"Poking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... round to pry into the way the library was looked after, and the suspicion increased her resentment. "I saw you going into her house just now, didn't I?" she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her books. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... he had hardly spoken the word when out of the bushes came poking the great head and yellow eyes of a lion. He was looking straight at Gerasimus. Then, giving that cry again, he bounded out and strode towards the good man, who was holding the donkey tight to keep him from running away. He was the biggest kind of a lion, much bigger than ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... dead tortoise somewhere or other, and contrived an instrument with it. He fitted horns to it, with a cross-bar, stuck in pegs, inserted a bridge, and played a sweet tuneful thing that made an old harper like me quite envious. Even at night, Maia was saying, he does not stay in Heaven; he goes down poking his nose into Hades— on a thieves' errand, no doubt. Then he has a pair of wings, and he has made himself a magic wand, which he uses for marshalling souls— convoying ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the rebuke all the more meekly as he perceived the stiff black legs of a turkey poking out from under my grandmother's apron while she was delivering it. To be exhorted and told of his shortcomings, and then furnished with a turkey at Thanksgiving, was a yearly part of his family program. In time he departed, not only with the turkey, but with ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Meanwhile, after poking about in as much of the ruins as I could penetrate, I stepped out through a gap in one of the walls and found myself again on the path by which I had entered. I noticed that it still ran on farther north, as having a destination beyond. So leaving the haunted ruins ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... to know that the little circuit in this rear basement had escaped the general slaughter. He had even tried turning on the light at one time when poking about curiously. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... evening, the east wind piping its sharp sibilant ditty in the bare shorn hedges, and poking its sharp fingers into the sides of well broad-clothed men by the way of passing jest, Mr. Spires, a great manufacturer of Stockington, driving in his gig some seven miles from the town, passed a poor woman with a stout child on her back. The large ruddy-looking man in the prime of life, and in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Blanche and the view of Mont Blanc from the valley of Aosta were alone worth all the trouble. I had only one wet day, and that I spent on the Brenon Glacier; for, in spite of all good resolutions to the contrary, I cannot resist poking into the glaciers whenever I have a chance. You will be interested in my results, which we shall soon, I hope, talk ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... safe anywhere. The question in my mind is whether our silver's safe; and a few other things. I catched him poking about in the silver table only this morning. He knows what's what. He knows everything. I wouldn't say he ain't one of the swell mob myself—made up to look like an old man. I'll swear he's never seen eighty ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... are, poking fun at your poor old Progenitor again,' said the old cobbler, with a merry twinkle in the corner of his eye. 'If it weren't for the jelly, and the natural affections always engendered by shoemaking, I think I should almost feel inclined to cut you off with a shilling, Artie, my boy—to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... draining the immense Haarlem lake, and then drove to it. Imagine a round tower with a steam-cylinder in its center; and the piston which works up-and-down, instead of working one great beam as they usually do, works eight, poking out on different sides of the round tower, and each driving a pump 6 feet in diameter. I am glad to have seen it. Then ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... act," shouted the callboy, poking his grinning countenance through between the flaps. "Leapers and clowns all out ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... muscles, Ben," remarked George, flinging an armful of wood on the brick floor, and kneeling beside the stove to kindle a fire in the old ashes. "I haven't a doubt but it's better for the back and arms than horseback riding. All the same," he added, poking vigorously at the smouldering embers, "I'm going to wallop that boy as soon as I've got ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... out when she talks. Just suppose she should drop some down my neck when she is talking. They would stick in to me, and hurt me like everything before I could get them out. I guess I would n't like that, would I? And if you had to stand just hours and hours, and have her cold fingers poking around your neck, and those great sharp scissors going snip, snip all around your neck, just where they would cut great pieces out if you dared move, I don't believe you would like that yourself, Ruthy Warren, even if she did give ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... wet. A servant helps him remove his coat. Then he comes to the window and sinks into a leather chair and stares at the rain and the umbrellas outside. The great financier has been abroad. His highly specialized mind has been, poking among columns of figures, columns of reports. He desired to find out if possible what conditions abroad were. For six months the great financier closeted himself daily with other great financiers and talked and talked and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... narrow lane cutting through the tall stems of sugarcanes; then he reaches the open meadow where the cricket chirps and where there is not a single man to be seen, only the snipe wagging their tails and poking at the mud with their bills. I can feel him coming nearer and nearer ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... the tank instead of standing on one leg when he found it a failure. Perhaps he was thinking the thing over. He did not think to much purpose, for day after day for more than a week back came the adjutant to walk like a soldier on duty up and down, up and down, poking his head through the bars each time. Sometimes he did it a score of times, sometimes only two or three. After ten days he disappeared. Where is he? Has he gone to find a blacksmith among the adjutants? or have his brother adjutants had him shut up till he has sense to know the ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Gentlemen, they were, hastily but richly dressed—one of them wounded severely in the hand, both radiating a sort of furious horror. Waving aside Wessel's ready miscomprehension, they pushed by him into the room and with their swords went through the business of poking carefully into all suspected dark spots in the room, further extending their ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was already approaching, with an eye to business, and even as his master spoke, he had got his nose into a certain wide, baggy pocket in the old army trousers, and was poking it about in ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... reaches the edge of the herd, this horse swells up and his eyes pop out like door-knobs. You can feel every muscle in him become as rigid as ropes, and he touches the ground as if he was walking on eggs. Look at him now; goes poking along as if he ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... come and watch them now and then as the work progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house, looking up at it pridefully and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or fingertip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded up a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge near the fence that separated her yard from that of the very young couple next door. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Guy, who were poking about in the house. 'You're not to guard the stockade,' she announced, with ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... if that was his title, took not the slightest notice of her reply, but nodded again—once, then two or three times together, then once alone, just as before. Griselda did not know what to do, when suddenly she felt something poking her head. It was the cuckoo—he had lifted his claw, and was tapping her head to make her nod. So she nodded—once, twice together, then once—that appeared to be enough. The king nodded once again; an invisible band suddenly struck up the loveliest music, and off they set to the places ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... hopeless martyrdom to the poor as in Old World cities, London for instance. There is something in the clear skies and bracing air of our city that keeps the spirits up to the successful defiance of anything short of actual hunger. There abides with me from days and nights of poking about in dark London alleys an impression of black and sooty rooms, and discouraged, red-eyed women blowing ever upon smouldering fires, that is disheartening beyond anything I ever encountered in the dreariest ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... and cool!" murmured she, poking her little pink toes into the burning sand; till presently, a thorn, which appeared to be waiting for that very purpose, thrust its way deep into her foot. She sat down in the middle of the road and screamed. Jennie tried her best to draw out the thorn, but only succeeded in breaking ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... we could find some way of getting down into it," said Ralph wistfully, poking at the ground, as if he thought he might force ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... said Gashwiler, now rapidly changing situations with the cooler Wiles; "yes, but, old fellow," he added, poking Wiles with a fat forefinger, "don't you see the whole thing will be ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... fiction, whichever you like. Here's a fact, plain and unvarnished. Born and bred in New York. Swell stable. Swell coachman. Swell master. Jewelled fingers of ladies poking at me, first thing I remember. First painful experience being sent to vet. ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... yelled, dropping the lamp and poking him roughly in the ribs. "What the devil do you mean by trying ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was a slender dogwood switch that I had been poking into the holes of the digger-wasps up the hillside. If one thing more than another will turn a snake tail to in a hurry it is the song of a switch. Expecting to see this overbold fellow jump out of his new skin and lunge off into the swale, I leaned forward and made the stick sing under ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the room, quite alone. Betty had disappeared, and the old scoundrel was having quite an enjoyable time poking into matters that did not concern him and disapproving of them on general principles. So far as the improvements concerned old Sam Graham's fortunes, Blinky would concede no health in them. But with regard to Duncan there was ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... boasting of what we would do. "Just wait, my boys, till you see some hundreds of those ugly blackamoors, with their long pikes, poking away at you, and climbing up the side of the schooner, and you will have reason to change your tone, I suspect," said he, as he turned on ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the men of the day, found a good deal of pleasure in poking fun at woman's use of dress and ornaments as bait for entrapping lovers, and many a squib expressing this theory appeared in the newspapers. These cynical notes no more represented the general opinion of the people than do similar satires ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... After poking under the clock in the dark, and failing to set the pendulum going again properly in that way, she next attempted to lift the clock, and give it a shake. It was set in a marble case, with a bronze figure ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... stepped briskly up, and poking her head between us, said, at the highest pitch of her cracked voice,—"Yes, it is good; it was made this ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... clerk who had cross-examined me to get off his stool, and after poking the fire and consulting the directory, and skirmishing pleasantly with a fellow-clerk for a minute or two, to go to the door of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... corporation was under arms, indeed, in the sable costume, doublet, breeches and cloak, with which the "Estudiantinas Espagnoles" have familiarised us, only in this case the Spanish cocked hat and spoon was replaced by a sort of black Phrygian cap. To our astonishment, these young gentlemen, instead of poking fun at us, got off the parapet on which they had been sitting, pulled off their caps to us, and welcomed us with the most kindly politeness. They knew, perhaps, that we too had worn our breeches out upon school benches, and ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... what else, Rose questioned, could she do with time, of which there was so much? She could not find an answer, and there rose at that moment a chorus of thanks and a gentle clapping of hands. The gaunt girl had finished her song and, poking her chin, returned to her seat. The room buzzed with chatter; it seemed that only Francis and Rose were silent. She turned to ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... next is not very clear in my memory. I have a hazy picture of purple A.P.M.'s, of our GEORGE sitting calmly in a Rolls Royce, of irrepressible woman poking a No. 2 Brownie against the window of our car and trying to find a perfectly good king in a small viewfinder; of the Colonel on my right saluting, with a fearful waggle of the hand, without his hat on, that article having been simply swept off by my own tremendous "circular-motion-thumb-close-to-the-forefinger-touching-the-peak-of-the-cap, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... upon the question, "when positive and persistent memory begins in the human being." And, like Hugh Miller, he must have been a shy old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by what he could not well account for, peering and poking about among the layers of right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness of that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon{6} his "first-found Ammonite," ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... walls were covered with grass and moss. The odour of a certain yellow feathery flower, which grew on them rather plentifully, used to give me special delight. Great humble-bees haunted the walls, and were poking about in them constantly. Butterflies also found them pleasant places, and I delighted in butterflies, though I seldom succeeded in catching one. I do not remember that I ever killed one. Heart and conscience both were against that. I ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... happiness in his voice, while Slim's excess stomach almost entirely disappeared in the abnormal expansion of his chest. Jerry could find no other dignified way of expressing his great pleasure than by quietly poking Slim under the ribs, to the entire undoing of that young man's ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... his particular and especial abomination and when he gets on the editorial trail of one of that ilk, he turns him inside out and displays the very secrets of what should be his immortal soul. He is always poking fun at friends and they laugh with him at what he writes about them, which recalls one of his earliest and best bits of advice—"never to write about a man so that others will laugh at him, unless your intention is deliberately to hurt his feelings. Write so that he will ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... "Well! Suppose he stops poking me first! I haven't got the patience of a saint like you, Lucy—and gracious only knows where you get it from, my poor child! Twenty years ago you'd have taken that plate of chops and shoved it down his throat." A fleeting recollection corollary to this thought impelled ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning. His energy is wonderful—and contagious. Can you imagine that he has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly poking at the bars? Metaphor apart, I find myself collecting all my notes and commonplaces, and wondering to see how easily they fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot help smiling when I add, that I fancy ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stooped and kissed her, and she held his hand and stroked it lovingly. The sisters gathered about with teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy her father always used to bring her, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... "He'll be poking in just as dinner is over, and the puddings cold, and company preparing to leave; then he'll catch ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and mineralogist; a lover of all natural science, but particularly of chemistry and geology. When I stopped to look at him, I thought he must have put his own tastes in his pocket for several days past that he might gratify mine. I was standing on a rock, high and dry and grey with lichen; he was poking ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from his perch in the tree. He could tell by the actions of the large creature that it was eating and at the reminder of food he became frantic. He scrambled hastily to the ground just as the big beast ambled away and lost no time in poking his head into the cavity in the ants' nest in the hope of finding some remnant of the other's meal. But, if he thrust his head into the opening hurriedly he withdrew it in still greater haste. He had indeed found remnants of the feast, just as he had hoped. A carpet ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Gouache, poking the stick of a brush into the eye of his picture. "I have painted three generations of the family, I who speak to you, and I hope to paint the fourth if Don Orsino here can be cured of his cynicism and induced to marry Donna—what is her name?" ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... difficulty, succeeded in manufacturing a warm suit of clothes for the winter wear of the prettiest one. Having equipped the kitten in its new habiliments, I carried it to Aunt Henshaw, as quite a triumph of art; but when I made my appearance, with the two little ears poking out of the bonnet, and the tail quite visible through a hole in the skirt which I had cut for it, Cousin Statia actually indulged in a hearty fit of laughter, while Aunt Henshaw appeared even more amused. She told me that nature had furnished it with ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... scolding at him. "Your sister," repeated the carter, turning round his face with its great red lump of nose—"she's gone to hospital—diphtheria hospital—she has. Doctor was here over a week ago and took her off. They've been here since poking round and asking who she was and where she belonged—well, we didn't know. And asking where you were, too—and we didn't know either. She was real bad, if you ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... class, publishers' readers are not vocal. They spend their days and nights assiduously (in the literal sense) bent over mediocre stuff, poking and poring in the unending hope of finding something rich and strange. A gradual stultitia seizes them. They take to drink; they beat their wives; they despair of literature. Worst, and most ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... alone," said Hans, his face glowing with indignation. "You are always poking fun at my foot, and I don't half like it. My foot is one very good foot, (holding it up, and swaying it backwards and forwards;) just fit to kick an impudent vagabone with and teach ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... around. Her assumption of equality with him was disconcerting, and at times he half-consciously resented the impudence and bizarreness of her intrusion upon him—rising out of the sea in a howling nor'wester, fresh from poking her revolver under Ericson's nose, protected by her gang of huge Polynesian sailors, and settling down in Berande like any shipwrecked sailor. It was all on a par with her Baden-Powell and ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... Las Animas yesterday, Mrs. Phillips, Mrs. Cole, and I, to do a little shopping. There are several small stores in the half-Mexican village, where curious little things from Mexico can often be found, if one does not mind poking about underneath the trash and dirt that is everywhere. While we were in the largest of these shops, ten or twelve Indians dashed up to the door on their ponies, and four of them, slipping down, came in the store and passed on quickly to the counter farthest back, where the ammunition ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of the window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then, between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen-wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... who he is—Jenny and me and you; and I'd propose that my niece goes down the coast in the motor boat with Giuseppe. They can cruise away to the west, where there's an easy landing here and there at little coves, and they may sight my brother poking about, or hid in some hole down that way. There are caves with tunnels aft that give on the rough lands and coombs behind. It's a pretty lone region and he couldn't hang on long there or find food for his belly. They can try that for ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... was all too interesting to let you get sick right away. Pop was poking into two of the large mound-shaped cases that were sitting loose and open on the right-hand seat, as if ready for emergency use. One had a folded something with straps on it that was probably a parachute. The second had I judged a thousand or more of the inch cubes ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... there's nothing more for explorers to do in this country. What fun it must have been for La Salle and Pere Marquette and Lewis and Clark to find those big rivers that no white man had ever seen before, and go poking about in the wilderness. That was the great and only sport; everything else is tame and flat beside it. I'll never get done envying those early explorers; how I wish I ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... alive!" exclaimed Kittie, slamming the stove door open, and poking in among the ashes and cinders with wrathful haste, "if this abominable fire hasn't gone out; I never did in all my life! burnt up a bushel of kindling, too, dear me; water in the tea-kettle stone cold, not a blessed thing cooking; no more stuff in ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... quick wit, characteristic of the clod-hopper, it did not occur to him to mention this at the time. He told it, however, afterwards to his master, a hunting man; and, on a subsequent occasion, when the same incident occurred again, one of the whips dismounted and went into the water, and, poking about the roots of the willows, dislodged Reynard, concealed under the hollow bank, and immersed under water, except his nose and mouth, by which he was hanging suspended from a fang of the tree roots. Surely Reynard’s clever ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... his ease in a deck-chair on the broad Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall, thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls' school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead, sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... groups and processions, surged back and forth. What a multitude of idlers of all ages and ranks were crowded together here to gratify their curiosity! There was laughing, grumbling, stealing, rib-poking, hurrahing, while every now and then blared the trumpet of the mountebank, who, in a red cloak and with his clown and monkey, stood on a high stand loudly boasting of his own skill, and sounding the praises of his marvelous tinctures and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... lived a poor peasant, who used to sit every evening by the hearth, poking the fire, while his wife spun. One night he said, "How sad it is that we have no children; everything is so quiet here, while in other houses it is so noisy ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... an ill-looking person: she has good eyes, and would be very well if she had not a, habit of stretching and poking out her neck. Her shape is horrible; she is quite crooked; her back is curved into the form of an S. I observed her one day, through curiosity, when the Dauphine was helping ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... rose from the floor in corners and wall angles, and could be shut or opened by means of lids over their upper ends. These were more to Hewitt's mind, and he went about from one to another, groping under the lids, and poking down into the flues with a walking-stick. There was a wire-grating, or diaphragm, it seemed, in each of them, two or three feet down, and we could hear the end of the stick raking on this at each investigation. ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... young fellow came poking around here not so long ago with a little hammer pecking at the rocks. I didn't pay much attention to him, though. He never stayed but one day, and I was a-cutting clover hay, and too busy to notice him much 'cept to ask him in to dinner. He couldn't seem to manage his chicken ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... appeared and the change was effected, to the great disappointment of Bi, who kept continually poking his head out to get a glimpse of the fine ladies. He would much have preferred staying out in the main car and getting acquainted with people. His cunning had departed with the need. He had put things in the hands of this surly companion, and now he meant to have a ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... Let me read you some lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... bed near the yew-hedge. She heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges, Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable nuisance of poking in her nose where it was not wanted. Thus did Miss Coppinger summarise the duties of a chaperon; but it must be remembered that she had never been broken to the work, and in any case she had been out of harness for ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... fool going, is Jenkins," was the complimentary retort of Jenkins's wife. "After he had helped to ring out the bell, he must needs go poking and groping into the organ-loft, hunting for matches or some such insane rubbish. He might have known, had he possessed any sense, that candles and matches are not likely to be there in summer-time! Why, if the organist wanted ever so much to stop in after dark, when the college is locked ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... uttering fierce growls, he tore the hard wood into shreds, the man at the other end poking at the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the charge that the unlucky Burl had barely time to thrust out his gun against the chief assailant, when he found himself completely beset. Wielding his unloaded rifle as he would a pike—poking, pushing, punching therewith at the infuriated dam, in throat and breast and ribs—he contrived for a time to keep himself clear of the terrible claws continually making at him in such fierce, unwelcome greeting. But the odds were against the black hunter. Swift to obey their mother's command, the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... before attacking you. They pricked horribly, like pins your maid has stuck in the wrong places; and they had a horrid penchant for your ankles. I was sorry I had on clocked stockings! And I apologised heartily to Potter for poking fun at his ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Morty, poking his head this way and that, peering into the chamber as he had peered yesterday, wished he could see Colonel John's face. But Colonel John, bending resolutely over the handful of embers that glowed in an inner angle of the room, showed only his back. Even that Morty could ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... gives it its feeling and truth. Emphasis deceives less than words; perhaps that is why well-educated people are so afraid of it. From the custom of saying everything in the same tone has arisen that of poking fun at people without their knowing it. When emphasis is proscribed, its place is taken by all sorts of ridiculous, affected, and ephemeral pronunciations, such as one observes especially among the young people about court. It is this affectation of speech and manner which makes ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... for I like dreams, and have a great many curious ones myself. But they don't keep me from being tired of Christmas," said Effie, poking discontentedly among the ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... with dignity. 'Me listenin'! I've too much to do to go poking myself into other people's bizness. But I wos just comin' in to ask wot ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... jerk. They were poking him up on all sides, wanting him to come to a decision, and he could not see his way to it. Of course he was half asleep; he knew it himself. He felt that he wanted rest; his entity was working for him ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... caught of Aiken's face I knew he was regretting now, with even more reason than before, that he had not remained at the coast, and I felt very sorry for him. Now that he was in trouble and not patronizing me and poking fun at me, I experienced a strong change of feeling toward him. He was the only friend I had in Honduras, and as between him and these strangers who had received us so oddly, I felt that, although it would be ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... more brawny arm of the two. The real advantage lies in the point and polish of the swordsman's weapon; in the trained eye quick to spy out the weakness of the adversary; in the ready hand prompt to follow it on the instant. But, after all, the sword exercise is only the hewing and poking of the clubman developed ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... gift-horse in the mouth. All I care about is that I'm to go to London next week and begin work—Why, you don't seem pleased to hear of my good fortune," continued Leather, turning a sharp look on his friend, who was gazing gravely at the sand, in which he was poking ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Marian's sympathies were real. She liked Miss Almira, though she didn't enjoy having her cold scissors snipping around her shoulders, and her bony fingers poking at her when she stood up to ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... we have no other course before us than to wish Henry luck and bid him go to it. But Jill, who had not seen the opening stages of the affair, thought far otherwise. She merely saw in Henry a great brute of a man poking at a defenceless bird ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... I could feel things poking into my back before I landed; I always get the creeps when there's death around, and that last sound had been just that—somebody's last sound. I knew somebody was going to kill me before I could find the switch. Then I stumbled over something, and my hair stood on end. I ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... not quite such a damned fool as all that. A man needn't handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it. If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I'm quite prepared to believe you without poking my nose into it. Chastity is a dead donkey. No beating will bring it to life again. Who killed it? The experience of every sane man and woman on earth. It's decayed; it ought to be buried. You ask me to give it a trial. Perhaps I will, when I'm in the same mellow condition ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... "What are you poking about down there for?" he said, pushing his ugly old face into mine as he spoke. "You fool! if you had fallen you would have been drowned. No one could swim a stroke in that mill-race. And then there would have been another death, and all the old fuss ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... touch, and you arrest and attract everyone. You are not the superior person. In effect, you slap your neighbour on the back and say, "We're all in the same boat; let us enjoy the joke"; and you find he will come to you with glistening eye. He may feel a little foolish at first—you are poking his ribs; but you cannot help it—having given him the way to poke your own. By your merry honesty he knows you for a safe comrade, and he comes with relief and confidence—we like to talk about ourselves. He will ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... tipped over his eyes as a protection from the rays of the declining sun, lying fast asleep in a large garden chair which was tilted back on its hind legs against the side of the house. Spotts lost no time in poking him in the ribs with his cane, whereupon the tragedian, rousing himself from slumber, hastily assumed a more upright position, bringing the chair down on its front legs with a bang. Having thus been fully awakened, he became at once the ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... years—from 1847 to 1851—Browning never crossed the confines of Italy. No duties summoned him away, and he was happy in his home. "We are as happy," he wrote in December 1847, "as two owls in a hole, two toads under a tree-stump; or any other queer two poking creatures that we let live after the fashion of their black hearts, only Ba is fat and rosy; yes indeed." In spring they drove day by day through the Cascine, passing on the way the carven window of the Statue and the Bust, and "the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... went to the ha-ha, and satisfied herself that at any rate the youngsters were amusing themselves, spoke a word to Mrs. Greenacre over the ditch, and took one look at the quintain. Three or four young farmers were turning the machine round and round and poking at the bag of flour in a manner not at all intended by the inventor of the game; but no mounted sportsmen were there. Miss Thorne looked at her watch. It was only fifteen minutes past twelve, and it was understood that Harry Greenacre was not to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Gub-Gub poking his nose through the bars of the window, trying to sniff the cooking-smells that came from the palace-kitchen. She told the pig to bring the Doctor to the window because she wanted to speak to him. So Gub-Gub went and woke the Doctor who was ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... about deck, among sheep and goats. Most of the live stock was washed off, but Jean remained because she had been stowed away in the long boat. In warm latitudes the men took their meals on deck, and she was always one of the mess, poking her nose into every bread bag, and scalding it in the soup. The sailors poured grog down her throat, and twice made her tipsy; and she behaved as most individuals ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... know what you call a good thing, you old fluter. I'm obliged to sit on my hip bones—I can't go to a lecture—all the tutors think I am poking fun at them, and put me on directly. I haven't been able to go to lecture these ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Eileen, poking viciously at the Poms with her umbrella. "I don't know how you endure them, Cousin Mary; I can hardly tell which is the worst, Chloe ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... first night, about 10 o'clock. We had to take a narrow path on the way, with Fritz sniping us every step; he had registered the path and it was a constant target for his machine guns and snipers. Our pet was well hidden in the hedge, with its nose poking through a hole in the leafage and so cunningly camouflaged that it was absolutely impossible ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... short, Brissenden struck Martin as anaemic and feather-brained, and was promptly dismissed from his mind. An hour later he decided that Brissenden was a boor as well, what of the way he prowled about from one room to another, staring at the pictures or poking his nose into books and magazines he picked up from the table or drew from the shelves. Though a stranger in the house he finally isolated himself in the midst of the company, huddling into a capacious Morris chair and reading steadily from a thin volume he had drawn ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... "and I also saw yuh poking him up the street with a big stick. Do yuh think that was a nice thing for a strong young ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... attestation of these long-winded old monsters, who wrote about charms and enchantments in a style as potent in disenchantment as holy-water, and who bored their own generation too thoroughly to have any claim upon the button of ours. Every age is sure of its own fleas without poking over the rag-bag of the past; and of all things, a superstition has the least need of proving the antiquity of its pedigree, since its very etymology is better than the certificate of all the Heralds' Colleges put together. We are surprised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... said Glen, feeling that his new friend was poking fun. "I ran away from the reform school, ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... at a picnic in the holidays—a clerk, he was, at the bank—and he used to put notes to her under the cushions at church; but one unlucky Sunday, Louie had a cold and didn't go, and she told Mabel Blisset to bring it, and Mabel didn't understand the right place, and went poking about, so that Miss Dormer found it out, and there was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... today discovered a man poking about, and using a pickax now and then, as though searching for minerals, I suspected instantly that we were on the verge of a discovery, and it turned out that way. We hid in the bushes, and I even managed to snap off the party, with his ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... to the garden, have they?" he asked now, poking with his stick in the beds under the windows. "I suppose you girls know what these things are, coming up. There's a peony. I do know that. I remember this one. It's the old dark kind, not pink. I don't much care ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... said Patsy, swinging her feet and poking at the grass with a branch she had stripped of willow leaves; "I suppose that even if you are at the castle and I at Cairn Ferris we can always come here or meet at the alder grove—why, there ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... crack of the whip left in me yet, Stephen, old chap, said Mr Dedalus, poking at the dull fire with fierce energy. We're not dead yet, sonny. No, by the Lord Jesus (God forgive me) not ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... face took on a deep hue, but only for a moment. He filled his pipe, poking the tobacco down hard with his thumb. Then he took the Commissioner's letter, twisted it up, touched it to the tiny fire that blazed in the grate, and lighted his pipe. He smoked in silence for a few moments and then said to himself, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... there must have been nevertheless something very attractive, for the young men crowded around this carriage in numbers; and especially that young reprobate Dolly Trotter was to be seen, constantly leaning his great elbows on the window, and poking his head into the carriage. Lady Raikes remarked that, among other gentlemen, her husband went up and spoke to the little carriage, and when he and Dolly came back to her, asked who was in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... pertinacious way of poking his nose into all sorts of affairs, not at all after the manner of the usual pig, but more like a village gossip who wants to know about everything that is going on in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... job on to me, with asphaltum and a buzz saw. I'm going to be on your front page 'fore you know it, but it's going to be a poetry piece that will raise your hair; I ain't going to frost my cake, poking into folks' private business, telling shameful things on them that half kills them. Lots of times I see them getting their dose on the cars, and they just shiver, and go white, and shake. Nix on the printing about shame, and sin, and trouble in the papers for me!' I said, and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... she announced. "You girls can talk if you don't make too much noise. Loud talking always keeps me awake. You may call me when we get to Overton." With these words she bent over her bag, opened it, and drew out a small down cushion. She rose in her seat, removed her hat, and, poking it into the rack above her head, sat down. Arranging her pillow to her complete satisfaction, she rested her head against it, closed her eyes and within five minutes was oblivious ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... forgive my poking about, Josephine? But you are so vague—all artistic and beautiful natures are vague—you might easily have forgotten that Piccolo is hanging about somewhere waiting to carry a last goodnight word to your impatient bridegroom. Why, there is a ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... not seem interested in what was said, or in what I answered. He was a man of few words. He went off to the eastern wall, whither we followed him. I found him poking about there with a stick. The Jo'burg charioteer was soon fussing along, hurrying on tea-time. 'He didn't want to get a dose of fever this trip,' he said. He had heard about our unhealthy season up north, and the month was now April. He wanted to be back by sunset. So it came to pass that ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... After poking around in the family cupboard under the window seat, I routed out a bag of popcorn. I lighted the gas stove and popped about three quarts, and then boiled some sugar and water to crystallize it. When you are starving, have you ever eaten popcorn buttered for a first course and crystallized ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... old "Sailor," who had been poking his nose over the vessel's side, and snuffing and whining, rushed up to me, and, placing his head in my lap, turned his eyes towards my face, and looked as much as to say, "Are we not near our journey's end; and don't I smell the land?" Little Jacko, too, came out of his crib, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... "I thought it war poking his fun at me, yer honours—for I knowed the Captain hadn't been at Ballycloran that night, and that the masther had been ating his dinner at home, so I didn't be taking much notice of what he war saying, till we war mostly half down the avenue, when Mr. Thady told me the body ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... near the site of an old French post, Fort William was a typical traders' stronghold. Wooden palisades twenty feet high ran round the whole fort and the inner court enclosed at least two hundred square yards. Heavily built block-houses with guns poking through window slits gave a military air to the trading post. The block-houses were apparently to repel attack from the rear and the face of the fort commanded the river. Stores, halls, warehouses and living apartments for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the table, he lingered awhile, watching his mother gather the cups and saucers into the waiter in readiness for Aunt Rachel, and Pocahontas collect scraps for the dogs, two of which were already poking impatient, wistful noses into the room. Beyond the threshold they were not allowed to intrude, but they stood in the passage outside the open door, and whined and indulged in sharp "yaps" of protest against hope deferred. When they saw their mistress advancing with a heaped-up plate of food, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... served as a bed. By this time the rain had almost ceased, and I began to think that it might be advisable to get outside the house before I chanced to be seen. So, having got through the window with Patch in my arms, I shut it again and was going round to the front when I saw that the terrier was poking his muzzle into every nook and corner, as if in search of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes, and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is," he said, "and I earned it myself and so I ain't poking it down any rat-hole without being condemned sure that I'll be able to pull it all back again with just as much more sticking to it. That wouldn't be sooavable—and from what you know ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... after bedtime. I think it's rather wonderful.' Your aunt seemed interested, and said it reminded her of a boa constrictor. Angela said, didn't she mean a python? And then they argued as to which of the two it was. Your uncle, meanwhile, poking about with that damned pistol of his till human life wasn't safe in the vicinity. And the pie lying there on the table, and me unable to touch it. You begin to understand why I said I had been ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... guide, poking his head into the coach. "Here's where you get out. Boss said to treat her well," he continued, turning to the man with whom he had ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... announced on Bakery-hill. It was in November, 1853. Four hundred diggers were present. I recollect I heard a "Doctor Carr" poking about among the heaps of empty bottles all round the Camp, and asked who paid for the good stuff that was in them, and whither was it gone. Of course, Doctor Carr did not mention, that one of those bottles, corked and ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... said to himself as he left the rock and turned to go back to the camp; "it may be a family secret of some sort, and I have no business to be poking into it. I'll just keep my hands off, and wait for Joe to speak, if he cares to. Besides, I've got plenty of other things to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... lunch alone with his grannie, for grandfather was lunching at his club. There was no poking of the Ffolliot children into schoolrooms and nurseries for meals when they stayed with the ganpies. His face was clean and his hair very smooth, and he held back Mrs Granny's chair for her just as grandfather did. She stooped and kissed the fresh, friendly little face and ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... pleased wid de way things is gwine on heah at all," he declared, poking the fire viciously and addressing his remark more particularly to an old gentlemen who in ruffles and red velvet sat with crossed legs in a high-backed chair just over the piano. "Heah me an' Marse Nat an' Miss ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... was just poking his rim above the western horizon and the chilly damp of early dawn lay over the island. The sea, as calm almost as a lake, lay sullen and gray, scarcely heaving. Behind the sleeping camp a few shreds of mist—the ghosts of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... he growled. "If I'd seen him, do you think he'd be writing me letters? It is your job to pinch him. If you people down at Scotland Yard spent less time poking into the affairs of honest ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... you mean sleeping until seven o'clock, the first morning we are on our houseboat?" cried Phil, poking her head in the cabin door. "I would have awakened you before now, only Miss Jones would not let me. Lillian and Eleanor have been waiting for you in their bathing suits for a long while. Do let's have a ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... like Dr. Archie, poking up out of the past, reminded one of disappointments and losses, of a freedom that was no more: reminded her of blue, golden mornings long ago, when she used to waken with a burst of joy at recovering her precious self and her precious world; when she never ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... don't think it's got any name. Principal towns—why, what ARE those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees—nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know—' and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, 'just as if it was ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... how, when the fine weather came, he had been allowed by his doctor to take advantage of it, how devoted Brooke had been, and how he was altogether a most estimable and upright young man. Why Mr. March paused a minute just there, and after a glance at Meg, who was violently poking the fire, looked at his wife with an inquiring lift of the eyebrows, I leave you to imagine. Also why Mrs. March gently nodded her head and asked, rather abruptly, if he wouldn't like to have something to eat. Jo saw and understood the look, and she stalked grimly away to get wine ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... she tried in vain to imagine his cultured greatness in a "teeny weeny" little house. "Am busy enamelling a cosy corner," said Fanny, sprawling to the end of her third sheet, "so excuse more." Miss Winchelsea answered in her best style, gently poking fun at Fanny's arrangements, and hoping intensely that Mr. Se'noks might see the letter. Only this hope enabled her to write at all, answering not only that letter but one in November ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... responsibility of this matter on myself; you must not waken her, absolutely. It would not do at all," said the captain, poking the fire very energetically; "it would not do at all; I ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and stuck out his chin. He mouthed and pointed to it tauntingly. In spite of himself, a sorry grin flickered over George's battered, weary young face. He mouthed back—speech was beyond either; sagging at the knees he reeled forward and his right arm went poking out ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... how soon I fell asleep. It must have been pretty soon; for I can remember seeing Crofter come into the dormitory and turn out the gas; and I can remember in the general stillness hearing voices and the noise of poking the fire in Mr Sharpe's room downstairs. After that I forgot everything, until suddenly I discovered myself ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Milt watched Jeff Saxton's manner and manners. The hot day had turned into a cold night. Jeff tucked the knitted robe about Claire's shoulders, when she returned to the fire. He moved quietly and easily. He kept poking up the fire, smiling at Claire as he did so. He seemed without difficulty to maintain two conversations: one with Mr. Boltwood about finances, one with Claire about mysterious persons called Fannie and Alden and Chub and Bobbie and Dot, the mention of whom ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You shouldn't ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... you will) tower was certainly of great antiquity; even the unkempt little priest whom I questioned in the Grand' Place could give me little or no information concerning it. Indeed, he seemed to be on the point of resenting my questions, as though he thought that I was in some way poking fun at him. I presume that it was the scene of great splendor in their early days. For here a count of Flanders or a duke of Brabant exercised sovereign rights, and at such a ceremony as the laying of a corner-stone ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... had just stacked up Saturday evening, he too began to scent mischief. From the direction of Will Stoker's cottage he too began to smell smoke. Was it after all possible that Will Stoker could not give up the business of poking fires? He had been in the village since the previous winter. In the gray of winter nothing had happened; but now, when the sun was shining again, when it was aglow in the heavens, when day in and day out it spread its red heat over cottages and fir-trees, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... well with the Colonel. Freed from money cares, praised for his generalship in the cotton corner, able to entertain sumptuously, he was again a Southern gentleman of the older school, and so in his envied element. Yet today he frowned as he stood poking absently with his cane ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the mantlepiece with any hope of making a variation in their numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as good to you as Grimaldi. Any thing to deliver you from this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to shake it off: not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of Sickness ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Lass,' which part she acted, she transformed her whole being, body, shape, voice, language, look, and features, into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad, laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bediz'ning, dowdy dress that ever cover'd the untrain'd limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here you would have thought it impossible the same creature could ever have been recover'd to what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and looked away from him to escape evidence of the pain which she knew her words were giving him. His face seemed haggard in the feeble flicker of the candle. Stiles had sat silent throughout, poking some dried pine-needles into a little heap with a stick. He continued carefully to poke them together and scatter them again, poke them together and ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse |
