|
|
|
More "Skittish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were behaving very well, trudging along sturdily with their riders, and every hour proving more and more the value of Yussuf's choice. There was no restiveness or skittish behaviour, save that once or twice the little cream-coloured fellow which Lawrence had selected for himself and christened Ali Baba had shown a disposition to bite one of his companions. He soon gave up, though, and walked or trotted steadily on in the file, Yussuf ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... the happy father drink a glass off at one gulp, his heels well together in military fashion. Minora thought the incident typical of German manners, and not only made notes about it, but joined heartily in the health-drinking, and afterward grew skittish. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... frightened to death if she could only have seen the way they pranced at her funeral last fall. I was determined then that they should never draw me;" and Aunt Pen shivered for herself beforehand. "And I can't have them from Timlin's, for the same reason," said she. "All his animals are skittish; and you remember when a pair of them took fright and dashed away from the procession and ran straight to the river, and there'd have been four other funerals if the schooner at the wharf hadn't stopped the runaways. And Timlins has a way, too, of letting white horses follow the hearse ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... with the one-sided broom when Brit drove out through the gate and up the trail which she knew led eventually to Sugar Spring. The horses, sleek in their new hair and skittish with the change from hay to new grass, danced over the rough ground so that the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would later do duty as a brake on the long grade down ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... most eventful day in my life, for it was very nearly the termination of it. I was riding Diaway, the colt just shod; he is seldom ridden, though a very fine hack, as he is such a splendid weight-carrier as a packhorse; he is rather skittish, and if anything goes wrong with his pack, he'll put it right (on the ground) almost instantaneously. I was driving all the horses up to the camp, when one broke from the mob, and galloped across the creek. There was a bank of stones about three feet high, which was hidden by a growth ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Yas, suh, settin' yonder after I made that motion, I sez to myse'f, I sez, 'Glass, you done started this thing an' you must see it th'ough. 'Twon't never do in this world fur the gran' marshal to be stuck up 'pon the top side of a skittish, skeery liver'-stable hoss that'll mebbe start cuttin' up right in the smack middle of things and distrac' the gran' marshal's mind frum his business.' I seen that happen mo' times 'en onct, wid painful results. I s'pose, tho, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Uncle Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish, curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once asked her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she did not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... matrimony. She had done so before now; and Iglesias, while presenting a dignified front to the enemy, had inwardly shuddered. She was an excellent, estimable woman; but when ponderously arch, when extensively sly! Oh, dear no! It didn't do. Her gambols were too sadly suggestive of those of a skittish hippopotamus. Dominic Iglesias was conscious that he had a skin too little to-night; he could not witness them with philosophy. The kindliest intention, the best-meant words, might cause him ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... get over that. You might be of great use to me, Jack, in a very delicate affair—for you know how it is with women; they must be handled as a man would handle this brig among breakers; Rose, in partic'lar, is as skittish as a colt." ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... these old oysters will have a fleeting moment of human pity and disgorge some tip on which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so constantly at Mrs Peagrim's house." Uncle Chris shivered slightly. "A fearsome woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as skittish as a young lamb in springtime! She makes me dance with her!" Uncle Chris' lips quivered in a spasm of pain, and he was silent for a moment. "Thank heaven I was once a footballer!" he ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... is. Uncle wants to bring about a match, because Mad's plantation joins ours. Mad acted as if he owned me already when he was home last, and yet he knows I can't abide him. He seems to think I can be subdued like one of his skittish horses." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... 'Elmnest is as much yours as mine, as I told you when you sprigged off to marry in town. Get your dimity together, Nancy! Your grandmother Craddock's haircloth trunk is strapped on behind her carriage there, and Rufus will drive you home. These mules are too skittish for him to handle. Fine pair, eh, William?' And right there in the early dawn, almost in front of the garage that contained his touring Chauvinnais and my gray roadster, father stood in his velvet dressing-gown and admired the two ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at all, was as inevitable as the sequence of the seasons. Ella and Grace did not manage badly, considering that they had only their girlish prettiness and the twine hammock to work with. But Flora, with her beauty, captured H. Charnsworth Baldwin. Chippewa gasped. H. Charnsworth Baldwin drove a skittish mare to a high-wheeled yellow runabout (this was twenty years ago); had his clothes made at Proctor Brothers in Milwaukee, and talked about a game called golf. It was he who advocated laying out a section of land for what he called links, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... cloud had passed Mathilde was no longer on the garden wall. She lay prone on the ground in a field on the opposite side of the wall. Horsemen were all about her. Now and then a horse narrowly missed stepping on her, and those Uhlans must have wondered that night why their horses were so skittish. ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... and skittish horses whirled him rapidly along to Mr. Perekatov's house. It was a summer day, close and sultry. Not a cloud anywhere. The blue of the sky was so thick and dark on the horizon that the eye mistook it for storm-cloud. The house Mr. Perekatov had ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... that there's any white wool in the world; there are so many of these skittish little black lambkins ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... tell you," he answered, good-humoredly, and not the least disturbed by Manning's quiet reflection on the bravery of stage drivers in general. "When a fellow has to manage four tolerably skittish horses with both hands full of leather, he haint much time to fool around huntin' shootin' irons, 'specially when he's got to look down into the muzzle of a repeater which is likely to go off ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Like a skittish horse old Gid shied at the office door. Once he had crossed that threshold and it had cost him a crop ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... you to be a coward, and I don't think there is any use of going now. I don't like to be in a boat with a fellow who is skittish when the wind blows," continued Paul, who was determined to make the most of their previous experience. "It isn't safe to have a fellow jumping about in the boat when there's a heavy sea on. You might upset her, cantering about over the thwarts ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... managed with dexterity, as a horse is never to be depended on that is skittish about the tail. Let your hand fall lightly and rapidly on that part next to the body a minute or two, and then you will begin to give it a slight pull upwards every quarter of a minute. At the same time you continue ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... fashion, and the chains were less obtrusively displayed, she had to thank Mr. Sheldon for the refinement in her taste. Her views of life in general had expanded under Mr. Sheldon's influence. She no longer thought a high-wheeled dog-cart and a skittish mare the acme of earthly splendour; for she had a carriage and pair at her service, and a smart little page-boy to leap off the box in attendance on her when she paid visits or went shopping. Instead of the big comfortable old-fashioned farmhouse at Hyley, with its mysterious passages ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Grange one evening—a dark evening, threatening thunder—and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were skittish and would not ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... which refused to be persuaded were simply lifted in by the sailors. 'Though all are thin and some few looked pulled down I was agreeably surprised at the evident vitality which they still possessed—some were even skittish. I cannot express the relief when the whole seventeen were safely picketed ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... have meant no more than the natural coyness of a maiden whom the learned Upton somewhat drolly designates as "a skittish female." [3] Indeed, Spenser must have thought so himself, and with reason, for she continues to receive his presents, "the kids, the cracknels, and the early fruit," sent through his friend Hobbinoll ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and Caleb understood that he meant the trap. "An' I reckon I'd better not lug my weapon into the house, neither, hed I? She might——" He nodded in the direction of Sarah's disappearance—"Old Tom says womin folks that's gentle born air kind-a skittish about havin' shootin' irons araound the place. And I don't reckon it's the part of men folks to ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... was a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's a future in you. Why don't you ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... heaven, where he should see strange mysteries, which were not lawful to be seen by any other man. He prayed him, then, to get upon Alborak; but the beast, having lain idle and unemployed from the time of Christ to Mahomet, was grown so mettlesome and skittish, that he would not stand still for Mahomet to mount him, till at length he was forced to bribe him to it by promising him a place in paradise. When he was firmly seated on him, the angel Gabriel led the way, with the bridle of the beast in his hand, and carried ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... thinking I recommend you mere contubernium, as the lawyers call it. Well, I confess I did think of that for a moment, it occurred to me; I should have liked to have mentioned it, but knowing how preposterously touchy and skittish you are on supposed points of honour, or sentiment, or romance, or of something or other indescribable, I said not one word about that. I have only wished to consult for your comfort, present and future. You don't do me justice, Agellius. I have been attempting to smooth your way. You must act ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the plump, pink, smiling face of one of those very women of the buyer type on whom she had speculated ten minutes before—a good-natured face with shrewd, twinkling eyes. At sight of it you forgave her her skittish ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... theory considered play simply the discharge of surplus nerve force in the animal's organism. He was supposed to play when he felt fresh and vigorous. The horse is "skittish" and playful in the morning, not so much so at night. The dogs lie down and rest when they are tired, having used up their surplus energies. This is called the Surplus-Energy Theory ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... limestone, or slate formed the grander height beyond, thus leading to schemes of more distant rides to verify the conjectures, which Rachel accepted with the less argument, because sententious dogmatism was not always possible on the back of a skittish black mare. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... persuaded him to trot the animal to and fro in front of the hotel. There was a good deal of noise and hoof-clattering, and people came to their doors to see what was going on. Obviously, if they were watching the antics of a skittish two-year-old in the high-street, their eyes were blind to proceedings in the back premises. Even the postmaster and his daughter were interested onlookers, and a policeman, who might have put a summary end to the display, vanished as though ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... already had of his yoke-fellow,—one of the most skittish, explosive, unruly creatures in harness,—cannot be counted wise to have plunged so heartily into such an adventure with him. "An undoubted Courser of the Sun!" thought Friedrich;—and forgot too much the signs ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... horse of some light material, fastened round the waist of the morrice-dancer, who imitated the movements of a skittish horse. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... something Trojan, Illiadic, in the way in which they moved out presently, to bay. The first tang of salt air, that rotten, indescribable smell of the sea, tickled her nostrils. It was all she could do to keep from being drunk with it. She felt skittish. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... said he, leering round upon us, "they tell me your pretty Penelope takes something more than a common interest in yonder fop; have a care, Sir John, she's a plaguey skittish filly by the looks of her, have a ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... she said. "They want to, I'm sure of that, but yet neither one of 'em will speak first. Such foolishness I never did see. Now take yesterday! Cousin Sam went to town, and Cousin Sim werried every single minute he was gone. The mare was skittish, and the harness might break, and he might meet the cars, and I don't know what all. If he called me off my work once he did a dozen times, till I thought I should fly. By the time Cousin Sam got back he was all worn out, and soon ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... be the son of a bitch if I lie! Ask, and all the officers will bear witness, all the army will tell you that in the second army, ninth corps, second division of infantry, fiftieth yager regiment, Major Plut is the foremost dancer of the mazurka. Come on, young lady! Don't be so skittish, for I shall ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... working like the busy bees; even Bumpus tried to assist in hauling at the cable, having moved forward when the boat no longer pranced and bobbed on the agitated sea like a skittish horse. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... a touch of malice. She coloured, but replied "Good-morning" with a sweet composure. He eyed her askance, but had no opportunity for more words, as old Hugo just then clambered up into the dog-cart, and took the reins of the rather skittish young mare which was ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly drilled ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... and called me, surprised at not finding herself in my arms, her whole being would not become languid, and suddenly sink into a state of prostration? I wanted to reason with myself, and bring myself face to face with those cursed suggestions, as one does with a skittish horse before some object that frightens it, and to evoke the recollection of every hour, every minute of that first night of love, and to extract the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... big herd of horses[14]—oh, what a big herd! There were horses old and young, and foals running beside their mothers; horses brown, dun-colored, black, and white; and all of them were so bright and shiny and fat and skittish! They trotted and ran, with heads tossing,—those ahead being passed by others, then those behind getting ahead again,—making a noise almost like the ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... Newgate, as he was going to proclaim Bartholomew Fair. The city custom is, it seems, to drink always under Newgate when the Lord Mayor passes that way; and at this time the Lord Mayor's horse, being somewhat skittish,-started at the sight of the large glittering tankard which was reached to his lordship." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and the second thing is education. That is where I'm a little skittish about this college business. I'm not starting in to preach to you, because I know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... said—'a little skittish, but very affectionate, and has a fine mouth. Perhaps she ought to have a curb-bit ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... that's a sight for sore eyes!" exclaimed the nurse. "I am as pleased as punch to find you here; but I've been thinking that like as not, you're scared of sick folks; there's plenty of people that are; but there's nothing to be skittish about; I think this poor dear will get ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... teaches that the skittish god must not be scared by a premature exhibition of the noose hid beneath the sieve of corn. Champagne suppers and love among the roses—yes. But there should be, also, cunningly hidden, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... shied an' backed off'n the bluff—that air whut the country-side will think. Whenst his body is fund his head will be mashed ter a jelly by the fall, an' nobody kin say he kem otherwise by his death—jes' an accident in drivin' a skittish horse-critter." ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... I've forgotten the cushion. I must go and get it. But the nose-rope makes the bullocks skittish. I suppose I had better take the cart along with ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... meaning plain since the first I saw you; it's to take you to church and take care of you as a woman ought to be took care of by a man. And you know I could do it, Jen, for my wages is good; but you've shied an' shied whenever you've seen me, and baulked an' baulked when you couldn't shy, so as no skittish ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... comfortable phaeton, speaking the presence of Mr. Pound and Mrs. Pound, who used it as their own; the Buckwalters' rockaway and the Rickabachs' spring-wagon. Even Miss Agnes Spinner's bicycle had a fence panel all to itself, as though it were very skittish and likely to kick and set the whole road in commotion. To my own unimportant self I never attributed this assembly of all the great folk of the valley. There was some more potent reason. As I pondered, hunting for it, we came to the lane. Until I found that reason ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... gloriously towards the house, with Bill and Jerry in a full canter, and adroitly throwing himself off before they had any idea of stopping, he brought them up alongside of the horse-post like a tornado. Haley's horse, which was a skittish young colt, winced, and bounced, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stirrups?" asked Roy. "Stand in them. Guess they're about right.... Careful now! Thet hoss is skittish. Hold him in." ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... conveying young men and young women of such clean-cut, high-bred features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and there is such a thing as a mail-order business in ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... ranch-wagon, with its high spring-seat, was drawn up beside a telegraph pole to which the skittish young horses had been securely tied. Anne went over to meet Jeb, and said, with ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... well defined as elegantly skittish; She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do; And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British, And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, and quite suddenly you may find yourself prostrate upon a surface of slippery blue ice. It may be easily imagined that it is no seemly place to exercise skittish ponies or mules in a cold wind, but there is no other place ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... she replied, "but I know not exactly how to go. I do not wish to take my carriage; your nag is so skittish that I am afraid to undertake the journey ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... from the inner room a trim, lithe, almost boyishly slim figure attired in a bewitchingly skittish-looking garment consisting of knickerbockers and snug brassiere of king's blue satin messaline. Dainty black silk stockings and tiny buckled slippers set off ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... out of the horse shows any viciousness towards other horses or towards human beings; also, whether he is skittish; (8) such defects are apt to cause his ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque [Fr.]