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More "Housemaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprised to find that every basin is left by the housemaid with cold water in it, and there it stands waiting at all seasons; but such a thing as warm water is considered positively indecent, and the servant generally looks as if she would fall down with amazement at the mention of such a strange ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, housemaid, curl-papers, crumpet. ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... as the children had! There were presents for Mother Brown, and Aunt Lu, and some for Mary the cook, and Jane, the housemaid, and later in the day, when Sallie and her aunt came, there ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... however, I found that I could not bear to look upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so cruelly, and I caused it to be replaced. I did more. In order that it might not be disturbed by some dusting housemaid, I myself made it fast with three or four tin-tacks which I remember I drove through the velvet stuff into the panelling, using a fireiron as a hammer. At the time I thought it a good job although by accident I struck the nail of the third finger of my left ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... greeting—'This is a beautiful world, Mr. Patmore'—that he remembered nothing else of that interview. I remember one day it so happened that I had to pay a visit to Anthony Hope. I knocked tremblingly at his door in Gower Street and followed the trim housemaid into the dining-room. Here I found an oldish man with his back to me. Turning round at my entrance he said, without any asking who I was, 'Have a cigarette?' And this is all that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Hendricks. "I am her counsel. I represent Mrs, Embury. Eunice, say nothing more. Leave it to me. And, first, Shane, you haven't enough evidence to arrest this lady. That dropper thing is no positive information against her. It might be the work of the servants—or some intruder. The story of that housemaid is not necessarily law and gospel. Remember, you'd get in pretty bad if you were to arrest Mrs, Sanford Embury falsely! And my influence with your superiors is not entirely negligible. You're doing your duty, all right, but don't overstep your authority—or, rather, don't let your ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the fold. Forth issues from his mansion the family of the decent tradesman, the small children in the advance; then the citizen and his comely spouse, followed by the grown-up daughters, with small morocco-bound prayer-books laid in the folds of their pocket-handkerchiefs. The housemaid looks after them from the window, admiring the finery of the family, and receiving, perhaps, a nod and smile from her young mistresses, at whose ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... postage of her letter to Captain Carey, a new housemaid brought Mary his visiting-card on a silver tray. Mary knew, before looking at it—having heard nothing of the letter, and no sound of his arrival in his hired buggy—what name it bore. Her forlorn hope had been too forlorn to stand for anything but despair. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... sent out on "freak" assignments for special features, such as feigning injury or insanity in order to gain entrance to hospitals in the guise of patients. Recently one woman writer posed as an applicant for a position as moving-picture actress; another applied for a place as housemaid; a third donned overalls and sorted scrap-iron all day in the yard of a factory; and still another accompanied a store detective on his rounds in order to discover the methods of shop-lifting with which department stores ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... which she became mistress she had her difficulties at first. The other servants, especially the butler and the upper housemaid, resented her promotion and sought new situations. Bridie replaced them, replaced the whole staff with ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... after you, and who may not have the means of being liberal over and above the prescribed standard. Under no circumstances is a lady called upon by the rules of etiquette to give fees to men servants; the lady's-maid and the housemaid are the only ones she is expected to remember; but if a gentleman visit where only female servants are employed, he should make them a present on ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... very much. No one from this house, I am sure of that. Now that I think of it, though, Polly sings—Polly, the under housemaid; she has a pretty little bird-like voice, but nothing such as you ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... was a woman of economies, keeping vigilant watch over all expenditures, great and small, and employing one servant only, who was cook, housemaid, and laundress all in one, and expected to give every moment of her time to the service of her mistress, and be content with smaller wages than many ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... two compartments, which were crossed at regular intervals by smaller joists, richly carved, and retaining some traces of gilding. The spaces between had been originally of a deep blue tint, almost lost now under the thick coating of dust and spiders' webs that no housemaid's mop ever invaded. Above the grand old chimney-piece was a noble stag's head, with huge, spreading antlers, and on the walls hung rows of ancient family portraits, so faded and mouldy now that most of the faces had a ghastly hue, and at night, by the dim, flickering lamp-light, they ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the following semester, and when he came back for the long summer vacation they met on the street one day and exchanged a few rather forced pleasantries. It suddenly dawned on Fanny that he was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier office and walked off, leaving him staring. It was shortly after this that she began a queer line of reading for a girl—lives of Disraeli, Spinoza, Mendelssohn, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... lawyer in full practice can be usually supposed as faultless in the eye of heaven as a dove or a woodcock; but it is not, in former divinities, thought the will of Providence that he should be dropped by a shot from a client behind his fire-screen, and retrieved in the morning by his housemaid under the chandelier. Neither is Lady Dedlock less reprehensible in her conduct than many women of fashion have been and will be: but it would not therefore have been thought poetically just, in old-fashioned morality, that she should be found by her ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... without a nurse, too, so that partly accounted for it. Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not be expected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly but good-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties of nursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her second capacity that the first suffered considerably. She used to lay the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to help her, and bundle on the clothes ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal 'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O women; the laggard men will not act; they say, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... they also secured a trained nurse. This final attention required special tact, for Miss Anthony's fear of "giving trouble" was so great that she was not willing to have a nurse. The nurse, therefore, wore a housemaid's uniform, and "Aunt Susan" remained wholly unconscious that she was being cared for by one of the best ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... the open hall door as Leeds came down the wide, main stairs. He saw, under the porte-cochere, the trap ready to take him to the station, and into which the second man, with the help of the groom, was lifting his trunk. Here and there a housemaid was busy with duster and cloth. The machinery of the establishment was being set in running condition, and there was the accompanying disorder. The place ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... St. Nicholas the marriage was to take place. Early in November the preparations for it began. No such great event could happen without an extraordinary housecleaning; and from garret to cellar the housemaid's pail and brush were in demand. Spotless was every inch of paint, shining every bit of polished wood and glass; not a thimbleful of dust in the whole house. Toward the end of the month, Anna and Cornelia arrived, with their troops of rosy boys and girls, and their ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... grown-up, respectable people, we often inhabit new dwellings; the housemaid daily cleans them and changes at her will the position of the furniture, which interests us but little, as it is either new or may belong today to Jack, tomorrow to Isaac. Even our very clothes are strange to us; we hardly know how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she galloped on Moses, her black pony, through the Herefordshire lanes, and offered pagan sacrifices to some imaginary Athene, "with a bundle of sticks from the kitchen fire and a match begged from an indulgent housemaid." In a letter to Richard Hengist Home, under date of October 5, 1843, in reply to a request of his for data for a biographical sketch of her for "The New Spirit of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... humorous connection that Thackeray has given it with King George III. That monarch made a royal visit to Gloucester, and in his lectures on the "Four Georges" Thackeray says: "One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town, pushed over Molly the housemaid with her pail, who was scrubbing the doorsteps, ran up stairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms, and then trotted down to the bridge, where by this time a dozen of louts were assembled. 'What! is this Gloucester new bridge?' asked our ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... become the object of Schubert's later adoration. On the first visit, however, she was only nine, and we find Schubert, with his usual promiscuous taste, more at home with the servants than in the drawing-room. "The cook is a pleasant fellow," he writes; "the ladies' maid is thirty; the housemaid very pretty, and often pays me a visit; the nurse is somewhat ancient; the butler is my rival; the two grooms get on better with the horses than with us. The count is a little rough; the countess ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... brought sorrow or shame to his house, they seemed as little amenable to the discipline he had hoped to exert in his family as the boys were. The elder had married, at fifteen years of age, a journeyman printer; and so, instead of filling the place of housemaid in some good family, as her father had fondly dreamed, she was cook, housemaid, and general servant to a man aware of his rights, and determined to maintain them, and nurse and mother (giving the more important function precedence) ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... sails of ships that took refuge there—on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at home in the house, that when she found the housemaid on her knees cleaning the hall floor, she passed on unceremoniously to the dining-room, where she felt sure of finding some of the family. It was a spacious room, with a low ceiling where black beams crossed and recrossed each other; with wainscoted walls, and a carved ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... did they do the things they did, and what did they feel, and what was it all about? Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor. She had been that morning to take up the character of a servant, "And, of course, at half-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushing the stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd! But she could not explain to herself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which they lived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar and inexplicable, and themselves as chairs or umbrellas ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... surgeon, coolly, "we will wait for the end; and if the end should come sooner than our most sanguine hopes have led us to expect, we will not quarrel with the handiwork of fate. Now leave me. I see a petticoat yonder amongst the trees. It belongs to some housemaid from the castle, I dare say; and I must see if my eloquence as a wandering merchant cannot win me admission within the walls which I dare not ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... greeted Frank and inquired whether he had enjoyed his journey. The story of the accident was told to her. It was evident at once that she took a keen interest in the sprained ankle. Priscilla, describing the scene afterwards to Rose, the under housemaid, said that Miss Lentaigne's eyes gleamed and sparkled with joy. Every one in the household had for many weeks carefully refrained from illness or disability of any kind. If Miss Lentaigne's eyes really did sparkle they expressed a perfectly natural delight. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... sea-going town of Portsmouth, full of beautiful and romantic houses. In one of the best of them Governor Wentworth invited his friends to a party and flabbergasted them all by turning the "party" into a wedding. He married his housemaid—but she was a beauty! But of all the pleasant things of Portsmouth the Thomas Bailey Aldrich house is the best. This lovely old house is kept exactly as he left it. His spirit seems to pervade the place as a fragrance lingers after the flowers ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... an educated woman—a lady—who tried it as a sort of upper housemaid. The work was easy, the pay good, and she never had a harsh word; but they just seemed unconscious of her existence. She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, would come in and stand before her to have her take their umbrellas or help ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... tenacious in that respect than the men; they consider, even down to a housemaid, that their sex demands a certain tone of deference, however humble their position, and if a nobleman did not touch his hat to them when they open or shut the door for them, with the usual salutation of good day or good morning, they would pronounce his manners brutal, and say, that although ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... very seriously what she should do. The lack of a housemaid she had made up quite comfortably with her own two busy hands; Mrs. Copley at least had been in particular comfort, whenever she did not get a fit of fretting on Dolly's account; and Dolly herself ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... coming to the Place to morn: Bess housemaid told me. Lord and Lady——: dash My wigs! I can't think on. But there's a mash O' comp'ny and fine ladies; fit to torn The heads of these young chaps. Why now I'd lay This here gun to an empty powder-horn Sir Reginald be in love, or that-a-way. He ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Helmer. Nora, his wife. Doctor Rank. Mrs. Linde. Nils Krogstad. Helmer's three young children. Anne, their nurse. A Housemaid. A Porter. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... A housemaid in one of the Mayo hotels on coming up to make a fire complained bitterly, not of the toil of coming up stairs, but of the early hour of ten, and do what I would I could get nothing done earlier. On another occasion I was told ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... it—I don't object," said Anne; "but I don't think so, for they have to be directed and guided. To be without a housemaid is dreadful. The moment you think of that, you see how important the people who work are; everything comes to a stand-still without Mary, whereas there are ladies whose absence would make ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... servants say it. Ellen the housemaid and me—but that ain't for the newspapers. So Mr. Walter's home, is he? Well, he do walk about, to be sure, and him not left for New York ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... poles. But here again that rigid duenna did her invaluable service, for if she didn't look handsome in the clothes selected for her, she didn't, as that lady said frankly, look vulgar in them. No longer would you be liable to mistake her for somebody's second-rate housemaid on her day out. The simple diet and the inexorable regularity of her hours also told in her favor, although she herself wasn't as yet aware of the change taking place. Already you could tell that hers was a supple ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... company of their daughters last night. I should warn them to be on the alert lest Anna elopes to Potchefstroom with somebody, probably to take the train and go farther — to Johannesburg or Kimberley, as did Klein Mietje, whom I had hoped to train as our housemaid ——" ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... opportunity tarried. Mrs. Wilson was too often about the passages to make the expedition safe. On one occasion Cicely went to act scout, but found the housemaid sweeping the top landing, and had ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... turned me round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat scullion-maids, who assured me that, 'in the respectable families they had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.' One young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants' hall. I now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate enough to find a young gentleman of remarkable talents, who welcomed me with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Hours later, Minna the housemaid found Beth sitting up in bed, sobbing hopelessly; and got her tea, and stayed with her, making her put some restraint upon herself by the mere fact of her presence; and presently Beth, in her human ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... covered up in sheets of brown paper, and bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a whimper or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the furniture; to whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, but met with very slight ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... had closed on Saturday. Monday I was to sail for England, and early that morning the housemaid watched for the carriage. My landlady was growing quivery about the chin, because I had to cross alone to join Mr. and Mrs. James Lewis, who had gone ahead, My mother was gay with a sort of crippled hilarity ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the wife of Leopold Eberhard. She was the daughter of a baker, and had held the post of housemaid at the small court of Oels in Silesia. Having succeeded in espousing a gentleman of the name of Zedlitz, she turned her attention to the eighteen-year-old Erbprinz of Moempelgard; and her husband, Herr von Zedlitz, not approving of this new relationship, she divorced him and married Leopold. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Flora, our housemaid, who is a character, has a great deal of dignity and influence among the other negroes, and takes the greatest care of us. She is most jealous for what she considers our interests, and moreover is quite an interpreter, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... morning in which that event took place, as they were all preparing to go to church, the flames began to burst forth; the young people screamed from the back part of the house, 'A fire! a fire!' and all was in a state of confusion and alarm. The housemaid was not at home, it being her turn for the Sunday 'out.' Kitty, the cook, was taking her place, and performing her duties. The old woman was always very particular on the subject of her responsibility on such occasions, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... know that if you had a sister, and a mother, and a housemaid, your mother would quite expect that your sister should in time have a lover, but that she would be horrified at the idea of ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... comfortably seated, toasting chestnuts over the fire and enjoying a jug of wine, little Annette, the housemaid, appeared in a black calico dress and velvet turban, with rosy cheeks and lips like a cluster of cherries. She came running up the stairs, gave a hasty knock and threw herself joyfully into my arms. I had known the pretty little girl for a long time; we were of the same ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... of some employment, any employment, which a woman could take up; and her last few pence had been spent in one of those advertisements which tell their own tale of despair. She was willing to do anything; she would have taken a situation as a housemaid; would have gone out charing; for life is precious to all of us, and scruples of refinement disappear when there is no bread in the cupboard. But her applications, for even the lowliest place, were turned down; she had no experience, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... vrai Canayen" is mak' it marie, You t'ink he go leev on beeg flat An' bodder hese'f all de tam, night an' day, Wit' housemaid, an' cook, an' all dat? Not moche, ma dear frien', he tak' de maison, Cos' only nine dollar or ten, W'ere he leev lak blood rooster, an' save de l'argent, Wit' hees ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... straightened her dress, waited a moment, and then pulled impatiently at an old-fashioned bell-rope that hung by the door. There was no answer. Again she rang, but the house lay dark and silent. A little housemaid with brown, startled eyes, came at last, just as she was beginning to grow alarmed at the darkness and stillness, ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... suggested a freezing-machine. The temperature of the house was reduced to ten degrees below zero; the pipes froze (and burst next day), the milk froze, the housemaid's toes and the cook's little finger of the left hand froze, everything froze; and presumably the beetles froze, for there was not ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... her son's wife Joan. She kissed Bernard twenty times, and begged him to come and see her; and Bernard did his best not to cry. There was an early breakfast, but nobody sat at the table two minutes together; something was to be done every moment. Mr. Low walked in and out five or six times. The housemaid and the cook came in to say good-bye; they were going to walk to their homes; and Ralph was to go with his sister, the cook. People, too, were coming with packages from Mr. Evans's, and the bustle kept Bernard from thinking very deeply on what was ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... which Dushyanta[14] or even Rama[15] can hardly be said to live. Shudraka's men are better individualized than his women; this fact alone differentiates him sharply from other Indian dramatists. He draws on every class of society, from the high-souled Brahman to the executioner and the housemaid. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... a little salt afterwards. It is also advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that the weeds come up by the roots! Next to the cast-iron back before mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used for scrubbing ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... examples of John Champe and Nathan Hale, beloved of Washington, but of the two estimable young men not long emerged from under the area steps in 5— Street, let us dismiss the contempt with which we have been wont to regard Paul Pry and Betty the housemaid, listening at key-holes, in our favorite dramas, and look mercifully upon the peccadilloes ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... and Mrs. Tulliver's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. "A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and the chief feminine—the chief with the ferula, and the chief with the brimstone and treacle—the master and the matron, each of whom had their appendages—the one in the usher, the other in the assistant housemaid. But of this quartette, the master was not only the most important, but the most worthy of description; and as he will often appear in the pages of my narrative, long after my education was complete, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... She sat down for a moment near the open window. The day was still in its prime. She looked at the clock. The under-housemaid, who had the charge of the schoolroom tea, now came in with the tray. She laid the cloth and spread the tea-things. There was a plate ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference. In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the unconscious ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... last heard of me; leading the strangest life of absolute Latrappism; and often enough remembering Farlingay and you. I live perfectly alone, and without speech at all,—there being in fact nobody to speak to, except one austerely punctual housemaid, who does her functions, like an eight-day clock, generally without bidding. My wife comes out now and then to give the requisite directions; but commonly withdraws again on the morrow, leaving the monster to himself and his own ways. I have Books; a complete ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the world, except her uncle (who was at this time at sea), she went off one morning and was married to him, her only bridesmaid being the housemaid at her aunt's. The consequence was that Frank and his wife went into lodgings, and Mrs Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the warm-hearted housemaid, whom they accordingly took into their service. When Captain ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... this offending accumulation of many days' neglect. There was not a moment to lose. He was due in ten minutes to meet the possible guests for the Royal at the train. He seized a pail left in the hall by the none too tidy housemaid and with his hands scooped into it the ashes from the stove, and, leaving a cloud of dust to settle everywhere upon tables and chairs, ran down with his pail and back again with kindling and firewood and had a fire going in an extraordinarily short time. He then caught up an ancient ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... that our landlord, shortly after giving us the agreement, could have found some other place to hang himself in than one of our attics, for the consequence was that a housemaid left us in violent hysterics about every two months, having learned the tragedy from the tradespeople, and naturally "seen a ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... commissions to execute. Sometimes he delivers a hare or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or newspaper to the door of a public-house; and sometimes, with knowing leer and words of sly import, hands to some half-blushing, half-laughing housemaid an odd-shaped billet-doux from some rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the village, every one runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces, and blooming giggling girls. At the corners are assembled juntas of village idlers ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... Gramont stables from time immemorial) to cleanse windows, brighten mirrors, and polish dingy furniture. Bettina, the antiquated femme de chambre of the countess, who also discharged the combined duties of housekeeper and housemaid, flew about with a bustling activity that could hardly have been expected from her years and infirmities. Elize, the cook, made far more elaborate preparations for the coming of the young viscount than she would have deemed necessary for the dinner to be given to her master's ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield. She stared at the fact on the journey back to Versailles, and all that sleepless night in her room; and the next morning, when the housemaid came in with her breakfast tray, she felt the factitious energy that comes from having decided, however ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... way, in our own little home. There's a hat-rack here under the stairway," she continued, as Russell, murmuring some response, came into the hall. "I'm afraid you'll think it's almost TOO informal, my coming to the door, but unfortunately our housemaid's just had a little accident—oh, nothing to mention! I just thought we better not keep you waiting any longer. Will you step ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... ill enough, I believe; but me and the clothes, and the wedding wherewith the clothes and me are reconciled, produce every night a thrill of admiration. Our cook told my mother (there is a servants' night, you know) that she and the housemaid were "just prood to be able to say it was oor young gentleman." To sup afterwards with these clothes on, and a wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is something to live for. It is so nice to feel you have been dead three hundred years, and the sound ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... temptations. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of tea with all these penitents. . . . It sounds a little vulgar, as the past will do, if we look into it too closely. We could not let these great folk of old into our drawing-rooms. Queen Elizabeth would positively not be eligible for a housemaid. The old manners and the old customs go sinking from grade to grade, until, if some mighty emperor revisited the glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of his way of thinking, any one he could strike hands with ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now) elicited the hushed and cautious fact that he had gone to bed. But old Mac caught the awesome name and glared round, so they hurriedly filled out another for him, from the boss's bottle. Then there was a slight commotion. The housemaid hurried scaredly in to the bar behind and whispered to the boss. She had been startled nearly out of her wits by the Professor suddenly appearing at his bedroom door and calling upon her to have a stiff nobbler of whisky hot sent up ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... pastor. In his Susanna he essayed a more regular and varied versification than that of the ordinary Knittelvers. The apocryphal story of Susanna was in high favor with the Protestant playwrights on account of its vindication of a chaste wife. 63: Ewig immer. 64: Meid; the housemaid who had brought the news to Susanna's mother. 65: Sehen an, 'look on,' 'bring to light.' 66: In in den. 67: Guter ru, 'security'; 'I thought I should be safe there.' 68: Namens ... fr, 'they resorted to crime.' 69: Er Ehre. ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... kneel, for if I do, I shall spoil my new breeches." The thrifty king ought to have hugged him and knighted him on the spot. George's admirers wrote pages and pages of such stories about him. One morning, before anybody else was up, the king walked about Gloucester town; pushed over Molly the housemaid who was scrubbing the doorsteps with her pail; ran upstairs and woke all the equerries in their bedrooms; and then trotted down to the bridge, where, by this time, a dozen of louts were assembled. "What! is this Gloucester New Bridge?" asked our gracious monarch; and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in sober fact, but must array it in all the theatrical properties of a vulgar imagination; he must give to things more imposing proportions, he colours gaudily; Nature for him is ever posturing in the full glare of footlights. Really he stands on no higher level than the housemaid who sees in every woman a duchess in black velvet, an Aubrey Plantagenet in plain John Smith. So I, in common with many another traveller, expected to find in the Guadalquivir a river of transparent green, with orange-groves along its banks, where wandered ox-eyed youths and maidens ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... in the dust of the floor for a week or two, till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away the accumulation, when she found the shining one in ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... you women! You exact such rigid morality from the governess and the housemaid! You're full of excuses when ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... upon this when a frightened housemaid brought the news that Gaffer Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped down at home, in the huntsman's lodge, where he raved of a battle with a ferocious and gigantic ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... rang with extreme violence. Edwards rushed out of the butler's room. The butler fell back, opened his mouth, and pretended to be asleep—snoring moderately. This of itself would have undeceived any one, for when the old hypocrite was really asleep he never snored moderately. The cook and housemaid uttered two little shrieks and slammed their respective doors, while the bell ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... are not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the field. An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor, and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers. But I would submit to all Englishmen and English women who may look at these pages whether such an opinion or feeling on their part bears much, or even at all, upon the subject. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... fearful verisimilitude of this that Lucia's new housemaid had once fled from her duties in the early morning, to seek the assistance of the gardener in killing it. The dish of stone fruit had scored a similar success, for once she had said to Georgie Pillson, "Ah, my gardener has sent in some early apples and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... AN Irish housemaid who was sent to call a gentleman to dinner, found him engaged in using a tooth-brush. "Well, is he coming?" said the lady of the house, as the servant returned. "Yes, Ma'am, directly," was the reply; "he's just ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the head of the kitchen stairs. The four maids were huddled together. Mrs. O'Halloran descended on them. She took Molly, who was nearest to her, by the shoulders and shook her violently. The housemaid and Lady Devereux' maid fled at once to the coal cellar. The kitchenmaid sat down ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... have. Something like this: My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... greatest rush came around Christmas time. Lucia Day—when the housemaid went about dressed in white, with candles in her hair, and served coffee to everybody at five in the morning—came as a sort of reminder that for the next two weeks they could not count on much sleep. For now they must brew the Christmas ale, steep the Christmas ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... leather covering gets a hole in it, from ripping, or other accidents, it loses its elasticity with its air—an accident which happened to me this very night; for a mouse having gnawed the leather where the housemaid's greasy fingers had left a mark, I sunk gently down, not to soft repose, but on the hard planks, where I uncomfortably lay until the bell warned us to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... shed many tears for her, you may set them off to the account of our son-in-law, the Prince of Hesse, who is turned Roman Catholic. One is in this age so unused to conversions above the rank of a housemaid turned Methodist, that it occasions as much surprise as if one had heard that he had been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Are not you prodigiously alarmed for the Protestant interest ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... when you would have said that if ever a man's life was hidden and withdrawn it was Tasker Jevons's. And yet it wasn't. You knew it wasn't; and he knew that you knew. He knew that his gardener and his chauffeur and his butler and his cook and his housemaid and his parlourmaid knew that he was sitting in his garden writing, or meditating in his pinewood or basking on his moor in the sun, and that their knowledge penetrated to every house in the village, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... nearly all he had got. But what matters? Money's nothing to him, except for its uses. My own little mite is my own now, and he shall have every farthing of it for the next election, even though I should go out as a housemaid the next day." There must have been something great about George Vavasor, or he would not have been so idolized by such a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... cook and one housemaid and a man of all work—all three newcomers, for Presbury insisted—most wisely—that none of the servants of the luxurious, wasteful days would be useful in the new circumstances. He was one of those small, orderly men who have a genius ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... days. The food is good and varied, the charges moderate; the place is spotlessly clean in every part—I could only wish that the hotels in some of our English country towns were up to the standard of the "Concordia" in this respect. "One cannot live without cleanliness," as the housemaid, assiduously scrubbing, remarked to me. It is also enlarged; the old dining-room, whose guests are so humorously described by him, is now my favourite bedroom, while those wretched oil-lamps sputtering on the wall have been replaced by a lavish use of electricity. One is hardly ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... arms, brown arms, copper-colored arms, and even black arms, but beautiful red arms are not. This fault is seldom to be found with the arms of ladies, which are so constantly kept covered as to be protected from the influences of weather. It is characteristic of a cook, a dairymaid, a housemaid, a field-hand, to have red arms, and it is probably from this association that they have ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... after him. I thought he'd get to be fond of me, if only I was near him. He'd taken service here at Stone Farm, and I took a place here as housemaid; but there was only one thing he wanted me for, and that I wouldn't have if he wasn't fond of me. So he went about boasting that I'd run away from home for his sake, and the other thing that was a lie; so they all thought they could do ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... added to the library shelves, where Clarendon and Burnet reigned before them, too often they only passed to a state of dignified retirement and slumber. No hand disturbed them save that of the conscientious housemaid who dusted them in due season. They were part of the furnishings indispensable to the elegance of a 'gentleman's seat'; and in many cases the guests, unless a Gibbon were among them, remained ignorant ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... said Mlle. Girond, returning to her seat and clasping her hands in front of her. "As soon as the housemaid appears in the morning, Nina asks her to come into the room; the money is put into an envelope for Mrs. Grey; the not great luggage is taken quiet down the stair, so that no one is disturbed. Everything is arranged; you know Nina ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... for the housemaid, who would in the absence of her half of Amelie have to help her dress, and gave ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... said the doctor; and then, as the housemaid left the room, "Well, it can't be anything about Dexter now, because he ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... things as a canvasser and never dreamed of how easy it was to get boarders to talking and find out that way. Now I hear that Chester Hunt is advertising for white servants and of course my stunt would be to apply at once for the place of housemaid ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... as to the other servants. She says the maids are still very nervous. I spoke to them for the first time about the noises to-day. The butler's wife has heard sounds, but her husband only scoffs. The upper housemaid thinks ghosts the proper thing, and tolerates them along with the high families to which she is accustomed. The under housemaid is very shy, is Highland, and knows little English, and won't talk, but owns to discomfort, and is scoffed at by the other servants, who think it all part of her having ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... that she was not the mysterious lady who visited Orange's lodgings. Having weighed all the disadvantages, Sara now directed her attention to the advantages she could snatch out of the dilemma. At last she hit on a bold plan. She rang a bell and a housemaid answered the summons. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... drove him out of the house by her scandalous conduct. Yes, indeed; although you may not believe me, Di. You were away in Australia at the time, but I kept a watch on Lydia in your interest, dear, and our housemaid heard from your housemaid the most dreadful things. Why, Mr. Vrain remonstrated with Lydia, and ordered Count Ferruci out of the house, but Lydia would not let him go; and Mr. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before;—yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... enemies were wofully chagrined; but what perfected their annihilation was the palpable lie which my appearance gave to their false assertions. They had blazoned forth everywhere that my manners were those of a housemaid; that I was absurd and unladylike in my conduct; and that it was only requisite to have a glimpse of me to recognize both the baseness of my extraction, and the class of society in which my life had been hitherto ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... day's sport we went home happy and pleased with ourselves, not in the least depressed if we had drawn a blank, to jolly and delightful meals, without any formality at all. And if we were wet, there was a great drying-room off the kitchen premises where our clothes were dried by a housemaid who really understood the business. As for our tackle, we dried our own lines and pegged them under the verandah, and rewound them again in the morning, made up our own casts, and generally did everything for ourselves without a retinue of attendants. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... committed homicide; and he might make the details as gruesome as he liked. But there was no need to shock the sensitive when he made his choice of the circumstances in which the poet, Stephen Byrne, inadvertently throttles his housemaid. It is a fault, too, that his scheme only interests him so far as it concerns Stephen and his society, and that the horror of the tragedy from what one may loosely call the victim's point of view does not seem to affect him at all. Otherwise, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... scarcely understanding why, accused of having by my naughtiness made ray poor mamma so ill, and discovering for the first time that I was a miserable, naughty little fretful being, and with nobody but Clarence and the housemaid ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same relation to typhoid," said the Doctor, eyeing the other with solemnity, "as housemaid's ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... needn't be away more than about an hour and a half. I don't quite remember how she'd got all she knew about the times of the trains. I think it was from the cook or housemaid at Miss Bogle's, for I know she said one of them came from near Hill Horton, and that she was very good-natured, and liked talking about Margaret's home and ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... They at once perceived that the hall-door was open, and Mrs. Carbuncle, as she crossed the pavement, saw that there were two policemen in the hall. The footman had been with them to the theatre, but the cook and housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle's own maid, were with the policemen in the passage. She gave a little scream, and then Lizzie, who had followed her, seized her by the arm. She turned round and saw by the gas-light that Lizzie's face ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... time his eyes were wandering to the other side of the aisle. Mrs. Payne tried to follow their direction. Here, presumably, was a fairly representative collection of the female inhabitants of the village. Here she might expect to find the farmer's daughter, or, in the last emergency, the housemaid, on whom his affections were centred. She heard no more of Considine, only watching Arthur's eyes, and watching, she soon discovered that these were for Mrs. Considine and her alone. She could not deny the fact that Gabrielle, with her fine pale profile set against a pillar of grey sandstone, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... powders on every chair, Alice and I were laying a coat of invisible green over the cave-cask, and Philip, in radiant good-humour, was giving distance to his woodland glades in the most artful manner with powder-blue, and calling on us for approbation—when the housemaid came in. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... something amiss; and she believed Alice knew what it was: but she had not told either cook or housemaid a syllable about it. By Morris's account, Alice had been playing the mysterious in the kitchen as her mistress had in the parlour. Mr Grey had been suddenly sent for, and had saddled his horse himself, as his ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... list of diseases to which fowls are subject is dispiriting. I am glad they can't read them, or they would have all at once, as J.K. Jerome, the witty playwright, decided he had every disease found in a medical dictionary, except housemaid's knee. Look ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... beautiful one at Elizabeth Bay, and, as Dot told her mother, there were parlour-maid, housemaid, kitchen-maid and every other sort ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... bedroom to fetch his pipe. It was occupied by a housemaid, and he made a polite apology for disturbing her. Then ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... chair suggestively near the chest. I pushed the chair a little and mounted it. By standing on tiptoe I could now reach the box. I opened it and took out an irregular lump of sparkling sugar. I stood on the chair admiring it. I stood too long. My grandmother came in—or was it Itke, the housemaid?—and found ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Miss Esther thinks to talk me into inviting them to come and stay at Sanditon House, she will find herself mistaken. Matters are altered with me since last summer, you know: I have Miss Clara with me now, which makes a great difference. I should not choose to have my two housemaid's time taken up all the morning in dusting out bedrooms. They have Miss Clara's room to put to rights, as well as mine, every day. If they had hard work, they ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... wrong;" or, perchance, to the newly-elected mayor who, in returning thanks for his elevation, said that during his year of office he should lay aside all his political prepossessions and be, "like Caesar's wife, all things to all men." A well-known dignitary, rebuking his housemaid for using his bath during his absence from the Deanery, said, "I am grieved to think that you should do behind my back what you wouldn't do before my face;" and it was related of my old friend Dean Burgon that once, in a sermon on the transcendent merits of the Anglican ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... solves it," said Osborn nodding eagerly, "rubber gloves for wet work, and housemaid's gloves for dry, eh, dearest? You will always, won't you? You must let me buy you all ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... gravely confirmed it. "Don't you feel in the very air the vibration of the passion that she's simply too charming to shake at the window as the housemaid shakes the tablecloth or the jingo the flag?" Then he took up what Vanderbank had previously said. "Of course, my dear man, I'm 'aware,' as you just now put it, of everything, and I'm not indiscreet, am I, Mrs. Brook? in admitting for you as well as ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Next morn, the housemaid, passing by, Just chanced the little flower to spy, And then, without delay, She rudely seized its tender stalk, And threw it in the gravel walk, And ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... The tall housemaid—Rhoda they called her—stared at me as I re-entered, but Mrs Garnett gave me an approving glance; but it was baby who afforded me most satisfaction, for he screwed up his little rosebud of a mouth in the prettiest fashion and said, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... came down the wide, main stairs. He saw, under the porte-cochere, the trap ready to take him to the station, and into which the second man, with the help of the groom, was lifting his trunk. Here and there a housemaid was busy with duster and cloth. The machinery of the establishment was being set in running condition, and there was the accompanying disorder. The place seemed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... of an abused term, catholic. We must not suffer Association to be merged in mere partisanship for any class or calling, or blind hostility to any abuse or oppression. We are not the champions of the slave or the hired servant, the factory girl or the housemaid, the seamstress or the washerwoman. We are not the advocates merely of labor against capital, of the employers as opposed to the employed. Ours is the cause of all classes and vocations, and our success is the triumph of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... whom the earl had never seen, but whom he was supposed to hate, must be his heir. "A hearl can never choose his own heir, like you or me," said the footman, laying down the law. "Can't he though really, now? That's very hard on him; isn't it?" said the pretty housemaid. "Psha," said Vickers: "you know nothing about it. My lord could make young Eames his heir to-morrow; that is, the heir of his property. He couldn't make him a hearl, because that must go to the heirs of his body. As to his leaving him the place here, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... for some minutes without interruption, one woman takes a winnowing pan, a mat made in the shape of an English housemaid's dustpan, but rather larger than this article, and receives in it the pounded grain which the other throws out of the pit with ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of brown horses and a little carriage in which he drove about to stay with the squires. But as the horses were a deal of trouble and money was required for oats, Anton Prokofievitch bartered them for a violin and a housemaid, with twenty-five paper rubles to boot. Afterwards Anton Prokofievitch sold the violin, and exchanged the girl for a morocco and gold tobacco-pouch; now he has such a tobacco-pouch as no one else ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... well, miss? Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?" asked Alice the housemaid, noticing that the pudding was unappreciated, and divining that something ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... nature are described by Podmore in his chapter on "Haunted Houses."[33] Miss Langton saw a misty phantom, and Lizzie the housemaid saw a cloud and afterwards got a cramp, less persistent than the butler's, as she began to scream.[34] The upper housemaid saw a woman whose legs she did not notice,[35] as was the case with Mr. Godfrey's friend to ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... name Jesse Kilgo, so he was, and Mistress Letha Kilgo, dats his wife, good to him, good to me, good to everybody. My young mistress name Catherine, when her marry Marster Watt Wardlaw, I was give to them for a housemaid, 'cause I was trim and light complected lak you see I is dis very day a setting right here, and talking wid you. 'Members how 'twas young missie say: 'You come go in my room Delia, I wants to see if I can put up wid you'. I goes in dat room, winter time mind you, and Miss Charlotte set down befo' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... out of her solicitude for me has limited me to one cigar after dinner. But as I have been a heavy smoker for years I have found this a great hardship, and have therefore kept a reserve store, by arrangement with the housemaid, behind my tub. In self-defence I must also state that I seldom have recourse ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the blush of the clove trees, the deep blue sea with the dhows slipping out toward Muscat. He dried his eyes, put everything away, concealed in his palm a tiny, empty, square vial of glass enameled with gold. He appeared in the corridor, calm, stately, giving a passing housemaid a look of scorn. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... "A divorce," said he, with an extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the laughing-stock of England? The point is a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... liked to get the bedrooms ready for the honoured guests, but a really good housemaid is sometimes more ready to say 'Don't' than even a general. So the girls had to chuck it. Jane only let them put flowers in the pots on the visitors' mantelpieces, and then they had to ask the gardener which kind they might pick, because nothing worth ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... world news so it is with the minor events of ordinary life,—birth, death, marriage, accidents, crime. Let me give an illustration. Suppose that in a suburb of London a housemaid has endeavoured to poison her employer's family by putting a drug in the coffee. Now on our side of the water we should write that little incident up in a way to give it life, and put headings over it that would capture the reader's ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... to salon, from kitchen to kirmess, from the faro table to the Queen's drawing-room, from the canvas trousers of the miner to Poole's creations, from the calico frock of the housemaid to Worth's dazzling masterpieces, from making omelets to sneering at operas, the great social lightning-change ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... was obliged to remain awake, to shake the frogs when they began to croak. It was lucky that I did so, for they tried to begin their concert again two or three times. These frogs came safely to Oxford; and the day after their arrival, a stupid housemaid took off the top of the bottle to see what was inside; one of the frogs croaked at that instant, and so frightened her that she dared not put the cover on again. They all got loose in the garden, where I believe the ducks ate them, for I never ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... an ecstatic letter from Allenby." Allenby was the ex-sergeant. "He seems in a condition of trembling joy at the prospect of being our butler; and, what is more to the point, he says he has a niece whom he can recommend as a housemaid. So I have told him to instal her before we get to Homewood on Thursday. Hawkins has written a three-volume list of things he will require for the farm, but I haven't had time to study it yet. And ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the chart that recorded the antecedents of Gustave Schnorr, I saw his daughter going through my own folder with the business-like dispatch of a society dowager examining the "character" of a new housemaid. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the housemaid was bolder. "I'll tell the gentleman if you don't, Sarah," she declared. "It's like this, sir," she rattled out volubly: "the master, Mr. Mannering that is, has been so queer in his ways lately that Sarah and ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... married or was he still a bachelor? He was a bachelor as before, but there was a difference—he now had a female boarder who paid nothing for her board. The thought was anything but pleasant, but it was the truth. The cook kept house, the housemaid attended to the rooms. Where did Helena come in? She was to develop her individuality! Oh, rubbish! he thought, I am a fool! Supposing his friend had been right? Supposing women always behaved in this silly way under these circumstances? ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... attendants; to be handled by the profane; to cross three seas; to come to land under the foolscap of St. Paul's; to be domesticated within hail of Lillie Bridge; there to be dusted by the British housemaid, and to take perhaps the roar of London for the voice of the outer sea along the reef. Before even we had finished dinner Chench had begun his journey, and one of the newspapers had already placed the box upon my table as the gift ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... run round to my place right away. Our cook's fallen downstairs—broke her leg; the housemaid's got chicken-pox, and my two boys have been knocked down by ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... his wife. Doctor Rank. Mrs. Linde. Nils Krogstad. Helmer's three young children. Anne, their nurse. A Housemaid. A Porter. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... will wait for the end; and if the end should come sooner than our most sanguine hopes have led us to expect, we will not quarrel with the handiwork of fate. Now leave me. I see a petticoat yonder amongst the trees. It belongs to some housemaid from the castle, I dare say; and I must see if my eloquence as a wandering merchant cannot win me admission within the walls which I dare not approach as ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... nurse of young children, a cook, or a housemaid, is regarded as the lowest and last resort of poverty, and one which no woman of culture and position can assume without loss of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... represent Mrs, Embury. Eunice, say nothing more. Leave it to me. And, first, Shane, you haven't enough evidence to arrest this lady. That dropper thing is no positive information against her. It might be the work of the servants—or some intruder. The story of that housemaid is not necessarily law and gospel. Remember, you'd get in pretty bad if you were to arrest Mrs, Sanford Embury falsely! And my influence with your superiors is not entirely negligible. You're doing ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... whirled themselves away, and the stars told him it was ten o'clock. There was a light in the sitting-room, and Blue Dave judged it best to go to the back door. He rapped gently, and then a little louder. Ordinarily the door would have been opened by the trim black housemaid; but to-night it was opened by George Denham's mother, a prim old lady of whom everybody stood greatly in awe without precisely knowing why. She looked out, and saw the gigantic negro looming up on ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... looking for her husband and inquired anxiously of a housemaid, "Do you happen to know anything of your ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... viewscreens, he saw the door to the service hallway open. Zinganna, in a black evening gown and a black velvet cloak, and Calilla, the housemaid, in what she believed to be a reasonable facsimile of fashionable First Level dress, and Nindrandigro, in one of his master's evening suits, emerged. Salgath Trod waited until they had gone down the hall to the antigrav shaft, and ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... answered, "destiny or whatever it is will let them alone. I feel as though they were two precious pieces of china that a housemaid might sweep off the chimney piece at any moment. If ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... desired to see the house, and having carefully surveyed it, said the work was too hard for her, nor could she undertake it. This put my sister beyond all patience, and me into the greatest admiration. "Young woman," she said, "you have made a mistake; I want a housemaid, and you are a chambermaid." "No, madam," replied she, "I am not needlewoman enough for that." "And yet you ask eight pounds a year," replied my sister. "Yes, madam," said she, "nor shall I bate a farthing." "Then get you gone for a lazy impudent baggage," said I; "you want ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... are here!" thought Stella; "always finding out harm in things. I'm sure it wasn't my business to tell Uncle William I hadn't been at Sunday school. Sophy and Ada often tell the housemaid to say they are not at home when they are, and don't think it any harm. What would ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... happened, sir: he was my benefactor through life. Always kind to me at the workhouse, where he was chaplain, he got me a situation, as soon as I was old enough, with a lady. I lived with her first as housemaid, and then as her personal attendant, till she died under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... face of his master. 'Nobbles' had been given to him a very long time ago by a sailor-brother of Nurse's, who came to tea at certain periods, and who related the most wonderful stories of foreign parts. Jane, the housemaid, always took tea in the nursery upon these occasions, and she and Bobby listened with awed admiration to the handsome traveller. 'Nobbles' was only a walking-stick, with a wonderful little ivory head. It was the head of a goblin, Nurse declared, ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... strong and well again, and as bright as ever. She was so glad when Mrs. Leslie said I might come here and be her housemaid. My mother says it's a grand thing to lie down to sleep at night feeling that her children are all safe, and she can never thank God enough for all He has done for me. I told her of you and your mother, and she prays ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... is housemaid's knee, and painter's colic, so there is millionaire's melancholia. And the Budlongs were enduring the ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... you?" her visitor queried in the friendliest of tones. "You see, I know quite a lot about you already. Lydia told me—Lydia's the housemaid—you'll like her; she's a really nice girl. My name is June Mason—I live here, too, and I hope we will ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Throughout such portions of the Sabbath as they did not spend with their offspring in their pew, they kept them indoors behind drawn blinds. His mother kissed young Heriot seldom and severely (with a cold smack like a hailstone), and never permitted him to remain ten minutes in the same room with a housemaid unchaperoned. His father never allowed him to sleep under more than two blankets, and locked the front door at nine o'clock in summer and ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... not at all reputable career Old Rody "found it most convenient" to marry his housemaid. He survived the ceremony only a few months. His widow, disappointed in her expectations of wealth for the estate cut up very badly, indeed emigrated to Australia, where, I believe, she ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... they do the things they did, and what did they feel, and what was it all about? Again she heard Aunt Lucy talking to Aunt Eleanor. She had been that morning to take up the character of a servant, "And, of course, at half-past ten in the morning one expects to find the housemaid brushing the stairs." How odd! How unspeakably odd! But she could not explain to herself why suddenly as her aunt spoke the whole system in which they lived had appeared before her eyes as something quite unfamiliar and inexplicable, and themselves as chairs or ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... valuable a part of a lady's education it would be to be well instructed in these things, in an age when young ladies learn little more than how to dress themselves, had in her youth placed Miss Letty as the handmaid (or housemaid as the vulgar call it) of an eminent pawnbroker. The lightning, therefore, which should have flashed from the jewels, flashed from her eyes, and thunder immediately followed from her voice. She be-knaved, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... turning toward his sister. His words issued now with extreme clearness, sharp and nasal. "I say, Betty: What sort of beings are we rearing here?—why, they cannot live. Why, we simply cannot intrust to them the thing that we call life. A housemaid who steals out to the stable-boy and lets him seduce her knows what she is after; but what we are bringing up is little intoxicated ghosts that tremble with longing to haunt the outside world and cannot breathe when they get out there. That is ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sprawling on the bed again and laughing, "don't look all that serious. Bring back your brigadier and I'll kiss him on both cheeks while you hold him! But say; suppose that doctor's one of these swabs who serve out number nine pills for shell-shock, broken leg, dyspepsia, housemaid's knee and the creeping itch? Suppose he swears I'm ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... saved Madge's life. This faithful creature, on the death of her young husband twenty years before, had entered Mrs. Foster's service; she practically managed Stephen Foster's establishment, assisted by a housemaid and by the daily visits of ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... pretty—because I am not. At least,' she added, for she prided herself upon her truthfulness, 'not exactly pretty. And I should hate to be always thinking about my looks, like poor Milly—she's our housemaid, you know—and I so often have to tell her that she did not make ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... she assisted Susan, the housemaid, in preparing the rooms for the expected guests; for she was a notable little woman, and she had been encouraged by her grandmamma to busy herself in household matters. She with much taste arranged the bouquets ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Bob; and she was "that tired when she went to bed that she thought it weren't fair to expect her to get up and answer the night-bell, and so she never would hear it if it rang. It warn't her place; for though she did housemaid's work, and there was two sets of front-doorsteps, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... couldn't learn something higher she might as well stay on the lower rounds," sneered some one. "They relegate these things better in England. A housemaid's daughter is generally ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... been with us about two weeks, Betty, the housemaid, came into the yard with a cloth over her head, and a big apron on. All of us who lived there knew what it meant, and ran for dear life, with Mrs. Wild Goose at our heels, ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... in his dressing-gown and saw the King, he nearly had apoplexy. But the King quickly told his errand and made his friend Primate on the doorstep, with the butler and the housemaid for witnesses. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Every word you say gives up your case. What's it to do with you whether she likes it or not? I'm not talking of her, but of you. You silly ass, don't you see where you are? You fall in love with a woman and make her your head housemaid. Then you say, Oh, but she likes it. It's not what she likes we're talking about; it's what you can bring yourself to do with her. Wait a bit now. There's more to it. You play about here, there, and all over the shop. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... it was not definite enough to suit Johnny. However he said no more at that time. While the family were gone Bessie and I had the back porch to ourselves, and no one being there except the housemaid to whom she could display her superiority over me, she grew to be quite agreeable. For some time before the Morrises had bought her, which was years and years before, long before Johnny was born, she had lived ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... depends on the way other people bear themselves toward you. The looks and tones at your breakfast-table, the conduct of your fellow-workers or employers, the faithful or unreliable men you deal with, what people say to you on the street, the way your cook and housemaid do their work, the letters you get, the friends or foes you meet,—these things make up very much of the pleasure or misery of your day. Turn the idea around, and remember that just so much are you adding to the pleasure or the misery of other people's ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... cross-questioned the servants, but only succeeded in eliciting the facts which I have already stated. One other detail of interest was remembered by Jane Stewart, the housemaid. You will remember that on hearing the sound of the quarrel she descended and returned with the other servants. On that first occasion, when she was alone, she says that the voices of her master and mistress were sunk so low that she could hear hardly anything, and judged ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... time roused him to a perception of all that had happened since he strolled out of the dining-room of the Central Hotel. He smiled dourly when he remembered the mislaid key. Did it still repose in the bedroom? Or had a housemaid found it, and restored it to a numbered hook in the office? Had not that immaculately dressed clerk said he would find Number 605 "a comfortable, quiet room"? Well, it might be all that, yet Curtis could hardly help dwelling ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... was not a game arranged especially for their entertainment. The quadroon sat for hours before Edna's palette, patient as a savage, while the house-maid took charge of the children, and the drawing-room went undusted. But the housemaid, too, served her term as model when Edna perceived that the young woman's back and shoulders were molded on classic lines, and that her hair, loosened from its confining cap, became an inspiration. While Edna worked she sometimes sang ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... on returning from a visit, brought a gift to each of her mother's colored servants. It was the "day out" for Lily, the housemaid, so Annette distributed her gifts, reserving ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed girl. Up to yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... as she always did, the earliest of the family. In the hall she encountered the housemaid, not broom in hand as usual, but with ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... his supposed station in life, and she said that if they would remain there a few days she would try to procure them some situation. The third day after their arrival, she informed Mary that she had heard of a situation as under-housemaid at the squire's, about a mile off, if she would like to take it, and Mary gladly consented. Mrs Derborough sent up word, and received orders for Mary to make her appearance, and Mary accordingly went up to the hall, accompanied ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... to find that every basin is left by the housemaid with cold water in it, and there it stands waiting at all seasons; but such a thing as warm water is considered positively indecent, and the servant generally looks as if she would fall down with amazement at the mention of such ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... must be smothered. I hope he is not dead. Oh! there he is. Has Miss Temple got a page? Does her page wear a feather? My page has not got a feather, but he shall have one, because he was not smothered. Here! woman, who are you? The housemaid. I thought so. I always know a housemaid. You shall take care of my page. Take him at once, and give him some milk and water; and, page, be very good, and never leave this good young woman, unless I send ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... intents a copartner in the running of the house, and after that sweet lady's death she had been its manager in all regards. In the simple economies of the house she had indeed been all things for these past few years—housekeeper, cook, housemaid, even seamstress, for in addition to being a poetess with a cook-stove she was a wizard ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and seemed so serious a matter, that Davy was much distressed, wondering what had become of his dear old grandmother, and Mrs. Frump, the cook, and Mary Farina, the housemaid, and Solomon, the cat. However, before he had time to make any inquiries of the Goblin, his grandmother came dropping down through the air in her rocking-chair. She was quietly knitting, and her chair was gently rocking as she went by. Next came Mrs. Frump, with her apron quite full ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... if they are not trained to discuss the causes which have brought them into the field. An English gentleman will think that his gardener will be a better gardener without than with any excessive political ardor, and the English lady will prefer that her housemaid shall not have a very pronounced opinion of her own as to the capabilities of the cabinet ministers. But I would submit to all Englishmen and English women who may look at these pages whether such an opinion or feeling on their ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... corridor Arthur met the under housemaid and asked her to knock at his door at six in ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... resentfully, wended by familiar landmarks to New York,—to await there a joyous day of returning, when the King's regiments should have scattered the rebels and hanged their leaders. John Williams, steward of the manor, was left to take care of the house against that day, with one white housemaid, who was of kin to him, and one black slave, a man. The outside shutters of the first story, the inside shutters above, were fastened tight; the bolts of the ponderous mahogany doors were strengthened, the stables and mills and outbuildings ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... an auroral air. She sunned herself like a bird in the dust; she bathed her body, and tired herself with long mountain and woodland walks. When she was alone with her husband she grew as sentimental as a housemaid and as little heedful of the absurd. She grew young and amazingly pretty, the sister of her son. It would be untrue to say that, being in clover, she was unaware of it. For a woman of one-and-thirty to have her husband ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... moment I thought of a passage at arms with a pretty housemaid as a solution. But it would obviously have been much quicker and simpler for any other party to flee the room than to make for the window and lower the blind. No; something had to be done which took a few minutes to do. I thought instantly of one possibility—the ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... till, While Pot-boy, busiest of the bunch, Steals pence for self, and beer for Punch. Look at that window, you may trace At every pane a laughing face. Yon graceful Girl and her smart Lover, And in the story just above her, The Housemaid, with her hair in papers, All finding Punch a cure for vapours. E'en the pale Dandy, fresh from France, Throws on the group an eye askance; Twirls his moustache, and seems to fear That some gay friend may catch him here. The Widowed wretch, who ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... and when it came to filling her place, it was discovered that she was by no means the only member of that useful profession laid low. It was quite impossible to find a substitute. Miss Sarah was obliged to do her own cooking, with the assistance of a not very intelligent housemaid. ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... will give you a fresh mop, and you can have the back porch and table for your workshop, and if I'm not mistaken, you will find two hours a day little enough for the work!" she added with very much the air of some one engaging a new housemaid and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and silenced the attendant housemaid, I took the precaution of burying the rabbit partially under the eider-down quilt before testing the squeak, so that no noise should reach the children. I am afraid I "mothered" the squeak of that rabbit if I imagined it could reach anywhere so far; it was in ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... out of the butler's room. The butler fell back, opened his mouth, and pretended to be asleep—snoring moderately. This of itself would have undeceived any one, for when the old hypocrite was really asleep he never snored moderately. The cook and housemaid uttered two little shrieks and slammed their respective doors, while the bell rang ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... several times been obliged to do without some of our luxuries if they entailed "fetching," as we had no boy to run errands quickly on an emergency and be useful. However, I rang the bell; and when the housemaid, whose temper, since she had been what is curiously termed in servants'-hall language "single- handed," was most trying, entered, I said, "Make some lemonade, Mary, and ask cook to gather some strawberries quickly, and bring them, ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... and brother suffered for this choice and preference, which highly offended Bonaparte, who ordered them both to be transported to Guadeloupe, under pretence that the latter had said in a coffee-house that his sister would rather have been the housemaid of the wife of a ci-devant valet, than the friend of the wife of a ci-devant assassin and Septembrizer. It was only by a valuable present to Madame Bonaparte from Madame Moulin, that Mademoiselle de B——- was not included in the act of proscription ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... dark, deep-bosomed and comely, a rich flush on her cheeks under the clear brown skin thanks to a kitchen fire which didn't burn and righteous anger which did, Mary Fisher, the upper housemaid, set a tea-tray upon the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and beloved "world" (sixteen friends now, and two of them carriage-folks!) agree that we really must be spending seven hundred, or at all events, running into debt up to that figure; but the butcher and baker, who have gone into the matter with the housemaid, know better. ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... morning-trains begin, followed at half-past six by fifty factory-whistles. The children are awake and stirring. The housemaid is banging her utensils on piazza and in hallway: the cook is flirting with the milk-and butter-man at the back gate, and exclaiming "Oh Laws!" to some news or pleasantry of his. The licensed venders are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... LIZA, a housemaid, not bad-looking, but very stout and snub-nosed; in a white dress, of which the bodice is short and ill-fitting. About her neck is a little red kerchief; her hair is very ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... at last, and slowly crept upstairs, glad to meet no one, and that not even Josephine was there to see her red eyes. Her muslin frock was on the bed, and she managed to dress herself, and run down again unseen; she stood over the fire, so that the housemaid, who brought in her tea, should not see her face; and by the time she had to go to the drawing-room, the mottling of her face had abated under the influence of a story-book, which always drove ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Connie went to bed early. Well, when I came up, and passed her door, I noticed something—somebody in that room was—smoking! I could not be mistaken. And this morning I questioned the housemaid. 'Yes, ma'am,' she said, 'her ladyship smoked two cigarettes last night, and Mrs. Tinkler'—that's the maid—'says she always smokes two before she goes to bed.' Then I spoke to Tinkler—whose manner to me, I consider, is not at all what it should be—and she said that Connie ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thinking, that, as my fortune is so ample, it is quite unnecessary that you should undergo so much fatigue: for instance, I do think that the wife of a baronet of 12,000l. a year owes it to her rank to be otherwise employed than in hunting after the housemaid, or sacrificing her time in the storeroom in counting candles, or weighing out soap, starch, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... daren't attempt to make my apologies personally. Will you accept my written excuses? Upon my honor, nobody told me when I got here yesterday that you were in the house. I heard the recitation, and—can you excuse my stupidity?—I thought it was a stage-struck housemaid amusing herself with the children. May I accompany you when you go out with the young ones for your daily walk? One word will do. Yes or no. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the opportunity tarried. Mrs. Wilson was too often about the passages to make the expedition safe. On one occasion Cicely went to act scout, but found the housemaid sweeping the top landing, and had ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. "And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the schoolroom. She sat down for a moment near the open window. The day was still in its prime. She looked at the clock. The under-housemaid, who had the charge of the schoolroom tea, now came in with the tray. She laid the cloth and spread the tea-things. There was a plate ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... chosen two very respectable young women in Christchurch, one as a cook, and the other as a housemaid. The cook, Euphemia by name, was a tall, fat, flabby woman, with a pasty complexion, but a nice expression of face, and better manners than usual. She turned out to be very good natured, perfectly ignorant though willing to learn, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Rosie, the housemaid, when he went out angrily slamming the front door. "I will never marry a member of Parliament, no, not though he goes on his bended knee to ask me. I may not have wealth or fame—but I'll ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... follow the train of thought in the parrot's mind. It is evidently recalling episodes or things which form part of its daily mental experiences. It begins by barking like the dog, then remembers the dog's mistress, and tells it to be quiet, as she does. Then it hears the housemaid, and imitates a window-sash being let down, or some phrase it has picked up in the servants' quarters. If it has been lately struck with some new animal noise or unusual sound, it will be heard practising that. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... selfishness. All servants love to get swollen knees, and chilblains and chapped hands. They like to make a fuss about themselves. And to make their employer pay a substitute to do their work. They're all like that. It was just the same before I married. Yes, every housemaid I employ. Contracts these swollen kneeses. They only do it to annoy. Because they ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... her tongue, sucking luxuriously the lips and clitoris, and thrusting in the velvet tip as far as it would go into the vagina, until Ethel murmured, "It is coming again, Mabel. Oh! Oh! Suck harder, my dear." He now recognised the stranger as a housemaid who had attracted his attention on more than one occasion during the short time he ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... recommended me to their abigails; the abigails turned me round with a stare, and then pushed me down to the kitchen and the fat scullion-maids, who assured me that, 'in the respectable families they had the honour to live in, they had never even heard of my name.' One young housemaid, just from the country, did indeed receive me with some sort of civility; but she very soon lost me in the servants' hall. I now took refuge with the other sex, as the least uncourteous. I was fortunate enough to find a young gentleman ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... much. No one from this house, I am sure of that. Now that I think of it, though, Polly sings—Polly, the under housemaid; she has a pretty little bird-like voice, but nothing such as you describe. I'll ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... of service is to cleanse. Cleansing is always dirty work for the cleaners, as every housemaid knows. You cannot make people clean by scolding them, by lecturing them, by patronising them. You have to go down into the filth if you mean to lift them out of it; and leave your smelling-bottles behind; and think nothing repulsive if your stooping ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... ring for some paste," said Emilie, just as the clock struck four; Margaret answered the bell. Margaret was the housemaid, and so far from endeavouring in her capacity to overcome evil with good, she was perpetually making mischief and increasing any evil there might be, either in kitchen or parlour, by her mode of delivering a message. She would ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... attending Madame Brune in the salon au cinquieme etage," announced a very excited little housemaid, who was supposed to speak English for the benefit of the American pensionnaires at Maison Pace. "Madame Pace is some time gone at the boucher, not expecting callers at so early heur. La Marquise demanded not Madame Pace; ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... Listening a minute outside the kitchen door she slipped stealthily down the cellar stairs, and tiptoed over to the area door where the ashman took out the ashes. Softly slipping the bolt she opened the door and drew in her bundle. Then standing within, she quickly slipped the black silk over her housemaid's gown, donned her coat and hat and gloves, and sallied forth. A moment more and she was in the next street with the consciousness that she "might have done the like any time sooner, if she'd wanted, in spite of ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... to a plan to serve the poor girl. Early in the morning he took his pack and went through the village up to the Rev. Mr. Horton's. There, under pretence of asking for kettles to mend, he told the most dismal tale to the housemaid. At breakfast-time this was reported to Mrs. Horton. Distress at such a time was sufficient to engage any lady's attention. Mrs. Horton was a frail, tender woman, but earnest in works of charity. The ponies were ordered, and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... tone Ellen had remembered. She stiffened, and became again a housemaid in the Anthony Cardew house, a self-effacing, rubber-heeled, pink-uniformed lower servant. She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, whose ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Canayen" is mak' it mariee, You t'ink he go leev on beeg flat An' bodder hese'f all de tam, night an' day, Wit' housemaid, an' cook, an' all dat? Not moche, ma dear frien', he tak' de maison, Cos' only nine dollar or ten, W'ere he leev lak blood rooster, an' save de l'argent, Wit' hees nice ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... help and sympathy! Oh, irony of circumstances, how were they answered? The housemaid entered the room, to announce the arrival of a discharged servant, with ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... mastered all your jealously-guarded secrets and I've allowed the strong wind of a man's intellect to blow through them. I am facing the cook on a new system and am dealing with the tradesmen in a spirit of inexorable resolution. The housemaid is being brought to heel and has already begun not to leave her brushes and dust-pans lying about on the floors of the library and the drawing-room. Stern measures are being taken with the kitchen-maid; and Parkins, that ancient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... the man. "Somebody sprinkle him with cold water," said he; "and be quiet, all of you, and keep out of sight, while I examine him." He stood before the insensible figure with his arms folded, amid a dead silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of Sarah Wilson, and of a sociable housemaid who ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the fearful verisimilitude of this that Lucia's new housemaid had once fled from her duties in the early morning, to seek the assistance of the gardener in killing it. The dish of stone fruit had scored a similar success, for once she had said to Georgie Pillson, "Ah, my gardener has sent in some early ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee. ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... two sitting rooms, opening into a conservatory. There are six bedrooms, a dining-room, bath room, and housemaid's sink. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... how do I look?" she asks, turning round to face Molly. "Anything like a housemaid?" With a faint laugh that has ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... quite noiseless and quite harmless. My servants, when they meet them in the corridors or on the stairs, stand aside to let them pass, thus paying them the respect due to guests of mine; but not even the rawest housemaid ever screams or flees at sight of them. I, their host, often waylay them and try to commune with them; but always they glide past me. And how gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a pleasure to watch them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the worth of every volume was now trebled in her eyes. Their furniture was all left behind; and in its stead went some of neat light painted wood which looked to Fleda deliciously countryfied. A promising cook and housemaid were engaged to go with them to the wilds; and about the first of April they turned ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... going below, had called the housemaid and confided to her that, for good reasons, she had locked Violet in her room and she charged the maid not to let ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to come back to the house after the walk with Eliza, the nurse, or Annie, the housemaid; to go through all the rooms looking for Mimi; looking for Mamma, telling ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant or no servant, strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If she have cook and housemaid they are to go also, and number her two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which they would make a holiday, they would—as at other crises, of birth, sickness, death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no first-class ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... must be. He is always thinking of others; and you and I, Mary, must do all we can for him. I shall be housekeeper and cook and all sorts of things, and you shall be chief housemaid, and help me, and we will try and make the house ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... could have been in question for her—there had been, by the vulgar measure, more to go upon. He had walked with her to Lancaster Gate, and then she had walked with him away from it—for all the world, she said to herself, like the housemaid giggling ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... my study "out" that day, And then contrives to pitch away As "rubbish" (which it is) my Play? My Housemaid. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... know. I must consider. I must think it over.' He paused a minute. 'I am pained. Pained and surprised. A girl like Hyacinth, a friend of yours, behaving like a housemaid out with a soldier in the ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... said he, pointing to the easel, canvas, and stretcher; 'and tell the housemaid she may kindle the fire with them: your mistress won't ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... wuk 'til de war come on, 'cause Mistess was larnin' me to be a housemaid. Marse Gerald and Miss Annie never had no chillun 'cause she warn't no bearin' 'oman, but dey was both mighty fond of little folks. On Sunday mornin's mammy used to fix us all up nice and clean and take us up to de big house for Marse Gerald to play wid. Dey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... London and fix our attention on the dust of its air. Suppose a room in which the housemaid has just finished her work to be completely closed, with the exception of an aperture in a shutter through which a sunbeam enters and crosses the room. The floating dust reveals the track of the light. Let a lens be placed in the aperture ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... alike dirty in the extreme; but the Emperor Alexander, after his visit to England, introduced great improvements. Now the public offices at Saint Petersburg, at all events, are kept fairly clean. I do not think, however, that the housemaid has got so far south as Moscow; it is too holy a place, in a Russian's ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... time. His son publishes none of them in the late biography, and it is safe to say that in all the range of literature there are no other letters filled with such drivelling idiocy as these. Had they been written by some Cockney coachman to some sentimental housemaid, they should stand as the finest specimens of that grade of literature extant; but that they should have been written by one of the foremost literary men of his time is a marvel, and seems to show to what extremes of imbecility love ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the negro who lay beneath the walnut tree had resembled him, and I cried for fear Carrie might marry so ugly a man, thinking it would not be altogether unlike, "Beauty and the Beast." Sally, our housemaid, said that "most likely he'd prove to be some poor, mean scamp. Anyway, seein' it was plantin' time, he'd better be to hum tendin' to his own business, if he ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... the door, a silence as of death was the sign of his welcome; but a tumult presently arose, and discipline was for a time suspended. I am afraid he had a slight feeling of condescension, as he returned the kind greeting of his old companions.—Raise a housemaid to be cook, and she will ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... you but the whole mass. Contempt for a task violates the principle because it is contempt for a thing which the system recognizes as useful. Classification based on tasks falls down in a democracy. A poor lawyer falls below a good clerk, a poor teacher below a good housemaid, since one renders a sound and the other ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... turns in watching by her bedside, but the two unemployed ones lingered forlornly near, and had no heart for sightseeing. Francesca did, however, purchase opera tickets for the evening, and secretly engaged the housemaid to act as head ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was the trusted servant, almost the friend, of the young master, he was his bailiff and his steward, and he lived in a pretty cottage by the edge of the lake. O'Dwyer's aunts, they were old women, of sixty-eight and seventy, lived in the Big House, the elder had been cook, and the younger housemaid, and both were now past their work, and they lived full of gratitude to the young master, to whom they thought they owed a great deal. He believed the debt to be all on his side, and when he was away he often thought of them, and when he returned home he went to greet them as he might go to the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... particular business, and to it they went manfully. A fairy glazier put in new panes to the shattered windows, fairy carpenters replaced the doors upon their hinges, and fairy painters, with inconceivable celerity, made cupboards and closets as fresh as paint could make them; one fairy housemaid laid and lit a roaring fire, while another dusted and rubbed chairs and tables to a miraculous degree of brightness; a fairy butler uncorked bottles of fairy wine, and a fairy cook laid out a repast of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... fed up with the Grey Room, if I may say so, and so's the housekeeper, Mrs. Forbes, and so's Jane Bond. Not that they would desert the ship; but there's others that be going to do so. I may mention that four maids and Jackson intend to give notice to-morrow. Ann Maine, the second housemaid, has gone to-night. Her father fetched her. Excuse me mentioning it, but Mrs. Forbes will give you the particulars ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... just four miles out on the other side of Elbury, where Susan Congleton went to live that was housemaid at the Grange. She says it's such a nice place, and such beautiful organ and singing at church! And what did you say you were to ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were comfortably seated, toasting chestnuts over the fire and enjoying a jug of wine, little Annette, the housemaid, appeared in a black calico dress and velvet turban, with rosy cheeks and lips like a cluster of cherries. She came running up the stairs, gave a hasty knock and threw herself joyfully into my arms. I had known the pretty little girl for a long time; we were of the same village, and if truth ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... your bed side stands A nest of speaking tubes; this one commands My bedroom, number two, my sister's, and The third, Jane's room; this last, you understand, Might be convenient should you e'er require, If ill, an early cup of tea, or fire. Is Jane the pretty housemaid? I reply, She is, you sly boy, but she's coy and shy. Harry, I thought you'd known me better to—— All right, old boy, I was but joking you. Harry now left. When dressed for dinner I Resolved tube numbered one at ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... waistcoat with a heavy sigh over this philosophical dictum, the poignancy of which was enhanced by his knowledge that the upper housemaid had taken to conversing with a mounted policeman in the Park during ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... actually the Princess von Steinheimer whom he met at the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball. He laughed at me; there was no convincing him. He said that theory was more absurd than the sending him a picture of a housemaid as that of the lady he met at the ball. I used all the arguments which you had used, but he brushed them aside as of no consequence, and somehow the case did not appear to be as clear as when you ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... said, 'Follow me,' and Mrs. Claughton, taking the bedroom candle, rose and followed out on to the landing, and so into the adjacent drawing-room. She cannot remember opening the door, which the housemaid had locked outside, and she owns that this passage is dreamlike in her memory. Seeing that her candle was flickering out, she substituted for it a pink one taken from a chiffonier. The figure walked nearly to the window, turned three-quarters round, said ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
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