"Covey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and threw my arms round my mother's neck, who only screamed, "Good heavens, my child!" and fell into hysterics. My father, who was in the very midst of helping his soup, jumped up to embrace me and assist my mother. The company all rose, like a covey of partridges: one lady spoiled a new pink satin gown by a tip of the elbow from her next neighbour, just as a spoonful of soup had reached "the rosy portals of her mouth;" the little spaniel, Carlo, set up a loud and incessant bark; and in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was a hunting country, and the havoc made by foxes was found to be so great that he gave up preserving in disgust, and so, growing lazy, made that an excuse for dropping the other field shooting, which passed into different hands. So now there was no partridge-shooting, unless a stray covey chose to light in the park, and there were very few pheasants, though ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... assisted by the advent of a covey of flying fishes and a (Sunday) "school" of porpoises, is responsible for the following, which is adventured with profuse apologies to ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... City bubbles and bladders, at all events,' Mr. Fenellan said. 'But if we let our journals go on making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game with our loss of the covey. An unstable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'they always follow that with a shell.' And so they did, but it passed overhead without harming anyone. Again the Vickers-Maxim flung its covey of projectiles. Again we crouched for the following shell; but this time it did not come—immediately. I had seen quite enough, however, so we bade our friends good luck—never good-bye on active service—and hurried, slowly, on account of appearances, from this unhealthy valley. As we ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... suddenly Di's whole action changes: crouching to the ground and beating her sides rapidly with her tail, she runs hither and thither, snuffing eagerly in the grass. Now Sancho comes up and catches the cold trail, for a covey has certainly been in that place to-day. Most probably they rose from the spot, frightened by the swoop of a hawk, and made for the nearest cover, for the dogs can do nothing with the scent. But that little whiff of the exciting effluvia has brought them down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... he would carry the dead fox for them, and again they went forward. They spent the best part of the afternoon looking for more foxes, but in this they were disappointed. However, deep in the woods they came upon a covey of partridges. All banged away at a lively rate, and had the satisfaction of killing ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... significantly. "Wait till he asks her; that's what I say. It's wonderful what a difference the asking makes. Women think a sight more of a sparrow in the hand than a covey of partridges in the bush; and I don't blame them for it; it's ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... awakened by a whirr. A covey of partridges, with wings glistening in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field of mustard. They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges, and began to call upon ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... jacket than in anything else, and always, like her own hunters, minutely groomed, was preparing a breakfast for her own consumption with the leisurely precision characteristic of her whether in the saddle, on the box, or grassing her brace of any covey that ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the chaser, Tires me to death; and the adorer of buzzards. They talk of covey and hawk, And never of arms, nor ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Edition (1657) has various cuts amongst which is a frontispiece, that occurs again at page 29 of the little volume, depicting Gonsales being drawn up to the lunar world in a machine, not unlike a primitive parachute, to which are harnessed his 'gansas ... 25 in number, a covey that carried him ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... they approached the hill, but drew his pistol, ready to fire down upon them as they came. Suddenly there was a change. So quickly that he could scarcely believe his eyes the flying Mormons had disappeared. Not a man was visible upon that narrow plain between the hill and the sea. Like a huge covey of quail they had dropped to the ground, their rifles lost in that ghostly gloom through which the voices of the mainlanders came in fierce cries of triumph. It was magnificent! Even as the crushing truth of what it all meant came ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... moving, except every now and then, as they slowly rolled from side to side to give a loud thundering clap, and once more to subside into sullen silence. The sea, smooth as a mirror, shone like burnished silver, its surface ever and anon broken by the fin of some monster of the deep, or by a covey of flying fish, which would dart through the air till, their wings dried by the sun, they fell helpless again into their ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... the other eye. With this it winked also, then got up, flapped its wings, ruffled its feathers, and, after a pause, sprang into the air with that violent whirr-r which is so gladdening, yet so startling, to the ear of a sportsman. It was instantly joined by the other members of the covey to which it belonged, and the united flock went sweeping past the sleeping hunters, causing their horses to awake with a snort, and themselves to spring to their feet with the alacrity of men who were accustomed to repose in the midst ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the —," "generally said of a goshawk when, having 'put in' a covey of partridges, she takes stand, marking the spot where they disappeared from view until the falconer arrives to put them out to her" (Harting, Bibl. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... of the young man, Mr. Norman Halliday, tell upon the covey of frightened girls. Mrs. Morse herself began to recover from her disturbance of mind. This was ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, our crested three of immemorial antiquity and a presumptive immortality, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across the dormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer above the nether ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Tis a gentleman of quality, this; though he be somewhat out of clothes, I tell ye.—Come, AEsop, hast a bay-leaf in thy mouth? Well said; be not out, stinkard. Thou shalt have a monopoly of playing confirm'd to thee, and thy covey, under the emperor's broad seal, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... amidships and a crew of sixty men; others were vessels of 300 tons, with an armament and crew like a man-of-war. Before the middle of July, 1812, sixty-five such privateers had sailed, and the British merchantmen were scudding for cover like a covey of frightened quail. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... unexploded shells. No plough can be put here—the only solution for the land for years to come is forest. Just before we gained the road at the bottom, where the car was awaiting us, we were startled by the sudden flight of a covey of partridges. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sight of a covey soon after. He and Ernest slipped out of the wagon and stole up as close as possible. Ernest got two with the scattering bird ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... A covey of Uhlans entered the shambles, picking their way across the wreckage of the battle, a slim, wiry, fastidious company, dainty as spurred gamecocks, with their helmet-cords swinging like wattles and their ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... no existence; he takes in a room at a glance. He has the sportsman's eye which, in a covey of partridges, marks its bird at a glance. He never hesitates. "That is the thing to make for," he says, "come along"—and we make for it. He plants himself right in front of the picture, with both hands in his overcoat pockets, and his chin sunk in his collar; says nothing, but is quite happy ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 419.) Garrick entered the school about two years after Johnson left. According to Garrick's biographer, Tom Davies (p. 3), 'Hunter was an odd mixture of the pedant and the sportsman. Happy was the boy who could slily inform his offended master where a covey of partridges was to be found; this notice was a certain pledge of his pardon.' Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Chief Justices, ii. 279, says:—'Hunter is celebrated for having flogged seven boys who afterwards sat as judges in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... cloth round his head—a disguise specially calculated, one would think, to excite attention. The two young men talked frankly and confidentially, making great strides in friendship as they went along. Once a covey of partridges rose, and, with a true British instinct for sport at all hazards,[7] the Prince raised his gun and would have fired if Malcolm had not caught his arm. They were careful to pass through the hostile MacLeod country at night, and at break of day arrived in Strath, the country of the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the silver whistle of a partridge, and Christopher, lifting his head, noted involuntarily the direction of the sound. A covey was hatching down by the meadow brook, he knew—for not a summer mating nor a hidden nest had escaped his eyes—and he wondered vaguely if the young birds were roaming into Fletcher's wheatfield. Then, with a single vigorous movement as if he were settling his thoughts upon ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... its way; but about 3 P.M. the Hun is roused to the depths of his savage nature, and one wakes up to find Hildebrand and Hoffelbuster, the two guns told off to attend to our liberty area, scattering missiles far and wide, but mostly wide, and a covey of aeroplanes bombing the local cabbageries. This again is all right in its way, but in the meantime the mutual noise further up the line has become so loud that Someone very far back and high up catches the echo of it, and a bare hour later we receive the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... the middle of the causeway to Margny, two arrow-shots from our bridge end, he is letting build a great bastille, and digging a trench wherein men may go to and fro. The cordelier was as glad of that as a man who has stalked a covey of partridges. 'Keep my tally for me,' he said to myself; 'cut a notch for every man I slay'; and here," said Barthelemy, waving his staff, "is his ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Can one wonder therefore that the human system soon breaks down in this vapour bath and that sickness is very common in this part. There is not much game to be seen from the river but occasionally a covey of partridges rises from the grass and comes within gun shot ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... through woods they started a covey of partridges. The small brown and white shapes vanished in a skurry of dead leaves. "No doubt, no doubt!" said the soldier of fortune. "At any rate, I have rubbed off particularity in such matters. Live and let live—and each man to run ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... exclaimed as a covey of large Namaqua partridges whirred up from his path. "A good sign that: they are seldom far ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... tree stems gleamed like bronze in the firelight; beyond that—blackness, and, so far as he could tell, a silence of death. Just behind them a passing puff of wind lifted a single leaf, looked at it, then laid it softly down again without disturbing the rest of the covey. It seemed as if a million invisible causes had combined just to produce that single visible effect. Other life pulsed about ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... covey,' spoke an ulcerous-looking being; 'he's of our stripe. Tim, did you hear what an infernal scrape I got into last night? No, you didn't. Well, I went to our friend Fred's; he didn't want to drink when I found him; his dimes looked so extremely large. Well, I destroyed ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... bath, as B.-P. discovered in going down to a pool and spotting just in time a leering crocodile in the reeds. Lions, too, were stumbled upon in clumps, just as in peaceful England one walks upon a covey of partridges. Then, lying down one day after dinner for a nap, B.-P. discovered on awaking that a snake had selected precisely the same spot for its own siesta. The charm of night marches, too, was occasionally broken by the growling of a bloodthirsty ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... exactly know about that, myself," returned the soldier, slightly raising his cap and scratching his crown, as if in recollection of some narrowly escaped danger. "I reckon, tho', when I see them slope up like a covey of red-legged pattridges, my heart was in my mouth, for I looked for nothin' else but that same operation: but I wur just as well pleased, when, after talkin' their gibberish, and makin' all sorts of signs among themselves, they made tracks towards ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... into the niche, awakened us. A covey of partridges venturing too close yielded three to our guns. We breakfasted well, and a little later were ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... palmetto a pair of horns were visible; and a herd of wild cattle, incredibly thin and fleet, leaped with a snort into the open, stared an instant at the intruders and sprang out of sight with the speed of deer. A covey of small, brown quail broke close at hand and sailed away, skimming the top of the grass. Fox squirrels were to be seen through the hanging moss on the cypress trees. A great whooping crane waded into view and flapped away in clumsy fashion. A flock of teal ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... been shooting into a covey of publishers for twelve years and never have touched a feather. Perseverance is a good quality, but there is such a thing as insanity." He stared unconsciously at ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... a covey of partridge, they all stood up, stretching, twisting their bodies, stiff and torpid after ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... thing has faults, nor is't unknown That harps and fiddles often lose their tone, And wayward voices at their owner's call, With all his best endeavours, only squall; Dogs blink their covey, flints withhold the spark, And double barrels (damn them) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Nicolas Vignau that here was the direct road to Cathay. At St Anne's the expedition made a brief halt to ask a blessing on the enterprise. Here the men, according to custom, each received a dram of liquor. When they had again taken their places, paddles dipped at the word of command, and, like a covey of birds, the canoes skimmed over the dark waters of the Ottawa, springing under the sinewy strokes of a double row of paddlers against the swift current of the river. Following the shore closely, they ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... Covey, living at Bayside, at no great distance from the campground where Thomas Auld was converted, had a wide reputation for "breaking in unruly niggers." Covey was a "poor white" and a farm renter. To this man Douglass was hired out for a year. In the month ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... Prussia is found again—where do you think? only in Poland, up to the chin in Russians! Was ever such a man! He was riding home from Olmutz; they ran and told him of an army of Muscovites,(941) as you would of a covey of partridges; he galloped thither, and shot them. But what news I am telling you! I forgot that all ours comes by water-carriage, and that you must know every thing a fortnight before us. It is incredible ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... start, "I refuse to hang out a minute longer. Seems like I c'n just get a whiff of the steak a sizzling on the gridiron at our house; and say, when I think of it, I get wild. I'm as hungry as that bear that came to our camp, and sent us all up in trees like a covey of partridges." ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... "I perceive a native. Several natives, in fact. Quite a little covey of them. We will put our case before them, concealing nothing, and rely on their advice to take us ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... thing as it arose: "Will this bring anything fresh to his mind, or will it pass?" The wood-path the nut-tree growth all but closed over on either side she decided was safe; it could taste of nothing but his English school-boyhood, before ever she knew him. But the sudden uprush of the covey of partridges from the stubble, and their bee-line for a haven in the next field—surely danger lay that way? Think what a shot he was in the old days! However, he only said, "Poor dears, they don't know how near the thirty-first is," and seemed to be able to know that much from past ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was a freshman at Oxford, 1642, I was wont to go to Christ Church, to see King Charles I. at supper; where I once heard him say, " That as he was hawking in Scotland, he rode into the quarry, and found the covey of partridges falling upon the hawk; and I do remember this expression further, viz. and I will swear upon the book 'tis true." When I came to my chamber, I told this story to my tutor; said ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... larger are somewhat like red gurnards, and are said to prey on their smaller cousins, which are also pursued by bonitos, albicores, and dolphins of various species, as well as by numerous sea-birds. Several times we saw a large covey of the smaller kind rise above the surface, followed closely by another of the larger species, when at the same moment a dozen sea-birds would descend, and, quick as lightning, a dolphin would dart by, intent on sharing the prey. Looking down ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... pointer, descended from the famous bitch before-mentioned, that littered while she was hunting a hare. I had the misfortune to have him shot soon after by a blundering sportsman, who fired at him instead of a covey of partridges which he had just set. Of this creature's skin I have had this waistcoat made (showing his waistcoat), which always leads me involuntarily to game if I walk in the fields in the proper ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... won't be singled out simply for your pretty face—there are too many pretty faces; so it is the woman who strikes some high note of conspicuousness who attracts attention. But you're like a flock of cooing doves, you Washington girls. You're as natural and frank and unaffected as a—a covey of partridges. I believe I am almost jealous of your Mary ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... there was a flourishing covey of fifteen: Pa Tridge, Ma Tridge, and thirteen little Tridges, all brown and speckled and very chirpy. They had been born in a hollow under some big leaves beside a hedge, and they now moved about the earth, pushing their way through the grass, all keeping close together ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... comes to killing, that ain't in my line; but if you want me to lead him on somehow where somebody else could do the job, I think I'd be about the covey that could do it." ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... virulent yet oddly subdued, hummed through the chaotic ballroom. Feverish youths swore they would kill Perry or Jumbo or themselves or someone and the Baptis' preacheh was besieged by a tempestuous covey of clamorous amateur lawyers, asking questions, making threats, demanding precedents, ordering the bonds annulled, and especially trying to ferret out any hint or suspicion of prearrangement ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... said Florry Meldrum, watching a shoal of them that rose from the water just like a covey of white larks, and which, after skimming past the Nancy Bell, again settled in the sea, quite tired out with their ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... poplars were clear amber and the hickories russet and the oaks a deep burgundy. Lean hogs began to fill and fatten with their banqueting on beechnuts and acorns. Scattered quail came together in the conclave of the covey, and changed their summer call for the "hover" whistle. Shortly, the rains would strip the trees, and leave them naked. Then, Misery would vindicate its christener. But, now, as if to compensate in a few carnival days of champagne sparkle and color, the mountain world was ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... come, the devils! one, two, three—there are seven of them. I suppose this is what they call a covey in these parts. Were you ever ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... nobody wouldn't care!" These utterances, it may be imagined, went to the very heart of the errand-boys, who were collected in a circle, plotting how to release Rosa, when Elsworthy, mortified and furious, came back from his unsuccessful assault on the Curate. They scattered like a covey of little birds before the angry man, who tossed their papers at them, and then strode up the echoing stairs. "If you don't hold your d——d tongue," said Elsworthy, knocking furiously at Rosa's door, "I'll turn you to the door this instant, I will, by—." ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... whimpered as they came, and on and on they came out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last, when the procession stopped, he—and his mythical sixteen—marched the entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject obedience, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... dogs in a crowded street is great sport. A young man with a new revolver shooting at a mad dog is a fine sight. He may not kill the dog, but he might shoot into a covey of little children and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... masses, and again and again the ground was azure with the bluebells swaying in the soft breeze. Several times he started up with a laugh of delight as a rabbit leaped up from under the greenery and scudded away with a twinkle of short white tail behind it. Once a covey of partridges rose with a sudden whir and flew away, and then he shouted ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... yellow light. Colour had returned to the world, clean pearly colour, clear and definite like the glance of a child or the voice of a girl, and a golden wisp of cloud hung in the sky over the tower of the church. There was a mist upon the pond, a soft grey mist not a yard high. A covey of partridges ran and halted and ran again in the dewy grass outside his garden railings. The partridges were very numerous this year because there had been so little shooting. Beyond in the meadow a hare sat up as still as a stone. A horse ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... was clearing away the morning mist, and that rest-time was nearly over; while the sudden rattle of a machine gun close by him, indulging in a little indirect fire at a well-known Hun gathering place a thousand yards or so behind their lines, disturbed a covey of partridges, which rose with an angry whirring of wings. Then came four of those unmistakable faint muffled bursts from high above his head, which betokened an aeroplane's morning gallop; and even as he automatically jerked his head ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... presently, with whirring, rushing wing, there flew over the hedge beside them a covey of partridges, followed by Ranger's eager bark. Marian's pony started, danced, and capered; Edmund watched her with considerable anxiety, but she reined it in with a steady, dexterous, though not a strong hand, kept her seat well, and rode on in ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with coarse grasses and low thickets of maple—which leads up to the entrance of the Brockhurst woods. Over these hung a soft, bluish haze, making them appear vast in extent, and upraising the dark ridge of the fir forest, which crowns them, to mountain height against the western sky. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy road before Richard's horse; and, rising at last, with a long-drawn whir of wings, skimmed the top of the bank and dropped into the pale stubble field on the other side of it. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... (7) A covey of partridges rose out of shot, flew over the hedge, and was lost to view. "Where do you think they've gone?" said the sportsman to his keeper. "There's a man digging potatoes in the next field. Ask if he saw them." "Aw, that's old Sam Petherick: he hasna ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of fox-ways. I have not spoken of his occasional tree climbing; nor of his grasshopper hunting; nor of his planning to catch three quails at once when he finds a whole covey gathered into a dinner-plate circle, tails in, heads out, asleep on the ground; nor of some perfectly astonishing things he does when hard pressed by dogs. But these are enough to begin the study and still leave plenty of things ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... the green curtain of her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat, to nod and dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalettes and poetry; the old gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph 'nose,' looked out at the 'corduroy' and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus covey followed suit, leaving the preacher and me vis-a-vis and saying nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out at the window and criticized the cattle we now and then passed. I was wishing ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... and has educated himself by all manner of out-of-the-way dodges,—sometimes these friends, odd specimens, old music-masters, rambling artists, seedy tutors, fencers, boxers, hunters, clowns, all light down together, and then the neighborhood rings with this precious covey: the rest of the year, may-be, he don't see an individual. One result of this isolation is, that freaks which would be very strange escapades in other people with him are mere commonplaces. Sometimes he goes over to the city there, and roams round like a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the two or three hours of restless, dream-filled unconsciousness was not what he needed, and he blinked in the dawn with eyes which felt as if they were filled with hot sand. In the first gray light a covey of winged things, which might or might not have been birds, arose from some roosting place within the city, wheeled three times over the building, and then vanished ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... been out upon Haldon, To look for a covey with Pup: I've often been over to Shaldon, To see how your boat is laid up: In spite of the terrors of Aunty, I've ridden the filly you broke; And I've studied your sweet, little Dante, In the shade of your favourite oak: When I sat in July to Sir Lawrence, I sat in your love of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... well as humor on his side when he observed, "My brother has done much execution this shooting season; with his gun he has killed a great deal of time." Having ineffectually discharged two barrels at a covey of partridges, the Chancellor was slowly walking to the gate of one of his Encome turnip-fields when a stranger of clerical garb and aspect hailed him from a distance, asking, "Where is Lord Eldon?" Not anxious to declare himself to the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... once became of vital interest to us. We spent months and years going through every vacant building into which we could force an entrance. Our setter dogs could point an empty doorway as well as a covey of quail, and seemed as curious about the interiors as we were ourselves. I became obsessed with a desire to know the age of these buildings and something of those early Alexandrians ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... the shop, the reporter right at her heels, but the chasing of his covey to corner was not easily accomplished. He was a newly fledged reporter, and Amarilly had all the instinct of the lowly for localities. She turned and doubled and dodged successfully. By a course circuitous she returned to Hebrew haunts, this time to seek, one Abram Canter, a little ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... the fight. And as for my men, may God bless 'em! I've loved 'em ever since then: They fought like the shining angels; they're the pick o' the land, my men. And the trench was a reeking shambles, not a Boche to be seen alive— So I thought; but on rounding a traverse I came on a covey of five; And four of 'em threw up their flippers, but the fifth chap, a sergeant, was game, And though I'd a bomb and revolver he came at me just the same. A sporty thing that, I tell you; I just couldn't blow him to hell, So I swung to the point of his jaw-bone, and down like ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... sixteenth repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial giving. Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty yards away; a paisano bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long tail. In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... October woods a covey of ruffed grouse springs up before us, overhead a flock of robins dashes by, and the birds scatter to feed among the wild grapes. The short round wings of the grouse whirr noisily, while the quick wing beats of the robins make little sound. Both are suited to their uses. The robin may ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... draw across the field and got nine of a covey of sixteen that had been ahead of Mr. Cat; and about four o'clock that evening we killed another white-and-gray cat. While driving home that night, Mr. Savage told me that he had killed fifty or more ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... him to you, my lord," said Monkbarns, "body and soul: give him leave to crack off his birding-piece at a poor covey of partridges or moor-fowl, and he's yours for everI will enchant him by the intelligence. But O, my lord, that you could have seen my phoenix Lovel!the very prince and chieftain of the youth of this age; and not ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... beating the home-preserve of his brains for pretty thoughts. On he struggles through that wild, and too luxuriant cover; now brought up by a "lawyer," now stumbling over a root, now bogged in a green spring, now flushing a stray covey of birds of Paradise, now a sphinx, chimsera, strix, lamia, fire-drake, flying-donkey, two-headed eagle (Austrian, as will appear shortly), or other portent only to be seen now-a-days in the recesses of that enchanted forest, the convolutions of a poet's brain. Up they ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... o'clock, a covey of partridges were seen to pitch in the middle of the CIRCUS, Bath, supposed to have taken refuge there, after having escaped from the aim of some distant gunner. Under the effects of fright and fatigue six were easily caught by three servants, and strange as it may ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... passed swiftly from terror to hysterical laughter as the driver pulled up short and a group of barefooted children broke in front of his horses and scuttled out of the dust into the road-side bushes like a covey of quails. There seemed to be a dozen of them, nearly all the same in size, but there turned out to be only five or six; or at least no more showed their gleaming eyes and teeth through the underbrush in quiet enjoyment of the ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... I'd often seen hawks do. Well, I stopped and hid behind a rock, thinking I might have a chance to put a few drops into him. All at once he appeared to stand still in the air, and, then closing his wings, shot down like an arrow. Just then I heard a loud 'whur-r-r,' and up started a whole covey of white partridges—grouse, I should say—the same as this you call the 'rock-grouse.' I saw that the hawk had missed the whole of them, and I marked ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... land, in the course of which a covey of partridges was seen, and Dr. Kjellman on the diorite rocks of the island made a pretty abundant collection of plants, belonging partly to species which he had not before met with in the Arctic regions, we again weighed anchor in order to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... and vicious expression of face, proclaimed him one of those predestined candidates for the State Prison and gallows, bred to their fate by the criminal neglect of the State, "I say," he said, addressing his companion, as wicked looking as himself, "isn't it a rum old covey." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... up strayed stock, went to the spring for water, or tilled the fields. If two men were together, one always watched while the other worked, ate, or drank; and they sat down back to back, or, if there were several, in a ring, facing outwards, like a covey of quail. The Indians were especially fond of stealing the horses; the whites pursued them in bands, and occasionally pitched battles were fought, with loss on both sides, and apparently as often resulting in the favor of one party as of the other. The most expert Indian ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... no bird life here, beyond a rare covey of partridges well behind the line, or a solitary lark searching for summer. One misses—oh, so much!—the cheeky chirp of the sparrow or the note of the thrush. We found a stray terrier about yesterday and have adopted it, but I don't think ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... and half dead, now washed by the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again. Arctic petrels flew across the road with joyful cries; marmots called to one another in the grass. Somewhere, far away to the left, lapwings uttered their plaintive notes. A covey of partridges, scared by the chaise, fluttered up and with their soft "trrrr!" flew off to the hills. In the grass crickets, locusts and grasshoppers kept ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... The fog, however, abated none of its denseness even on the "Surrey side," and before they reached the "Elephant and Castle," Jorrocks had run against two trucks, three watercress women, one pies-all-ot!-all-ot! man, dispersed a whole covey of Welsh milkmaids, and rode slap over one end of a buy 'at (hat) box! bonnet-box! man's pole, damaging a dozen paste-boards, and finally upsetting Balham Hill Joe's Barcelona "come crack 'em and try 'em" stall at the door of the inn, for all whose benedictions, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the immediate situation, Reader, did ever you see a careful setter run suddenly into the middle of a covey who were not on their feet nor close together, but a little dispersed and reposing in high cover in the middle of the day? No human face is ever so intense or human form more rigid. He knows that one bird is three yards from his nose, another the same distance from either ear, and, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... throwing herself on the help of Dixon, who was removing the tea things. Melrose meanwhile seated himself, and with a magnificent gesture invited the ladies to do the same. Mrs. Penfold obeyed; Lydia remained standing behind her mother's chair. The situation reminded her of a covey of partridges when a hawk ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... informed there are no game laws in America, and that all ranks of citizens, or even a negro, may destroy them in any manner he pleases. When the snow is on the ground, whole coveys are taken in traps, and brought alive to market. They fly swiftly, and afford an excellent shot; but if the same covey be shot at a second time, they will often seek a refuge in the woods, whence it is difficult to dislodge them. They are very hardy, and will bear almost any degree of heat and cold; this circumstance, and their being so prolific, I should think would ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... At this very moment a twig snapped beneath his foot with a noise like a pistol-shot, and a covey of partridges, lying out upon the stubble beside him, made an indignant evacuation of their bedroom. The mishap seemed fatal: M'Snape stood like a stone. But no alarm followed, and presently all was still again—so still, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Kenyon, to the effect that he will be here at four o'clock P.M.—and comes a final note from my aunt Mrs. Hedley (supposed to be at Brighton for several months) to the effect that she will be here at twelve o'clock, M.!! So do observe the constellation of adverse stars ... or the covey of 'bad birds,' as the Romans called them, and that there is no choice, but to write as I am writing. It can't be helped—can it? For take away the doubt about Miss Mitford, and Mr. Kenyon remains—and take away Mr. Kenyon, and there is ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett |