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U.S.], particular, humorsome^, freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c 83; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle &c (irresolute) 605; frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile. Adv. by fits and starts, without rhyme or reason. Phr. nil fuit unquain sic inipar sibi [Lat.]; the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Legend a sea-dog who cannot speak without a nautical metaphor; Jeremy an idealised comic servant; and Foresight grotesque farce. Angelica is a shrewd but hearty 'English girl,' and Miss Prue a veritable country Miss; while Mrs. Frail and Mrs. Foresight are broadly skittish matrons. There is nothing in the play to strain the attention or to puzzle the intellect, and it is full of laughter: no wonder it was a success. It is, intellectually, on an altogether different plane from The Way of the World, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of thinking, 'tis for women, kind and wise, These neglected scattered units to enrol and mobilize, Their vagabond activities to curb and concentrate, And turn the skittish hoyden to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... And the young lady, with a laugh, sat down, looking so pleased, and good-natured, and merry, that even old Tamar was fain to smile a glimmering smile; and little Margery actively brought the tea-caddy; and the kettle, being in a skittish singing state, quickly went off in a boil, and Tamar actually made tea ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... crittur she, poor thing!" said Bruce, looking after her commiseratingly; "and a stranger might think her no more nor half-witted. But she has sense enough, poor crittur! and, I reckon, is just as smart, if she war not so humble and skittish, as any ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque[Fr]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c. n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U. S.], particular, humorsome[obs3], freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c. 83; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle &c. (irresolute) 605; frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile. Adv. by fits and starts, without rhyme or reason. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... grant and the gold mine. Rufe and Tennessee added their company without any definite intention. Pete and Joe were hurrying out of the house toward the group. All the dogs congregated, some of them climbing over the fence to investigate the colt, which was skittish under the ordeal. Even the turkey-gobbler, strutting on the outskirts of the assemblage, had an attentive aspect, as if he, too, relished ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... sincerity of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU, Kernel, diet she should ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... 10, 1865, and was sent to San Diego, Texas; but I never was in a battle. And they was only one time when I felt anyways skittish. That was when I was a new recruit on picket duty. And it was pitch dark, and I heard something comin' th'ough the bushes, and I thought, 'Let 'em come, whoever it is'. And I got my bayonet all ready, and waited. I'se ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... another time," said Burr, not finishing his sentence, and the pair, urging their horses to a faster gait came up with the others. Just then the party met a robust countryman who saluted the Morgans, as he trotted by on a skittish colt. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... sits above." He laughed, with a motion towards the ceiling, signifying the direction of the governor's office. "By the way, I was sorry about that bill you were interested in," he went on; "upon my word I was—but we're skittish just now on the subject of corporations. Charters are dangerous things—you can't tell where they're leading you, eh?—but, on my ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... are both princes of great nobleness and spirits. The barge put me into another boat that come to our side, Mr. Holder with a bag of gold to the Duke, and so they away and I home to the office. The Duke of Monmouth is the most skittish leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping, or clambering. Thence mighty full of the honour of this day, I took coach and to Kate Joyce's, but she not within, but spoke with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to kill off a few of your skittish horses," observed a stout, sandy-mustached man, one of the two who had left the car. "If you don't, they're ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... the manager. "She'll teach you to dance and shy assegais. Pore thing! she buried her 'usband the day afore we come here, but you'll be surprised to see 'ow skittish she can be when she has got over it ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... mighty near the bar 'long 'bout sundown last night. Kinder skittish actin' hussy she was, but she turned out an' cleared off without much trouble. We ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... public'ouses, but to make up for it she went into sweet-stuff shops three times and 'ad ices while they stood and watched 'er and wondered 'ow she could do it. And arter that she stopped at a place Poplar way, where there was a few swings and roundabouts and things. She was as skittish as a school-gal, and arter taking pore Sam on the roundabout till 'e didn't know whether he was on his 'eels or his 'ead, she got 'im into a boat-swing and swung 'im till he felt like a boy on 'is fust v'y'ge. Arter that she took 'im to the rifle gallery, and afore he had 'ad three ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... thought on country or freedom. No voluntary sacrifices to be expected here. What we want we must buy, and pay for; it is only to see that we do not pay too much for it. Selfish, timid, grasping, these people are a skittish set to deal with. Nobody understands better the game of 'the spider and the fly,' and they are as ready to play it with the state as with smaller opponents, if the state will but let them. From his first visit to this region, to the present time, our able ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ma'am," said Andy. "It gets skittish, just like horses—but if I take it out sometimes, ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... he'll probably never beat the record of them that is, but I've kept an eye on him this summer, and I tell you he's developing the traits that win every time. Last spring, when the judge made this offer, he was as skittish and unreliable as a young colt. I wouldn't have trusted him around the corner to do an errand for me. I've known him ever since he put on the district messenger uniform, and I wouldn't have given one of his own brass buttons for him. I've come across him too many times, when ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Boy, if euer thou shalt loue In the sweet pangs of it, remember me: For such as I am, all true Louers are, Vnstaid and skittish in all motions else, Saue in the constant image of the creature That is belou'd. How dost thou like this tune? Vio. It giues a verie eccho to the seate ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... remember where she had seen her. Though she could remember nothing, the association seemed to be one of pain. In vain she beat her brains. Memory was an almost uncultivated quality with her, and, like the rest of her intellectual powers, had a nervous, skittish way of deserting her in need, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... park, and across the common, and round the base of Blackman's Hanger, as fast as her clever mare could carry her with any degree of comfort to either. The clever mare was somewhat skittish from want of work, and inclined to show her cleverness by shying at every stray rabbit, or crocodile-shaped excrescence in the way of fallen timber, lying within her range of vision; but Ida was too anxious to be disconcerted by any such small surprises, and rode on ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Wadin round here over shoe-mouth deep in woe, When they's a graded 'pike o' joy and sunshine don't you know! When evening strikes the pastur', cows'll pull out fer the bars, And skittish-like from out the night'll prance the happy stars. And so when my time comes to die, and I've got ary friend 'At wants expressed my last request— I'll mebby, rickommend To drive slow, ef they haf to, goin' 'long the out'ard track, But I'll smile and say, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... for the time being. But it made the Mayor nervous the way Portate was keyed up for tragedy, and the way Sadler acted as if he wasn't going to escape real mysterious. For the Mayor had to please the British consul and Ferdinand Street and the Transport Company; but the Hottentots were skittish, and the Mayor ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... creature, to guide them about alleys and by-paths, because imaginary creatures find little nourishment in the public highways, and shun them. Thus must these timid persons skulk about obscurely with their diffident and skittish guides, and they do not ever venture willingly into the thronged places where men get horses and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... in, "the testimony was to the effect that he was riding a young, skittish horse, which was startled by stray hogs breaking at a dead run through the bushes, and that the horse bolted and ran away. And the man died from concussion of the brain. That would have happened if we had had a road of the first class, twenty feet wide, instead of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... by her, too, Aunt Emily. I rather shy at perfect types; girls, at the best, make me skittish. They make me think of myself ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... your money. Which of you will go to the Cross next Saturday and there buy him a fairer wife than he can wed out of our lineages? and a wife withal of whose humours he need take no more account of than the dullness of his hound or the skittish temper of his mare, so long as the thong smarts, and the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... poem, play, or novel is at least as fine an achievement as a good history; yet the history gets the benefit of an expert's judgment and two columns of thoughtful pimse or censure, while the poem, play, or novel is treated to ten skittish lines by the hack who happens to be within nearest call when the book ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... to proceed far in explanation; and he was studious in the sequel to prevent the young folks from being too intimately acquainted with each other's inclinations. Grimes, of consequence, attributed the reluctance of Miss Melville to maiden coyness, and the skittish shyness of an unbroken filly. Indeed, had it been otherwise, it is not probable that it would have made any effectual impression upon him; as he was always accustomed to consider women as made for the recreation ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... you; honest, never a mouse dares show the tip of his nose outside the cellar! If you don't go down there, you're as safe as you would be up in a balloon. And I don't count none the less on you for acting skittish ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... sixteen!" Without specifying to which of the two latter classes our present medium belonged, one might venture to say she had safely passed the former. She was of that ripe and Rubens-like beauty to which we could well imagine some "Higher" spirit offering the golden apple of its approval, however the skittish Paris of the spheres might incline to sweet sixteen. I had a short time before sat infructuously with this lady, when a distressing contretemps occurred. We were going in for a dark seance then, and just as we fancied the revenants were about to justify the title, we were startled ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... spirit craved a spice of the dangerous in everything, had taken immediately to the sorrel, who had apparently been given no name. He was a skittish horse, gentle, as Andy explained, but "pow'ful nervous—had to be sort o' ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... much. I simply told him not to lose his nerve; that a woman never meant 'no'; that she often says it only to be made say 'yes.' And I ended up with telling him if she got a little skittish, as thoroughbreds do sometimes, to try a strong arm. That was ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... wanted to enjoy the rector's company they must be prepared to put up with his sister's, since the canons of a country neighbourhood forbade inviting the one without the other, and on this particular evening Forrester had chaffed her into such good humour that she became quite skittish, and contributed some truly surprising outbursts of frivolity ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... without a second's delay he was gone. Hugh put out his whole strength in the endeavor to raise himself somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat sidled away from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling with it he only slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it as ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... old barky jumped out of the way of those rovers in the cutter?" said the captain complacently to the quarter-deck group, when his survey aloft had taken sufficient heed that his own nautical skill should correct the instinct of the ship. "A skittish horse, or a whale with the irons in him, or, for that matter, one of the funniest of your theatricals, would not have given a prettier aside than this poor old hulk, which is certainly just the clumsiest craft that sails ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the footway, and was joking with Madame Taboureau's little servant. He seemed quite gay and skittish that morning. He took hold of the little servant's hands, and squeezed her fingers so tightly, in the exuberance of his spirits, that he made her cry out. Lisa had the greatest trouble to get him to go back ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me; For such as I am all true lovers are, Unstaid and skittish in all motions else. Save in the constant image of the creature That is beloved. Twelfth Night, Act ii. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... till happening to meet another man, also airing a pair of skittish horses,—the capering of the horses, or something else, roused the brute's savage nature, and he sprang on one of them like a tiger, fastening on his flank, and sucking his blood so greedily that all the two men could do did not make the savage beast ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... brutes, Though somewhat skittish; the foam is whit'ning The crest and rein of my courser "Lightning"; He pulls to-night, being short of work, And takes his head with a sudden jerk; Still heel and steady hand on the bit, For that is "Tempest" on ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... with dexterity, as a horse is never to be depended on that is skittish about the tail. Let your hand fall lightly and rapidly on that part next to the body a minute or two, and then you will begin to give it a slight pull upwards every quarter of a minute. At the same time you continue this handling of him, augment the force of the strokes as well as the raising ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... a member of this household. Even Fanny Fitz, with all her optimism, knew better than to expect that William O'Loughlin, who divided his attentions between the ancient cob and the garden, and ruled the elder Misses Fitzroy with a rod of iron, would undertake the education of anything more skittish than early potatoes. It was to the stable, or rather cow-house, of one Johnny Connolly, that the new purchase was ultimately conveyed, and it was thither that Fanny Fitz, with apples in one pocket ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... enterin' the ring wi' them sausage-eaters I'd raither 'ave a dozen Lancashire or Devon lads about me than all the Frenchies you could put in Hyde Park. It ain't that these here spec'mens don't 'ave a good sound heart as far as standin' up and takin' knocks is concerned, but they be too frisky and skittish for my likin'. I see 'em all wavin' their arms like as if a carriage and pair has run away, and talkin' all at once and together, likewise and sim'lar. Wot's more, they does it in a lingo that no one can't go for to make out, not even a Frenchy hisself, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... conscience. As I have said, they are not. The vast majority of those who appear in the public haunts of sin are there, not to engage in overt acts of ribaldry, but merely to tremble agreeably upon the edge of the abyss. They are the same skittish experimentalists, precisely, who throng the midway at a world's fair, and go to smutty shows, and take in sex magazines, and read the sort of books that our vice crusading friend reads. They like to conjure up the charms of ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... changeableness; how soon he tires of the music he calls for, of the clown's song (II. iv.). Is his first speech to Viola, on woman's constancy before the song, consistent with his second, after it? Is his own report of himself true,—'Unstaid and skittish in all motions else Save in the constant image of the one beloved'? Is Olivia's unattainableness the main source of her desirableness for him? How is it with Sebastian? Does his loyalty in love seem to be of the sort that suffers impairment when he can win love ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... fashionable circles at decent intervals. Later, Peter learned to know their redoubtable relatives as "Rabbits" and "The Grampus," and he once saw a terrifyingly truthful portrait of "Rabbits" sketched on a skittish model's bare back, and a movingly realistic little figure of "The Grampus" modeled by her dutiful nephew in a moment of diabolical inspiration. It was explained to him that God, for some inscrutable purpose of his own, generally pleases himself by bestowing only the most limited human intelligence ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... was over he sauntered out into the market square, where the horse sale was already in progress. The yearlings were being sold first—tall, long-legged, skittish, wild-eyed creatures, who had run free upon the upland pastures, with ragged hair and towsie manes, but hardy, inured to all weathers, and with the makings of splendid hunters and steeplechasers when corn and time had brought ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to rest the eye on, To see a Christian creature graze at Sion, Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full, Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke, At crippled Papistry to butt and poke, Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull Haunts an old ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... some tip on which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so constantly at Mrs Peagrim's house." Uncle Chris shivered slightly. "A fearsome woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as skittish as a young lamb in springtime! She makes me dance with her!" Uncle Chris' lips quivered in a spasm of pain, and he was silent for a moment. "Thank heaven I was once a footballer!" he ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the reins of her skittish, snorting pony and picked up Lennon's new sombrero. Through the middle of the high peak was a neatly drilled ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... said Mr. Tredgold to himself, wearily. "Two skittish octogenarians, one gloomy baby, one gloomier nursemaid, and three dogs in the last five minutes. If it wasn't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... belonged, one might venture to say she had safely passed the former. She was of that ripe and Rubens-like beauty to which we could well imagine some "Higher" spirit offering the golden apple of its approval, however the skittish Paris of the spheres might incline to sweet sixteen. I had a short time before sat infructuously with this lady, when a distressing contretemps occurred. We were going in for a dark seance then, and just as we fancied the revenants were about to justify the title, we were ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... hooked to a ring-bolt in amidships. In action, particularly in violent action, the guns became very hot, and "kicked" dangerously. Often they recoiled with such force as to overturn, or to snap the breeching, or to leap up to strike the upper beams. Brass guns were more skittish than iron, but all guns needed a rest of two or three hours, if possible, after continual firing for more than eight hours at a time. To cool a gun in action, to keep it from bursting, or becoming red-hot, John Roberts advises sponging "with spunges wet in ley and water, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... by the sea, A skittish and beautiful widow is she; She has black shiny tresses, and curly buff toes, And a heavenly tilt to the ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer
... long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like Uncle Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish, curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once asked her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she did not marry, but she only said ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... kindliness, albeit her only advances had been a muffled request for the salt. The next morning, Miss Arthur's chair had been empty, and her charge, left to herself, had been more glacially circumspect than ever. Whatever skittish traits the pair might develop, Weldon felt assured that they would be solely upon the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... could only have seen the way they pranced at her funeral last fall. I was determined then that they should never draw me;" and Aunt Pen shivered for herself beforehand. "And I can't have them from Timlin's, for the same reason," said she. "All his animals are skittish; and you remember when a pair of them took fright and dashed away from the procession and ran straight to the river, and there'd have been four other funerals if the schooner at the wharf hadn't stopped the runaways. And Timlins has a way, too, of letting ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Danzig, when his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you should reign in my way, but not in yours!"—he had cheerfully taken up his familiar business, and—like a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts—he dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... for her luggage. A lonely dory, black of complexion and skittish of gait, had wandered out and hung in the shadow of the steamer, awaiting the passengers. The dory was manned by one negro, who sat with his oars crossed, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... expect, And beg they 'll take my word about the moral, Which I with their amusement will connect (So children cutting teeth receive a coral); Meantime, they 'll doubtless please to recollect My epical pretensions to the laurel: For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish, I 've bribed my grandmother's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... expect she likes it as it is. But there is something honest about her very vulgarity. She knows what she wants and goes straight for it; and she isn't a fool. The daughter is. She was intended by nature to be a dull young woman with a pretty face, but not content with that she puts on an absurdly skittish manner—oh, so ruthlessly bright—talks what she thinks is smart slang, poses continually, and wears clothes that would not be out of place at Ascot, but are a positive offence to the little grey town. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... doth sit a lazy mist, A fatal tree, and luckless to the gods, Where for disdain in life—Love's worst of odds— The queen of shades, fair Proserpine, did rack The sad Adonis: hither now they pack This little god, where, first disarm'd, they bind His skittish wings, then both his hands behind His back they tie, and thus secur'd at last, The peevish wanton to the tree make fast. Here at adventure, without judge or jury, He is condemn'd, while with united fury They all assail him. As a thief at bar Left to the law, and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... in Punch's way of thinking, 'tis for women, kind and wise, These neglected scattered units to enrol and mobilize, Their vagabond activities to curb and concentrate, And turn the skittish hoyden to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... said nothing whatever, being fully occupied with the animal he was driving—a skittish young mare ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... for less money, while they obtained a readier access to the best markets for their stock and farm-produce. Notwithstanding the predictions to the contrary, their cows gave milk as before, their sheep fed and fattened, and even skittish horses ceased to shy at the passing locomotive. The smoke of the engines did not obscure the sky, nor were farmyards burnt up by the fire thrown from the locomotives. The farming classes were not reduced to beggary; on ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... on which to walk in the dark, for the surface is strewn with boulders of all sizes and furrowed and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, and quite suddenly you may find yourself prostrate upon a surface of slippery blue ice. It may be easily imagined that it is no seemly place to exercise skittish ponies or mules in a cold wind, but there is no other place when the sea-ice ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... light material, fastened round the waist of the morrice-dancer, who imitated the movements of a skittish horse. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... going to the grange one evening—a dark evening threatening thunder—and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him. He was crying terribly, and I supposed the lambs were skittish and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... might have been suspicious of her. She had found out much about those archvillains Felix and Hortense Markle by an assumption of supreme dullness. But no one of her acquaintances had ever seen Josie assume the role of a skittish, dressed-up miss, painted ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... seemed so skittish that Philip finally told the men to lead him away, adding that a man would be foolish to purchase such a useless animal. Alexander then stepped forward and begged permission ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... the white splendor of the lightning and the majestic booming and crashing of the thunder. It was a very satisfactory room; and there was a lightning-rod which was reachable from the window, an adorable and skittish thing to climb up and down, summer nights, when there were duties on hand of a sort to ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... called Steve stated, and Caleb understood that he meant the trap. "An' I reckon I'd better not lug my weapon into the house, neither, hed I? She might——" He nodded in the direction of Sarah's disappearance—"Old Tom says womin folks that's gentle born air kind-a skittish about havin' shootin' irons araound the place. And I don't reckon it's the part of ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... slate formed the grander height beyond, thus leading to schemes of more distant rides to verify the conjectures, which Rachel accepted with the less argument, because sententious dogmatism was not always possible on the back of a skittish black mare. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the boys that are for you," advised Presson, fretfully, "not this year, when reformers have got 'em filled up with a lot of skittish notions. Humor those ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Susan got quite young and skittish; and as for old Worble's aunt Susan's mother, who was bedridden, up she had to get on old Joe Wilkings's third visit, and had to toddle across the room. He drilled her—kept on at it; he was there twice a day; and every time she had to get out of bed and toddle across the room. Had ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tragedy, and the way Sadler acted as if he wasn't going to escape real mysterious. For the Mayor had to please the British consul and Ferdinand Street and the Transport Company; but the Hottentots were skittish, and ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... that if they wanted to enjoy the rector's company they must be prepared to put up with his sister's, since the canons of a country neighbourhood forbade inviting the one without the other, and on this particular evening Forrester had chaffed her into such good humour that she became quite skittish, and contributed some truly surprising outbursts of frivolity ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... to put it. The truth is that their cattle own them. In all the world there is no 'boss' who behaves as stupidly as the beasts you favour. Pretty nearly every day they give you trouble or do you some mischief. Now it is a skittish horse that runs away or lashes out with his heels; then it is a cow, however good-tempered, that won't keep still to be milked and tramples on your toes when the flies annoy her. And even if by good fortune they don't ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... him tell it. "You tell him you would like any one, and see what will come of it." There was a pretty sun-burnt girl about fifteen years of age that had given me a cock-stand. "That's a pretty girl Smith, I'd give a sovereign to have her,—is she loose?" "Don't think so yet squire, she be skittish; her sister's not fourteen, and they say she be in the family way, when one sister takes to it squire, the others generally do." "Where do you pay their wages?" I asked. The old fellow leered at me. "Why you be a taken a leaf out of young squire's ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... less obtrusively displayed, she had to thank Mr. Sheldon for the refinement in her taste. Her views of life in general had expanded under Mr. Sheldon's influence. She no longer thought a high-wheeled dog-cart and a skittish mare the acme of earthly splendour; for she had a carriage and pair at her service, and a smart little page-boy to leap off the box in attendance on her when she paid visits or went shopping. Instead ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... favours and flowers, Veneering's house reached, drawing-rooms most magnificent. Here, the Podsnaps await the happy party; Mr Podsnap, with his hair-brushes made the most of; that imperial rocking-horse, Mrs Podsnap, majestically skittish. Here, too, are Boots and Brewer, and the two other Buffers; each Buffer with a flower in his button-hole, his hair curled, and his gloves buttoned on tight, apparently come prepared, if anything had happened to the bridegroom, to be married instantly. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... on the inside; and the only sign of adornment was a couple of framed pictures, one close above the head of the bed, and the other opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after I made that motion, I sez to myse'f, I sez, 'Glass, you done started this thing an' you must see it th'ough. 'Twon't never do in this world fur the gran' marshal to be stuck up 'pon the top side of a skittish, skeery liver'-stable hoss that'll mebbe start cuttin' up right in the smack middle of things and distrac' the gran' marshal's mind frum his business.' I seen that happen mo' times 'en onct, wid painful results. I s'pose, tho, you kin ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... eggsackly. I can't say it is. That job will come later. But we got to be pationate, an' not spoil it by upsettin' our kettles o' fish with boardin'-schools, an' such nonsense. Meanwhile we can put in time with Mrs. Sherman, who'll pay you well, an' won't be too skittish if you just keep a firm hand on her. This mornin' she got discoursin' about everythin' under the canopy, from nickel-plated bathroom fixin's, an' marble slobs, to that state o' life unto which it has pleased God to call ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... cook in the Denman house and for our family and Uncle Joe's family. She didn't have much time for anythin' but cookin' all the time. But she's the bestes' cook. Us had fine greens and hawgs and beef. Us et collard greens and pork till us got skittish of it and then they quit the pork and kilt a beef. When they done that, they's jus' pourin' water on our wheels, 'cause us liked best of anythin' the beef, and I do to this day, only I can't ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... or a man. Now Chicky is no thoroughbred, and he'll probably never beat the record of them that is, but I've kept an eye on him this summer, and I tell you he's developing the traits that win every time. Last spring, when the judge made this offer, he was as skittish and unreliable as a young colt. I wouldn't have trusted him around the corner to do an errand for me. I've known him ever since he put on the district messenger uniform, and I wouldn't have given one of his own brass buttons for him. I've come across him ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's a future in you. Why don't ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Anna watched this pretty scene as one who would really take a young girl's part in it. She simulated an interest in the rowing about which she knew nothing at all—visited the house-boats of such of her friends as had come down for the regatta, and was, in Willy Forrest's words, as "skittish as a two-year-old that had slipped its halter." Forrest had been to and fro from the stable near Winchester on several occasions. "He comes to tell me that I am about to lose a fortune, and I am beginning to hate him," Anna said; and on ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... in the door as he spoke, and I thought, he looked a little skittish; but I was consider'bly frustrated, and didn't mind much; so I turned about and walked off as smart as I know'd how. He said he would tell me when to stop, so I kep' on 'till I tho't I'd gone far 'nough; I then 'spected suthin' was to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... returned, full of pleasant disconnected thoughts. He had had a rare good time. He liked every one—even that poor little Elliot—and yet no one mattered. They were all out. On the landing he saw the housemaid. He felt skittish and irresistible. Should he slip his arm round her waist? Perhaps better not; she might box his ears. And he wanted to smoke on the roof before dinner. So he only said, "Please will you stop the boy blacking ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... mile," he said consolingly. "The roads ain't none too good this season, an' Kittie—that's her" (pointing to his mare)—"don't feel over-skittish; she's nigh onter fourteen year, an' right smart, too, fur her age, but sorter broken-winded latterly; but I guess we'll make it afore ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... "Too skittish for me," responded the other with a sidelong look, for he had caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... features as to make us wonder. And yet I don't know why we should wonder, either. They all come from good old stock. The young fellows run a little too strongly to patent-leather shoes and their horses are almost too skittish for my liking, but the girls are all right. If their clothes set better than you thought they would, why, you must remember that they subscribe for the very same fashion magazines that you do, and there is such a thing as a mail-order business ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... plenty of rain this year. But they do say there's a ghost hereabouts—a Trotting Cob, with a man in white on him? Lord, no, that's an old woman's tale. But the girl—she walks—she walks they say, and mighty good reason—too—if all tales be true. Hosses always shy here if they Ve at all skittish. Got that letter, Jack, and the tobacco? That's right! Rum, isn't it, to get all your news of the world at dead of night? Reg'ler as clockwork we pass—a little after one, and the coach from Deniliquin she passes an hour ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... taught him to carry all sorts of burdens, to stand without being tied, to go anywhere over all sorts of ground fast or slow, and to jump and swim and fear nothing,—a truly wonderful creature, strangely different from shy, skittish, nervous, superstitious civilized beasts. We turned him loose, and, strange to say, he never ran away from us or refused to be caught, but behaved as if he had known Scotch boys all his life; probably because we were about as wild as ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... purchase him for me, one of your servants might ride him to Euston, and I might receive him there. This, sir, is just as such a thing happens. If you hear, too, of a Welch widow, with a good jointure, that has her goings and is not very skittish, pray, be pleased to cast your eye on her for me, too. You see, sir, the great trust I repose in your skill and honour, when I dare put two such commissions in your hand...."—The ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enough till happening to meet another man, also airing a pair of skittish horses,—the capering of the horses, or something else, roused the brute's savage nature, and he sprang on one of them like a tiger, fastening on his flank, and sucking his blood so greedily that all the two men could do did not make the savage beast quit his hold, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... married I used to room with an old lady named Johnson. Time we went to bed and put the light out, something would open the doors. Finally I got scared and used to tell my wife to get up and close the doors. Finally she got skittish about it. There used to be the biggest storms around there and yet you couldn't see nothin'. There wasn't no rain nor nothin'. Just sounds and noises like storms. My wife comes to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Aubrey Arms o' nights—always attended by Hector, the large Newfoundland dog already spoken of, and who was now lying stretched on the floor at Pumpkin's feet, his nose resting on his fore feet, and his eyes, with great gravity, watching the motions of a skittish kitten under the table. Opposite to him sat Tonson the gamekeeper—a thin, wiry, beetle-browed fellow, with eyes like a ferret; and there were also, one or two farmers, who lived in ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... my wife—cousin. I'm goin' in ter see him a minit. Hold the horse, will yer, he's a bit skittish." ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... might lay hands on that devil yet, and not far away, either. I was up at Demorest's to-day, and I heard Joan and a skittish sort o' Mexican young lady talkin' about some tramp that had frightened her. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... rode back in the direction of Mudgee. Uncle Abe winked long and hard and solemnly at Andy Page, and Andy winked back like a mechanical wooden image. The two women nudged and smiled and seemed quite girlish, not to say skittish, all the morning. Something had come to break the cruel hopeless monotony of their lives. And even the settler ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... handed to me neatly tied up in a pillow-case with her tufted head protruding from a hole in the seam at the side. Although very anxious to carry her home immediately, my heart died within me at the prospect of a long gallop on a skittish mare with a plump Dorking hen tied up in a bag ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... place for the ladies to be initiated. There might easily be an accident, even with the best of drivers such as we had in Terry, and I was sure that he was having all he could do to keep on the crown of the road. At any moment, slowly as we were going, the heavily laden car might become skittish and begin to waltz, a feat which would certainly first surprise and then alarm the ladies, even if it ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... however, may have meant no more than the natural coyness of a maiden whom the learned Upton somewhat drolly designates as "a skittish female." [3] Indeed, Spenser must have thought so himself, and with reason, for she continues to receive his presents, "the kids, the cracknels, and the early fruit," sent through his friend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... And she who was perhaps of no regard or station among natives sits with captains, and is entertained on board of schooners. Five of these privileged dames were some time our neighbours. Four were handsome skittish lasses, gamesome like children, and like children liable to fits of pouting. They wore dresses by day, but there was a tendency after dark to strip these lendings and to career and squall about the compound in the aboriginal ridi. Games of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the same facile weapon? Now Mrs. Cleveland won't you help me? I am not a Humbug, I have too many bullet holes through my body to be classed with that tribe of insects. I begin to feel a little skittish about my age, 35 and not yet Married. Yet I have always been rather a fatalist and incline to Worship some star. The Greeks Worshiped the sun, And moon under the Name of Isis and Osiris, but I am more like the Arab look to the stars for something sublime and unchanging among all ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... even taking down the partition and enlarging the windows; and yet, you know how much he clings to everything that is old about the house. He tries to do everything for my pleasure. Did he not go to Strasbourg the other day to buy a pony for me, because I thought Titania was too skittish? It would be impossible to show ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... think for in the peccant chapter, where I have succeeded in packing into one a dedication, an explanation, and a termination. Surely you had not recognised the phrase about boodle? It was a quotation from Jim Pinkerton, and seemed to me agreeably skittish. However, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me: For, such as I am, all true lovers are; Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image of the creature That is belov'd.