"Counterpane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such care and pains by Babs the night before were still making the nursery look pretty. The little china animals sat in many funny groups on the mantelpiece. The white and blue violets lay in a large bowl on a table by Judy's side. One of the little sleeper's hands was thrown outside the counterpane. Hilda touched it, and found that it burned with ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... her pale lips murmured faintly, then the heart-throbs beneath Beth's ear were still; the slender hand fell helpless on the counterpane; the brilliant eyes ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... moved into a low, one-story house, that was old too, as well as small; but as we had always lived in a log-house, and this was a frame one, we were more than satisfied. We did not mind if the snow blew in at the cracks in the roof, and nestled in little drifts on the counterpane, for we were used to it. I remember that one bright star always peeped down at me in the winter through the open spaces between the boards, and shone so calm and clear that I used to fancy it was God's home, and somehow my prayers seemed surer of getting to him when I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... own, was again seized with such an inclination to sleep, that he gradually sunk down by her side, and seemed to enjoy his repose in that attitude. Meanwhile, his tender-hearted mistress, that he might not suffer in his health by his humanity and complaisance, covered him with the counterpane as he slept, and suffered him to take his rest without interruption, till he thought proper to start up suddenly with an exclamation of, "Heaven watch over us!" and then asked, with symptoms of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... to life. He opened his eyes with difficulty and saw the sun coming through a barred window, white walls, and a dirty and darned cotton counterpane. After great wandering and stumbling, he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to' form one idea: they had placed the Cathedral on his temples—the huge church was hanging over his head crushing him. What terrible pain! He could not ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... each other: the eyes closed, The lashes on the cheek reposed. Round each sweet brow the cap close set Hardly lets peep the golden hair; Through the soft opened lips the air Scarcely moves the coverlet. One little wandering arm is thrown At random on the counterpane, And often the fingers close in haste, As if their baby owner chased The butterflies again. This stir they have and this alone, But else they are so still— Ah, you tired madcaps, you lie still; But were you at the window now, To look forth on the fairy sight Of your illumined haunts by night, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... unlettered because he was a sportsman, though it must be confessed that books occupied him only when the weather compelled, or when on his back with the gout. At times he would fain have me read to him as he lay in his great four-post bed with the flowered counterpane, from the Spectator, stopping me now and anon at some awakened memory of his youth. He never forgave Mr. Addison for killing stout, old Sir Roger de Coverley, and would never listen to the butler's account of his death. Mr. Carvel, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... home from church, she found her little daughter up in her room on her knees beside her bed, her arms stretched out over the white counterpane, asleep. She had suffered until nature had taken her into her own soothing arms and put her to sleep through sheer weakness. Her cheeks were still burning and her eyelids red from weeping. Mary thought her in a fever, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... room," yes, at last, after thirty years of pioneer life, she had a guest chamber and a new "bedroom soot." With open pride and joy she led Belle Garland's boy in to view this precious acquisition, pointing out the soap and towels, and carefully removing the counterpane! I understood her pride, for my mother had not yet acquired anything so luxurious as this. She ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... kindness and her doctorship. What drenchings did not the poor Wolfert undergo, and all in vain! It was a moving sight to behold him wasting away day by day, growing thinner and thinner and ghastlier and ghastlier, and staring with rueful visage from under an old patchwork counterpane, upon the jury of matrons kindly assembled to sigh and groan ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... and then stopped with a dry sob. He crawled on his knees a little nearer to the bed and eyed fearfully a patch of blood on the counterpane. Just God! what was that patch? A faint circle smeared with the finger, and through the midst of it a ragged dart. Carlo Formaggia had been there! He knew that mark! And then the whole truth blazed before him like a sheet of fire. He fell forward on his face. The thin thread of ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... room and its contents were to him as the water and the fire which even pagans counted every man bound to hand to his neighbour. There was the bed! Through all the cold time it had been waiting for them! The counterpane was very dusty; and oh, such moth-eaten blankets! But there were sheets under them, and they were quite clean, though dingy with age! The moths—that is, their legs and wings and dried-up bodies—flew out in clouds when they moved the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels—towels too clean ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... folding his little hands on the counterpane, "it is worth while to have had this indisposition (except for the trouble it has given others) just to see how good every one is. Gifford has been exceedingly kind and thoughtful. His gentleness—for I have been very troublesome, doctor—has ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... passionate movements, she snatched the child from her breast, carried him upstairs screaming and laid him on her bed. When the nurse came she found him writhing and wailing, and his mother on her knees beside the bed, her face hidden in the counterpane. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... I drew the counterpane aside, lay down under it revolver in hand, and then, for the first time since I had put on the glorious gray, found I could not face the thought of death. I grew steadily, penetratingly, excruciatingly cold, and presently—to the singular satisfaction of my conscience—began to shake from head to ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... He had helped her. He undid hooks, and fastened others.... The rich blue frock lay across the bed and looked lovely on the ivory-coloured counterpane. It seemed indeed to be a part of that in her which was Louise. Then she was in a short skirt which she had devised herself, and he was pushing her out of the room, his hand on her back. And she had feigned reluctance, resisting his pressure, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... suspended a blanket, a travelling shawl, and a voluminous, and evidently costly, Spanish cloak. Protruding beyond the edge of this extemporaneous screen, I could see the footposts of an iron bedstead, and the end of a large poncho, which served for a counterpane. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... spinning some very fine flax next week," said Mara; "and have I shown you the new pattern I drew for a counterpane? it is to be morning-glories, leaves and flowers, you ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... green ground—only four pillars along the wall and only two across. The furniture? There were not five chairs or five separate pieces of any furniture in the room altogether. The fringes that hung from the cornice of the bed? Plenty of them, at any rate! Up I jumped on the counterpane, with my pen-knife in my hand. Every way that "5 along" and "4 across" could be reckoned on those unlucky fringes I reckoned on them—probed with my penknife—scratched with my nails—crunched with my fingers. No use; not a sign of a letter; and the time was ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... would have been impossible,—everywhere, in short, capable or incapable of affording a retreat to humanity; but discovered nobody. All he observed was that a light stood on the low table by her bedside; that on the bed lay an open Prayer-Book, the counterpane being unpressed, except into a little pit beside the Prayer Book, apparently where her head ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... as it would, and whatever the frame of mind in which she approached that white cot at her niece's side, I knew, by the lingering touch upon the pale forehead, the deft, gentle, and quite unconscious smoothing of the white counterpane across his breast, that the pale, unknowing face had won its way, and that what she took away from that hospital ward was not the tenderly carried burden of another's interest and another's anxiety, but a personal interest and a personal liking ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... His sitting-room was just as she had left it, the unwashed plates piled together, the red cloth over the window, the dead ashes of the fire in the grate. Very gently she opened his bedroom door. He was still in bed. She went over to him. He was asleep, muttering, his hands clenched on the counterpane. His cheeks were flushed. To her inexperienced eyes ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... bring in a bundle of laughable incidents gleaned from the "funny" pages of popular magazines; or Allee would lay a carefully trimmed bunch of short poems gathered from children's publications upon the white counterpane of Peace's bed. And once Hope triumphantly displayed a thick package of beautiful illustrations for articles already ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... light Witney blankets as bed covering for the sick. The heavy cotton impervious counterpane is bad, for the very reason that it keeps in the emanations from the sick person, while the blanket allows them to pass through. Weak patients are invariably distressed by a great weight of bed-clothes, which often prevents their getting ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... and the grand-daughter of De Lachaise, who came to the colony in 1723 as ordaining commissary, was described as consisting of a cypress bedstead, three feet wide by six in length, with a mattress of corn shucks and one of feathers on the top, a bolster of corn shucks, and a coarse cotton counterpane or quilt, manufactured probably by the lady herself, or by her servants; six chairs of cypress wood, with straw bottoms; some candlesticks with common wax, the candles made in the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was sitting on the bed with half a loaf in his hand. When he recognized Stephen he jumped down, and would have rushed from the room; but changing his mind, possibly because of the condition of his lower limbs, he turned, and springing into the bed, scrambled under the counterpane, and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and temperatured, and in the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other objects which must not be forgotten, and above all a mattress, bolster, and counterpane, as the berths are generally unfurnished. These can be purchased very cheaply in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... turned the corner when a titter, Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,—three slim shapes, And a face that looked up ... zooks, sir, flesh and blood, That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went, Curtain and counterpane and coverlet, All the bed furniture—a dozen knots, There was a ladder! Down I let myself, Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped, And after them. I came up with the fun Hard by St. Laurence, hail fellow, well met,— Flower o' the rose, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... round with pictures and old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. Premising that he was going to show us something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately embroidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken. It was stained, and seemed very old, and had an ancient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the house Albert was shown to a room that reminded him of his boyhood home, the old-fashioned bed, spotless counterpane, and muslin curtains all seemed so sweet and wholesome. A faint odor of lavender carried him back to the time when his mother's bed linen exhaled the same sweet fragrance. He lighted a cigar and sat down by a window where crisp salt sea air came in, and tried to fathom what ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... assistant) was standing by the bedside, and on the counterpane lay the 'Requiem,' concerning which Mozart was still speaking and giving directions. As he looked over its pages for the last time, he said, with tears in his eyes, 'Did I not tell you that I was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... dishes drifted in, and they began to eat. There happened to be every single thing Tavy liked best to eat. After supper there was music and singing, and Tavy, having kissed a white, soft, furry forehead, went to bed in a gold four-poster with a counterpane of butterflies' wings. He awoke at home. On the mantelpiece sat the White Cat, looking as though butter would not melt in her mouth. And all her furriness had gone with her voice. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... furniture, not to speak of a great sweet-brier bush tapping and scratching at the window, with all its thousand sharp little fingers, gave it a good right to be called the rosy-room. Dora hastily drew away the bright counterpane, and nodded to Karl, who laid the little form he carried tenderly ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... in a robe of white taffeta embroidered with gold flowers, her hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and leaning upon a staff of fine black ebony. Don Quixote, disconcerted and in confusion at her appearance, huddled himself up and well-nigh covered himself altogether with the sheets and counterpane of the bed, tongue-tied, and unable to offer her any civility. Altisidora seated herself on a chair at the head of the bed, and, after a deep sigh, said to him in a feeble, soft voice, "When women of rank and modest maidens ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his pillows. On his shoulders, over one of those striped pyjama suits that Barbara had once ordered from the Stores, he wore, like a shawl, a woolly, fawn-coloured motor-scarf of Fanny's. His arms were laid before him on the counterpane in a gesture of complete surrender to his illness. Fanny was always tucking them away under the blankets, but if anybody came in he would have them so. He was sitting up, waiting in an adorable patience ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... just like redness dipped in milk, and all worked over with flowers of the same colour. It didn't shine much, it was silk, but it kept in the shine. When she came to my bedside, she sat down, just where you are sitting, Diamond, and laid her hand on the counterpane. I was sitting up, with my table before me ready for my tea. Her hand looked so pretty in its blue glove, that I was tempted to stroke it. I thought she wouldn't be angry, for everybody that comes ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... their fingers up—so! One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It's a round finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders—or, Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to the face of a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn't a bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don't much mind. I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that——he is a dear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... isn't it?" remarked Austin, folding a red table-cover round his single leg by way of counterpane. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... present, she resumed her examination of the apartment, and was more and more attracted by it as she proceeded. For, thanks to her eminence as a local beauty, she had not that fear of beautiful and rich things which renders abject people incapable of associating costliness with comfort. Had the counterpane of the bed been her own, she would have unhesitatingly converted it into a ball-dress. There were toilet appliances of which she had never felt the need, and could only guess the use. She looked with despair into the two large closets, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... presented it to me with two very thin pieces of wrought-gold. Of this gold I believe there is but little here, though I suspect there is a place at no great distance which produces a great deal, and whence they procure it. Believing he might like a carpet or counterpane which lay on my bed, I presented it to him, together with some fine amber beads which I wore about my neck, a pair of red shoes, and a bottle of orange-flower water, with all of which he seemed very much pleased. The two old men who sat ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... style corresponding. He is lying upon a catre, or camp bedstead, rendered soft by a mattress of bearskins, while a serape of bright-coloured pattern is spread over him, serving both for blanket and counterpane. In the apartment is a table of the rudest construction, with two or three chairs, evidently from the hand of the same unskilful workman, their seats being simply hides with the hair on. On the table is a cup with a spoon in it, and two or three small bottles, that ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the girl closed the book, and leaned over the pillow to look at the sleeper. She had turned her face towards the wall, and one hand lay under her head, pressed against her cheek, while the other held her handkerchief on the outside of the counterpane. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... but she persuaded me to lie down a while. I was not unwilling to comply. What a sense of blissful repose pervaded me, weary with running, and perhaps faint with loss of blood, when I stretched myself on the bed, whose patchwork counterpane, let me say for Turkey's mother, was as clean as any down quilt in chambers of the rich. I remember so well how a single ray of sunlight fell on the floor from the little window in the roof, just on the foot that kept turning the spinning-wheel. Its hum sounded sleepy in my ears. I gazed at ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire—the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles—you feel like mixed pickles—so terribly sharp is the pricking, And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking. Then the bedclothes all ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... great many things. At length we go to bed. Well! we can't sleep. We toss and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly. We can't help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier—that wicked- looking cavalier—in green. In the flickering light they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable. Well! we get nervous— more and more nervous. We say "This is very foolish, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... it is lying out here in this chilly wind which comes down from the mountain tops! I say, what an idiot I was to strip myself and turn my greatcoat into a counterpane! No, I won't be a humbug; that wasn't the cold. It was sheer fright—cowardice—and I should have felt just the same if I had had a blanket over me. The brutes! There is something so horrible about it. The very idea of their coming down ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... late that the sun entering at the south windows of the room shone glaringly upon the white counterpane of his bed when Craig awoke the next morning. Breakfast had long been over, but throughout the unplastered ranch house the suggestion of coffee and the tang of bacon still lingered. At home those odours would have aroused slight sensations of pleasure ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... wisps at foot and side, twisted and turned back; from the floor-level to the waist. [443] For lords, 2 beds, outer and inner, hung with hangings, hooks and eyes set on the binding; the valance hanging on a rod (?), four curtains reaching to the ground; these he takes up with a forked rod. [455] The counterpane is laid at the foot, cushions on the sides, tapestry on the floor and sides of the room. [461] The Groom gets fuel, and screens. [463] The Groom keeps the table, trestles, and forms for dinner; and water in ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... dress, paused in the chamber she had designated, reluctant to enter the room beyond; for he saw at a glance that the bed which stood at one end was occupied. A white hand fell over the side, working nervously among the folds of the counterpane, as if the person who lay there was ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... mother's bed a covering of pink chintz, pictured all over with the figure of a man sitting on a cloud, holding a bunch of keys. I put the two together in my mind, imagining the chintz counterpane to be an illustration of the poem, or the poem an explanation of the counterpane. For the stanza I liked best began ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... thoughts vanished as they had come, and Mrs. Crickett set to work; she dragged off the counterpane, blankets and sheets, and stooped to lift the pillows. Thus stooping, something arrested her attention; she looked closely—more closely—very closely. 'Well, to be sure!' was all she could say. The clerk's wife stood as if the air had suddenly ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... long-sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with a grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his hopes of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on the counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled movement, and knew that eyes wide open with fear were striving to pierce the gloom ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... General Bonaparte—"Sir Hudson Low, call me not thus; I am Napoleon, Emperor of the French." There is also something singularly gratifying about the scene of Napoleon's death, in which he lay in bed with his little wooden hands outside the counterpane and the doctor (who was hung on wires too short) "delivered medical opinions in the air." It may seem flippant to dwell on such flippancies in connection with a book which contains many romantic descriptions and many moral generalisations which Dickens probably valued ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... heart. For the rest of that day he lay motionless on the bed, smoking pipe after pipe in the hope of stupefying himself with tobacco fumes. The air in the room became blue and thick with smoke; it was bitterly cold, and he wrapped himself up in his great-coat and drew the counterpane over him. The night came on and the window darkened, and at ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... his skill could devise, but he could not restore consciousness to the paralyzed brain. The soul was gone already. The body lay, a form of motionless and senseless clay, under the white counterpane; and Joseph Wilmot, sitting near the foot of the bed, watched it ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... man, saints and saints and saints again. I could not paint all night—Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. There came a hurry of feet, and little feet, a sweep of lutestrings, laughs, and whifts of song,"—etc. In his eagerness to join in the fun, he tears into shreds curtain, and counterpane, and coverlet, makes a rope, descends, and comes up with the fun hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met. On his way back toward daybreak, he is throttled by the police, and it is to them the monologue is addressed. He ingratiates himself with them by telling ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... He turned to the left and passed into their bedroom. The details of the chamber were growing clear: the bed was placed against the farther wall, projecting into the room, its low footboard held between posts that rose slimly dark against the white counterpane beyond; on the right were a window and high chest of drawers, on the left a stand with a china toilet service and a couch covered with sheep skins, roughly tanned and untrimmed. A chair by the bed bore Lettice's clothes, another at the foot ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... kind mater-familias, related an amusing experience which illustrates the semi-civilization of the people of those regions. His bed was provided with but one sheet; and the hostess kindly enquired whether he would rather have a counterpane or a blanket next him—"some people prefers one, and some the other!" she remarked. He thanked her blandly and chose the counterpane. During the two days and nights of his stay he did not hear the sound of a piano, nor a note of music ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... his study, and that consequently he had not touched the handle at all. He went straight into his room, his face quite calm—perhaps a trifle more resolute than usual. His glance, wandering inquisitively, fell on the bed. On the counterpane was a mess of blood, and the sheet had been torn. He had not noticed this before because he had walked straight to the dressing-table. On the further side the bedclothes were depressed as if someone had ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... drew back the curtains along the iron rod, and threw them in thick folds behind the head of the bed. She gazed upon the comte's pallid face, remarked his right hand enveloped in linen whose dazzling whiteness was increased by the counterpane covered with dark leaves which was thrown across a portion of the sick couch. She shuddered as she saw a spot of blood becoming larger and larger upon the linen bandages. The young man's white chest was quite uncovered, as if the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... more than tiredness," he said, with sudden impatience, beating upon the counterpane with his fist. "Amy—you're not behaving fairly. You must talk to ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... bed, and the air from the window cut his naked back. He buried his head in the counterpane and fastened his teeth in it so that he should not ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... knowed you would, or any true gentleman that don't hold with screwing poor folks. Just go and say that to him inside there for the love of God. Tell him to think what he's doing, driving poor creatures to despair. Summer's coming, the Lord be praised, but yet it's bitter cold at night with your counterpane gone; and when you've been working hard all day, and nothing but four bare walls to come home to, and all your poor little sticks of furniture that you've saved up for, and got together one by one, all ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... had been up for maybe an hour—the time of year, as I told you, being near about mid-summer—and the Parson, that never wanted for pluck, jumped out and into his breeches in a twinkling, while his wife pulled the counterpane over her head. Down along the passage he skipped to a little window opening over the ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... knees by the side of the bed, his eyes open and fixed with worry, he would breathe into the counterpane. Clad in his nightshirt, his neck poked forward, his back rounded, he resembled some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on a carved bedstead, furnished with sheets of fine linen and a counterpane of blue embroidered satin; but all bearing an appearance of great age. The room was oval, like a bird's-egg halved lengthwise; the smoothly vaulted ceiling being frescoed with a crowd of figures. The rich and costly ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new horror—looking back and walking stealthily, and making horrible grimaces—that might alone have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... his thin hands upon the counterpane, and speaking as in self-commune; "we must live near to God to know His mercy. It does seem almost as if I had asked a favour of any earthly person, so exactly has it been granted me! Mr. Arthur, I prayed that I might live to see you put right with Mr. Galloway and the town, and ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a nice little bourgeois, hasn't he, Blanquette? He knows how to make polite conversation. He is tidy in his habits in the Rue des Saladiers, eh? He does not spit on the floor or spill absinthe over the counterpane. Ah! je suis un vieux salaud, hein? Don't ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the centre of the floor and looked about her. There was a square of oilcloth in front of each article of furniture and a drawn-in rug beside the single four poster, which was covered with a fringed white dimity counterpane. ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nevertheless, his being knock-kneed, and spavined of one leg, sorely impaired the effect of this hidalgo cloak, which, by-the-way, was some-what rusty in front, where his chin rubbed against it, and a good deal bedraggled all over, from his having used it as a counterpane off ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... when the King of England goes to the House, with numberless well-dressed ladies leaning out to see him pass, it would give one an idea of the continental towns upon a gala day. But our people would be apt to cry out, Monmouth Street! and look ashamed if their neighbours saw the same deckerwork counterpane or crimson curtain produced at Easter, which made a figure at Christmas the December before; so that no end would be put to expence in our country, were such a fancy to take place. The rainy weather beside would spoil all our finery at once; and ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... true. Ten thousand devils! That so beastly a dog should have soiled Jeanne d'Albret's bed! Observe the nest he has made in her counterpane. Mon Dieu! it is scandalous. Monsieur, you will ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... kindly visitor stood lost in a species of helpless contemplation, until at last a motion of Susan's, directed towards the ordering of an unsightly fold in the wide smoothness of the counterpane, led to her bending herself to do a similar kindness upon her side of the bed. The action resulted in a slight change in her expression which Susan's watchfulness ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... MATTRESS.—Keep the body cool when asleep; heat arising from a load of bed-clothes, is most undesirable. Turn down the counterpane, and let the air have free course through ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... fire illumined the darkest side of the poor chamber. There were no trees near the house, and a full November moon streamed in at the unblinded, uncurtained windows, lighting up the bare interior—the unpainted floor, the gray plastered walls, and the white counterpane. ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... discovered the high canopied tester of dark green damask, with the curtains descending to the floor in the fashion of a tent, half drawn, and remaining apparently, as they had been left twenty years before; and over the whole bedding was thrown a counterpane, or pall, of black velvet, that hung down to the floor. Emily shuddered, as she held the lamp over it, and looked within the dark curtains, where she almost expected to have seen a human face, and, suddenly remembering the horror she had suffered upon discovering ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... perhaps," muttered the boy to himself, as he ran back to the other side of the bed and raised the counterpane. "Haven't slipped off and gone under," he muttered, and then as a fresh thought struck him he clapped his hands to his forehead and stood staring before him. "The thieves!" he exclaimed. "They haven't been in here and ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... it was papered, it was rugged, its floor was painted and waxed, its window—opening into the court, by the way—was hung with chintz and net curtains, its bed was garnished with sheets and counterpane, its chairs were upholstered and in perfect repair and polish. It was not Arizona, emphatically not, but rather the sweet and garnished and lavendered respectability of a Connecticut village. My dirty old cantinas lay stacked against the washstand. At sight ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... 474).—The following are different counterpane patterns which should be worked in coarse cotton; our engraving represents a single square, worked in two colours, in raised crochet. By joining a number of such squares together, 4 or 6 colours can be introduced into one covering with very ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... house, while the latter with his nose over the barnyard fence, neighing occasionally, as if he missed the little hands which had daily fed him the oatmeal he liked so much, and which now lay hot and parched and helpless upon the white counterpane Grandma Markham had spun and woven herself. Maddy might have been just as sick as she was if the examination had never occurred, but it was natural for those who loved her to impute it all to the effects of excitement and cruel disappointment, so there ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... spin, toil and spin, year in, year out," said the Spider sadly. "It is my masterpiece that I am finishing to-night,—a woven counterpane, light as air, threaded with sparkling dewdrops. I was just going out to fetch a few more, and thought there might be some in this pond; but it is a sticky pond, and I fell in, and now ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... monstrous grey old man, with a vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green—a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring the water out ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... shine crimson in the ruddy glow of a cheerful fire. All my preparations complete, I had pulled back the hangings, and was about to slip in between the sheets, when, to my unbounded amazement, what should I see sitting on the counterpane but the black-and-tan mongrel. It was he right enough, there could not be another such ugly dog, though, unlike his usual self, he evinced no demonstrations of joy. On the contrary, he appeared downright miserable. His ears hung, his mouth dropped, and his ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... come in time; for so still and motionless were they that it seemed as if the smoke must have already stifled them, and left them in these startling attitudes. One—a very old lady—was kneeling by the bedside, her head bent forward in despair, her hands flung out over the counterpane. The other—a tall, heavy-looking woman—was standing bolt upright by the window. Neither spoke nor stirred, and the kneeling woman did not even raise her head at the noise of his entrance; the other, with eyes utterly expressionless and awful, supported herself with one hand against the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Fareham says his death-bed was like a money-changer's counter. He was passionately fond of hocca, the Italian game which he brought into fashion, and which ruined half the young men about the Court. The counterpane was scattered with money and playing cards, which were only brushed aside to make room for the last Sacraments. My Lord Clarendon declares that his spirits never recovered from the shock of his Majesty's ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... paper, but through the table on which it lay. Yes, and through the floor below that, down, and still down, even into infinite depths. He craned over it, utterly bewildered. Just as, when you were a child, you may have pored over a square inch of counterpane until it became a landscape with wooded hills, and perhaps even churches and houses, and you lost all thought of the true size of yourself and it, so this hole seemed to Humphreys for the moment the only thing in the world. For some reason it ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... tray sat untouched on its little stand, while on the counterpane were spread out some twoscore portraits of more ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... went towards him and poured out more milk. Instead of reaching out for it, the sick man's hand lay on the coverlet. The notes were tightly held by three fingers; the free finger and the thumb picked at the counterpane. Von Holzen bent over the bed and examined the face. The sick man's eyes were closed. Suddenly he spoke in a mumbling voice—"And now that you have what you want, you ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... tapestries, and covered with various devices wrought into fantastic images of flowers, angels, and seraphim. A large, fresh-gathered posy in the bosom of the deceased had a most striking effect, when contrasted 30with the pallidness of death; over the lower parts of the corpse was spread a counterpane, covered with roses, marigolds, and sweet-smelling flowers; whilst on his breast reposed the cross, emblematical of the dead man's faith; and on a table opposite, at the extreme end, stood an image ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... music that evening. Maulevrier and Mary were playing billiards; Fraeulein Mueller was sitting in her corner working at a high-art counterpane. Lesbia came in from the verandah presently, and sat on a low stool by her grandmother's arm-chair, and talked to her in soft, cooing accents, inaudible to John Hammond, who sat a little way off turning the leaves of the Contemporary Review: and this went on till eleven o'clock, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... leaned her head upon her hand in an attitude of extreme dejection. Mrs. Blair eyed her with the exasperation of one whose just challenge has been refused; she marched back and forth through the room, now smoothing a fold of the counterpane, with vicious care, and again pulling the braided rug to one side or the other, the while she sought new fuel for her rage. Without, the sun was lighting snowy knoll and hollow, and printing the fine-etched tracery of the trees against a crystal sky. The road was not usually much frequented ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... body: "There, you see, whenever you break the law people will hurt you like this. So take notice." She moved about the room, leaving it as it should be left for the night, opening the windows and folding up the counterpane, while he lay face downwards on his pillow. Just as she was closing ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the window. Lifting back the curtain, she stood in the splendour of the moonlight, and sang the grand old hymn. At first Aunty Nan beat time to it feebly on the counterpane; but when Joscelyn came to the verse, "With mercy and with judgment," she folded her hands ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... yearned at him through the uncurtained window of the bare attic chamber, and he longed back to it. Oh how sweet, how sweet to pass to peace for ever, to lie asleep for ever, with the grass and the daisies for a counterpane, and yet to be somewhere and wideawake and happy! 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' Paul was of the kingdom for a time, but he had the blundering ill-luck to mention it. He put his arms ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... room turned out to be on the shady side, and though not so grand as the spare-room, it was pleasantly cool. The little bed with the hard mattress and the snowy counterpane was infinitely to be preferred to the ocean of feathers, and the rescued maiden lay back on her smaller pillows ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... very bad, and have been sent on here from another hospital. They are enchanted with their quarters, which indeed do look uncommonly nice. One hundred and thirty beds are ranged in rows, and we have a bright counterpane on each and clean sheets. The floor is scrubbed, and the bathrooms, store, office, kitchens, and receiving-rooms have been made out of nothing, and look splendid. I never saw a hospital spring up like magic in this way before. There ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... and Sally went out of the room together. But while Sally went straight upstairs, to light the bedroom gas, fold up the counterpane, and otherwise play the part of the good sister she was, Martie noiselessly opened the side door and stepped out for a breath ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... real to him, so natural, so tangibly alive! When she put her face down by his he trembled, and burst out crying like a child. He was afraid she would go away. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands about one of his. The other hand lay bandaged on the counterpane. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... upstairs with lights, and such weapons as chance afforded; when we beheld a very diverting scene. In one corner stood the poor captain shivering in his shirt, which was all torn to rags: with a woeful visage, scratched all over by his wife, who had by this time wrapped the counterpane about her, and sat sobbing on the side of her bed. At the other end lay the old usurer, sprawling on Miss Jenny's bed, with his flannel jacket over his shirt, and his tawny meagre limbs exposed to the air; while she ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... and pulled the sheet up over me; but still I shivered. Then I pulled the blanket up, but the chill continued. I couldn't seem to get warm again. Then came the counterpane, and finally I had to put on my bath-robe—a fuzzy woollen affair, which in midwinter I had sometimes found too warm for comfort. Even then I was not sufficiently bundled up, so I called for an extra blanket, two afghans, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... ejaculative note of joy and rushed to the bed. A dozen books lay upon the counterpane. Oh, the beautiful books! Romance, adventure, love stories! She gathered up the books in her arms and cuddled them, as a mother might have cuddled a child. Love stories! It was of negligible importance that these books were ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... stretches with hurried gnawings behind a door, that she is sick because the philosophy of Rees is not yet her philosophy, that her hands and feet grow cold and her body turns to warm milk, that she longs so to sit on a bed that she can almost visualize the depression her body would make on its counterpane, and I get a glimpse of the passage of time and of ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... she lay in a tight round ball, inactive, undisturbed. Even her breathing revealed her peculiar idiosyncrasy: no actual movement on her surface was discernible. Her breathing involved the least possible disturbance of the pink and white contours that bulged the sheets and counterpane. Her face was calm, expressionless, and even dull, yet wore a certain look as though she knew so much that she had no need to maintain her position by the least assertion. Exertion would have been a denial of her right to exist. And exist she certainly ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... The fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ceiling but was, from floor to top, about 7 ft. 3 in. high, and the bed was 6-1/2 ft. square. The curtains were arranged on rods and pulleys, and when closed this "lit en housse" looked like a huge square box. The counterpane, or "coverture de parade," was of the curtain material. The four corners of the canopy were decorated with bunches of plumes or panache, or with a carved wooden ornament called pomme, or with a "bouquet" of silk. The beds were covered with rich stuffs, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... at an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send Lilith ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... her kindly aid in this time of need, we owe a graphic but pathetic picture of Poe's home shortly before the death of his almost angelic wife: "There was no clothing on the bed, which was only straw, but a snow-white counterpane and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat in her bosom. The wonderful ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... velvet suit with the cowl in his hand. They watched him pause before a certain door, draw on the cowl and disappear. Through the opening they could see Lord Ashleigh asleep in bed, the moonlight streaming through the open window across the counterpane. They saw the Professor turn with a strange, horrible look in his face and close the door. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yourself: "I am getting up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of humour for going about that I was made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze beneath the counterpane?" Surely action is the end of your being. Look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders and bees, and you will see that they are all exerting their nature, and busy in their station. Shall not a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... at last, and at seven o'clock one evening he sent Ginger off to fetch a cab to take 'im to the London Horsepittle. Sam said something about putting 'is clothes on, but Peter Russet said the horsepittle would be more likely to take him in if he went in the blanket and counterpane, and at last Sam gave way. Ginger and Peter helped 'im downstairs, and the cabman laid hold o' one end o' the blanket as they got to the street-door, under the idea that he was helping, and very ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... five days later he sat in his bedroom, looking over a number of water-colors that covered the counterpane and largely obscured the pillows—views of Green Lake, scenes from the rocks and gorges of the upper Wisconsin. "I've done very well," he thought—"very well, indeed." He was trying to make himself believe that he ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... order than usual, as I have said. The bed was made—which was out of the ordinary, for Jennie Brice never made a bed—but made the way a man makes one, with the blankets wrinkled and crooked beneath, and the white counterpane pulled smoothly over the top, showing every lump beneath. I showed Mr. Holcombe the splasher, dotted with ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... take care of my nephew, because, Mr. Masham being a brother of our Society, his son, you know, is consequently a nephew. Mrs. Masham sat up dressed in bed, but not, as they do in Ireland, with all smooth about her, as if she was cut off in the middle; for you might see the counterpane (what d'ye call it?) rise about her hips and body. There is another name of the counterpane; and you will laugh now, sirrahs. George Granville came in at supper, and we stayed till eleven; and Lord Treasurer set me down at my lodging in Suffolk Street. Did I ever ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Two dry blankets were spread upon the mattress, and I was enveloped in them as in the wet sheet, being well and closely tucked in round the neck, and the head raised on two pillows. Then came my old friend the down bed, and a counterpane. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... answer, Miss Verinder called to me softly. She met me at the door of her room, with a light shawl, and with the counterpane from her ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... lighting the dim frescoes on the high ceiling, and paling the light of the little lamp which burned before the image of the Madonna. A wandering breeze, fresh from the distant hills, blew in, making the flame dance and flicker and flaunting a corner of the white counterpane gayly in the air. ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... bent over the appalling shroud, opened it with the knife which Faria had made, drew the corpse from the sack, and bore it along the tunnel to his own chamber, laid it on his couch, tied around its head the rag he wore at night around his own, covered it with his counterpane, once again kissed the ice-cold brow, and tried vainly to close the resisting eyes, which glared horribly, turned the head towards the wall, so that the jailer might, when he brought the evening meal, believe that he was asleep, as was his frequent custom; entered ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the broad bed with its snowy counterpane and downy pillows roomy enough for two, but a wide cot had been placed on the other side of the neat little room for whoever chose ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... had to be humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not mind me, ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... she lay staring at it without power to move, and then she would assuredly have run to some one for protection had she known to whom to go, or, indeed, had she not been too terrified to do more than hide her head under the counterpane again. From that time it became a perpetual nightmare to her. By day its terrors were less apparent, though even then, with her innate love for all things bright, and joyous, and pleasant, it was a positive grief to her to have such ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... little, old-fashioned bed that had been Aunt Jed's. It, too, was a four-poster; but so pompous a name overweighted its daintiness. So light were its trimmings in white, so snowy the mounds of its pillows and the narrow reach of its counterpane, that it seemed more like a nesting-place for untainted dreams than the sensible, stocky ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... and spread it out on the counterpane. The boys, not without a sense of shock, noted a dark, rusty-looking stain upon it. It struck them that the marks might be the life blood of the treacherous Foxy's friend who had met a tragic end ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... counterpane off the bed, and went with it into the next room. He gently drew the body to the corner of the room, and covered it up with the counterpane, and then proceeded to examine the cupboards, etcetera. In one he found a good store of ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... subdued from her native impetuosity to something chastened and severe, was still out of harmony with the shabby carpet, the patched counterpane, and the meagre daylight; she brought into the room an extraordinary sense of brightness, and yet she had taken some trouble to amend her costume and bring it within the range of things sorrowful and sober. Her side face, in particular, nothing could tame; the exquisite ear, defined by a diamond, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... their way, he came out to help them, when he was much surprised on beholding the princess in her water bed, calling out to him to save her life. The old man ran back to fetch a grapple, and towed the bed ashore with some difficulty, and the princess having wrapt herself in the counterpane, followed him to his cottage, where he lit a fire, and gave her some clothes that once belonged to his late wife. Seeing that she must be a lady of high degree, by the richness of the bed-clothes, which were of satin, embroidered with gold and silver, the old man questioned her, ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... a peak of the Balkans, wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit snow. The interior of the room is not like anything to be seen in the east of Europe. It is half rich Bulgarian, half cheap Viennese. The counterpane and hangings of the bed, the window curtains, the little carpet, and all the ornamental textile fabrics in the room are oriental and gorgeous: the paper on the walls is occidental and paltry. Above the head of the bed, which stands against a little wall cutting off the right hand corner ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... after the lapse of perhaps a quarter of an hour, to Jessie's bedside, she found the girl sobbing as though her heart would break, and the letter torn into a thousand pieces, which were fluttering over the counterpane. ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... said the Irishman, 'an' by the same token the 'broidery is scrapin' my hide off. I've lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me boots, an' me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl's leg at a dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man—all fearful an' timoreous. Give me a pipe ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... regardless of the fate of the predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune; "you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a tapestry needle, in plaiting ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... dreaming of him whom she loved so, and who was now, she supposed, travelling far away over mountain and sea. Her wicked brother stopped over her, and laughed hideously, as fiends only can laugh. The dry leaf fell out of his hair upon the counterpane; but he did not notice it, and went to get a little sleep during the early morning hours. But the elf slipped out of the withered leaf, placed himself by the ear of the sleeping girl, and told her, as in a dream, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... worm-eaten chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering world; and he records the rent in a ragged counterpane as an event in history. He is equally curious in his back-grounds and in his figures. You know the Christian and surnames of every one of his heroes,—the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a Monday,—their place of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... rich material were composed the tester and the lightly-quilted coverlet, thrown across the foot of the bed, over a fine white Marseilles counterpane. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... of Hungary lace very elegantly trimmed with olive-coloured cloth, and six chairs and a counterpane to match; the whole in very good condition, and lined with soft red and blue shot-silk. Item:—the tester of good pale pink Aumale serge, with the small and the ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... and spread the contents on the counterpane. "I wasn't so stony as you thought. What? Cash and unregistered bonds. They would ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... lay in a close room. Her curls were tangled on the pillow and her thin, brown arms tossed on the hot counterpane. By her side was a glass of some dark medicine, and her black eyes held more of rebellion than of fever as ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... house up in the tree Is just the very thing for me. It holds my food and keeps the rain From off my comfy counterpane. ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... came in. She advanced to the bedside smiling joyously, and put the money Mrs. Lander had given her down upon the counterpane. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the so-called Wilderness—a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West—and gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and embroidered linen counterpane ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... She seems very happy,' said Mrs Constable; 'but I'm afraid she'll make dirty marks on your white counterpane, child.' ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... and with him a kiss was a sacrament. Now he would scorn her. The field of her disaster seemed to broaden, as she thought of it, and with the chastity of her lips she felt that she had lost everything worth having in life. Abandoning her pillow, she covered her head with the counterpane, and drawing her knees to her breast, lay trembling and sobbing. Dic was lost to her. There seemed to be no other possible outcome to the present situation. She feared Williams as never before, and felt that ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... frightful shudder that seemed to sweep by, Pierre, with his horror of all violence, succumbed, and let his face sink upon the counterpane at the edge of the bed. And he sobbed distractedly: a sudden attack of weakness, overflowing in tears, cast him there exhausted, with no more strength than a child. It was as if all his sufferings since ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mountain, where the little people lived. Here everything was of a very small size, but more fine and elegant than can be told. The mother of the child lay in a bed made of ebony, studded with pearls, the counterpane was embroidered with gold, the cradle was of ivory, and the bathing-tub of gold. So the maid stood godmother, and was then for going home, but the elves begged her to stay at least three more days with them; ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... chamber lay before us brightly illuminated by a brass lamp which stood upon the table. The bedclothes had not been turned down, but there was an indentation upon the counterpane which showed that some one had lain there. One-half of the lattice window was swinging on its hinge, and a cloth cap lying upon the table was the only sign of the occupant. My uncle looked round ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It was a quarter to two. But Stirling did not appear, nor was there any message from him or sign. I had to submit to the predicament. As a faint chilliness from the window affected my back I drew my overcoat up to my shoulders as a counterpane. Through a gap between the red curtains of the window I could see a star blazing. It passed behind the curtain with disconcerting rapidity. The universe was ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... here! Mamma, I've come!" He flung himself upon the soft, warm shoulder, but it was still, and the comforting arms lay limp upon the counterpane. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... I loved you in the candlelight. Your golden hair strewed the sweet whiteness of the pillows and the counterpane. O the darkness of the corners, the warm air, and the stars framed in the casement of the ships' lights! The waves lapped into the harbour; the boats creaked; a man's voice sang out on the quay; and you loved me. In your love were the ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... exemplified. An ordinary man would have leapt overboard in pursuit, but Bones was no ordinary man. He remembered in that moment of crisis, the distressing propensity of his prisoner to the "eradication of garments." With one stride he was in his cabin and had snatched a counterpane from his bed, in two bounds he was over the rail on the bank and running swiftly in the direction the fugitive ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... knees, her face buried in the counterpane, a corner of it stuffed into her mouth that it might help to stifle her agony, knelt Lady Isabel. The moment's excitement was well nigh beyond her strength of endurance. Her own child—his child—they alone around its death-bed, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood |
