"Mop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he remembered Gill Mace. The boy who had called Frank a thief was unable to repeat the vile accusation when he emerged from the puddle into which Frank had pushed him. His mouth was full of mud, his hair was a dripping mop, his clothes were plastered with it. Frank had waited to respond to any later move that Gill might decide on. The jeweler's nephew, however, made none. As he emerged from the puddle three schoolgirls, arms linked in friendly companionship, ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... neither tall nor short; neither broad nor slender; neither old nor young. He wore a thick mop of brown hair, tinged with chestnut in the sun. His forehead was broad and high and white and shapely. His eyes were deep-set and wide apart, very innocent, very large, and very brown, fringed with long ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... would be possible to take Brian to Paris. I'd have made it possible if I'd had to sell my hair to do it; and you know my curly black mop of hair was always my pet vanity. Brian being a soldier, he could have the operation free, if Doctor Cuyler considered it wise to operate; but—as our man warned me—there were ninety-nine chances to one against ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it just paid for their places at the theater, where they saw the living puppets of the colony mop and mow and rant under the title of acting. This was so interesting that Robinson was thinking of his ring the whole time, and how to get it back. The girls agreed between themselves they had never ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... said Leon. "And therefore, cousin, I intend to present you to-night in the salon of a duchess,—a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where you will see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and probably be able to win your lawsuit. But it is quite impossible to present you anywhere with that mop of Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine; and therefore we'll take you close by, Place de la Bourse, to Marius, another ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... avay, und den you see Rudolph's farm. He has got a nice vife, und a putiful leetle child. Putty soon Leah comes in, being shased, as ushual, by fellers mit shticks. She looks like she didn't ead someding for two monds. Rudolph's vife sends off dot mop, und Leah gits avay again. Den dat nice leedle child comes oud, und Leah comes back; und ven she sees dot child, don'd she feel orful aboud dot, und she says mit affectfulness, "Come here, leedle child, I voodn'd harm you;" ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... I looked at the old man, who was busy at work with a mop and pail cleaning out the old cannons on ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... jist molasses and water, not quite so sweet as 'lasses, and not quite so good as water; but a spilin' of both. And why? His pictur was of polished life, where there is no natur. Washington Irving's book is like a Dutch paintin', it is good, because it is faithful; the mop has the right number of yarns, and each yarn has the right number of twists, (altho' he mistook the mop of the grandfather, for the mop of the man of the present day) and the pewter plates are ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... visitors come I usually propose to give them a row. I go down—and find the boat full of water; then I send to the house for a dipper and prepare to bail; and, what with bailing and swabbing her with a mop and plugging up the cracks in her sides, and struggling to get the rudder in its place, and unlocking the rusty padlock, my strength is so much exhausted that it is almost impossible for me to handle the oars. Meanwhile the poor guests sit on stones around the beach ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... while the hideous roar of conflict diminished to the occasional sharp crackling of single rifles. Now and then a sinewy brown arm might incautiously project across the gleaming surface of a rock, or a mop of coarse black hair appear above the edge of a gully, either incident resulting in a quick interchange of fire. That was all; yet the experienced frontiersmen knew that eyes as keen as those of any wild animal ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... had taken advantage of this opportunity to mop her forehead with her blue and white pocket handkerchief, and wrestle with her bonnet's unconquerable tendency to slip off behind, and the clergyman passed the question on to her husband, who fixed his eye on a bluebottle buzzing in one of the windows, ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... of Toby Kiddle, my other friends managed occasionally to let me have my own way; and with great pride they looked on while I, with the end of a mop stick in my hand, went galloping about the deck, belabouring the goat's hinder quarters, very much after the fashion of an Irishman riding a donkey at a race. The Sergeant of Marines, Julian Killock was his name, on seeing the use I made ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... all contributed more or less except Miss Gamer; Margaret followed with knitted brows and occasional interjections. "People won't SEE that," for example, and "It all seems so plain to me." The doctor showed himself clever but unsubstantial and inconsistent. Isabel sat back with her black mop of hair buried deep in the chair looking quickly from face to face. Her colour came and went with her vivid intellectual excitement; occasionally she would dart a word, usually a very apt word, like a lizard's tongue into the discussion. I remember chiefly ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... entered the room, regally carrying her small head crowned with the slightly frizzy mop of chestnut hair, conscious of her fine eyes, her perfect features, and her pretty shoulders, happy in her slim young beauty, and withal wholly unaffected. Therein lay her greatest charm. A beautiful woman, fully aware of her ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... to shut off the human intellect from the search of truth as reverent investigators in the realms of geology and biology might find it. Comparing scientific truth to a great ocean, he speaks of an opponent of science as "brandishing his mop against each succeeding wave, pushing it back with all his might, but the ocean rolls on, and never minds him; science is utterly unconscious of his opposition." This point of view, maintained even to the point of accepting the theory of evolution, led eventually to his trial and condemnation ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... time lets you out, Mike, is that havin' jest had our feed we're happ'ly lethargic. Which if you'd let fly that crack about barbarians, an' us not fed none, some gent not otherwise employed 'd have seized upon you as a mop-rag wharwith to wipe ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said in a voice that trembled with rage and nerves, "will you kindly step for'ard and stop that brat's mouth with a deck mop?" ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... moth-eaten vicuna smoking jacket of blue. Beside this garment hung a girl's bright red blazer, with black collar; protecting, business-like paper cuffs were still attached. In the corner of the closet reposed a broom, a mop and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... and stared, wiping the glass clear that he might see better. Nikky without his cap, disheveled and flushed with exertion, was making a frantic shot at the white ball, rolling past him. Where had he seen such a head, such a flying mop of hair? Ah! He remembered. It was the flying young devil who had attacked him and the others that night in the by-street, when Peter ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and more vigour, till Maggie's hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching Mr. Stelling's reading-stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study was a one-storied wing ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... a mellow mood (induced by a string of cocktails and a hearty lunch), he started a conversation with Jones, the elevator boy. Jones was a slender, mop-headed, man-grown, truculent flame of an individual who seemed to go out of his way to insult his passengers. It was this that attracted Daylight's interest, and he was not long in finding out what was the matter with Jones. He was a proletarian, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... emptied at the conclusion of that ceremony; while the pinnace, which was stowed bottom-up in the launch, was liberally soused with water at the same time. In addition to this the proper complement of oars and rowlocks, the stretchers, boat-hook, mop, baler, anchor, rudder, yoke, and tiller, together with the compass, masts, and sails, were always stowed in the boat to which they belonged, and were carefully overhauled once every week under the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... room; he followed, and sat down in rather constrained fashion on the chair nearest the door, deposited his hat on the floor beside him, took from his pocket and unfolded with a flirt an immense bandanna handkerchief, highly redolent of cheap cologne, and proceeded to mop ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... morning in apple-blossom time. At about ten of the clock Penrod emerged hastily from the kitchen door. His pockets bulged abnormally; so did his checks, and he swallowed with difficulty. A threatening mop, wielded by a cooklike arm in a checkered sleeve, followed him through the doorway, and he was preceded by a small, hurried, wistful dog with a warm doughnut in his mouth. The kitchen door slammed petulantly, enclosing the sore voice of Della, whereupon Penrod and Duke seated themselves upon ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... kindness or blows. On one occasion, when a body of these intrusive creatures had constructed an absurdly conspicuous brown gallery straight across the ceiling of my drawing-room, I determined to declare open war against them, and, getting my black servant to bring in the steps and a mop, I proceeded to demolish the entire gallery just after breakfast. It was about 20 feet long, as well as I can remember, and perhaps an inch in diameter. At one o'clock I returned to lunch. My black servant pointed, with a broad grin on his intelligent features, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... a thirtover place this world is!" continued Mrs. Coggan (a wholesome-looking lady who had a voice for each class of remark according to the emotion involved; who could toss a pancake or twirl a mop with the accuracy of pure mathematics, and who at this moment showed hands shaggy with fragments of dough and arms encrusted with flour). "I am never up to my elbows, Miss, in making a pudding but one of two things do happen—either my nose must needs begin ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... to throw away good stuff," he grumbled at almost every creak. "Two hunder pound I would 'a paid myself for this here piece of timber. Steady as a light-house, and as handy as a mop; but what do they young fellows care? There, now, my lads, hold your legs a moment; and now make your ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... won't stay put, there's such a mop of it!" She submitted willingly to the other's deft ministrations. "Neither mother nor I look half as nice since you got married, Jemmy. Oh, I do love your smooth hands!" She held one affectionately to her cheek. "They're so nimble and sure of themselves, as if each finger ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... with its four paws, using its tail as well—it had a nice long tail in those days; the mouse crept out of his pocket and made channels with its little pointed toes; and the squirrel brushed and swept the water in with its bushy, mop-like tail. The rising sea poured down the ever- deepening hole. They worked with a will together; there was no complaining, though the rabbit wore its tail down till it was nothing but a stump, and the mouse stood ankle-deep in water, and the squirrel's fluffy tail looked ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... spot and reached for the thing he had killed, but his fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair and he turned Snettishane's face upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun scattered at fifty yards, and he knew that he had peppered Snettishane across the shoulders and in the small of the back. And Snettishane knew that he knew, but ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... flowed with gracious oblivion. When Emily ceased, it was with an inward fervour of gratitude to the master and the instrument, To know that, was to have caught once more the point of view from which life had meaning. Now let them chatter and mop and mow; the echo of that music ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... tesselated floor of the governor's house are once again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we make for the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... surprise, Gladys rushed at her, and clutched two handfuls of her heavy black hair, and pulled so that Miriam fell prone on the floor. "I'll teach you, you free lover!" she screamed. "I'll teach you to make love to my husband!" And she dragged Miriam about by that mop of black hair, kicking her and clawing her, until finally several of the bulls had to interfere to ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... were well enough off as they were: he didn't see "what she wanted ob dat chile to support—he was sho' he wouldn't do it;" and as for adventuring his precious self among the Philistines again, he utterly declined the proposition. Then Vina's anger rose, and with her lifted mop she drove her liege lord from her cabin-door, which he ever after found barred against him. George soon consoled himself with another wife, and about a year later departed for parts unknown. The years that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... at it all; it sounded very funny to him, coming from this very small person, with her round, serious eyes, and her mop of gold. He asked her what she wanted him to bring her next time he came home, and Julia said black boots with white tops and tassels, and made him ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... individual must be taken into account and the temperature and frequency of the bath must be determined and regulated by the necessity and idiosyncrasies of each case. The amount of bathing that a strong, full-blooded person could endure would mop out the life of a thin, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... blossom among them all. You shall also invent new ways for arranging them, new combinations, new effects, the only restriction being that you shall not put vases where the water will drip on books, or make the house look like the show window of a wholesale florist. I will 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
... Add. Gleams of light pricked on the shore well to his left. Those must mark the Rover settlement. And again the Terran wondered why the invaders had remained there. Unless they knew that there had been three cruisers out on a raid and for some reason they were determined to make a complete mop-up. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... hot side of the barn, and painting was no light work. The agent was forced to mop ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... opened by the long hairpin or skewer, and the head is ravissante. Scented and frizzled in this manner with a well-greased tope or robe, the Arab lady's toilet is complete. Her head is then a little larger than the largest sized English mop, and her perfume is something between the aroma of a perfumer's shop and the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. This is considered "very killing," and I have been quite of that opinion when a crowd of women have visited my wife in ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... MOP.—Philip Cook, Jr., Sioux City, Iowa.—This invention relates to a new and useful improvement in mops, whereby they are so arranged that they may be wrung or freed from water when in use by moving the slides connected with the handle and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... answered this able seaman, not a little flattered by Dorothy's appreciation of his service, and in Molly's own frequent manner. With another smile at this memory, Dorothy followed as he walked ahead, dragging his mop behind him and leaving a shining streak in ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... tall man continued, "you rescued us in a deucedly shabby manner. It makes me ill to think of it. I've a mind to mop you 'round just for that. In the second place, your vessel is bound for Athens, N. Y., and there's no sense in it. Now, will you or will you not turn this ship about and take us back where our clothes are, or ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... that the inside of all cups and pitchers is thoroughly clean. It is a good plan to have a mop made by fastening finger-lengths of coarse cotton twin to a suitable handle, for washing the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... withdraws his curling horns, And the cold Waterer twirls his circling mop: Swift sudden anguish darts through altering corns, And the spruce mercer trembles in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... nothing more nor less than the beginning of the end of that. Just as the great refreshment caterers have mopped up the ancient multitude of coffee-houses and squalid little special feeding arrangements of the days of Tittlebat Titmouse and Dick Swiveller, so now your Hostels are going to mop up the lodging-house system of London. Of course there are other and kindred movements. Naturally. The Y.W.C.A., the Y.M.C.A., the London Girls Club Union and so forth are all ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... cleaning. Thus, except in very rare cases, no fault can be found with the cleanliness of the Army hotels. We hardly ever visited any of them without coming into contact with the scent of fumigation, or finding some individual working with mop ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... that helped to mop up some of the ink. Miss Davis sent Jessie to get a cloth from Maria, the maid, and she used that to wipe the ink off the desk. Sunny Boy and the lead soldier she sent upstairs to the bathroom, where Maria scrubbed them both with water and ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... was so hot that any feeling sent beads of perspiration to the face. Sommers paused when Lindsay began to mop his head. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the least little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to the jury, Brown interposed, and begged that Mr. Ryland should call Mrs. Brown as the last witness, instead of first, which was the proper course. "Because," said he, "if anything goes wrong during the trial or anything is wanting, Mrs. Brown will be quite ready to mop it ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... waved back acknowledgments of the cheers sent to him across the water. Half-a- dozen eager hands were waiting to help with the boat as she ran ashore, and there he stood, the water dripping from his clothes, his hair ruffled into a veritable mop of dark brown curls, his face ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... abroad on the small number of troops which the Government had conditionally undertaken to provide. And throughout the first sixteen months of the war, it was they who went on doling out contingents with Troy weights and measures like Mrs. Partington beating back the tidal waves with a mop. It was they, too, who were at extraordinary pains and risked their prestige, to throw away the splendid privileged position which, at the outset of the struggle, we chanced to occupy in South-Eastern Europe. Every blunder into which petty municipal minds could ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully in the atmosphere ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... A light quick step was heard mounting the stairs. A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door. A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; a soft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere—it sounded like a wet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young man straight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin, large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth. As he stepped forward into the light, he paused, parting the haircut ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Off and on, you know. They whip me till they got tired and then they go and res' and come out and start again. They kept a bowl filled with vinegar and salt and pepper settin' nearby, and when they had whipped me till the blood come, they would take the mop and sponge the cuts with this stuff so that they would hurt more. They would whip me with the cowhide part of the time and with birch sprouts the other part. There were splinters long as my finger left in my back. A girl named Betty Jones come over and soaped the splinters ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Anthony is a peppery little person and the audience enjoyed the cayenne piquancy of his remarks. The red-tabbed Lieutenant-Colonel spoke. He was a bit dull. The elderly orator from London roused enthusiastic cheers. The wounded sergeant, on crutches, displaying a foot like a bandaged mop, brought tears into the eyes of many women and evoked hoarse cheers from the old men. I spoke from my infernal chair, and I think I was quite a success with the good fellows in khaki. But the only men we wanted to appeal to had studiously ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... mothers. Men who allow their wives to dress like chorus girls. White-faced, scared-looking, yellow-eyed men who belong to societies for the suppression of vice. Men who boast that they neither drink nor smoke. Men who mop their bald heads with perfumed handkerchiefs. Men with drawn, mottled faces, in the last stages of arterio-sclerosis. Silent, stupid-looking men in thick tweeds who tramp up and down the decks of ocean steamers. Men who peep out of hotel rooms at Swedish chambermaids. Men who go to ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... was curiously unchanged, curiously unlike the spiritual chaos below stairs. The September sunshine came sifting in through the tree tops to dapple with level spots of light the silky surface of the rug; the soft breeze stirred the curtains and then passed on to ruffle the curly mop of bright brown hair that gleamed like polished chestnuts in the sun. After the excitement and the tragedy of the lower rooms, this place seemed as quiet as a sanctuary; and Reed's face matched the quiet, as he ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... have quite a Dutch mania for cleanliness. On Saturdays they give their homes a complete overhaul, and the men are driven out of doors during the ceremony. What man could stay at home when his wife, supplied with a mop and a big pail of soapy water, is sousing the floor and the walls? Furniture is scrubbed and dusted, glass ornaments, porcelain hens, and shell-boxes have to be carefully wiped, grates and fire-irons must be rubbed to a glittering ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... tilted slightly back in his chair to obtain a better view of Nan's head. It was really rather puzzling to decide whether her curly mop was intended to be up or down; and the burst of laughter which followed showed how perfectly his uncertainty was appreciated. Nan made a grimace intended to express reckless indifference, and waved her ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in spirit, retraced their steps to Ercilla, and consented to be baptized, in the hope of being permitted to revisit their native land. The number, indeed, was so considerable, that the priest who officiated was obliged to make use of the mop, or hyssop, with which the Roman Catholic missionaries were wont to scatter the holy drops, whose mystic virtue could cleanse the soul in a moment from the foulest stains of infidelity. "Thus," says a Castilian historian, "the calamities of these poor blind creatures proved in ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... back? Ho! Ye mean one that you can lean back in. What talk folk will bring with them from up south, to be sure! Yes, I'll get it for ye, Ma'am. Come, Mop, be a braw little wee ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... asserted, with mock seriousness, as he gazed at Dick's bushy mop of football hair. "You're growing a regular chrysanthemum for a top piece ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... the other, stretching forward over the half door to throw his words into the bar; for his voice was as if the head of his boat's mop were down his throat; 'I say so, Miss Abbey! And mind you! I'll follow him up, Miss Abbey! And mind you! I'll bring him to hook at last, if it's twenty year hence, I will! Who's he, to be favoured along of his daughter? Ain't I got a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... City and Newark, only to reach my destination cold and hungry, and to be interviewed by a seedy man with a patent stove-lifter, a shirt-waist belt, a contrivance for holding up a lady's train, or a new-fangled mop—anything, everything that a persistent agent might sell to the spendthrift wife of an ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... a birch broom, and hung my boa near the fire to dry. There was a wild, fierce-looking Lapp in the room, who spoke some Norwegian, and at once asked who and what I was. His head was covered with a mop of bright brown hair, his eyes were dark blue and gleamed like polished steel, and the flushed crimson of his face was set off by the strong bristles of a beard of three weeks growth. There was something savage and ferocious in his air, as ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... letters, was now reinforced by the too demonstrative legend, "Apartments and Board, by the Day or Week." Was it possible that this narrow, creaking staircase had once seemed to him the broad steps of Fame and Fortune? On the first landing, a preoccupied Irish servant-girl, with a mop, directed him to a door at the end of the passage, at which he knocked. The door was opened by a grizzled negro servant, who was still holding a piece of oily chamois-leather in his hand; and the contents of a dueling-case, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... tiny head in its scarlet setting with shuddering fascination. It had a hideous little face; a broad, brutal face of the Tartar type; and the mop of gray-brown hair, so unhuman in color, and the bristling mustache that stood up like a cat's whiskers, gave it an aspect half animal, half devilish. I clapped the lid on the box, thrust it back on the shelf, and, plucking down the first volume of the "Archives," ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... being so constituted, could not be easy on the subject this time. All day long she heard rats and mice in the grain-chests; she stopped and listened with her broom, and she stopped and listened with her mop. ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... prepared breakfast before sunrise as before, the washing and ironing were as well done, but when she prepared to clean the kitchen floor the first washday after Aunt Susan's death, she took the mop down from its nail on the back porch and used it as she had ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best and not ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... but bent every faculty to the mastery of the duties required of him. He was to mop out the store with damp cloths, so as to raise no dust, to look after the furnace and graduate the heat throughout the building, to receive boxes, to assist in packing and unpacking pianos and other musical instruments that occupied ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... smiling as he rarely did, the firm line of his out-thrust lower lip relaxed good-humouredly. He had taken off his campaign hat to her, and though his stiff, yellow hair was twisted into a bristling mop, the little persistent tuft on the crown, usually defiantly erect as an Apache's scalp-lock, was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... six hundred and forty-eight plates every day. Second month: Promoted to drying aforesaid plates. Third month: Promoted to peeling potatoes. Fourth month: Promoted to cutting bread and butter. Fifth month: Promoted one floor up to duties of wardmaid with mop and pail. Sixth month: Promoted to waiting at table. Seventh month: Pleasing appearance and nice manners so striking that am promoted to waiting on the Sisters! Eighth month: Slight check in career. Sister Bond ate Sister Westhaven's ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... was at last able to remove his coat, mop his perspiring brow, and release the crushed and dishevelled Phoenix. Robert had to arrange his damp hair at the looking-glass at the back of the box, and the Phoenix had to preen its disordered feathers for some time before either of them ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... common tall, with a sandy beard, and a mop of tangled hair straggling beneath his torn straw hat. A square of wet calico drips from under the back of the hat. His gingham shirt is open at the throat, showing his tanned neck and chest. Warm as it is, he wears portions ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... walked with long strides, free and supple as if he were going to leap or dance, and the skirts of his overcoat flapped in the wind. Behind came an indistinct, compact, howling mass, gentle and simple, arm in arm,—a child carried on a shoulder, a girl's red mop of hair between a chauffeur's cap and the helmet of a soldier. Chests out, chins raised, mouths open like black holes, shouting the Marseillaise. To right and left of the ranks, a double line of jail-bird faces, along the curbstone, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... planks, was bare, but it carried a dark stain, and this had been waxed until it shone. The walls, painted gray, had yielded a clean surface to the mop. The grate was blackened. On either side of it stood the two large chairs, and Mary had thrown a strip of bright stuff over the cushions of the Morris. Beside this chair stood the smaller table, polished, and upon it blue and white tea things. Near the large ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... dreaded by all beginners, but needlessly so. With a full supply of all conveniences,—plenty of soap and sapolio, which is far better and cleaner to use than either sand or ashes; with clean, soft towels for glass and silver; a mop, the use of which not only saves the hands but enables you to have hotter water; and a full supply of coarser towels for the heavier dishes,—the work can go on swiftly. Let the dish-pan be half full of hot soap and water. Wash glass first, paying no attention ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... hate my friends. Yet Euphemia says I must "keep up" my friends. They would be all very well if they were really true friends and respected my feelings and left me alone, just to sit quiet. But they come wearing shiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer their gibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wicked perversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given us to season our lives rather than to make them insipid. New friends are the worst ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... pricking of my thumbs'!" Patience rolled over, and resting her sharp little chin in her hands, stared up at her sisters from under her mop of short red curls. "Pen! Ink! Paper! And such a lot of torn-up scraps! It's ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... that among his officers was a sturdy veteran named Keldermeester, who had cherished, through a long life, a mop of hair not a little resembling the shag of a Newfoundland dog, terminating in a queue like the handle of a frying-pan, and queued so tightly to his head that his eyes and mouth generally stood ajar, and his eyebrows ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... there might be a regular fight, but in a few seconds the proprietor of the store appeared, armed with a mop stick he had picked up. He happened to be the father of the girl, and she told him how Tad Sobber had ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... for Watts that the tree prevented him from falling backwards. He was quite sober, but cheerful withal, as he had nothing to do but sleep, smoke, eat, and drink the light wine of the district, of which his only complaint was that "one might mop up a barrel of it an' get no forrarder." Nevertheless, he received a positive shock when addressed in his own language by a young woman who was obviously of Brazil. He stared at her so hard that he forgot the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... "Dame Hilda, what an untidy chamber!"—she usually began in that way—"why don't you make these children put their playthings tidy? (Of course Dame Hilda did, at the end of the day; but how could we have playthings tidy while we were playing with them?) Meg, your hair is no better than a mop! Jack, how got you that rent in your sleeve? (I never knew Jack without a rent in some part of his clothes; I should not have thought it was Jack if he had come in whole garments.) Joan, how ungainly you sit! pluck yourself ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... sort of little vegetable, Bensington," said Cossar—"that's what you ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you're made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D'you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can't help yourselves ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... the Captain, hurried forward to receive our distinguished guest, who climbed heavily on his Secretary's arm. Arriving thus at the sally-way, he nodded graciously in answer to the first lieutenant's salute, pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow, and in the act of mopping it cast a glance across ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... landing on which they stood, at the miserable, uncarpeted floor, the ill-painted doors on which the long-forgotten varnish stood out in blisters, the jumble of dilapidated hot-water cans, a mop, and a medley of brooms and rags all thrown down together ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cat flew at his throat, clutched him above the steel breastplate, and shook three times, the gatewarden's uncovered, dun-coloured head swaying back and forward as if it were a loose bundle of clouts on a mop. When they parted company, because he could no longer keep his fingers clenched, Hogben fell back; he fell back, and they lay with their heels touching each other and their arms stretched out ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... what time that pest would break in on me so I could always arrange to be out!" groaned Durtal. Now he ground his teeth, as Rateau, with a yell, grabbed up the mop and, skating around on one leg, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... before sweeping. When the dust is settled take a pail of warm water, put in a tablespoonful of ammonia, then with a clean cloth wrung from this wipe the window glass, mirror and pictures; polish with dry cloth. Wipe all finger marks from doors and mop boards. ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... diversely lobed, and great pink, fragile flowers, each with a blotch of maroon at the base and each containing a fat and lumbering bee spangled with maroon-tinted pollen. A trailing eugenia bears dark red flowers shaped like a mop, and a tiny white lily with petals and strangely protuberant anthers scents the air as with honey ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... they go entirely naked; the hair is woolly, but it is so managed by some sort of grease or ointment, and a white or red powder with which they dress it, that it hangs on some like so many candle wicks, or rather like the thrums of a new mop reversed, or turned upside down; they are generally as fully powdered as a beau dressed for an assembly; some have their hair of a yellow, sun burnt colour, others quite red, as if powdered wholly with the true marechall; none are seen with the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... closed and her face all drawn up on that side as if with a twinge of toothache, she stepped out on the verandah, sat down in a rocking-chair some distance away, and took up her knitting from a little table. Before she started at it she plunged one of the needles into the mop of her grey hair and ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in it till they were clean. Then they were wiped while they were still a little soapy, without rinsing them, because in that way they were polished like diamonds. After they were lifted out and put on the tray the silver went into the pan and was well scrubbed with the mop, and then rinsed with very hot water, which proved to be too much for Margaret's hands; when she tried to lift out the forks and spoons she ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... a bill," replied Mr. Verdant Green; "it was a letter about a dog from the man of whom I bought Mop last term." ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... woman, agreeable, motherly, comfortable as she might be, wasn't his affair; that child with the mop of black hair who combined so magically the charm of mouse and butterfly and flitting bird, who was daintier than a flower and softer than a peach, was no concern of his. Good heavens! what were they to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... close of this long rigmarole, she at once told a young maid to take the mop and wash ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin |
