"Maidservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treasure." "But how," asked Brother Masseo, "can one speak of treasure when there is such lack of all things needful? Here have we neither cloth, nor knife, nor plate, nor porringer, nor house, nor table, nor manservant, nor maidservant." Answered Francis, "This and none else it is that I account wide treasure; which containeth nothing prepared by human hands, but all we have is of God's own providence—as this bread we have begged, set out on a table of stone so fine, beside a fountain so clear. Wherefore," said he, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rose, and changed her dinner dress for a plain traveling one, and, putting on her hat and jacket, went down to the library slowly and almost stealthily. A maidservant was sweeping the hall, and she looked up at Nell, clad in her outdoor things, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... light, which appeared and disappeared and reappeared again, flickering faintly from floor to ceiling. There seemed no explainable origin for it, and Evelyn's mind at once turned to the supernatural. A silly maidservant at home had been accustomed to ply her with ghost stories, all of which now recurred to her memory. What was it, that unnatural, luminous halo on the opposite wall? It was moving nearer to her, and had almost reached the curtain of her cubicle, when, with a choking little ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in to spread the cloth for dinner, and went through her duties with the stolidity of the London lodging-house maidservant, poking a clogged fire to perdition, and repressing a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pronoun, his insolence would be considered quite unpardonable. And yet no people appear to be troubled less with false pride than the class of whom I am speaking. Relatively large landowners, whose names count for a good deal in the district, think there is nothing derogatory in sending a maidservant to market to sell the surplus fruit and eggs. Those who buy are equally practical. They haggle over sous with their friends' servant just as if she were a peasant driving a bargain on her own account. It is the exception, however, when to this keen appreciation of money warm-hearted ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... A maidservant in the drama Malatimadhava is called Avalokita. It is not clear whether it is a feminine form of the divine name or an adjective meaning looked-at, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... dear. But, yourself excepted, look at the few of us who chance to be here in the South. Look at Courtlandt Classon, intellectually destitute! Cuyp, a mental brother to the ox; and Vetchen to the ass; and Mrs. Van Dieman to somebody's maidservant—that old harridan with all the patrician distinction ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... people—and it gave his manner a peculiar charm. I asked him once where he had learned his gracious fashions that were so un-English—he would stand with uplifted hat as he asked a question of a maidservant, or handed a woman into a carriage—and he answered, with a half-smile, half-scoff, that it was only in England he was an outcast from society. In France, in Spain, in Italy, he was always welcomed among men and women of the highest social ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... slave—begone!" Wherewith I delivered what is technically known in "sporting" circles as a "right hook in the ear," followed by a "left swing to the chin," and my assailant immediately disappeared behind a bush, with a flash of pink silk calves and buckled shoes. Then, while the trim maidservant filled the air with her lamentations, the imp and I ran hot-foot for the wall, over which I bundled him neck and crop, and we set ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... are forbidden to play with fire or candles, to quarrel with fellow domestics, to waste victuals or to give them away. A fine example of the morality of scruples inculcated by the tract is the passage on the duty of religious observance. A maidservant should not neglect to go to church at least every other Sunday, and should never spend the time allowed her for that purpose walking in the fields or drinking tea with an acquaintance. "Never say you have been at Church unless you have, but if you have gone out with that ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... carnal, but with whom agreement in politics (for they were both great politicians and republicans) seems to have established a link. One evening, when Mr. Ardworth was in the house, Jane Prior, who was the only maidservant (for they kept but two, and one had been just discharged), had been sent out to the apothecary's. On her return, Jane Prior, going into the nursery, missed the infant: she thought it was with her master; but coming into ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it might ever have happened, if Richard Kendrick had gone into the house of Mr. Robert Gray, on that first night, by the front door. For, if he had made his first entrance by that front door, if he had been admitted by the maidservant in proper fashion and conducted into Judge Calvin Gray's presence in the library, if he had delivered his message, from old Matthew Kendrick, his grandfather, and had come away again, ushered out of that same front door, the chances are that he never would have gone again. In which case there ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... A maidservant entered with the tea-tray. Dyce lay back in his chair, gazing vacantly, until his hostess offered him a cup of tea. As he bent forward to take it, his eyes for a moment dwelt with unusual intentness on the face and figure of Iris Woolstan. Then, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... that while he lived they never failed to have champagne at their dinner parties; and that they had three men to wait at table on such occasions, while Mr. Smith, next door, had never more than one and a maidservant. If such idiotic women would but look forward, and consider how all this must end! If the professional man spends all he earns, what remains when the supply is cut off; when the toiling head and hand can toil no more? Ah, a little of the economy and management which must perforce be ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... looked as if these things, and some others beside, in her dress, her manner and even her name, were an implication that she was very admirable. I had never been able to follow the argument, but that is a detail. I expressed briefly and frankly what I felt, while the little mottled maidservant flattened herself against the wall of the narrow passage and tried to look detached without looking indifferent. It was not a moment to make a visit, and I was on the point of retreating when Lady Luard arrested me with a queer, casual, ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... the haughty fidalgo de solar with a page to carry his chair, the judge who through his wife accepts bribes from the Jews, the rhetorical goldsmith, the usurer (onzeneiro) with his heart in his cassette (arca)[127]. There too the pert servant-girl, the gossiping maidservant, the witch busy at night over a hanged man at the cross-roads, the faithless wife of the India-bound lisboeta, the Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel, the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her house to go to church or pilgrimage, the mal ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... return immediately to Colonel William Johnson, rode away with their horses, and Robert, Tayoga and Willet took their packs into the house of Mynheer Huysman, who grumbled incessantly while he and a manservant and a maidservant made them as comfortable ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was waiting in the drawing-room he took off his shoes and stockings. In his own country this would have been a perfectly natural thing to do. In fact, in his own home ordinary politeness would have made him leave his shoes at the door. The maidservant who had ushered him in, returning for some purpose, was amazed to see what the visitor had done, and went and reported the fact to her mistress. She, probably thinking that they had either a madman or a would-be thief to deal with, sent to ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... when the door was opened by a neat maidservant, he brought the box of flowers, and laid it on a table in the hall. "Miss Bond's niece!" he said, with a nod of explanation and introduction. "Thought she'd come herself; like to see the young ones. I'll be back for ye in an hour," ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... schoolroom and to Miss Mills' dull society she must go. Swinging her hat on her arm she walked slowly down the long, cool stone passage which led from the principal hall to the schoolroom regions. A maidservant of the name of Susan hurried past her with the tray which contained the ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... fervour of conversation, improved and shaped into those famous lines, which are in truth the noblest in the poem of the Campaign. As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe; the little maidservant that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was the owner in his worn snuff-coloured ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... qui mal y pense', but why is not that maidservant rather laid by the side of her mistresses? Now, when we on the floor above offer our hospitality to Yves, we are careful to place ourselves under our mosquito-net in ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... market-places, 'righteousness clothed him' there, and 'his justice was a robe and a diadem.' He 'broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth;' and, humble in the midst of his power, he 'did not despise the cause of his manservant, or his maidservant, when they contended with him,' knowing (and amidst those old people where the multitude of mankind were regarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carved into eunuchs or polluted into concubines at their master's pleasure, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... had not come for a lesson, the dirty maidservant, who opened the third-floor door to him, showed him as a visitor into the best sitting-room. Maurice remained standing, in prescribed fashion. But he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he was aware of loud voices ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... on your condition, according to the Ten Commandments, namely: Whether you are a father or mother, a son or daughter, a master or mistress, a manservant or maidservant—whether you have been disobedient, unfaithful, slothful—whether you have injured any one by words or actions-whether you have stolen, neglected, or wasted aught, or ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... ancient custom with the Pharaoh to present each of his guests with a living reminder of the occasion and his hospitality. Wherefore he desireth thee to choose which of the twelve serving maidens hath pleased thee best, and he will give her to thee, to be always thy maidservant." ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... the stones of the court-yard, I became aware that a certain maidservant had been obtruding upon my view with a persistency that might be intentional. I now regarded her, as she stood in a small doorway leading to the kitchen. She was a plump, well-made thing, with a wholesome, honest face, but the sluttishness ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... side, for she sees that we were in the right. Verbenowitsch and Bennari bring in the things now. They are much better suited for it. Hella's father did not like her doing it anyhow; he says: The porter or the maidservant are there for that—we never see them all the year ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... way!—and they strolled out into the long uneven street beyond their garden wall, on their way to the forest. The old inn to the left was in a clatter. Two diligences had just arrived, and the horses were drooping and panting at the door. A maidservant was lighting guests across the belittered courtyard with a flaring candle. There was a red glimpse of the kitchen with its brass and copper pans, and on the bench outside the gateway sat a silent trio of artists, who had worked ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste, appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed rather to suggest that she might have come after ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... great "domestic difficulty" gave Leech a fund of anecdote that he was not slow to draw upon. He was himself a typical middle-class British householder, who liked to have everything nice and neat about him, including the pretty, amiable, zealous, h-less maidservant in nice white apron and clean print-dress. He closed his eyes and ears to Sydney Smith's discovery that all the virtues and most of the graces are not to be had for L7 a year. And so Leech gave us the series he entitles ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... supplied them with Testaments and instructions to vend the books in all the parishes of Madrid, with the result that in the course of about a fortnight 600 copies were disposed of in the streets and alleys. A house to house canvass was instituted with remarkable results, for manservant and maidservant bought eagerly of the books. Antonio excelled himself and made some amends for his flight from Labajos, when, like a torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon it. Dark Madrid was becoming illuminated with a flood of Scriptural ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension. The moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant, seemingly in waiting for them at the door, stepped forward, and more intent on telling the news than giving them any help, immediately began with, "The Thrush is gone out of harbour, please sir, and one of the officers has been here to—" She was interrupted by a fine tall boy of eleven years ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a maidservant, neat and trim, and after some wrestling with bolts the outer door was opened a little way, and our names and business demanded, after which we entered a great hall, apparently used as a refectory. Huge logs ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Further, the dominion of a master over his slave differs from that of the father over his son (Polit. i, 3). But the dominion of master over slave gives the former the right to sell his servant or maidservant. Therefore it was unfitting for the Law to allow a man to sell his daughter to be a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Edward consented to pass the night there, and return home on the following morning. Oswald went into the sitting-room to speak with the Intendant of the forest, leaving Edward in the kitchen with Phoebe, the maidservant. He told the Intendant that he had brought home some fine venison, and wished his orders about it. He also stated that he had been assisted by Edward Armitage, who had brought the venison home for him in his cart, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... carefully, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within ...
— Three People • Pansy
... constant drain of physicians' bills, and the great expense of sending mother and son to a warm climate each fall, as the rigors of the northern winters were considered too hard for the two invalids to bear, had reduced them almost to poverty; consequently the expense of a maidservant had long since ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... of the best in the town, but the family was small. There was but one child, a boy of fourteen, who was now away at school. The doctor had readjusted the logs upon the andirons, and was just putting the tongs in their place when a maidservant came in. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... eye for everything. She "shooed" into duty's path a youngling hen with vague maternal aspirations which was wandering off to found a family by laying an egg in the underbrush about the saw-mill. She called back final directions to her daughter Jen and maidservant Meg, and saw that they were attended to before she would go on. She looked into the saw-mill itself in the by-going, and made sure that Rob McTurk was in due attendance on the whirling machinery which was turning off the spools, as it seemed to me, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... 'In another year I shall be freed from the spell I am under at present, because then the seven years will be over. But before I can resume my natural form, and take possession of the belongings of my forefathers, you must go out into the world and take service as a maidservant.' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... and, moveover, preoccupied with business. He was consequently indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like counting-house of "Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins," to find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth "Mittagsessen" as a reasonable explanation of the solitude. "A country," said Mr. Clinch to himself, "that stops business at mid-day to go to dinner, and employs women-servants to talk ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... pathway came a trim maidservant, who could never guess how John Everard hated her for at least one ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... maidservant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and assure the maid that they're both so in love that they'll die on the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... slightly acquainted with Aunt Maria; and this acquaintanceship induced him to request that he might be permitted to escort me to her house and see me safe after my disagreeable adventure. I had no objection to his accompanying myself and the staid maidservant whom I found waiting for me at the inn when the coach stopped at York; and Aunt Maria politely insisted on the young man's remaining to partake of the early breakfast she had prepared to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... because it was better to drift Urquhart into a thing than to lead him up to it. Moreover, it was not at all disagreeable to him that Urquhart, a club and office acquaintance, should see how comfortably placed he was, how well appointed with wife and child, with manservant and maidservant and everything that was his. Urquhart was a rich man, and to know that his lawyer was rich was no bad thing. It inspired confidence. Now the particular thing to be done with the two men, Francis Lingen and Urquhart, was this. Francis Lingen, who might be a baronet ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... The little maidservant brought in the afternoon letters and with them a folded newspaper—the Markborough Post. A close observer might have detected that it had been already opened, and hurriedly refolded in the old folds. There was much interest felt in Upcote Minor in the inquest held on John Broad's mother; ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... khitmutgar^; yardman. bailiff, castellan^, seneschal, chamberlain, major-domo^, groom of the chambers. secretary; under secretary, assistant secretary; clerk; subsidiary; agent &c 758; subaltern; underling, understrapper; man. maid, maidservant; handmaid; confidente [Fr.], lady's maid, abigail, soubrette; amah^, biddy, nurse, bonne [Fr.], ayah^; nursemaid, nursery maid, house maid, parlor maid, waiting maid, chamber maid, kitchen maid, scullery maid; femme de chambre ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rang, and the detectives went out, following the old maidservant who had shown them in. Don ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... between ourselves—not I, nor Homo, but Dea. As for me, I shall continue to roll on in the caravan. I belong to the meanderings of vagabond life. I shall dismiss these two women. I shall not keep even one of them. I have a tendency to become an old scoundrel. A maidservant in the house of a libertine is like a loaf of bread on the shelf. I decline the temptation. It is not becoming at my age. Turpe senilis amor. I will follow my way alone with Homo. How astonished Homo will be! Where is Gwynplaine? Where is Dea? Old comrade, here we are once more alone together. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and the news of the robbery, scared the two women, who went about their work at once with a commendable quietness. But I think it was a whisper from the maidservant which caused the farmer to ejaculate, as he ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... confidence collapses and he shrieks to Christ to save him. It is just like his thrusting himself into the high priest's palace—no safe place, and bad company for him by the coal fire—and then his courage oozing out at his fingers' ends as soon as a maidservant's sharp tongue questioned him. It is just like his hearty welcome of the heathen converts at Antioch, and his ready breaking through Jewish restrictions, and then his shrinking back into his old shell again, as soon as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... away from the door and went quietly about her well-ordered house, directing the maidservant and looking carefully over her husband's wardrobe. Then she did the same for Peter Junior's, and at last, taking her basket of mending, she sat in the large, lace-curtained window looking out toward the west—the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Country school, where I was noted for my aptness in learning; and my skill at 'prisoner's base,'—upon my word I purposed no pun! I was intended for the Church. Wishing, betimes, to instruct myself in its ceremonies, I persuaded my schoolmaster's maidservant to assist me towards promoting a christening. My father did not like this premature love for the sacred rites. He took me home; and wishing to give my clerical ardour a different turn, prepared me for writing sermons by reading me a dozen a day. I grew tired ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
