"Untidy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was not as desirable a one as I could have wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... at the gate and saw the two sisters near the side porch. One was on a bench shelling peas and the other was lolling in a hammock. Each looked very untidy and both wore wrappers that ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... to Colonel Gray as untidy dress or shabby habiliments on a member of the guard detail. One morning in making his usual inspection, he came upon a soldier who was particularly slovenly. Ordering the man to step out of the ranks, the colonel surveyed him from head to foot, then, spurning him with his foot, remarked: ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... an instant upon Morna Woodgate, leaning forward upon the sofa where they had sat together, eager, enthusiastic, but impotent as a woman must be; they passed over the vicar, looking stolid as usual, and more than a little puzzled; but at last they rested on Langholm's thin, stooping figure, with untidy head thrust forward towards her, and a light in his dreamy eyes that kindled a ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... pays!" she declared, almost passionately. "You've never seen my rooms or my drunken father. I can tell you what they're like, though. They're ugly, they're tawdry, they're untidy, when I've any work to do, they're scarcely clean. Our meals are thrown at us—we're always behind with the rent. There isn't anything to look at or listen to that isn't ugly. You haven't known what it is to feel the grim pang of a constant hideousness crawling into your senses, stupefying ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mud, we soon reached the house, and at its door an untidy old gentleman, with the grace and courtesy of the days that are no more, greeted us as a gracious host greets warmly welcomed guests, and we were led to a roaring fire and told to ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... 'How bare and untidy the room looks at this season of the year; really you and Olive ought to go into the conservatory and see if you ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... pretty, thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she was entirely unaffected and obviously ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... going to take it into Caraquet; there's no sense in making a mystery to him. Come on, Stretton, and have a look at it now!" He stuck his fat little arm through mine, and we went back to the house by the back door and Charliet's untidy kitchen. It was the shortest way, and it was not till afterwards that I remembered it was not commanded by the window in his office, like the front way. I was not keen on going; later I had a sickly feeling that it was because I had a presentiment ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... as being for several years impulsive, erratic, talkative, untidy, and rather dishonest in other small ways besides lying—all this in spite of vigorous home discipline. The girl at one time under the influence of revival meetings left the religious faith of her parents. However, they thought if any form of religion ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... of Varnhagen's store in precisely the same frame of mind. The grimy, match-lined walls of the merchant's untidy office, the litter of odds and ends upon the floor, the antiquated safe which stood in one corner, all aroused his ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... remind me of Mrs. Benson. The day after I came, she asked me whether Miss Greenway didn't write books; she thought all people who wrote books were generally a little untidy." ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... it was no sooner set ajar than a crowd of inquisitive heads peeped in. The furniture was of a very rudimentary kind, consisting simply of two deal tables of unequal height placed end to end and not even covered with a cloth; together with a kind of big "canterbury" littered with untidy papers, sets of documents, registers and pamphlets, and finally some thirty rush-seated chairs placed here and there over the floor and a couple of ragged arm-chairs usually reserved ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... over the problem of her mother's kisses being softest and her mother's eyes kindest when her own eyes were bright and her little figure radiant; and she also thought of the other problem, of her grave-eyed father always loving her, no matter whether her frock was torn, her hair untidy, ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... walked slowly on; he was now some distance from the one-time "emporium." Where should he go? His fortunes had not been enhanced materially by his brief excursion into the realms of melody; he had thirty cents in cash and a "dollar-and-a-half appetite." An untidy place where they displayed a bargain assortment of creature comforts attracted his gaze. He thought of meals in the past—of caviar, a la Russe, three dollars and a half a portion; peaches Melba, three francs each at the Cafe de Paris; truffled capon from Normandy; duck after the ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... about him—quite wrong," he assured her earnestly. "When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go so ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Republican side of the Chamber. He was answered by "Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... of summer, which season it then was. The hansom, of the oldest-fashioned type, shook and jolted beyond belief, and threatened every moment to fall to pieces. The streets from the docks to the town were unfinished, untidy, and vilely paved, and I remember comparing them very unfavourably with Melbourne or Sydney. However, I soon modified my somewhat hasty judgment. We had seen the town's worst aspects, and later I noticed some attractive-looking shops; the imposing ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... bigger man was choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hung limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was Colonel Everard, the man who stood over him was ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... took a good long look at the old man. There was no mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just what a scholar's should be,—old, not untidy, a little shiny at the elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had moulded itself to a broad, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sent on an errand with sixpence and had stolen the money; with many sobs and tears he confessed that he had spent it in cakes. Mr. Kent looked at the tear-stained face; the untidy brown head scarcely reached to the table, and the good magistrate thought, with something like pain at his heart, of a fair-haired boy at home. So he spoke kindly to the poor, trembling prisoner, and while he strongly reprimanded, still encouraged him to better ways. ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... she displeased him in every possible way, and made his life almost unbearable; that she would wake him out of his first sleep, never came to the door when he knocked, but would leave him out in the rain and the cold, and that the house was always untidy. His garments were buttonless, his laces wanted tags. The linen was spoiling, the wine turning sour, the wood damp, and the bed was always creaking at unreasonable moments. In short, everything was going wrong. To this tissue of falsehoods, the wife replied by pointing to the clothes and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... light, silvery morning, with hidden sunshine everywhere. On the other side of the vast amphitheatre of flat, cinder-covered ground, the Downs crept upwards, rolling away to the blue-capped summit of a distant range of hills. Northwards, the pall of London darkened the horizon. An untidy medley of houses and factories stretched almost to the gates of the vast air terminus. Listening intently, one could catch the faint roar of the city's awakening traffic, punctuated here and there by the shrill whistling of ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spite of his polished courtesy, there was that about Dr. Damar Greefe which I did not and could not like. The voice was the voice of a gentleman, but the face was a mask—a mask of Anubis; and seated there in that strange untidy apartment, amid varied relics of the past and obscure experiments possibly designed to pry into the future, whilst thunder boomed high over the Bell House, I determined to withhold from Dr. Damar Greefe the true nature of my mission. In fact already I regretted ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... take you to the train, children; and Frieda has a spot on her coat which I can remove if you will open my suitcase, Hannah, and bring me the little bottle of benzine in the left-hand corner. Mrs. Eldred must not think I have brought her an untidy little Maedchen!" ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... seen any shops or people in his life before. At last he arrived at the Corner, and, turning into the Park, spent a quarter of an hour watching the riders in Rotten Row; then he crossed to the Marble Arch, passing a vast array of gorgeous flowers in full bloom, listened wonderingly to an untidy orator demolishing Christianity for the benefit of a little knot of errand-boys and nursemaids, took another omnibus along Oxford Street to the Circus, and, after an enchanting walk down Regent Street, entered a bright ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... cast about for a new character, and found one to suit me. The German professor was becoming popular as a hero about this period. He wore his hair long and was otherwise untidy, but he had "a heart of steel," occasionally of gold. The majority of folks in the book, judging him from his exterior together with his conversation—in broken English, dealing chiefly with his dead mother ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... white men. Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men; open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously round untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place some distance away from the buildings. In it, under a tall cross much out of the perpendicular, slept the man who had seen the beginning of all this; who had planned and had watched the construction of this outpost of progress. He ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man, and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take the old man into a cemetery, kill ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... not have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy, dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to his family why she takes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wilderness of a garden, as untidy and unkempt as a fashionable pianist's hair, but growing the most wonderful collection of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons, guavas, and strawberries flourished equally well in the accommodating Argentine climate, and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... end of the hall, beyond the open door of the bedroom (which he still occupied with his wife from an ineradicable conviction that all respectable married persons slept together no matter how uncomfortable they might be), Cyrus discerned the untidy figure of Mrs. Treadwell reflected in a mirror before which she stood brushing her back hair straight up from her neck to a small round knot on the top of her head. She was a slender, flat-chested woman, whose clothes, following ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... told me to send her greetings, and ask you if you have any flowers, and whether they are sweet? Well, good-bye. ... If you could hear her laughing. Silver can't ring like it; and the good-nature in every note of it—you want to kiss her little feet for it. We are going, going. Don't mind the untidy smudges, and ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... domestic comforts as habit has rendered almost necessities. The exercise of a little philosophy will reconcile him to the exigencies of the case, and render endurable here what would be inadmissible at home. A coarse, ill-cooked dinner, untidy service, and an unappeased appetite must be compensated by active interest in grand and peculiar scenery; a hard bed and a sleepless night, by the intelligent enjoyment of famous places clothed with historic interest; foul smells and rank odors, by the charming study of a unique ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... dark and noisome hole, filled with demijohns and merchandise, with two or three untidy bunks in corners, the air soaked with the smells of thirty years of bilge-water, sealskins, copra, and the cargoes of island traffic. Capriata, Harry Lee, and I sat on boxes at a rough table, which we clutched as the Roberta ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the shattered ruins of a little hamlet; their armor-plated bodies, already rendered as inconspicuous as possible by erratic daubs of bright colors laid on after the most approved Futurist style, were further hidden by untidy wisps of straw, a few casual beams, and any other of the broken rubbish which had once been a village. The men had their quarters in the cellars of one of the broken houses, and the two officers inhabited the corner of a house with a more ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... led him into a room to which his back-parlour was a paradise. She offered him the only chair in the room, and took her place on the edge of the bed, which showed a clean but much-worn patchwork quilt. Charley slept on the bed, and she on a shake-down in the corner. The room was not untidy, though the walls and floor were not clean; indeed there were not in it articles enough to make ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... broken and torn. [She goes out, with a look of awe at Deirdre. DEIRDRE — clasping her hands. — Woods of Cuan, woods of Cuan, dear country of the east! It's seven years we've had a life was joy only, and this day we're going west, this day we're facing death, maybe, and death should be a poor, untidy thing, though it's a queen that dies. [She ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... in my band, "Dutch Lige" was the worst clad. Not that there was less money expended upon his outward man; but partly from his ungainly form and loose untidy habits, and more, perhaps, from the wear and tear caused by his botanising excursions, a suit of broadcloth did not keep sound upon him for a week. He ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... No untidy church, home, or school expresses Christ—for Christ represents perfection in cleanliness and order. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" we are told. Cleanliness shows the spiritual, the God, but dirt in any form is an expression of the opposite. Dirt under ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... looked round the room; it no longer seemed the same place to her. Beth's cheerful chatter had already driven away the evil spirit of dejection, and taken the old lady out of herself. Untidy child! She had left her work on the floor, her scissors on the bed, disarranged the window-curtain, and upset a chair. If she would not do any more unpicking when she returned, she must be made to put things straight. There was one little easy-chair ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... a small parcel wrapped in dirty tissue paper, and put it on the table. The untidy folds fell apart, exposing the missing necklace, but the diamond was missing from the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... was a very clever man, and as he raised the pitcher to his mouth to drink the water, he thought to himself, "This is a very strange-looking creature who has brought me this jug of water. She would be pretty, but that her face seems to want washing, and her dress also is very untidy. What can that black stuff be on her face and hands? It looks very unnatural." And so thinking to himself, instead of drinking the water, he threw it in the Princess's face! The Princess started back ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... was big, his body small, his arms and legs were thin and spindling. His long, dark hair fell about his face; his dress was careless and disordered; his stockings had tumbled down over his shoes, and he looked much like an untidy boy. But one scarcely noticed the dress of this boy. It was his face that held ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... hate laurels; for they are always untidy, and scattering about their yellow leaves when all the trees about them ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... a dry place, in order that they may escape the deteriorating influence of rust, and thereby be quickly destroyed. Never leave saucepans dirty from one day's use to be cleaned the next; it is slovenly and untidy. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... An untidy-looking lawn with a few unkempt and overgrown rhododendron bushes dotted here and there ran its length in front of the house and terminated in an iron railing which separated the grounds from a little wood. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the archdeacon drove by the well-remembered entrance of Hiram's Hospital. There, at the gate, was a large, untidy farmer's wagon, laden with untidy-looking furniture; and there, inspecting the arrival, was good Mrs. Quiverful—not dressed in her Sunday best, not very clean in her apparel, not graceful as to her bonnet and shawl, or, indeed, with many ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... about Sydney is, that there is a thoroughly untidy look about the place. It is in a perennial state of deshabille; whereas Melbourne nearly always has its dress-clothes on. In keeping with the wretched pavements, the muddy crossings, and the dust, are the clothes of the people you meet in the streets. Nobody seems to care much how ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against the glow inside. "Here's Mr. Howat Penny," she called over her shoulder. "Is everything off the table? There's not much," she turned to him, "but the end of the pork barrel." A meagre fire was burning in the large, untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty but for some dull scarred pewter ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inevitable wedding present), and on the wall above a large autotype of the chief figure in Titian's Virgin of the Assumption, is very inviting. Altogether the room is the room of a good housekeeper, vanquished, as far as the table is concerned, by an untidy man, but elsewhere mistress of the situation. The furniture, in its ornamental aspect, betrays the style of the advertised "drawing-room suite" of the pushing suburban furniture dealer; but there is nothing useless or pretentious in the room. The paper ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... Several other untidy-looking women opened doors and peered out at her as she went by; but no one else spoke to her. Guided by the sound of the groans, which came at regular intervals like long breaths, she went up a second ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... untidy bricks overlook is now given up to stalls and is the centre of the cheap clothing district. Looking diagonally across it from the church one sees the great walls of the courtyard of what is now the Riccardi palace, but was in the great days the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... above the level of the flooring he could see the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail that held him was the gross, expectant ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... cordial thanks, and apologies for this untidy letter written in haste, pray believe me, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... and unwound the canvas from about my body. While I was doing so an untidy old gentleman made his appearance in the hall, and stood ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus could be functional and still be so untidy. "It—could teach me?" ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... whimsical tones. When he was absent, Mariana often thought how much she liked his voice; but whenever she saw him she consumed her friendly interest in wishing he wouldn't wear a beard. She was a fastidious woman, and a beard seemed to her untidy. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of it—the captain was a most untidy man. Family letters, papers covered with figures, handwritten military documents, even some bank-notes, were jumbled ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... in a loose and untidy coil beneath a work bench. Tommy sprang to it in a queer, nightmarish activity. He knew what was happening, of course. Von Holtz had seen the magnetic catapult at work. That couldn't be destroyed or its workings hidden ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... from the window with a sigh of pity for the miserable creatures below. His glance strayed over the untidy kitchen which bore all the marks of the most extreme poverty and he gave another sigh of pity for the man who had been brought so low in the last days of his life, the man whom he had known in the time ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... have moved down to my place. She's a great housekeeper and very particular. She's rooted all my June lilies up because she says they make a garden look so untidy. Thomas set them lilies out when we were married. Her husband seems a nice sort of a man, but she can't get over being an ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unperturbed hours, she calls them. She crossed the street with a hole in her stocking. She had a hole in her stocking not because her uncle and aunt were poor (they had around them never less than eight thousand oranges, mostly in cases) but because she was then careless and untidy and totally unconscious of her personal appearance. She told me herself that she was not even conscious then of her personal existence. She was a mere adjunct in the twilight life of her aunt, a Frenchwoman, and her uncle, the ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... in months she looked at herself curiously, taking an impersonal, calm survey of this body. She sought for signs of slovenly decay,—thinning rusty hair, untidy nails, grimy hands, dried skin,—those marks which she had seen in so many teachers who had abandoned themselves without hope to the unmarried state and had grown careless of their bodies. As she wound her hair into heavy ropes and braided them, it gave her a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the whale-boat for you. You will find mine an untidy house, and Tepi a great cook—as far as size goes. He ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... well built, if somewhat untidy looking, with the pigstys and out buildings in rather too close proximity for comfort. There was usually a large living room with heavy sooty beams overhead, and thick walls pierced by quaint deeply sunken windows furnished ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... a matron, whose household linge and personal lingerie showed complete only in the sections of finger napkins and undervests, as is the way of a careless, untidy woman's ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... all that she is a working girl. She is never idle. She is studying or sewing or helping about the home part of the day. She is romping or playing or swinging out of doors the other part. She is never frowsy or untidy or lazy. She is never rude or slangy or bold. And yet she is always full of fun and ready for frolic. She does not depend upon a servant to do what she can do for herself. She is considerate toward all who serve her. She is reverent to the old and thoughtful of the ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... be respected, keep clean. The finest attire and decorations will add nothing to the appearance or beauty of an untidy person. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... under the pretext that she was displaying great housekeeping knowledge. She told Peter that he ought to keep his champagne on ice. "That champagne will spoil if it isn't kept on ice." She complained because some bottles of Burgundy had dust on them. "That's not merely untidy," she said, "but it's bad for the wine. It ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle." She criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. "All your game should be hung," she said. She put her finger or her eyes into every drawer and cupboard, and found ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... an untidy knot, slipped from the hairpins, and fell, grey and scanty, over her neck; her bony shoulders, barely covered by the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... heard Peter saying joyfully as he opened the door, and then came the sound of light footsteps on the wooden stairs. Another minute, and the bedroom door opened gently, and a sunshiny face looked into the children's untidy room. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate? I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... subject that it should be unnecessary to touch upon, but, unfortunately, too many bright, pretty, carefully-dressed girls degenerate into careless, fretful, untidy and illy-clad young wives, whose presence is anything but a joy forever to the individuals who must face them across the family board for three hundred and sixty-five days in every year. And it is this careless young ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... and came back to usher him into the drawing-room. The flat was expensively furnished, but very untidy. He at once perceived, however, that the "former" Mr. Okasaki was not romancing when he boasted of his artistic tastes. The Japanese articles in the room were gems of faience ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... down if you try to do both outdoor and indoor work. Busy times will soon come, and you won't get your meals regularly; you'll be living on coffee and anything that comes handiest; your house will grow untidy and not fit to live in. If you should be taken sick, there'd be no one to do for you. Lumbermen, hunters, and such fellows can rough it alone awhile, but I never heard of a farm being run by man-power alone. Now as to selling out your stock, look at it. Grazing is what your farm's good for ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... at home in the familiar untidy room, with the old chaos of books and papers about him. He looked tired and ill, and rose to greet his visitor with a weary air, as if nothing in the world possessed ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the machine is unworkable on sticky clay soil, and after a wet summer, when the corn is badly laid and twisted, it makes very poor work, cutting off the ears and scattering them, and leaving a quantity of uncut and untidy straw ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... wait upon the untidy little servant girl from over the way whose family had suddenly "run out ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... with little curtains in the French fashion, whose freshness had also long departed. The restaurant itself was low and teeming with the odor of past dinners. At this hour it was almost empty. Several untidy-looking waiters were rearranging tables. In the middle of the room Louis ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cutting her words off in the middle, and a man came into the room. He was dark and clean-shaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair growing scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, and wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The dominant expression of his face was startled—hunted; an expression that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of terror and announce a total ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... be of a kind and color different from any thing else. All these must be neatly hemmed and run, or seamed, if necessary. Nothing in a well directed family should bear the impress of neglect, or be suffered to assume an untidy appearance. Clothes bags of different sizes, should also be provided, of two yards in length, and either one breadth doubled, in which case only one seam will be required; or of two breadths, which makes the bag more suitable for large articles of clothing. These bags ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... once. Pigs may wait till you have time to put up a regular stye, and to have grown potatoes enough to feed them. Two fat and well-tended pigs are worth half a dozen half-starved wretches. Such neglected brutes make a place look very untidy, and their existence will be a burden to themselves, and an eyesore ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... tourists as the College and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, was always in their mouths. They had precisely the same incapacity for settling down to anything, as the prisoners used to have; they rather deteriorated one another, as the prisoners used to do; and they wore untidy dresses, and fell into a slouching way of life: still, always like ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... much in appearance as in mind. The outer seeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces of contemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, a heroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a three days' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of the noblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was but a part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide humanity. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... his close and anxious inspection. After a time he turned away and, passing behind the boxes, made his way into the wings. Bassett's curiosity was aroused, especially when, shortly after, Gregory reappeared, bringing with him a small man in an untidy suit who was probably, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the handsome looks. You will get the jaded face, and the dull, lusterless eyes, and the untidy hair with the dye showing on it. You will not get the exquisite dresses. You will get dirty, shabby frocks and slommicking dressing-gowns, such as your cook would be ashamed to wear. You will not get the charm and fascination. You will get the after-headaches, the complainings and grumblings, ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... the wind was across the tide) the little waves broke in small white tips: in their movement and my own, in the dance of the boat and the noise of the shrouds, in the curtsy of the long sprit that caught the ridges of foam and lifted them in spray, even in the free streaming of that loose untidy end of line which played in the air from the leach, as young things play from wantonness, in the rush of the water, just up to and sometimes through the lee scuppers, and in the humming tautness ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... "canvas" sheets, "noggan" sheets, "towsheets," and "nimming" sheets (mentioned by Lechford in his note-book in 1640) were all of linen. Flannel sheets also were made, and may appear in inventories under the name of rugs, and thus partially explain the untidy absence, even among the possessions of wealthy citizens, of sheets. "Straken" sheets were of kersey. After spinning became fashionable, and flax was raised in more abundance, homespun sheets were made ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open as she had ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... strange little church of sweet chimes, almost hidden between immense, concealing walls of rock; but to-day he merely paid his respects to the saint and quickly went his way again. Twenty minutes after parting from Lady Dauntrey, he rang the bell of her villa, and was told by an untidy servant that Miss Grant ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He sketched the morning—breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... some water into it. Then she took a look about the room. Books and papers were scattered over the table; clean clothes from the wash lay on the chairs; nothing was in its place; and Katy, who knew how particular Miss Jane was on the subject of order, guessed at the discomfort which this untidy state of affairs must have ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... however, Roger's routine was somewhat different. After closing the shop he would return to his desk and with a furtive, shamefaced air take out from a bottom drawer an untidy folder of notes and manuscript. This was the skeleton in his closet, his secret sin. It was the scaffolding of his book, which he had been compiling for at least ten years, and to which he had tentatively assigned such different titles ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... drawing-room, and the servant left the visitor there alone, saying that she would seek her mistress. There were one or two books on the tables. One table was rather untidy; it was Desiree's. A writing-desk stood in the corner of the room. It was locked—and the lock was a good one. De Casimir was an observant man. He had time to make this observation, and to see that there were no letters in Desiree's work-basket; to note ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... glimpse of the red-headed boy who stood just outside the circle, munching an apple and staring at him with astonished blue eyes, and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief. There was no mistaking him. He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy self-importance. When he spoke, the rest fell into ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the ground were a dozen untidy, unshaven men, whom I recognized by their uniforms to be Germans. One man cast an insolent glance toward me and turned his back. Two others smiled and pointed toward the bread they held in their hands. On some straw ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... that their names were Mary and Maria Porter. I liked them, for they were very neat and plain in their dress,—not like some, who seem to think that if their waists are small, and their hair dressed in the fashion, it is no matter how soiled their collars are, nor how untidy their nails. Well, one day when I went for certain kinds of buttons which were to be made for us, Maria, the younger one, who took the order, was not there. I asked for her, and Mary said she was at home with a lame knee. I was so sorry, and ventured to put a few questions in a friendly ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... ever, and glared so that Tommy expected nothing less than that her eyes would set fire to her feathers and she would be burnt alive. "But what must I say of the Boggarts? Those idle urchins who eat the bread-and-milk, and don't do the work, who lie in bed without an ache or pain to excuse them, who untidy instead of tidying, cause work instead of doing it, and leave little cares to heap on big cares, till the old people who support them are ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sing. But I don't like your ways. Take this little box, and put your rubbish inside where I can't see it. Come out when you want to sing; but let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior. Keep to the box, and don't make the garden untidy.'" ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... returned from her visit to Gorse Point, she found a hard-faced woman, thin of figure, with untidy hair, wrinkled brow and sharp features, engaged about a pile of washing in the garden at the kitchen-door. Mrs. Tregenza heard the girl arrive, and spoke without lifting her little gray eyes from the clothes. Her voice was hard and high and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... I shall comfort myself with the thought that it's a pleasure to you...Grisha, don't pull my hair. It's untidy enough without that," she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... same environment is, therefore, erroneous. That these differences are original, or inborn, and not acquired, may be readily seen by observing children of different sex. Even from their earliest years boys are more active, restless, energetic, destructive, untidy, and disobedient, while little girls are quieter, less restless, less destructive, neater, more orderly, and more obedient. These different innate qualities fit the sexes naturally for different functions in human society, and there is, therefore, a natural division of labor between ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... lazy one?" cries a grave face in spectacles and lawns. With a sleepy feeling she turns her head away from his stern gaze, only to meet the sterner faces of the judges, who are examining her untidy copy-book. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... attentive ear to the nautical adventures of Captain Jonas Baker. Abbie, who was a systematic housekeeper, approved of his habit of wiping his feet before he entered the door and the careful fashion he had of replacing any chair he moved; most men, she averred, were so thoughtless and untidy. But it was with Zenas Henry that the young man won his greatest triumph, the two immediately coming into harmony on the common ground of motor-boating. Most of the male visitors who dropped in at the white cottage came only ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... fancy boxes of stationery, and photographs of objects of interest in the vicinity. But nobody cared to change a guinea that day in Rochester, and as they went from shop to shop they got dirtier and dirtier, and their hair got more and more untidy, and Jane slipped and fell down on a part of the road where a water-cart had just gone by. Also they got very hungry, but they found no one would give them anything to eat for their guineas. After trying two pastrycooks in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... evidently pleased when he saw the ring, which I had washed and wrapped up carefully in a bit of rag, and it looked clean and bright. He then took me into the parlour, where two ladies were sitting at breakfast, where he made me join them, all untidy as I was, at their meal; after which he desired me to give a full account of myself, and to recite some more poetry, all of which I did, apparently much to the satisfaction of the ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... human life enhanced the burning sensation of the thick air breathed out and breathed in again, unrefreshed, by multitudes of lungs. Here, there, and everywhere human beings stood about idly. Groups of untidy women, in twos and threes, gossiped; lazy men lolled against the houses, smoking in sullen silence; and for every grown-up person there were fully a dozen of squalid children playing, shouting, staring, and squabbling with a vigour no ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... regular spindle-shanks. And just look at that fool Akoulna. Wasn't the girl a regular untidy slattern, and just look at her now! Where has it all come from? Yes, he has fitted her out. She's grown so smart, so puffed up, just like a bubble that's ready to burst. And, though she's a fool, she's got it into her head, "I'm the mistress," ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... Hermann had "left two days ago," said the untidy girl, whose aspect, like that of the street and house, betokened that Janet was drinking of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... within ten blocks of a florist's window; she had not been more than a five-cent car ride away from the public parks; but she had never dreamed of faring forth for herself, and no one had taken her. Her conception of America had been the untidy street in which she lived and had made her long struggle to adapt herself to ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... available spot is under cultivation. The stone houses in Tete are cemented with mud instead of lime, and thatched with reeds and grass. The rains, having washed out the mud between the stones, give all the houses a rough, untidy appearance. No lime was known to be found nearer than Mozambique; some used in making seats in the verandas had actually been brought all that distance. The Portuguese evidently knew nothing of the pink and white marbles which I found at ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... man, and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... surprise; there was nobody to take. All was quiet; Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with pleasure at the familiar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of life that lay scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they were all out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though one were exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... credits are awarded. Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is no excellence about ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... inside my house if you used tobacco," she always replied. And she would get quite excited at the mere thought of such an untidy habit. ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... myself as correct-looking as an Englishman. I am always well-groomed, as the saying is, and carefully dressed, with my hair neatly arranged. Do you think I should ever permit myself to leave the house half-dressed, with untidy hair? Certainly not! I have kept my looks by never letting myself slump as some women do. [She puts her arms akimbo, and walks up and down on the lawn] See me, tripping on tiptoe like ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... beautifully formed bosoms covered only by the shirt, rose and fell in goddesslike shamelessness. A string of glass beads hung round her neck, and two long earrings tapped her cheeks at every movement. She made no effort to hide her bare feet, but now and then put back her untidy but beautiful black hair from her forehead and eyes; for it was so thick that if she did not do ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... when barreled, these decayed apples are of course in the barrels, and help to decay others. Although packed ever so well and pressed ever so tight, the shrinking of the fresh-picked fruit, soon makes them loose, and nothing is so bad in handling apples as this. Altogether this was a very untidy method of handling apples, and has been entirely abandoned ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... a kind, good mother, who saw that she would have to, in some way, cure her little daughter of such slovenly habits or else she would grow up to be a very careless, untidy woman, and the mother was wise enough to know that it is more easy to correct such matters when children are young than when ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... Everything, though, was not right with her, as I noted the moment I made her out, with her white canvas all crimson from a last expiring gleam of the afterglow; for I could see that her sails were tattered and torn, with the ragged ends blowing out loose from the boltropes in the most untidy ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... very pale. His bull neck, which his unbuttoned night-shirt exposed to view, all his soft, flabby flesh seemed to swell with terror. At last he sank back, pale and tearful, looking like some grotesque Chinese figure in the middle of the untidy bed. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must she be scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy!" ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... farm-bailiff. The farm-bailiff was thrifty, and sensible and faithful, and Thomasina was faithful and sensible and thrifty, and they each had a tendency to claim the monopoly of those virtues. Notable people complain, very properly, of thriftless and untidy ones, but they sometimes agree better with them than with rival notabilities. And so Thomasina's broad face beamed benevolently as she bid the cowherd "draw up" to the fire, and he who (like Thomasina) was a native of the country, would confirm the marvels she related, with a proper ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... generation of girls Laughed at me, not fearing me, And I had no more exciting adventures Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil, But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs Of other days and other men. And time went on until I lived at Mayer's restaurant, Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy, Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . . There is a mighty shade here who sings Of one named Beatrice; And I see now that the force that made him great Drove me to ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... been inferred that he was objectionable. For the fact, he was objectionable in every way: as a human being, a man, a citizen, a member of the Slocum County bar, and a veteran of our late civil conflict. He was shiftless, untidy, a borrower, a pompous braggart, a trouble-maker, forever driving some poor devil into senseless litigation. Moreover, he was blithely unscrupulous in his dealings with the Court, his clients, his brother-attorneys, and his fellow-men at large. When I add that he was given to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... her of his departure looked her over curiously, setting her thinking that he thought Mr. Ede had done well to get clear of the likes of her. She had tried to make herself look tidy and thought she had succeeded, but tidy or untidy, it was all the same, nothing mattered now; she was done for. No doubt the porter was right; Ralph had gone away to escape from her, which was just as well, for what more had they to say to each other: hadn't ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... or apple, and anything else its mother eats, and sometimes even sips of beer or gin. If it cries, it is joggled about or slapped, and as soon as ever it is able to sit up, it is put down on the pavement among a number of other dirty, untidy children and left to take care of itself. When a little girl is seven she is thought quite old enough to look after all the younger ones, and on Saturdays she goes off with other little girls, pushing a rickety old perambulator or ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... ground was thickly strewn with dirty pieces of paper, broken boxes, and old rags, which had been left behind by the show-people; besides a quantity of orange-peel and cocoa-nut and oyster shells, which had been thrown into the mud the night before. Very dirty and untidy and forlorn it looked, as Rosalie gazed at it from the door of the caravan. Then a waggon jolted past, laden with the largest of the numerous whirligigs, the wooden horses and elephants peeping out from the waterproof covering which had been thrown over them. Then a large ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... it. If she failed she must try Poste-Restante, at the suggestion (not of Mr. Finch—there I was wrong)—at the suggestion of Zillah, who had relatives in foreign parts, and had tried Poste-Restante in her case too. So Mrs. Finch driveled mildly on, in her large loose untidy handwriting, to the bottom of the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... strolled away along the shore, while the other two were occupied in discussing Indian customs and modes of life, their conversation having started from the bark canoe. The two ladies took their work, and remained quiet listeners, until a rough-looking, untidy servant-girl came to ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... breakfast in," he said nodding toward an untidy tray. "I hate to seem to be finding fault all the time, but really her breath was enough to set the house on fire! Can't you keep her down ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... that this man is a little too untidy. Look at his collar, or bib, or whatever one may call it. I noticed that he put his cigar-holder in his vest-pocket a moment ago without first putting it in a case. Who knows, there might be an old comb in the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... of habit also I looked about for a book. I did not have to look far. Books were my extravagance—almost my only one. They filled the shelves to the ceiling on three sides of the study and overflowed in untidy heaps on the floor. They were Hephzy's bugbear, for I refused to permit their being "straightened ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... saw, through the open doors of a Catholic church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a black-robed janitor was rattling his keys ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... my head full of Redegonde, whom I preferred to the young Corticelli, and I went to pay her a visit; but what a reception! She received me in a room in which were present her mother, her uncle, and three or four dirty, untidy little monkeys: these were ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lines, Ralph, some whole paragraphs, may be, that would be very fine in a poem; but in an every-day novel they are strikingly out of place. Your jewels, (heart-jewels I suppose you call 'em,) seem to me like diamonds on the bosom of a calicoed and untidy chambermaid. That sentimental chapter with 'The Dead Hope' caption, is quite as good as your blank verse, and I would wager a copy of Griswold's 'Poets of America,' against a doubtful three-cent piece, that you wrote it in rhyme—it's not very difficult, you ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he trudged on foot, the rest he went by boat, and after nearly a week of most uncomfortable traveling he arrived one Sunday morning at Philadelphia. He was soaked to the skin, dirty and untidy, hungry and tired. His pockets bulged out with shirts and stockings, but save for one Dutch dollar ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... one twin on her lap, and the other on a chair by her side, and a larger child was in the corner by the fire, looking heavy and ill, while others of different ages lounged about listlessly. She was not untidy, but very pale, and she spoke in a meek, subdued way, as if the ills of life were so heavy on her that she had no spirit even to complain. She thanked them for their gifts but languidly, and did not visibly brighten when told that her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... have more than one or two good ornaments, and the old gilt clock, were now stacks of papers, a rack bulging with packing materials—something like that—an ink-bottle, a candlestick, the candle trailed over with sealing-wax, and an untidy ball of string. And right in the centre of the room a great clumsy writing-table, an office table, piled with papers again, ledgers, a portable typewriter, and—a litter ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... the abruptness of the escape from New York City by the Pennsylvania Railroad. From the time you enter the station you are as good as gone. There is no progress between the city's tenements, with untidy bedding airing in some windows and fat old slatterns leaning out from others to survey the sordidness and squalor of the streets below. A swift plunge into darkness, some thundering moments, and your train glides out upon the wide wastes of the New Jersey meadows. The city ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... This untidy, comfortless, bedraggled room was now hers, her home! She would not have believed that any human habitation could be so ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... chest, sat gazing fixedly at the body where it lay hidden in the shadow of the curtains. All the others had their hats and gloves on and looked as if they were paying a call: she alone sat there with bare hands and untidy hair and cheeks rendered pale by three nights of watching. She felt stupid in the face of this sudden death, and her eyes were swollen with weeping. A shaded lamp standing on the corner of the chest of drawers threw a bright flood of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... "Well, me with my untidy clothes, I was a thorn in the side of those ladies. Visibly turned up their noses when I came around. One day after a big row with my eldest brother I just walked off. I've been regularly up against it ever since. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... lounged, after tea, in the vestibule of the reading-room, an eccentric citizen of Arkansas varied the entertainment. A short, thin man, of the cracker type, swarthy, long-bearded, and untidy, he was dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture. Heeling up to a gentleman who sat near me, he glared stupidly at him from beneath a broad-brimmed hat, demanding a seat mutely, but with such eloquence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... in an untidy school," he said—"tramp steamers, coasting schooners, collier brigs, and timber barques; and those aren't the sort of craft that rub neatness into a man. Our motto in the little drogher yonder is to keep her afloat with the least possible bother to ourselves. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... alone. As I came up I saw a red-faced, blowsy woman, in a grey shawl, and with dusty, fluffy hair, fall on Charley's neck. It was his mother. She slobbered over him:—"O, my boy! My boy!"—"Leggo of me," said Charley, "Leggo, mother!" I was passing him at the time, and over the untidy head of the blubbering woman he gave me a humorous smile and a glance ironic, courageous, and profound, that seemed to put all my knowledge of life to shame. I nodded and passed on, but heard him say again, good-naturedly:—"If you leggo ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... drawing-room, where Charmion and I were lolling over our tea. There was fruit on the table, besides a selection of cakes from town, and as we had been gardening in the earlier part of the afternoon, and got thoroughly grubby and untidy, we had changed into the tea-gowns which we wear in the evening when we are too lazy to put on more elaborate clothes. They are very nice tea-gowns, and, though I say so who shouldn't, we look exceedingly nice ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... but before he could reply in words there came a clatter upon the rickety stairs at the far end of the entry. A thin, slipshod woman with untidy hair and a sharp face paused on the lower step and looked out ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... poorly dressed, Untidy, an spoortin black e'en; Wi' a babby hawf clammed at her breast, Neglected an shame-to-be-seen; If yo ax, an shoo'll answer yo true, What's th' cause of her trouble? Aw think, Yo'll find her misfortuns are due To that ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... towns which devote themselves to a composite business, displaying newspapers, apples, tobacco, and sweets for sale. The afternoon light, already growing feeble in the open air, had almost deserted the interior of the shop. At first Hyacinth saw nothing but an untidy red-haired girl reading in a corner by the Ught of a candle. Ho asked her for cigarettes. She rose, and laid her book and the candle on the counter. It was one of O'Growney's Irish primers, dirty and pencilled. Hyacinth's heart warmed ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham |
