"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she says, gently smoothing out the letter that lies upon her knee. "How her happiness was wrecked and what a sad ending there has been to everything! Her children coming home to us, fatherless—motherless! Dear child! what a life hers has been! It is quite twenty years ago now, and yet it all seems to me ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... your hand and tell you how dear I hold you. Do, Dane, do let us cease from this. Let us discuss no further. Let me care for Hester in my own way so long as I do no sin and harm no one; and be you father to us, and bless us who else must go unblessed. For Hester, also, is fatherless and motherless, and you must be to her as you are ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... God be about you to protect you, my motherless babe, may angels guard you, and make you as they are; and may the heavy curse and everlasting doom of the Almighty fall upon those who would ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had entrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he liked it better. This man entered into the new plans ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... was only too gentle and kind and patient with his four motherless children; but to-day, when they slowly, and at a discreet distance, followed Jabez into the study, Kitty felt a sudden conviction that things were not going to be quite as simply and easily got over as usual. She saw a ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... for this world. Only keep me from worse, George, while I am alive, and do something for the boy afterwards, and I am content. You're going to get married, I know, and I wish you well. But don't forget this poor little thing when it's motherless. If you do, and let him fall into vice, you'll never be ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... motherless; the daughter reigned as mistress of her father's house, acknowledging no control save his, and that was of the mildest kind. Captain Tillotson was the most indulgent of parents; his wife had died while Clarissa was still too young to realize her loss, and the child had been entirely left to ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... in the contemplation of that other life which was so very near to him, smiled tenderly and stretched out his old hands to greet Nehushta when she mounted to his chamber at sunset, attended by her maidens and her slaves. She was the youngest of all his kinsfolk—fatherless and motherless, the last direct descendant of King Jehoiakim remaining in Media, and the aged prophet and governor cherished her and loved her for her royalty, as well as for her beauty and her kinship to himself. Assyrian in his education, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and passive with ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... at the trade of schoolmaster. Perhaps if some of my lords and baronets in the Shell had known that far away, in a tiny cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily- covered beds—if they had known that this same poor creature said a prayer for his beloved France every ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. They had worked together for their daily bread. ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the best to do; but 'pears to me, His mercy hid its face behind His wrath, when He saw fit to let that poor innercent young creetur in there get well, after her ma was laid in the grave. It will be a harder heart than mine what can stand by, and tell her she is motherless." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... State of the future, people could therefore get rid of new-born babes far more easily than they now can of puppies and kittens. The institution round the corner would be the general foster-mother. Hordes of fatherless and motherless children would throng the State nurseries. The words "father" and "mother" would lose their meaning. However, we are told that "Socialism would begin by making sure that there should not be a single untaught, unloved, hungry child ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... preparations were complete. Sound doctrine in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon, as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt my exquisite ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... happened so," she said—"if it has been my carelessness that has done it, I shall never forgive myself. Never! For I can never say that I didn't suspect myself of being unfit. It will break my heart. I have been so proud to think that I had never failed any one who trusted me. And now a poor motherless girl, who was to be my especial care, who had no one but me to care for her—Oh, Judith, what has become ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... as possible, the body was buried at the close of the day, in an inclosure which had been set apart as a family burying-ground; and when again the night shadows fell Hagar Warren sat in her silent room, brooding over her grief, and looking oft at the plain pine cradle where lay the little motherless child, her granddaughter. Occasionally, too, her eye wandered towards the mahogany crib, where another infant slept. Perfect quiet seemed necessary for Mrs. Miller, and Madam Conway had ordered her ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... her husband would marry again. He was of those men who are inveterate husbands—and that new woman!—Who was she? What was she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child? towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt of that, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become of the child of a husband's first wife? . ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... baby. All the affection of his strong nature found its outlet in this little soul—this motherless little waif, who likewise found in the old man that rare comradeship of extremes—the inexplicable law of the physical world which brings the snow-flower in winter. The one real serious quarrel the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... her mother, and have come to see you, who loved her so well, and your good mother, who cared for her when she was motherless"— ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... a position, I believe. It never occurred to me before. Only think! Gathering up little bits of motherless humanity like this, and training them into noble men and women. They would go on perpetuating my work long after my eyes were sleeping under the daisies. Why that would be next thing to the immortality most of us ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... them poor motherless children,' said Mrs. Hackit to her husband, 'a-going among strangers, and into a nasty town, where there's no good victuals to be had, and you must pay ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... breast and hilt him close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po' strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur. And Clay, he—Oh, the po' motherless thing—I cain't talk abort it—I cain't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lady of noble birth named Princess Terute. Very different in character, alas! to the good and wise Princess Murasaki, this woman had a cruel, bad heart. She did not love her step-daughter at all, and was often very unkind to the little motherless girl, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... for the motherless child welled up in Dino's heart and he longed to be her protector. He could understand now why Cornelli looked so strange; he had even noticed it as soon as he had seen her. There was no mother to fix everything ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... died when he was quite young, and he, their only child, had been left to the care and protection of dame Brandon; and well had she cared for him, and been as a mother to the motherless. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... told her, that if she would see that Saviour's face in Heaven, and dwell with him in joy and peace for ever, she must learn to pray for those dreadful men who had made her fatherless and motherless, and her home a desolation; that the fire of revenge must be quenched within her heart, and the spirit of love alone find place within it, or she could not become the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. How hard were these conditions to ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... be much simpler than what Sandra said as she descended the Acro-Corinth, keeping to the little path, while Jacob strode over rougher ground by her side. She had been left motherless at the age of four; and the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... rooms was prepared and set aside for the new-comers, and the little princess was wild with joy at the thought of having her friends so near her. The lady and her daughter arrived, and for a long time all went well. They were very kind to the motherless princess, and she almost began to forget how dull she had been before they came. Then, one day, as she and the other girl were playing together in the gardens of the palace, the lady came to them, dressed for a journey, and kissed the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... done that before since my mother died," and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. Motherless and unprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world by that hideous brute of a man; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome denizens of its mountains, its plains, and its jungles—it was a miracle that she had ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Margaret's notice, but did not sink down into her pre-occupied heart. She did not know what they meant—what was their deep significance; while she did know, did feel the keen sharp pressure of the knife that was soon to stab her through and through by leaving her motherless. She was trying to realise that, in order that, when it came, she might be ready to comfort ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fatherless and motherless!" she cried. "Would to our dear Lady that thou wert no worse! The blessed saints help thee, for none other be like to do ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... I shan't be fit for any thing to-morrow if I go on so." Then she patted the lamb on its head, and said with a comforting sense of comradeship in the little creature's presence, "Good-night, little motherless one! Sleep warm," and then she went to ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... suit of Mark's which just fitted him, and his hair, which had been long and tangled, was cut short and neatly brushed. Being naturally of a sunny and affectionate disposition, the cheerful home influences, the motherly care of Mrs. Elmer, whose heart was very tender towards the motherless boy, and, above all, the great alteration in his father's manner, had changed the shy, sullen lad, such as he had been, into an honest, happy fellow, anxious to do right, and in every way to please the kind friends to whom his debt of gratitude was so great. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... what a hold that queer motherless child took upon my heart in her babyhood, and it tightens as she ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Highlands, left her with this pleasing intimation, "that if he found either of the boys dead on his return, he would shoot her through the head." Partly through fear, and partly from the goodness and rectitude of her mind, Lady Lovat devoted her attentions so entirely to the care of the delicate and motherless boy, that she saved his life, and won his filial reverence and affection by her attention. He loved her as a real parent. The skill in nursing and in the practical part of medicine thus acquired, was never lost; and Lady Lovat was noted ever after, among those who knew her, as the "old lady ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... try to make a honest living a man ought to help another when he try to help his self. this is only one I will do any kind of work if any company pass in up their I can pay half of my fare. I am motherless and fatherless I dont care when I go I am gone trust in the lord if you yill help me the Lord will pay you I am with donfident I am not a loafer If my fare is advance up their it a written contract that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... luxuries from the Charity doctor (of which all could taste), but it brought in its train the assiduous attendance of Mrs. Simons. To see the kindly brown face bending over it with smiling eyes of jet, to feel the soft, cool hand pressed to its forehead, was worth a fever to a motherless infant. Mrs. Simons was a busy woman and a poor withal, and the Ansells were a reticent pack, not given to expressing either their love or their hunger to outsiders; so altogether the children did not see so much of Mrs. Simons or her bounties as they ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... got to come and see the folk at home while the master and mistress are in Galway seeing what they can save out of the ruin of their estate there. Ochone, it's bad times, Mike; indeed it is. Lonely enough for you and me and the motherless boys. I've a mind to stay where I am, and settle down in the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... or even cruel aliens in order to be there thrillingly homesick. Homesickness was a luxury I remember craving from the tenderest age—a luxury of which I was unnaturally, or at least prosaically, deprived. Our motherless cousin Augustus Barker came up from Albany to the Institution Charlier—unless it was, as I suspect, a still earlier specimen, with a name that fades from me, of that type of French establishment for boys which then and for years after so incongruously ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" And the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing capable of making him more uncomfortable than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord;"—but it was manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and his wife having died about a month before, the bairns, of whom the eldest was but nine or so, were ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... I am called, but I have wandered a motherless child; nor have I a father like the sons of ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... need me, Beltane, in thy lonely childhood thou didst need me, and I—O God pity me—I was far from thee! But, dear my son, because I could not cherish thee within these arms I strove to love and cherish all motherless children for thy dear sake and to grieve for all sorrowing mothers. So builded I the nunnery at Winisfarne and there sought to bring solace and comfort to desolate hearts because my heart was so desolate for thee, my babe, my Beltane. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... as she guided her father through the door had an effect upon the men who sat around the office. Kind-hearted fellows they were, and they felt sorry for the poor little motherless girl, sorry for "old Doc" too. One after another they went home, feeling just a ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... that now, for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where mulleins ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... much to the young art-student, he soon owed more to that gentle but potent hand by which Ronald had been moulded, refined, and spiritualized. Ronald's mother opened wide her large heart and her loving arms to take in the motherless youth thrown by an ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while Harriet went over and took from the arms of the young father the little motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of age, when one day says I to mesilf, 'flesh and blood can bear it no longer,' and I ran away to the city uv Dublin where an aunt by me mother's side lived. Me aunt was a poor woman, but she gave a warm welcim to her sister's motherless boy; she trated me kindly and allowed me to share her home, although she could ill afford it, till I got a place as sarvant in a gintleman's family. As for my father, he niver throubled his head about me any more; indade I think he was glad to be rid ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... belonged to a different social station. In any event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... be hasty. How do you know Lady Kingsland detests you? That is impossible, I think. She will be a kind mother to my little motherless girl. Ah, pitiful Heaven! that agony ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... fire. While I was superintending the cookery, the young one moaned incessantly, and my companion tried every persuasion to coax it down. Urged by Lucien, I ascended the tree, and tried to catch hold of the motherless little creature. No doubt it was paralyzed by fear, for it only showed its teeth, and allowed me to place it on my shoulder. It clung to my hair and wound its tail round my neck, as I descended, and I was in fear every moment ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... is growing dark over my dwelling; God is descending upon us in a cloud. 'Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, what doest thou.' O, you never lost a wife, my dear sir, nor looked on a motherless family, as I begin to do. God help me, for I ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... glad to have you, and I will do as well for you as for my own Tabitha; but, if you are bent on factory work and schooling, I have got no more to say; for I have no right to say where you shall go or where you shall stay. But one thing I do want to tell you, it is a serious thing for a poor, motherless girl to be all ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever in; for the cries of the widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children are enough to pierce the hardest of hearts. Likewise it is a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness or keep them warm, but all they had consumed to ashes. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... preached for the last time to his people and baptized a little Eskimo to whom they gave his name, Hans. The following week he sailed for home, carrying, as all his earthly wealth, his beloved dead and his motherless children. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... said Susanna, quietly; "but oh! my dear, the world outside isn't such a Paradise for young girls like you, motherless and fatherless and penniless. You have a good home here; can't you learn ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her take them along, poor motherless baby?" asked the doctor when he saw the dolls lying as she had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... marriage of Alexis with Natalia, his second wife. He was dining with one of his boyars and was attracted by a young girl, who was serving him. She was motherless, and had been adopted by her uncle the boyar. The Tsar said to his friend soon after: "I have found a husband for your Natalia." The husband was Alexis himself, and Natalia became the mother of Peter the Great. She was the first Princess who ever drew aside the curtains of her litter and ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... to stay, lately, at the Home Farm on their grandmother's place. We became great friends. I found out that they were motherless, and that they were being cruelly ill-treated ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... marry him?" she answered with passion, "because I was forced into it, bullied into it, starved into it. What would you do if you were a defenceless, motherless girl of eighteen, with a drunken father who beat you—yes, beat you with a stick—apologised in the most gentlemanlike way next morning and then went and got drunk again? And what would you do if that father were in the hands of a man like my husband, body and soul in his hands, and if between ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... talked to his daughter for a while longer. He asked her about her school work and her school pleasures, about what the girls and boys in her circle of friends were doing. He tried to keep in close touch with the motherless girl's interests, and especially did he not want her to go to bed with sad and troublous ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... at Bryde, "Dan's is he? I've heard tell o' him, but whitna queen is't that's lookin' at him like a motherless foal?" ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... head. "Nothing at all. I just showed a decent interest in Lydia, as I would in any motherless girl ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... polite, Irish boy, whose frankness and good humour quite won our regards. He informed us he was one of seven orphans, who had lost father and mother in the cholera. It was a sad thing, he said, to be left fatherless and motherless, in a strange land; and he swept away the tears that gathered in his eyes as he told the simple, but sad tale of his early bereavement; but added, cheerfully, he had met with a kind master, who had taken some ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... There was once an elephant who accidentally trod on the mother of a brood of newly-hatched chickens. Her tender heart filled with remorse for what she had done, and, overflowing with pity for the fluffy orphans, she wept bitterly, and addressed them thus: 'Poor little motherless things, doomed to face the rough world without a parent's care, I myself will be a mother to you.' Whereupon, gathering them under her with maternal fondness, she sat down on the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Jim, who had been reading a sea novel in a corner of the living room, "you shouldn't say that about those two poor, motherless Gilman boys, unless you've got certain proof. Jest because their father ain't none too honest isn't any reason for calling them thieves. It's more likely it's been the robins took your cherries. They're turrible ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Leigh Shirley. The hours of the day slipped by. The breeze came pouring over the prairie from the far southwest where the purple notches stood sentinel. The warm afternoon sunlight streamed in at the door. The while these childless men planned together for the welfare of one motherless, and worse than fatherless, little girl away in the Clover Creek Valley in Ohio, waiting for a home and guardianship and love under ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... an occasional visit to cousin Frances Bond, my mother's niece, who, with her husband and child, had settled on a farm about twelve miles from us. She also had grown up a motherless girl, but had spent a part of her young ladyhood at our home in Illinois. She had helped my mother to prepare for our long journey and would have crossed the plains with us had her father granted her wish. She was particularly fond of us "three little ones" whom she had caressed in babyhood. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... chiefest of their delights was the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them. A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were right ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... with him a beautiful little girl of the same age as her own, but unusually advanced for her years, whose father and mother he claimed had been killed in a railroad accident, and of whose friends nothing could be learned. His wife had accepted his story in good faith, and welcomed the motherless little one to her own lonely heart. Unknown to Jim, who had charged her to burn them, she had also preserved the garments worn by the little stranger ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... innermost parts, in its very marrow, by the arrival of the two Germans. Other people round about had Belgians in their homes, and groaned; but who but he, the most immensely British of anybody, had Germans? And he couldn't groan, because they were, besides being motherless creatures, his own wife's flesh and blood. Not openly at least could he groan; but he could and did do it in bed. Why on earth that silly mother of theirs couldn't have stayed quietly on her Pomeranian sand-heap where she belonged, instead of coming gallivanting over to England, and then when ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... sorry to appear interfering, but you are a motherless little girl. Your dress to-night was ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... it's up t' me to help you and—and—oh, Gee!" Here Spike's voice broke altogether, whereupon Hermione, quite forgetting her own sorrows and worries, fell to soothing and comforting him as she had done many and many a time during his motherless childhood. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... companionship of sharing a cabin—which is a kind of acid test that generally brings out the best—and worst—of travellers. There was something protective in Norah's nature that responded instantly to the lonely position of the girl who was going across the world to a strange country. Both were motherless, but in Norah's case the blank was softened by a father who had striven throughout his children's lives to be father and mother alike to them, while Cecilia had only the bitter memory of the man who had shirked his duty until he had become less than a stranger ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... had been a hussy.... Was David his father's son? Hadn't she once caught Mrs. Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and wasn't that why Bridget had really been sent away? She had returned to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three. Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was showing himself such a son to his old father? Not she. He might be who and what he would. He was giving another ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... said Alice, at length, "we are both motherless, for the present at least—both of us almost alone; I think God has brought us together to be a comfort to each other. We will be sisters while He permits us to be so. Don't call me Miss Alice any more. You shall be my little sister and I will be your elder sister, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... him in a flash of revelation that, did she have a mother, it was to her she would have gone at this moment, and not to him, and his eyes were a little misty as he looked down at her. That she and her sister should have grown, motherless, to such sweet, triumphant womanhood struck him in this instant as a kind of miracle—he had never thought of it before. He had taken their beauty, their wit, their sanity, as matters of course; he had never looked at them, clearly, from the outside; he had never ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... you won't say so. You remember this, night twenty years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you did so! That night—little you thought it!—I was banded with them that were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... tenderly over mother and babe, and covered them with earth, saying many prayers. Then he went back to his fatherless, motherless maid. ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... the girl to her breast with tender affection. Beth had been motherless all her life, and the caress was sweet and soothing to her. Edith fastened her cape and kissed her fondly when she was going home. Clarence went with her, and somehow everything was so dream-like and unreal that even the old rough-cast home ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris. Another motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, was busy in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Ciseaux to allow the child to visit here sometimes," said madame, her kind old heart full of pity for the motherless little fellow; "and I shall also explain that it was only your desire to save Jules from ill treatment that caused you to do such an unusual thing. Otherwise he might think you too bold and too—well, peculiar, to be a fit playmate for ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... painful memories, to Cobham, which was Mr Arnold's home for the rest of his life. In September he "shoots worse than ever" (vide Friendship's Garland) in the famous preserves of Six Mile Bottom, and soon after his mother dies. But it is not given to all men not to be motherless till they themselves are fifty. And 1874 is again rather barren, even such yield as it gives being rather didactic and controversial, as for instance in a letter to his sister, who had apparently remonstrated with some vigour against the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... trembling comrade within doors, seated him by the still glowing stove in the front room, and struck a light. In less than a minute Mrs. Stannard, too, had joined them, her kind blue eyes filled with tender pity and sorrow. She, at least, was not entirely unprepared. Poor motherless Dora had no lack of friendly counsel and fond, womanly sympathy when once she could be brought to lay her burden there. If only she had earlier sought that wise and winsome monitor! But Mrs. Stannard had not been at Frayne in the early summer, not until the major was assigned ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... For ten years they had been motherless, and several years previous their father had died. They had no one but their brother Guy, not even a distant relative, and this made them cling very closely to one another. One day when Guy was in a very gay and gracious mood, ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... are kindly treated; but it makes me shudder, and actually weep, to look upon the assemblage of young creatures, not one of them able to call upon a mother; each with a distinct character, each with a human heart. Poor little motherless children! ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... science toward a vain and deluded race that knew little and learned reluctantly. A man is either better or worse than the manner he chooses for purposes of conciliating or defying the world. Dr. Schulze was better, as much better as his mind was superior to his body. He and his motherless daughters were "not in it" socially. Saint X was not quite certain whether it shunned them or they it. His services were sought only in extremities, partly because he would lie to his patients neither when he knew what ailed them nor when he did not, and partly because he ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... prove the final wrench to a heart that had been on the verge of breaking for many a year, and it was not long before Olive and Cyril were motherless. ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Minty, in a child's voice—the grown-up woman, under that magic touch, having lapsed again into her father's motherless charge of ten ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Staats died," he said, "McPherson brought Staats's motherless baby over here; and he said: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' Those were his very words: 'Peter, this is what you need in the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... father, and increasing years seemed only to confirm the custom. It was an unnatural life for the child, seeing no bright little faces peering into his own (for Augharad was, as I said before, five or six years older, and her face, poor motherless girl! was often anything but bright), hearing no din of clear ringing voices, but day after day sharing the otherwise solitary hours of his father, whether in the dim room, surrounded by wizard-like antiquities, ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... seventeen, he twenty-five. It was for him to think, not me. And he did think but to my eternal undoing. The Cause needed a woman's help, a woman's enthusiasm. Without considering my motherless condition, my helplessness, the immaturity of my mind, he drew me day by day into the secret meshes of his great scheme, a scheme which, as I failed to understand till it had absorbed me, meant the ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... which my kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking around ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... my sons, I commit my sweet Perreeza! Let her youthful feet be tenderly watched by the eyes of love. Whisper words of sweet, brotherly affection in her youthful ears. Oh, deal gently and kindly with the dear, motherless lamb! Remember the dying request of a mother, and throw your arms of ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... motherless young creature, needing counsel, had come to old Tabus to appeal to her art of prophecy and, if she wanted them, to render her any little services; for the old dame on the island was closely bound to Ledscha, the daughter of one of the principal ship-owners ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Patrick Bronte (himself a gifted but somewhat erratic man) brought his young wife into the solitude of this moorland parsonage and shut her up in a seclusion from which she was only removed by death, all the way down through the lonely childhood of the little motherless children, and on into their no less lonely and more afflicted womanhood, even to the deaths of all the gifted group, there is a depth of sombre gloom from which the sympathetic heart must turn away with a bitter pain and almost a feeling ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... my own eyes. I went to bed, about half-past nine it was this night, and I was lying quietly in bed, looking up to the ceiling; no light on account of the mosquitoes, and Maud, the little girl I was caring for, a romping dear of seven or eight, a motherless child, had been tossing about restless like, and her arm was flung over me. All at once I saw a lady standing by the side of the bed in her night dress and looking earnestly at the child beyond me. She then came nearer, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... tending them and their mothers with careful shepherding. Once or twice he brought a newborn and orphaned one home wrapped in his plaid and it was kept warm by the kitchen fire and fed with milk by Maggy to whom motherless lambs were an ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was weeping, took no notice of me. Miss Murdstone gave me her cold fingers, and asked if I had been measured for my mourning, and if I had brought home my shirts. There was no sign that they thought of my suffering, and—alone—except for dear faithful Peggotty, I remained there, motherless, and worse than fatherless, still stunned and giddy with the shock. As soon as the funeral was over, Peggotty obtained permission to take me home with her for a visit, and I was thankful for the change, even though I knew that Peggotty was ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... houseless, wandering, motherless child!" cried the old man, gazing as if for the first time upon her anxious face, her travel-stained dress, and bruised and swollen feet. "Has all my agony of care brought her to this at last? Was I a happy man once, and have ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... harbor, and Maarda, who was to join her husband there, left me, with a happy good-night. As she was going below, she faltered, and turned back to me. "I think sometimes," she said, quietly, "the Great Spirit thought my baby would feel motherless in the far Spirit Islands, so He gave her the woman I nursed for a mother; and He knew I was childless, and He gave me this child for my daughter. Do you think I ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... a motherless girl. My daddy said he looked at her struggling along. All the other girls were trying to have a good time. But she would be settin' down trying to make a quilt or something else useful, and he said to a friend of his, 'That woman would make a good wife; I am going ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... little life it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing topic for days. Gradually some sort of a human rotundity became manifest, and on the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... looking into her eyes, her hand in his while he made his adieux. He had determined, before Morris fired the bomb which shattered his hopes, to ask if he might see her again, and where, and if there could be found no place fitting and proper, she being motherless and Miss Felicia but a chaperon, to write her a note inviting her to walk up through the Park with him, and so on into the open where she really belonged. All this was given up now. The best thing for him was to take his leave as quietly as possible, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is a tale of folly, not of crime," she said. "You must remember, Lesley, that I was a motherless girl, brought up in a lonely Scotch house in a very haphazard way. My dear father loved me tenderly, but he was away from home for the greater part of the year; and he understood little of a girl's nature or a girl's requirements. When I was sixteen he allowed me to dismiss my governess, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... born at sea) to Tarsus, intending to leave her with Cleon, the governor of that city, and his wife Dionysia, thinking, for the good he had done to them at the time of their famine, they would be kind to his little motherless daughter. When Cleon saw Prince Pericles, and heard of the great loss which had befallen him, he said, "O your sweet queen, that it had pleased Heaven you could have brought her hither to have blessed my eyes with the sight of her!" Pericles ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... the heart of Findelkind, as if a knife had pierced it. He loved Katte better than almost any other living thing, and she was bleating under his window motherless and alone. They were such beautiful lambs too!—lambs that his father had promised should never be killed, but be reared ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... these she repaired to the little rough shed-like chamber where the two brothers lay for the last time on their pallet bed, awake, and watching for her, with Spring at their feet. The poor old woman stood over them, as over the motherless nurslings whom she had tended, and she should probably never see more, but she was a woman of shrewd sense, and perceived that "with the new madam in the hall" it was better that they should be gone before ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can't tell till I encounter him; and then, uncle, when I have an old gentleman by the hand, who has been disabled in his country's service, and is struggling to support his motherless child, a poor relation, and a faithful servant, in honorable indigence, impulse will supply me with words to express ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,' I thought to myself. 'Then she would never have attracted his attention, and might have known what happiness was with some man who could appreciate her. Now she is doomed, and being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to her fate, and no ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... was drawn towards the motherless child, and she clothed her from head to foot; though how far this was a benefit as regarded cold and heat, is a question. Herbert began to teach her to read; in which her progress was just like her bodily movements over the earth's surface; now a dead pause, and now ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... clumsily. The girl linked her arms round her neck and kissed her warmly, repeatedly, feeling through all her motherless sense the satisfaction of a long hunger in the contact of the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and energy, and Ambrose's plans were efficiently carried on, so that all went well till Alice's marriage; and, a year or two later on, Dorothy's death, in giving birth to her little girl, no woman was left at the farm but a rough though kind-hearted old convict, who did her best for the motherless child. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I cry now only in ze story, only—to—to show thee how it would be! I say, 'It is me, Marie, Mere Jeanne! I come to show thee my little son, to take thy blessing. And my little friend, too!'" She turned to pat Petie's head; she would not let the motherless boy feel left out, even from a world in which he ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherless child, sir, while you have neglected ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... it is time to give you some more accurate knowledge of the outward appearance and the inner life of this motherless, convent-reared girl, who, though a young and wealthy heiress, was bent on forsaking the world and taking the vail. In the first place, she was not beautiful at all in repose. There can be no physical beauty without physical health. ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... myself this day oppose himself to two of his own countrymen to save a defenceless woman from injury. That woman was my daughter—some of you know her well—ah, Thompson! you may well hang your head—would you slay the deliverer of her whose good nursing saved the life of your motherless child?—Wilson, it was but last week that she sat beside your dying mother, and soothed and comforted her—but for this good and brave man she would now have been with her ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... ungrateful woman yearned after an occupant for the old wooden cradle, and treasured up the bits of baby things that had belonged to Tom and Bill, and nursed up any young thing that came to hand and wanted care, bringing up a motherless blind kitten with assiduous care and patience, as if the supply of that commodity was not always largely in excess of the demand, and lavishing more care on a sick lamb or a superfluous young pig than most of ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... own right Countess of Beaumanoir, and mistress of fiefs and manors, rights of chase and warren, mills and hospices, the like of which were not in Picardy, was happy in all things but her family. Her one son had fallen in his youth in an obscure fray in Guienne, leaving two motherless boys who, after her husband's death, were the chief business of life to the Countess Catherine. The elder, Aimery, grew to manhood after the fashion of the men of her own house, a somewhat heavy country gentleman, much set upon rustic sports, slow at learning, and averse alike from camps and cities. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... young lawyer's state, or his employers, had sent him to Congress; and Portia, left motherless in her middle childhood, had grown up in an atmosphere of statecraft, or what passes for such, in an era of frank commercialism. Inheriting her mother's rare beauty of face and form, and uniting with it a sympathetic ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde |
