden from any prying eye. Then Sally straightened herself, listened and bent down again to fasten the bag. Within ten minutes she and Gaga were out of the house, sitting in a taxi on their way to Victoria Station. Sally pressed herself back in ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... answer in a dry tone. He was giddy, flurried, exasperated, by the prying and irritating mode of the examination, which scarcely gave him time to breathe. The magistrate's questions fell upon him more thickly than the blows of the blacksmith's hammer upon the red-hot iron which he is anxious to beat ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... see, Sir Jabber," remarked the King to the can-opener, "that you have such a prying disposition. As a matter of fact, all the things you mention ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... around a human being year by year—letters, yellowing scraps of newspaper, tokens, relics kept, accidental vestiges, significant litter. I learnt many things I had never dreamt of. At times I doubted whether I was not prying, whether I ought not to risk the loss of those necessary legal facts I sought, and burn these papers unread. There were love letters, and many such ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Iuuinall, an English Dorrell-lorrell, must lick it vp for restoratiue, & putrifie thy gentle brother ouer against thee, with the vilde impostumes of thy lewd corruptions: God blesse good mindes from the blacke enemy say I: I know you haue bene prying like the Deuill from East to West, to heare what newes: I will acquaint thee with some, & that a secret distillation before thou goest. He that drinketh oyle of prickes, shall haue much a doe to auoyd sirrope of roses: and he that eateth nettles for prouender, hath a priuiledge to pisse vpon lillies ...
— The Art of Iugling or Legerdemaine • Samuel Rid
... away, because they hadn't any proper nippers. Father took off his coat, and worked like a navvy, and Forest hoisted him up to get at the wire along the wall. Forest says he was determined to leave nothing! "And I believe, Miss, the Squire was very glad of the fog—because there couldn't be any one prying around." ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... preferred him to the good, well-behaved boys. Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at the druggist's in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the far end of my room, away from prying eyes. I used there to distribute it into three bags ticketed respectively: "large pieces," "middle-sized pieces," "small pieces." When I returned to school with the three bags in my pocket, I would draw out one or the other to offer ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... against one's mind is intrinsically, necessarily, and always evil. But when a thing is thus evil in itself, there is no need to bring into the definition of the act, from a moral point of view, the intention with which it is done. There is no use in prying into ends, when the means taken is an unlawful means for any end. If a person blasphemes, we do not ask why he blasphemes: the intention is not part of the blasphemy: the utterance is a sin by itself. But if a person strikes, we ask why he ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... himself, (n. 18, p. 777.) In the second book he explains the Trinity, which we profess in the form of baptism, and says, that faith alone in believing, and sincerity and devotion in adoring, this mystery ought to suffice without disputing or prying, and laments, that by the blasphemies of the Sabellians and Arians, who perverted the true sense of the scriptures, he was compelled to dispute of things ineffable and incomprehensible which only necessity can excuse, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... resident court. Richard hurrying hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was, however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get into some mischief if left to himself— now treading ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of 1783, while it added an infant giant to the catalogue of earthly "principalities and powers," also liberated from the fetters of commercial, as well as political restraints, a people active, restless, daring, prying, and enterprising to the last degree; a people whose skill in navigation and swift-sailing vessels rendered them absolutely intangible to an enemy that took occasion to chase them, while their courage, when they thought proper to "stand to it," as dame Quickly says, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... "Collection," was that of curiosity! The old man would within his own domain reign supreme, in the mental as in the physical world. The chance cowboy, genuinely desirous only of a resting place for the night, rode away unscathed; but he whom the old man convicted of a prying spirit committed a lese-majesty that could not be forgiven. And I had made many tracks during my ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... bien, mon maitre, all was going on remarkably well, and I felt almost reconciled to my new situation, when who should rush into the kitchen but le fils de la maison, my young master, an ugly urchin of thirteen years or thereabouts; he bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, how sensitive I am on certain points, for I am no Spaniard but a Greek, and have principles of honour. Without a moment's hesitation I took my ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... ill-fated field of Bothwell Brig, from which he was lucky to escape with a bullet in the shoulder. Thereupon he had been put to the horn, and was now lying hid in a den in the mosses of Douglas Water. It was a sore business for my mother, who had the task of warding off prying eyes from our ragged household and keeping the fugitive in life. She was a Tweedside woman, as strong and staunch as an oak, and with a heart in her like Robert Bruce. And she was cheerful, too, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... thousand. And you don't have to strain any point, either, to give me a job. When I want to work for you I'll sure tell you so. In the meantime, I don't know as it's very businesslike for you to go prying into my plans. You've accepted my note, and you've got your security, and what the hell more do ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... degrees we mean to look into, And watch our vantage in this business. We'll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio, The narrow-prying father, Minola, The quaint musician, amorous Licio; All for my ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... The prying pilot crow persuades The flock to join in thieving raids; The sly racoon with craft inborn His portion steals; from plenty's horn His pouch the saucy chipmunk ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... was needed. Janice and her aunt made the curtains themselves, and they put them up so as to keep out the prying eyes of all Poketown, for the community now began to wonder what was going on in the empty room next the drug store. As Walky had been bound to secrecy, too, the curious had no means of learning what was going on. It was just ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... belief that he isn't mazed at all but so well in his head as you and I be,—just pretending like. And you'm right about that Brimacott too, and I do hope that every one will let mun know that he's not welcome in Ashacombe. He's a prying man and a tale-bearing man, that's what I believe he is, and all to deceive her ladyship and keep friends with the witch. But we'll catch that mazed man for all his pretending, and there there will be two guineas ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... a glass he found on the bureau and poured some milk in it, crept on the bed and lifted Mark's head in his arms, put the glass to his lips, and begged and pled, and finally succeeded in prying the lips and getting a few drops down. Such joy as thrilled him when Mark finally swallowed. But it was a long time, and Billy began to think he must go for the doctor, leave his friend here at the mercy ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... picturing of the great catering business which was the other side of her husband and which she had taken on trust so long, she had in her heart a quite unreasonable feeling of shame that she should listen at all, a shyness, as though she was prying, as though this really did not concern her. She knew she had to listen and still she felt beyond her proper jurisdiction. It is against instinct, it is with an enormous reluctance that women are bringing their quick emotions, their flashing unstable intelligences, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fly beyond my hopes! The queen will listen now, will now believe, And trust the counsel of her faithful Burleigh. Dispose them well, till kind occasion calls Their office forth; lest prying craft meanwhile May tamper with their thoughts and change their minds: Let them, like batteries conceal'd, appear At once, both to ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... ends, dear Reader. Mr. Hoopdriver, sprawling down there among the bracken, must sprawl without our prying, I think, or listening to what chances to his breathing. And of what came of it all, of the six years and afterwards, this is no place to tell. In truth, there is no telling it, for the years have still to run. But if you see how a mere counter-jumper, a cad on castors, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... glad to be rid of his wife's presence. He didn't know what trouble might be impending and he wanted to face the music without the irritation of a prying audience. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... people were guilty of an insolence to which she would not submit. She thought she discovered a certain antagonism amongst those with whom she presently came into contact, and the opposition developed character. Pride came to her aid. No doubt some peeping Tom or prying woman had been witness to the theft of kisses. In that case the incident would now be a theme of conversation in the cabins. She could not trust Mrs. Macdougal to withhold from the gossips a single word of their conversation. Lucy's determination was to show herself superior ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Wren and his wife did not object to Jolly's visits—so long as he did not venture too near their house. They always scolded loudly when an outsider came too close to their home, for they had a big family of children, and they couldn't help feeling that the youngsters were safer with no prying ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and of Thomas Clarkson and his excellent wife, and was much esteemed by Lord and Lady Lonsdale, and every member of that family. Among his verses (he wrote many), are some worthy of preservation; one little poem in particular, upon disturbing, by prying curiosity, a bird while hatching her young in his garden. The latter part of this innocent and good man's life was melancholy. He became blind, and also poor, by becoming surety for some of his relations. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... for one in whose conduct so many prying eyes were seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries since ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... again you considered and you said: 'It is perhaps not well that we leave this here, lest it should be seen by our grandchildren; for they are troublesome, prying into every crevice. People will be startled at their returning in consternation, and will ask what has happened that this (corpse) is lying here; because they will keep on asking until they find it out. And they will ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... scant need for the apologia which precedes the letters; a few pages dispels the fear that we are prying into another's soul. As for the authorship, there is a woman's influence, an artist's poorly concealed bias in the foreign letters; and for the rest a man's blunders—so much easier to see in another than to avoid oneself—writ large from cover to cover. King Cophetua, who sends ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... forge in readiness. I then ascended to the field, where the chaise was standing as we had left it on the previous evening. After looking at the cloud-stone near it, now cold, and split into three pieces, I set about prying narrowly into the condition of the wheel and axle-tree—the latter had sustained no damage of any consequence, and the wheel, as far as I was able to judge, was sound, being only slightly injured in the box. The only thing ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... is touch, this quivering, This flame, this ether, This glad rush of blood, This daylight in my heart, This glow of sympathy in my palms! Thou blind, loving, all-prying touch, Thou openest the book of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... his tea between his sentences. 'He comes in—oh, it's a positive fact, for I've seen him myself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him as one would a tramp in one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over his shoulder. 'First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes cautiously on—a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with big hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature, he begins his precious search—shelves, drawers that are not here, cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... your hid retreat, When the frost rages, and the tempests beat; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The God of ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... rushed forward and seized both her hands. Madame Desvarennes's arrival was an element of interest in his unoccupied life. The dandy guessed at some mysterious business and thought it possible that he might get to know it. With open ears and prying eyes, he sought the meaning of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... heart, by which means—as a person of such propensities inevitably must—she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, but, I should imagine, was looked upon by others as an intruder and a nuisance. Prying further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled "THE SCARLET LETTER"; and it should be borne carefully in mind ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conceives unto himself things almost incredible and impossible to be effected. As a heron when she fishes, still prying on all sides; or as a cat doth a mouse, his eye is never off hers; he gloats on him, on her, accurately observing on whom she looks, who looks at her, what she saith, doth, at dinner, at supper, sitting, walking, at home, abroad, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and buried hugger-mugger two hundred years ago, you are now not over-praised, but more worshipped, with more servility and ostentation, studied with more prying curiosity than you may approve. Are not the Molieristes a body who carry adoration to fanaticism? Any scrap of your handwriting (so few are these), any anecdote even remotely touching on your life, any fact that may prove your house was numbered 15 not 22, is eagerly seized and discussed ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... informed of the national affairs; and in which he has a right to have that expectation gratified. For, whatever may be urged by Ministers, or those whom vanity or interest make the followers of ministers, concerning the necessity of confidence in our governours, and the presumption of prying with profane eyes into the recesses of policy, it is evident that this reverence can be claimed only by counsels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dinners, all with the same empty ending. He attended Gargantuan feasts, where multitudes fed on innumerable bullocks roasted whole, prying them out of smoldering pits and with sharp knives slicing great strips of meat from the steaming carcasses. He stood, with mouth agape, beneath long rows of turkeys which white-aproned shopmen sold. And everybody bought save Smoke, mouth still agape, chained by a leadenness of movement to the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the Article-lecture; stray remarks at wine-parties—were treasured up, and strengthened the case against him. One time, on coming into his rooms, he found Freeborn, who had entered to pay him a call, prying into his books. A volume of sermons, of the school of the day, borrowed of a friend for the sake of illustrating Aristotle, lay on his table; and in his bookshelves one of the more philosophical of the "Tracts for the Times" ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Cyrene 'twixt the oracle of swelt'ring Jove and the sacred sepulchre of ancient Battus, or as the thronging stars which in the hush of darkness witness the furtive loves of mortals, to kiss thee with kisses of so great a number is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ill tongues ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... some game, and he returned their visit in the cool of the evening. It appeared that it was not his general practice to drink spirituous liquors in presence of his people, as it may be against the law to do so, for having carefully excluded all prying eyes from their dwelling, and ordered a mat to be hung over the door-way, he even then turned his face to the wall, whenever he attempted to swallow the brandy that was offered to him. He remained with them rather better than an hour. On the presentation of the chief to them, a religious ceremony ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... compare it to the conduct of some convicted rebel, who, when brought into the presence of his Sovereign, instead of seizing the occasion to sue for mercy, should even neglect and trifle with the pardon which should be offered to him, and insolently employ himself in prying into his Sovereign's designs, and criticising his counsels. Our case indeed is, in another point of comparison, but too much like that of the convicted rebel. But there is this grand difference—that at the best, his success ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... him to insure our success. While his police are prying about to discover something new, we are in constant danger of detection and can accomplish little. If, however, he declines to join us, we dare run no risk. ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... when she had every reason to expect, that, by concealing it for a season, it might be veiled for ever? Was it not, on the contrary, pardonable, that, in such an emergency, a young woman, in such a situation, should be found far from disposed to make a confidant of every prying gossip, who, with sharp eyes, and eager ears, pressed upon her for an explanation of suspicious circumstances, which females in the lower—he might say which females of all ranks, are so alert in noticing, that they sometimes discover them where they do not exist? Was it strange ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fact remained that Johanna did not die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she slept in a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come prying about there to find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness was that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... on the other side of the fire, prying at the rowel of his spur with a hunting-knife. He raised his head and laughed. "Another good man gone wrong, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... occupant of the dug-out, might even have been left there and forgotten by some passing British soldier when the place was captured; but the latter at least is unlikely. When inquisitiveness had such dire results no one did much prying until everything had been examined and pronounced safe. But that the wells were safe was the great thing and their ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... place, they could already see the point at the further edge where they should leave it again. Here too there were very few on the road, because it was so early in the day. But people were stirring, right and left, at the doors and windows. The rumbling of the wagon awoke the prying eyes of Waltheim. Each one beckoned or called to the others. It was as if the little group were running the gauntlet. Fausch and Cain walked with lowered heads, the smith, because it was his surly fashion, the boy, through bashfulness, because he knew that now all eyes and tongues were ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... only remarking that he himself was going out, and should not return until after compline, and asking Dalaber to take care of the book and keep it safe till he should come and claim it, for it was dangerous to leave such volumes where any prying eyes might ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... bird never ceased to intrude and annoy. He visited the nest when empty; he managed to have frequent peeps at the young; and notwithstanding he was driven off every time, he still hung around, with prying ways so exasperating that he well deserved a thrashing, and I wonder he did not get it. He was driven away repeatedly, and he was "picked off" from below, and pounced upon from above, but he never ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... unlimber his persuader on a huge German who had just rounded the corner of the "bay." He made a good job of it, getting him in the face, and must have simply caved him in, but not before he had thrown a bomb. I had broken my bayonet prying the dug-out door off and had my ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... many months in the house; some of which Mr. Crawley happened to find in D'Hozier's dictionary, which was in the library, and which strengthened his belief in their truth, and in the high-breeding of Rebecca. Are we to suppose from this curiosity and prying into dictionaries, could our heroine suppose that Mr. Crawley was interested in her?—no, only in a friendly way. Have we not stated that he was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a fifth member of their party, Flap-Jacks' husband. 'Tana had bestowed that name on the squaw in the very beginning of their acquaintance. But Overton had sent him on an errand back to Sinna Ferry, not wishing to have his watchful eyes prying into their plans in the very beginning of their prospecting. And it was not until he had started on his journey that the pick and pan had disclosed the golden secret of the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... had eaten nearly a whole fowl, and had drunk a bottle of beer with it, I felt like another man; and then, pursuing my investigations more leisurely, I found in one of the lockers—which I took the liberty of prying open with a big carving-knife—four or five boxes of capital cigars. In the same locker was a package of safety-matches, and in a moment I was puffing away with such satisfaction that I fairly grew light-hearted—so ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... practice, driven by her own trouble over that line of diffident distrust which had always divided her from the hearts of her poorer neighbours. She was astonished at her own indelicacy, asking questions, prying into their troubles, pushed on by a secret aching for distraction; and she was surprised how well they took it—how, indeed, they seemed to like it, as though they knew that they were doing her good. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... asked a question. "Dear mamma, don't think me prying, but is Potter's the only pressing obligation on papa ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... But John Skelton, the satirical poet of the fifteenth century, undoubtedly enjoyed its hospitality, for he has left record in the following lines that he was acquainted with it: Intent on. signs, the prying eye, The George & Vulture will descry. Let none the outward Vulture fear, No Vulture host inhabits here. If too well used you deem ye then Take your revenge and ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... country where the scene is cast, notes are added to give some account of the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peasantry in the west of Scotland. The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such honour the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it among ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have King Lear: ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... interrupted," observed Hugh, "but seems as though we've dropped on the queerest sort of a mystery the very first thing. And as scouts always stand to investigate what they don't understand, I reckon we'll have our hands full prying into this thing." ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... whether I should go as I intended to Hampton Court to-morrow or no. At last resolved the contrary, because of the charge thereof, and I am afraid now to bring in any accounts for journeys, and so will others I suppose be, because of Mr. Coventry's prying into them. Thence sent for to Sir G. Carteret's, and there talked with him a good while. I perceive, as he told me, were it not that Mr. Coventry had already feathered his nest in selling of places, he do like him very well, and hopes great good from him. But he complains so of lack of money, that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in some future sociological period of the earth's history some antiquarian of the post-aviatorian age, prying into the modus vivendi of the men of pre-air-shippian times can learn "a thing or two" about that delicate gazelle-like mammal so as to show his contemporaries how "fierce" living was before the age of trial marriages and legitimate affinities, the dessicated author ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... the remainder of the evening. When the evening was over and she went upstairs to get her wraps from the high four-poster bedstead, she had almost forgotten Hannah and her ill-natured, prying remarks. But Hannah had not forgotten her. She came forth from behind the bed curtains where she had been searching for a lost glove, and remarked that she should think Marcia would be lonely this first winter away from home and want her sister with ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... said the sorcerer. They digged until they came to a broad, flat stone. Prying this up, they found some steps leading downwards. They went down the steps and along a narrow passage until they came to a door. "Are you brave?" asked the sorcerer; "will you ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... uneasiness what he called the liaison of des Lupeaulx with Madame Rabourdin, and his silent wrath on the subject was accumulating. He had too prying an eye not to have guessed that Rabourdin was engaged in some great work outside of his official labors, and he was provoked to feel that he knew nothing about it, whereas that little Sebastien was, wholly or in part, in the secret. Dutocq was intimate with Godard, under-head-clerk ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... vouchers containing the financial history of the Metropolitan since its organization in 1893 had been sold for $117 to a junkman, who had agreed in writing to grind them into pulp, so that they would be safe from "prying eyes." We shall therefore never know precisely how this money was spent. But here again the Chicago transactions help us to an understanding. In 1898 Charles T. Yerkes, with that cynical frankness which some people have regarded as a redeeming trait in his character, opened his books for the ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... and intuitive perceptions. He felt the hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... have got to a state where simply to be entrusted with great financial responsibility is enough to constitute a man a criminal; to warrant a newspaper in prying into the intimate details of his life, and in ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... once! She would get "the boys" to write an insulting letter to Senator Slocumb,—Mrs. Baker had the feminine idea of Government as a purely personal institution,—and she would find out who it was that had put them up to this prying, crawling impudence! It was probably that wall-eyed old wife of the postmaster at Heavy Tree Crossing, who was jealous of her. "Remind her of their previous unanswered communication," indeed! Where was that communication, anyway? She remembered she had sent it to her admirer at Hickory ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... touched by the woman's emotion. "Miss Maclaire," he said gravely. "I am not prying into your life needlessly, but am endeavoring to serve you as well as others. Hawley may indeed possess papers of great value, but if so they were not found by accident, but stolen from the body of a murdered man. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human industry have ...
— Hebrew Literature
... snow and the difficulty of walking, I examined all the windows; but these were coated so with ice, like ferns and flowers and dazzling stars, that no one could so much as guess what might be inside of them. Moreover I was afraid of prying narrowly into them, as it was not a proper thing where a maiden might be; only I wanted to know just this, whether ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... from which he hauled the water which he drank and used for culinary purposes. If there was wealth in the land and rocks, nature had masked it very well indeed. The pick and the hammer revealed nothing; long hours of prying and exploring yielded no gleam of metal to confirm his fast-shrinking belief that he ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... and content myself with knowing what chance and good luck teach," returned Myndert. "There are men in Manhattan ever prying into their neighbors' credit, like frogs lying with their noses out of water; but it is enough for me to know the state of my books, with some insight into that of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... I could but shudder! If I could but shudder!' The host who heard this, laughed and said: 'If that is your desire, there ought to be a good opportunity for you here.' 'Ah, be silent,' said the hostess, 'so many prying persons have already lost their lives, it would be a pity and a shame if such beautiful eyes as these should ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... stripping off formation after formation like a garment, or cutting away the strata over hundreds of square miles, as we pry a slab from a rock—and has done it all but yesterday. If we break the slab in the prying, and thus secure only part of it, leaving an abrupt jagged edge on the part that remains, we have still a better likeness of the work of these great geologic quarrymen. But other workmen, invisible to our eyes, have carved these jagged edges ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... boy," said Mr. Derwentwater, "if there is any mystery, all right; I don't want to be prying;" but, as was natural, this only increased his curiosity. After an interval, he broke forth again. "A little mystery," he said, "suits them; a woman ought to be mysterious, with her long robes falling round her, and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... He was prying around in one of the bunks while saying this, as though he had suspicions; which Lub, who was anxiously watching him, hoped in his heart might turn ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... many of them committed suicide rather than pass into slavery. Who has not heard of St. Ursula and her thousand British virgins, whose bones were said to be enshrined at Cologne Cathedral, until a prying medico reported that many of them were only dogs' bones—for which heresy he was expelled the city as ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... only I don't know whether we ought! And it's heavy, too. I hardly think we could. Perhaps we might just try to peep behind it. You know, Cynthia, I realize we're doing something a little queer being in this house and prying about. I'm not sure our folks would approve of it. Only the old thing has been left so long, and there's such a mystery about it, and we're not harming or disturbing anything, that perhaps it isn't so dreadful. Anyhow, we must be very careful not to pry ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... followers, and fellow believers: "Come let us reason together," marks the dividing line between knowledge and superstition. The daring of the mind of man proves him to be, in very truth, "a child of God." No arcana of knowledge are too deeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, his longing for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts to surprise the hidden things of God and Nature. Livingston and Stanley wrought in the jungles of Africa, Audubon and Agassiz in the fastnesses of tropical America. These in the material world, the world ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... cheeky as a crow and as prying as a magpie and I venture to say thee is a roving scamp. But I may as well talk to thee ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... his years he was quite active, having broken the horses on which he rode, bareback, without assistance. We were told that he placed a spring or trap gun in his houses at the river, ready to greet any prying marauder The last we saw of him he was on his way to the post-office, miles away, to draw his pension for service ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... her on her defence—a defence that she felt, however, especially as of Kate. "We're very intimate," she said in a moment; "so that, without prying into each other's affairs, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... I had installed myself in quiet quarters on the Mittelstrasse, and Kim, who had been transformed from a Basuto boy into an efficient man servant, looked after my comforts. To secure myself from the questions of prying neighbors, I had caused it to be known that I was a retired South African planter inclined to poor health. This was the most likely explanation for my curious mode of living and my sudden periodical disappearances, for I was away from the Mittelstrasse for months at a time. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... completely under the sway of the blood-curdling reports. When the performance was at an end, he approached Clarissa, who, with an impassive air, was making her way to the exit, and asked whether she had been trying to jest with him, and she, her lips dry, and something like a prying hatred in her eyes, answered, laughing again: "No, no, Captain." After that her face resumed its earnest, almost sad, expression and her ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... ceaseless drip was eerie enough to his strained senses, waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life. He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers. But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking he heard a deep roar mingling with the incessant patter, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... clever, Charlie. She knew too much of our affairs, and was always prying into things that did not concern her. So father took an antipathy to the poor creature, and because she has served our family for so long sent her to care for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... have to get on the table and I will hand thee a chair. Standing on that thee must try to push the door open, and then draw thyself up into the room above. With the door closed thou wilt be safe from prying eyes, yet thou wilt be able to hear ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... adopted and who did not know he was her father. I suppose Esther must have asked mother to take care of these things for her. It is queer that she never thought of speaking of them to me. I must write her I have seen them, for I should not wish her to feel I had been prying," Betty finished, going back to the trunk and putting the little ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... holding up a hand. "That gets us to the point. What's this here purpose? What's the big idea prying, like, into my affairs till you learned all this about me? And what's this stuff about me getting something out of it? Right now I'm ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... feel deeply the degradation of his situation. Shorn of power among his people, compelled to acknowledge the authority of his rival, and bending beneath the infirmities of age, it is not singular that he should shrink from the prying gaze of curiosity, and sigh for the deep seclusion of his ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the Nameless Thing was discovered in Farmer Burns' corn-patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that it was some sort of meteor from inter-stellar space, reporters, scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that the Thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... to start from Woodvale at half after one o'clock, so as to have plenty of time. That Fate, which is always prying into and disarranging the plans of us poor mortals, interfered with our arrangements an hour before the time fixed for our departure. The visitors who were to arrive in the evening came shortly after ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... had suddenly remembered the possibility of prying eyes. With obvious reluctance she released herself from the embrace she had no desire ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Now, now, Cousin William, you know yourself, it's very rude to insist on prying into ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... about the country. He was an abstract and chronicle of the time; and could tell you where the Earl of Lancaster mustered his forces, the day of their march, and the very purposes and projects of that turbulent noble. Even the secrets of my lady's bower did not elude the prying of this indefatigable artist; at any rate, he had the credit of knowing all that he assumed, which amounted very much to the same thing as though his knowledge were unlimited: a nod and a wink supplying the place of intelligence, when his wondering neophytes grew disagreeably ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... place Joseph went on the morning after the angel's visit, as this was the spot he had seen in his vision. On the west side of this hill, not far from the top, Joseph found a large, rounded stone, nearly covered with earth. Prying this up, he found it to be the lid of a stone box which was buried in the earth. Raising the lid, he looked in, and there indeed were the sacred treasures about which the angel had told him. As he stood ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background; it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in its ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in vain that the law has endeavored to shield private life from prying eyes. The scribes who pander to Parisian curiosity surmount all obstacles and brave every danger. Thanks to the "High Life" reporters, every newspaper reader is aware that twice a week—Mondays and Thursdays—Madame Lia d'Argeles holds a reception at her charming mansion in the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... at work to keep the antecedents of either out of the conversation. Old Maisie fought shy of inquiries, which might have produced counter-inquiry she could scarcely have met by silence; and Mrs. Thrale shrank, with a true instinctive delicacy, from prying into a record which had the word poverty so legible on its title-page, and signs of a former well-being so visible on its subject. Besides, how about Sapps Court and Dave's ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Most certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with an attention to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like sound judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the whole tenor of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,—or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... neighborhood in which Aesop was a slave one day observed him attentively looking over some poultry in a pen that was near the roadside; and those idlers, who spent more time in prying into other people's affairs than in adjusting their own, asked why he bestowed his attention ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... grunted, prying off the tire. "Heard it m'self 'bout noon—or a little after. Yeh, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... already, as well as such a lout can hint, at a private interview! Miss Milroy's eyes are sharp, and the nurse's eyes are sharper; and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter! I must take my chance, and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, and—if his friend doesn't come between us—I ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... our day's walk. The girls declared themselves fully able to proceed. While we were sitting on the ground, I perceived a movement in the boughs, and saw that the monkeys were coming back to have a further look at us; and presently the boughs above our heads were filled with curious prying black, grey, and yellow faces. I pointed them ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... more prudent than generous; for I agree with you that it is all up with me if my uncle gets hold of you. I dread my prying brother, too; in fact, the obligation is on my side; only stay abroad till I am a rich man, and my marriage made public, and then you may ask of me what you will. It's agreed, then; order the horses, we'll go round by Liverpool, and learn ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... His prying eye, however, detected an old chest in the corner, half covered with deer and other skins, and the key of this ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Tommy was playing in the yard. Sally's eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... Finally, we drove down into a dusty plain, and so presently came to the old frontier fort. Here, then, was civilization—the stage coach, the new telegraph wire, men and women, weekly or daily touch with the world, that prying curiosity regarding the affairs of others which we call news. To me it seemed tawdry, sordid, worthless, after that which I had left. The noise seemed insupportable, the food distasteful. I could tolerate no roof, and in my own ragged robes ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Overland, slipped unostentatiously into the capital railroad yard. With as little stir as it had made in its arrival, the single-car train took a siding below the freight station, where it would be concealed from the prying eyes of any chance prowler ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Then came punching and prying with the iron bar to get the wheel itself free from where it was jammed by the cable against the side of the block. After that Jerry replaced the wheel, and by means of the rope, heaved up on the car till the trolley once more rested ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... his order."[461] But they did not usually pay so much attention to the duties of transcribing. The Dominicans were fond of the physical sciences, and have been accused of too much partiality for occult philosophy. Leland tells us that Robert Perserutatur, a Dominican, was over solicitous in prying into the secrets of philosophy,[462] and lays the same charge ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... fellow that I cannot endure. That is the flying-fish. I fight, make war on him, and drive him away every time he comes around. Oh, but he is the trying creature! Forever flying in your face, getting in your way, prying into your affairs, a kind of gossip-fish, that I despise. Why I feel so great a dislike for him I cannot say, it must be there is something in my nature that sets me against him, but a flying-fish and a Dolphin cannot ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... events narrated here transpired, Brandur had grown prosperous and very old—old in years and old in ways. The neighbours thought he must have money hidden away somewhere. But no one knew anything definitely, for Brandur had always been reserved and uncommunicative, and permitted no prying in his house or on his possessions. There was, however, one thing every settler in those parts knew: Brandur had accumulated large stores of various kinds. Anyone passing along ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... think one thing," said Hoffland, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye; "to wit, that I am very prying." ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... is his illness, for he is a lamb when he is well. He is capable of getting up and prying about; and if by any chance he went into the salon, he is so weak that he could not go beyond the door; he would see that they ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... resumed its wonted appearance; the dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces appear to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... like this, involving the most prying supervision of the affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax to be paid, "the collector takes into consideration the number of children [74] to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the collector, and with the disadvantage that the latter has no pecuniary ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... time gentlemen would call to their men & cry, "Come, trusse me": now the word is "Come, hooke me"; for every body now lookes so narrowly to Taylors bills (some for very anger never paying them) that the needle lance knights, in revenge of those prying eyes, put so many hookes & eyes to every hose ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... no dog o' mine. Jes' follered me—run after the stage—then, when she was stuck in the mud, Bill Sarber dropped a rail he was prying with, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... OF THE SOUL: Anna is sternly loyal to her husband Paolo, but refuses to submit to his incessant prying into her individuality and questioning of her ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... attempt at an explanation was impossible. It was not for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets. Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his portion in that shame—must be content to leave ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... she saw that he was writing, and half an hour afterward that he was leaning back in his chair, looking at something in the hollow of his hand, a mingling of such love and sadness in his countenance that she felt it would be unlawful prying into his most sacred feelings for her to watch him longer. He turned his head at the slight rustle she made in removing to another part of the room, and beckoned to her. At her approach, he arose and held out ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... child, undone by the very instrument he designed for your security, how pungent would be his anxiety! I say, Peter, though there is something so unaccountable to human wisdom in such events of things, yet there is something therein so reasonable and just withal, that by a prying eye, the Supreme Hand may very visibly be seen in them. Now, this being plainly the case before us, and herein the glory of the Almighty exalted, rest content under it, and let not this disappointment, befallen you for your father's faults, be attended with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... ridiculous more than all. The committees before which many theatrical managers were obliged to appear a few years since have done good in a few instances; but they have often played the most ridiculous pranks, and they have roused grave fears in minds unused to know fear of any kind. The peculiar prying questions, the successful attempts made to interfere with concerns which should not on any account be public property, the disposition to treat the people, whose mature wisdom is proclaimed from all political platforms, as little children, all ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... clearly than the "honor system" that came into vogue in William and Mary College. The Old Oxford system of espionage which was at first used, gradually fell into disuse. The proud young Virginians deemed it an insult for prying professors to watch over their every action, and the faculty eventually learned that they could trust implicitly in the students' honor. In the Rules of the College, published in 1819, there is an open recognition of the honor system. The wording is as follows, "Any student may be required ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... be confoundedly ungentlemanly of me to be prying into anyone's affairs, Brigley, and I won't ask questions about him. I hope, though, he hasn't done anything so foolish as to desert, because, even if he is in the band, he is a soldier, and—I have heard nothing. Has it ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... could tell you where the Earl of Lancaster mustered his forces, the day of their march, and the very purposes and projects of that turbulent noble. Even the secrets of my lady's bower did not elude the prying of this indefatigable artist; at any rate, he had the credit of knowing all that he assumed, which amounted very much to the same thing as though his knowledge were unlimited: a nod and a wink supplying the place of intelligence, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... had suffered from hunger, cold, fatigue, and watchfulness; after all their perils from treacherous and savage men, they exulted in the snugness and security of their isolated cabin, hidden, as they thought, even from the prying eyes of Indian scouts, and stored with creature comforts. They looked forward to a winter of peace and quietness; of roasting, broiling, and boiling, feasting upon venison, mountain mutton, bear's meat, marrow-bones, buffalo humps, and other hunters' dainties; of dozing ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... which is here forbidden is rather knowledge as such, general knowledge, or getting the eyes opened, as it is afterwards called. This is what transcends, in the writer's view, the limits of our nature; prying out the secret of things, the secret of the world, and overlooking, as it were, God's hand to see how He goes to work in His living activity, so as, perhaps, to learn His secret and imitate Him. For knowledge is to the ancient world also power, and no mere metaphysic. This ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... with Napoleon," says Lucien, "I at once went into the cabinet where Bourrienne was working, and found that unbearable busybody of a secretary, whose star had already paled more than once, which made him more prying than ever, quite upset by the time the First Consul had taken to come out of his bath. He must, or at least might, have heard some noise, for enough had been made. Seeing that he wanted to know the cause from me, I took up a newspaper to avoid being bored by his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... advancing menacingly upon Christine. "I always felt you were a spy. But you shall not stay prying here another day. Pack your things and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... one day—for so runs the tradition— While idling and lingering about The low city streets, a Magician From Africa, swarthy and stout, With his wise, prying eyes ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... wrong," said the Jew, "that was the part of a fool. No Christians here could buy so many horses and armour—no Jew except myself would give him half the values. But thou hast a hundred zecchins with thee in that bag," said Isaac, prying under Gurth's cloak, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... childish foreboding on your part, the result of an agitated mind and a weakened body. Can anything be more absurd than to suppose, that a secret confided to me can be pregnant with danger, unless it be, indeed, that my zeal to assist you may lead me into difficulties. I am not of a prying disposition; but we have been so long connected together, and are now so isolated from the rest of the world, that it appears to me it would be a solace to you, were you to confide in one whom you can trust, what evidently has long preyed upon your mind. The consolation ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... time Odin, Loki, and Hoenir started on a journey. They had often traveled together before on all sorts of errands, for they had a great many things to look after, and more than once they had fallen into trouble through the prying, meddlesome, malicious spirit of Loki, who was never so happy as when he was doing wrong. When the gods went on a journey they traveled fast and hard, for they were strong, active spirits who loved nothing so much as hard work, hard blows, storm, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... descended, he plainly saw the form of the witch, coming to wash in the stream just below him. The water was clear reflecting her visage, fearsome in its hideous detail. Up in the tree brave Eut-le-ten saw her, he thought himself safe from her fierce prying eyes; he forgot that he too was mirrored below in the still water which lay at her feet. When she had finished her morning ablutions, she filled her vessel with water and turned to depart, when she saw just below her, the features of Eut-le-ten in the still water. Upturning her ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... and prying with the iron bar to get the wheel itself free from where it was jammed by the cable against the side of the block. After that Jerry replaced the wheel, and by means of the rope, heaved up on the car till the trolley once more ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... I know," replied the irritated Cockney, who swiftly resented this prying into his affairs. Remembering himself instantly, he turned with a fine red in his face to the girl on the dais. "I beg your pardon, Your Grace, for forgetting myself. It was none of 'is business," ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... sacrifice all to the well-being and happiness of those she loved. With Nan self held a particularly subservient place to every other emotion. And when it did manage to obtrude itself it was her way to fight her battle alone, at a time when no prying eyes were there to witness her sufferings. To the daylight she presented a pair of sweet brown smiling eyes, and lips as full, and ripe, and firm as though no shadow of doubt and unhappiness had ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... occurred to the Anarchist, but, were I myself organising secret committee meetings for unholy purposes, I should invite my comrades to meet in that section of the local museum devoted to statuary. I can conceive of no place where we should be freer from prying eyes and listening ears. A select few, however, do appreciate statuary; and such, I am inclined to think, will not be weaned from their passion by the contemplation of the opera singer in his ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... Abe was prying at that hole with a dead branch of a tree, and, almost while he was speaking, a great piece of the loose pudding-stone fell off and came thumping down at ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... herself an ambush from prying eyes in one corner of the apartment. She turned her boudoir into a bedroom and sitting-room combined. From there she heard the shuffling of feet as the people assembled in the large dismantled drawing-room without. She was writing ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... a crime to drive a prying miscreant from his door? Crime! Oh, no, sir; if there be a criminal involved in this affair, it is ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... you want it for?" said the postmaster, in a tone which Andy considered an aggression upon the sacredness of private life. So Andy, in his ignorance and pride, thought the coolest contempt he could throw upon the prying impertinence of the postmaster was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... snoring pig is not a poem, whatever may be said of a little roast pig; and what an escape from books and people and parlors (in this country) is the feeding and littering and scratching of him! You put on your old clothes for him. He takes you out behind the barn; there shut away from the prying gaze of the world, and the stern eye, conscience, you deliberately fill him, stuff him, fatten him, till he grunts, then you scratch him to keep him grunting, yourself reveling in the sight of the flesh indulged, as ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... chief of the Civil Guard and two gentlemen carrying papers and bottles of ink; all with an escort of men wearing three-cornered hats and carrying guns. These omnipotent personages, after a rest at Can Mallorqui, had climbed up to the tower, examining everything, prying all around, running over the ground as if to measure it, compelling him, the Little Chaplain, to lie down in the very spot where Don Jaime had been found, adopting a similar posture. After the visit of the magistrate some pious neighbors had borne the body of the Ironworker to the cemetery ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... her scat and asked him, as a particular favour, not to allude again to his discovery. It was no concern of hers at all, and she had no warrant for prying into his secrets. She was very sorry to have been for a moment so absurd as to appear to do so, and she humbly begged his pardon for her meddling. Saying this she walked on with a charming colour in her cheek, while he laughed ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... swelt'ring Jove and the sacred sepulchre of ancient Battus, or as the thronging stars which in the hush of darkness witness the furtive loves of mortals, to kiss thee with kisses of so great a number is enough and to spare for passion-driven Catullus: so many that prying eyes may not avail to number, nor ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... interchanging a joke with the dwellers in the house. While all these pleasing occupations proceeded, the hour of Cudmore's trial was approaching. The tea-pot which had stood the attack of fourteen cups without flinching, at last began to fail, and discovered to the prying eyes of Mrs. Clanfrizzle, nothing but an olive-coloured deposit of soft matter, closely analogous in appearance and chemical property to the residuary precipitate in a drained fish-pond; she put down the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... keep a very sharp look-out on all political offences, but are more indulgent towards all moral ones, as long as public decorum is not infringed, and then it is severely punished. But they have none of that censoriousness or prying spirit in France which is so common in England to hunt out and criticise the private vices of their neighbours, which, in my opinion, does not proceed from any real regard for virtue, but from a fanatical, jealous, envious, and malignant ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... of pursuit. The soldiers kept unsuspiciously at their mid-day meal. The swamp-lined creek-sides served well as a shelter from prying eyes. For hours Cushing pursued his slow course. The sun sank; darkness gathered; night came on. At the same time the water widened around him; he was on ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gentlemen who would freely open their gates to respectable visitors, provided they could be assured of every party being contented with a general view of the local beauties, without indulging a too prying curiosity; and at the same time would refrain from plucking choice flowers, fruits, and shrubs, many of which may perhaps have been cultivated by the hands of the owner with an affection of no little ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... buried treasures of light, the million-fold ensemble of lustres dancing schottishe with the eye, as it moved or was still: this place, I should guess, being quite half a mile from the entrance. My prying lantern showed me here only nineteen dead, men of various nations, and at the far end two holes in the floor, large enough to admit the body, through which from below came up a sound of falling water. Both of these holes, I could see, had been filled ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... men pried with their crowbars, and the big stone started from its place and rolled down from the pile. And the men got it over to the trench, sometimes prying it with their crowbars and sometimes rolling it with their hands, and they set it in its place on top of the small ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... A waking eye, a prying mind; A heart that stirs, is hard to bind; A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind; Ye ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... put his mug down and leaned with both elbows upon the rough deal table, because he wanted to talk confidentially with his friend, and there was never any knowing what prying ears might be about. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the most prying and adroit of politicians were puzzled to read the signs of the times. Despite Henry's garrulity, or perhaps in consequence of it, the envoys of Spain, the Empire, and of Archduke Albert were ignorant whether peace were likely to be broken or not, in spite of rumours which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... good natural Notions, and will soon learn Arts and Sciences; but are generally diverted by Business or Inclination from profound Study, and prying into the Depth of Things; being ripe for Management of their Affairs, before they have laid so good a Foundation of Learning, and had such Instructions, and acquired such Accomplishments, as might ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... himself—"it is all very well for you to prate of forgiveness; but I'll have you in the 'Chambers' in less than a month—then see if you can again escape me! In that luxurious underground retreat, from whose mysterious recess no cry can reach the ears of prying mortals above—there, amid the sumptuousness of an Oriental palace, will I riot on those charms of thine, which now I dare but gaze upon! I'll make thee a slave to every extravagant caprice of my passion; I'll become a god of pleasure, and thou, my beautiful blonde, shall be my ministering ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... light flickered in Puma's eyes, but the cool smile lay smoothly on his lips, and he did not even turn his head to watch them as they passed along the walls, sounding, peering, prying, and jerking open the door of the cupboard—the only furniture there except the desk and the chair ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... close of his first year Goriot began to practise little economies; at the end of the second he removed his rooms to the second floor, and did without a fire all the winter. This although, as Madame Vauquer's prying eyes had seen, Goriot's name appeared in the list of state funds for a sum representing an income of from eight to ten thousand francs. Henceforth she denounced him to the other paying-guests as an unprincipled old libertine, who lavished his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... caught the children prying into the cupboard. She will be angry with them, I am sure, for ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... were asked, for it was necessary now to be very careful. Half-a-dozen might be invited, as if to supper; but the times when a hundred or more had assembled to hear the Word of God were gone by. Would they ever come again? They dared not begin to read until all prying eyes and ears were likely to be closed in sleep; and the reader's voice was low, that nobody might be roused next door. Few people could read then, especially among the labouring class, so that, except on these occasions, ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... Mr. Derwentwater, "if there is any mystery, all right; I don't want to be prying;" but, as was natural, this only increased his curiosity. After an interval, he broke forth again. "A little mystery," he said, "suits them; a woman ought to be mysterious, with her long robes falling round her, and her mystery of long hair, and all the natural ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... them, carrying a round stick, a piece from a small sapling that the guide had picked up for firewood. This she cautiously slipped under the rope at the edge of the shelf, prying the rope up a little in order to do so, thus sending Tommy into a fresh outburst of terror when she felt the added movement of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... struck fiercely at the bait. She soon had plenty for supper and breakfast. Wherefore she abandoned that diversion, and took to prying tentatively in the lee of certain bowlders on the edge of the creek—prospecting on her own initiative, as it were. She had no pan, and only one hand to work with, but she knew gold when she saw it—and, after all, it was but an idle method of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... earlier emigrants went forward, driving their heavily laden wagon by day and sleeping at night by the camp. After they had passed the region of roads and bridges they had to literally hew their way; cutting down bushes, prying their wagon out of bog-holes, building bridges or poling themselves across streams on rafts. But, in defiance of every ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... enjoyed the services of a physician named Rouget, whom they held to be a man of consummate malignity. Were we to believe certain bold tongues, he made his wife extremely unhappy, although she was the most beautiful woman of the neighborhood. Perhaps, indeed, she was rather silly. But the prying of friends, the slander of enemies, and the gossip of acquaintances, had never succeeded in laying bare the interior of that household. Doctor Rouget was a man of whom we say in common parlance, "He is ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Budlong felt of the water. It was, as Hicks had said, even warmer than tepid from standing—an ideal temperature. The brush grew high around the pond formed by the back-water and made a perfect shelter. No fear of prying eyes ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... dug a monstrous pit To hold his wealth, and buried it By night, alone; then smoothed the ground So that the spot could not be found. But he gained nothing by his labor: A curious, prying, envious neighbor, Who marked the hiding, went and told The Sultan where to find the gold. A troop of soldiers came next day, And bore the hoarded ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Bob flushing; "I just meant supervisors' salaries, of course. I wasn't prying, really. It's all a matter ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and leads us all on and we do tell him everything; especially Mamie Sue, if we don't warn her beforehand and make her wear a horsehair ring not to forget when he asks her questions. It makes Belle mad for him to do Mamie Sue that way, and she calls it "prying"; but I think it is just kindness. How can you sympathize with your friends' affairs if you don't make them tell you all? And sympathy applied to life is like the gasoline in a motorcar, ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... path, Where the shy stream's encircling heights Shut out all prying eyes, invites Her lily daughters ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... fair shrine of that holy love! Tears of tenderness rose to his eyes, and in the midst of them he thought his mother sat before him. Her head was bent; an all-eating shame was crimsoning her pale cheek. Then he knew that other eyes were upon her, looking into her heart, prying deep down into her dead past, keeping open the heavy eyelids that could never sleep. He looked up; his own shadow was silently gazing ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... some days, the guest of Mountjoy. There, on 7 July, a letter found him, written on 18 April by his superior, the prior of Steyn, his old friend Servatius Rogerus, recalling him to the monastery after so many years of absence. The letter had already been in the hands of more than one prying person, before it reached him by ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we found a marble crusader with a broken nose, under a battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the restricted limits of the present Duffield church, and half buried in nettles. "Ichabod," said my uncle. "Eh? We shall be like that, Susan, some ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... "and he said I'd no business to ask; and if Bet went prying about everywhere, I'd better ask her. Have ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him. It was Henrietta Hen. Being a prying sort of person she had followed Turkey Proudfoot around the house to see what happened when ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... dining-room furniture has been replaced; the tables are as nicely polished as formerly; the horsehair chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever; Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter. The subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the Gattleton family, unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise and regret at finding that ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a narrow lane between high walls, a place where refuse collected and was allowed to remain undisturbed, a place upon which looked no prying window and which echoed ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... The Gays are hard up and proud and the Hildreths are busy and like to keep to themselves. I don't know now whether Louisa and Alec will be glad to see me bringing three strangers to meet 'em, but my honest opinion is they need someone to say 'Hello' and be friendly without prying." ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Indians now swarmed about the place. Some brought a few land-otter and sea-otter skins to barter, but in very scanty parcels; the greater number came prying about to gratify their curiosity, for they are said to be impertinently inquisitive; while not a few came with no other design than to pilfer; the laws of meum and tuum being but slightly respected among them. Some of them beset the ship in their canoes, among ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the purpose of my visit, the nature of my business, how long I intended to stay, did I have a place to stay arranged for, and if so, where and through whom. It looked for all the world as though they had something to conceal; Czarist Russia couldn't beat that for keeping track of people and prying into their business. Sign here, the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... which her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest, and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should come inside his door, he declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it had become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked the door and put ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... doubtful that my former trance Could not as yet be o'er. A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, Sate watching by the cottage wall. The sparkle of her eye I caught, Even with my first return of thought; For ever and anon she threw 810 A prying, pitying glance on me With her black eyes so wild and free: I gazed, and gazed, until I knew No vision it could be,— But that I lived, and was released From adding to the vulture's feast: And when the Cossack maid beheld My heavy eyes at length unsealed, She smiled—and I essayed to speak, But ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to walk down the hill instead of riding down in the finiculaire, down the stairs which form another of the pictures in Louise, with the abutting houses, into the rooms of which one looks, conscious of prying. And you see the old in these interiors, making shoes, or preparing dinner, or the middle-aged going to bed, but the young one never sees in the houses in the summer.... It was early and we decided to dance; I thought of the Moulin de la ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... thou be prying into God's secret decrees, or entertain questions about nice curiosities, thou mayest stumble and fall to thine eternal ruin. Take heed of that lofty spirit, that, devil-like, cannot be content with its own ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not allow it," she said simply. "He says that servants are always prying into one's concerns. Good night, Capitaine Rotherby! Thank you so much for taking me out this evening. After all, I cannot help feeling that it has been rather like the ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taken her sunbonnet off, and was enjoying the cool of the evening. He carried the rifle over the crook of his arm, and watched her pensive face. The poor little chipmunk lay stiffening in the cleft of the rock, forgotten. The next morning a prying jay discovered him and carried him away. He was only a little chipmunk after all—a very little chipmunk—and nobody and nothing missed him in all the wide world, not even his mate and his young, for mercifully grief in the animal world is generally short-lived where tragedies are frequent. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Mrs. Peaches," said Doctor John teasingly, as he stooped beside me. "Leave a few for—for the others." I waked up in a half-second and so did all those prying ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... moment when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite, concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling so unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of all her old indifference that side which confronted people had always been the most sturdy, the most solidly built. Without affectation she had been a profoundly incurious woman as to the lives and the concerns of others, even of those ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... his, and the small mouth Seemed almost prying into his for breath; And, chafing him, the soft, warm hand of youth Recalled his answering spirits back from death; And, bathing his chill temples, tried to soothe Each pulse to animation, till beneath Its gentle touch and trembling care, a ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... four days after Calhoun's return from the Oaks, the thought suggested itself to mischievous, prying Dick and his coadjutor Walter, that the key of some other lock in the house might fit that of the door they so ardently desired to open. They only waited for a favorable opportunity to test the question in the ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... face, saying, "Get thee behind me, Satan," so that he let her go. Whereupon she ran out at the door so suddenly that she threw me on the ground, and fell upon me with a loud cry. Hereat the sheriff, who had followed her, started, but presently cried out, "Wait, thou prying parson, I will teach thee to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... sit in his office and write up his diary, and recruit, and keep quiet, instead of showing up the incapacity of his seniors?" So the Nasiban Murder Case did him no good departmentally; but, after his first feeling of wrath, he returned to his outlandish custom of prying into native life. By the way, when a man once acquires a taste for this particular amusement, it abides with him all his days. It is the most fascinating thing in the world; Love not excepted. Where other men took ten days to the Hills, Strickland took leave for what ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that to speak against one's mind is intrinsically, necessarily, and always evil. But when a thing is thus evil in itself, there is no need to bring into the definition of the act, from a moral point of view, the intention with which it is done. There is no use in prying into ends, when the means taken is an unlawful means for any end. If a person blasphemes, we do not ask why he blasphemes: the intention is not part of the blasphemy: the utterance is a sin by itself. But if a person strikes, we ask why he strikes, to heal or to slay, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... chief, on one of these pieces of matting, the dwarf was regaling himself in the parlour, with bread and cheese and beer, when he observed without appearing to do so, that a boy was prying in at the outer door. Assured that it was Kit, though he saw little more than his nose, Mr Quilp hailed him by his name; whereupon Kit came in and demanded ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... stretching out thorny sprays, and twining tendrils, to catch and detain her prisoner?—or would they not rather, in their sweet liberty of air, and dew, and sunshine, have done their best to help forward this poor little captive in her flight, aiding her in her descent, and shielding her from all prying eyes with their leafy branches, their interlacing sprays of red buds, and soft, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... out of the box, feeling that he had intruded into private places. He had intended to be considerate and had achieved only the appearance of prying. "That's like me!" he thought, as he descended the stairs that led to the stalls. "I wonder why it is that I'm full of sympathy and understanding and tact in my books, and such a clumsy fool ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the remembrance of the other letter—Otto's. She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling, and burst into the Prince's armoury. The old chamberlain was there in waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her distress, struck ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... itself as a possible subject for artistic treatment. They had been called the detectives of history; they became detectives, inquisitors in real life, and, much as they loathed the occupation, they never rested from their task of spying and prying and "documentation." As with Charles Demailly, so with their other books: each character is studied after nature with a grim, revolting persistence. Their aunt, Mlle. de Courmont, is the model of Mlle. de Varandeuil in Germinie Lacerteux; Germinie herself is drawn from their ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... folly, to compare it to the conduct of some convicted rebel, who, when brought into the presence of his Sovereign, instead of seizing the occasion to sue for mercy, should even neglect and trifle with the pardon which should be offered to him, and insolently employ himself in prying into his Sovereign's designs, and criticising his counsels. Our case indeed is, in another point of comparison, but too much like that of the convicted rebel. But there is this grand difference—that at the best, his success must be uncertain, ours, if it be not our own fault, is sure; and ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... we beg For a devouring despot, lank of leg, Of prying eye, and frog-transfixing beak; Though singly we seem weak, United we are strong to smite or scoff. Off, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the manner of a petulant child. "I'll annoy them. I tell you I am not going to stand for a lot of people's coming here, sneaking and prying around to see what they can see. If anybody wants to enjoy a place like this let him work for it as ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Axphain, and they were invariably meant to establish communication between separated squads of robbers, all belonging to one band. My friends and I on more than one occasion narrowly escaped disaster by prying into the affairs of these signalers. I take it that the squads have been operating in the south and were brought together last night by means of the fires. Doubtless they have some big project of their own sort ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... can't," I said; and so Aaron went on, pulling and prying, but not one inch did the determined ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... her as much pleasure as the other did pain. This was the writing of a story which she intended to send away to a magazine. She wrote it in the back of an old notebook, and when she was not working at it she kept it carefully in the bottom of her shirtwaist box, where the prying eyes of her younger sister would not find it. She had all the golden dreams and aspirations of a young authoress writing her first story, and her days were filled with a secret delight when she thought of the riches that would soon be hers ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... stepped to a good-sized window near the head of the workbench. "Here's the fellow's private entrance!" And he pointed to where a heavy nail locking the lower sash had been forced aside, also to a series of indentations in the outer sill, where some prying tool had ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... unusually moved. Instead of answering, she hastily collected all the walking things, and carried them off to her room. Much astonished, as well as conscious that she had asked an unwise question, which must have sounded like prying, Estelle, in distress, ran ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... official knowledge of the result of our election, because the return of Mr. Van Benthuysen, one of your electors and neighbors, offers me a safe conveyance, at a moment when the post-offices will be peculiarly suspicious and prying. Your answer may come by post without danger, if directed in some other hand-writing than your own: and I will pray you to give me an answer as soon as you ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to prevent 826 B from seeing her. A sudden thought took possession of her mind; she would overthrow Frederika just as she herself had been overthrown. Yesterday, Saturday afternoon, she watched for 826 B in the hallways and chambers. The snuffling old wretch has a fashion of prying around in all parts of the house, under the fear that he is being robbed by the servants; and it was not long until Celestine encountered him. She threw herself ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... usually watchful. The injunction had a remarkable effect. At the dead of night, a soldier of the watch was going his rounds on the outside of the breastwork, listening, if perchance he might catch, as was not unusual, a portion of the conversation among the beleaguered burghers within. Prying about on every side, he at last discovered a chink in the wall, the result, doubtless, of the last cannonade, and hitherto overlooked. He enlarged the gap with his fingers, and finally made an opening wide enough to admit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... found out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont Blanc,—but I did not wish to know. We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chance coming your way now—or I'm much mistaken—which it would be madness to miss. This Miss Moore—she's dropped from the skies, but she's charming, she's a lady, she's just the woman for you. What, Dick? Think so yourself, do you? No, it's all right, I'm not prying. But this is a chance you'll never get again. And you can't ask her, you can't have the face to ask her, as long as you keep that half-witted creature dangling after you. It wouldn't be right, man, even if she'd have you. Look the thing in the face, and you'll be the first to say so! It ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... destiny, but one didn't pick a husband or lover as one chose a gown or a hat. One went along living, and the thing happened. Chance ruled there, she believed. The morality of her class prevented her from prying into this question of mating with anything like critical consideration. It was only to be thought about sentimentally, and it was easy for her to so think. Within her sound and vigorous body all the heritage of natural human impulses bubbled warmly, but she recognized neither their source ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... amounts, defying those in authority to take the plunder from them. However, such a course could not be entertained for one moment, and, moreover, were we to possess ourselves of all the contents of the jar, there was no secure place of concealment to be found, and unpleasant inquiries and prying eyes would soon have revealed to the world our ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... any one who goes meddling in my brush cupboard now that I've just put all in order against the prying and nozzling of the good-for-nothing baggage what's coming ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... great deal of curiosity, a very great deal, indeed. He was forever pushing his prying little nose into other people's affairs, which, you know, is a most unpleasant habit. In fact, Mr. ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... A prying rat, believing that She needed change of diet, In search of such disturbed this much- To-be-desired quiet. To say the least, this tactless beast Was apt to rudely roister: She tapped his shell, and called him—well, A name that hurt ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... distrustful question:—"Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Peckover, but are you quite sure you have kept what you know about little Mary and her mother, and dates and places and all that, properly hidden from prying people, since you were here last?" At which point Mrs. Peckover generally answered by repeating, always with the same sarcastic emphasis:—"Properly hidden, did you say, sir? Of course I keep what I know properly hidden, for of course I can hold my tongue. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... of the spinning-mule, born near Bolton; for five years he worked at his project, and after he got it into shape was tormented by people prying about him and trying to find out his secret; at last a sum was raised by subscription to buy it, and he got some L60 for it, by which others became wealthy, while he had to spend, and end, his days in comparative poverty, all he had to subsist on being a life annuity of L63 which ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... an hour before I was saying to myself that it was impossible to tell what was in people's heads or at the back of their talk, or what they were likely to be up to. And here I found myself up to as low a trick as you can well think of. For, after I had stooped, there I remained prying, spying, anyway looking, where I had no business to look. Not consciously at first, may be. He who has eyes, you know, nothing can stop him from seeing things as long as there are things to see in front of him. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Britain and her Colonies deliberately chose the dearest market for their purchases. In the same spirit, the price of freights was wilfully heightened by the Navigation-laws. Important branches of home industry were crippled by prying, vexatious, and wasteful excises. And this system was conceived to be the highest wisdom; or at any rate, to be so invincible a necessity that it could not be avoided or altered without danger. The country, if it were to make ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... did not care for her mother, asked his usual questions: "What leads you to wish to take up nursing? Are you interested in medicine, and fond of caring for the sick? For you should be, to enter such an exacting life." She seemed to misunderstand him altogether and take his inquiry for prying. She coloured, bit her lip, then lost her head and blurted out: "Interested in the sick! Of course not. Who could be, for they are always so aggravating. I don't mean to stay so very long at it, but it's a good chance to go into some swell family, and ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... political and social institutions by custom. They look askance at the man who dares to question what is established, not reflecting that all orthodoxies were once heterodox, that without innovation there could never have been any progress, and that if inquisitive fellows had not gone prying about in forbidden quarters ages ago, the world would still be peopled by savages dressed in nakedness, war-paint, and feathers. The mental stultification which begins in youth reaches ossification as men grow ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Dropping the cant-hook, I turned aft and crept forth through a small opening onto the wooden frame which supported the motionless paddlewheel, choosing for the scene of operations the river side, where the boat effectively concealed my movements from any prying eyes ashore. Everyone aboard would be clustered forward, curiously watchful of that line of soldiers filing across the gangplank and seeking quarters upon deck. The only danger of observation lay in some straggler along the near-by bank. I lowered ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... woodpecker is as terrifying to a little insect in the bark of a tree as the breaking open of our shutters by a burglar would be to us. But at night she was safe in her lofty nook. At night no creatures came prying. ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... by the veranda door, because he bade me do so, to avoid what he termed 'the prying of servants.' I broke some clusters of chrysanthemums blooming in the rose garden, to carry to my mother, and then I hurried away. If the wages of disobedience be death, then fate reversed the mandate, and obedience exacts my life as a forfeit. Think of it: I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... into a bad swale that afternoon and Samson had to cut some corduroy to make a footing for team and wagon and do much prying with the end of a heavy pole under the front axle. By and by the horses ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... him by bringing the matter into court. Stafford, for once becoming interested in the argument, declared decisively that the woman was right, that, having entered into a matrimonial compact, she was in honor bound to conceal from prying outsiders any domestic differences they might have. Virginia promptly differed with him and proceeded to give her reasons. Stafford was no match for her when it came to sociology and he could only grunt disapproval as she ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... accusation yet more malicious, an accusation not only of crimes which this gentleman did not commit, but which have not yet been committed, an accusation formed by prying into futurity, and exaggerating misfortunes which are yet to come, and which may probably be prevented. Well may any man, my lords, think himself in danger, when he hears himself charged not with high crimes and misdemeanours, not with accumulative treason, but with misconduct ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... head,—that there is not a drop in all thy bitter cup but what a God of love saw to be absolutely necessary! Wilt thou not trust Him, even though thou canst not trace the mystery of His dealings? Not too curiously prying into the "Why it is?" or "How it is?" but satisfied that "So it is," and, therefore that all must be well! "Although thou sayest, thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before Him, therefore trust thou ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... out, and in spite of Archelaus, who had brought his master's boat round and moored her cunningly under the lee of the rocks overhung by the Keg of Butter Battery. There, while the weather held, the Commandant and his guest could slip away without fear of prying eyes and sail off among the islands—as they had sailed off yesterday, Vashti sitting low and covering herself with a spare-sail, until beyond sight of St. Lide's quay and the houses on the slope. To ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... most striking feature of this striking scene was to be found in the custom of masking, then almost universal in Venice, and the origin of which may be traced in great part to dread of the Inquisition, and of its prying enquiries into the actions and affairs of individuals. Amidst the sea of faces that thronged roofs, windows, balconies, streets, and quays, the minority only were uncovered, and the immense collection of masks, of every form and colour, had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... looking very black, "that no one, not even my daughter, is permitted to go where I forbid.—As for you, you prying fool," added he, turning on me, "you shall see whether I am to be obeyed ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... these years can be sent to the court; for the scriveners are intimidated and will not give official statements of anything of what occurs, except what may be in favor of the governor and the archbishop. Item, [this] is written in much distrust and fear, on account of the numerous spies who go about prying into and noting everything that is done. One notary is in prison on account of a statement that he drew up; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... see no trace of her, nor of her water-cresses. She seemed to have vanished clean out of sight. "It is very odd," thought Little Red Riding Hood to herself, "for surely I can walk faster than she." Then she kept looking about her, and prying into all the bushes, to see for the green huntsman, whom she had never heard of before, and wondered why the old woman had given her such a message. At last, just as she was passing by a pool of stagnant water, so green that you would have taken it ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... to the depths of the silken bag, Inga fastened it securely around his neck and buttoned his waist above it to hide the treasure from all prying eyes. Then he slowly climbed down from the tree and returned to the room where King ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... for unfolding to you the mysteries of my conduct, the motives of which have baffled even your keen sight, your prying affection, and your subtlety. I am to be married in a country village near Paris. I love and am loved. I love as much as a woman can who knows love well. I am loved as much as a woman ought to be by the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... ridiculous occurrences, it is said, that some of Charles's gallantries were discovered by a prying neighbour. A wily old minister was deputed, by his brethren, to rebuke the king for this heinous scandal. Being introduced into the royal presence he limited his commission to a serious admonition, that, upon such occasions, his majesty should always shut the windows.—The king ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... indicative of wounded pride and disappointed ambition. He seemed to feel deeply the degradation of his situation. Shorn of power among his people, compelled to acknowledge the authority of his rival, and bending beneath the infirmities of age, it is not singular that he should shrink from the prying gaze of curiosity, and sigh for the deep seclusion of ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... favorite location for him, the warm sawdust furnishing a good burrowing place for a nest or sleeping room. When a building is used as a nesting place, the bird very cunningly drills the entrance close up under the eaves, where it is sheltered from storms, and at the same time out of sight of all prying eyes. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... an attic-window I found a Minie-ball. Prying it out with my knife, and holding it up to Turner, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... from Sardis a Syrian sausage-seller, named Bargus, who, with native address, had insinuated himself into his good graces and obtained a subordinate command in the army. The prying omniscience of Eutropius discovered that, years before, this same Bargus had been forbidden to enter Constantinople for some misdemeanor, and by means of this knowledge he gained an ascendency over the Syrian, and compelled him to accuse his benefactor, Timasius, of a treasonable conspiracy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... gay scene, then, there were anxious and thoughtful bosoms. Lord Rivers was silent and abstracted; his son's laugh was hollow and constrained; the queen, from her pavilion, cast, ever and anon, down the green alleys more restless and prying looks than the hare or the deer could call forth; her mother's brow was knit and flushed. And keenly were those illustrious persons watched by one deeply interested in the coming events. Affecting to discharge ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... almost reconciled to my new situation when who should rush into the kitchen but le fils de la maison, my young master, an ugly urchin of thirteen years, or thereabouts. He bore in his hand a manchet of bread, which, after prying about for a moment, he proceeded to dip in the pan where some delicate woodcocks were in the course of preparation. You know, mon maitre, how sensitive I am on certain points, for I am no Spaniard, but a Greek, and have principles of honour. Without a moment's hesitation I took my young master by ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... pleasure; but if the Fates bring us two together I will owe heaven a favor. I don't know what it is, but some god's silent purpose is beneath this. Circe loves not Polyaenos without some reason; a great torch is always flaming when these names meet! Take me in your arms then, if you will; there's no prying stranger to fear, and your 'brother' is far away from this spot!" So saying, Circe clasped me in arms that were softer than down and drew me to the ground which was covered with ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... will then be in my opinion in all respects an excellent fellow." For he who receives pardon on small matters is content that his friend should rebuke him on matters of more moment: but the man who is ever on the scold, everywhere sour and glum, knowing and prying into everything, is scarcely tolerable to his children or brothers, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... DYSON (says Hearne) a person of a very strange, prying, and inquisitive genius, in the matter of books, as may appear from many libraries; there being books, chiefly in old English, almost in every library, that have belonged to him, with his name upon them." Peter Langtoft's ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... what went on in my household, and anything of value that could be discovered there. Doubtless the girl, for whom my wife, in spite of her occasional fits of reserve and temper, entertained no little liking, enjoyed many opportunities of prying; and would have continued still to serve him had not this last piece of villainy, with the stir which it caused in the house and the rigorous punishment to be expected in the event of discovery, proved too much for her nerves. Hence this burst of confession; which once allowed ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... reason, when your engagements forbid me the ecstatic happiness of seeing you, I am always desirous to be alone; since my sentiments for Leonora are so delicate, that I cannot bear the apprehension of another's prying into those delightful endearments with which the warm imagination of a lover will sometimes indulge him, and which I suspect my eyes then betray. To fear this discovery of our thoughts may perhaps appear too ridiculous ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... piercing eyes, made more prominent by the unusual lowness of the forehead, told more surely than language, of their owner's propensity to investigate the affairs of her neighbor, and proved her claim to the complimentary title, they had bestowed upon her, viz:—"That prying old mother, Wynn." But what was still more strange, was the silver hair of both these old people, and which their age did not seem to warrant. The lady, however, with a little lingering of feminine vanity in her heart, had made an awkward attempt ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
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