—How dost ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the hill in front of old Grout Nickelson's wuz steep, and the road a skittish one that wound around it above the creek. But imagine goin' along a road where you could look down thousands of feet into running water, and right up on the other side of you mountains thousands of feet high. And you between, poor specks of clay with only a breath of steam ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... myself if I can," said Lomax, "and ride him up pretty quickly. He'll have had such a rest that he'll be quite skittish." ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... if she attempts to be skittish I just threaten to publish the photographs of her two sons who are lieutenants in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque [Fr.]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U.S.], particular, humorsome^, freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c 83; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle &c (irresolute) 605; frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile. Adv. by fits and starts, without rhyme ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... my ways, Uncle Amy. I do act like a wild zebra,—I know that. But I'm sorry. Of course it's silly for a girl who's nearly nineteen to be as skittish as I am. And they tell me I'm a bad example to my cousins and the whole town. It's tough to be a bad example. What's this they're going to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... day in my life, for it was very nearly the termination of it. I was riding Diaway, the colt just shod; he is seldom ridden, though a very fine hack, as he is such a splendid weight-carrier as a packhorse; he is rather skittish, and if anything goes wrong with his pack, he'll put it right (on the ground) almost instantaneously. I was driving all the horses up to the camp, when one broke from the mob, and galloped across the creek. There was ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... behind him, his rifle laid across the saddle in front of him, and his axe, canteen, and other gear hanging to the horn, he was as awful-looking a ruffian as one could see. By way of contrast he rode a small Arab mare, of exquisite beauty, skittish, high spirited, gentle, but altogether too light for him, and he fretted her incessantly to make ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... immigration agent has been trying to locate a colony of Mennonites here," Judge Thayer said, "fifty families or more of them, but the notoriety of the town made the elders skittish. They were out here this spring, liked the country, saw its future with eyes that revealed like telescopes, and would have bought ten sections of land to begin with if it hadn't been for two or three killings while ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... recognition that the meeting was over. Winch clasped the minister's hand in his own broad, hard palm, and squeezed it in an exuberant grip. "Don't mind his little ways, Brother Ware," he urged in a loud, unctuous whisper, with a grinning backward nod: "he's a trifle skittish sometimes when you don't give him free rein; but he's all wool an' a yard wide when it comes to right-down hard-pan religion. My love to Sister Ware;" and he followed the senior ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... anything like the same care. . . . A good poem, play, or novel is at least as fine an achievement as a good history; yet the history gets the benefit of an expert's judgment and two columns of thoughtful pimse or censure, while the poem, play, or novel is treated to ten skittish lines by the hack who happens to be within nearest call ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... "My fly's growing skittish, stranger," smiled Jim Duff. "He's on the point of moving. You'd better whisper to ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... hence with one or another imaginary creature, to guide them about alleys and by-paths, because imaginary creatures find little nourishment in the public highways, and shun them. Thus must these timid persons skulk about obscurely with their diffident and skittish guides, and they do not ever venture willingly into the thronged places where men ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... hors-d'oeuvre they settled down to a solid joint of national finance, laid before them by Lord MIDLETON. I am afraid they would have found it rather indigestible but for the sauce provided by Lord INCHCAPE, who was positively skittish in his comments upon the extravagance of the Government, and on one occasion even indulged in a pun. In his view the Ministry of Transport was an entirely superfluous creation, solely arising out of the supposed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... date, which is all important. We must picture Milton "affable, erect, and manly," as Wood describes him, speaking from a low pulpit in the hall of Christ's College, to an audience of various standing, from grave doctors to skittish undergraduates, with most of whom he was in daily intercourse. The term is the summer of 1628, about nine months before his graduation; the words were Latin, but we resort to the ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... said Andy. "It gets skittish, just like horses—but if I take it out sometimes, it'll be ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... no longer yourself when you are in society with your wife. Like a man who is riding a skittish horse and glares straight between the beast's two ears, you are absorbed by the attention with which you listen ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... adding to and counting up their gains to be able to spare much time or thought on country or freedom. No voluntary sacrifices to be expected here. What we want we must buy, and pay for; it is only to see that we do not pay too much for it. Selfish, timid, grasping, these people are a skittish set to deal with. Nobody understands better the game of 'the spider and the fly,' and they are as ready to play it with the state as with smaller opponents, if the state will but let them. From his first visit to this region, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dressing-table in the girls' room fastened with pins and tied round the waist with a small bath towel. She was to be the Dauntless Equestrienne, and to give her enhancing act a barebacked daring, riding either a pig or a sheep, whichever we found was freshest and most skittish. Dora was dressed for the Haute ecole, which means a riding-habit and a high hat. She took Dick's topper that he wears with his Etons, and a skirt of Mrs Pettigrew's. Daisy, dressed the same as Alice, taking ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... be well defined as elegantly skittish; She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do; And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British, And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... "Gee, but you're skittish this morning," said Ted, giving Sultan a vigorous slap on the haunch. "But just you wait a few minutes until I get on you. I'll take some of that out ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... enormous: what a team to drive; and on such a road, untrodden before by hoof or wheel! Two Empresses that cordially hate one another, and that disagree on this very subject. Kaunitz and his Empress are extremely skittish in the matter, and as if quite refuse it at first: "Zips will be better," thinks Kaunitz to himself; "Cannot we have, all to ourselves, a beautiful little cutting out of Poland in that part; and then perhaps, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Tommy. "Look out! There cometh another automobile." Tommy shied from her position in the road like a skittish horse. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt—a fifty-inch, with the pedals shortened up to forty-eight—and skittish, like any other colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wonder that there's any white wool in the world; there are so many of these skittish little black ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... could say another word. Saul walked up and down the room a few moments, taking very short steps, and solacing his mind by muttering to himself: "Well, that's what I get by having a scholar in the family. Learning goes to the head and the heels—makes 'em proud and skittish." ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Bodyke, went to Limerick to buy cattle for grazing on his estate. The cattle were duly bought, but the gallant Colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... find a better one than the dappled mount. The birds in the air do not fly more swiftly than the palfrey; and he is not too lively, but just suits a lady. A child can ride him, for he is neither skittish nor balky, nor does he bite nor kick nor become unmanageable. Any one who is looking for something better does not know what he wants. And his pace is so easy and gentle that a body is more comfortable and easy on his ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... wonder, too, the tits that pull This rum concern along, so full, Should never back or bolt, or kick The load and driver to Old Nick. But, never fear, the breed, though British, Is now no longer game or skittish; Except sometimes about their corn, Tamer Houghnhums ne'er were born. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... leering round upon us, "they tell me your pretty Penelope takes something more than a common interest in yonder fop; have a care, Sir John, she's a plaguey skittish filly by the looks of her, have a care, or ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... more, for he did not know but that Andy's horse might be skittish. He need have no fears, however, for the animal did not seem to have much more life than ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... peaceful days your attitude Was witty and satirical and shrewd, But, whether you were serious or skittish, Always a candid critic of things British, Though, when you were unable to admire us, Life's "little ironies" were free from virus. But since the War began your English readers Have welcomed MARTIN's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... went into sweet-stuff shops three times and 'ad ices while they stood and watched 'er and wondered 'ow she could do it. And arter that she stopped at a place Poplar way, where there was a few swings and roundabouts and things. She was as skittish as a school-gal, and arter taking pore Sam on the roundabout till 'e didn't know whether he was on his 'eels or his 'ead, she got 'im into a boat-swing and swung 'im till he felt like a boy on 'is fust v'y'ge. Arter that she took 'im to the rifle gallery, ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... a skittish horse when I was a spalpeen of a lad, but never in all my born days have I ridden so ill-mannered a baste; and sure I hope as long as I live that I may not have to break in such another as this ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... who has a pretty figure, mottled pink cheeks, and yellow hair, Alexandra is very fond, though she keeps a sharp eye upon her. Signa is apt to be skittish at mealtime, when the men are about, and to spill the coffee or upset the cream. It is supposed that Nelse Jensen, one of the six men at the dinner-table, is courting Signa, though he has been so careful not to commit himself that no one in the ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... appearance; but I said no more, and possessed my soul in patience, until the day came when I received a copy of a newspaper marked in the corner, "Compliments of J.P." I opened it with sensible shrinkings; and there, wedged between an account of a prize-fight and a skittish article upon chiropody—think of chiropody treated with a leer!—I came upon a column and a half in which myself and my poor statue were embalmed. Like the editor with the first of the series, I did but glance my eye down the head-lines and was ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Unfortunately, Vaudrey was rather skittish on these particular questions, besides he was informed on the matter. He felt his flesh creep while Molina was speaking. Just before, on seeing the banker's card, the idea of the money of which the fat man was one of the incarnations, had suddenly ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the cushion. I must go and get it. But the nose-rope makes the bullocks skittish. I suppose I had better take the cart ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... were not wholly averse to such familiarity, the noses of several of our people strongly testified: They were, however, as great coquets as any of the most fashionable ladies in Europe, and the young ones as skittish as an unbroken filly: Each of them wore a petticoat, under which there was a girdle, made of the blades of grass highly perfumed, and to the girdle was fastened a small bunch of the leaves of some fragrant plant, which served their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... lizards come forth. Even these the moucher sometimes captures; for there is nothing so strange but that some one selects it for a pet. The mad March hares scamper about in broad daylight over the corn, whose pale green blades rise in straight lines a few inches above the soil. They are chasing their skittish loves, instead of soberly dreaming the day away in a bunch of grass. The ploughman walks in the furrow his share has made, and presently stops to measure the 'lands' with the spud. His horses halt dead in the tenth of a second at the sound of his ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... returned as disengaged as she came. Mark Wilson, thoroughly bored by her vacuities of mind, longed now for more intercourse with Patty Baxter, Patty, so gay and unexpected; so lively to talk with, so piquing to the fancy, so skittish and difficult to manage, so temptingly pretty, with a beauty all her own, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to Dullhampton the Bishop was in the best of spirits, much on the principle of a naughty boy who, having played truant, means to enjoy his holiday to the full, well knowing that he will be caned when it is over. Indeed his Lordship became positively skittish, and Miss Arminster was obliged to squelch him a little, as that young lady, for excellent reasons of her own, had no more intention of becoming the mistress of Blanford than she had of wedding the author of "The Purple Kangaroo." On ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... feet in height, and 120 of them would be considered an ample number for a quiet little fox hunt. Some hunters think this number inadequate, but unless the fox be unusually skittish and crawl under the barn, 120 foxhounds ought to be enough. The trouble generally is that hunters make too much noise, thus scaring the fox so that he tries to get away from them. This necessitates hard riding and great activity on the part ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... hundreds equally well if not better adapted to the sailor's furtive habits, the total of escapes must have been little short of enormous. It could not have been otherwise. In this grand battue of the sea it was clearly impossible to round-up and capture every skittish son of Neptune. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... did regret the change in her name, though she was by no means indifferent to the rank. As Lady Glencora she had made a reputation which might very possibly fall away from her as Duchess of Omnium. Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes. As Lady Glencora Palliser she was known to every one, and had always done exactly as she had pleased. The world in which she lived had submitted to her fantasies, and had placed her on ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... bull, he got perceptibly thinner and thinner—must have lost several tons at least—and as nervous as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony. When I'd come up with him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he'd jump like a skittish colt and tremble all over. Then he'd pull out on the run, tail and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing, and the way he'd swear at me was something dreadful. A most immoral beast he was, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the Campbell girls, who didn't appear quite so skittish as she was, "do tell us, no doubt you will make a funny one out ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Aunty played up her skittish symptoms about them same bonds a few weeks back, the time she planned to exhibit me to Vee in my office boy job and got so badly jolted when she finds me posin' as a private sec instead? Went away real peeved, Aunty did that time. And now it looks like she was ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... useful brutes, Though somewhat skittish; the foam is whit'ning The crest and rein of my courser "Lightning"; He pulls to-night, being short of work, And takes his head with a sudden jerk; Still heel and steady hand on the bit, For that is "Tempest" on which ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... factional or influence machine can be compared to a highland cataract of lofty height but small volume, which is more picturesque than useful, and the current from a voltaic battery, a thermopile, or a dynamo to a lowland river which can be dammed to turn a mill. It is the difference between a skittish gelding and a ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... Prince of the seventeenth century lives again in the pages of this fervent admirer as he would never have lived in those of a colder historian. Dancing, riding, hunting, raking and fighting, we are bound to feel about him much as old PEPYS did, who called him, in a memorable and picturesque phrase, "skittish and leaping," and, for all his righteous disapproval, admired with the best. "How he would have loved flying!" is Mrs. NEPEAN'S very characteristic comment upon a record of her hero's graceful activities. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... Sirens sing— Sly, seducious, and skittish— To the Tourist, wealthy, British, When Society's on the wing, Or should be, for "Foreign Parts." British BULL mistrusts their arts. "Come away!" (One doth say), "Our Emperor is quiet to-day!" Cries another, "Come, my brother, "Avalanches down again!" Sings a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... subscriber on the back, and give him a new album that will fall to pieces whenever you laugh in the same room? Why should you forget the old love for the new? Do we not often impose on the old subscriber by giving up the space he has paid for to flaming advertisements to catch the coy and skittish gudgeon who still lurks outside the fold? Do we not ofttimes offer a family Bible for a new subscriber when an old subscriber may be in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... laughed, with a motion towards the ceiling, signifying the direction of the governor's office. "By the way, I was sorry about that bill you were interested in," he went on; "upon my word I was—but we're skittish just now on the subject of corporations. Charters are dangerous things—you can't tell where they're leading you, eh?—but, on my ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... right, sir," he replied, steering a straight course. "She's a bit skittish at times. I was saying as how I did the Colonel an injustice. I'm very sorry. No man who wasn't steel all through ever got the V.C. They don't chuck it ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
