"Housemaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I am bound to say she spoke the truth. Nobody was fonder of old Uncle Cuthbert than I was, but everybody knows that, where money was concerned, he was the most complete chump in the annals of the nation. He had an expensive thirst. He never backed a horse that didn't get housemaid's knee in the middle of the race. He had a system of beating the bank at Monte Carlo which used to make the administration hang out the bunting and ring the joy-bells when he was sighted in the offing. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... please him. And then your memory travels back and back along the years, arriving at last at the picture of an English nursery, in the household where a German guest had arrived the night before. The nurses and the children are sitting peacefully at breakfast, when there enters to them a housemaid, scornful, scandalised, out of breath with her hurry to impart what she ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... one, too—with two or three more. You broke that woman's heart. I don't suppose you know that she died last month. You never noticed it, eh? Her precious coachman is living like a lord on the money you and he took from her. Old Burkenday's housemaid has bought a little home in Edgewater—but not from her wages. The two jobs you now have on hand never will be pulled off. The girl in the Banker Watts case has been cornered and has confessed. She is ready to appear against you. McLennan's ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... when you come to the test of actual facts you find, I think, all grades of freedom and determinism. For certain purposes you believe in free will, for others you do not. Thus, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, no determinist is prevented from saying "if you please" to the housemaid. In love, in your career, you have no doubt that "if" is a reality. But when you are engaged in scientific investigation, you try to reduce the spontaneous in life to a minimum. Mr. Arnold Bennett puts forth a rather curious hybrid ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... say it. Ellen the housemaid and me—but that ain't for the newspapers. So Mr. Walter's home, is he? Well, he do walk about, to be sure, and him not left for New York ten ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... Jones to run round to my place right away. Our cook's fallen downstairs—broke her leg; the housemaid's got chicken-pox, and my two boys have been knocked ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... busy over Miss Crawford's accounts. She remembered so well the column of figures, and the doubtful hieroglyphic which might be an 8, but was quite as likely to be a 3. While she sat gazing at it and weighing probabilities in her mind the housemaid appeared, with an urgent request that she would go to Miss Crawford at once. Obeying the summons, she found the old lady looking at an unopened letter which lay on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference. In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the unconscious ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... idea,' interposed Miss Rodney quietly. 'I have been asked if I knew of a girl who would go into a country-house not far from here as second housemaid, and it occurred ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... probably false impressions abroad as to the susceptibility of literature to destruction by fire. Books are not good fuel, as, fortunately, many a housemaid has found, when, among other frantic efforts and failures in fire-lighting, she has reasoned from the false data of the inflammability of a piece of paper. In the days when heretical books were burned, it was necessary to place them on ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... goes to Astrardente in the Sabines on the day after to-morrow," said Temistocle. "It is quite sure that she goes, because she has already sent out two pairs of horses, and several boxes of effects, besides the second housemaid and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... comfortably seated, toasting chestnuts over the fire and enjoying a jug of wine, little Annette, the housemaid, appeared in a black calico dress and velvet turban, with rosy cheeks and lips like a cluster of cherries. She came running up the stairs, gave a hasty knock and threw herself joyfully into my arms. I had known the pretty little girl for a long time; we were of the same ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... husband I know little," cried the fair Bella. "Only this, that she drove him out of the house by her scandalous conduct. Yes, indeed; although you may not believe me, Di. You were away in Australia at the time, but I kept a watch on Lydia in your interest, dear, and our housemaid heard from your housemaid the most dreadful things. Why, Mr. Vrain remonstrated with Lydia, and ordered Count Ferruci out of the house, but Lydia would not let him go; and Mr. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked to any woman except his cook or housemaid. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... said she was a housemaid, and didn't understand stoves. She had always lived where kitchen-maids ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dress and powder; Anna, a French troubadour singing beautifully and speaking French perfectly; William, the youngest son, a half-pay officer, king of the coffee house; Tom, a famous London black beggar, Billy Waters, with a wooden leg; Morton, Meg Merillics; Dr. Lushington, a housemaid; Miss Mulso, an English ballad singer; Mr. Burrell (I forgot to mention him, an old family friend at dinner) as a Spanish gentleman, Don Pedro Velasquez de Tordesillas; very good ruff and feathers, but much wanting ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... mamma is willing. Have the horses harnessed." The rain was not abating; one might almost have said that it was raining harder when the carriage drove up to the door. Jeanne was ready to step in when the baroness came downstairs, supported on one side by her husband and on the other by a tall housemaid, strong and strapping as a boy. She was a Norman woman of the country of Caux, who looked at least twenty, although she was but eighteen at the most. She was treated by the family as a second daughter, for she was Jeanne's foster sister. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... there is one room in Darwin's house, his bedroom, where the housemaid is never allowed to touch two things? One is a plant he is growing and studying while it grows" (it was one of those insect-devouring plants which consumed bugs and beetles and things for the particular delectation of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you like me to make you a cup of tea?" asked Alice the housemaid, noticing that the pudding was unappreciated, and divining ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... for a moment all meet together in the centre; at other times, rolling their heads upon their shoulders with such astonishing velocity, that the eye was dazzled as they flew round and round, their hair radiating and diverging like the thrumbings of a mop, when trundled by some strong-limbed housemaid. Their motions were regulated by the tom-toms, while an old Brahmin, with a ragged white beard, sat perched over the door of the pagoda, and, with a small piece of bamboo, struck upon the palm of his ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to be company or no company, into the kitchen regularly every day, half an hour before dinner, to take a slice from the roast or the boiled before it went up to table. As he was this day, according to his custom, in the kitchen, taking his snack by way of a damper, he heard the housemaid and the cook talking about some wonderful fortune-teller, whom the housemaid had been consulting. This fortune-teller was no less a personage than the successor to Bampfylde Moore Carew, king of the gipsies, whose ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... in Mary's masculine hand, instead of in your lovely Italian penmanship. Strange—isn't it?—how much better the women of your time write than the girls of the present day! Lady Kirkbank receives letters from stylish girls in a hand that would disgrace a housemaid.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If she have cook and housemaid they are to go also, and number her two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which they would make a holiday, they would—as at other crises, of birth, sickness, death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no first-class families—come ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... week before that I was down in the bed of the Redclay Creek fishing for 'tailers'. I'd been getting on all right with the housemaid at the 'Royal'—she used to have plates of pudding and hot pie for me on the big gridiron arrangement over the kitchen range; and after the third tuck-out I thought it was good enough to do a bit ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... a ray of light from a candle entered the room, which was now almost dark. A foot-man and a housemaid thrust in their heads cautiously and peered into the broad gloom, holding the candle high before them. Either would have been afraid ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... is so like you, father," he said; "yes, that is you all over. You don't like to give trouble even to the housemaid. Now when you see things going wrong you ought to give trouble—serious trouble, I mean. You ought, in vulgar phrase, to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... his expenses." "I hope it didn't cost George much," said Alice. "It did, though; nearly all he had got. But what matters? Money's nothing to him, except for its uses. My own little mite is my own now, and he shall have every farthing of it for the next election, even though I should go out as a housemaid the next day." There must have been something great about George Vavasor, or he would not have been so idolized by such a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... about his carriage were five servants, among whom were two young gentlemen between eighteen and nineteen, who, by the housemaid's report, made his bed. (I should have thought one would have been sufficient to make or unmake it) Lady Grenville was cruel enough not to repeat this to me till he was gone, so that I ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... befell the household a series of coincidental labor problems that left them all at once without servants. The chauffeur, who hated his employer, was summarily discharged for drunken insolence. The cook was taken dangerously ill and her sister, the housemaid, went with her to her home at Provincetown. The gardener and outside man alone remained on duty and since both of these came and went from a distance, Conscience and Stuart found themselves promoted ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... seconds later, the old black housemaid and cook combined strode heavily in and knelt down just inside the door. Prayers over, Miss Elizabeth Blake, the senior lady teacher, sat down to the harmonium and played the first few bars of a hymn. Then the little congregation stood up and sang. They kept good time, and their singing was ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... we talk of a thousand, and the all-important and beloved "world" (sixteen friends now, and two of them carriage-folks!) agree that we really must be spending seven hundred, or at all events, running into debt up to that figure; but the butcher and baker, who have gone into the matter with the housemaid, ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... the schoolroom. She sat down for a moment near the open window. The day was still in its prime. She looked at the clock. The under-housemaid, who had the charge of the schoolroom tea, now came in with the tray. She laid the cloth and spread the tea-things. There was a plate of little queen-cakes ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... much indoors, but Betty says the housework's nothing. Anne agrees. She combines the duties of housemaid and my sister. Oh, we're all in it, I warn you. Of course, we do old Bumble and Mrs. Bumble proud. They deserve it. They're very kindly and easy-going, and we always try and give them just a shade ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... some paste," said Emilie, just as the clock struck four; Margaret answered the bell. Margaret was the housemaid, and so far from endeavouring in her capacity to overcome evil with good, she was perpetually making mischief and increasing any evil there might be, either in kitchen or parlour, by her mode of delivering a message. She would be sure to add her mite to any blame that she might ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... opened his mouth, and pretended to be asleep—snoring moderately. This of itself would have undeceived any one, for when the old hypocrite was really asleep he never snored moderately. The cook and housemaid uttered two little shrieks and slammed their respective doors, while the bell rang ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... of course, the unjust effect of my original exaggeration of their length and breadth. The troops that I saw marching through the streets where we first lodged were fine, large men. I myself saw no choice in the different bodies, but the little housemaid much preferred the grenadier guards to the Scotch guards; perhaps there was one grenadier guard who lent beauty and grandeur to the rest. I think Scotch caps are much gayer than those busbies which the grenadiers wear, but that, again, is a matter of taste; I certainly did not think the plaid pantaloons ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... believe it for a reason that I shall give you presently. But first I want to go though our joint history, very briefly, just to justify myself if you like. Five-and-twenty years ago, or was it six-and-twenty, I was a boy of eighteen and you were a woman of twenty, a housemaid in my mother's house, and you made love to me. Then my mother was called away to nurse my brother who died at school at Portsmouth, and I fell sick with scarlet fever and you nursed me through it—it would have been kinder if you had poisoned me, and in my weak state ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... maidens were not anxious the conflict should cease—it was far more entertaining than maxims, arithmetic and working texts on samples—and Miss Pinwell seeing this, summoned Bridget, the brawny housemaid, who with a canvas apron finally caught and squashed the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... give you a fresh mop, and you can have the back porch and table for your workshop, and if I'm not mistaken, you will find two hours a day little enough for the work!" she added with very much the air of some one engaging a new housemaid and presenting her ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... dust that had gathered lightly in its owner's absence, the place was as neat and clean as if the housemaid had but gone over it. Hazel shrugged her shoulders. Roaring Bill Wagstaff became, if anything, more of an enigma than ever, in the light of his dwelling. She recollected that Cariboo Meadows had regarded him askance, and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Afterwards I tried to put my bets, as far as I could remember them, down on a large sheet of paper, and I think I got it very nearly right. But I left the paper lying about in the library in a very interesting first edition of Plotinus, I believe, and either the housemaid burned it, or my host threw it into the waste-paper basket. At all events, it was lost, and I have no head for figures, and things got mixed somehow. The book-maker's recollection of the circumstances was not the same as mine. But I began quite a fresh book, on imaginative ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... obliged to look on: she was a woman who spoke her meaning. She knelt, handling paper, firewood and matches, like a housemaid. Danvers proceeded on her mission, and Redworth eyed Diana in the first fire-glow. He could have imagined a Madonna on an old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... please me. I hoped that he would escape by the window, but it stuck, and to my horror I heard him there, in the dark, moving about. I covered the sounds as well as I could, and pacified Raoul, who thought he had seen someone come in. I hinted that it must have been the fiance of a pretty housemaid I have. It was not till after one that Ivor Dundas finally got away; this I swear to you. What happened to him after leaving my house you know better than I do, for I haven't seen him since, as you ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... appearance at the door, a silence as of death was the sign of his welcome; but a tumult presently arose, and discipline was for a time suspended. I am afraid he had a slight feeling of condescension, as he returned the kind greeting of his old companions.—Raise a housemaid to be cook, and she will condescend ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... a bed! One mattress about four inches thick over squeaking slats, cotton sheets, so nicely calculated to the size of the bed that the slightest move on the part of the sleeper would detach them from their moorings and undo the housemaid's work; two limp, discouraged pillows that had evidently been "banting," and a few towels a foot long with a surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of the room. Baths were unknown, and hot water was a luxury distributed sparingly by a capricious handmaiden. It is only ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... cab down the still street, a pull-up, a short, sharp knock, and in two minutes more Hyacinthe King had been welcomed kindly by one aunt and tenderly pressed to the heart of the other. A sober housemaid had taken her wraps, and was even now unpacking her boxes in the chamber above. She was sitting in Miss Juliet's own armchair, and had greatly surprised Ponto, the ancient cat, by taking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... here in our own home. It was there [Pointing towards the first door on the right], in the dining-room, that I first came to know of it. I was busy with something in there, and the door was standing ajar. I heard our housemaid come up from the garden, with water ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... is housemaid's knee, and painter's colic, so there is millionaire's melancholia. And the Budlongs were enduring the illness ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... menage was by no means magnificent, but was abundant in a patriarchal way; Madame de Warens had no idea of economy, and with her hospitalities and speculations was ever running more deeply into debt. The household, besides herself and me, consisted of housemaid, cook, and a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... head of the procession with an accordion, Willy Parker clashed the castanets as well as he could, and they all marched into the house. The table was beautifully spread with flowers and grapes and pretty china. Johnnie took the head, Willy the foot, and Dinah the housemaid helped them all round to ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... pulled down and others turned into schools or hospitals, valued only at the rent of the land on which they stand. All this is inevitable. You cannot stop all this any more than Mrs. Partington could stem the Atlantic tide with a housemaid's mop. But ere the flood has quite swallowed up all that remains of England's natural and architectural beauties, it may be useful to glance at some of the buildings that remain in town and country ere they have ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Fothergill, and, with a certain foreboding of ill, made my way down to Holly Lodge as soon as possible. It was with no surprise at all that I heard that the master was missing. In the very first of the morning, it seemed, or ever the earliest under-housemaid had begun to set man-traps on the stairs and along the passages, he must have quietly left the house. The servants were cheerful enough, nevertheless, and thought the master must only have "gone for a nice long walk,'' and so on, after the manner of their kind. Without ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... furnished with disregard to expense. But, in addition to lavish expenditure, there was much taste shown, and many articles chosen for their beauty and elegance adorned his rooms. As Wilson passed a window which a housemaid had thrown open, he saw pictures and gilding, at which he was tempted to stop and look; but then he thought it would not be respectful. So he hastened on to the kitchen door. The servants seemed very busy with preparations for breakfast; but good-naturedly, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... grave Norman is drawn in. He agrees with Mary that bubbles used to fly over the wall, and that one once went into Mrs. Richardson's garret window, when her housemaid tried to catch it with a pair of tongs, and then ran downstairs screaming that there was a ghost in her room; but that was in Harry's time, the heroic age of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... had closed on Saturday. Monday I was to sail for England, and early that morning the housemaid watched for the carriage. My landlady was growing quivery about the chin, because I had to cross alone to join Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis, who had gone ahead, My mother was gay with a sort of crippled hilarity ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... nature are described by Podmore in his chapter on "Haunted Houses."[33] Miss Langton saw a misty phantom, and Lizzie the housemaid saw a cloud and afterwards got a cramp, less persistent than the butler's, as she began to scream.[34] The upper housemaid saw a woman whose legs she did not notice,[35] as was the case with Mr. Godfrey's friend to whom ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... plan to serve the poor girl. Early in the morning he took his pack and went through the village up to the Rev. Mr. Horton's. There, under pretence of asking for kettles to mend, he told the most dismal tale to the housemaid. At breakfast-time this was reported to Mrs. Horton. Distress at such a time was sufficient to engage any lady's attention. Mrs. Horton was a frail, tender woman, but earnest in works of charity. The ponies were ordered, and down they drove. The tale was not overdrawn. "Not ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... said Osborn nodding eagerly, "rubber gloves for wet work, and housemaid's gloves for dry, eh, dearest? You will always, won't you? You must let me buy you ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... stage-door, to find his enemy or not to find him, as the case might be, but in either event to eat his heart in jealousy and impatience. When he found him he burned to insult him by asking him what tailor he advertised, or by addressing him as the Housemaid's Terror or the Nursegirl's Blight. He ground tegmenta of 'Maud' between his teeth as he looked at him. 'His essences turn the live air sick,' and 'that oiled and curled Assyrian bull, smelling of musk and of insolence.' And it happened ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and coat here in the hall, Mr. Nason," she said cordially, "and go right into the parlor and get warm. You will kindly excuse me now. I'm first and second girl, housemaid and cook, and I must go and help Aunt Susan to get supper ready. You two gentlemen are hungry, ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... family is called Scharrer von Arneck, and the father is a retired member of the Board of Mines. The young lady is really his sister, and she is a teacher at the middle school in Brunn. I found all this out from the housemaid. But I went about it in a very cunning way, I did not want to ask straight out, and so I said: Can you tell me who that white-haired old gentleman is, he is so awfully like my Grandfather. (I have never see my Grandfather, for Father's Father has ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... are grown-up, respectable people, we often inhabit new dwellings; the housemaid daily cleans them and changes at her will the position of the furniture, which interests us but little, as it is either new or may belong today to Jack, tomorrow to Isaac. Even our very clothes are strange to us; we hardly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the toilette of the two little children, and gave the assistance that Cherry needed, as well as discharging some of the lighter tasks of the housemaid; leaving the heavier ones to Sibby and Martha, a stout, willing, strong young woman, whom Sister Constance had happily found for them, and who was disqualified, by a loutish manner and horrible squint, from the places to which her capabilities ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the whitewashing season, and stands like the land of Goshen amidst the plagues of Egypt. But then he must be extremely cautious, and ever upon his guard; for, should he inadvertently go abroad and leave the key in his door, the housemaid, who is always on the watch for such an opportunity, immediately enters in triumph with buckets, brooms, and brushes—takes possession of the premises, and forthwith puts an his books and papers "to rights," to his utter confusion, and sometimes ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... utterly hopeless. Every word you say gives up your case. What's it to do with you whether she likes it or not? I'm not talking of her, but of you. You silly ass, don't you see where you are? You fall in love with a woman and make her your head housemaid. Then you say, Oh, but she likes it. It's not what she likes we're talking about; it's what you can bring yourself to do with her. Wait a bit now. There's more to it. You play about here, there, and all over the shop. Off you ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... known the best and most attentive nurses guilty of this; aye, and have known, too, a patient afflicted with severe diarrhoea for ten days, and the nurse (a very good one) not know of it, because the chamber utensil (one with a lid) was emptied only once in the 24 hours, and that by the housemaid who came in and made the patient's bed every evening. As well might you have a sewer under the room, or think that in a water closet the plug need be pulled up but once a day. Also take care that your lid, as well as your utensil, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... assuring the lady of the house that they never expected to go out to service in America, but that some family misfortune has rendered such a step necessary. The lady then, of course, asks them what branch of household service they can undertake; to which the invariable reply is, anything—cook or housemaid, child's-maid or housekeeper, and that indeed they lived in better places at home than they expect to get in America, such as Lord So-and-so's, or ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... was thrown upon this when a frightened housemaid brought the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in the huntsman's lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and gigantic ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... his wife. Doctor Rank. Mrs. Linde. Nils Krogstad. Helmer's three young children. Anne, their nurse. A Housemaid. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... about three when she arrived. The housemaid had gone on about an hour before, and I had watched with delight my little trunk and my toys being packed into the carriage. The maid climbed up and took the seat by the driver, in spite of my mother protesting at first against this. When my aunt's magnificent equipage arrived, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... late been so little at home, that the establishment had been much reduced; Mistress Mac Farlane did most of the cooking herself; had quarrelled with the housemaid and not yet got another; and, Nicie dismissed, and the kitchen maid gone to visit her mother, was left alone in the house with her Mistress, if such we can call her who was really her prisoner. At this moment, however, she was not alone, for on the other side of the fire sat Angus, not thither ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... of our seventh housemaid (the seventh this year) was to light gas and things in the bedrooms when it became dark. And one evening, when she was groping about with her hands and snatching at things on the dressing-table in the hope of finding matches, she clutched a group of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... Clara, meditatively, "is the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... marster name Jesse Kilgo, so he was, and Mistress Letha Kilgo, dats his wife, good to him, good to me, good to everybody. My young mistress name Catherine, when her marry Marster Watt Wardlaw, I was give to them for a housemaid, 'cause I was trim and light complected lak you see I is dis very day a setting right here, and talking wid you. 'Members how 'twas young missie say: 'You come go in my room Delia, I wants to see if I can put up wid you'. I goes in dat room, winter time mind you, and Miss Charlotte set down befo' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... in, just as I'd always done ever since he was a boy, and went across to the window and drew the curtains. "Nice morning, Master Barclay," I said. "Half-past—" There I stopped, and stared at the bed, which all lay smooth and neat, as the housemaid had turned it down, for no one had slept in it that night. I was struck all of a heap, and didn't know what to think. To me it was just like a silver spoon or fork being missing, and setting one's head to work to think whether it ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... What will start your mind to working on the subject? Looking at my rings?" She had an odd, persistent accent which irritated Mary's ears. If it was like anything the convent-bred girl had heard, it resembled the accent of a housemaid who "did" her bedroom in Cromwell Road. This maid had said that she was a London girl. And somehow Mary imagined that, if she had rings, she would like taking them out of a gold bag and putting them on at the dinner-table. Because Mary had never had for a companion any girl or woman ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in the morning Aaron had gone. Only on the floor were two packets of Christmas-tree candles, fallen from the stranger's pockets. He had gone through the drawing-room door, as he had come. The housemaid said that while she was cleaning the grate in the dining-room she heard someone go into the drawing-room: a parlour-maid had even seen someone come out of Jim's bedroom. But they had both thought it was Jim himself, for he was ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... and sense. In like manner it asks for a particularly well-disposed reader to appreciate the wit of Browning's retort upon his critics: "You are chimney-sweeps," he sings out in his great voice, "listen! I have invented several insulting nicknames for you. Decamp! or my housemaid will fling the slops in your faces." This may appear to some persons to be genial and clever. It certainly has none of the exquisite malignity of Pope's poisoned rapier. Perhaps it is a little dull; perhaps ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... simmering at the back of my head for years. . . . She'll use me as I used Binat at Port Said. She's quite right. It will hurt a little. I shall have to see her every Sunday,—like a young man courting a housemaid. She's sure to come around; and yet—that mouth isn't a yielding mouth. I shall be wanting to kiss her all the time, and I shall have to look at her pictures,—I don't even know what sort of work she does yet,—and I shall have to talk about Art,—Woman's Art! Therefore, particularly ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... after his cousin's health. He did that to put old Mr. Crow in a good humor. But Jasper was sorry at once that he had started Mr. Crow to talking about his ills. It happened that the old gentleman was then suffering from gout, hay-fever and housemaid's knee. And he liked to talk about his ailments. Living all alone as he did, he had nobody to do his housework. And that, he complained, was the reason ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Corkoran. Mr. HENDRIE handled the broad humour of the butler with imperturbable restraint, and Miss BARBARA GOTT was as fine and human a cook as I ever wish to meet in her native lair. Miss MARGARET FRASER, a most attractive figure, was a model for any housemaid on whose damask cheek the concealment of an unrequited passion for her master feeds like a worm i' th' bud. Altogether a really ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... word, tore herself out from that slightly rigid embrace. She struggled dumbly between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs. Fyne to put Flora de Barral to bed. She was as if gone speechless and insane. She lay on her back, her face white like a piece of paper, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her awful immobility broken by sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering of teeth ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing, rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, whose ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Kinloch, with ineffable scorn. "Lucy Ransom! I hope my son isn't low enough to dally with a housemaid, a scullion! If I had seen such a spectacle, I should have kept my mouth shut for shame. 'A guilty conscience needs no accuser'; but I am sorry you had not pride enough to keep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... know? An escaped lunatic, one of the keepers, the under housemaid, anyone you like. What does it matter? It wasn't David, even though his namesake did kill Goliath, and I always disliked the name, having suffered from a Biblical one myself. I said to his mother when he was born. 'For goodness' sake give the poor child a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... young ladies discarded their coarse dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, and gently drew elaborately fringed ones through their taper fingers to give them an air of use, as they took a hasty review of themselves in the swing mirrors; the housemaid hurried off with a whole armful of brown holland; and Jawleyford threw himself into attitude in an elaborately carved, richly cushioned, easy-chair, with a Disraeli's Life of Lord George Bentinck ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... underlies our present-day marriage system, although it is disguised as economic necessity; as a religious sacrament; and as a suitable or a brilliant "catch"—a type of marriage by capture which forms the ideal of our own upper-class women and which the housemaid copies in ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... whole family to be as lively and indifferent as possible, Grace, having shut her friends into their rooms to perform their toilette, hurried to her sister, to find her so entirely engrossed with her patient as absolutely to have forgotten the dinner party. No wonder! She had had to hunt up a housemaid to make up a bed for Lovedy in a little room within her own, and the undressing and bathing of the poor child had revealed injuries even in a more painful state than those which had been shown to Mr. Grey, shocking emaciation, and most scanty garments. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... High Street, where there was the faint stir and bustle of early morning, windows opening, a housemaid kneeling on a doorstep here and there, an occasional tradesman taking down his shutters. They drove past the fringe of prim little villas on the outskirts of the town, and away along a country road towards Arden; ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entree ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... wondher to me," said the cook to the housemaid, as if no other was present, "how these American bigbugs wid their inilligant ways ever got as far as the front door o' ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... in the dust of the floor for a week or two, till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away the accumulation, when she found the shining ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... gone so far, Nancy, the housemaid, came out with broom and bucket, and the mingled sounds of laughing and crying, and babel of many voices that floated out through the opened windows, told Edith that the family were rising ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... the host and his wife entertained their guests to a genuine Highland feast in the trophied hall, and at a somewhat later hour Duncan, the butler, and Elsie, the cook, assisted by Roderick, the groom, and Mary, the housemaid, held their share of high revelry in the kitchen, with Quin, Tips, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... comfort. How well the English understand it, I learn more and more every day. My maid had a large room above me, also with a fire; indeed, a "lady's" maid is a VERY GREAT character INDEED, and would be much more unwilling to take her tea with, or speak familiarly to, a footman or a housemaid than I should. My greatest mistakes in England have been committed toward those high dignitaries, my own maid and the butler, whose grandeur I entirely misappreciated and invaded, as in my ignorance I placed them, as we do, on the same level with other servants. She ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... were as good then, and friends were as leal, Though coaches were scant, wi' their cattle a-cantrin'; Right air we were tell 't by the housemaid or chiel', Sir, an' ye please, here 's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... plants in urns, and behind these a great variety of houses—French chateaux and marble palaces and nice little white cottages, and, finally, a frowning Gothic castle. All alike seemed asleep, with empty piazzas and closed shutters, and the only sign of life he saw in any of them was one pale housemaid shaking a duster out of a window in an ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... servants love to get swollen knees, and chilblains and chapped hands. They like to make a fuss about themselves. And to make their employer pay a substitute to do their work. They're all like that. It was just the same before I married. Yes, every housemaid I employ. Contracts these swollen kneeses. They only do it to annoy. Because ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... is mak' it marie, You t'ink he go leev on beeg flat An' bodder hese'f all de tam, night an' day, Wit' housemaid, an' cook, an' all dat? Not moche, ma dear frien', he tak' de maison, Cos' only nine dollar or ten, W'ere he leev lak blood rooster, an' save de l'argent, ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... and silenced the attendant housemaid, I took the precaution of burying the rabbit partially under the eider-down quilt before testing the squeak, so that no noise should reach the children. I am afraid I "mothered" the squeak of that rabbit if I imagined it could reach anywhere so far; it was in reality ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... sir, the two maid-servants, Marie the housemaid and Louise the cook, and also Herve the butler; but Herve did not sleep in the chateau last night. He had asked the mistress's permission to go into the village, and she had given it to him on condition that he did not ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... as it was, all the way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan mountains, we can easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant mind conceives all points distant from its own position as near to one another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness in grasping the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... song of the nightingale came in the lulls that occurred in one's busy life. One grew to connect it with coffee out on the lawn in some houses of surpassing comfort, where (years and years ago) one dressed for dinner, and a crinkly housemaid brought hot water to one's room. The song went on above the smug comfort of things, and the amusing conversation, and the smell of good cigars. Within, we saw some pleasant drawing-room, with lamps and a big table set with candles and cards, and we felt that the nightingale ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... considering how valuable a part of a lady's education it would be to be well instructed in these things, in an age when young ladies learn little more than how to dress themselves, had in her youth placed Miss Letty as the handmaid (or housemaid as the vulgar call it) of an eminent pawnbroker. The lightning, therefore, which should have flashed from the jewels, flashed from her eyes, and thunder immediately followed from her voice. She be-knaved, be-rascalled, be-rogued the unhappy ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... old enough to be a general servant or a cook; you have not experience enough to be a housemaid; you don't take to sewing, and there is no chance of being accepted as a hospital nurse: you must confess there is nothing you can do. You are really a very useless ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... again—and perhaps, also, some of those who do. The nation ought to take care of the children. If there is a nation left, God knows they will be needed," the Duchess said. "One of my footmen who 'joined up' has revealed an unsuspected passion for a housemaid he used to quarrel with, and who seemed to detest him. I have three women in my household who have soldier lovers in haste to marry them. I shall give them my blessing and take care of the wives when they are left behind. One can be served by old men and married ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on the morning of Christmas Eve that the china punch-bowl was broken. Mr. Skratdj had a warm dispute with Mrs. Skratdj as to whether it had been kept in a safe place; after which both had a brisk encounter with the housemaid, who did not know how it happened; and she, flouncing down the back passage, kicked Snap; who forthwith flew at the gardener as he was bringing in the horse-radish for the beef; who stepping backwards trode upon the cat; who spit and swore, and went up ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... paper. What a bore That it should be delivered at the door. There ought to be some expeditious way To get it to one. By this long delay The fizz gets off the news (a rap is heard). That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird; She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul. (Gets up and takes it in.) Upon the whole The system's not so bad a one. What's here? Gad, if they've not got after—listen dear (To sleeping wife)—young Gastrotheos! Well, If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... this happy favourite, and be revenged on her petulant rival, she prevailed upon the jeweller to employ a scout, who should watch all night upon the stair, without the knowledge of any other person in the family, alleging, that in all likelihood, the housemaid gave private admittance to some lover who was the author of all the losses they had lately suffered, and that they might possibly detect him in his nocturnal adventures; and observing that it would ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... opened her eyes in the morning it was because a young housemaid had come into her room to light the fire and was kneeling on the hearth-rug raking out the cinders noisily. Mary lay and watched her for a few moments and then began to look about the room. She had never ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... got a woman-servant, but I don't miss it at all; little Achmet is very handy, Mahommed's slave girl washes, and Omar irons and cleans the house and does housemaid, and I have kept on the meek cook, Abd el-Kader, whom I took while the Frenchman was here. I had not the heart to send him away; he is such a meskeen. He was a smart travelling waiter, but his brother ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sober fact, but must array it in all the theatrical properties of a vulgar imagination; he must give to things more imposing proportions, he colours gaudily; Nature for him is ever posturing in the full glare of footlights. Really he stands on no higher level than the housemaid who sees in every woman a duchess in black velvet, an Aubrey Plantagenet in plain John Smith. So I, in common with many another traveller, expected to find in the Guadalquivir a river of transparent green, with orange-groves along its banks, where wandered ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Lucy Barnes that stole sixpennyworth of calico. She is downstairs now. Would you know her if you saw her? She isn't the bright-faced baby she was when they sent her here to 'reform', and when Lieutenant Frere wanted a new housemaid from the Factory! Call for her!—call! do you hear? Ask any one of those beasts whom you lash and chain for Lucy Barnes. He'll tell you all about her—ay, and about many more—many more poor souls that are at the bidding of any drunken brute that has stolen a pound note ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... would find out everything. In all this, of course, I was very wrong, but having made sure that I was being treated unjustly I felt that I was only doing right in rebelling. So after waiting till Ephraim was in the pantry, washing up the dinner-things with the housemaid, I slipped down the garden to the boat-house. The door was padlocked, as I had feared; but with an old hammer-head I managed to pry off the staple. I felt like a burglar when the lock came off in my hand. I felt that I was acting deceitfully. Then the thought of Ephraim came ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... of footsteps he sat up, suddenly very much aware of his unheroic dishevelment. He tugged at the fallen stocking and made hasty dabs at his hair. But it was only Esther the housemaid with an envelope on a tray. Envelopes, however, were ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... to behold. As Mary the cook said to Jane the housemaid, "If they'd been born kings and queens, Mrs. Lee couldn't have laid herself out more; it's grand, so it is,—just you go and see;" which Jane proceeded to do, and forthwith thereafter corroborated Mary's ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... to enter that room save the housemaid in the morning, and my valet, or my wife's maid, during the rest of the day. They are both trusty servants who have been with us for some time. Besides, neither of them could possibly have known that there was ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ci-devant valet of Comte de Brienne. Her father and brother suffered for this choice and preference, which highly offended Bonaparte, who ordered them both to be transported to Guadeloupe, under pretence that the latter had said in a coffee-house that his sister would rather have been the housemaid of the wife of a ci-devant valet, than the friend of the wife of a ci-devant assassin and Septembrizer. It was only by a valuable present to Madame Bonaparte from Madame Moulin, that Mademoiselle de B——- ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... you," were all the words the housemaid dared to say so close to the bedroom. And softly, softly Miss Monro stepped down the stairs, into the drawing-room; and there she saw Mr. Livingstone. But she did not know him; she had never ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... previously been in better circumstances. Being an only daughter, and aware that she possessed no small share of rustic charms, she resolved to try her fortune in a higher sphere. She became a dressmaker in Gainsborough, and resided subsequently in Hull, and it is said as housemaid in a good family in London, where her attractions obtained for her the attentions of a person of rank, to whom she afterwards averred she was married; and she from that time occupied a position where her fortunes led her into contact ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the house, but not with the Marshal's cognizance. She had struck terror into the three servants—for she had allowed herself a housemaid, and she exerted her old-maidish energy in taking stock of everything, examining everything, and arranging in every respect for the comfort of her dear Marshal. Lisbeth, quite as Republican as he could be, pleased him by her democratic opinions, and she flattered ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Five or six months. Did he own the house? No. The people who owned the house had gone to Europe for a year and had rented it furnished. No, Mr. Wynne didn't have a family. He lived there alone except for two servants, a cook and a housemaid. She had never noticed anything unusual about Mr. Wynne, or the servants, or the house. Yes, he went out every day, downtown to business. No, she didn't know what his business was, but she had an idea that he was a ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle |
