"Jumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told you I would not have an American," said the Duke, reproachfully. "Think how jumpy they are, and I can't explain to her that I simply want her to stay at home and have lots of children and do ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... good control, but he had a jumpy feeling when he realized that he was actually in charge. Once, and only once, he got a little panicky, and, turning to the officer ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... horrible. In the meanwhile, he has found a cheerful interlude in Sanity and Insanity, a text-book (written in a popular yet scientific strain) of the maladies of the mind. He says, that Dr. MERCIER, the author, is to be congratulated on having treated a rather "jumpy" subject in a manner that can offend no one. "Co." had no idea up to now, that "t'other was so like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... lunch, he must have wandered aimlessly about, not returning home until late in the afternoon. During dinner he appears to have been rather restless and nervous—"jumpy," according to the evidence of the little serving maid. Once he sprang out of his chair as if shot when the little serving maid accidentally let fall a table-spoon; and twice he upset the salt. It was at mealtime that, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... came his pulse was steady—a little jumpy but reassuringly rhythmic. But the sunlight was two hours old upon the floor before the silent watcher saw the white lids flutter and then part with a gaze that was once more sane. Garry's smile had always been mocking; it was shamed and ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... faithful to him.' Patrem filius amat, or filius amat patrem, or in whatever order it may be, there is no doubt who does, and who (as they say) suffers the loving.—But now take a word in English. You can still recognise him for the same creature that was once so gay and jumpy-jumpy: father is no such far cry from pater:—but oh what a change in sprightliness of habits is here! Time has worn away his head and limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him move off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... down. He was tense and jumpy but tried not to show it. "I suppose you have," he said, adding, after a ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... anyway. He's working late nearly every night, getting stuff cleared up before vacation. He doesn't want any extra problems, especially not Cat problems. Mom's been having asthma a good deal lately, and we're all pretty jumpy. It's always like this at ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... stretched himself. His head was aching a little. The room seemed to him a trifle close. He got out of bed and threw open the window. Then, returning to bed, he picked up a book and began to read. He was conscious of feeling a little jumpy, and reading generally sent ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... ill-used beggar in the whole of London. Remorse was gnawing hard at his heart, though he was trying to believe that it was entirely another emotion. He had not slept properly for nights; his head ached, and his nerves were jumpy. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... sweetness, the extraordinary warm sweetness, of this summer in places in the forests and by the sea,—I don't believe people who had done that could for at least another year want to quarrel and fight. And by the time they did want to, having got jumpy in the course of months of uninterrupted herding together, it will be time for them to go for holidays again, back to the blessed country to be soothed and healed. And each year we shall grow wiser, each year more ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... one scratching upon the tree-trunk. And being of a very curious nature, he crawled half through the hole and peered out to see what was happening. Daddy Longlegs was all ready for a fright. He was so upset, on account of being caught away from home on a windy day, that he was unusually jumpy and fidgety. But—as it often happens at such times—he met with a pleasant surprise. For there sat Sandy Chipmunk, with his long tail curled over his back, and something very like a ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and looked over my way. He gave one glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes thrust into the cleft of the rock a little above my head. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Mrs. Denton being a personage that a landed gentry, rendered jumpy by the perpetual explosion of new ideas under their very feet, and casting about eagerly for friends, could not afford to snub. A kindly, simple folk, quite intelligent, some of them, as Phillips had surmised. Mrs. Denton made no mystery of why she had invited them. Why should ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... were administering a bowl of deadly nightshade. It upsets them. Then when you nurse sick people, and find them not as well as could be expected, why go into hysterics? MAR. Why not? DES. Because it's too jumpy for a sick-room. MAR. How strange! Oh, Master! Master!—how shall I express the all-absorbing gratitude that—(about to throw herself at his feet). DES. Now! (Warningly). MAR. Yes, I know, dear—it shan't occur again. (He is seated—she ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and then, as the last flutter of a pocket-handkerchief is seen, he finishes with "And blass the Prince of WAILES!" After which he subsides, occasionally breaking the silence to sigh aloud, "O Maman!" and thenceforth, for the greater part of the journey to Paris, he slumbers in a more or less jumpy manner. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... ..." Lois began and then stopped. "I don't know. Jumpy. The market was up again today. Another all-time high. Do you think there'll be another Crash? Like ...
— New Apples in the Garden • Kris Ottman Neville
... Baxter," said the other almost kindly, "I advise you to give this up. It plays the very devil with nerves, as I told you. Why, you're as jumpy as a cat yourself. And it isn't worth it. If there was anything in it, why it would ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... wandered about, each endeavouring to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the other seven. It became rather like a curious game of hide-and-seek, and by evening they were thoroughly "jumpy," with ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... "Whiteley's," he said. "Getting jumpy. Are in receipt of my favor of the 7th inst, and are at a loss to understand—all sorts of things. Would like ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... burden, but the nilgao will carry a man. I had one in my collection of animals which I trained, not to saddle, for such a thing would not stay on his back, but to saddle-cloth. He was a little difficult to ride, rather jumpy at times, otherwise his pace was a shuffling trot. I used to take him out into camp with me, and made him earn his grain by carrying the servants' bundles. He was not very safe, for he was, when excited, apt to charge; and a charge from a blue bull with his short sharp horns is not to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... that you are being watched, and you don't know by whom, gives, I can assure you, a very jumpy feeling—especially when ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... to cause even greater apprehension than the limitation of the Act of 1844." Certainly if, during a foreign drain, for every million of gold that went out, another two millions of credit, over and above, had to be cancelled, it is easy to imagine a very jumpy state of mind in Lombard Street and on the Stock Exchange. Sir Edward and the Committee seem to be agreed as to a limit on the note issue, but of the two limiting systems the old one advocated by the Committee, though apparently more severe, would seem to have ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... platoon has lost some of its best men, and I've been pretty badly hit, as some of them were real chums of mine—the bravest and dearest fellows. And I don't know why, but for the first time, I've been feeling rather jumpy and run down. So I went to a doctor, and he told me I'd better go off duty for a fortnight. But just then, luckily, the whole battalion was ordered, as I told you a week ago, into what's called "divisional rest," so here we are—for ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... battery around the hole began whanging away at once. I was jumpy and nervous, I'll admit, and it was all I could do to hold to the pitch and not break the time. I thought all of Von Hindenburg's army must be attacking us, and, from the row and din, I judged he must have brought up some of the German ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the last egg from the ashes and was just cracking it when suddenly there was a shout which made them all jump. Those were pretty jumpy times, I can tell you, for a new sound might mean almost any kind of danger. There were so many wild beasts in the forest that no one could feel safe a single minute unless he was deep in a cave. Even then ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Dr. Russ, who was with Mason's forces on their march to Toledo gives a description of the soldiers' jumpy nerves. Various jokers had circulated dark stories of the number of sharp-shooting Buckeyes waiting for them at Toledo, which so alarmed this amateur legion that nearly one half of those who had marched boldly from Monroe availed themselves of the road-side ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... will I find time enough from making our garden to help make his play?" I asked as I rose and clung to his sleeve as I had done in all serious moments of my life, even when his coat-sleeve had been that of a roundabout jacket. My heart was weak and jumpy as I ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the last few chapters of this narrative, I see that I have been giving the reader a rather too jumpy time. To almost a painful degree I have excited his pity and terror; and, though that is what Aristotle tells one ought to do, I feel that a little respite would not be out of order. The reader can stand having his emotions churned up to a certain point; after ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... doubt the loneliness is getting on her nerves," said the doctor. "And the rain—that's enough to make anyone jumpy," he continued irritably. "Doesn't it ever stop ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... and fossils and stuffed lizards and crocodiles and elephants' tusks, and I do not know what else, so that by the time one came out, after passing through the confusion that reigned everywhere, one's brain was so worn and jumpy that one was glad to sit and rest in the lovely garden and sip cup after cup of tea, which the Palace servants had been good ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of a coiled rope made me jumpy and I dreamed of snakes writhing, coiling, moving in undulating lines. At noon one day I was alone, making up the paper. I stood at the form table working, when I turned abruptly. A snake's slimy head ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Cruchard of my heart. I am addressing this to Paris whence I suppose it will be forwarded to you. I have been ill, your reverence, nothing except a stupid anemia, no legs, no appetite, continual sweat on the forehead and my heart as jumpy as a pregnant woman; it is unfair, that condition, when one gets to the seventies, I begin my seventieth spring tomorrow, cured after a half score of river baths. But I find it so comfortable to rest that I have not yet done an iota ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... number of catfish in one tank. At present in this country, for instance, and, indeed, in the whole world, there seem to be more catfish than cod, and the resulting liveliness is perhaps a little excessive, a little "jumpy." But in the midst of all the violence, turmoil, and upheaval, it is hopeful to remember that of the deepest and most salutary change which Europe has known it was divinely foretold that it would bring ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... had been hers as well as Diana's!... What had become of it?... It seemed now as if Diana had absorbed it all, for Meryl was nearly always quiet, while the younger girl was almost boisterous. And yet even in Diana there was a note that puzzled him. She was so jumpy and uncertain. Childishly gay one moment, and cuttingly brilliant the next. He was glad she was there. After the first week of the engagement he found himself quite willing to further Meryl's obvious ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... reported. "From what I can make out, as soon as the stoats, who were very nervous and jumpy already, heard the shrieks and the yells and the uproar inside the hall, some of them threw down their rifles and fled. The others stood fast for a bit, but when the weasels came rushing out upon them they thought ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... foe. For the past day and night Good Luck had been uneasy, snuffing the wind and growling in his throat, but the actions of his master had been cause enough for that, for he responded to Wunpost's every mood. And Wunpost was as jumpy as a cat that has been chased by a dog, he practised for hours on the draw-and-shoot; and whenever he dismounted he dragged his rifle with him to make sure he would do it in a pinch. He was worried but not frightened ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... night, when the second footman dropped the pudding just as he was bringing it into the room, that we could really have spared him better than what we could Sir David, sir; but of course it's natural for the household to be feeling a bit jumpy till after the funeral to-morrow. When that's over I shan't ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... everywhere about us; the children mysterious and up to all sorts of games and wickedness; and bright light over everything, like- like a scene in a theatre, somehow. It's exhilarating, but I can't quite make it out. It can't be right to feel so frivolous and jumpy- about at my age, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the felt rather than seen, expanse of water, marsh and mud-flat of the Haven—the tide being low—along with the goblin whispering chuckle of the river speeding seaward away there on his left, made him oddly jumpy and nervous. No human being was in sight, neither did any human dwelling show signs of habitation. He wished he had gone round by the road and through the length of the village. He registered a vow against short cuts—save ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... voice without any life. "The woman we had had for years was dead; and when Nicholas asked for work we were glad to take him. He wanted the smallest possible wages and was willing to do everything; he even cooked quite nicely. At first he was jumpy—he had asked if many strangers went by; but then when no one appeared he got easier.... He got easier and began to do extra things for me. I thanked him—until I understood. Then I asked father to send him away, but he was ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the most unstable of minds, and yet by the power of religion he has become a coherent personality of almost rigid singleness of purpose. In conversation with him one cannot help feeling that he is jumpy and excitable; every movement of his extremely mobile face suggests a soul of gutta-percha stretched in all directions by the movements of his brain, and twitching with every thought that crosses his mind; but at the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... life of the bar, and every possible temptation is put in their way to draw them from home, from refinement, from high thoughts, from chaste and temperate modes of life. Horrible it is to hear fine lads talking familiarly about the "jumpy" sensations which they feel in the morning. The "jumps" are those involuntary twitchings which sometimes precede and sometimes accompany delirium tremens; the frightful twitching of the limbs is accompanied by a kind of depression that takes ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the best. Besides, he was now furnished with a respectable pair of jaws, not to mention the rudiments of teeth. Daphne was his first victim. Daphne sounds somehow floral, but this Daphne was equipped with one eye and several pairs of legs, and practised abrupt jumpy flights through the water. In short, she was a branchiopod, to be vulgarly precise, a water-flea. The succulence of Daphne led to experiments on Cyclops—Cyclops is her first cousin—and the taste, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... from Chillicothe, Ohio, to Singapore, Malaya, and back again. There were permanent trouble spots at various places where practically anything was likely to happen at any instant. The people of every nation were jumpy. There was constant pressure on governments and on political parties so that all governments looked shaky and all parties helpless. Nobody could look forward to a peaceful old age, and most hardly hoped to reach middle age. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Business of a Gentleman (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, Sir Robert Wilton, who figured of course in Keddy and Sir Guy and Lady Rannard—he has, in fact, by this time married Marion, late Sir Guy's widow—is far too jumpy and nervy a person to fit my ideal of a paternal landlord, and what is, after all, more important, I feel convinced that his tenants and stable-lads would have thought the same. Secondly, I refuse to believe that a spinster, however soured, however ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... good-natured banter as they ate. They had just sat down when a voice from the darkness brought instant silence, and a quick reaching for their weapons. The nerves of the Overland girls were getting jumpy. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... clouds of dust about. The sea also became troubled. Two days later the atmospheric conditions got worse. Several boats were blown ashore and the piers damaged. About 8 p.m. rain descended and drenched those whose dugouts afforded little protection. During the worst period the enemy became "jumpy" and opened a heavy fire on the hill above. The prospect of having to ascend the slippery tracks was forbidding. However, quiet returned and daybreak ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... sufficiently so to scare Bluey and some of the others. The open desert life seems to make camels, and horses too, very nervous when anything the least unusual has to be faced. The echoes amongst the rocks, and the rather gloomy gorges, seemed to make them "jumpy"; a stone rattling down behind them would be sufficient to cause a panic. Leaving the pool, we followed the gorge until it ran out as a deep, sandy channel down the valley formed by the horseshoe of the ranges. The ranges I named the Erica Ranges, after one of my ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... said Colonel Dewes. "Jumpy and feverish, and with the air of a man who has been sitting up all night for a week or two. But this is what interested me most," and Dewes told how the lad had implored him to bring Linforth out ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... nothing," said the Irishman, a little sharply. "And I wasn't aware that I'd been looking at you in any unusual way. You're precious jumpy to-day, if you want to know.... Look here!" He came back a step, frowning. "Look here!" he repeated. "I don't quite make you out. Are you keeping back anything? Because if you are, for Heaven's sake have it out here and now! We're all ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... men, mud-caked and weary, with a Lewis gun between them, are peering over the top in an early light of dawn. Beside them there are others: tense, with every nerve alert, looking fixedly into the grey shadows, wondering, a little jumpy. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... come very sudden," said Captain MacWhirr, "and from over there, I fancy. God only knows though. These books are only good to muddle your head and make you jumpy. It will be bad, and there's an end. If we only can steam her round in time to meet ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... a next time for you, Furnival. That's why I don't even pretend to be sorry for you. There'll be other women. But there aren't any next times for me, and there aren't any other women. This—I mean she—was my one chance. It was pretty jumpy work, I can tell you, sitting tight and gambling with it for ten blasted days. Any other man would have gone clean off his chump with worrying over it. There've been times when I've felt like it myself. It was infernal—when you think what ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... and then it had been ether and an operation and the whole blooming thing over again. Then, when they couldn't work on his head any longer, they'd started up this talk about his heart. Of course his heart was jumpy! All the fellows who had been badly gassed had jumpy hearts. But how was he ever going to get any better lying there on his back? What he needed was exercise and decent food and something cheerful to think about. He wanted desperately to get away from his memories, to forget the horrors, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... courtin' Annie, she wuz honey an' red wine, She made me feel all jumpy, did that ol' sweetheart o' mine; Wunst w'en I went to Crawfordsville, on one o' them there trips, I kissed her—an' the burnin' taste wuz sizzlin' on my lips. An' now I've married Annie, an' I see her all the ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... are connected with the interior by breakneck paths and by rude steps, slippery with green moss. The people seem to delight in standing, like wild goats, upon the dizziest of 'jumpy' peaks; we see boys perched like birds upon impossible places, and men walking along precipice-faces apparently pathless. The villages are joined to one another by roads which attempt to follow the sea-line; the chasms are spanned by the flimsiest wooden bridges, and the cliff is tunnelled ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to 'em! Aim low! Give it to 'em—give it to 'em, horns and hoofs, sabre and carbine!" he shouted in a high, jumpy voice. "Give it to 'em! Make 'em weep! Make 'em whine! ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... thought came to him that perhaps it was the last cigarette he would ever smoke. He tried to dismiss the thought, but it persisted uncomfortably. He argued with himself and told himself that he mustn't get jumpy, that the surest way to get shot was to be nervous about being shot, that the job was bad enough but was only made worse by worrying about it. As a relief and distraction to his own thoughts, he listened to catch the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... for Calais and crossed the Channel to Dover. This time the eccentric strip of water was as calm as a pond at sunset. No jumpy, white-capped billows, no flying spray, no seasick passengers. Tarpaulins were a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... behind her and tied the girl securely to the twisted trunk of a Joshua tree. To make sure of her he lay on the rope, both hands clinched to the rifle. In five minutes he was asleep, but it was long before Kate could escape from wakefulness. She was anxious, her nerves were jumpy, and the muscles of arms and shoulders were cramped. At last she fell into ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... cried sharply. The crack of the pistol had given a flick to my nerves. Mine had been a sheltered life, into which hitherto revolver-shots had not entered, and I was resenting this abrupt introduction of them. I felt jumpy and irritated. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... occasions was silent and jumpy, his brow "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of care." But Psmith followed his leader with the pleased and indulgent air of a father whose infant son is showing him round the garden. Psmith's attitude towards archaeological research struck a new note in the history of that ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... down at the end of the writing table nearest Lina] Bad thing to aeroplane on, I should imagine. Too jumpy. Been up much? ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... but with the old year touching the heels of the new, and Time commanding me to get in step, my return to civil life held few inducements. Instead of a superabundance of cheer, I had brought from France jumpy nerves and a body lean with over training—natural results of physical exhaustion coupled with the mental reaction that must inevitably follow a year and a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... coward, neither was he a superstitious man, but he had imagination. The steady strain of his and Frank's long flight, the certainty of pursuit close behind, had frayed his nerve and rendered him jumpy. For a man in his condition to be awakened out of a trancelike sleep by an intruder at once invisible, dumb; to feel the presence of that mysterious visitor and actually to see him—it—bulked dim and formless among the darting shadows cast by a blazing match—was a test ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... shall ride it over to-morrow morning. You're a bit jumpy still and can't be allowed to run any risks. I mean to see you safely back ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the devil's trouble,' said he,' in pulling the boat over here, when there is a beautiful place at the other end of the barrage, where you can go down with the current? The water is a bit jumpy, but there is nothing ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... to the marines! You're timid and jumpy as a girl. How are we ever to put this thing over if you don't pull yourself together? I might as well have a baby to help me," sneered the ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... against Vandyke. As it was, they accepted the theory that he had been hoaxed by some one unknown, purporting to be the orderly of Major Vandyke, then acting as colonel. Owing to the comparative darkness of the night (luckily there wasn't a moon, only stars) it would have been possible for a nervous, jumpy man to mistake the identity of a person masquerading as another person. Now you know, and I know, and everybody who knows him knows March is the last fellow in the world to get nerves or jumps in any circumstances whatever. All the same, giving him ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Stevens. He had not been looking at her, but he turned a surprised face from his own task at the sound of her voice. "Excuse me, please, Steve. I don't know what's the matter with me—must be getting jumpy, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... I thought we might encounter desperate characters in the house; but as a fact, it was the supernatural element which decided me. I do not like the idea of the supernatural; my nerves, excellent in their way and in their own sphere, are inclined to get jumpy under certain conditions. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... hosses, a little to one side. We saw Texas Pete jump up from his chair, take a quick aim, and cut loose with his rifle. It was plumb unexpected to us. We hadn't thought of any shootin', and our six-shooters was tied in, 'count of the jumpy country we'd been drivin' the steers over. But Gentleman Tim, who had unslung his rope, aimin' to help the hosses out of the chuckhole, snatched her off the horn, and with one of the prettiest twenty-foot flip throws I ever see done he snaked old Texas Pete ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... closer I recognised my lost lance-jack, very pale and shaky, a little thinner than usual, and with a hint of that gleam of sniper-madness which I have noticed before in the jumpy, unsteady eyes ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... "We'll walk. First nights always make me as jumpy as a cat. If I don't walk my legs off, I shan't get to ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... and then bang—right under our feet. More bangs, and creaks and groans; for that ice was moving and splitting like glass. The cracks went off all round us, and some of them ran along for hundreds of yards. Afterwards we got used to it, but at first the effect was very jumpy. From first to last during this journey we had plenty of variety and none of that monotony which is inevitable in sledging over long distances of Barrier in summer. Only the long shivering fits following close one after the other all the time we ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of it. "No, Jack, no! Don't be so jumpy! Of course she hasn't. As if she would! She hasn't said a thing. But I know how she feels, and I should feel exactly the same in her place. Now do be sensible! You must see my point. I'm getting on, you know, Jack. I'm twenty-five. Just fancy! You've sheltered ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... When I was a mass of bruises and aches, to say nothing of jumpy nerves. I was not inclined to make light of my injuries ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... be looked at was on hand, right enough—and I reckon it showed to most advantage by about as much light as it got from the stars. All they could make sure of was something alive, moving sort of awkward and jumpy, coming out from a tangle of mesquite bushes not more'n three rods off and heading straight for 'em; and seeing it the way they did—just a black splotch all mixed in with the shadows of the bushes—it looked to be most as big as a cow! Limp as he was—so you'd a-thought there wasn't any yell in ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... transport animals would be able to drag them through any bad drifts. We only managed to do some seven miles before darkness came on, when we camped for the night at the Madeline Gold-mine. It was jumpy work here, as the whole place was honeycombed with prospecting-holes and ditches, varying in depth from three feet to about three hundred. How on earth no one fell in must ever remain a mystery, as, to add to the delightful freshness of ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... on a crazy errand which I scarcely believed could come off. There were no signs of Sandy; somewhere within a hundred yards he was fighting his own battles, and I was tormented by the thought that he might get jumpy again and wreck everything. A strange Companion brought us food, a man who spoke only Turkish and could tell us nothing; Hussin, I judged, was busy about the horses. If I could only have done something to help on matters I could have scotched my anxiety, but there was nothing to be done, nothing ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Bin during the night. It hadn't exactly fought its way back from the river but had had enough casualties to make the men nervous and jumpy without tempering them at all. One of the casualties had been Lt. Colonel Upton. Now Major Chapelle was in command. The men of the battalion were nervous but Chapelle was riding on the thin edge of panic. He ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... get rather jumpy at times. Strangely enough, it is always over more or less trivial matters. Every time we have a submarine scare, I feel markedly better for a while—it seems to reestablish ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... said to Lawler on the tenth day following that on which Garvin had reported the presence of the riders behind them; "the boys is gettin' jumpy. They're givin' one another short answers, an' they're growlin' about ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... through thick darkness, bumping into things which hurt me. I was challenged again and again by sentries, alert and I think occasionally jumpy. One of them, I remember, refused to be satisfied with my reply, though I said "Friend" loudly and clearly. I have never understood why a mere statement of that kind made by a stranger in the dark should satisfy an intelligent sentry. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... you are doing it. We had been talking, and the sight of that building, so unexpected, startled us into silence. It would any one. Believe me, your imperturbable man with perfect, cool, self-possession does not exist. Man's a jumpy thing, given to nerves. You may deny it and talk about the unexcitability of the American citizen and all that bunk, but let me tell you that your journalists and moving picture producers and preachers and politicians have caught on to the fact ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the room, pausing outside the door. "You'll find him very jumpy," she said; and then, "My ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... very high, much higher than it would in ordinary weather. This morning, it was jumpy, showing—as the changes in the haziness of the air showed—irregular and violent movements in the upper atmosphere. It is now beginning to go down steadily, a little faster every hour. This is an almost sure sign that there is a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... be sillier than the way we let human nature surprise us. For my part 'tis only the expected that ever astonishes me, for men and women have grown so terrible tricky and jumpy and irregular nowadays, along of better education and one thing and another, that you didn't ought to expect anything but the unexpected from 'em. ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... "You ARE jumpy," said Alfred, and at that instant a wrangle of loud voices, and a general commotion was heard in the outer hall. "What's that?" asked Alfred, endeavouring to disentangle himself from ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... get me all hoodled up when you act so jumpy," said the aunt. Then she walked to a corner of the parlor, reached behind the big cupboard and drew out a cane upon which were tied some thirty ribbon ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... he was almost ready to put, in spite of his resolution, remained unasked, and he said instead: "Look here, Nina, I don't think you are well! You're awfully jumpy. I never saw you like this at home. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... disposed on table; wily tidy man in civilian clothes, pen in hand, obviously lawyer, avocat type, little bald on top, sneaky civility, smells of bad perfume or, at any rate, sweetish soap; tiny red-headed person, also civilian, creased worrying excited face, amusing little body and hands, brief and jumpy, must be a Dickens character, ought to spend his time sailing kites of his own construction over other people's houses in gusty weather. Behind the Three, all tied up with deference and inferiority, mild and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... long thoughtful books on abstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them. Most of the ambitious simians who try it—out of pride—go to sleep. The typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really too jumpy by nature to endure ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... action variety, because of the dynamic character of the people who produce them. Fired by fanatic zeal, the auto speeds faster, the rescuing hero runs harder, the stern policeman and sheriff become more jumpy, all that the audience may be converted. Here if anywhere meditation on the actual resources of charm and force in the art is a fitting thing. The crusader should realize that it is not a good Action Play nor even a good argument unless it is indeed the Winged ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... of fine ears close behind Davidson's chair. It was ten to one against, the owner of the same having enough change in his pockets to get his tiffin here. But he had. Most likely had rooked somebody of a few dollars at cards overnight. He was a bright creature of the name of Fector, a spare, short, jumpy fellow with a red face and muddy eyes. He described himself as a journalist as certain kind of women give themselves out as actresses in the dock of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... gave it up. Some sixth sense had him all jumpy. It was not usual for Sime Hemingway to be jumpy. He was one of the coolest heads in the I. F. P., the Interplanetary Flying Police who patrolled the lonely reaches of space and brought man's law to the outermost orbit of ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... States Secret Service, who had instructions to run this man down—this man who signed himself The Eye of Allah. And do it quickly for the notes were threatening. Official Washington, it seemed, was getting jumpy and was making caustic inquiries as to why a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... you silly cuckoo!" said Jimmy. "You make me feel all jumpy. He had indeed jumped rather violently. "Here, walk between Cathy and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... jumpy and on edge with excitement, and got on my nerves so that it was the greatest relief when I'd seen her off in her train for St. Cloud. Just at this point I find another break in my narrative, made by a silly, not ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... laughed in disdain. "Fat chance!" There was a long silence during which the only sound was the bubbling of a pipe. "I s'pose I'll have to stick, if you say so," Denny agreed finally, "but I'm fed up. I'm getting jumpy. I got a hunch the cache ain't safe; I feel like something was ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach |
