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More "Fidget" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... five minutes to five he started to fidget with his rifle, and then suddenly springing up on the fire step with a muttered, "I'll send over a couple of souvenirs to Fritz, so that he'll miss me when I leave," he stuck his rifle over the top and fired two shots, when "crack" went a bullet and he tumbled off the step, ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... each and all, but as few could tell their names I was at a loss to distinguish one from another; my head and eyes were in a perfect fidget, flying from Marshal to Marshal and from Picture ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... my sight, you despicable thief!" he cried. "My control is going. If you stand and fidget there, I'll ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... opened. A woman's head looked out, with suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There ain't—hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a fidget." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... for several minutes in a bleak and desolate valley of introspection wherein Mr. Wordsley dared not intrude. There was a certain grandeur about his great, dark visage, his falciform nose and meaty jowls as he stood there. Mr. Wordsley began to fidget and clear his throat. ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with daylight; even cross children are wheedled into quietness, and servants forget to fidget and giggle; and, for ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... dreadful, deadly; pungent. Fell, the cuticle under the skin. Felly, relentless. Fen', a shift. Fen', fend, to look after; to care for; keep off. Fenceless, defenseless. Ferlie, ferly, a wonder. Ferlie, to marvel. Fetches, catches, gurgles. Fetch't, stopped suddenly. Fey, fated to death. Fidge, to fidget, to wriggle. Fidgin-fain, tingling-wild. Fiel, well. Fient, fiend, a petty oath. Fient a, not a, devil a. Fient haet, nothing (fiend have it). Fient haet o', not one of. Fient-ma-care, the fiend may care (I don't!). Fier, fiere, companion. Fier, sound, active. Fin', ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed the ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... a gift from a fair. Fairn-year, last year. Faitour, vagabond. Fand, found. Farl, meal cake. Fash, bother. Fatt'rils, falderals, finery. Faut, fault. Feck, bulk. Fell, deadly, pungent. Fend, keep off. Ferlie, ferly, wonder. Fetive, festive. Fidge, fidget. Fient, fiend, devil. Fiere, chum. Fit, foot. Flainen, flannen, flannel. Flang, kicked. Fleech, wheedle. Flet, remonstrated. Flitchering, fluttering. Fling, waving. Flott, fly. Flourettes, flowers. Foggage, coarse grass. Forswat, sunburned. Forwindm dried up. Fou, very, drunk, full. Fourth, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... late to-night," he said, when they reached the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but a poor bargain to her this ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... what a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both hands to keep it at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these ridiculous trains because they think they look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... visits at Ashton Grange. He remembered a very sad-looking lady, with a sweet face, who had held his hand as he stood by her chair, and that he had half liked it, and felt half awkward as she spoke to him. He remembered that as he had stood there, he had felt afraid to move or fidget in the least bit, and that every now and then, as he had stolen a glance at her, he had seen that her large dark eyes had been fixed upon him. He had been very glad when the nursery dinner-bell rang and he was obliged to go, without seeming to wish ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... in stimulants, not deterrents. How inexpressibly tiresome is the everlasting "Don't!" in some households. Don't get in the fire, don't play in the water, don't tease the kitty, don't trouble the doggy, don't bother the lady, don't interrupt, don't contradict, don't fidget with your brother, and don't worry me now; while perhaps in this whole tirade, not a word has been said of something ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare began to fidget. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should ever be without 'em)— And, just conceive the bliss— There is so little of the goose about 'em, One's safe from any hiss! Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, When the poor dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright, Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness—more f's yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that, Funeral, fate-foreboding—sits in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... I don't hurt you, mademoiselle, except when you pull your head aside. But in truth it is hard to comb your hair properly when you move and fidget about. You are very difficult ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... drew nearer and nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... beard and began to fidget in the saddle. King gave him another view of the bracelet, and again he found ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the day—not of time—flaunter in all their purchased fancy in house-building, without prejudice to the prevailing sober sentiment of their neighbors, in such particulars. The man of money, simply, may build his "villa," and squander his tens of thousands upon it. He may riot within it, and fidget about it for a few brief years; he may even hang his coat of arms upon it, if he can fortunately do so without stumbling over a lapstone, or greasing his coat against the pans of a cook-shop; but it is equally sure that ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—and, checking himself just as he was ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. "Do put that photograph down, George!—you do fidget so! Haven't you got any news for me—anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!—I see. Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... need not fidget about poison, my lad. The place will soon heal. Now then, any sign of ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... took the tray down some time ago." Helen watched her father fidget with his watch fob for several minutes, then asked with characteristic directness. "What do ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... after all always been the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... is expecting me to come! What a silly! I can just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her tournure will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I shan't go, though. . . . ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... knelt in prayer and she could hide her tears in a corner of the old sofa. Prayers were very much longer on Sundays than on other mornings, but, though the boys might fidget a little, the most active member of the family never moved. Elizabeth's soul was carried away far above any bodily discomfort. But not even the smallest Gordon made a sound. There had been a dreadful day ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... resources—one of which WOULD be most decidedly to clear out. What did I know after all about the girl except that I rejoiced to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother, it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange her conscience should have begun to fidget in advance of my own. It was strange she should so soon have felt Archie's peril, and even stranger that she should have then wished to "save" him. The ways of women were infinitely subtle, and it was no novelty to ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... one has ever had her tea out of doors in all her born days. What! do you think our little stuffy room would be any treat to her, after the drawing-room at Font Abbey? Come, you be off till half-past five; you'll fidget yourself and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... still; the stars swelled out larger; the rats came, and then came puss, and the rats went with a scuffle and patter; the pagan grey came in like a sleep-walker, and made the barn dreary as a dull dream; then the horses began to fidget with their big feet, the cattle to low with their great trombone throats, and the cocks to crow as if to give warning for the last time against the devil, the world, and the flesh; the men in the adjoining chamber ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... of dreamy content as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then—he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. He knew that Marjory knew it, too. It began the day Dr. Marcellin advised him to take a walk in ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Almighty frequently accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not have had ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the long evenings she used to dread; now they had become part and parcel of her daily pleasures. They dined about four, and when dinner was over it was time to talk about what kind of house they were going to have, to fidget about in search of brushes and combs, the curling-tongs, and to consider what little necessaries she had better bring down to the theatre with her. At first it seemed very strange to her to go tripping down these narrow streets at a certain hour—streets ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... and evidently annoyed, says: "But what is the matter, my dear? You fidget and fidget—I want to sleep." He turns ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... monastic student's notebook on conduct which has been preserved, and which "prescribes that the young man is to kneel when answering the Abbot, not to take a seat unasked, not to loll against the wall, nor fidget with things within reach. He is not to scratch himself, nor cross his legs like a tailor. He is to wash his hands before meals, keep his knife sharp and clean, not to seize upon vegetables, and not to use his spoon ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... answered, but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to show you our pew. Here's a cent for collection. Don't stare at people and don't fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the trouble,' rejoined the most unhappy man in existence, 'I don't mind that; but my nerves are in that state—I cannot go through the ceremony. You know I don't like going out.—For God's sake, Charles, don't fidget with that stool so; you'll drive me mad.' Mr. Kitterbell, quite regardless of his uncle's nerves, had occupied himself for some ten minutes in describing a circle on the floor with one leg of the office-stool on which he was seated, keeping the other three up in the air, and holding ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... neighbourhood. It was difficult to realise that he was quite alone in the room and that somebody was not in hiding. The finer counterparts of his senses warned him to act as if he were being observed; he was dimly conscious of a desire to fidget and look round, to keep his eyes in every part of the room at once, and to conduct himself generally as if he were the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... your place than mine; especially since my wife's brother Garland was called in as consulting physician, last month at the penitentiary. He has so stirred her sympathies for the woman whom he pronounces a paragon of all the virtues and graces, that I begin to fidget now at the sound of the prisoner's name, and can hardly look my wife straight in the face. When I go up to court next week, I will call on the Governor, and add a personal appeal to the one I have already signed. According ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses, all together, and at a rattling ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of Featherstone's—a tall man, with a refined and intellectual face and reserved manner. Finally, there was Otto Melick, a litterateur from London, about thirty years of age, with a wiry and muscular frame, and the restless manner of one who lives in a perpetual fidget. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... so long in the stomach of the monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The man knew that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men that are so lethargic they would have given the matter ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Nothing would be said, nothing done; we would not even trouble to stare at the intruder. Yet he would seldom stop to finish his consommation, or he would bolt it. He would feel something in the air; he would know he was out of place. He would fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace in the bush. From half a dozen to a score of us dined at her long table ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... he hadn't disappointed her. He was so little what she might have expected, and so perversely preoccupied that she could explain it only by the high pressure at which he was living, his anxiety about his "exam." He was in a fidget, in a fever, putting on a spurt to come in first; sceptical moreover about his success and cynical about everything else. He appeared to agree to the general axiom that they didn't want a strange woman thrust into their life, but he found Mrs. Churchley ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... enjoyed visiting her friends. She set out in peevish resignation, leaving her house, and when she had sat half an hour with Lizzie or Sarah or Connie she would begin to fidget, miserable till she got back to it again; ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... myself, I would rather have a bare and open pasture than such a yard as that shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and unpretentious; but the yard would be full of effort and fidget. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... can't get ... get to sleep if you fidget like that. You're keeping me ... awake. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... had been going for two years, and had had a great success, as hitherto it had had no large losses; but the king, who knew that the luck might turn, was always in a fidget about it. With this idea he told Calsabigi that he must carry it on on his own responsibility and pay him a hundred thousand crowns per annum, that being the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sat down on the edge of the stool, but even there it was warm, and after a while he began to fidget, saying, 'Dear me, mother-in-law! how hot your house is! ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... a fidget they did not know where to begin. They held a meeting in a great rose-bush, beside the Pastor's garden-fence, all cackling and screaming together. The cock-sparrows ruffled themselves up, so that all their feathers stood straight on end; and ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... peas left," she returned, "and when I've reset them I'll give you your answer. That'll be in fifteen minutes. Now go away, or you'll fidget round, and I sha'n't get 'em straight." And without another word she resumed ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... much wiser, have not the same consideration," thought Humphrey, as the pony trotted along. Humphrey thought a good deal about the danger that Edward had been subjected to, and said to himself, "I really think that I should be more comfortable if Edward was away. I am always in a fidget about him. I wish the new king, who is now in France would raise an army and come over. It is better that Edward should be fighting in the field than remain here and risk being shot as a deer-stealer, or put in prison. The farm is sufficient for us all; and when ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... began to falter and fidget. Beth was amused. Patsy was fast growing indignant. Flo had a queer expression on her pretty face that denoted mischief to such an extent that it alarmed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... side-table on which writing materials were placed. "You shall breakfast in peace, you old fidget," he replied, and addressed himself forthwith to Mr. Darch, with his usual Spartan brevity of epistolary expression. "Dear Sir—Here I am, bag and baggage. Will you kindly oblige me by being my lawyer? ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with such ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... impatience, but Mr. Mix had been able, so far, to hold her in check. He had realized very clearly, however, that Mirabelle wasn't to be put off indefinitely; and he had been glad that he had a readymade ruse which he could employ as a blinder whenever she began to fidget. This ruse was his amendment; and although he could no longer see any value in it for the purposes of his private feud, yet he was passing it for two reasons; Mirabelle was one, and the public was the other. Even a reformer must occasionally ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... he dropped straight into the seat. "I assure you there has really been nothing." With a continuation of his fidget he pulled out his watch. "Won't she ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... why do you fidget? You're hurting my shoulder, you troublesome midget! Perhaps it's that hole that you told me about. Why, darling, your sawdust ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... was Brace to fidget about, and my other friends of the troop. I wanted to know whether they had been scattered, as Ny Deen had assured me, and whether the English rule really was coming ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... dawn of a winter's morning creeping over the gray sky of London?—somehow, things seemed less dismal already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish that some one would come with my hot water and say it ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Keble and Froude advocated their continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalized him considerably. As for me, there was matter enough in ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... elephant on the right: Don't meddle with him, or he'll bite. (He's Rover, Neddie's dog, you know. I wish he wouldn't fidget so! He doesn't think it fun to play Wild beast, and be chained up all day.) We'll feed him, pretty soon, with meat; Though grass is what he ...
— The Nursery, February 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... "Very good," I thought; "you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too. She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she placed no undue emphasis ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and went over to the fireplace, where he leaned against the mantelpiece, and began to fidget ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the Angel in H. G. Wells' novel, "The Wonderful Visit," as if somewhat frightened at, or of, with, or by its new abode, and no wonder, for it was indeed a novel guest, and the goblins of "Worry and Tease, Fidget and Fear," who had hitherto been allowed to riot about and come and go at their own sweet mischievous wills, were ill-pleased at being made to keep quiet by this new lady of the manor. And indeed no mere state of mind, however well maintained, can resist everything, and the mildest ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... scarlet sets all the rest on the fidget, and without troubling to lay 'that or that' together, they desert their breakfasts, hurry to the stables, get out their horses and rattle away, lest their watches should be wrong or some arrangement made that they are ignorant of. The hounds too, were on, as was seen as well by their footmarks, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... could cut it off,—like a boy's. It is miles too long. You might as well head Zachariah off. She has been gone since one o'clock. I am sure I heard the front door close before I dropped off to sleep. Don't fidget, Kenny. They've probably got old Martin in the calaboose by this time. Mother never fails when she sets out to do a thing. That good-for-nothing sleepy-head, Hattie, never heard a sound last night. What ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... protest, I knew nothing of all this yesterday, so entirely was I taken up with the rocks and meadows; no chance of meeting either card or billiard players in their solitudes. Both abound at Ems, where they hop and fidget from ball to ball, unconscious of the bold scenery in their neighbourhood, and totally insensible to its charms. They had no notion, not they, of admiring barren crags and precipices, where even the Lord would lose his way, as a coarse lubber ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she will catch ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all my real and all my assumed levity. O that I had, at this instant, dared to be myself! But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was a tone of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... uncommon a thing for her to find any self-imposed check upon what she wished to do, that Miss Haye was very much puzzled; and tried and annoyed out of all proportion by her self-consultations. She was in a fidget of uneasiness all day long; and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... sat quietly for a quarter of an hour. Then he began to fidget in his chair, but he stoically sat on until, when at the end of an hour Katinka showed no signs whatever of leaving off, he rose, and ceremoniously regretting that his duties prevented him from having the pleasure of hearing the ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. No one ever knew it, but this sermon haunted me, and day and night it crossed me. I began to pray a good deal, though only night and morning, with a sort of fidget and impatience, almost angry at feeling so unhappy, and wanting and expecting a new heart and have everything put straight and be made happy, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... gone out for the day, and had left me charge of the children. It was very hot, and they kept up a continual fidget. I bore it patiently for some time, for children will be restless in hot weather, but at length I requested that they ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... utterly miserable that a smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so impertinent to her as this man. She had ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... laughing hoyden—Pastorella had with him the allowance of being blameless: but what was that towards being praiseworthy? To be only innocent, is not to be virtuous. He afterwards spoke so much against Mrs. Dipple's forehead, Mrs. Prim's mouth, Mrs. Dentifrice's teeth, and Mrs. Fidget's cheeks, that she grew downright in love with him: for it is always to be understood, that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her. In a word, things went so far, that I was dismissed, and she will remember that evening nine months, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... cookin stove, too, but she gwine be in en out here wid her old mammy off en on. Yes'um, I wants to see her mighty bad since it be dat she been gone from here so long. When she first went up dere, she worked for a white family dere to Hartford, Connecticut, but it won' long fore she got in a fidget to marry en she moved dere to Philadelphia. Dat whe' she livin now, so my ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... left him to attend my father in sickness. And, taking Nicodemus' arm, he drew him close, that he might more safely whisper that two men seemed to be searching in their garments as if for daggers. Nicodemus knew them to be hirelings in the pay of the priests. Look, he said, how their hands fidget for their daggers; the opportunity seems favourable now to stab him; but no, the crowd closes round his ass again, and the Zealots draw back. God saved Daniel from the flames and the lions, Joseph answered. But will he, Nicodemus returned, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... beautifully in this further lounge without a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke—he broke out as he tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light: "I must go for a stroll. I'm in a fidget—I must walk it off." She fell in with this as she fell in with everything; on which he went on: "You go up to Miss Ash"—it was the name they had started; "you must see she's not in mischief. Can you ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... right. I'm not so wet as I look. I'll change my coat, and come in to supper in one minute. Don't you fidget about me so, good Marty." Never was Stephen heard to speak discourteously or even ungently to a human being. It would have offended his taste. It was not a matter of principle with him,—not at all: he hardly ever thought of things in that light. A rude or harsh word, a loud, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... left the room, and then Lucy's wrath burst forth unrestrainedly. She called her father all sorts of names, such as "an old granny—an old fidget," and finished up her list with what she thought the most odious appellation of all, "an ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... exclaimed that fidget John; and in less time than my lady-readers would believe, I had put on my pink bonnet and my white dress, and was bowling down to Richmond by the side of my cousin, behind a roan and a chestnut that stepped away in a style that it did one good ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... plaited in three long tails, and tied with bows of ribbon: a task my unaccustomed fingers found great difficulty in performing. She told me her nurse could do it in half the time, and, by keeping up a constant fidget of impatience, contrived to render me still longer. When all was done, we went into the schoolroom, where I met my other pupil, and chatted with the two till it was time to go down to breakfast. That meal being concluded, and a few ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... filled with a tumult of energy; every instinct longed to skip; she thought of jouncing as high as the poplars, right over the house and into Washington Square beyond. "Miss Fidget!" her grandfather exclaimed, exasperated, releasing her hand. "You're like holding on to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... noted person like you, did I, Winston?" he chuckled feebly. "Just because I chose to go to sleep and didn't fidget round much you thought I'd got my ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... began to fancy that if I got into the middle of the stream I should not be able to paddle myself back against it—which, indeed, might very well have proved the case. Then I became nervous, and paddled all on one side, by which means, of course, I only turned the boat round. S—— began to fidget about, getting up from where I had placed her, and terrifying me with her unsteady motions and the rocking of the canoe. I was now very much frightened, and saw that I must get back to shore before I became more helpless than I was ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... dispute and an exchange of insults and obscenities. When we were all in bed, no one could stir without causing inconvenience to his neighbours. A sleepless night, invariably accompanied by the restless impulse to stir and fidget, was unforgettable misery, but fortunately our work was so hard that ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... not English: we can be sentimental, tender, witty, pretty, pompous, and glorious in our songs; but we ever want the essential quality of gaiety—gaiety of heart—the dancing life of the spirit, that makes the voice hum, the fingers crack merrily, and the feet fidget restlessly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... more than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child's is not?—and he had inherited an ample store of the joie ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Schehati's compound noun as a tribute to the fact that she was well-groomed and independent, knowing her own mind, and, when she started out to go to a place, reaching it in the shortest possible time, without fidget, fuss, or flurry. These three feminine attributes were held in scorn by Jane, who knew herself so deeply womanly that she could afford in minor ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... heard calling them down to dinner. During this both the little girls were silent and subdued, and were seldom spoken to, except that Sophia Jane was repeatedly corrected. It was wonderful how often she was told not to fidget, not to eat so fast, not to shrug her shoulders, not to make faces. As surely as anyone looked in her direction there was something wrong. It did not seem to make much impression on her, although her thin little face looked very sullen; and once when Nanna called Susan "darling" a ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... Dick, moreover, his own perfect ability to move freely about appeared to him as little short of discourteous, not to say coarse. He, therefore, tried to keep very still, with the consequence that he developed an inordinate tendency to fidget. Altogether Lord Fallowfeild did not show to advantage in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... ladies saw his bright face become overclouded with anxiety. "I am the wretched bearer of bad news," he resumed, "and if I fidget in my chair, that is the reason for it. Let us get to the point—and let us get off it again as soon as possible. Here is a letter, written to me by Mr. Linley's lawyer. If you will take my advice you will let me say what the substance of it is, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... always there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... in the fidget he fell into, trying this and that effect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, his hand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion's Head, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then both hands ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the grasshopper must require a new set of wings every ten days. It would be more in keeping with the traditions of our public life if the scientific man simply confessed that he was baffled by this problem of the grasshopper's back legs. Yet, as I have said, if a public speaker may fidget with his back legs while he is stridulating, why not a public grasshopper? The more I see of science the more it strikes me as one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... playing "canny," risking nothing, nursing their energies for the last furious five minutes. Damer began to fidget; than he dropped out of the front rank of spectators. He couldn't stand still to see his boys win—or lose. He paced up and down behind the fags, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Would that I had been brute enough to slay him!— Great Zeus, Hipparchus had so turned his head, His every smile and word As we sat by our fire, stung my fool's heart.— How we laughed to see him curtsey, Fidget strings about his waist,— Giggle, his beard caught in the chlamys' hem Drawing it tight about his neck, 'just like Our Baucis.' Could not sleep For thinking of the life they lead in towns; He said so: when, at last, He sighed from dreamland, thoughts ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... next quarter of an hour the two sat with hardly the interchange of a word. From outside came the swift steady hiss of the rain on to the shrubs in the garden, and again the clock chimed. Morris who at first had sat very quiet had begun to fidget and stir in his chair; occasionally when he happened to notice it, he drank off the port with which Mr. Taynton hospitably kept his glass supplied. Sometimes he relit a cigarette only to let it go out again. But when the clock ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... "What a fidget you are, my love," said the physician, who, being pressed close against her by the throng, had no need of personal effort for contact. "Just as well have patience: there's ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... her situation has overtaken her in this country, where every perfect ministration will surround her, rather than in your far-off insular abyss of mere—so to speak—picturesqueness. I should have been, in that case, at the present writing, in a fidget too fierce for endurance, whereas I now can prattle to you quite balmily; for which you are all, no doubt, deeply grateful. Give her, please, my tender love, and say to her that if London were actually at all accessible to me, I should dash down to her thence without delay, and thrust myself ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... guy is;" the District Attorney goes around tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because you ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... anew upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readily relax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I could see it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, and this intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, in a way of speaking, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... it is work he wants, though it is beastly work—dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh water and food. A nation who can produce men of that sort may well be proud. No wonder England ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... gone well on towards the end of the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget. From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch and lean towards her husband to say something. An actor who was going through a piece of business perceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and stopped. Just ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... am sorry to say that you will be a good deal with her,' Miss Darrell said, shaking her head gravely; 'for you are to take the second English class under her—I heard them say so at dinner to-day— and I am afraid she will fidget you almost out of your life; but you must try to keep your temper, and take things as quietly as you can, and I daresay in time you will be able ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... Isabel, laughing. "Don't mention it pray," exclaimed Emily, "you have no idea what I endured coming down. Poor Charles, he must have been almost worried to death, she is such a horrid tease, and the old gentleman too, is an awful fidget. I think Arthur Barrington knew what he was about, when he refused to be of our party, and went on by express. Talking of Lady Ashton, how abominably she behaves to you. I was saying so to Harry the other day, and he really ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... try, mother, I really will. I will keep my hands tight in my pockets, and my feet close together; I will pretend I'm going to be shot by a file of soldiers, and then I really think that will help me not to fidget. I promise you ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... she packed Christabel and her belongings away again, and went to get the book. Annie waited sullenly. Then, as her friend did not come back immediately, she began to fidget. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... you will stay with your Aunt Ellen long,' said Miss Morton, 'because there is no doubt your father and mother will soon be in England, and then they will be able to look after you. Now,' she added, 'if you think you can keep still and not fidget, you may sit down by the window and watch for ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... neighbor, I plainly saw; but instead of turning toward me, she began to fan herself in a nervous way and to fidget with the buttons of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... had deepened into darkness; the fire, which was blazing when we entered, had settled into a glow, and the room was lit by one shaded lamp. To me the dimness was restful, but Dale, who, with the crude instincts of youth, loves glare, began to fidget, and presently asked whether he might turn on the electric light. Permission was given. My hostess invited me to smoke and, to hand her a box of cigarettes which lay on the mantelpiece, I rose, bent over her while she lit her cigarette from my match, and resuming an upright position, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... conceive. It seems stupid Beyond all expression to have a "possession" whose "ownness" there's desperate doubt of, And which (if she's nous) you can't keep in your house, nor yet (if she's "savvy") keep out of! What is "Hymen's halter"? I fidget and falter! The Beaks seem to palter and fumble. In such a strange fashion, I fly in a passion, and vow that the world is a jumble. Law seems a wigged noodle, as tame as a poodle, the whole darned caboodle ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... this stare that Blake began to be embarrassingly conscious of it, to fidget under it. When he looked up he did so circuitously, pretending to peer beyond the white face and the staring eyes of the young woman confronting him. Yet she ultimately coerced his unsteady gaze, even against his own will. And ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... at his success, and flung a laughing glance of triumph back at his comrade, who still sat at the lady's feet, though he, too, was beginning to fidget and look about for a way of escape. Mrs. Campbell had seen all with eyes that seemed to notice nothing, and was indignant enough, for she was inordinately vain, and desired attention even from boys, if no other was forthcoming. To ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... found in this free country. What think you, gentle reader, of Solomon Sly, Reynard Fox, and Hiram Dolittle and Prudence Fidget; all veritable names, and belonging to substantial yeomen? After Ammon and Ichabod, I should not be at all surprised to meet with Judas Iscariot, Pilate, and Herod. And then the female appellations! But the subject is a delicate one and I will ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... morning he was in a fidget, having fixed no hour for his visit to Holloway. It was not likely that she should be out or engaged, but he determined not to go till after lunch. All employment was out of the question, and he was rather a trouble to his sister; but in the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the apartment at dinner, and an inquiry at the laboratory was fruitless also. So I sat down to fidget for a while. Pretty soon the buzzer on the door sounded, and I opened it to find a messenger-boy with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!' It was to this that the girl's lesson ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... had arrived at this happy stage, the Captain, who had been put in a fidget by the crowd clustering round—'a pack of star-gazing fools' as he whispered pretty audibly to Mrs Gilmour—thought it was time ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a nasty fidget, am I?" It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, in the other ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You can't ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... you. After you went indoors to dress, I took off my rings and put them on that table. [Looking away rather guiltily.] Rings fidget me, this hot weather—don't they you? Well, just as I'd finished with Mrs. Jack, it suddenly struck me—my rings!—and I hurried back to fetch them. When I got here, I came across Lord ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... smile there which said all she wanted. Breakfast went on more vigorously than ever. But after breakfast it seemed to Ellen that her father never would go away. He took the newspaper, an uncommon thing for him, and pored over it most perseveringly, while Ellen was in a perfect fidget of impatience. Her mother, seeing the state she was in, and taking pity on her, sent her up stairs to do some little matters of business in her own room. These Ellen despatched with all possible zeal and speed; and coming down again, found her father gone, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... looked out, with suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There ain't—hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a fidget." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... speaking till the next interruption, by one of the numerous convalescent meals, brought in by Grace, who looked doubtful whether she would be allowed to come in, and then was edified by the little arrangements he made, quietly taking all into his own hands, and wonderfully lessening a sort of fidget that Mrs. Curtis's anxiety had attached to all that was done for Rachel. It was not for nothing that he had spent a year upon the sofa in the irritably sensitive state of nerves that Bessie had described; ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gift from a fair. Fairn-year, last year. Faitour, vagabond. Fand, found. Farl, meal cake. Fash, bother. Fatt'rils, falderals, finery. Faut, fault. Feck, bulk. Fell, deadly, pungent. Fend, keep off. Ferlie, ferly, wonder. Fetive, festive. Fidge, fidget. Fient, fiend, devil. Fiere, chum. Fit, foot. Flainen, flannen, flannel. Flang, kicked. Fleech, wheedle. Flet, remonstrated. Flitchering, fluttering. Fling, waving. Flott, fly. Flourettes, flowers. Foggage, coarse grass. Forswat, sunburned. Forwindm dried up. Fou, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... but one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and lacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be without its interest; in its way it provided the one really ...
— When William Came • Saki
... round from the altar, and began to fidget with the fastenings of his rich robes. And they made a lane for us up to the west door; then I put on my helm and we began to go up the nave, then suddenly the singing of the monks and all stopped. I heard a clinking and a buzz ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... drew near, whereupon she began to fidget; ending by shinning up a tree, just as the dogs burst into view below her, and stifled their songs upon the body of their victim ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... absently). He is still pacing up and down restlessly—to and fro—along and across—he that is usually so innocent of fidget or fuss. "Nancy," he says, half seriously, half in rueful jest, "if you want a thing done, do it yourself: mind that, all your life. I am a standing instance of the disadvantage of having let other people do it for me. The fact is, I ought to have gone out there ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... we know the tincture of mortal acid is in them. We remember the satirist who remarked that to love one's self is the beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelong romance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn in the barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for a few hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve, to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... smilingly answered, but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below him do not hurry either, for which reason most things in Finland ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... novelties. Now I'm much mistaken if this one has ever had her tea out of doors in all her born days. What! do you think our little stuffy room would be any treat to her, after the drawing-room at Font Abbey? Come, you be off till half-past five; you'll fidget yourself and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... came, and again Cappy eyed him over the tops of his spectacles; again the terrible silence. Skinner commenced to fidget. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—and, checking himself just as he was starting with his part of the story, said to me ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... discussion.' 'Talk away, Phil,' said the king. 'Well, sir,' says I, 'since you're always a-looking—leastways in winter—through the bars of grates, it's possible you've seen a bit yourself of human nature. Don't it fidget you?' 'Why,' says he, 'Phil,' a-stretching out his arms for a great yawn so suddenly as very nigh to set my coat on fire with his red fingers, 'I have been tolerably patient, haven't I?' 'If it's sarcasm you mean,' says ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... friend of Featherstone's—a tall man, with a refined and intellectual face and reserved manner. Finally, there was Otto Melick, a litterateur from London, about thirty years of age, with a wiry and muscular frame, and the restless manner of one who lives in a perpetual fidget. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... to bother me. I have been bothered, Lionel. Mr. Jan,"—turning to the bureau—"it's that which has made me feel ill. One comes to me with some worry or other, and another comes to me: they will come to me. The complaints and tales of that Roy fidget my ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... cheer me—for what can be gloomier than to watch the cold dawn of a winter's morning creeping over the gray sky of London?—somehow, things seemed less dismal already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish that some one would come with my hot water and say it was time to ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... quietest of them began to fidget and strain at their head-ropes the moment they scented ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... worrying," Mr. Stuart made answer, with the easy insouciance concerning all things earthly which sat so naturally upon him; "bad shillings always come back—let that truthful old adage console them. Why should I fidget myself about them. Take my word they're not fidgeting themselves about me. The governor's absorbed in the rise and fall of stocks, the maternal is up to her eyes in the last parties of the season, and my sister is just out and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... He began to fidget. He took his legs out of the fender and put them back again. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, but without relief. He turned over his Spectator to see what it had to say about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... cold wind softened and grew still; the stars swelled out larger; the rats came, and then came puss, and the rats went with a scuffle and patter; the pagan grey came in like a sleep-walker, and made the barn dreary as a dull dream; then the horses began to fidget with their big feet, the cattle to low with their great trombone throats, and the cocks to crow as if to give warning for the last time against the devil, the world, and the flesh; the men in the adjoining chamber woke, yawned, stretched themselves mightily, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... him over; he had the shroud up to his eyes, as the saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have not come to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you may be. Count on me; I would pull you through all by myself, I would! Keep still, don't you fidget ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... was closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium. Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... be plainer.—Do sit down, and don't fidget so.—How long have you been here now? Nearly two months. Well, that's long enough to know something of what's going on. You must have both seen and heard that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certain person, to put it bluntly, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... and mother were gone out for the day, and had left me charge of the children. It was very hot, and they kept up a continual fidget. I bore it patiently for some time, for children will be restless in hot weather, but at length I requested that they would get something ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... a drowsy way with him, was esteemed rather an active man of business, being really, I'm afraid, only what is termed a fidget: and the fact is, his business would have been better done if he had looked after it himself a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalised him considerably. As for me, there was matter enough in the early ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... her all day, soothing her with assurances that Durward would surely come back, as there was no possible reason for his leaving them so abruptly. As the day wore away and the night came on he seemed less sure, while even Uncle Timothy began to fidget, and when in the evening a young pettifogger, who had recently hung out his shingle on Laurel Hill, came in, he asked him, in a low tone, "if, under the present governor, they hung ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... woman guest. This was the rule of courtesy; kings observed it as well as burgesses. Children were taught how to behave towards a sleeping companion, to keep to their own part of the bed, not to fidget, and to sleep with ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... But fidget not, good Peacock! fret not, most excellent Pythagoras! one moment more, and I am not the boy to baulk you. And here comes Harry on the gray; by George! he makes the brushwood crackle! Now for a nasty leap out ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... alone in a church, and we made ever so many plans. And the next Sunday—that was our first one at Mossmoor,—when we all came home from church and were at dinner, Serena astonished us very much, when nurse said she'd been a very good girl, for she's generally a dreadful fidget, by saying quite coolly— ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... they had grown to accept him as part of the household, and were civil to him again. Mrs. Kettering liked to get him to herself of an evening and talk to him for two hours at a time. Kettering himself would fidget a good deal at such times, but scarcely ventured to intrude, though apparently his greatest delight was also to converse with Morgan. But Mrs. Kettering showed no such scruples about entering into the ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... if he were at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen different ways. She? oh, she took it coolly, but that was all feminine bosh, or coquetry on ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... pasture than such a yard as that shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and unpretentious; but the yard would be full of effort and fidget. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... Toni was always in a fidget to get to work. Miss Gibbs took her annual week's holiday just then, and had plenty of time to note her cousin's behaviour; and the way in which Toni swallowed her breakfast and clad herself for the start was a revelation to one who knew her ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... same memory now that she had spoken of it. Virtue had gone out of it. But she was too fatigued to grieve, and presently there stood by her bedside a phantom Harry, a pouting lad complaining of his own mortality. She put out her hand to him and crooned, "There, there!" and told herself she must not fidget if he were there, for the dead were used to quietness; and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... saw his bright face become overclouded with anxiety. "I am the wretched bearer of bad news," he resumed, "and if I fidget in my chair, that is the reason for it. Let us get to the point—and let us get off it again as soon as possible. Here is a letter, written to me by Mr. Linley's lawyer. If you will take my advice you will let me say what the substance of it is, and then put ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... sat anew upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readily relax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I could see it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, and this intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... firm to fidget; but his mind was out of its usual comfort, because the pride of his heart, his Mary, seemed to be hiding something from him. And with the justice to be expected from far clearer minds than his, being vexed by one, he was ripe for the relief of snapping ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... was my duty to go accurately from guest to guest, to shake hands, and to say perfectly naturally not "Hunh!" as so many modern children do, but "How do you do, Mrs. Lessing," or "How do you do, Mrs. Green," and not to stare and fidget or be awkward. Then I had my tea, discolored hot water with sugar and cream, my buttered toast, and a bit of cake. After that my mother would make it exceedingly easy for me to get away. My second public appearance was just before dinner. Then, dressed once more in white ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... steps, sighed, murmured prayers—especially one favourite one, consisting of three words only, 'Lord, succour us!'—and looked after the house with much good sense, taking care of every halfpenny, and buying everything herself. Her nephew she adored; she was in a perpetual fidget over his health—afraid of everything—not for herself but for him; and directly she fancied the slightest thing wrong, she would steal in softly, and set a cup of herb tea on his writing-table, or stroke him on ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... that Blake began to be embarrassingly conscious of it, to fidget under it. When he looked up he did so circuitously, pretending to peer beyond the white face and the staring eyes of the young woman confronting him. Yet she ultimately coerced his unsteady gaze, even against his own will. And ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... for to them accrue all the profits of its salubrious fountains. I protest, I knew nothing of all this yesterday, so entirely was I taken up with the rocks and meadows; no chance of meeting either card or billiard players in their solitudes. Both abound at Ems, where they hop and fidget from ball to ball, unconscious of the bold scenery in their neighbourhood, and totally insensible to its charms. They had no notion, not they, of admiring barren crags and precipices, where even the Lord would lose his way, as a coarse lubber ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... made her laugh the more, and at last Mrs. Tynan stooped over her and said, "I could shake you, Kitty. You'd make a snail fidget, and I've got enough to do to keep my senses steady with all the house-work—and now her in there!" She tossed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and you are to do whatever anybody requests you to do. And, above all, don't be surprised at anything that may happen. You'll be nervous enough; I expect that. You'll probably color up and flush and fidget; I expect that; I count on that. But don't lose your nerve entirely; and don't ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was a tone of contempt in the last ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... distance, when he would stop and lift his great head, wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... were found in their beloved temperance hotel near Bloomsbury—a clean, airless establishment much patronized by provincial England. They always perched there before crossing the great seas, and for a week or two would fidget gently over clothes, guide-books, mackintosh squares, digestive bread, and other Continental necessaries. That there are shops abroad, even in Athens, never occurred to them, for they regarded travel as a species of warfare, only to be undertaken ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... a monastic student's notebook on conduct which has been preserved, and which "prescribes that the young man is to kneel when answering the Abbot, not to take a seat unasked, not to loll against the wall, nor fidget with things within reach. He is not to scratch himself, nor cross his legs like a tailor. He is to wash his hands before meals, keep his knife sharp and clean, not to seize upon vegetables, and not to use his ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. "Do put that photograph down, George!—you do fidget so! Haven't you got any news for me—anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!—I see. Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... themselves, while the fiddlers and zimblers scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless and the dancers wearied. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry; while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost all patience, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... minutes waiting for the connection. Roger went out to talk with Warner, while Aubrey fumed in the back office. He could not sit still, and paced the little room in a fidget of impatience, tearing his watch out of his pocket every few minutes. He felt dull and sick with vague fear. To his mind recurred the spiteful buzz of that voice over the wire—"Gissing Street ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... looking from the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he appears such a boor." He glanced at the book on the armchair. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie von Prof. Dr. Paul Deussen. "And a philosopher, eh!" Having little German he turned away and lighted his pipe. After a while he began to fidget, wondering how long he was to be kept waiting. "Damn the fellow!" he muttered and picked up one of the books on the table, Les Ba-Rongas, par A. Junod, opened it at random and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the flies was bothering th' horse," surmised Mrs. Dodge; "he does fidget an' stamp somethin' terrible when the flies gets after him; his tail ain't so long as some.... Well, I'll let you know; and if you could drop around and see the table and all— Yes, some day this week. Of course I'll have to buy new furniture to put in their ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... this happy stage, the Captain, who had been put in a fidget by the crowd clustering round—'a pack of star-gazing fools' as he whispered pretty audibly to Mrs Gilmour—thought it was time to ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... she had not, and he sat down in the verandah to wait. He was both an American gentleman and an American father, therefore he was accustomed to waiting for his women folk and did not fidget. He read the New York Herald, and when he had devoured the share list, he glanced at the society news and read that, among others who were expected at the Bohemian health resort that day, was Lord Fordyce, motoring, for a stay of three weeks ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... the High School, wished to speak to her in the dining-room. This was no unusual occurrence, as Miss Mohun was secretary to the managing committee of the High School. But on the announcement Valetta began to fidget, and presently said that she was tired and would go to bed. The most ordinary effect of fatigue upon this young lady was to make her resemble the hero of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mr. Crow said to that. But he began to fidget—which was a sign that he was worried. And when Jimmy Rabbit appeared again Mr. Crow was not quite so cocksure when he asked if the ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... himself the best of companions in the diligence. All the way he amused me with tales of his little parish up in the mountains, and I in my turn told him stories about the camp; but, my faith, I had to pick my steps, for when I said a word too much he would fidget in his seat and his face would show the pain that I had given him. And of course it is not the act of a gentleman to talk in anything but a proper manner to a religious man, though, with all the care in the world, one's words may get out ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... woman in charge began to fidget. "Excuse me, miss, but I was ordered not to answer questions. I'm sorry, and I wish you wouldn't worry so much. If I can ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... promising campaign. Here you have moral heroism; ordinary valor is more impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... hear the sound of a cry in the castle, my heart beats ready to burst. I fear man and beast alike for this innocent darling; I dread volts, passes, and manual exercises; in fact, I dread everything. I live not in myself, but in him alone. And, alas! I like to endure these miseries, because when I fidget, and tremble, it is a sign that my offspring is safe and sound. To be brief—for I am never weary of talking on this subject—I believe that my breath is in him, and not ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... would not have to speak of this," he said. "But, since you have asked, it is right that I should tell you." He hesitated again, until the Kwanns in front of him had begun to fidget. Then he asked old Shatresh: "Speak of the beliefs of the People about ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... head, nor fidget the legs, nor roll the eyes, nor frown, nor make mouths. Be careful not to let saliva escape with your words, nor any spittle fly into the faces of those with whom you converse. To avoid such accident do not approach them too near, but keep ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... probably put you in a fidget. But the devil, who ought to be civil on such occasions, proved so, and took my letter to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses, all together, and at a rattling ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... pompous, and glorious in our songs; but we ever want the essential quality of gaiety—gaiety of heart—the dancing life of the spirit, that makes the voice hum, the fingers crack merrily, and the feet fidget restlessly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... foothills, faint and clear, the sounds of the chase could now be heard. Dean's men were closing on the fleeing warriors, for every little while the silence of the range was broken by the crack of rifle or carbine. Shaughnessy's fellows began to fidget and look eagerly thither, and he read their wish. "Two of you stay with Mr. Folsom," he said, "and the rest come with me. There's nothing we can do here, is there? ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... round-shouldered, as its shape is not unlike half a walnut, scooped out. The post-boy sits behind, or stands up, as a groom does in England; but his position must be uncomfortable in the extreme, as the carriole has no springs, and bounds and jumps heavily over ruts and pebbles, causing him to fidget at intervals, and make an exclamation of discomfort most irregularly. The shafts and wheels are slight, and the body painted uniformly of a chocolate colour. The foot-board is not larger than a tea-tray, about six inches square, and in order to reach it, the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... of sails, and when he got plenty of employment he bade mother stay at home and look after Mary and me, while Jack went with him. As, however, it would not have been prudent to give up her business altogether, she hired a girl, Nancy Fidget, to take her place, as Jack had done, when she was ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... to be about, but not quite. If you go back to your habitual hours of sleep you will fret and fidget indoors, and you are not yet sufficiently recovered to resume your normal life. You need fresh air. I have considered what is best and what is possible. I have talked with your friend Opsitius. Through him I have arranged for you to have short outings in this ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... that, mum—don't you fidget yourself about that. There's a pawnbroker's in the next street. I'll take it round there in the evening, if you ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... up the tool box and hides himself under the car again, while Runyon Q. Sampson begins to fidget around and look at his watch like it was the first one ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... bird, that guy is;" the District Attorney goes around tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... from the Hall that was wanted by the patient, but only the use of the fresh air that was about her, and the observance of her doctor's simple directions. Sir William next began to make his horse fidget, and ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... likeness of her, as you see her combing my hair. She is not young, you perceive, nor yet very old. Sometimes I get a little impatient, and fidget, because she is so particular; but our quarrels always end in my kissing her, and saying, "You are a ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... true, and you've been an uncommon plucky girl, I will say. She ain't like them females that faint and go into high strikes and fidget your life out," he said to Smith, who observed the girl's face flush. "Now, my dear, you'll go with Mr. Smith, and please your old father. There ain't a morsel of danger; he's come safe all the way from London, and I never see a better bit of manoeuvring, I ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... say that he felt much relieved by fomentations of such an herb; perhaps you will see that he finds in his chamber all that he wants." Of another he would say, "I think he drinks asses' milk; I should like him to have his morning draught." And I, who was born with such sensibility that I must fidget myself about everybody, was sure to exceed ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... frequently; sometimes there were long unaccountable absences, it was true; when his daughter began to fidget after him, and to wonder what had become of him. But when he made his appearance he had always good reasons to give; and the right she felt that she had to his familiar household tenderness; the power she possessed of fully ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... distressed If you fidget when you're dressed. If you fidget like Miss Midget, Hopper, or her sister Bridget. Goops like that are so much bother, That they ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... illustration of the perfect adaptation of means to an end—one well worthy the attention of all future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath, under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling. How they must have longed to gobble him up, were it only for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... because the German mercantile marine was laid on the ice till the end of war, they had turned him on to this show. He was bored by the business, and didn't understand it very well. The river charts puzzled him, and though it was pretty plain going for hundreds of miles, yet he was in a perpetual fidget about the pilotage. You could see that he would have been far more in his element smelling his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth, or beating against a northeaster in the shallow Baltic. He had six barges in tow, but the heavy flood of the Danube ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... along... And then we stopped. I shouted to the horses—nothing but a shout could have the slightest effect against the wind. They started to fidget and to dance and to turn this way and that, but they would not go. I wasted three or four minutes before I shook free of my robes and jumped out to investigate. Well, we were in the corner formed by two fences—caught as in a trap. I was dumbfounded. I did not know of any fence in these parts, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and others got blanks. Ussher got Miss Fidget, Larry Kelly's mare, and was advised in a whisper by that cunning little gentleman—who meant to buy Conqueror by way of a hedge, and who therefore wanted to swell the stakes—to be sure and buy the mare himself, for she didn't know how to fall; "and," he added, "you know she's no ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... he was in a fidget, having fixed no hour for his visit to Holloway. It was not likely that she should be out or engaged, but he determined not to go till after lunch. All employment was out of the question, and he was rather a trouble to his sister; but in the course of the morning there came a letter ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... down and frighten more birds. Now then, don't fidget. If the stone goes, you'd still hold on by the rope, and I should be left sitting there all the same. I shouldn't do it if I didn't feel that I could. I'm not a ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... man who looked young; it seemed to prove nothing, as against other things, that he was bald and, as might have been said, slightly stale, or, more delicately perhaps, dry: there was such a fine little fidget of preoccupied life in him, and his eyes, at moments—though it was an appearance they could suddenly lose—were as candid and clear as those of a pleasant boy. Very neat, very light, and so fair that there was little other indication of his moustache than his constantly ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... only don't be too particular, because I'm late and must hurry down or Jane won't get things straight, and it does fidget me to have the saltcellars uneven, the tea strainer forgotten, and your uncle's paper not aired," returned Miss Plenty, briskly unrolling the two gray curls she wore at ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... the necessary time at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed the 2,499,999,999 ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is Low Church, is very ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... it off,—like a boy's. It is miles too long. You might as well head Zachariah off. She has been gone since one o'clock. I am sure I heard the front door close before I dropped off to sleep. Don't fidget, Kenny. They've probably got old Martin in the calaboose by this time. Mother never fails when she sets out to do a thing. That good-for-nothing sleepy-head, Hattie, never heard a sound last night. What a conscience she ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... time to half finish my eating Ere Merdle is done; such a fidget is then, He'd starve me I think rather 'n miss of a meeting Where brokers preside o'er the fate of the stocks, As Pales ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... relieved when they knelt in prayer and she could hide her tears in a corner of the old sofa. Prayers were very much longer on Sundays than on other mornings, but, though the boys might fidget a little, the most active member of the family never moved. Elizabeth's soul was carried away far above any bodily discomfort. But not even the smallest Gordon made a sound. There had been a dreadful day once when Jamie and Archie, kneeling at one chair with their heads together, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... a man at the gate. He looked to me like a burglar. No doubt she let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Kobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so, it will be bad ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not have had an opportunity of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... all the afternoon, and Meredith won steadily. He talked a lot about his abnormal luck, but one man present seemed to be constantly on the fidget. Jim had been weaned on cards in a place where gambling was the salt of life, and "tinhorns" were as plentiful as mosquitoes in summer. He kept his eyes on the slim, nimble hands of Meredith, and what he saw did not ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... the shops, on approval. Maggie, certainly, would have been as far as Charlotte herself from positively desiring this, and Charlotte, on her side, as far as Maggie from holding him light as a real value. She made him fidget thus, poor girl, but from generous ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... dead! Would that I had been brute enough to slay him!— Great Zeus, Hipparchus had so turned his head, His every smile and word As we sat by our fire, stung my fool's heart.— How we laughed to see him curtsey, Fidget strings about his waist,— Giggle, his beard caught in the chlamys' hem Drawing it tight about his neck, 'just like Our Baucis.' Could not sleep For thinking of the life they lead in towns; He said so: when, at last, He sighed ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... The marquis, indeed, began to betray his impatience, and the great clock immediately over our heads presently striking the half-hour after ten, he started and made as if he would have approached the king. He checked the impulse, however, but still continued to fidget uneasily, losing his reserve by-and-by so far as to whisper to me that his Majesty ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... you certainly are a lively companion!" exclaimed Mrs. Butler. "Fidget, fidget sigh, sigh, and not a word out of your lips! I'll thank you to hand me my knitting, and then you may read me a chapter from that book of sermons on the table. I often think it's in fine weather we should remember our ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Celia blew away the threatening cloud, however, and for her sake her brother promised to try to be patient; for her sake Ben declared he never would "get mad" if Mr. Thorny did fidget, and both very soon forgot all about master and man and lived together like two friendly lads, taking each other's ups and downs good-naturedly, and finding mutual pleasure and profit in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... James's essay on "The Gospel of Relaxation," in Talks to Teachers and Students, or Annie Payson Call's books, of which the best known is Power Through Repose.] This nervous leakage is a notoriously American ailment; we knit our brows, we work our fingers, we fidget, we rock in our chairs, we talk explosively, we live in a quiver of excitement and hurry, in a chronic state of tension. We need to follow St. Paul's exhortation to "Study to be quiet"; to learn what Carlyle called "the great art of sitting still." ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... he remained quite quiet; but when the minutes lengthened into a quarter of an hour he began to fidget. Would the talkers never stop? Why, their chattering seemed to be endless? Even through the door he could hear Mr. Crowninshield's curt tones and the eager rise and fall of his voice. Once he laughed as if pleased, and twice Walter heard a cry of "Good!" ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... be that the seal of old-bachelorhood is already set upon me, and that I am that odious and hyper-sensitive creature commonly called a 'fidget;' but somehow I could not find a governess whom I really felt inclined to choose for my little Lizzie. Some of the ladies were elderly and stern; others were young and frivolous; some of them were uncertain as to the distribution of the letter h. One young lady declared that ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... drawing-room here, knowing how to walk and to curtsey alone, I did not, at first, perceive the great man, who followed so close to his wife's skirts as to be nearly hid. But he was soon flying about the room at large, and betrayed himself immediately to be a fidget. Instead of remaining stationary, or nearly so as became his high quality, he took the initiative in compliments, and had nearly every diplomatic man walking apart in the adjoining room, in a political aside, in less than twenty minutes. He had a countenance ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the fidget he fell into, trying this and that effect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, his hand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion's Head, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then both hands lifted in parallel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is," corrected Mr. PELL, severely. "I knew it would come, Boy, and it has. Though it has taken time, it has taken time. Listen yet further, and don't fidget with that Bag! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... at the apartment at dinner, and an inquiry at the laboratory was fruitless also. So I sat down to fidget for a while. Pretty soon the buzzer on the door sounded, and I opened it to find a messenger-boy with a large brown ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... in a dreadful fidget whenever the little gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... awful, and the poor child was quite broken-hearted, particularly at parting from her dearest beloved papa, whom she idolises. How we miss her, I can't say, and never having been separated from her since thirteen years above a fortnight, I am in a constant fidget and impatience to know everything about everything. It is a great, great trial for a Mother who has watched over her child with such anxiety day after day, to see her far away—dependent on herself! But I have great confidence in her good sense, clever head, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... he answered, 'look how you worry all the time! If you'd only have what I call a quiet set-down and a chat, without being always on the fidget, always looking either at the glass or at the clock, one might not ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the minute I set eyes on him—he never ought to have been sent out like this ... He's been to a wedding this morning, so I heard, and it's upset him a little, that's all ... Upset him—we're lucky if he doesn't upset us. What a fidget you are! I shan't take you into Switzerland next year, if you're like this... If Switzerland's full of a lot of drunken men, I don't want to go... Well, what had we better do about it? Perhaps this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... chap!" said Percy Guest, with a laugh. "Married? Looked as if he was going to be hanged. Wonder whether I shall be as nervous and upset if—if—I ought to say when—it comes off? No, not likely, bless her. Might be all in a fidget to get it over for fear of a slip, but I don't think I should ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... house on wheels and drawn by an hundred laborious oxen, came bumping and joggling the ale that thirsty Connaught princes would drink. On a road again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern one gape and fidget, would be marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high on the back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken wands, that were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs; the first lines of poems (for it was an offence ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... compromised, and why not he? But if Gering was bent on trouble, why, there was the last resource of the peace-lover. He tapped the rapier at his side. He ever held that he was peaceful, and it is recorded that at the death of an agitated victim, he begged him to "sit still and not fidget." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... indisputably whither I was hieing, was such an Astonishment, that they looked at me rather as a recollected spectre than a renewed acquaintance. When we came to the iron rails poor Miss Planta, in much fidget, begged to take the books from M. d'Arblay, terrified, I imagine, lest French feet should contaminate the gravel within!—while he, innocent of her fears, was insisting upon carrying them as far as to the house, till he saw I took part with Miss Planta, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... series, isn't it? Make my apologies to our dear dismal Romayne—and if you drive out this afternoon, come and have a chat with me. Your affectionate mother, Emily Eyrecourt. P. S.—You know what a fidget Matilda is. If she talks about me, don't believe a word she ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... fancy that if I got into the middle of the stream I should not be able to paddle myself back against it—which, indeed, might very well have proved the case. Then I became nervous, and paddled all on one side, by which means, of course, I only turned the boat round. S—— began to fidget about, getting up from where I had placed her, and terrifying me with her unsteady motions and the rocking of the canoe. I was now very much frightened, and saw that I must get back to shore before I became more helpless ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... man at the gate. He looked to me like a burglar. No doubt she let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Kobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so, it will be bad for ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... really wish I had a photograph of that gathering of people to put right in here, on this page! Many of them would have looked much better at this point than they did after four hours of patient waiting. How that crowd did fidget and fix and change position, as far as it was possible to change, when there was not an inch of unoccupied space. How they talked and laughed and sang and grumbled ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... thing for her to find any self-imposed check upon what she wished to do, that Miss Haye was very much puzzled; and tried and annoyed out of all proportion by her self-consultations. She was in a fidget of uneasiness all day long; and ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... affections because we know the tincture of mortal acid is in them. We remember the satirist who remarked that to love one's self is the beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelong romance will resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish and crank. We shall fidget and fume while waiting our turn in the barber's chair; we shall argue and muddle and mope. And yet, for a few hours, what a happy vision that was! And we turn, on Christmas Eve, to pages which those who speak our tongue immortally associate with the season—the pages of Charles Dickens. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... sorry for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... seen Phil fidget: he stood on one foot, then on the other; he put his hands in his pockets and jingled the things he had there, till he remembered that papa doesn't like us to do that, then he took his hands out. He straightened up, and shook ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... reigned in France. We had a magnificent army, in which my brothers took as much interest as I did in the navy. And the head of the army was an eminent Minister of War, Marshal Soult, who, although he looked on M. Thiers as a tiresome little fidget, employed the fruits of his great experience and long service in the Ministry in bringing every branch of our land forces to perfection gradually, and in the most admirably consistent spirit. This army was waging an incessant war in Africa under ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... lady's, began to fidget confusedly, and, the silence continuing, she coughed several times, to effect the preface required by her sense of fitness, before she felt it proper to observe, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... anxious countenance. By his regimental acquaintances he had traced out Madam Nosebag, and found her full of ire, fuss, and fidget at discovery of an impostor who had travelled from the north with her under the assumed name of Captain Butler of Gardiner's dragoons. She was going to lodge an information on the subject, to have him sought for as an emissary of the Pretender; but Spontoon ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... marquis, indeed, began to betray his impatience, and the great clock immediately over our heads presently striking the half-hour after ten, he started and made as if he would have approached the king. He checked the impulse, however, but still continued to fidget uneasily, losing his reserve by-and-by so far as to whisper to me that his Majesty ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... looked so utterly miserable that a smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so impertinent to her as ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sentimental, tender, witty, pretty, pompous, and glorious in our songs; but we ever want the essential quality of gaiety—gaiety of heart—the dancing life of the spirit, that makes the voice hum, the fingers crack merrily, and the feet fidget restlessly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... sanguine prediction, however, she did not return as promptly as she had promised, and Mr. Tolman began to fidget uneasily. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Nervous and bashful persons fidget, they do not sit squarely or firmly at table, their chairs are crooked, they play or gesticulate with their knives and forks, or they beat dismal tattoos with them against their plates. These same timid minds find vent for inspiration in the crumbs of the bread, of which they involuntarily make ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... know any sort of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You can't reason ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... famous straits to carry victory into Greece, till at last his navy went under at Salamis. We saw the pathetic figure of Byron swimming where Leander swam; and, in all, such an array of visions that the lure of the Eternal Waterway gripped us, and we were a-fidget to be there. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... minutes to five he started to fidget with his rifle, and then suddenly springing up on the fire step with a muttered, "I'll send over a couple of souvenirs to Fritz, so that he'll miss me when I leave," he stuck his rifle over the ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... sat and listened intently, like children who hear and do not understand, yet who are spellbound. The children themselves sit spellbound on the benches till the play is over. They do not fidget or lose interest. They watch with wide, absorbed eyes at the mystery, held in thrall by ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... concerned, batuchka, Rodion Romanovitch, I will tell you something which shall reveal to you my disposition," answered Porphyrius Petrovitch, continuing to fidget about the room, and, as before, avoiding his visitor's gaze. "I live alone, you must know, never go into society, and am, therefore, unknown; add to which, that I am a man on the shady side of forty, somewhat played ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... holding it or else put it on the table with a paraphernalia of matters to keep it down, a tablespoon on one side, a knife on another, and so on, which things always tumble off at a critical moment, and fidget you out of the repose which is absolutely necessary to reading; whereas, a big folio lies quiet and majestic on the table, waiting kindly till you please to come to it, with its leaves flat and peaceful, giving you no trouble of body, so that ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... epistle would probably put you in a fidget. But the devil, who ought to be civil on such occasions, proved so, and took my letter ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a start) that the listener or the reader of a story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert your attention as you read; ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... a piece of perpetual motion, Full of bother And pother, Would make paralytic old Bridget A Fidget. So you see (to my notion), Better leave our downy Diminutive browny Alone, near his "diggings;" Ever free to pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... walk about in his room. One can't be too particular, when rest is of such importance to your young lady—and it has struck me as just possible, that the floor of his room may be in fault. My dear, the boards may creak! I'm a sad fidget, I know; but, if the carpenter can set things right—without any horrid hammering, of course!—the sooner he is sent for, the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Donelson was pleased at his success, and flung a laughing glance of triumph back at his comrade, who still sat at the lady's feet, though he, too, was beginning to fidget and look about for a way of escape. Mrs. Campbell had seen all with eyes that seemed to notice nothing, and was indignant enough, for she was inordinately vain, and desired attention even from boys, if no other was forthcoming. To have any one preferred ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... nothing done; we would not even trouble to stare at the intruder. Yet he would seldom stop to finish his consommation, or he would bolt it. He would feel something in the air; he would know he was out of place. He would fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace in the bush. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... rather late to-night," he said, when they reached the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but a poor bargain ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Marty,—all right. I'm not so wet as I look. I'll change my coat, and come in to supper in one minute. Don't you fidget about me so, good Marty." Never was Stephen heard to speak discourteously or even ungently to a human being. It would have offended his taste. It was not a matter of principle with him,—not at all: he hardly ever thought of things in that light. A rude or harsh word, a loud, angry tone, jarred ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... In a savage country, to which my thoughts often wander, I would stumble over every taboo, and soon find myself in the oven. As it is, I stumble over everything, stools and lady's trains, and upset porcelain, and break all the odds and ends with which I fidget, and spill the salt, and then pour claret over it, and call on the right people at the wrong houses, and put letters in the wrong envelopes: one of the most terrible blunders of the Social Duffer. Naturally, in place of improving, MACDUFFER gets worse and worse: ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... dear, you know best; but what about Fanny? I shall not ask her again. How very forward, and indeed altogether"—Another stoppage, another twitch at her gown, with another fidget on the chair, the eyes going up to Dr. Flavel's bands as before. "In OUR house too—to put herself ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... is distressed If you fidget when you're dressed. If you fidget like Miss Midget, Hopper, or her sister Bridget. Goops like that are so much bother, That they ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... had used up my advance salary and was, for the first time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my bills weekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week I knew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. The neighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping. And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours with my wife I ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... appointment! repeated Mr. Jones, who began to fidget with curiosity; then it is an appointment. If it is in the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman on the stage began to quarrel. They were married (not really, but in the play, I mean), and I guess it was some more of that incompatibility stuff. Anyhow, as they began to talk more and more, Mother began to fidget, and pretty soon I saw she was gathering up our things; and the minute the curtain went down after the ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... under the hill, the maidens danced, and the matrons fanned themselves, while the fiddlers and zimblers scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless and the dancers wearied. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry; while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost all patience, and begged leave to go home. But before they went they deposited ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... stop her, he dropped straight into the seat. "I assure you there has really been nothing." With a continuation of his fidget he pulled out his watch. "Won't ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... emancipated woman; but the expression of her face produced a disagreeable effect on the spectator. One felt impelled to ask her, 'What's the matter; are you hungry? Or bored? Or shy? What are you in a fidget about?' Both she and Sitnikov had always the same uneasy air. She was extremely unconstrained, and at the same time awkward; she obviously regarded herself as a good-natured, simple creature, and all the while, whatever she did, it always ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... great deal of fidget concerning what other people think of them and their peculiarities. Some are too much disposed to take the illnatured side, and, judging by themselves, infer the worst. But it is very often the case that the uncharitableness of ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... especially since my wife's brother Garland was called in as consulting physician, last month at the penitentiary. He has so stirred her sympathies for the woman whom he pronounces a paragon of all the virtues and graces, that I begin to fidget now at the sound of the prisoner's name, and can hardly look my wife straight in the face. When I go up to court next week, I will call on the Governor, and add a personal appeal to the one I have already signed. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... for long memories, but their intentions were good, and the first day of Aunt Anne's visit passed very well, the children remembering to rub their feet on the mat, shut the door softly, and not fidget at meals. But the exertion seemed too much for them, and the second day began rather boisterously, and did not improve as it went on. After lunch, when the twins came into the drawing-room, Lucy drew a footstool near her aunt, and sat down meekly upon it, thinking that the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... time he found himself in his daughter's presence. A dozen times he said that the man was heartless to come to the house at such a time, and he spoke of his cousin always as though the man were guilty of a gross injustice in being heir to the property. But not the less on that account did he fidget himself about the room in which Belton was to sleep, about the food that Belton was to eat, and especially about the wine that Belton was to drink. What was he to do for wine? The stock of wine in the cellars ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would be interesting ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Hattie, and don't fidget. Don't you see how tired Aunt Raby looks?" exclaimed Rose. "Prissie can't be here yet, and you are such a worry when you jump up ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... a superficial acquaintance with its mechanism. The hammer, which by its stroke upon the string has produced the sound, falls immediately when the tone resounds; and after that you may caress the key which has set the hammer in motion, fidget round on it as much as you please, and stagger up and down over it, in your intoxicated passion,—no more sound is to be brought out from it, with all your trembling and quivering. It is only the public who are quivering with ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... be very well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. "Do put that photograph down, George!—you do fidget so! Haven't you got any news for me—anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!—I see. Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consider themselves much wiser, have not the same consideration," thought Humphrey, as the pony trotted along. Humphrey thought a good deal about the danger that Edward had been subjected to, and said to himself, "I really think that I should be more comfortable if Edward was away. I am always in a fidget about him. I wish the new king, who is now in France would raise an army and come over. It is better that Edward should be fighting in the field than remain here and risk being shot as a deer-stealer, or put in prison. The farm is sufficient for us all; and when I have ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... fair. Fairn-year, last year. Faitour, vagabond. Fand, found. Farl, meal cake. Fash, bother. Fatt'rils, falderals, finery. Faut, fault. Feck, bulk. Fell, deadly, pungent. Fend, keep off. Ferlie, ferly, wonder. Fetive, festive. Fidge, fidget. Fient, fiend, devil. Fiere, chum. Fit, foot. Flainen, flannen, flannel. Flang, kicked. Fleech, wheedle. Flet, remonstrated. Flitchering, fluttering. Fling, waving. Flott, fly. Flourettes, flowers. Foggage, coarse grass. Forswat, sunburned. Forwindm dried up. Fou, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... came here, weeks ago, to look over the house. She has something on her mind,—I see it in her eyes.' Then it occurred to me, too, that the woman's manner had altered, and that she seemed always in a tremble and a fidget. I went at once to her room, and charged her with stealing the book. She fell on her knees, and told the whole story as I have told it to you, and as I shall take care to tell it to all to whom I have so foolishly blabbed my yet more foolish suspicions of yourself. But can ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... continued to break down at the "never, never, never," part of the tune. Dr. O'Grady began to fidget nervously in his chair. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... of a cry in the castle, my heart beats ready to burst. I fear man and beast alike for this innocent darling; I dread volts, passes, and manual exercises; in fact, I dread everything. I live not in myself, but in him alone. And, alas! I like to endure these miseries, because when I fidget, and tremble, it is a sign that my offspring is safe and sound. To be brief—for I am never weary of talking on this subject—I believe that my breath is in him, and not ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Featherstone's—a tall man, with a refined and intellectual face and reserved manner. Finally, there was Otto Melick, a litterateur from London, about thirty years of age, with a wiry and muscular frame, and the restless manner of one who lives in a perpetual fidget. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... assiduously cultivated. Do not fidget or loll about in your chair, or twist your fingers constantly, or play with something while you talk, or restlessly beat a tattoo with fingers or feet. All such faults render your companionship a burden ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a state of dreamy content as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then—he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. He knew that Marjory knew it, too. It began the day Dr. Marcellin advised him to take a ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... "You need not fidget about Victor, Marie. Elise is with him, and will come and let you know if he wakes; but I hope that he has gone off fairly to sleep for the night. He knew me, and I think I have put his mind at rest a little as to how he came here. I have told him it was an accident in the street, and ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... youth. A tall, good-looking fellow, wasn't he? Well, well, this matter scarcely concerns us. How about the dimity in the room which will be Fluff's? My dear Frances, what is the matter? I must ask you not to fidget so." ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... said, "you need not fidget about poison, my lad. The place will soon heal. Now then, any ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... world IS," Martie reflected. "Workers needing jobs, and jobs needing workers." And suddenly she hit upon the keynote to her new philosophy. "MEN don't worry and fidget about keeping their jobs, and I'M not going to. I'm just as necessary and just as capable as if I were—say, Len. If Len came on here for a job I wouldn't worry myself sick about his ever ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... repaired, and to buy a new suit of sails, and when he got plenty of employment he bade mother stay at home and look after Mary and me, while Jack went with him. As, however, it would not have been prudent to give up her business altogether, she hired a girl, Nancy Fidget, to take her place, as Jack had done, when she ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... been long started before he begins to fidget and shuffle, and presently he hauls up a wicker basket beside him, undoes it, and fishes out a very nice dark purple kimono. His top hat goes into the rack. His collar, tie, and stud disappear. His coat comes off and is carefully ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the tray down some time ago." Helen watched her father fidget with his watch fob for several minutes, then asked with characteristic ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... a dreadful fidget whenever the little gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures—startling ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... of the perfect adaptation of means to an end—one well worthy the attention of all future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath, under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling. How they must have longed to gobble him up, were it only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... profit. The children sat around the big room with Bibles, their task being to learn by heart one of the eight-verse articulations of the 119th Psalm, while the old lady meditated in her armchair and maintained discipline. Those were stern times for the young students: to fidget in one's seat was to court calamity; even to scratch oneself was a risky experiment. David got little credit as a bard in ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... cramped little office and he always brought home a sheaf of papers under his arm. He would sit at the table inside the window in the candlelight and, as the music rose outside, singing to the child and the flowers and the stars, he would scowl and fidget and tap irritably on the table with the point of his pen, for he did not love ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... too particular, because I'm late and must hurry down or Jane won't get things straight, and it does fidget me to have the saltcellars uneven, the tea strainer forgotten, and your uncle's paper not aired," returned Miss Plenty, briskly unrolling the two gray curls she wore at ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Reade began to grow decidedly restless. He would sit up, look and listen, and then lie down again. Then he would fidget about nervously, all of which was most unusual with him, for Reade's was one of those strong natures that will endure work day and night as long as is necessary, and then go in for complete rest when there is nothing ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... fast enough to suit him, his mind leaping on ahead of their tongues, his fingers wriggling to wrap themselves around something valuable—preferably the eggs of the golden goose—and a general eagerness to be up and about and onwards. He was one round fidget on two legs, yet a good man ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... one of the living graces and glories of our city, those that spelled the cryptic riddle of its meaning clapped their hands for pleasure and turned their eyes to where the lady thus bepraised stood and smiled at her, and she, delighted, would bridle and fidget with her fan and seek to maintain herself as if she did not care one whit for what in reality she prized very highly. So the river of sweet words ran on, sweetly voiced, and flowing in its appointed course with a golden felicity of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... about sixteen miles, when we fortunately got sufficient water in a barrier in the creek, evidently from recent rain, the bed of the creek otherwise perfectly dry. Three more horses knocked up and obliged to be left behind, namely Bawley, Fidget, and Camel (mare) although good travelling. Ascended hill at camp and found that the first leading main range bears east and about 40 degrees north, ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... their grasp, while they fasten eagerly on the light and insignificant. They fidget themselves and others to death with incessant anxiety about nothing. A part of their dress that is awry keeps them in a fever of restlessness and impatience; they sit picking their teeth, or paring their nails, or stirring the fire, or brushing a speck of dirt ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... cautiously opened. A woman's head looked out, with suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There ain't—hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a fidget." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... opera, and this tiresome cough all night after the ball. Quite a series, isn't it? Make my apologies to our dear dismal Romayne—and if you drive out this afternoon, come and have a chat with me. Your affectionate mother, Emily Eyrecourt. P. S.—You know what a fidget Matilda is. If she talks about me, don't believe a word ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... bustle," exclaimed that fidget John; and in less time than my lady-readers would believe, I had put on my pink bonnet and my white dress, and was bowling down to Richmond by the side of my cousin, behind a roan and a chestnut that stepped away in a style that it did ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... kept from getting their proper supply of nourishment from the food-canal, the state of affairs is quickly revealed in the mouth mirror. Those muscles which open the mouth, instead of resting peacefully in the consciousness of duty well done, are in a state of perpetual fidget, twitching, pulling, wondering whether they ought not to open the portal for the entrance of new supplies of material, since the tissues are crying ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... feet, as though the floor under the table were uncomfortably hot. When Mr Verloc returned to sit in his place, like the very embodiment of silence, the character of Mrs Verloc's stare underwent a subtle change, and Stevie ceased to fidget with his feet, because of his great and awed regard for his sister's husband. He directed at him glances of respectful compassion. Mr Verloc was sorry. His sister Winnie had impressed upon him (in the omnibus) that Mr Verloc would be found at home in a state of sorrow, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... to fidget with some account books and papers that he had brought from his house. He eyed his partner with furtive glances; Mallalieu eyed him with ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... This was enough for Edward Rosier, who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked him—a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect jeune fille, and one couldn't make of a jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing light ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... a burglar. No doubt she'll let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Bobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so; it will be bad for ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... players swayed, clenched struggling, fell in a heap, and leaped to their feet again. And everywhere he saw Gray's yellow head darting among them like a sun-ball, and he began to wonder, if he could not outrun and outwrestle his old enemy. He began to fidget in his seat and presently he could stand it no longer, and he ran out into the field and touched ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Percy Guest, with a laugh. "Married? Looked as if he was going to be hanged. Wonder whether I shall be as nervous and upset if—if—I ought to say when—it comes off? No, not likely, bless her. Might be all in a fidget to get it over for fear of a slip, but I don't think ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... get a sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—and, checking himself just as he was starting with his part of the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to nine struck, and he saw old Thomas beginning to fidget about with the keys in his hand, he thought of the Doctor's parting monition, and stopped the cornopean at once, notwithstanding the loud-voiced remonstrances from all sides; and the crowd scattered away from the close, the eleven all going into the School-house, where supper and beds were provided ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern crowded out of my life and out of my companions' lives (in a convent boarding-school) by the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics when we were learning to skate, and our very dreams were a medley of ice and bumps? How could we worry over 'natural laws' in the face of a tyrannical interdict which lessened our chances of breaking our necks by forbidding ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... diligence. All the way he amused me with tales of his little parish up in the mountains, and I in my turn told him stories about the camp; but, my faith, I had to pick my steps, for when I said a word too much he would fidget in his seat and his face would show the pain that I had given him. And of course it is not the act of a gentleman to talk in anything but a proper manner to a religious man, though, with all the care in the world, one's words may ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... must be plainer.—Do sit down, and don't fidget so.—How long have you been here now? Nearly two months. Well, that's long enough to know something of what's going on. You must have both seen and heard that Louise has no eyes for anyone but a certain person, to put it bluntly, that she is ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a quarter of an hour. Then he began to fidget in his chair, but he stoically sat on until, when at the end of an hour Katinka showed no signs whatever of leaving off, he rose, and ceremoniously regretting that his duties prevented him from having the pleasure of ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... those peas left," she returned, "and when I've reset them I'll give you your answer. That'll be in fifteen minutes. Now go away, or you'll fidget round, and I sha'n't get 'em straight." And without another word ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... "Three for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... wouldn't? You groaning—groaning—groaning. Enough to make anybody fidget. Why, you're making me sick! Why can't you look after yourself?... What's the use of eating things ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the church in the middle of the sermon and seated himself in the back pew. After a while he began to fidget. Leaning over to the white-haired man at his side, evidently an old member ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... indeed an intruder. She gave us the permission we waited for, however. There were many good copies of lessons: those I did not dwell upon. But the sketches, spirited though imperfect, I studied as if they had been those of an Allston. Etty was evidently in a fidget at this preference of the smallest line of original talent over the corrected performances which are like those of every body else. I drew out a full-length figure done in black chalk on brown paper. It chained Flora's wondering attention as quite new. It was a young man with his chair tipped back; ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... major got in, and brought a worse tale than I had, though he stated the same facts as far as I went. This seemed to put our colonel all into a fidget; and it convinced me clearly of one of the hateful ways of the world. When I made my report, it wasn't believed because I was no officer: I was no great man, but just a poor soldier; but when the same ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to that, why, as human nature is weak—excuse what I may feel compelled to do; but for the present pray oblige me by keeping your seat and the peace; or, if you must move and fidget about, go and make that pugnacious Tim Carroll as decent as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... he spoke. Mr Gillooly began to fidget in his chair, and his countenance grew redder and redder. He cast a glance at his whip and hat. Suddenly seizing them, he paid a hurried adieu to my mother, and turning to the lawyer, added, "Your servant, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... long rides when the horse is going quietly at an extended walk, for directly as the slowness of the pace is the length of the horse, and so should be the length of the rein. The horse is at his greatest length when standing still, and if you force him to collect himself then, he will be uneasy and fidget.[16-*] But the reins must never be loose. The bearing on the mouth, however lightly, must still be felt; and if the horse, in attempting to stare about, as colts and ill-ridden horses will, should throw his head to the right, it must be stopped by the feeling ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... had been taken up with her musical studies. It was the long evenings she used to dread; now they had become part and parcel of her daily pleasures. They dined about four, and when dinner was over it was time to talk about what kind of house they were going to have, to fidget about in search of brushes and combs, the curling-tongs, and to consider what little necessaries she had better bring down to the theatre with her. At first it seemed very strange to her to go tripping down these ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... been "in a fidget," and said so. But Ruth could restrain herself pretty well. She nodded so that Copley saw she heard him and was listening. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... Brahma, guard in sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya, And may no restless fay, with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping; ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... as she looks any worse to me either; but Dr. Van Anden is in a fidget, and I suppose ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... him so to his face!' thought the wife. 'Oh! I wish he would sit anywhere but in Arthur's chair, and not fidget me with playing with that horrid little piece of watch-chain!' 'He is very well, thank you. He had a bad cold last week, but it is quite gone now. I hope ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said all she wanted. Breakfast went on more vigorously than ever. But after breakfast it seemed to Ellen that her father never would go away. He took the newspaper, an uncommon thing for him, and pored over it most perseveringly, while Ellen was in a perfect fidget of impatience. Her mother, seeing the state she was in, and taking pity on her, sent her up stairs to do some little matters of business in her own room. These Ellen despatched with all possible zeal and speed; and coming down again, found her father gone, and her mother alone. She flew ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I want to get done. Queer how these details fidget me. Nerves! I ought to have had a holiday this ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... you about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is Low Church, is very well ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium. Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... rather think she wouldn't be fast enough. But that game's all over, and we are all going to be at peace now we have put Bony away like a wild beast in a cage and he can't do anybody any hurt. There, you needn't fidget yourself about that. All the same, I don't quite understand why a craft that isn't a man-of-war, but carries a long gun amidships and has officers in uniform aboard, should be taking refuge in this port. I dunno. She looks too smart and clean, but it might mean that ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... almost well enough to be about, but not quite. If you go back to your habitual hours of sleep you will fret and fidget indoors, and you are not yet sufficiently recovered to resume your normal life. You need fresh air. I have considered what is best and what is possible. I have talked with your friend Opsitius. Through him I have arranged for you to have short outings ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... money, it is work he wants, though it is beastly work—dull country, dishonest natives, an eternal fidget over fresh water and food. A nation who can produce men of that sort may well be proud. No wonder ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... low-breeding to fidget with the hat, cane or parasol during a call. They are introduced merely as signs that the caller is in walking dress, and are not intended, the hat to be whirled round the top of the cane, the cane to be employed in tracing out the pattern of the carpet, or the ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... I was coming to than a babe, and once you're here, you stays here." "Well, never mind for the present, my man. Why, you're a regular lawyer, you rascal; I shall have to mind my p's and q's with you. Now don't talk any more, or you'll fidget, and that won't do your back any good. Will you have bread and milk, or beef-tea and toast, you luxurious person? And I must ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... nor fidget the legs, nor roll the eyes, nor frown, nor make mouths. Be careful not to let saliva escape with your words, nor any spittle fly into the faces of those with whom you converse. To avoid such accident do not approach them too near, but keep ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, "If you'll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over—to-night. I guess we can go down here by the corral ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... not sufficient plague to be harboured in a hovel that would hardly serve for a dog's kennel in England, baited by a rude peasant-boy, and dependent on the faith of a mercenary ruffian, but I cannot even have time to muse over my own mishap, but must come aloft, frisk, fidget, and make speeches, to please this pale hectic phantom, because she has gentle blood in her veins? By mine honour, setting prejudice aside, the mill-wench is the more attractive of the two—But patienza, Piercie Shafton; thou ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child's ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... fancy in house-building, without prejudice to the prevailing sober sentiment of their neighbors, in such particulars. The man of money, simply, may build his "villa," and squander his tens of thousands upon it. He may riot within it, and fidget about it for a few brief years; he may even hang his coat of arms upon it, if he can fortunately do so without stumbling over a lapstone, or greasing his coat against the pans of a cook-shop; but it is equally ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on towards the end of the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget. From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch and lean towards her husband to say something. An actor who was going through a piece of business perceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and stopped. Just ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... all, she seemed easier if he were at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen different ways. She? oh, she took it coolly, but that was all feminine bosh, or coquetry ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Not that I can boast, since I too sit passive on a gilt chair, only turning the earth above a buried memory, as we all do, for there are signs, if I'm not mistaken, that we're all recalling something, furtively seeking something. Why fidget? Why so anxious about the sit of cloaks; and gloves—whether to button or unbutton? Then watch that elderly face against the dark canvas, a moment ago urbane and flushed; now taciturn and sad, as if in shadow. Was it the sound of the second ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... cookery, miss? Lor' bless me, I could die of laughing to think a pair of hands like yours could make better paste than mine! You'd best be careful or you'll catch it. If ever there was a fidget about his food it's Master Lambert. Come, now, Tom, I am going to clear away, so you must budge. Why, you've left half your victuals on the platter. I'll feed the cat ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... innocent look of a very young girl, with the polish of the woman, garbed by an artist. It seemed the great pearls in her ears were not more milkily white than her throat, and he was sure were also her little slender hands, that did not fidget, but lay idly in her lap, holding her blue parasol. He would like to have taken off ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... I'll tell you about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is Low Church, is very well ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... to. And when you are spoken to you are to acquiesce in whatever anybody says to you, and you are to do whatever anybody requests you to do. And, above all, don't be surprised at anything that may happen. You'll be nervous enough; I expect that. You'll probably color up and flush and fidget; I expect that; I count on that. But don't lose your nerve entirely; and don't think of ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses, all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... afternoon before the great day all the visitors were to come, and during the forenoon old Miss Stanbury was in a great fidget. Luckily for Dorothy, her own preparations were already made, so that she could give her time to her aunt without injury to herself. Miss Stanbury had come to think of herself as though all the reality of her life ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... a state of rare fidget from the discovery that he had lost one of his precious winged shoes, and had in consequence dawdled away a whole week in company with Venus, not having dreamed that it was that crafty goddess herself, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... I set eyes on him—he never ought to have been sent out like this ... He's been to a wedding this morning, so I heard, and it's upset him a little, that's all ... Upset him—we're lucky if he doesn't upset us. What a fidget you are! I shan't take you into Switzerland next year, if you're like this... If Switzerland's full of a lot of drunken men, I don't want to go... Well, what had we better do about it? Perhaps this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... seen! Aunt Honora sent it to me in a box with a spirit lamp all complete when I got the rest of my things. I'll just exercise those little tongs on dear, nice Bessie. I do wish she would not be so devoted to that book, she might talk. Oh, I am lonely. I think I'll fidget a bit." ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... accused of communicating our plans to the Rebels, and this at a time when the favorite charge against his administration was the having no plan at all. The public mind, as the public folly is generally called, was kept in a fidget by these marvels and others like them. But the point to which we would especially call attention is this: that while the war slowly educated the North, it has had comparatively little effect in shaking the old nonsense out of the South. Nothing is more striking, as we trace ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Perry," said he, beginning to fidget with his stock, "my very dear fellow, as may be supposed, your extraordinary sudden and perfectly inexplicable flight from Wyvelstoke's reception and disappearance has caused no small consternation, and, to one person in particular, very ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... followed, and she sat so perfectly still that the Princess began to fidget, looked at the tall old clock in the corner and then compared her pretty watch with it, laid her olive-green parasol across the table, but took it off again almost immediately and dropped the tip to the ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... Down, this instant, Watson—this instant, I say!" His head sank back upon the pillow and he gave a deep sigh of relief as I replaced the box upon the mantelpiece. "I hate to have my things touched, Watson. You know that I hate it. You fidget me beyond endurance. You, a doctor—you are enough to drive a patient into an asylum. Sit down, man, and let me have ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there ever such a aggravating boy to take anywheres! Set quiet, do, and don't fidget, and look ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... settles here,—conglomerated into a baby. Probably that lot has befallen me: my monad, meant for another region in space, has been dropped into this, where it can never be at home, never amalgamate with other monads nor comprehend why they are in such a perpetual fidget. I declare I know no more why the minds of human beings should be so restlessly agitated about things which, as most of them own, give more pain than pleasure, than I understand why that swarm of gnats, which has such a very short time to live, does not give itself a moment's repose, but goes up ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with happy foreign travel; and their system was once more to get on beautifully in this further lounge without a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke—he broke out as he tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light: "I must go for a stroll. I'm in a fidget—I must walk it off." She fell in with this as she fell in with everything; on which he went on: "You go up to Miss Ash"—it was the name they had started; "you must see she's not in mischief. Can you ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... I left him to attend my father in sickness. And, taking Nicodemus' arm, he drew him close, that he might more safely whisper that two men seemed to be searching in their garments as if for daggers. Nicodemus knew them to be hirelings in the pay of the priests. Look, he said, how their hands fidget for their daggers; the opportunity seems favourable now to stab him; but no, the crowd closes round his ass again, and the Zealots draw back. God saved Daniel from the flames and the lions, Joseph answered. But will he, Nicodemus returned, be able to save him ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... few moments he left the room, and then Lucy's wrath burst forth unrestrainedly. She called her father all sorts of names, such as "an old granny—an old fidget," and finished up her list with what she thought the most odious appellation of all, "an ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... he is going with you, Mark; for although I know well enough that they could never be watching for those diamonds to turn up all these years, I feel sure I should fidget and worry if you were alone. You are not going to ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... Nickleby, when a message was brought that Miss Leverett, the head-mistress of the High School, wished to speak to her in the dining-room. This was no unusual occurrence, as Miss Mohun was secretary to the managing committee of the High School. But on the announcement Valetta began to fidget, and presently said that she was tired and would go to bed. The most ordinary effect of fatigue upon this young lady was to make her resemble the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lavretzky laughed, but Lemm did not emerge from his corner, maintained silence, quietly quivered all over like a spider, looked glum and dull, and grew animated only when Lavretzky began to take his leave. Even when he was seated in the calash, the old man continued to be shy and to fidget; but the quiet, warm air, the light breeze, the delicate shadows, the perfume of the grass, of the birch buds, the peaceful gleam of the starry, moonless heaven, the energetic hoof-beats and snorting of the ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... maidens danced, and the matrons fanned themselves, while the fiddlers and zimblers scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless and the dancers wearied. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry; while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost all patience, and begged leave to go ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... apparent from the increased frequency with which we were obliged to edge away to keep her square abeam. And now the anxiety which I had all along felt began to be shared by the others, one or another of whom kept Cunningham's telescope continually bearing upon the barque. They began to fidget where they sat, to mutter and grumble under their breath, and to cast frequent looks at the sky astern, which had not materially altered its aspect since the morning, except that the haze had thickened somewhat. At last the boatswain could restrain ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... he, hobbling quickly down. 'Niver fidget theesel' wi' gettin' ready to go search for her. I'll tak' thee a bet it's Philip Hepburn's voice, convoying her home, just as I said he would, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sight, you despicable thief!" he cried. "My control is going. If you stand and fidget there, I'll ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... Tom Reade began to grow decidedly restless. He would sit up, look and listen, and then lie down again. Then he would fidget about nervously, all of which was most unusual with him, for Reade's was one of those strong natures that will endure work day and night as long as is necessary, and then go in for complete rest when there is ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... My husband began to fidget openly, and asked how long my brother was going to stay. At last his impatience became little short of insulting, and my brother had no help for it but to leave. Before going he placed his hand on my head, and kept it there for some time. I noticed that his hand shook, and a tear fell from ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... you fidget when you're dressed. If you fidget like Miss Midget, Hopper, or her sister Bridget. Goops like that are so much bother, That they ought to ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... so uncommon a thing for her to find any self-imposed check upon what she wished to do, that Miss Haye was very much puzzled; and tried and annoyed out of all proportion by her self-consultations. She was in a fidget of uneasiness all day long; and the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... like a burglar. No doubt she'll let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Bobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so; it will be bad for ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... have been so nice if he hadn't been disagreeable," she thought after a bit. Then he began to fidget and to kick the floor a little with one foot, and she began to cry and to wipe her tears away very softly and quickly, so that ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... own Thoughts, a Chair or a Chariot would be thought the most desirable Means of performing a Remove from one Place to another. I should be a Cure for the unnatural Desire of John Trott for Dancing, and a Specifick to lessen the Inclination Mrs. Fidget has to Motion, and cause her always to give her Approbation to the present Place she is in. In fine, no Egyptian Mummy was ever half so useful in Physick, as I should be to these feaverish Constitutions, to repress the violent Sallies of Youth, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ye're rather late to-night," he said, when they reached the little gate leading into the causeway. "The mother's begun to fidget about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the old woman Bede, Dinah? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but a poor bargain to her this ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... "Yes it is. Don't fidget. Have you got the wine out? We should have a dozen of champagne. Mind you make no mistake; '80, that is the wine you must get. Jimmy is most particular what he drinks, and Alfred has the most frightful headaches ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There ain't—hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a fidget." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... I had a photograph of that gathering of people to put right in here, on this page! Many of them would have looked much better at this point than they did after four hours of patient waiting. How that crowd did fidget and fix and change position, as far as it was possible to change, when there was not an inch of unoccupied space. How they talked and laughed and sang and grumbled and ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... to children, they mitigate the mental pain by wrinkling their brows, or they fidget and put themselves into strange attitudes. These odd motions, which at first are voluntary, after they have been frequently associated with certain states of mind, constantly recur involuntarily with those feelings or ideas with which they have been connected. For instance, a boy, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his hands and stared ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... is not in my line at all, and I don't suppose we shall ever get within five hundred yards of a Prussian soldier. You need not be in the least uneasy, even supposing that you were inclined to fidget about me?" ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... "S'bad business. Must tink all the time and be worried by dese things. For God's sake you don't fidget. You tink all the suffering was wit you, but it was inside of me where the ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... moved in soul," said Mr. Penny, "I shall never forget the first time I heard the 'Dead March.' 'Twas at poor Corp'l Nineman's funeral at Casterbridge. It fairly made my hair creep and fidget about like a vlock of sheep—ah, it did, souls! And when they had done, and the last trump had sounded, and the guns was fired over the dead hero's grave, a' icy-cold drop o' moist sweat hung upon my forehead, and another upon my jawbone. Ah, 'tis a ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... seldom does lie quiet, and you have to cramp your hand by holding it or else put it on the table with a paraphernalia of matters to keep it down, a tablespoon on one side, a knife on another, and so on, which things always tumble off at a critical moment, and fidget you out of the repose which is absolutely necessary to reading; whereas, a big folio lies quiet and majestic on the table, waiting kindly till you please to come to it, with its leaves flat and peaceful, giving you no trouble of body, so that your mind is free to enjoy the literature ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... that the accident will somewhat incommode Douglas, and greatly fidget you, I should not much regret it, for to me there is a peculiar charm about this old stone house and its quaint surroundings. But the greatest charm of all, perhaps, lies in my fair nurse, Maggie Miller, for ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!' It was ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... his feet again, looking over his shoulder at the combination of azure silk and lace-like ebony in awkward consternation. Then he took another chair, all cushions and softness, in which he sank down luxuriously, and began to fidget ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... good will made the baronet fidget and swear to hide his compunction. But his evil ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... music, and who enjoy it for itself alone. It is not wise to include people who are not fond of music (if there really are any such people!) for they are likely to be bored, and instead of listening quietly to the selections, talk and fidget and so disturb the other guests who are anxious to give their undivided attention to ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... there which said all she wanted. Breakfast went on more vigorously than ever. But after breakfast it seemed to Ellen that her father never would go away. He took the newspaper, an uncommon thing for him, and pored over it most perseveringly, while Ellen was in a perfect fidget of impatience. Her mother, seeing the state she was in, and taking pity on her, sent her up stairs to do some little matters of business in her own room. These Ellen despatched with all possible zeal and speed; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and listless; so that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, "If you'll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over—to-night. I guess we can go down here by the corral and ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... called it; the music seemed to come out of her fingers of itself. And this was Basil's happiest moment of the day. Blanche liked it too, but not as much as Basil. She would sometimes get tired of sitting still, and begin to fidget about, so that now and then her mother would tell her to run off to bed without waiting for nurse to come for her. But not so Basil. There he would sit,—or lie perhaps, generally on the white fluffy rug before the fire,—with the soft dim light stealing in ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... pause arter this, jes' about so long as you cou'd count twenty; an' the rest o' the congregashun began to fidget an' whisper round that suthin' was up, when all 'pon a sudden my ould rook straightens hissel' up an' begins to cuss and to swear. What's that you say, sir? Rooks don't swear? Don't tell me. Blasphemin'? ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cassandra. "You are always in such a fidget to learn, Ruth. Come into the garden; I want ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... or desire to fidget left in Jabe Smith now. As he watched the beavers at work in the moonlight, looking very mysterious in their stealthy, busy, tireless diligence, and conducting their toil with an ordered intelligence which ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... an hour the two sat with hardly the interchange of a word. From outside came the swift steady hiss of the rain on to the shrubs in the garden, and again the clock chimed. Morris who at first had sat very quiet had begun to fidget and stir in his chair; occasionally when he happened to notice it, he drank off the port with which Mr. Taynton hospitably kept his glass supplied. Sometimes he relit a cigarette only to let it go out again. But when the ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... in his hand a moment, and seemed to ponder the propriety of what he was about. Mr. Harley said nothing, but sat a-fidget with curiosity. It is not given every American to be taken, via a Count with estates on the Caspian, into the confidence ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the nor'ard. Ye'll find, I bet ye, that the fishin' fleet is cotched fast somewheres long about the straits. An' a bottle o' rum for a cold night! Well, well! I bet ye, Dannie," says he, "that the Likely Lass is gripped by this time. An' ye got a bottle o' rum!" cries he, in a beaming fidget. "Rum's a wonderful thing on a cold night, lad. Nothin' like it. I've tried it. Was a time," he confided, "when I was sort o' give t' usin' ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the pole, JOKIM, or we shall be all adrift. We'd better have kept to our first pitch; it was quiet there, and we hooked one or two sizeable ones. (Aside.) Fact is, you're such a fidget, you lose your fish, and then ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... proper supply of nourishment from the food-canal, the state of affairs is quickly revealed in the mouth mirror. Those muscles which open the mouth, instead of resting peacefully in the consciousness of duty well done, are in a state of perpetual fidget, twitching, pulling, wondering whether they ought not to open the portal for the entrance of new supplies of material, since the tissues are crying ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... yesterday. The day was bright, clear, and cold, with high winds and a very stormy sea. The Nancy had been expected to make her port all that week, and Mrs. Arthur was very uneasy at her delay. She was never happy or contented when her sons were at sea, but in a constant fidget of anxiety and fear. She did not like both sailing in the same vessel. 'It is too much,' she would say—'the safety of two lives out of one family—to be trusted to one keel.' This morning she was more ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... ministers moved and spoke with a calm regularity which impressed him, familiar as he was with clergymen who gave out hymns and notices, and with his own solicitude at home that the singing should go well or that the choirboys should not fidget. But there was a terrible confusion with chairs, and a hideous kind of clapper that was used, apparently, to warn the boys to sit and rise. The service, moreover, as a reverential congregational act of worship such as he was used to ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... moment the lace curtains that hung about the archway leading into the parlor swayed noiselessly toward her and then settled back to their normal position. Presently the major, who was at Miss Bayard's right, and with his back close to the hall-door, began to fidget and look uneasily about. The doctor was just telling a very good story at the moment and she could not bear to interrupt him, but after the laughter and applause had subsided she came to ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... to attend to this conversation while listening to your guests: you thus make replies which bring you back such inquiries as: "Why, what are you thinking of?" For you have lost the thread of the discourse, and you fidget nervously with your feet, thinking to yourself, "What is ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... Lord Warden, oh! why should you fidget Your mind about matters you don't understand? Or why should you write yourself down for an idiot, Because "you," forsooth, "have the pen in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... conversation with him to trade exigencies; but after a few days they had grown to accept him as part of the household, and were civil to him again. Mrs. Kettering liked to get him to herself of an evening and talk to him for two hours at a time. Kettering himself would fidget a good deal at such times, but scarcely ventured to intrude, though apparently his greatest delight was also to converse with Morgan. But Mrs. Kettering showed no such scruples about entering into the conversation and eventually taking Morgan captive, being entirely ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... manuscript she had left in my hands. After having sent off the letter, I did not go out of the house all day, and pondered all the time on what might be happening at the Ratsches'. I could not make up my mind to go there myself. I could not help noticing though that my aunt was in a continual fidget; she ordered pastilles to be burnt every minute, and dealt the game of patience, known as 'the traveller,' which is noted as a game in which one can never succeed. The visit of an unknown lady, and at such a late hour, had not been kept secret from her: her imagination at once pictured ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... mind going to the after-deck?" he asked. "These people walking about fidget me," ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... heroism; ordinary valor is more impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the major got in, and brought a worse tale than I had, though he stated the same facts as far as I went. This seemed to put our colonel all into a fidget; and it convinced me clearly of one of the hateful ways of the world. When I made my report, it wasn't believed because I was no officer: I was no great man, but just a poor soldier; but when the same thing was reported by Major Gibson! why, then it was all as true as preaching, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the ice till the end of war, they had turned him on to this show. He was bored by the business, and didn't understand it very well. The river charts puzzled him, and though it was pretty plain going for hundreds of miles, yet he was in a perpetual fidget about the pilotage. You could see that he would have been far more in his element smelling his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth, or beating against a northeaster in the shallow Baltic. He had six barges in tow, but the heavy flood of the Danube made it an easy job except when it ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... going for two years, and had had a great success, as hitherto it had had no large losses; but the king, who knew that the luck might turn, was always in a fidget about it. With this idea he told Calsabigi that he must carry it on on his own responsibility and pay him a hundred thousand crowns per annum, that being the cost of his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... willing to give way. Keble and Froude advocated their continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalised him considerably. As for me, there ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... stare that Blake began to be embarrassingly conscious of it, to fidget under it. When he looked up he did so circuitously, pretending to peer beyond the white face and the staring eyes of the young woman confronting him. Yet she ultimately coerced his unsteady gaze, even against his own ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... were gone out for the day, and had left me charge of the children. It was very hot, and they kept up a continual fidget. I bore it patiently for some time, for children will be restless in hot weather, but at length I requested that they would ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... tell you about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... necessary time at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed the ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... of this sanguine prediction, however, she did not return as promptly as she had promised, and Mr. Tolman began to fidget uneasily. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... A small boat lay there which he was able to launch by himself, and pulling off in her he went on board the lugger. He had left the most trusted part of his crew in her, including his mate, Tom Fidget, on whom he could always rely, not that Tom objected to get drunk "at proper times and seasons," as he observed, but duty first and pleasure afterwards was his maxim. His notions of duty were, to be sure, somewhat lax, according ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... looked at Jurgen for a while without speaking: and in the eyes of the Centaur was so much of comprehension and compassion that it troubled Jurgen. For somehow it made Jurgen fidget and consider this an unpleasantly personal ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... this one has ever had her tea out of doors in all her born days. What! do you think our little stuffy room would be any treat to her, after the drawing-room at Font Abbey? Come, you be off till half-past five; you'll fidget yourself and fidget ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... abbot turned round from the altar, and began to fidget with the fastenings of his rich robes. And they made a lane for us up to the west door; then I put on my helm and we began to go up the nave, then suddenly the singing of the monks and all stopped. I heard a clinking and ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... three different kinds of small nails, tin tacks, and neat little brass-headed nails. Bridget stayed at the door of both these shops: she thought them not at all interesting, and mamma and Alie did not press her to come in. The little girl was in a great fidget to get to Pier Street, and stood murmuring to herself that she didn't believe they'd ever come; Alie might make mamma be quick, she knew how she, Biddy, wanted to see Celestina ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... guard in sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya, And may no restless fay, with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping; give ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... affair of honour. Of course it may be serious for your father if the baron dies: but he won't die. Some of his hot blood let out. Do him good, and let all these Hanoverians see what stuff the English have in them. Don't you fidget. Why, every one in the Guards will be delighted. I know I am. Wouldn't have ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... country, where every perfect ministration will surround her, rather than in your far-off insular abyss of mere—so to speak—picturesqueness. I should have been, in that case, at the present writing, in a fidget too fierce for endurance, whereas I now can prattle to you quite balmily; for which you are all, no doubt, deeply grateful. Give her, please, my tender love, and say to her that if London were actually at all accessible to me, I should dash down to her thence without ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... your majesty's command?" he asked, bending low before King Seaphus. The King did not reply for a moment. He was a wise King, and thought for several minutes before he spoke. This made the Prime Minister fidget about on his tail. If he had been a Prime Minister of any land, and not of the sea, he probably would have stood first on one leg and then on the other, but, as he had no feet, he shifted about uneasily on his fin-tail until the ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... her not being taller, that when she casts a glance, it is of necessity upwards and not downwards, and thus the effect of the eyes is not thrown away,—the beam and effluence not lost. The composure with which she filled the throne, while awaiting the Commons, was a test of character,—no fidget and no apathy. Then her voice and enunciation could not be more perfect. In short, it could not be said that she did well, but she was the Queen,—she was, and felt herself to be, the acknowledged chief among grand and national realities." ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... would not do to stare at him. The instant she began to do so, he began to fidget, and turned his back to her. It had made her lose her temper for a moment, and declare aloud as her conviction that he was after all an impostor, and saw as ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The man knew that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men that are so lethargic they ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... follow that because men are capable of doing hard work they like it. Some, indeed, fidget and fret if they cannot otherwise work off their superfluous steam; but on the other hand there are many big lazy fellows who will not get up their steam to full pressure except under compulsion. Again, the character of the stimulus that induces hard work differs greatly in different ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... wants to see her mighty bad since it be dat she been gone from here so long. When she first went up dere, she worked for a white family dere to Hartford, Connecticut, but it won' long fore she got in a fidget to marry en she moved dere to Philadelphia. Dat whe' she livin now, so my ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... the tool box and hides himself under the car again, while Runyon Q. Sampson begins to fidget around and look at his watch like it was the first one he ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... quite well. What a fidget you are! Apparently you attach as much importance to rosy cheeks as ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... gave it up as out of place. Then I assumed an air of frigid composure, and toyed with my watch-chain. But a little girl screwed her eyes into me, and said, evidently, in her mind: "That old gentleman is a fidget." Then I leaned back gracefully, but something whispered: "That's all right at home, Father Dan, but please remember that the convenances of society require a different posture;" and I sat bolt upright in a moment. My eye caught in a blissful moment my ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... impatience so much that it seemed to her that the enemy would never decamp. She was obliged to control herself; but by the time she might speak, she was very irritable. She told Rollo not to grin and fidget in that manner, but to let ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... her and carries her muff And coat and umbrella, and that kind of stuff; She loads him with things that must weigh 'most a ton; And, honest, he likes it,—as if it was fun! And, oh, say! When they go to a play, He'll sit in the parlor and fidget away, And she won't come down till it's quarter past eight, And then she'll scold him 'cause ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... a great deal of fidget concerning what other people think of them and their peculiarities. Some are too much disposed to take the illnatured side, and, judging by themselves, infer the worst. But it is very often the case that the uncharitableness of others, where it really exists, is but the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... been taken up with her musical studies. It was the long evenings she used to dread; now they had become part and parcel of her daily pleasures. They dined about four, and when dinner was over it was time to talk about what kind of house they were going to have, to fidget about in search of brushes and combs, the curling-tongs, and to consider what little necessaries she had better bring down to the theatre with her. At first it seemed very strange to her to go tripping down these narrow streets at a certain hour—streets that were filled with people, for ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... at this instant, dared to be myself! But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was a tone of contempt in the last words which piqued me to the quick; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Cotherstone began to fidget with some account books and papers that he had brought from his house. He eyed his partner with furtive glances; Mallalieu eyed him with steady ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below him do not hurry either, for which reason most things in Finland ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... heart-breaking times. From the first I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk were—Politics; but I never was calmer and quieter or less nervous. Great events make me quiet and calm, and little trifles fidget me and irritate my nerves. But I feel grown old and serious, and the future is very dark. God, however, will come to help and protect us, and we must keep up our spirits. Germany makes me so sad; on the other hand, Belgium is ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... slight cast; this was wont to grow more marked with emotion, and gave at all times the disconcerting impression that he was looking every way at once. It seemed to Ishmael that that light glittering gaze was fixed on him, and he was aware of acute discomfort. Annie whispered him sharply not to fidget, and the next moment the preacher gave out his text: "For many are called, but few are chosen." With a long breath of anticipation the congregation ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Then he began to fidget. He ought to go out and buy a paper. See what was doing. See what became of Mac and the rest of the boys. Maybe they'd all been nabbed. But they couldn't do him harm. On account nobody knew where he was. No pal. No dame. Nobody knew he ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... do you fidget? You're hurting my shoulder, you troublesome midget! Perhaps it's that hole that you told me about. Why, darling, your sawdust is ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... least, if not despair, was painted in Henry's face as he saw the General's glance directed alternately with contempt at Lady Juliana, and at himself, mingled with pity. He continued to fidget about in all directions, while Lady Juliana talked nonsense to Mr. Shagg, and wondered if the General never meant to go away. But he calmly kept his ground till the man was dismissed, and another introduced, loaded with ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... sighed, murmured prayers—especially one favourite one, consisting of three words only, 'Lord, succour us!'—and looked after the house with much good sense, taking care of every halfpenny, and buying everything herself. Her nephew she adored; she was in a perpetual fidget over his health—afraid of everything—not for herself but for him; and directly she fancied the slightest thing wrong, she would steal in softly, and set a cup of herb tea on his writing-table, or stroke ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... had taken no interest in Uncle Remus's story of the horses' tails, and yet, as soon as the little boy and Aunt Tempy were through laughing at a somewhat familiar climax, the old African began to twist and fidget in his chair, and mumble to himself in a lingo which might have been understood on the Guinea coast, but which sounded out of place in Uncle Remus's Middle Georgia cabin. Presently, however, his uneasiness took tangible shape. He turned ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... laughed. "I'll tell the meester how ye tease and fidget and bother to be let out in the air; and if he says it, I'll bundle ye warm tomorrow and give ye a turn on your feet. But I'm freezing you with this door open. I declare if there isn't Gretel with her apron full, skating on the canal like ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... must stop a week or ten days longer," thought Bessie, laying down her letters with rather a dissatisfied feeling. "I wish father could have written, himself, but I dare say he will in a day or two. I will try not to fidget. I will wait a little, and then write to mother and tell her how I feel about things. When she understands how difficult it is for me to get away without giving offense, she will be sure to help me, and six weeks are enough to satisfy ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... leading off to San Zaccaria; the waterside life, the wondrous lagoon spread before me, and the ceaseless human chatter of Venice came in at my windows, to which I seem to myself to have been constantly driven, in the fruitless fidget of composition, as if to see whether, out in the blue channel, the ship of some right suggestion, of some better phrase, of the next happy twist of my subject, the next true touch for my canvas, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... yet, after all, she seemed easier if he were at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen different ways. She? oh, she took it coolly, but that was ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... "isn't a gambler in the ordinary sense. He never plays cards. Little pictures on paste-board fidget him, he says; he loathes Monte Carlo because it's vulgar, and he dislikes roulette and bridge. He's only a gambler in the best sense of the word—and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Sheffield was acquainted; a sharp, but not very wise freshman, who, having been spoiled at home, and having plenty of money, professed to be aesthetic, and kept his college authorities in a perpetual fidget lest he should some morning wake up a Papist; and a friend of his, a nice, modest-looking youth, who, like a mouse, had keen darting eyes, and ate his bread ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... well on towards the end of the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget. From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch and lean towards her husband to say something. An actor who was going through a piece of business perceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and stopped. Just then Mrs. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... dolly?—or why do you fidget? You're hurting my shoulder, you troublesome midget! Perhaps it's that hole that you told me about. Why, darling, your ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
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