"Clucking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in gazing in silent wonder at me and the bicycle; now and then giving expression to his utter inability to understand how such things can possibly be by shaking his head and giving utterance to a peculiar clucking of astonishment. He has heard me mention having come from Stamboul, which satisfies him to a certain extent; for, like a true Turk, he believes that at Stamboul all wonderful things originate; whether the bicycle was made there, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... extraordinary clucking to be heard outside the door, and the next moment Erle entered with a hen under each arm, and very red in the face ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sharp pointed acorns were dropping, darkest green oaks, shut out the shore. A thousand starlings were flung up into the air out of these oaks, as if an impatient hand had cast them into the sky; then down they fell again, with a ceaseless whistling and clucking; up they went and down they came, lost in the deep green foliage as if they had dropped in the sea. The long level of the wheat-field plain stretched out from my feet towards the far-away Downs, so ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... their words to listen to a familiar clucking sound from a near-by shrub. Peering closely they made out the plump, genial form of Franklin's grouse,—a bird known far and wide in the north for her ample breast and ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... closed mechanically upon the strips of leather. Jeb led the mare through the gate, closed it, resumed his seat. This time the mare went on without exacting the clucking sound. They were following the rocky road along the wester hillside of the pasture hollow. As they slowly made their way among the deep ruts and bowlders, from frequent moistenings of the lips and throats, noises, and twitchings of body and hands, it was evident that the young farmer was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... railroad, long-plumed trains arrived and departed like pictures passed through the slide of a magic-lantern; even a pile-driver, at work in the same direction, seemed to have no malice in the blows which, after a loud clucking, it dealt the pile, and one understood that it was mere conventional violence like that of a Punch ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... person, and once remarked frankly that he had no passion for clean linen; that he ate voraciously, with a half-animal eagerness; that in the intervals of talking he 'would make odd sounds, a half whistle, or a clucking like a hen's, and when he ended an argument would blow out his breath like a whale.' More important were his dogmatism of opinion, his intense prejudices, and the often seemingly brutal dictatorial violence with ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... maribus, gentleman's property now (Agreeable to the law explained above). In proprium usum, for his private ends, The boy he chucked a brown i' the air, and bit I' the face the shilling; heaved a thumping stone At a lean hen that ran cluck-clucking by, (And hit her, dead as nail i' post o' door,) Then abiit—What's the Ciceronian phrase? Excessit, evasit, erupit—off slogs boy; Off like bird, avi similis—(you observed The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... windows were open. From the pulpit he could look right out into the square, and as he looked he became aware of a hen surrounded by her young family pecking vigorously on the pavement in search of food, and clucking as she pecked. All at once an overwhelming sense of the difference between the two worlds in which he and that hen were living took possession of him, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained himself ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... let it cuff his bow to starboard, and made for the lee of Cod Lead, rounding the island into the reach. He was safely away and, gazing into the faces of the Portuguese, he grimly reflected that for impressed men they seemed fully as glad to be away as he. They rowed now without further monition, clucking, each to himself, little prayers for their safe ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... at low water (as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings, and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... money, coin. Clink, to chink. Clink, to rhyme. Clinkin, with a smart motion. Clinkum, clinkumbell, the beadle, the bellman. Clips, shears. Clish-ma-claver, gossip, taletelling; non-sense. Clockin-time, clucking- (i. e., hatching-) time. Cloot, the hoof. Clootie, cloots, hoofie, hoofs (a nickname of the Devil). Clour, a bump or swelling after a blow. Clout, a cloth, a patch. Clout, to patch. Clud, a cloud. Clunk, to make a hollow sound. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... garnished at the back with a mane of greasy black hair, which fell down upon his shoulders. In his hand, which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the little rolls of yellow and black down; but now that they were great stalking, ragged fowls, putting on all sorts of airs, they excited his ridicule, and he longed to tease them, and the last year's brood of clucking hens and crowing roosters, that didn't quite know what ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... we heard a cheerful clucking of fowls outside our bedroom window, and on looking out saw that the wind had blown the meat-safe over and emptied its contents on the path. The fowls were having a fine feast off the suet. Graham was just in time to save the half ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... and ready for the part of president of the bank whenever Mr. Beale should see fit to die, came in and, with frowns, "dear-dears" and tongue-clucking, heard from the president the story of what ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... leaky of tongue and pen, His dam was a clucking Khuttuck hen; And the colt bred close to the vice of each, For he carried the curse of an ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... gulls goes wailing up inland; the rooks from Annery come cawing and sporting round the corner at Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along to find their breakfast on the shallows. The pheasants and partridges are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow rings with the voice of birds, but the lark, who has been singing since midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the road began a steep ascent. Mrs. Burke let the horses walk up the hill, the slackened reins held in one hand; in the other lolled the whip, which now and then she raised, tightening her grasp upon it as if for use, on second thoughts dropping it to idleness again and clucking to the horses instead. It was typical of her character—the means of chastisement held handy, but in reserve, and usually displaced by other ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... The clucking noise came nearer, passed them within a yard, and was already some distance away towards the reef when the sailor burst into a hearty laugh, none the less genuine because of the relief it gave to his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... them strove, in a gush of good-will, to distinguish the surrounding summits, and, on the top of the belvedere could be heard the clucking of the Peruvian family, pressing around a big devil, wrapped to his feet in a checked ulster, who was pointing out imperturbably, the invisible panorama of the Bernese Alps, naming in a loud voice the peaks that were ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... thing relating to Fowls of this kind well worthy observation; and that is, of Capons being made to bring up a Brood of Chickens like a Hen, clucking of'em, brooding them, and leading them to their Meat, with as much Care and Tenderness as their Dams would do. To bring this about, Jo. Baptista Porta, in lib. 4. Mag. Nat. prescribes to make a Capon very tame and familiar, so as ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... said, swinging the cultivator back into place and clucking to Solomon to go ahead. "I can't eat green rocks, you know, ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... the door of his whitewashed house, under the shade of some gigantic sycamore or overhanging willow. Here would he smoke his pipe of a sultry afternoon, enjoying the soft southern breeze and listening with silent gratulation to the clucking of his hens, the cackling of his geese, and the sonorous grunting of his swine; that combination of farmyard melody, which may truly be said to have a silver sound, inasmuch as it conveys a certain ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... goblin When they spied her peeping: Came towards her hobbling, Flying, running, leaping, Puffing and blowing, Chuckling, clapping, crowing, Clucking and gobbling, Mopping and mowing, Full of airs and graces, Pulling wry faces, Demure grimaces, Cat-like and rat-like, Ratel and wombat-like, Snail-paced in a hurry, Parrot-voiced and whistler, Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry, Chattering like magpies, Fluttering ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... announced that she was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before—not even when her first brood pecked their way out ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... convalescent, when one evening a mysterious stranger arrived from the Castle, and had an interview with the governess. As a result of that interview, the kindly old lady began clucking like a scared hen, fussed quite prodigiously, and told us to collect our things at once, as we were to start for the Castle in a quarter of an hour. After a frantically hurried packing, we were bustled into the carriage, the mysterious ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... inquiry was for Hal and Ned, and was told that they had gone out after a flock of wild turkeys that had been heard clucking in the pecan trees, not far from camp. They had taken their guns with them, and expected to ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... outlying rocks to overlook the rookeries, calling out and listening as if for a familiar voice. Then changing to another place they do the same again...As soon as a female reaches the shore, the nearest male goes down to meet her, making meanwhile a noise like the clucking of a hen to her chickens. He bows to her and coaxes her until he gets between her and the water so that she cannot escape him. Then his manner changes, and with a harsh growl he drives her to a place in his harem. This continues ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... his friend of the military title looked hard at the grate, as if selecting a fair mark, then made a clucking noise, and drenched it completely. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the greatest delight at the three broods of downy little chickens, and one of ducklings, whose parent hens were clucking in coops; and in the kitchen they found a sickly one nursed in flannel in a basket, and an orphaned lamb which staggered upon its disproportionate black legs at ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... jumping up. "We'll have a feather." The frightened peacock ran up and down the parapet in an absurd distress, curtseying and bobbing and clucking; his long tail swung ponderously back and forth as he turned and turned again. Then with a flap and swish he launched himself upon the air and sailed magnificently earthward, with a recovered dignity. But he had left a trophy. Ivor had his feather, a long-lashed eye of purple and green, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... turn away. And, thinking to be your own protector, stray Into the open jaws of death: for, see! An owl is sitting in this very tree You thought safe shelter. Go now to your pen." And, followed by the clucking, clamorous hen, So like the human mother here again, Moaning because a strong, protecting arm Would shield her little ones from cold and harm, I carried back my garden hat brimful Of chirping chickens, like white balls of wool, And snugly housed them. And just ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stillness, watching the light tracery of shadow and sun on that smooth sward, only now and then roused by the fleet rush of a deer through the wood, or the brisk chatter of a plume-tailed squirrel, till one hears a distant, sharp, clucking chuckle, and in an instant more pulls the trigger, and upsets a grand old cock, every bronzed feather glittering in the sunshine, and now splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate underwing ground into down as he rolls and flutters; for the first shot rarely kills at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... a slight clucking sound from beside him and when he turned he found O'Shaughnessy lying almost beside him, squinting along his carbine. The Narakan's face split into two replicas of the map of Ireland and he saluted flat handed, his webbed fingers at ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... for this Day of Atonement, and worshippers clad in rainbow hues crowd round the base of the volcano, while the priests of Siva, in motley robes of brilliant patchwork, adorned with cabalistic tracery in white, ascend the swaying rungs, bearing their struggling victims, bleating, crowing, and clucking in mortal terror. Stalwart arms toss the black goat with accurate aim to an assistant priest, who passes on his clever "catch" to a third expert in the task of hoodwinking Siva and depriving him of his lawful prey. Sundry cocks and hens, evidently toothsome morsels, are then ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... all tuckered out, I can see," she said, hovering around her like a clucking hen; "but a wash-up and a good dish o' chicken pie will put you all to ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... comparable to the supposed feelings of a good mother-hen which has followed her brood of ducklings to the edge of the water. For Mr. Falkirk's attendance seemed to himself not much more valuable or efficient to guard from evil than the said mother-hen's clucking round the pond. True, he stood by, and saw Wych Hazel was there; he went and came with her; but the waves of the social entertainment floated her hither and thither, and he could scarce follow at a distance, much less navigate ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the riders, jolting along in the grub-wagon, awkwardly driving, with much clucking and pidgin-English, Old Tom and Baldy hitched to the heavy, canvas-covered vehicle with its "box-kitchen" and mess-board protruding gawkily ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... the gate, walked past her without a word, and began a professional examination of the garden-beds. When he came to a neglected line of box, he made a sympathetic clucking of the tongue, and before a rosebush, coming out in meagre leafage, he ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... the mucous membrane of the mouth, lips, between and above the claws and the region of the udder. The inflammation of the mouth and feet may be very painful. Long strings of saliva may dribble from the mouth and collect about the lips (Fig. 106). A smacking or "clucking" sound is produced when the animal moves its jaws and lips. The severe pain resulting from the inflammation of the mouth and feet, and the difficulty in moving about and eating and drinking, cause the animal to lose flesh and become emaciated. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... took to the water as soon as they saw it, as all little ducks will. The old hen was almost crazy at such behavior on the part of her chicks, and flew down to the water's edge, clucking and calling at a great rate. However,—to her great surprise, probably,—they all came safely to land. Every day after that, when the little ducks went for a swim, their hen-mother walked nervously back and forth on the shore, and was not easy till they ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... over Roger's shoulder, could hear a clucking in the receiver, and then, incredibly clear, a thin, silver, distant voice. How well he knew it! It seemed to vibrate in the air all about him. He could hear every syllable distinctly. A hot perspiration burst out on his forehead and in the ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... mean going to the park, or taking a trolley ride out to one of the suburbs. What I want is the sure-enough country, without any sidewalks, you know, and with roads that wind, and old hens clucking around, and cow-bells tinkling off in the ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... of them took so much as a green apple he would be liable to "death or some such less punishment as the Act shall provide." They talk about it and grumble, and then suddenly, without any warning except a clucking and scratching, the Mess Sergeant is seen by the greater part of the Battalion to issue triumphantly from a farm gate with two or three fat hens under his arms. Smiling broadly, totally ignorant of the enormity ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... herself on the edge of the table and Gallito bent forward and scratched her head, making little clucking noises in his throat the while: "Our guest is a great poker player, Lolita, he understands how to make a bluff, but," again that single grating note of a laugh, "assure him, my Lolita, that he ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... chickin-fixins and doins. And I say it would be a charity to give the pious brother sich a feed now and then, for he looks half-starved, and savage as a meat-ax; and I advise that old hen out thare clucking up her brood not to come this way just now, if she don't want all to disappear. But I say that Sprightly's preachers are so much beliked in the Purchase, that folks are always glad to see them, and make a pint of giving them the best out of love; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... half open, and I looked over into the garden, which was already forlorn and deserted. Some instinct told me she was not there. The little flower-beds looked shaggy, grass-grown, and uncared for. In the centre, among the geraniums, phlox-beds, and French marigolds, sat a dirty-white hen, clucking and calling a brood of dirty-white chickens. The box-bordered gravelled paths, which Wynne, in spite of his drunkenness, used to keep always so neat, were covered with leaves, shaken by the wind from the trees surrounding the garden. One of the dark green shutters was unfastened, and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... meal: fish from the river, fowl from the poultry-yard—we heard the clucking of the doomed hen, and the indignant remonstrances of her companions—a capital omelette, and country cheese and butter. With these comfortable things we had a bottle of honest wine of unknown vintage, ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... floor, leaned his head against Joe's and made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... of the South, came over the hill and on its crest the wild turkeys were still clucking to each other. Henry, through sheer energy and flush of life, ran up the slope, and watched them as they took flight through the trees, their brilliant plumage gleaming ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... no restraining Jenny. With a yell like the war cry of a clucking hen, she waved her umbrella aloft, and went ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... call the birds in, The birds from the sky. Allie calls, Allie sings, Down they all fly. First there came Two white doves Then a sparrow from his nest, Then a clucking bantam hen, Then a ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... they liked each other but found words unnecessary. Jock Macaur driving his sheep to fold in the westering sun wore the look of a man not unpleased with life and at least undisturbed by it. Maggy Macaur doing her housework, churning or clucking to her hens, was peacefully cheerful and seemed to ask no more of life than food and sleep and comfortable work which could be done without haste. There were no signs of knowledge on her part or Jock's ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... confident of his fealty. I know men better than you know them, my dear. Man loves beauty, but he does not always want to marry it. The rare white swan is admired, but the little brown partridge, clucking as she marshals her covey of chicks, is the type of the marrying woman. Again, no man is master of himself. That Strathay wishes to marry you, I can understand; but, perhaps, when he is not under the spell of your presence, he falls to wondering ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... of fierce-eyed carters cracking round the heads of large, sad mules; hooters of automobiles and immense motor diligences blaring; men shouting at animals; animals barking or braying, snorting or clucking at men; unseen soldiers marching to music; a town clock sweetly chiming the hour, and, above all, rising like spray from the ocean of din, high voices of Arabs chaffering, disputing, arguing. This was the "Arabian Night's Paradise" ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in his drives or walks late in the day, where the air fairly palpitates with sound; from every little marshy hollow and spring run there rises an impenetrable maze or cloud of shrill musical voices. After the peepers, the next frog to appear is the clucking frog, a rather small, dark-brown frog, with a harsh, clucking note, which later in the season becomes the well-known brown wood-frog. Their chorus is heard for a few days only, while their spawn is being deposited. In less than a week ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating, or what is called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breath, TOO, TOO, TOO: all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... That's exactly the way our little Berkshire pig grunts, and "Sweetlips" calls her calf just like that—and, oh, KATIE, I wonder if he could have heard our Dorkings clucking at home—I think he must have—he does ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... touch of Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself—a privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and then a low humming sound, backed up ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wild like, her voice clucking like a hen does, ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... clucking sound and a chorus of "cheep! cheep!" and a servant threw open the door to allow Billina and her ten fluffy chicks to enter the Throne-Room. As the Yellow Hen marched proudly at the head of her family, Dorothy cried, "Oh, you lovely things!" and ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the farmyard to the fields. Below it, moist ground was stamped with the trident impress of many fowls' feet; and, now and then, a feather sidled down from the heart of the evergreen, where poultry, black and white and spangled, were settling to roost. A subdued clucking and fluttering marked their hidden perches; then came showers of rain-drops from the shining leaves as a bird mounted to a higher branch; after which silence ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... been like an old hen clucking after her duckling in the water," he replied. "She has been fretting and fuming after you all the week. If it had been me out in Sark, she would have slept soundly and ate heartily; as it was you, she has ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... the poem which had immortalized that simple operation. It required only a casual glance about to see that this was a poultry farm. At the back of the house he saw a number of chicken runs, where a man was engaged in repair work. The air was filled with the comfortable clucking of hens, the most cheerful of country sounds. From his present slight elevation he had a view also of the trolley line which bisected the farm and crossed the road a few yards ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... halls, she would have recognised the woman as the original of a type frequently seen on the boards of those resorts, played by male impersonators. Directly she saw Mavis, Mrs Bale hurried to the bedside and seized the baby, to dandle it in her arms, the while she made a clucking noise not unlike ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... left within his mouth. And she stood there still when he came back to the side of the altar, holding the chalice in both hands, so that Vincent might pour over his forefingers and thumbs the wine and water of ablution, which he likewise drank. But when the mother hen ran up clucking with alarm to seek her little ones, and threatened to force her way into the church, Desiree went off, talking maternally to her chicks, while the priest, after pressing the purificator to his lips, wiped first the rim and next the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Al once gets into the bathroom!" Floss sat up in bed, her eyes still closed. She made little clucking sounds with her tongue and lips, as a baby does when it wakes. Drugged with sleep, hair tousled, muscles sagging, at seven o'clock in the morning, the most trying hour in the day for a woman, Floss was still triumphantly pretty. She had on one of those absurd pink muslin nightgowns, artfully ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the actual storm must have been to have a tail of such dimensions. There was no getting forth, no living creature of free will "took water" in this elemental crisis. The numerous dogs crowded the children away from the hearth, and the hens strolled about the large living-room, clucking to scurrying broods. Even one of the horses tramped up on the porch and looked in ever and anon, ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... For himself he decided that fresh air was what he needed. He went for a stroll. As soon as he was in the Charleston Road that led to the High Street he was pleased with the day. Early spring; mild, faint haze, trees dimly purple, a bird clucking, the whisper of the sea stirring the warm puddles and rivulets across the damp dim road. Warm, yes, warm and promising. Lent ... tiresome. Long services, gloomy sermons. Rebuking people, scolding them—made them angry, did them no good. Then Easter. That was better. Jolly hymns. "Christ ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... thought of it the angrier I grew, and I had to get up and move about the room. I tried the shutters, but they were the kind that lock with a key, and I couldn't move them. From the outside came the faint clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn't open the latter, and the sacks seemed to be full of things like dog-biscuits that smelt of cinnamon. But, as I circumnavigated the room, I found a handle in the ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... thought was too complicated; and, besides, she had so entirely cheered up that she practically forgot death. She began to count how much money her mother owed her for eggs—which reminded her to look into the nests; and when, in spite of a clucking remonstrance, she put her hand under a feathery breast and touched the hot smoothness of a new-laid egg, she felt perfectly happy. "I guess I'll go and get some floating-island," she thought. "Oh, I hope they haven't eaten it ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... head from a box stall to look at the little visitor, and a little red hen called her chickens, and hastened away, clucking, as if she ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... will, however, usually seek the shelter of some bushes or trees, and on such occasion is usually found under the lee of some little wooded point, where, steeped in sweetest sleep, he can at leisure dream of clucking hens, fat turkeys, and tender leverets—sheltered from the storm, and still having an uninterrupted view before him. The hunter, when bent on a fox hunt, is careful to wear garments whose colour blends with the prevailing hue of frosted nature: a white cotton capot, and capuchon to match, is ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... day in June when David believed he never in this world could get through with it. He heard the chuck and drowsy clack of the sprinkling-wagon as it ponderously advanced upon its lazy way; he heard the almost whispered clucking of a mother-hen who was calling her chicks to come shuffle with her in the cool loose earth under the shade of the crooked old apple-tree, and presently there came a time when the out-of-doors was all so still that even ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... "clucking" sound with his tongue. It was his way of expressing irritation. Then he stood erect, and glanced round the room in search of some one. He was a tall, well-built man and carried his fifty odd years fairly well, in spite of his gray hair and the bald patch at the crown of his ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... into a very distant antiquity, all seems to grow confused and out of focus. Yet time and space make little difference in the solution of these problems. Let us see what exists to-day. We see to-day that the lowest of savages—men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in many respects lower even than animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... deserted. Julien began to think that the young girl he was seeking had gone into the fields with the farm-hands, and stood uncertain and disappointed in the middle of the courtyard. At this sudden intrusion into their domain, a brood of chickens, who had been clucking sedately around, and picking up nourishment at the same time, scattered screaming in every direction, heads down, feet sprawling, until by unanimous consent they made a beeline for a half-open door, leading to the orchard. Through this manoeuvre, the young man's attention ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... reminds her of the years long ago, when she used to do the dairy-work at the farm, and had never known a care. But she is happy even now, for outside the window is Nora, cheerful and contented, feeding the poultry, who gather round her, clucking noisily, while some white pigeons have flown down from the dove-cot, and one has alighted on her shoulder, and Nora's merry laugh is as ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... feet outstretched upon the black joists and window-sills. Fowls of the midden, new brought from other parts to make up the place of those that had gone to the kail-pots of Antrim and Athole, stalked about with heads high, foreign to this causied and gravelled country, clucking eagerly for meat I made my way amid the bird of the sea and the bird of the wood and common bird of the yard with a divided mind, seeing them with the eye for future recollection, but seeing them not Peats were at every close-mouth, at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... times, we are told, the Caliphs and Viziers always listened to what the birds said about it, before they undertook any new enterprise. I have often thought I heard wise old folk discoursing, when a company of hens were busy on the side-hill, scratching and clucking together. Perchance some day we shall pick up a leaf of that herb which shall open our ears to these now ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... summer day had dawned, and in the village was heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh, the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... squirrels—oh! there was a squirrel up in the tree, with his great bushy tail thrown over his back. And Primrose laughed with tears still shining on her lashes. Over at a distance was a hen with a brood of chickens, clucking her way along. And there were two pretty calves in ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... floor, her decks awash, her rigging thrumming in the gale gusts or snow squalls or driving tropic rain. And the vision he saw was of farm and farm-house and straw-thatched outbuildings, of children playing in the sun, and the good wife at the door, of lowing kine, and clucking fowls, and the stamp of horses in the stable, of his father's farm next to him, with, beyond, the woodless, rolling land and the hedged fields, neat and orderly, extending to the crest of the smooth, soft hills. It was his vision and his ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... Billings—came up the galley hatch, no longer cheerful, but morose of face and menacing of gait, as is usual with this type of man when drunk. He spied Denman in his skirt, cloak, hat, and bandage, and, with a clucking chuckle in his throat and a leering grin on his face, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... might say exactly the same of the captain and Violet," pursued Betty, in a lower tone, and glancing toward that couple, as they sat side by side on the opposite sofa—Violet with her babe in her arms, the captain clucking and whistling to it, while it cooed and laughed in his face—Violet's ever-beautiful face more beautiful than its wont, with its expression of exceeding love and happiness as her glance rested now upon her husband and now upon ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... with pain and let the snake loose from his mouth. It hung on to his cheek with its fangs firmly implanted, and at last he tore him loose with both hands. The blood spurted from the wound, and a Hopi man beside me made a nervous clucking sound. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... me also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his vanity—unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his viol-strings—as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages yet unborn. He gazed on the simple moon with limpid, amiable eyes, and caught my ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... forest pen," he said. "Hark! I hear some curious clucking sounds. There's more than one bird there, or I am much mistaken." Stepping forward he peered over the branches, when he beckoned us to advance, and, he lifting me in his arms, I saw not only a hen turkey in the pen, but a brood of a dozen or more turkey ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... and low hawthorn-trees with immense masses of tangled underwood between, brambles and woodbine twisted and matted together, impervious above but hollow beneath; under these they could hear the bush-hens running to and fro and scratching at the dead leaves which strewed the ground. Sounds of clucking deeper in betrayed the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... only ejaculate the words, 'Pity!' 'Forgive!' in his most contemptuous tone; while Mrs. Shelldrake, rocking violently in her chair, gave utterance to that peculiar clucking 'ts, ts, ts, ts,' whereby certain women express emotions too ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... observers, the Australians often evince astonishment by a clucking noise. Europeans also sometimes express gentle surprise by a little clicking noise of nearly the same kind. We have seen that when we are startled, the mouth is suddenly opened; and if the tongue happens to ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... fence; there was a great big hole there. And they'd eaten every chicken, and every egg in the yard. My lovely boxes were all knocked over, and the nests torn to bits, and there wasn't so much as an eggshell left. The poor old hens were just demented—they were going round and round the yard, clucking and calling, and altogether like mad things. And in the middle of it all, fat and happy and ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... this application to the thumbscrew arrangement on the door, for the colonel had taken the bell away long ago. But there resulted a clucking, which brought the colonel to the portal frowning and alert, warming in the expectation of having somebody whom he ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... place; that it is she who ought to worship the man, and not the man her; and when she becomes properly conscious of her destiny, has not he a right to be conscious of his? If the grey hens will stand round in the mire clucking humble admiration, who can blame the old blackcock for dancing and drumming on the top of a moss hag, with outspread wings and flirting tail, glorious and self-glorifying. He is a splendid fellow; and he was made ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... acquainted, Westerfelt," he began, stroking his chin downward and letting his lips meet with a clucking sound, also another professional habit; "but, you'd find, ef you knew me better, that I never beat the devil round the stump, as the feller said, an' I'm above board." He paused for a moment; then he kicked a rotten spot on the log with the broad heel of his brogan till it crumbled into dust. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... Christian George King, who was individually unpleasant to me besides, comes a trotting along the sand, clucking, "Yup, So-Jeer!" I had a thundering good mind to let fly at him with my right. I certainly should have done it, but that it would ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens |
