"Sill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shafts and went and looked into the great window of the tobacco-shop. His eyes were all full, as far as they could carry: an abundance and a splendour to dream about. He came a step nearer and rested his two elbows on the stone window-sill, to see more comfortably. ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... summer, I nussed him on my knees; An' Mike browt home at lowsin'-time Wild rasps an' strawberries. We used to sit on t' door-sill I' t' leet o' t' harvist-moon, While our lile Doad would clench his fists An' suck his ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... see the rear portions of the houses on a parallel street, and speculated as to the chances of escape this way. As the room was only on the second floor, the distance to the ground was not great. He could easily swing off the window-sill without injury. Though he knew it would not be well to attempt escape now when Martin and Smith were doubtless on the lookout, he thought he would open the window softly and take a survey. He tried one window, but could not raise it. He tried the other, with ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... up on pillows just within the parlor window, where she could enjoy the cool evening air without too great exposure. "If she'll give me another kiss we'll call it all square and say no more about it," and I leaned over the window-sill. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... silently they sawed and chopped, then carried the wood into the chilly cabin; while one lit the lamp and went for a sack of ice, the other kindled a fire. These tasks accomplished, by mutual consent, but still without exchanging a word, they approached the table. From the window-sill Tom took a coin and balanced it upon his thumb and forefinger; then, in answer to his bleak, inquiring glance, Jerry nodded and he snapped the piece into the air. While it was still spinning ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... door-yard on the opposite side of the street, adjoining the Hubbard "Park." On the door of that bright-coloured, spruce-looking brick house, you will see the name of W. C. Clapp; and there are a pair of boots resting on the window-sill of an adjoining office, which probably belong to the person of the lawyer, himself. Now, we may observe Mrs. Hilson and Miss Emmeline Hubbard flitting across the street, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the left was a little cupboard of a living-room. He kept the shop window open, so that no customer came through the doorway, and he begged some scarlet geranium cuttings, which, in due time, bloomed into brilliant colour on his sitting-room window- sill, proclaiming that from their possessor hope and delight in life had not departed. Alas! the enterprise was a failure. Mike was no hand at driving hard bargains, and frequently, when the Jew from Cambridge came round ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... over the sill of the door, and gave the chamberlain a sign to follow her; as he approached the door, however, the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... had been growing more and more deliberate, stopped. For some time he stood, in a thoughtful attitude—then slowly returned. His hand was in his pocket, his dead-latch key between his fingers, and his foot upon the marble sill of his door. And thus he remained, in debate with himself, for as long a time ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... slowly the two sides of the casement opened out. As the dusty panes of glass swung away from before me my eye caught a singular irregularity in the surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark substance—darker than the bricks—through which shone twinkling glimpses ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... Molly had been washing her head. She had spread a towel on the window-sill and now hung her hair out of the window that sun and wind might play upon ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... makes the finest lace for miles about," said Michael, unhearing, unheeding. "Rare tales she would be telling me and I no higher than the sill of the window there, and I'd thought to find her long dead and buried surely, the way she was always as old as the Abbey itself. But no—there she was still in her bit of a cottage, the time I was just home, the oldest old woman I ever saw out of a mummy's wrappings and like a witch indeed ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some of her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she did have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory, for Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her wonderfully well, were not ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... lane which the fugitives had entered ran a high wall. Upon the other was a very large mansion. Its lower windows were five feet from the ground. As the lads ran they saw an open window. Without a moment's hesitation they placed their hands on the sill, threw themselves into it, and flung down the window. There was a scream as they entered, followed by an exclamation in English. The boys looked round, and saw a young lady who had started back in terror to ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... leaned against the window and gazed wolfishly at the food. A warm, foetid rush of air from under the grating at their feet tickled their nostrils and mocked their hunger with a mockery past endurance. Arranged on the window-sill was a miscellaneous collection of very smeary plates and dishes, containing an even more miscellaneous collection of food. A half-consumed ham, with more than a mere suspicion of dirt on its yellowish-white fat; some concoction in a bowl that might have been brawn ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... atmosphere which fills the streets of Paris, they felt the icy chill of crypts about them. A damp air came from an inner courtyard which resembled a huge air-shaft; the light that entered was gray, and the sill of the window was filled with pots of sickly plants. In this room, which had a coating of some greasy, fuliginous substance, the furniture, the chairs, the table, were all most abject. The floor tiles oozed like a water-cooler. In short, every ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... expedition, of whom the writer was one, were selected from the three Ohio regiments belonging to General J.W. Sill's brigade, being simply told that they were wanted for secret and very dangerous service. So far as known, not a man chosen declined the perilous honor. Our uniforms were exchanged for ordinary Southern dress, and all arms except revolvers were left in camp. On the 7th of April, by the roadside ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... him. But I did not sleep again, although I lay till all the rest had gone to the parlour. I found them seated round a blazing fire waiting for my father. He came in soon after, and we had our breakfast, and Davie gave his crumbs as usual to the robins and sparrows which came hopping on the window-sill. I fancied my father's eyes were often turned in my direction, but I could not lift mine to make sure. I had never before ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... nude figures, rustic, and elegiac subjects. Every artist had painted something in memory of his visit, and Mildred sought vaguely for what Mr. Mitchell had painted. Then, remembering that he had chosen to walk about with the Turner girl, she abandoned her search and, leaning on the window- sill, watched the light fading in the garden. She could hear the frogs in a distant pond, and thought of the night in the forest amid ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... his way into one of the rear chambers. There the night air was sweeping in through an open window, to the sill of which ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... the twine. That was the signal to Boris to go ahead. His eyes strained on the window, Fred saw his cousin's figure appear on the sill, saw him climbing swiftly up a water pipe, and then saw him drop to the flat roof, hidden for the moment by a low parapet. Then there was another period of agonized waiting, for again a sentry was to pass. Fred used the brief interval of enforced inaction to loosen the rope and place it on ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... critics applied so freely to all the issue of the so-called dark ages, were not entirely without justification. Dante is almost the only strictly mediaeval poet in whose work the form seems adequate to the content; for Boccaccio and Petrarca stand already on the sill of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... suspiciously; but, for all that, if he hadn't spoken, I wouldn't have thought anything about it, for I like cats. He walked backward and forward on the window sill, his spine and tail nicely arched, and rubbed himself on either window jamb. I watched him some little time, and finally concluded to make friends with him. Going over to the window, I put out my hand to stroke his glossy back, when a gust of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... affection of a people for a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contrary to nature than the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when love between them no longer exists. Now we know that, in your house, love at this moment has one foot on the window-sill. It is necessary for you, therefore, to put into practice that salutary rigor by which M. de Metternich prolongs his statu quo; but we would advise you to do so with more tact and with still more tenderness; for your wife is more ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... It was almost complete when through the little gap purposely left open Split deftly introduced a providentially flattened piece of ice from the window-sill, giving her victim a little shake that sent the ice slipping smoothly down her squirming body, but escaping before Sissy could turn ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... hope, and another to fear, both hope and fear had shaken hands with Sally and said good-bye. She was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with George and Long Snapps, George said, "Would you ever have come to take care of me, Sally, if I'd 'a' been shot on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that stood in the wild Wabash wood! The rank weeds were growin' like ghosts through the floor. The squirrels hulled nuts on the sill of the door. And the gals stood in groups scrapin' lint where they stood. And we boys! How we sighed; how we sickened and died For the days that had been, for ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... see what was to be seen. A flower-garden right below; a meadow of ripe grass just beyond, changing colour in long sweeps, as the soft wind blew over it; great old forest- trees a little on one side; and, beyond them again, to be seen only by standing very close to the side of the window-sill, or by putting her head out, if the window was open, the silver shimmer of a mere, about a quarter of a mile off. On the opposite side to the trees and the mere, the look-out was bounded by the old walls and high-peaked roofs of the extensive ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... minutes they were bounding over the road at a very different pace to that at which they had before traversed it. "There's the house among the trees," Peter said at last, "with aunt's pigeons on the roof as usual, and there's Minnie asleep on the window-sill, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... window-sills, he had a chance. A long red arm reached up; groped painfully; the finger-tips touched the end of a blind. There was dead silence except for the roar of the wind-driven fire while the mason pawed along the window-sill for safe lodgment; ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... table. His shadow twitched and wavered about the plastered walls,—a portentous mass of head upon a hemisphere of shoulders,—as Raoul bent over a chest, sorting the contents, singing softly to himself, while Matthiette leaned upon the sill without, and the gardens of Arnaye took form and stirred in the heart of ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... monkey, cap in hand, clambered to the sill of the mediocre artist's window. And the mediocre artist tossed into his cap a peanut. The monkey, putting the peanut in his mouth, ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... room And back again, pausing awhile to bask And wink its painted fans on the warm sill; A bird piped in the roses and there came Into the childless mother's ears a sound Of happy laughing ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... both supple little hands on the broad stone sill, and looked downward into the city street as you would look into a well. The wind was blowing sticks and dust around in fairy rings, and a motor car or so ran up and down, and there were the usual number of the usual kind of people on the sidewalks; ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... interfering, for Elizabeth was a prudent person and did not like draughts; but her sister's movements excited her curiosity, and she refrained. Beatrice sat down on the foot of her bed, and leaning her arm upon the window-sill looked out upon the lovely quiet night. How dark the pine trees massed against the sky; how soft was the whisper of the sea, and how vast the heaven through which the ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Mancroft, Norwich), running from east to west without break, but the large rood piers and reduced width and height of chancel make the pause demanded in so long a church. The step at this point is of oak, and is probably the original sill of the rood screen. The large figures of SS. Peter and Paul were placed on the piers in 1861. Of the three arches which open on either hand the centre one is widest, having four-light windows, instead of three-light, over it. The panelling ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... eloquent grave eyes, and a roguish white one with pink blemishes on a twisting black nose. And while the large brown face loomed steadily above two powerful front paws, the small white face only appeared at intervals as the nervous little body below flung it up to the sill in ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... over the sill and was gone, leaving the others staring at each other. Peggy ran to the window and looked after her. "She is all right, Margaret!" she cried; for Margaret was visibly distressed and alarmed. "The woodbine is very thick and strong, and there is ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police came and broke in the door, and the landlord was along, and the porter, and all the chambermaids, and everybody. I had turned in all the alarms there were, and everybody came quick. The ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... name for his wife's bed-room) really looked as bright and beautiful as any royal chamber in the universe. The rarest flowers, the prettiest gardens under glass, bowls with gold and silver fish in them, a small aviary of birds, an Aeolian harp to put on the window-sill in summertime, some of Valentine's best drawings from the old masters, prettily-framed proof-impressions of engravings done by Mrs. Blyth's father, curtains and hangings of the tenderest color and texture, inlaid tables, and delicately-carved book-cases, were among the different objects ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... that wasn't no live Injun! Didn't I blaze away at him with my six-shooter and empty all my barrels for nothing? No, sir, it's the same spirit that haunts the trail from Vernon, Texas, to Coffeyville. I've shot at that red devil this side of Fort Sill, and at Skeleton Spring, and at Bull Foot Spring, and a mile from Doan's store—always at night, for it never rises except at night, as befits a good ghost. I reckon I'll waste cartridges on that spook as long as I hit the trail, but I don't never expect to draw blood. Others has saw ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... every rustle of the western breeze, spotting the grass below. The river swirled along, glassy no more, but dingy gray with autumn rains and rotting leaves. All beyond the garden told of autumn, bright and peaceful even in decay; but up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the very window-sill, summer still lingered. The beds of red verbena and geranium were still brilliant, though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and plane; the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined its delicate green leaves, and more delicate yellow blossoms, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... her friend, who lingered behind. "Oh!" cried Lady Anne, "I am coming, I will soon be the first amongst you, I only wait a moment to bind up my troublesome hair." As she spoke, her eyes rested upon a little volume, which lay upon the broad sill of the casement. The wind fluttered in the pages, and blew them over and over; and half curiously, half carelessly, she looked again, and yet again. The word murder caught her eye; her feelings were still in a state of excitement from the tales and legends to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... smiling every now and then at the comically languishing faces made by that excellent woman, to express to "little Mary" the extremity of her sufferings from the heat. The whole length of the window-sill is occupied by an AEolian harp—one of the many presents which Valentine's portrait painting expeditions have enabled him to offer to his wife. Madonna's hand is resting lightly on the box of the harp; for by touching it in this way, she becomes sensible to the influence of its ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... swiftly. It was incredibly silent. There was no sound in the Master's room, and no light except the flicker of the logs smoldering in the fireplace. The thin line of it appeared faintly along the sill ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... dog whined low; on the doorway sill, With his cane to his chin, The old man sat; and the chore-girl still Sung to the bees stealing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that he and Hoggins were engaged in some nefarious plan and that in making an attempt to enter—as, of course, they had no right to enter—a block of flats in Cavendish Place, poor Talmot slipped and fell from the fourth floor window-sill, breaking his leg. Hoggins had to carry him ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... that the frame would be likely to go down or the stonework come up I could never make out. What I should fear would be that the stone would come up and take the frame with it. Every brick mason knows better than to bed mortar under the center of a window sill; and this putting a prop under the center of an engine girder seems a parallel case. They say Mr. Corliss would have done the same thing if he had thought of it. I do not believe it. If Mr. Corliss had found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... curious and more skeptical, went straight to the window and looked out. The crumbling mortar-dust on the sill had evidently been disturbed, seeming to make good the Englishman's story, but, from the window, was a clear drop of four hundred feet of naked rock, without even a crack to afford a finger-hold, while the precipitous descent fell another fifteen ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the stack of neatly folded patterns in a rustling storm to the floor as she pushed her way out from the narrow space between table edge and sill. The girl did not heed them or the lamp, that rocked drunkenly with the tottering table. She had forgotten everything—the thick white square of cardboard, even the stooped old man in the small back room—in the face of the overwhelming fear that reason ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... roses on the small table, on the desk, on the dresser—where their reflection added to their magnificence. Finally they were left on the broad window-sill, while the two discussed possible givers. It was Miss Sterling, however, who suggested names. Polly ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... the windows and the doors and saw no one except Miss Kitty Cat, dozing on a window sill. Then something moved beneath the piazza ceiling. It was a cage, which swayed as a green figure clung to the wires on one side ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Providence must have guided my movements, for in some otherwise unaccountable way, on the very point of hurling myself out bodily, I chose to drop feet foremost instead. With my fingers I clung for a moment to the sill. Then I let go. In falling my body turned so as to bring my right side toward the building. I struck the ground a little more than two feet from the foundation of the house, and at least three to the left of the point from which I started. Missing the stone pavement by not more than ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with the exceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an unknown region called "North'ard". So had his way of life:—he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheelwright's: he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries; and it was ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Thornton bit his lip and looked steadfastly at the scarlet geranium on the window-sill, as though in search ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Corney, out of the bedroom window of the genial physician, whose astonishment at his covering so long a stretch of road at night for news of a boy like Crossjay—gifted with the lives of a cat—became violent and rapped Punch-like blows on the window-sill at Vernon's refusal to take shelter and rest. Vernon's excuse was that he had "no one but that fellow to care for", and he strode off, naming a farm five miles distant. Dr. Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of his passing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the first floor, and at the side of the house; by which it seemed to me that I might enter. A mulberry-tree stood by it, and it lacked bars; and other trees veiled the spot. To be brief, in two minutes I had my knee on the sill, and, sweating with terror—for I knew that if I were taken I should hang for a thief—I forced in the casement, and ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... and when my wife went a second time to the window, they fired as soon as they heard the blast, but missed their aim. My wife then went down on her knees, and, drawing her head and body below the range of the window, the horn resting on the sill, blew blast after blast, while the shots poured thick and fast around her. They must have fired ten or twelve times. The house was of stone, and the windows were deep, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... to the window, and just before she jumped up on the sill so she could jump on the shelf I saw a mouse run along the shelf where the fish was and jump into ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... be phantoms in this ghastly mansion; but they had nothing to do with me; only the absent master of the house was any concern of mine; and, finding at last the window I sought for, I shoved it open and climbed to the sill, landing upon the floor inside, my moccasined feet making no more sound than the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... perhaps two o'clock in the morning had crept out of her window and along the balcony, which ended a dozen feet from Roger's room. From thence on there was merely a decorative stone ledge, barely four inches wide. The closed window of the bedroom came first, its projecting sill offering something to cling to, but on each side of this was a space where the only support was the creeper on the wall. It was a perilous undertaking. In some fashion she had evidently made her way along the ledge. Roger ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... his touch and vanished into air, and the old priest leaned forward on the window-sill and gazed through the chink. And with a cry of joy he saw a corner of the rude bed, and beside the corner, one above the other, three great dazzling wings; they were the left-hand side wings of one of the Angels at ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... fish-shop, whence is shed So strong a smell of fishes dead That people of a subtler sense Hold their breath and hurry thence. Miss Thompson hovers there and gazes: Her housewife's knowing eye appraises Salt and fresh, severely cons Kippers bright as tarnished bronze: Great cods disposed upon the sill, Chilly and wet, with gaping gill, Flat head, glazed eye, and mute, uncouth, Shapeless, wan, old-woman's mouth. Next a row of soles and plaice With querulous and twisted face, And red-eyed bloaters, golden-grey; Smoked haddocks ranked in neat array; A group of smelts ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... of six-guns. He felt Chinook shiver. He jumped clear as the horse rolled to its side. Sundown, retreating to the house, flung open the bedroom window and kneeling, laid the barrel of his gun on the sill. Deliberately he sighted, hesitated, and flung the gun from him. "God Almighty—I ought to—but I can't!" He had seen Corliss fall and thought that he had been killed. He saw a Mexican raise his gun to fire; saw him suddenly straighten ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... not endowed with great perspicacity, did not observe the expression which his words had given to the physiognomy of the stranger. The latter rose from the front of the window, upon the sill of which he had leaned with his elbow, and knitted his brow ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... way is, that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of a window spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, as they are not now where you left them, they have been removed. In the third place, you look at the marks on the window-sill, and the shoemarks outside, and you say that in all previous experience the former kind of mark has never been produced by anything else but the hand of a human being; and the same experience shows that no other animal but man at present ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... in through the open window; the keen spring air blew freshly across the house-tops; and on the window-sill a band of grimy, joyous sparrows twittered and preened themselves. In the middle of the room stood Loder. His coat was off, and round him on chairs and floor lay an array of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... which June offered, Daisy slowly crawled off the bed and went and kneeled down before her open window, crossing her arms on the sill. June followed her, with a ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... The chair had been a recent gift from an anonymous admirer whose political necessities, the Honorable Mr. Linder idly surmised, had not yet driven him to reveal his identity. Its occupant stretched his shoeless feet, as was his custom, upon the broad window-sill, flooded by the seasonable warmth of sunshine, the while he considered the ripening mayoralty situation. He found it highly satisfactory. In the language of his inner man, it ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... followed every movement he made and every change of his expression, and had faithfully told her sister what she saw, until the laugh came, short and light, but cutting. And Inez heard that, too, for she was leaning far forward upon the broad stone sill to listen for the sound of Don John's voice. She drew back with a springing movement, and a sort of cry ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... full of bones. His imagination was chiefly occupied in initiating ideas which would be the cause of exertion in others. In the warmth of the budding season he came out of his winter cage and could be seen for long hours perched on his window sill in the Kennedy, legs pendent; like some dreamy vulture, surveying the horizon ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... first," said Barrington; and he climbed out and dropped silently on to the roof some five feet below. Jeanne followed, and he lifted her down. Then he climbed up again, and, supporting himself on the sill, closed ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... peats, Sheila thought she might as well try an experiment with one. She crumbled down some pieces, put them on a plate, lit them, and placed the plate outside the open window, on the sill. Presently a new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke a house—any one, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... no shades at the window, as I have before said, and, once Sweetwater's eye had reached the level of the sill, he could see the interior without the least difficulty. There was nobody there. The lamp burned on a great table littered with papers, but the rude cane-chair before it was empty, and so was the room. He could see into every ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... anthropoid ape stood on the window sill, and the brute's left hand held tightly clasped the ankle of Balisle, holding him as a child holds ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... there were pink Madras curtains at the window. As Elizabeth pointed out, it could not have been closed for months, for actually beautiful clusters of roses had not only festooned the casement, but had found their way into the room, and hung their sweet heads over the sill, as though they were ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... took several skeins of yarn to one of the old ladies in the almshouses, to knit some stockings for some other poor. Afterward she sauntered round with a guilty feeling. She often ran in to see Phil and Andrew, and the one clerk always stared at the radiant vision. She hesitated on the broad sill, then she opened the door. There was a sort of counting room first, and that was vacant now. Andrew was in the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... At the sill of the Magan homestead the flood had stopped, hesitated, and then gone back. Maggie always said she knew it would—they always had good luck. The little woman was happier than ever when she thought of the whole train of people that ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... a table in the fine new canteen I should remember sadly a wet afternoon in the Church Army hut when there was no room to move and the air was heavy with Woodbine smoke and the steam of drying cloth, when I perched on the corner of a window-sill and pitted myself against a chess player who challenged me suddenly and turned out to be a master of the game and the secretary of a ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... elbow on the window-sill and gazed meditatively into the night. "If it comes to that," he said slowly, "no gossip is exactly edifying. And to be the victim of it is to be in the most undesirable ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... her head and her arms, she hurried again to the side garden, to the window of the kitchen. Leaning on the sill, she could just see, under the blind, her husband's arms spread out on the table, and his black head on the board. He was sleeping with his face lying on the table. Something in his attitude made her feel tired of things. The lamp was burning smokily; ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... a tumbler and played many agile tricks before them; and then a company of mummers, with the heads of birds and beasts, danced and sported. But the Lady Beckwith said, "Sir Paul, I will tell you a tale. A bird of the forest alighted at our window-sill some days ago, and sang very sweetly to us—and we spread crumbs and made it a little feast; and it seemed to trust us, but presently it spread its wings and flew away, and it comes not again. Tell us, what shall ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... polings. Breast boards were set on end under the ends of the transverse polings when they had been driven out to their limit. Side bars, BB, were then placed as far out as possible and supported on raking posts. These posts were carried down to rock, if it was near, if not, a sill was placed. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... came a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch, red, perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, and turned upon the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes. In the listening crowd he observed to his immense annoyance the deacon Avdiessov. The deacon, a tall thick-set man with a red pock-marked face, and straw in his hair, ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the cabin door, a rustle, and then a knock of something hard against wood. Silently he moved his head to look down through a crack between the rafters. He saw the glint of a rifle leaning against the sill. Then the doorstep was darkened. Ellen Jorth sat down with a long, tired sigh. She took off her sombrero and the light shone on the rippling, dark-brown hair, hanging in a tangled braid. The curved nape of her neck showed ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... silence: "I didn't mean you to take me seriously," she said. She tried to laugh. It was no use. And, as she leaned there on the sill, her heart frightened her with ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Harry, "I had forgotten that window-sill; there is more likely to be something in that accumulation of stuff up there than in the cell itself. Come and stand below it, so that I can mount on your shoulders, Roger; and then I can rake about there and see if I can find anything ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... down the road! And bent over the window-sill which is my desk, my fingers are not presentable with the splattering of this vile pen in consequence of my position. Two hours yet before sundown, so of course I am not dressed. They come nearer still. Now I see ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... for this high privilege Of hailing England, and of entering here. Without a fore-extended confidence Like this of yours, my plans would not have sped. [A Pause.] Europe, alas! sir, has her waiting foot Upon the sill of further slaughter-scenes! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to the narrow window-sill by a broken chair which stood under it; but when they were there, and Meg had her arm round Robin, to hold him safe, they could see down into Angel Court, and into the street beyond, with its swarms of busy and squalid people. Upon the stone pavement far below ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... takes the only course left him, and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself, and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public. This is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY. The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the door, neither Crimmins nor his father was in a talkative mood, and Billy heard nothing. They lingered a moment on the sill, within a foot of his head as he lay in a cramped position below, and then they sauntered out, his father bareheaded, to the stable-yard. There McGaw leaned upon a cart-wheel, listening dejectedly to Crimmins, who seemed to ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... right. An' den w'en I heared 'bout his goin' ter de lawyer ter fin' out 'bout a defoce, an' w'en I heared w'at de lawyer said 'bout my not bein' his wife 'less he wanted me, it made me so mad, I made up my min' dat ef he ever put his foot on my do'sill ag'in, I 'd shet de do' in his face an' tell 'im ter go ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... sort," said Daisy. "I was out on a kind of little balcony place, that's on top of a bay-window or something,—but I put my hands over the sill inside, so that I could say I was still in the house. Wasn't ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... getting dark, and I knew he was not strong. My hope was that he had taken shelter somewhere; but I could not rest, for I was sure he would try and get home, if only to quiet me. While running in and out in my anxiety—the water having meanwhile risen above the sill of the door, and poured into our little house, where it was already above my paws—I spied a dark figure crawling along the street, and with great difficulty making way against the beating of the storm. I at once rushed out, and swimming rather than running towards the object, I found my ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... as a die to Piddinghoe's dolphin, and there I drops in a cottage garden, There, on a sun-warmed window-sill, I winks and peeps, for the window was wide! Crumbs, he was there and fast in her arms and a-begging his poor old mother's pardon, There with his lips on her old grey hair, and her head on his breast while ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... This seems impossible and the individuals taking their places upon the paper endeavor to maneuver in impossible positions, but find they still can touch each other. The trick is to spread the newspaper over the sill of a door. One individual stands on one side of the closed door upon the newspaper, while the other takes his position on the other side ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... been drumming absently on the window-sill, but he looked up with awakened interest. Mrs. Wilson, too, felt a wholesale curiosity, and she, at least, saw no reason for ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... to break down the door and couldn't," answered the girl shortly, "Then I ran to the back-yard, and managed to climb on to the window-sill that looks into the room. It was an dim, and seemed to be empty, but I swear I saw James lying huddled up in a corner, as if he ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... turned away at last, but the movement was arrested by the sound of a lone baritone taking up the chorus again. She leaned over the sill to catch the words, for in the voice she recognized her companion of ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... will kill you!" and gave it a blow with his fist, but "could feel no substance; and it jumped out of the window again." It immediately came in by the porch, although the doors were shut, and said, "You had better take my counsel." Hereupon Louder struck at it with a stick, hitting the ground-sill and breaking the stick, but felt no substance. Louder concludes his ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands, the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi' it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hell shall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and rode forth upon his earrand." It was three miles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sleigh, Alete ran to the door sill; and Ebba followed him. At the appearance of the two sisters, like a rose and a lily, the young man hastened to divest himself of the thick fur which enwrapped him, sprang from the sleigh, and hastened ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Signify (to make known) sciigi. Silence silento. Silence silentigi. Silence, to keep silentigi. Silent silenta. Silent, to be silenti. Silent, to become silentigxi. Silex siliko. Silhouette profilo. Silk silko. Silkworm silkvermo. Silken silka. Silky silkeca. Sill sojlo. Silliness malsagxeco. Silly naivega. Silver argxento. Silver plate argxenti. Silver-fir pinio. Similar simila. Similarity simileco. Similitude komparajxo. Simile simileco. Simmer ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... passed, and the gathering slowly dispersed. Avoiding the offered companionship of Congressman Harkins and Douglas, Dr. Surtaine took himself off by a side passage. At the end of it, alone, stood the Reverend Norman Hale, leaning against the sill of an open window. The old quack ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sister went to fetch her hat, he put his elbows on the sill, and leaning into the room, said, 'Thank you again; it will be a wonderful treat to her, and she has never had one ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... window-brush school, and a face reminding you of the BOURBONS. As, although lighting his lamp, he has, abstractedly, almost covered it with his hat, his room is but imperfectly illuminated, and you can just detect the accordeon on the window-sill, and, above the mantel, an unfinished sketch of a school-girl. (There is no artistic merit in this picture; in which, indeed, a simple triangle on end represents the waist, another and slightly larger ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... I seem to see the square most readily in the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones and choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the square would be ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... and scarlet vine, Over the doorway twist and twine And every day, when the house is still, The humming-bird comes to the window-sill. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... out. A thick group of trees hid the window from the avenue beyond the campus wall, and below us, at a corner of the building, was a clump of rhododendrons. As Craig bent over the sill, he whipped out a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... bush below the back-window parted and the Kaffir slipped out. He grinned at me, and after a glance round, hopped very nimbly over the sill. Then he examined the window and pulled ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... south wall of the cabin, measured a two-foot space in the middle, and the Colonel sawed out the superfluous spruce intervening. While he went on doing the same for the other logs on that side, the Boy roughly chiselled a moderately flat sill. Then one after another he set up six of the tall glass jars in a row, and showed how, alternating with the other six bottles turned upside down, the thick belly of one accommodating itself to the thin neck ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... seated on the sill of the sanctuary, holding his head between his hands and his gun between his legs, with the camel mooning at him, the thicket over the way was divided, and the stupor-stricken Tartarin saw a gigantic lion appear not a dozen paces off. It ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... when she slipp'd from off the bed, Her cramp'd feet would not hold her; she Sank down and crept on hand and knee, On the window-sill ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... birds. The occupants of one of the offices in the west wing of the Treasury one day had their attention attracted by some object striking violently against one of the window-panes. Looking up, they beheld a crow blackbird pausing in midair, a few feet from the window. On the broad stone window-sill lay the quivering form of a purple finch. The little tragedy was easily read. The blackbird had pursued the finch with such murderous violence that the latter, in its desperate efforts to escape, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... well!" said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness intended to be soothing. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and going to his own chamber threw himself on the broad window-sill, which was a favorite retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do. Here he could see the rain gradually subsiding with gleams through the parting clouds which lit up a great reach of the park, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... leaned out over the window-sill, looking down into the dusky green of clambering foliage, and saw a familiar face smiling up at her. ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... expression changed from expectancy to blankness as she perceived that the room was empty. The fair white pillow bore no imprint of a curly head. The curtain ring was striking rhythmically against the window sill ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... open behind her. I have always rushed at my fences, and have had the falls I merited. I followed Lucille into the sunlit room. She must have heard my footsteps, but took no notice—walking to the window, and standing there, rested her two hands on the sill while she looked down ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... and wiped the cold dew from his face, preparatory to passing to the window, where he expected to secure the reward of his protracted terrors. But looking steadfastly at the window, he saw the faint image of a new-born child sitting upon the sill in the moonlight, with its little arms stretched toward him, and a smile so heavenly as ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... still sleep. And the old lady in the next led, with a brown wrinkled face and bright black eyes brimful of life, seemed almost vulgar beside such remote tranquillity, while she was telling Barbara that a little bunch of heather in the better half of a soap-dish on the window-sill had come from Wales, because, as she explained: "My mother was born in Stirling, dearie; so I likes a bit of heather, though I never been out o' Bethnal ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... am perfectly willing to admit that I crawled toward it on hands and knees, for angry voices now reached me, and I knew that if I raised myself and the watcher had changed his position he could see me. I reached the sill at last with the rifle clenched in one mittened hand; and while I debated on my next procedure I heard Colonel Carrington ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... from about his waist, hidden by his baggy trousers, a strong, fine line of camel hair. Making one end fast to the teakwood sill he went down hand over hand, his strong hard palms gripping the soft line. At the end of it he still had a drop of ten or twelve feet, but bracing his shoulders to one wall and his feet to the other he let go. Hunsa ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... a few feet wide, and he could therefore get but little run for a spring. His blood was, however, up, and having taken his resolution he did not hesitate. Drawing back as far as he could he took three steps, and then sprang for the window. Its sill was some three feet higher than the edge of the wall from which ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... window-ledge. He felt along the sash and shoved upward. To his surprise, the window lifted easily. But the hand he shoved without met, as he expected it would, a heavy wooden shutter; and his investigating fingers disclosed, moreover, a padlock, that, by means of a staple sunk in the sill, locked the shutter fast. No hope of getting away ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... rose, and went to the fireside, and drew the few coals together, and lit a lamp. For a moment she stood still, looking at the closed door between her and her child; then she lifted a large book from the window-sill, laid it on the small round table, opened it wide, and sat down before it. It was a homely, workaday-looking book, and she did not read a word of it, though her eyes were upon the page. But it was the Bible. And the Bible is like the sunshine, it comforts and cheers us only to sit down ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... by any kind of hedge or railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Doyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man's body lay ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... scratch her. Then they all set to work arguing and quarrelling and crying like silly babies, when suddenly a familiar "Cuck-oo!" sounded in their ears, and they saw our old acquaintance perched on the window sill. ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... house-top—the brown rock-chat (Cercomela fusca)—makes sweet music throughout the month for the benefit of his spouse, who is incubating four pretty pale-blue eggs in a nest built on a ledge in an outhouse or on the sill of a clerestory window. This bird, which is thought by some to be a near relative of the sparrow of the Scriptures, is clothed in plain brown and seems to suffer from St. Vitus' dance in the tail. Doubtless it ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... at once I went into this ditch, and struck full length. In its bottom there was about two inches of mud, thick enough to encase me. By the time I had pawed out, I could not, if laid out, have been distinguished from a mud sill; but I was too near gone to speak bad words, and so went on in silence, weighing five pounds more than before my descent. Before long we halted and bivouaced for the night. The next morning, the 27th, our regiment started about 10 o'clock, ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... fiddle in hand, at the window of the gardener's house, still thinking of the sparkling eyes—the lady's-maid came tripping through the twilight—"The gracious Lady fair sends you this to drink her health, and a 'Good-Night' besides!" And in a twinkling she put a flask of wine on the window-sill and vanished among the flowers and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... registered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley and to Milton. And what a result! How they must have both stared! The general design of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough—an oval containing the portrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or window- sill, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which a shepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdess are dancing; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the Muses Melpomene, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... might have taken up the words from some lips. But the child on her lap spoke them so quietly, her face was in such a sweet rest of assurance, and one little hand rose and fell on the window-sill with such an unconscious glad endorsement of what she said, that the ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... flung open and a man staggered blindly over the sill, reeling and clutching at his breast with both ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... reading, and while the congregation sang, Josi placed his arms on the sill which is in front of pews and laid his ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... of the lean-to looked towards the road, and so made a kind of front door to the kitchen which was within. The door-sill was raised a single step above the rough old grey stone which did duty before it; and sitting on the doorstep, in the shadow and sunlight which came through the elm branches and fell over her, this June afternoon, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the dark she lay listening to the strange low hub-hub from outside. And it made her think of what she had seen an hour before, when at the open window, resting her elbows on the sill, she had begun to make her acquaintance with her backyard—a yawning abyss of brick and cement which went down and down to cement below, and up and up to a strip of blue sky, and to right and to left went ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... Thyme, Sweet Marjoram, Tarragon, Mint, Sweet Basil, Parsley, Bay-leaves, Cloves, Mace, Celery-seed, and onions. If you will plant the seed of any of the seven first mentioned in little boxes on your window sill, or in a sunny spot in the yard, you can generally raise all you need. Gather and dry them as follows: parsley and tarragon should be dried in June and July, just before flowering; mint in June and July; thyme, marjoram and savory in July and August; ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... the cot, from there to the next and the next. Her course was straight to the door through which the physician had entered, and by the time he was halfway across the room she had wriggled herself clear of the last cot, and was over the sill and in the corridor, the twilight aiding her escape. Regaining her feet, she darted noiselessly down the long hall. At the head of the stairs she paused. On the floor below was a small alcove where she might ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... hard for him to breathe. So he commanded his servants to leave the windows open in order that he might get more air. One day, when he had been left alone for a few minutes, a bird with brilliant plumage came and fluttered round the window, and finally rested on the sill. His feathers were sky-blue and gold, his feet and his beak of such glittering rubies that no one could bear to look at them, his eyes made the brightest diamonds look dull, and on his head he wore a crown. I cannot tell you what the crown was made of, but I am quite certain that ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various |
