"Rat-tat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rat-tat at the door! Here are valentines one, two, three; There is one for Harry, and one for Will, And a big one for girlie, see! Wildly she flies o'er the nursery floor, Never was girlie so happy before, As ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... slackened our pace under the impression that all fear of pursuit was at an end, and Reuben was amazing us by an account of the excitement which had been caused in Havant by our disappearance, when through the stillness of the night a dull, muffled rat-tat-tat struck upon my ear. At the same moment Saxon sprang from his horse and listened intently ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wretched and forlore, Tattered, grim, so like a beggar, ne'er had trod that path before. His shirt was torn, his hat was gone, bare and begrimed his knees, Face with blood and dirt disfigured, elbows peeped from out his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "Drink! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... at last. Mrs. Ready had been absent on a visit to London; and the moment she heard of the intended emigration of the Lyndsays to Canada, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and rushed to the rescue. The loud, double rat-tat-tat at the door, announced an arrival of ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Not long after eight the housemaid brought in a lighted lamp, and set it, as usual, upon the little black four-legged table in the drawing-room. And in the same moment the knocker of the front door sounded a vigorous rat-tat-tat, a visitor's summons. ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... morn! Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... rat-tat at the door, the sound of a letter falling on the mat, and Fanning the postman passed on. George leaned back quickly so that he might not see him. Mr Griffith fetched the letter, opened it with trembling hands.... He gave a ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... letter at a time, With boggles, hesitations, 680 Stoppings, beginnings o'er again, And getting matters into train, Could hardly overload the brain With too excessive rations, Since just to ask if two and two Really make four? or, How d' ye do? And get the fit replies thereto In the tramundane rat-tat-too, Might ask ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... rose and floated a tarnished yellow haze. So many sounds go forth to make the voices of the night: somewhere a child was crying fretfully, across the way the faint tinkle of a piano, the far-off rattle of the elevated, a muffled laugh from a window, above, the rat-tat of a cab-horse, the breeze in the ivy clinging to the walls of the church next door, the quarrelsome chirp of the sleepy sparrows; and then, recurrence. Only the poet or the man in pain opens ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... chair again I sat down by him. The silence of a minute or two was broken by a thunderous rat-tat at the house-door. Christopherson leapt to his feet, rushed from the room; I, half fearing that he had gone mad, followed to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... had reached the old brick house and sounded the brass knocker with an eager rat-tat-tat. Presently she heard footsteps resound along the empty hall and the Irish housekeeper flung open ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... come a distinct little "rat-tat-tat," several times repeated. No one who was not deaf could have helped hearing such a distinct sound; but Lub could not see that any ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... rabble. Reaching Dunkeld in an exhausted condition early in the following morning, he and a few comrades found shelter in the house of a friend. But as they sat, about to fall to on a much needed meal, down the little street came the "rat-tat-tat" of a drum, and past the window swaggered an unkempt Highland drummer, halting at intervals to hurl defiance at all Whigs, and a challenge to them to fight the famous Highland champion, Rory Dhu Mhor. And this is something after the fashion ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... spoken when there was a loud rat-tat at the front door, and Jack Glover hastened into the hall to answer. But it was not the policeman he had expected. It was a girl in a big sable coat, muffled up to her eyes. She pushed past Jack, crossed the hall, and walked straight into ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... from the timbers forming the palisade. The defenders, lying close, made no attempt to reply, for the attackers were adept at taking cover and offered no target to the former's fire. Presently, as Rupert Wilmshurst had predicted, came the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun, and a swathe of bullets traversed the open ground in front of the defences, rising until the hail of nickel simply cut a gap in the palisade like a scythe ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... again down one side, and then on a corner, but always on the edge. Nor was it a regular and monotonous rapping; it was curiously varied. One performance that I carefully noted down at the moment reminded me of the click of a telegraph instrument. It was "rat-tat-tat-t-t-t-t-rat-tat,"—the first three notes rather quick and sharp, the next four very rapid, and the last two quite slow. After tapping, the bird always seemed to listen. Often while I was watching one at his hammering, a signal of the same sort would come from a distance. Sometimes my bird ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... was a slight rat-tat, That put their Joys to rout; Out ran the City Rat; His guest, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... long story for tell dat night On poor leetle Rose Elmire, An' she say she 's sorry about de fight We 're doin' so well down here— But it 's not our fault an' we can't help dat, De law she is made for all, So our duty is wait for de rat-tat-tat Of ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... say so if you had seen him walloping me with a hard leather strap. (Walking up garden.) I haven't forgotten it in sixteen long years. (Rat-tat-tat twice.) Hullo, Dad. (Bessie intensely expectant. Rat-tat-tat.) Hullo, Dad—let me in. I am your own Harry. Straight. Your son Harry come ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... mitrailleuse which can spit death in a wide swathe as it revolves from side to side, like the full stroke of a scythe on nodding daisies. The bark of it is as alarming as its bite—an incredibly rapid rat-tat that makes men fall on their faces when they hear, like worshipers at ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... the man in the moon, Coming back too soon From the famous town of Norwich, Caught up the dish, Said, "It's just what I wish To hold my cold plum-porridge!" Gave the cow a rat-tat, Flung water on the cat, And sent him away like a rocket. Said, "O Moon there you are!" Got into her car, And went off with the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... rat-tat, quickly doubled again, " Announced an intruder of Consequence vain, Decorum inclin'd to defy all;— Again went the knocker, yet louder and faster, John ran to the door, and one ask'd for his master, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... completed, being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at the sound of which ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... undercut before him, when he heard the postman's steps hurrying around the Crescent. He rose with a certain quick deliberateness, and, going out into the hall, opened the front door just in time to avoid the rat-tat-tat. Then, the one letter he had expected duly in his hand, he waited till he had sat down again in front of his still empty plate before he broke the seal and glanced over ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... with them, and they were so cunningly hidden that one might pass within six feet of them without being aware of their existence. But you could not get away from the sounds. The horrible dinning continued, from the sharp rat-tat-tat-tat of the French 75mm., of which we had several batteries in close proximity, and from the bark of the 18-pounders to the crunching roar of the 15-inch howitzer. The air was literally humming with shells. It seemed like a race ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... hanging like curtains, motionless in the bright light, and not a single bird on the tree-tops to break the perfect charm of the place. Beautiful, very beautiful! but how strangely still! A squirrel chattering, or the rat-tat of a woodpecker, would have been something; but there was not a single voice out; not so much as the hum of a musquito, though it was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various |
