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More "Pettish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visit might remain a secret, too mortifying to both parties to be divulged, but she found Horatia in a state of eager anticipation, awakened from the torpor to watch for tidings of a happy conclusion to their difficulties, and preparing jests on the pettish ingratitude with which she expected Lucilla to requite the services that would be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... home he had lost entirely the air of business-like severity which he had worn all day. He looked young and credulous. Juliet laughed with the pettish protest of a half-spoiled wife and drew ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... folded, but Kenrick was not to be deceived. He had caught one glimpse of Walter first; he saw his eyes wet with tears, and knew that he was in trouble. He hung on his foot doubtfully for one moment—but then his pride came in; he remembered the little pettish repulse in the playground the day before; the opportunity was lost, and he walked slowly on. And Walter's heart grew as hard within him ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... very pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek glowed while she spoke; but an arch, provoking smile was on ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hangs her head, Repenting follies that full long have fled, Heaving her white breast to the balmy air, Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair: Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light She fears to perfume, perfuming the night: And Clytia [5] pondering between many a sun, While pettish tears adown her petals run: And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth [6]— And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king: And Valisnerian lotus thither flown [7] ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... and the picture of good humour; but, change the scene, and Favoretta no longer appeared the same person: when alone, she was idle and spiritless; when with her maid or with her brother and sisters, pettish and capricious. Her usual play-fellow was Herbert, but their plays regularly ended in quarrels—quarrels in which both parties were commonly in the wrong, though the whole of the blame necessarily fell upon Herbert, for Herbert ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... strange fellow, John Constantine," was the answer, in a weary, almost pettish tone. "God knows I have more reason to be grateful to you than to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... ever turns pettish or ill-humoured, I'll taunt her with that spark,' he said, when he had recovered. 'She'll little think I know about him; and, if I manage it well, I can break her spirit by this means and have her under my thumb. I'm glad nobody came. I didn't call ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... thou be mummer, languishing poet, pettish woman and spoiled princeling all in one? No! And I shall love the clanking of arms and thy mailed footsteps all the more if thou permittest me to look upon irresponsible folly while ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... sixteen years old, and being undersized and childish of appearance had never had the pleasure of the company of a young man. The yearning in her pettish face as she stood unevenly on the discarded harness, looking out of the window toward John Hunter, caught Elizabeth's attention and illuminated the whole affair to the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... against a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, an interview. She appeared to be passing through some crisis which occasioned her the keenest suffering. I have seen her, when she thought herself alone, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... answered the Admiral, who appeared relieved now the story was at an end, "you would have found him very pettish." The admiral's play on ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit, might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue in favour of the exiled family of the Bourbons." Thus the paternal advice of the French Consul taught me that in all that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... walk on ahead, without even troubling himself to see if she followed—this was too much for her composure. Her face clouded over, and though she made a valiant effort to preserve her composure, it was in vain, and she was glad to find an outlet for her irritation in pettish complainings. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... merry times, and don't care if I never have any more!" answered our pettish little Pandora. "And, besides, I never do have any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with thinking about it all the time. I insist upon your telling me what is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Heart is so full of Lofes and Passions for Mrs. Gwinifrid, and she is so pettish and overrun with Cholers against me, that if I had the good Happiness to have my Dwelling (which is placed by my Creat-Cranfather upon the Pottom of an Hill) no farther Distance but twenty Mile from the Lofers Leap, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the noblest hearts At times may have some grief, And even in a pettish word May seek to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... heavy moustache, and a bronzed cheek—rather grave in his manner, but still perfectly good-natured, and when he smiled showing a most handsome set of regular teeth. Clara seemed less pleased (I thought) at his coming than the others, and took pleasure in tormenting him by a thousand pettish and frivolous ways, which I was sorry for, as I thought he did not like it; and used to look half chidingly at her from time to time, but without any effect, for she just went on as before, and generally ended by taking ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... my good friend," said I; "I was a fool then, and did not think I could incline to be Glentanner with L200 or L300 a year, instead of Glentanner with as many thousands. I was then a haughty, pettish, ignorant, dissipated, broken-down Scottish laird; and thinking my imaginary consequence altogether ruined, I cared not how soon, or how absolutely, I was rid of everything that recalled it to my own ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... he saw the lady walking impatiently up and down the room, tapping at the window, mending the fire, and expressing her haste in many other pettish manners so truly feminine. It was Florine. He knew the girl well from his frequenting Bertrand's during this piece of business. Jerome sent her word he would be in, and changing his costume to one he usually wore, presented himself before her in the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... that he hates all Buonapartes, past, present, or to come, but then he says that in his self-willed, pettish way, as a manner of dismissing a subject he won't think about—and knowing very well that he doesn't think about it, not mistaking a feeling for a reason, not for a moment. There's the difference between women ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage: Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours: Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers: And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers: Kid, whose grim sport still gambolled over graves: And Chettle, in whose fresh funereal verse Weeps Marian yet on Robin's wildwood hearse: Cooke, whose ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and when Richard warned her that she was not keeping her dress out of the dirt, it sounded like a sarcasm on her projects, and, with a slightly pettish manner, she raised the unfortunate skirt, its crape trimmings greatly bespattered with ruddy mud. Then recollecting how mamma would have shaken her head at that very thing, she regretted the temper she had betrayed, and in a larmoyante voice, sighed, "I wish I could pick my ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... column, or less, of the Herald. The moment Miss Crawford saw the slip, her anxiety seemed to be redoubled, and she reached over to Joe, as if to take the paper, with the words, half-pleading, half-pettish: ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... said he could not remain, and unfastened her arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and again clasped her ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... into Spabbink's room. Under Groby's vigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... my hand, she's doo to begin shootin' me up herse'f if I don't show more passionate anxiety about leadin' her to the altar. It's then, not seein' why the old gent should go entertainin' notions ag'in me, an' deemin' mebby that when he blazes away that time he's merely pettish and don't really mean said bullet none, that ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... kind to me, and you are cruel; for when I ask for love, you give me jewels, books, or flowers, as you would give a pettish child a toy, and go away as if you were weary of me. Oh, it is not right, Sir! and I cannot, no, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy one Laughed shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... giving to his writing, which subdued and attracted her far more than any words he could have spoken to her, or notice he could have taken of her just then. He had apparently forgotten her, this kind Monsieur le Docteur, who had evidently more important things to think about than her and her pettish little speeches; or she had perhaps made him angry, and he would not take any more notice of her at all? There was a certain amount of probability in this last idea to the self- convicted little Madelon, that urged her to some sort of action; she sat still ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him more than every thing else ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... massed against the rebellion of his disorganized adolescence her mature, well-ripened capacity to get her own way. She held him with her eyes as an animal-trainer is supposed to cow his snarling, yellow-fanged captives, and in a moment Arnold, with a pettish gesture, blew out the match and shut the cigarette case with a snap. Mrs. Marshall-Smith forbore to over-emphasize her victory by a feather-weight of gloating, and turned to her sister-in-law with a ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her hands, and the face defined by the slim fingers was small and delicate, pale with the clear pallor of perfect health, and now slowly flushing to some emotion. The little chin was firm, but the mouth was pettish. Her teeth bit on a gold chain, which encircled her neck and held a crystal reliquary. A spoiled pretty child, she looked, and in ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... pettish one day; 'If you keep on complaining,' he swore, 'I'll pack both my bow and my quiver away, And so I shall plague you no more.' 'Hey, Love, you mustn't do that! Hi, Love, what would you be at? You may ruin our ease, ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was more remarkable for its deep feeling in the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric. This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the common fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;" said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty. "In this instance, however, Europe has not so greatly erred. They who see much resemblance between the bay of Naples and this of Manhattan, have fertile brains; since it rests altogether on the circumstance that there is much water in ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... for to her mind the pleasantest and kindest person in the world put in comparison with Roger was as nothing; he stood by himself. Cynthia's next words,—and they did not come very soon,—were on quite a different subject, and spoken in rather a pettish tone. Nor did she allude again in jesting sadness to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, the joke ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... we can, and all I mean to do," said Alice Hooper, with a pettish accent of fatigue. "Everything's perfectly comfortable, and if she doesn't like it, we can't help it. I don't know why we make such ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Dorm. What a pettish Fool is a Maid in love at fifteen! how unmanageable! But I'll forgive all— go get you in, I'll watch for your Lover; I would not have you disoblige a Man of his Pretensions and Quality for all the World. [Clarinda ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of surprise and wonder. Surprise and wonder that the beautiful Juliet St. Leger, during six months of intimate courtship, so successfully could have veiled, under constant guise of amiability, the weak, pettish nature which she was now ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... all very well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a pettish whimper, 'and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to divorce me, YOU would be taken back too," she added quickly, suddenly withdrawing herself with a pettish movement and walking to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Lazelle called him "a pretty little fellow," and thought it a fine joke. He laughed, too, when the young man told him to "come out," for there was something in the pettish tone of his voice which Horace considered ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... poor Lettice sunk within her in a way she was little accustomed to, as the general, in a very pettish mood, stirred the fire, and said. "When are we to have dinner, Mrs. Melwyn? What are we waiting for? Will you never teach that cook of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the house late on the afternoon of Friday, and there was much fresh crying between her and Annie. Leslie had on new black, too, "just what I could grab down there," she explained—and was pettish and weary with fatigue and the nervous shock. She gave only the side of her cheek to Acton's dutiful kiss, and answered his question about the baby with an impatient, "Oh, heavens, she's all right! What could be the matter with her? She did have a cold, but now she's all right—and when I'm ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... pin and laid it away, put on a dry bib, and gave her baby a nice ivory ring to bite; then began to dance up and down the room, till the shadowy baby clapped its hands and kicked delightedly. Polly laughed, and did the same, feeling sorry she had been so pettish. Presently both babies grew quiet, went to sleep, and were laid in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... and temptations; but he was ignorant of my condition; he bade me take tobacco and sing psalms. Tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing; I could not sing. Then he bid me come again and he would tell me many things; but when I came he was angry and pettish; for my former words had displeased him. He told my troubles, sorrows and griefs to his servants so that it got among the milk-lasses. It grieved me that I should have opened my mind to such a one. I saw they were all miserable comforters, and this brought my troubles ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know—I wish—how can I say ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... rather sober at this. He hesitated a moment. He wanted to ask his pettish sister a question, but evidently did not know how to go ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... She was pettish withal, and easily offended, and if refused calico for an okendokenda, or beads, or ribbon to ornament some part of her dress, she would sullenly rest her chin on her hand, until pacified with a present, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... Madge pettishly. She was not a pettish person, only just now something in her sister's words had the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... anything but me. Ephraim said I was exacting, and I thought him cold and unkind. And so there gradually grew up a coldness between us; and yet the coldness was all on my side. Ephraim was always gentle, even when I was pettish and cross. For so I was. It was partly physical. I was not well that winter. I did not sleep, or when I did by fits and starts, I woke frightened and crying. Now, my doctor would call it nervous sensitiveness; but then people did not give fine names to their humors, and mother only looked sorry, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... to hope for even up to the verge of the grave. When the sullen storm-cloud of misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair, the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... began to observe indications of a change for the worse in his character. He grew more pettish and dissatisfied, and frequently acted towards her with great unkindness. He was rarely, if ever, at home before midnight, and then repulsed every affectionate act or word. Several times he came in intoxicated, and once, while in that ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... don't be miserable," said Gwendolen, with pettish remonstrance. "It only makes me more so. I ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... become more and more marked till they pass into what may be called the first stage of the affection, in which there are signs of congestion of the brain, such as I have already described, coupled with general irregular attacks of feverishness. The child becomes more gloomy, more pettish, and slower in its movements, and is little pleased by its usual amusements. Or, at other times, its spirits are very variable; it will sometimes cease suddenly in the midst of its play, and run to hide its head in its mother's lap, putting its hands to its head, and complaining of headache, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household, who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded them with blended awe and respect, than ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... appearance. The air was scented, too, with some pleasant odour of a not too pungent kind. But the table lacked one customary feature; no tea was laid as it was wont to be at this hour. The child gazed round in surprise. Her mother was in bed, lying back on raised pillows, and with a restless, half-pettish look ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... it for myself—I have had it by me for twenty years! Seeing that thee must stick thy nose into my business!" His tone was pettish and he stooped down and began to toss splinters and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... with a pettish slam. There might be a scene here were it not that CRICHTON reappears and goes to one of the glass cases. All are at once on the alert and his lordship ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... in his pettish resentment, that the younger traveller, who was in no such pressing hurry to depart, could not help being amused with it, especially as it was obvious, that every now and then the old gentleman, though very angry, could not help laughing at his own vehemence. But when ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... The broil must have been turbid in the old man's brain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could not calm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does some old song to quiet her pettish infant. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... orders as if something were going to happen again. I never felt so before; I never used to have the least concern in what you call 'the working of the ship,' and now"—her voice, which had been half playful, half pettish, suddenly became grave,—"and now—look at the mate and those men forward. There certainly is something going on, or is going to happen. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... irritable, and fractious, peevish, and pettish. He is morbidly anxious about trifles: slight ruffles on the surface, and trivial annoyances in the family circle or during the course of business, worry, flurry, tease and fret him, nothing satisfying or soothing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... middle-aged woman rose as I came in, and I stood aghast. It was not my sister. It was soon explained. She was a little pettish about it, poor woman! It seemed my sister had quite recently changed her house, and the present occupant had been put to some slight inconvenience before by people calling and leaving parcels after her departure. She gave me Jane's new address, which was only ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... half forgotten the matter; but now he remembered that Mildred had been keen to have the part only a week ago, and a little pettish because he had advised her to leave it alone, on account of Mrs. Shaw. Now she was hanging on him with desperate eyes and that worried brow which he had not seen once ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... and inadvertently touched upon the absurdity of supposing there could be any superiority, of man over man, except that which genius and virtue gave. Sir Arthur did not approve the doctrine, and was pettish. I perhaps was warmed, by a latent sense of my own situation, and exclaimed—'Oh! How many noble hearts are groaning, at this instant, under the oppression of these prejudices! Hearts that groan, not because they suffer, but because they are denied ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... voice, but to be good for her whole character—that is, if she had made a good use of them. But in these times, being usually already out of temper with the difficult answers of the Catechism questions, and obliged to keep in her pettish feelings towards what concerned sacred things, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her inattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more dull and unmusical than nature had made her, and was a grievous torment to poor Mrs. Lacy, and her ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he should be after his deep disappointment, and with the sense of his father's displeasure resting on him, and the prospect of the day school before him. Both father and mother were touched sometimes when they caught the sad expression of his face; but he was no longer sullen; and if a pettish word escaped him, he seemed to catch himself up quickly before it could be ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... black as thunder, And savage as RURIC the Red. For this did we lose the Crimea? For this did we larrup the Jews? I really had not an idea Republics could rule—and amuse. Miss FRANCE looks extremely coquettish. How well Miss COLUMBIA can coax! The Teuton, no doubt, will look pettish, The Briton will grumble "a hoax." Aha! I can snub a Lord Mayor, And give shouting Emperors a hint; I back La Belle France. Her betrayer My meaning must see, plain as print. My reply to the great Guildhall grumble Had less of politeness than pith, But—well I've no wish ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... haply 'twas the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even into May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay? or hark Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown. Come the tumult whence ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that old maid sister of his, and how she was a queer old girl; but I didn't have any idea what a cold blooded proposition she was. Honest, she seemed put out and pettish ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... indeed, young as he was, had felt the kind pulses of all those dear kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty to warn my Lord Mohun, and let him know that his designs were suspected and watched. So one day, when in rather a pettish humor his lordship had sent to Lady Castlewood, who had promised to drive with him, and now refused to come, Harry said—"My lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side I will thank you; I have much to say to you, and would like to speak ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth, rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson; of which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back as to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to the elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Since when have you gone into melodrama?" The voice was pettish, but the listener was not slow to catch a tremor of discomfort under its attempted loftiness. "As if I cared!—or need to fear such stuff as Gregoriev's!—Go to Zaremba, if you like, and tell him I sent you for the manuscript.—Much good ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... him: "You are a real poison in this country, Herr Doctor!"—and not very long before the war a German official to whom he was applying for leave to invite M. Andre Tardieu to lecture in Strasbourg, broke out with pettish exasperation: "For twenty years you have been turning my hair grey, M. le Docteur!"—and permission was refused. At the outbreak of war, he naturally escaped from Strasbourg, and joined the French army; while during the latter part of the ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Editor-Who-Believes-In-Me. Let the thing go on." I would send him off another manuscript. He would take it. Victory, by Jove! Then—wonk! Back would come my third effort with the curtest of refusals. I always imagined editors in those days to be pettish, whimsical men who amused themselves by taking up a beginner, and then, wearying of the sport, dropped him back into the slime from ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... not be in Paris," says the young man, still in the same discontented, pettish voice. "She will be there, no doubt—well to the front—in the thickest of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!' cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, 'what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered with the pettish frown it had assumed ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... out of the library across the hall. Errington followed him in silence. He knocked at the door of his wife's room,—in response to her "Come in!" they both entered. She was alone, reclining on a sofa, reading,—she started up with a pettish exclamation at sight of her husband, but observing who it was that came with him, she stood mute, the color rushing to her cheeks with surprise and something of fear. Yet she endeavored to smile, and returned with her usual ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Thorpe wasn't pettish, but he was discouraged and unstrung. He knew that his arrest, which was imminent, was, in part, due to the assertions of the medium and the Ouija Board. These secrets had leaked out somehow, and though the detective, Weston, would have scorned to acknowledge it, he had been more ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... swinging door; and then Denry most clearly heard the Countess's own authentic voice saying in a pettish, disgusted tone: ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... profession. Grave-eyed and intent, they went through the day's routine with a cheery patience under drudgery which showed the noble stuff of which they were made. They looked askance at Phebe's grumblings, her fluctuating enthusiasm, her hours of girlish frivolity and of pettish complaint. Among themselves, they analyzed her; but they were unable to classify her. She was foreign to their ways of life and thought; in a word, they set her down as worldly and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... some look, or gesture of opposition to her wishes. She turned sharp round on Mary, the old object of her pettish attacks, and said, "Now, wench! once for all, I tell you this. HE could never guide me; and he'd sense enough not to try. What he could na do, don't you try. I shall go to Liverpool tomorrow, and find my lad, and stay with him through thick and thin; and if he dies, why, perhaps, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... passed unnoticed. Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself with listening to Mr. Hudson's voice. It was a soft and not altogether masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive and pettish key. The young man's mood seemed fretful; he complained of the heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found the person he was in search of had left Northampton an ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was wholly feminine. "Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn't it? Too perfectly innocent, if you ask me." She stared out of the window abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with a corner between ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... which way the wind blows. His wife listened with some uneasiness, for she had always hoped the Colonel tacitly approved the attachment between their respective relatives, which to her appeared so evident. She could only trust this was but a pettish effusion from their prolonged absence, and determined to guard against such causes of offence ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of this pony was indeed one of my father's many kind thoughts for my welfare and amusement. My odd pilgrimage to the Rectory in search of change and society, and the pettish complaints of dulness and monotony at home which I had urged to account for my freak of "dropping in," had seemed to him not without a certain serious foundation. Except for walks about the farm with him, and stolen snatches of intercourse with the grooms, and dogs, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mind irritable, the body weak; when from that invisible weakness, little evils become great, the temper loses its equanimity, the spirits their elasticity, we scarcely know wherefore, and we reproach ourselves, and add to our uneasiness by thinking we are becoming pettish and ill-tempered, enervated and repining; we dare not confess such feelings, for our looks proclaim not failing health, and who would believe us? when the very struggle for cheerfulness fills the eye with tears, the heart with heaviness, and we feel provoked at ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... lea Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy: A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against his Will. He gets quite pettish—and after having had it out every morning for years, it does seem funny. He said the other day: 'They want my money.' It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him, nobody wants his money, I'm sure. And it does seem a pity he should be thinking about money ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... replied the renegade. "Caneri, you know how firmly I am devoted to the Moorish cause; why then was I insulted when it was only to advance the interests of that cause I spoke? But let that pass; I am no pettish boy to quarrel with my associates for a word uttered intemperately ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... impetuously, as he advanced with outstretched hand toward his prisoner, "and with all my heart, sir, I thank you. Forgive my pettish speech of a moment since; you were right to reprove me. No one appreciates a gallant foe more than I; and though the fortune of war has to-day made you my prisoner, to-morrow may ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... she who had started the whole thing, and got Tish's subconscious mind to working, Aggie was rather pettish. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when they are under the glow of splendid eloquence, that there is behind the words a thinking, reflective, and composed mind. The speech gained enormously by the contrast of its composure—its fine temper, its calm and broad judgment—from the somewhat pettish, personal, and passionate utterances of Mr. Chamberlain. This young man will go very far—very ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... written two years ago, and which were suggested by an indignant feeling at the cold manner with which the National Anthem was received by some persons who used to be loud in their professions of loyalty on former public occasions. Happily, this wayward and pettish, I will not call it disloyal spirit, has passed away, and most of the "Annexationists" are now heartily ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... gentleman bustled about his shop, in pettish displeasure at being summoned hither so hastily, to the interruption of his more abstract studies; and, unwilling to renounce the train of calculation which he had put in progress, he mingled whimsically with the fragments of the arithmetical ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. Pharmacy (science) farmacio. Pharos lumturo. Pharynx faringo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in one of her slightly pettish moods this evening. Peter didn't better matters by saying, "Oh, well, none of the others count. Lucy and I have always been different from most cousins, I suppose; more like brother and sister, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... in the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... fealty of the barons, and passed into Normandy in the spring of 1154. The work of reformation had already begun. Stephen resented indeed the pressure which Henry put on him to enforce the destruction of the castles built during the anarchy; but Stephen's resistance was but the pettish outbreak of a ruined man. He was in fact fast drawing to the grave; and on his death in October 1154 Henry returned to take the crown ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... you are cross, Miss Garston: you are not a saint, after all, though Giles says you sing like a cherub: I don't know where he ever heard one, but that is his affair. Well, as you choose to get pettish over it, I will be amiable, and tell you what we do. Etta says we waste our time dreadfully, but as it is our time and not hers, it is ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... there, my dear; they'll soon be better," said Mrs Dean, bending over him; and the sight of those two, with Esau's pettish ill-humour, quite drove away the rest of my gloom for the time. For as Mrs Dean bent over her ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... let him that will compare the benefits they receive by me, the metamorphoses of the gods, of whom I shall not mention what they have done in their pettish humors but where they have been most favorable: turning one into a tree, another into a bird, a third into a grasshopper, serpent, or the like. As if there were any difference between perishing and being another thing! But I restore the same man to the best and happiest ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... The pettish inquiring tone was exactly what delighted him. And he continued to tease her in the same style till Laura and Amabel came running in with their ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her wrists tight at the clasp of her waist, and letting her chin fall on her throat, shook her body fretfully, much as a pettish little girl might do. Wilfrid grimaced. "Tick-tick" was not a pathetic elegy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... before, in the Louvre; her form too was of a classical lightness and perfection. The Englishman noticed indeed that her temper was apparently not equal to her looks. When her small brothers interrupted her, she repelled them with a pettish word or gesture; the English governess addressed her, and got no answer beyond a haughty look; even her mother was scarcely ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scattered 'round de plantation. De biggest of 'em had two rooms and evvy cabin had a chimbly made out of sticks and red mud. Most of de chillun slept on pallets on de floor, but I slept wid my Pa and Ma 'cause I was so pettish. Most of de beds was made out of poles, dis a-way: Dey bored two holes in de wall, wide apart as dey wanted de bed, and in dese holes dey stuck one end of de poles what was de side pieces. Dey sharpened de ends of two more poles and driv' 'em in de floor for de foot ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such a look in this country; ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Germany!"—the falconers were in despair, and Churchill saw that the fault was his; and it looked so like cockney sportsmanship! If Horace had been in a towering rage, it would have been well enough; but he only grew pettish, snappish, waspish: now none of those words ending in ish become a gentleman; ladies always think so, and Lady Cecilia now thought so, and Helen thought so too, and Churchill saw it, and he grew pale instead of red, and that looks ugly in an ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... round a coy waist and heard the beating of a passionate heart against thine own! A truce to thy musty volumes! Believe it, those ancient and sorrowful philosophers had no manhood in them—their blood was water—and their slanders against women were but the pettish utterances of their own deserved disappointments. Those who miss the chief prize of life would fain persuade others that it is not worth having. What, man! Thou, with a ready wit, a glancing eye, a gay smile, a supple form, thou wilt not enter the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... hunted her mercilessly up and down through all sorts of charming sophisms, as she begged the question, and shifted her ground, as thoroughly right in her conclusion as she was wrong in her reasoning, till she grew quite confused and pettish.—And then Lancelot suddenly shrank into his shell, claws and all, like an affrighted soldier-crab, hung down his head, and stammered out some incoherencies,—'N-n-not accustomed to talk to women—ladies, I mean. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... aperture he saw the lady walking impatiently up and down the room, tapping at the window, mending the fire, and expressing her haste in many other pettish manners so truly feminine. It was Florine. He knew the girl well from his frequenting Bertrand's during this piece of business. Jerome sent her word he would be in, and changing his costume to one he usually wore, presented himself before her in ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... the glass to confirm what he has said, Annette takes him by the hand, tells him he must not mind, now; that if he is good he shall see Franconia,—and mother, too, one of these days. He must not be pettish, she remarks, holding him by the hand like a sister whose heart glows with hope for a brother's welfare. She gives him in charge of the messenger, saying, "Good by!" as she imprints a kiss on his cheek, its olive hues changing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... gentle! for the noblest hearts At times may have some grief, And even in a pettish word May seek ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... from visitors. In the drawing-room, Favoretta, consequently, was happy, always in high spirits, and the picture of good humour; but, change the scene, and Favoretta no longer appeared the same person: when alone, she was idle and spiritless; when with her maid or with her brother and sisters, pettish and capricious. Her usual play-fellow was Herbert, but their plays regularly ended in quarrels—quarrels in which both parties were commonly in the wrong, though the whole of the blame necessarily fell upon Herbert, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... gilded chariot bowls along from square to square with its delicate patrimonial possessor, bearing him homeward in celerity and silence, worn with lassitude, and heated with wine quaffed at his third rout, after having deserted the oft-seen ballet, or withdrawn in pettish disgust at the utterance of a false harmony in the opera. A cabriolet hurries past him still more rapidly, bearing a fashionable physician, on the fret at having been summoned prematurely from the comforts of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... say so, but in some way the feeling permeated the table. The widow pushed her plate aside, and sipped her glass of wine in silence. Charlotte took a pettish pleasure in refusing what she felt she was unwelcome to. Both left the table before Julius and Sophia had finished their meal; and both, as soon as they reached their rooms, turned to each other with faces hot ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... when she was not. She could not be certain what was the matter, but she saw that something was wrong. At times, Hester's manner was so unboundedly affectionate, that it was impossible to suppose that unkind feelings existed towards herself; though a few pettish words were at other times let drop. Hester's moods of magnanimity and jealousy were accounted for in other ways by her sister. Margaret believed, after a course of very close observation, that she had discovered, in investigating the cause of Hester's ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... and your ducks, Dick!" exclaimed Stukely, in a tone half-pettish, half-playful; "you have jolted me out of a reverie in which I was endeavouring to account for the extraordinary feeling that sometime in the past I have beheld this very scene, even as I behold it now. Of course I know that ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... horses round; the "ant business" had kept him waiting at "Tenby" gate nearly half an hour, and he had a strong objection to arriving at hotels when the dinner hour was long past and the cook, pettish at having to set to work again, quite callous about what ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... lose such a friend."—"Indeed it is," said my companion, "I don't know what I shall do. No one else ever understood my constitution. I really don't know whom I am to go to now"—and he went his way in a pettish mood, as though his physician had rather shabbily deserted him. Alas, is there not much of this when one of ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... expense—ought she to have gone to live with her uncle? He was rich. He could pay his coal bills. He was never in pinch. Oh! did her father and mother wish she had gone? There was no peace for Polly. Dutifully she crept over to the hospital to see Ilga, but found her in a pettish mood, and she returned home more disturbed than before. She longed to offer her bank money again, but she knew it would be of no use. Besides, she did not wish her father and mother to know she had been eavesdropping. She blushed with shame at the thought. Why had she not ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... irritable, susceptible; excitable &c 825; thin-skinned &c (sensitive) 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret. hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish^; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious &c (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious^; restiff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... you small brute!" and accompanied the words with a pettish little kick which reduced the dog ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... previous night, and which even his untutored ear could recognize as an attempt to accompany him. But before he had finished the second verse the unknown player, after an ingenious but ineffectual essay to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with an impatient and almost pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the sounding-board of the unseen instrument. Masterton finished ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... principally, That marriage was instituted for the help and comfort of man: where, therefore, the match proves such as that the wife doth but pull down aside, and, by her innate peevishness and either sullen or pettish and froward disposition, bring rather discontent to her husband, the end of marriage being hereby frustrate, why should it not, saith he, be in the husband's power, after some unprevailing means of reclamation attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off this clog, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... too, with some pleasant odour of a not too pungent kind. But the table lacked one customary feature; no tea was laid as it was wont to be at this hour. The child gazed round in surprise. Her mother was in bed, lying back on raised pillows, and with a restless, half-pettish look on her face. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... hall of Llangarth, Daurn-ap-Tavis, the old Welsh Wolf lay dying. Outside was the night and a sullen gale whose winds came moaning down the hills and clung about the house with little bodeful whispers that grew to long-drawn eerie wails, while pettish rain-squalls spent their spite in futile gusts on ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Madame de St. Andre, still laughing. "But even though you disclaim all effort to find me, or wish to be agreeable when found, yet I will still confess that you arrived most opportunely. Monsieur de St. Aulaire grows fatiguing," she went on, with a pettish shrug of her shoulders. "He is as prodigal of compliments as you are ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... finding herself physically intact, was keeping up an irritating moaning, interspersed with pettish diatribes against a Government that could be so culpably careless as to permit her to be bombed out of house and home; whilst Jane Crab, who had found and lit a candle, and recklessly stuck it to the table in its own grease, was bluffly endeavouring ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... fragment of paper that had fallen at her feet, and flung it out from her on the water. Mr. Haydon affected not to see the pettish act, but turned to ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "Parfaitement."—Pettish. Apollyon. But how changed. Who the devil is myself? Where in Hell am I? What is Paris—a place, a somewhere, a city, life; (to live: infinitive. Present first singular: I live. Thou livest). The Directeur. The Surveillant. La Ferte Mace, Orne, France. "Edward E. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... is rushed by her friend's impetuosity into coat and hat, and carried off, Miss Hill promising to return with her for Mr. Larcher "in an hour or two." Before Mr. Larcher has had time to collect his scattered faculties, he is alone with the pettish-looking old man to whom he has felt himself an object of perfect indifference. He glares, with a defiant sense of his own worth, at the old man, until the old man takes ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... ever kiss her, after I had seen her lips pressed by the snake's, though she sometimes coaxed me, and grew pettish and vexed when I would not; but she ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rose as I came in, and I stood aghast. It was not my sister. It was soon explained. She was a little pettish about it, poor woman! It seemed my sister had quite recently changed her house, and the present occupant had been put to some slight inconvenience before by people calling and leaving parcels after her departure. She gave me Jane's new address, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... dearest Hilda," said Zillah, instantly appeased; "I'm always pettish; but you won't mind, will you? You never mind ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... which she pressed in order to enforce her arguments turned cold within her grasp, and lay, like that of a corpse, insensible and unresponsive to her caresses, her feelings of sympathy gave way to those of hurt pride and pettish displeasure. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Ding, to beat, to surpass. Dink, trim. Dinna, do not. Dirl, to vibrate, to ring. Diz'n, dizzen, dozen. Dochter, daughter. Doited, muddled, doting; stupid, bewildered. Donsie, vicious, bad-tempered; restive; testy. Dool, wo, sorrow. Doolfu', doleful, woful. Dorty, pettish. Douce, douse, sedate, sober, prudent. Douce, doucely, dousely, sedately, prudently. Doudl'd, dandled. Dought (pret. of dow), could. Douked, ducked. Doup, the bottom. Doup-skelper, bottom-smacker. Dour-doure, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... (who indeed young as he was had felt the kind pulses of all those dear kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty to warn my Lord Mohun, and let him know that his designs were suspected and watched. So one day, when in rather a pettish humour, his lordship had sent to Lady Castlewood, who had promised to drive with him, and now refused to come, Harry said—"My lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side I will thank you; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against the rebellion of his disorganized adolescence her mature, well-ripened capacity to get her own way. She held him with her eyes as an animal-trainer is supposed to cow his snarling, yellow-fanged captives, and in a moment Arnold, with a pettish gesture, blew out the match and shut the cigarette case with a snap. Mrs. Marshall-Smith forbore to over-emphasize her victory by a feather-weight of gloating, and turned to her sister-in-law with a whimsical remark about the preposterousness ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... now sixteen years old, and being undersized and childish of appearance had never had the pleasure of the company of a young man. The yearning in her pettish face as she stood unevenly on the discarded harness, looking out of the window toward John Hunter, caught Elizabeth's attention and illuminated the whole ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... above all, the expences of the Navy; and do enquire into the King's expences everywhere, and into the truth of the report of people being forced to sell their bills at 15 per cent. losse in the Navy; and, lastly, that they are in a very angry pettish mood at present, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... hand of Joe came out with the treasure she had been seeking—a torn half column, or less, of the Herald. The moment Miss Crawford saw the slip, her anxiety seemed to be redoubled, and she reached over to Joe, as if to take the paper, with the words, half-pleading, half-pettish: ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... had lost entirely the air of business-like severity which he had worn all day. He looked young and credulous. Juliet laughed with the pettish protest of a half-spoiled wife and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... your harmonious numbers. I love him much better than the hot-headed son of Peleus, who bullied his general, cried for his mistress, and so on. It is true, the excellence of the Iliad does not depend upon his merit or dignity; but I wish, nevertheless, that Homer had chosen a hero somewhat less pettish and less fantastic: a perfect hero is chimerical and unnatural, and consequently uninstructive; but it is also true, that while the epic hero ought to be drawn with the infirmities that are the lot of humanity, he ought never to be represented as extremely absurd. But it ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... between them. I shall not anticipate what some of my honorable friends will bring before your Lordships; but I tell you, that, so far from quarrelling with Gunga Govind Sing, or being really angry with him, it is only a little pettish love quarrel with Gunga Govind Sing: amantium irae amoris integratio est. For Gunga Govind Sing, without having paid him one shilling of this money, attended him to the Ganges; and one of the last acts of Mr. Hastings's government was to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that the visit might remain a secret, too mortifying to both parties to be divulged, but she found Horatia in a state of eager anticipation, awakened from the torpor to watch for tidings of a happy conclusion to their difficulties, and preparing jests on the pettish ingratitude with which she expected Lucilla to requite the services that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then made his way through the corridor into Spabbink's room. Under Groby's vigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... is so full of Lofes and Passions for Mrs. Gwinifrid, and she is so pettish and overrun with Cholers against me, that if I had the good Happiness to have my Dwelling (which is placed by my Creat-Cranfather upon the Pottom of an Hill) no farther Distance but twenty Mile from the Lofers Leap, I would ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... very meekly for a savage young coxcomb like him. Perhaps they bore no very distinct meaning just then to his mind. Perhaps it was preoccupied with more exciting ideas; or, it may be, his agitation and fear cried 'amen' to the reproach; at all events, he only said, in a pettish but deprecatory sort ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Polignac look forth from it; they have fled, they have 'met Necker at Bale;' they shall not return. That France should see her Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish children? This was her peculiarity. They understood nothing; would understand nothing. Does not, at this hour, a new Polignac, first-born of these Two, sit reflective in the Castle of Ham; (A.D. 1835.) in an astonishment ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the letter, Miss Henny works daisies on a bit of canvas with pettish jerks of her silk, and Miss Cicely leans in the sofa-corner, staring at the newcomer, we will briefly introduce our small heroine. Her father was cousin to the elder ladies, and being called suddenly across the water on business, took his ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... creature shewed to him, and the care she took to humour him in every thing, not only while he continued in a condition, in which it might have been dangerous to have put his spirits into the least agitation, but after he was grown well enough to walk abroad, had made him become extremely pettish and self-willed; which shews, that an over-indulgence to youth, is no less prejudicial, than too much austerity.—Happy is it for those who are brought up in a due proportion between these two extremes; for as nature will be apt to fall ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... piece of knowledge, let me tell you) Indolence INTOLERATION in religious, and inhospitality in civil matters Kick him upstairs Many are very willing, and very few able Perseverance has surprising effects Pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young Reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does Singularity is only pardonable in old age Smile, where you cannot strike To govern mankind, one must not overrate them Too like, and too exact ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... The bear was fussing around a carcass of a deer, preparatory to burying it. "Once the bear lost his grip and rolled over during the course of some movement, and this made him angry and he struck the carcass a savage whack, just as a pettish child will strike a table against which it has knocked itself." Who does not recognize that trait in himself: the disposition to vent one's anger upon inanimate things—upon his hat, for instance, when the wind snatches it off his head and drops it in the mud or leads him a chase for it across ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... show which way the wind blows. His wife listened with some uneasiness, for she had always hoped the Colonel tacitly approved the attachment between their respective relatives, which to her appeared so evident. She could only trust this was but a pettish effusion from their prolonged absence, and determined to guard against such causes of ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... times, and don't care if I never have any more!" answered our pettish little Pandora. "And, besides, I never do have any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with thinking about it all the time. I insist upon your telling me what ...
— The Paradise of Children - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, perverse, rigid, severe, teasing, unsuitable, angry, boisterous, choleric, disgusting, gruff, hectoring, incorrigible, mischievous, negligent, offensive, pettish, roaring, sharp, sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... said Madge pettishly. She was not a pettish person, only just now something in her sister's words had the effect ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... want him," was her pettish reply; "but if she has your chin, I'll put her out to nurse. Oh! how I hate the thought ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... discipline were likely not only to improve her ear and untamed voice, but to be good for her whole character—that is, if she had made a good use of them. But in these times, being usually already out of temper with the difficult answers of the Catechism questions, and obliged to keep in her pettish feelings towards what concerned sacred things, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her inattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more dull and unmusical than ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think him over-proud And under-honest, in self-assumption greater Than in the note of judgment; and worthier than himself Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on, Disguise the holy strength of their command, And underwrite in an observing kind His humorous predominance; yea, watch His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if The passage and whole carriage of this action Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and ad That if he overhold his price so much We'll none of him, but let him, like an engine Not portable, lie under this report: Bring action hither; this cannot ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... CONSCIENCE. Such pettish quibbling is utterly unworthy of your good sense and ordinary candor. You know, as well as I do, the great difference between industry in some safe and honest calling, and driving a business which carries poverty and ruin to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the Pomeranian on the bed. The dog snarled and snapped viciously. Frank thrust out one hand and gave the animal a pettish push. Bestowing a hard, cold glare on her son, Mrs. Wiley snatched up the growling ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... to don in two days filled him with amazement and gave her person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared always accompanied by a very placid-looking and portly woman, who was evidently her mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettish attitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or an uncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no male attendants, but sat most of the time very properly, if a little restlessly, with her two companions. Once or twice Ramon felt her look ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a pettish whimper, 'and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... conversing. I was endeavouring to shew the pernicious tendency of the prejudices of mankind, and inadvertently touched upon the absurdity of supposing there could be any superiority, of man over man, except that which genius and virtue gave. Sir Arthur did not approve the doctrine, and was pettish. I perhaps was warmed, by a latent sense of my own situation, and exclaimed—'Oh! How many noble hearts are groaning, at this instant, under the oppression of these prejudices! Hearts that groan, not because they suffer, but because they are denied the power effectually to aid their very oppressors, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... These pettish words, qualified by the sweetest of smiles, were addressed by a beautiful girl of sixteen to a young man who was sitting beside her, and taking a mischievous pleasure in disturbing her work; now catching hold of her hands; now removing out of her reach something that she wanted; ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... from whose hand the sweet white locks of age Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours: Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers: And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers: Kid, whose grim sport still gambolled over graves: And Chettle, in whose fresh funereal verse Weeps Marian yet on Robin's wildwood hearse: Cooke, whose light boat of song one soft breath saves, Sighed from ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... been having a tiff with Mrs. Beaudesart?" continued Montgomery. "Lovers' quarrel? That's nothing. I did n't think you were so pettish as to run ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... out before eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll be when I ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... doo to begin shootin' me up herse'f if I don't show more passionate anxiety about leadin' her to the altar. It's then, not seein' why the old gent should go entertainin' notions ag'in me, an' deemin' mebby that when he blazes away that time he's merely pettish and don't really mean said bullet none, that I fronts ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... having to pay, they laughed louder than ever; on which the old lady's face gradually brightened up, till at last she laughed louder than any of them, Then, when the spinster aunt got 'matrimony,' the young ladies laughed afresh, and the Spinster aunt seemed disposed to be pettish; till, feeling Mr. Tupman squeezing her hand under the table, she brightened up too, and looked rather knowing, as if matrimony in reality were not quite so far off as some people thought for; whereupon everybody ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... or dislike, I had no other means of conjecturing than from the frequency with which he arranged, disarranged, and re-arranged his spectacles, first, fixing them tightly to the bridge of his nose, then, unfixing them, with a pettish jerk, to wipe them with his handkerchief, and, at last, refixing them with much precision, by removing the hat from his head and clasping it between his knees, till the yielding pasteboard crackled again. This circumnavigation continued for some time, much to my amusement, but more to the annoyance ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... after him with a puzzled look for a while, then said half to herself and in a pettish and vexed ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... moods and grow them in the natures next to him. Of course there must be exceptions to this rule, because the will is free and man is reasonable, and the motive and power to pluck up unwelcome seed, and unpleasant growths, inheres in all men. I have known a good-natured man to live with a pettish, ill-natured, jealous, fault-finding wife through all the years of my acquaintance with him, he meantime growing no worse, and she growing no better. They had voluntarily and effectually shut themselves each from the influence of the other. He had closed his spirit ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... them in ourselves, and those which they excite in others, are unprofitable as well as painful. They lessen our own comfort, and tend often rather to prevent than to promote the improvement of those with whom we find fault. If we give even friendly and judicious counsels in a harsh and pettish tone, we excite against them the repugnance naturally felt to our manner. The consequence is, that the advice is slighted, and the peevish adviser pitied, despised, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy: A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... Mr. Lazelle called him "a pretty little fellow," and thought it a fine joke. He laughed, too, when the young man told him to "come out," for there was something in the pettish tone of his voice ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... affairs of life, but which do not appear in its ordinary relations and habitudes. I thought what he said to me the other night looked like a severance of his Stanley connexion, and his strenuous support of this Bill and his pettish attacks upon Lyndhurst show that he at least is not likely to ally himself with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Betty became vain she became idle too. Instead of making her mother and sisters happy with her pretty playful ways, and making herself useful and pleasant at home, she grew pettish. ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... yet left his chamber. I wrote my business on a card with a pencil, not omitting to use the name of Mr. Benjamin, and sent it up. A moment after the President came down, shook hands with me, and, in his quick and rather pettish manner, said "send me the order." I retired immediately, and finding Mr. Benjamin still in the hall of the department, informed him of my success. Then, in conformity with his suggestion, I repaired to Adjutant-General Cooper, who wrote the order that A. T. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... your pettish temper, You've spoiled your breakfast, too. Cross Patch, cross Patch, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;" said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty. "In this instance, however, Europe has not so greatly erred. They who see much resemblance between the bay of Naples and this of Manhattan, have fertile brains; since it rests altogether on the circumstance ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... very evident astonishment which Lady Annabel testified at this question, and the expression of her extreme displeasure at any conversation on a circumstance for which there was not the slightest foundation, Mistress Pauncefort, after duly flouncing about with every possible symbol of pettish agitation and mortified curiosity, her cheek pale with hesitating impertinence, and her nose quivering with inquisitiveness, condescended to admit with a sceptical sneer, that, of course, no doubt her ladyship knew more of such a subject than she could; it was not her place to know ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... all we can, and all I mean to do," said Alice Hooper, with a pettish accent of fatigue. "Everything's perfectly comfortable, and if she doesn't like it, we can't help it. I don't know why we make such ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inform you," replied the renegade. "Caneri, you know how firmly I am devoted to the Moorish cause; why then was I insulted when it was only to advance the interests of that cause I spoke? But let that pass; I am no pettish boy to quarrel with my associates for a word uttered ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... taste, wisdom and safety we shall not now speak, but content ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered with the pettish frown it had assumed ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... starry sphere Can this elastic air convey. Or haply 'twas the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even into May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay? or hark Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy one Laughed shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Though somewhat ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Little boy Love grew pettish one day; 'If you keep on complaining,' he swore, 'I'll pack both my bow and my quiver away, And so I shall plague you no more.' 'Hey, Love, you mustn't do that! Hi, Love, what would you be at? You may ruin ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whatever; Uncle Zebedee, oppressed by the sense of former good fellowship, thought it discreet not to evince too much cordiality; so that the onus of the morning's welcome was thrown upon Eve, who, utterly ignorant of any offence Jerrem had given, thought it advisable to make amends for the pettish impatience she feared she had been betrayed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... said Jasmine, her eyes suddenly filling with tears, and her pettish mood changing to a tender and very sad one—"those eggs were given for Daisy, and no one else shall eat them. Do you know, Primrose, that Miss Egerton does not think Daisy at ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... hand with a smile, and bowed in return to the salutation of the page, whose stiff reception of his advances he imputed to the proud pettish disposition of a Scotch boy, trained up in extravagant ideas of family consequence and personal importance, which his acquaintance with the world had not ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... friend," said I; "I was a fool then, and did not think I could incline to be Glentanner with L200 or L300 a year, instead of Glentanner with as many thousands. I was then a haughty, pettish, ignorant, dissipated, broken-down Scottish laird; and thinking my imaginary consequence altogether ruined, I cared not how soon, or how absolutely, I was rid of everything that recalled it to my own memory, or that ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... dear; they'll soon be better," said Mrs Dean, bending over him; and the sight of those two, with Esau's pettish ill-humour, quite drove away the rest of my gloom for the time. For as Mrs Dean bent over her son, he ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... glow of splendid eloquence, that there is behind the words a thinking, reflective, and composed mind. The speech gained enormously by the contrast of its composure—its fine temper, its calm and broad judgment—from the somewhat pettish, personal, and passionate utterances of Mr. Chamberlain. This young man will go ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... after joined the party. He muttered over some short speech about regret for having been so long detained elsewhere, when he knew he should have the pleasure of seeing Madame Cheron here; and she, receiving the apology with the air of a pettish girl, addressed herself entirely to Cavigni, who looked archly at Montoni, as if he would have said, 'I will not triumph over you too much; I will have the goodness to bear my honours meekly; but look sharp, Signor, or I shall certainly run ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... myself—I have had it by me for twenty years! Seeing that thee must stick thy nose into my business!" His tone was pettish and he stooped down and began to toss splinters and broken boards ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother's aching heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl's face; but as he noted Millicent's pettish manner, and divined her mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger's presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he seldom spoke ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... would say, "here's the man at last, the Editor-Who-Believes-In-Me. Let the thing go on." I would send him off another manuscript. He would take it. Victory, by Jove! Then—wonk! Back would come my third effort with the curtest of refusals. I always imagined editors in those days to be pettish, whimsical men who amused themselves by taking up a beginner, and then, wearying of the sport, dropped him back into the slime from ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... marred-looking young one I never saw in my life," Mrs. Medlock thought. (Marred is a Yorkshire word and means spoiled and pettish.) She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything; and at last she got tired of watching her and began to talk in a ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tired, was shooting out a pettish lip because he had to go to bed without saying good-night to Uncle David; and his mother, making terms with this pretence, consented to bring down his nightdress, thinking Rossi might be out of the sitting-room by that time, and the boy be pacified. But when ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... care Claims from her couch the restless fair; The toilet's care!—the glass has won Just half a glance, and all is done! A snappish—pettish word or so Warns the poor maid 'tis time to go:— Not at her toilet wait the Graces Uncombed Erynnys takes their places; So great a mind expands its scope Far from the mean ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... watching the officers and men, and listening to the orders as if something were going to happen again. I never felt so before; I never used to have the least concern in what you call 'the working of the ship,' and now"—her voice, which had been half playful, half pettish, suddenly became grave,—"and now—look at the mate and those men forward. There certainly is something going on, or is going to happen. What ARE ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... space of time again elapsed ere the eloquence of the abbot, half chiding and half soothing, prevailed on the lady, in her adopted character, to approach, the parlour, in which at last she made her appearance, with a countenance on which the marks of tears might still be discovered, and a pettish sullenness, like that of a boy, or, with reverence, that of a girl, who is determined upon taking her own way in any matter, and equally resolved to give no reason for her doing so. Her hurried levee had not prevented her attending closely to all the mufflings and disguisings ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the little sceptre, fashioned in imitation of that made for the King of France, with which he had been toying. The action was that of a pettish child. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... pony was indeed one of my father's many kind thoughts for my welfare and amusement. My odd pilgrimage to the Rectory in search of change and society, and the pettish complaints of dulness and monotony at home which I had urged to account for my freak of "dropping in," had seemed to him not without a certain serious foundation. Except for walks about the farm with him, and stolen snatches of intercourse with the grooms, and dogs, and horses in the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... very generous," Rafaello resumed after a while. "A few more like him, and she will think twice before she refuses again. How I bear it, I can't tell. Pettish she is, certainly, but oh, signore, lovely, lovely, like un angiolin'! It was from a nobleman—a foreigner, anyway, I suppose it is all one—that old 'Cina got her money, Lippo thinks. He hunted, too, Lippo says, and 'Cina's brother waited on him—he came from these ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... things about him worried her inordinately, sometimes she resented, for a whole silent evening, his absorption in other people, sometimes grew pettish and unresponsive and offended because he could keep neither eyes nor hands from her. And there were evenings when they seemed to have nothing to talk about, and Billy, too tired to do anything but drowse in his big chair, was confronted with ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... my having nothing to put me out, you may be right, and you may be wrong, dear. There is never any excuse for being what you call put out, by which I understand cross and pettish, but I am rather amused, too, at your fixing on a daily governess, as a person the least likely in the world to have trials of temper and patience." "Yes, I dare say I vex you sometimes, but"—"Well, not to speak of you, dear, whom I love very much, though you are not perfect, I have other pupils, ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. Pharmacy (science) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Kenrick was not to be deceived. He had caught one glimpse of Walter first; he saw his eyes wet with tears, and knew that he was in trouble. He hung on his foot doubtfully for one moment—but then his pride came in; he remembered the little pettish repulse in the playground the day before; the opportunity was lost, and he walked slowly on. And Walter's heart grew as hard ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... woman wiped her chancre, which was on her lip, with her fingers at every other shake of the head. She was cooking for two boarders and had two children. She did not like hospitals and was homesick and pettish. Would she go over to the dispensary in the next block and find out how to take care of herself? Not a bit of it. She was going home, and she went. I saw the children later in the children's ward, both infected with syphilis—a poor start ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... he grows pettish, And stamps his foot; And then with a chatter, He cracks his nut; And thus he lives All the long summer through, Without either a care Or a thought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of the library across the hall. Errington followed him in silence. He knocked at the door of his wife's room,—in response to her "Come in!" they both entered. She was alone, reclining on a sofa, reading,—she started up with a pettish exclamation at sight of her husband, but observing who it was that came with him, she stood mute, the color rushing to her cheeks with surprise and something of fear. Yet she endeavored to smile, and returned with her usual ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... on ahead. But it was mid-afternoon before anything happened. Jacqueline meantime had shown some pettish ill-humor. Those who had fought to be her escort were now singularly indifferent. Driscoll was idly curious and quietly contemptuous, but he detected no fright in her manner. "Fretting for her silver-braided Greaser," he said to himself. "A pretty scrape she's got herself ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call it obstinacy or firmness. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... emotions of surprise and wonder. Surprise and wonder that the beautiful Juliet St. Leger, during six months of intimate courtship, so successfully could have veiled, under constant guise of amiability, the weak, pettish nature which she was ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... spring of 1154. The work of reformation had already begun. Stephen resented indeed the pressure which Henry put on him to enforce the destruction of the castles built during the anarchy; but Stephen's resistance was but the pettish outbreak of a ruined man. He was in fact fast drawing to the grave; and on his death in October 1154 Henry returned to take the crown ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... and when the operator answered I told her that she'd miscued. She listened to my complaint and then replied in a pettish tone, "But I did ring 913, sir. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... and both walked home without speaking another word; Jane having relapsed into a pettish silence which her brother felt it impossible to break without creating unnecessary excitement in a mind ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... times a day I would thank God that they are as they are, and praise him for showing me his will rather than my own. For the secret lies in this; that we must not follow our own impulses, and thus grow pettish and self-willed: neither must we float feebly upon the will of God, like a branch that spins in an eddy; rather we must try to put our utmost energy in line with the will of God, hasten with all our might where he calls ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very well, sir. A conspiracy to make me out to be pettish and jealous and childish and everything I am not. Everyone knows I am just ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity for fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she knows herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some mistake, treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if the patient gives more trouble than she had expected, intensely injured and disagreeable if he is made so courageous by his wretchedness as to wake her during the night—an act of desperation of which I was guilty once, and once only. Oh, these good women! What sane man wants ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... not aware of Paul's sudden appearance and hasty departure, he still pondered what was best to say to Polly, in her unusual pettish mood. But she paid no heed to his silence and continued, like most women will when they have been mistaken, and fear the consequences of an ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Suffering had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin as blind devotees, knowing but two things in eternity,—their own idea of God, and their own salvation. Nunneries are full of them. Grey had no vital pith of self-reliance to keep her erect, now that the storm came. What strength she had was outside: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... discover that he had made a blunder, that his fair young wife's temper was not all sunshine, and that his intended plaything was likely to prove his eventual tyrant. Constance, on her part, felt a twinge of conscience for her pettish desertion of him in his old age; for to her apprehension he was now an old man: and she was privately conscious that she could not honestly plead any preconsideration for her husband. She had merely pleased herself, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Nicholas! Since when have you gone into melodrama?" The voice was pettish, but the listener was not slow to catch a tremor of discomfort under its attempted loftiness. "As if I cared!—or need to fear such stuff as Gregoriev's!—Go to Zaremba, if you like, and tell him ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... to be kind to me, and you are cruel; for when I ask for love, you give me jewels, books, or flowers, as you would give a pettish child a toy, and go away as if you were weary of me. Oh, it is not right, Sir! and I cannot, no, I will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with the well-built, soft youth, his companion, Loerke, was more pettish and exasperated than ever, and would not even notice her existence in the room. This piqued her, but she made up to herself by dancing with the Professor, who was strong as a mature, well-seasoned bull, and as full of coarse energy. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Red. For this did we lose the Crimea? For this did we larrup the Jews? I really had not an idea Republics could rule—and amuse. Miss FRANCE looks extremely coquettish. How well Miss COLUMBIA can coax! The Teuton, no doubt, will look pettish, The Briton will grumble "a hoax." Aha! I can snub a Lord Mayor, And give shouting Emperors a hint; I back La Belle France. Her betrayer My meaning must see, plain as print. My reply to the great Guildhall ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... themselves like grinning faces. Alcohol is a capricious master, seldom setting the same task twice, nor directing his slaves into similar pathways. He delights, moreover, in reversing the edge of a person's disposition, making good-natured people pettish or morose, while he sometimes improves those of naturally evil temper. Often under his sway the somber and the stoical become gay and impulsive, while the joyful sink into despondency. But with Robert Wharton, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... him Mr. Wilson offers a flat contradiction. When these statements relate to numbers, his method of treating them is a systematic one. He has picked out of Bernal Diaz, who wrote in an avowed spirit of hostility to Gomara, a pettish remark, that the exaggerations of the latter are so great, that, when he says eighty thousand, we may read one thousand. This piece of rhetoric Mr. Wilson receives literally, and makes it a rule of measurement, applying it with more or less exactness,—not, however, to the statements of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... in her coaxing, half-pettish behavior to the provoking old woman—talkative and reticent by fits and starts, now whining and now laughing—who has been to seek out Romeo, and brought back news of him. In As You Like It, Rosalind's bright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... come forth, 'tis not for any thy goodness, but I would not be hard on thee in the first minute of thy home-coming, and I make allowance for thy coldness and weariness, that may cause thee to be pettish." ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... Betty, this time with her pettish air, this matter not being to her liking, for why should a Duke fall in love with widows when there were exquisite languishing unmarried ladies near at hand. "'Tis a wise beauty who sets bells ringing in five villages by marrying a duke, instead ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Lincoln was a wise mother, and would not try to divert her child's mind from the salutary lesson which the very shadow itself ever brings; so they moved on with the unbroken silence, save when Willie gave utterance to some pettish feeling, and then little Kittie would look at him with a deeper pity than poor ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... his cartoon a third time, by Mr. Sambourne's pencil, of "Nana would not give me a bow-wow!—A Pretty Little Song for Pettish Little Emperors," as the latest Teutonic version of the music-hall ditty then in vogue. And later on there was Sir John Tenniel's contribution to the pretty little quarrel, in which in "Alexander and Diogenes" (October, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... spoken some ghostly consolation, but she answered with pettish impatience, "Waste not words—waste not words!—Let me speak that which I must tell, and sign it with my hand; and do you, as the more immediate servant of God, and therefore bound to bear witness to the truth, take heed you write that which ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
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