Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Skirt" Quotes from Famous Books



... plain, blue, cotton blouse and skirt; her not over-tall figure swelling plumply beneath their starched folds. Her hair was of a nondescript brown, beautified by a glint of gold, so that her uncovered head looked bright in the sunlight. Her face was such as may be seen any day in the villages which nestle beneath ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... home his new wife, the lady, was waiting for him, dressed in a green blouse and a red skirt. He meant to be attentive to her, and had just lifted his arm to give her a good clout on the back, but she ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the rich promise of the age of the great navigators. Where they could but wonderingly skirt the fringes of a new world, the moderns have won their way to the heart of things and found many an Eldorado potentially richer than that which tempted the cupidity of Cortes ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... figures, the one holding the fan has the body of her dress, which is of spotted net, fluted at the top; the skirt is made open at the side, and fastened with a bouquet of roses. The petticoat, which is of pink satin, has a large bow of ribbon with a rose in the centre, just below the rose which fastens the dress. The sleeves are also trimmed with bunches ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... major-general in command of the British part of the Convention prisoners. Horses in plenty were in the stable, and the two ladies, well escorted by officers, took almost daily rides, the baroness making herself a figure of remark to the natives by riding astride her horse in a short skirt and long boots. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... the sidewalk followed by the singer lady, whose acquaintance with the young Pikes had long before ripened to the stage of intimate friendship. At the sight of her sympathetic face, Eliza, the first Pike, slipped to the ground and buried her head in her new but valued friend's dainty muslin skirt. Bud, the next rung of the stair steps licked out his tongue to dispose of a mortifying tear and little Susie sobbed outright. At this juncture, just as Mother was about to demand again an explanation ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... much longer, by ripping out the sleeves when thin, and changing the arms and also the breadths of the skirt. Tumbled black silk, which is old and rusty, should be dipped in water, then be drained for a few minutes, without squeezing or pressing, and then ironed. Coffee or cold tea is better than water. Sheets when worn thin in the middle should be ripped, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... took our seats I looked again at my companion; this time more closely. Father Knickerbocker he certainly was, yet somehow strangely transformed from my pictured fancy of the Sleepy Hollow days. His antique coat with its wide skirt had, it seemed, assumed a modish cut as if in imitation of the bell-shaped spring overcoat of the young man about town. His three-cornered hat was set at a rakish angle till it looked almost like an up-to-date fedora. The great stick that he used to carry ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... shoulder. Then he hesitated, finger on trigger, for the lion in his path was no burly gamekeeper, as, for the first moment, he had supposed. It was a woman who faced him—a mere girl of twenty, whose slender figure looked somehow boyish in its knitted sports coat and very short, workmanlike skirt. The suggestion of boyishness was emphasized by her attitude, as she stood squarely planted in front of Black Brady, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, her straight young back very flat, and her head a little tilted, so that her eyes might search the surly ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... her troubles confined to Claire. Rosetta Muriel who had been offered an unexacting part in the cast, confided to Peggy her intentions in regard to costume. "I'm going to have an apple-green silk. The skirt'll be scant, of course, and draped a little right here. And which do you think would be stylisher, a square ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... very tall. In her short skirt and with flying hair she looked like a child beside him as they walked across the fields. Suddenly Sara Lee was terribly afraid she was going ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole with ribbon bows ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... course of the Tigris to its mouth it would have had to skirt the coast of Elam for a considerable distance, and would inevitably have aroused the suspicions of Khalludush; the passage of such a strong squadron must have revealed to him the importance of the enterprise, and put him on his guard. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... terrible state. What belonged on the left side of the parting had been blown to the right, and what belonged on the right side was thrown to the left. The little apron, instead of being in front, hung down on the side, and from the bottom of her skirt the braid hung loose, carrying upon it brambles and forest leaves. First Martha combed the little girl's hair, then she pulled the apron into place. Finally she got a thread and needle and began to mend ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri

... her walk, had been standing motionless before them, and her eyes, instinctively following the direction of the lady's glance, travelled down her dress to her feet, where one of her walking-boots, old and cracked, was projecting from her skirt. She reddened with shame and confusion, and walked hurriedly on. What would her brother's feeling have been, she asked herself, if he had met her accidentally there and had noticed those shabby boots? and with all that money, which she had been told to use freely, in ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... a lovely morning when Daisy was next roused by the fairy music, and the ponies were standing at the door. "Are we going far?" she asked, as Wee put on her riding-skirt, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... is pushed open so that the table at which Marten and Nils are seated is upset together with the mugs and cups on it. A woman wearing a red and black skirt, with a nun's veil thrown over her head, comes running into the room. For a moment Gert can be seen in the doorway behind her, but the door is immediately ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast —the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing at the start—nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt; and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... practical way of doing it would be, if the skirt is quite plain, to lift it well from the top, and set it neatly on to a band, so making the skirt shorter as well as fuller. Eight inches is not considered too short for present wear, though personally I think six inches a more graceful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... footpads. But the two pass through in safety, for the robbers are either asleep or absent from their haunts. Reaching the head-waters of the Yuqueri, which empties into the Canabe, a tributary of the Paraguay, they skirt the heights of Angostura, where Lopez, after the evacuation of Humaita, planted his batteries, and which he made his final strategic point. Near by, on the right bank of the Canabe, is the field of Las Lomas Valentinas, where the Paraguayan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... left the village and mounted the steep, And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; And under the alders, that skirt its edge, Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, Is heard the tramp of his steed ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... in small curls, her smiling eyes blue-green, her face clear and feat, the little lips very red, the teeth small and white; and the daisies which she crushed in passing, holding her skirt high behind and before, looked dark against her feet; the ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... these are not the national costume of Norway. For that we have to go still farther north—to the Hardanger. If an English girl wishes to dress a doll as a typical Norwegian, the clothes would be those of the Hardanger, and they would be these: a dark blue serge skirt (to the ankles), trimmed with black velvet and silver braid; a white chemisette with full sleeves; a red flannel bodice embroidered with white, black, and silver, and glittering with brass saucer-shaped ornaments; and ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... the silk blouse and short homespun skirt that she had worn at the athletic club luncheon, but she had thrown aside her loose woolly coat, and the narrow furs that were no softer than her own fair skin. Flung back into a deep chair, and relaxed after her vigorous day, she looked ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... very pretty hands and a most graceful way of using them. At the moment they were idly turning some sheets of music, but the way the slim fingers moved in and out between the pages was pretty and fascinating. Her foot, glimpsed beneath her skirt, was slender and graceful, too. She had an attractive trick of swinging it as she sat upon ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... from his kind, but he could not help carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... men of David said unto him, "Behold the day of which the Lord said unto thee, 'Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.'" Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... every day in the year pulses out through hill or prairie or creek a full, untamed animal life,—shakes off the snow too early in spring, in order to put forth untimed and useless blossoms, wasteful of her infinite strength. So when this winter's evening came to a lazy town bedded in the hills that skirt Western Virginia close by the Ohio, it found that the December air, fiercely as it blew the snow-clouds about the hill-tops, was instinct with a vigorous, frosty life, and that the sky above the clouds was not wan and washed-out, as farther North, but massive, holding yet a sensuous yellow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... gay party returning from the chase. The beautiful Yolande de Foix came first, radiant as Diana, with a brilliant colour in her cheeks and eyes that shone like stars. Several long rents in the velvet skirt of her riding habit showed that she had been following the hounds through the thickets of furze that abound in the Landes, yet she did not look in the least fatigued, and as she came forward made her spirited ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... that old Dido was with me, but, since she was my constant companion this was to be expected. She had followed me to the glade, and was lying with her head on the end of my skirt, at peace, since she was with me. Away from me or my grandmother or Miss Champion she would whimper and shiver like a lonely old ghost in a world ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... had done what he hated to do; he had slaughtered young and old, but he had saved Agag, and although he humbled himself before Samuel, and prayed him to remain, he would not. Saul laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle; but he departed, and it was rent, and he cursed Saul, and declared that as the garment was rent, so had the Lord rent the kingdom of Israel from him that day, and given it to another better than he. Then Samuel called Agag unto him, and hewed the unarmed man in pieces, and declared ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... costume of the stage. Coralie was the delight of the pit; all eyes dwelt on the outlines moulded by the clinging folds of her bodice, and lingered over the Andalusian contour of the hips from which her skirt hung, fluttering wantonly with every movement. To Lucien, watching this creature, who played for him alone, caring no more for Camusot than a street-boy in the gallery cares for an apple-paring, there came a moment when he set desire above love, and enjoyment above desire, and the demon of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... back to Rossville, and when we reached the skirt of the little hamlet General Thomas halted and we dismounted. Going into one of the angles of a worm fence near by I took a rail from the top and put it through the lower rails at a proper height from the ground to make a seat, and General Thomas and I sat down while, my troops ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... was frankly communicative and they soon learned that her name was Myrtle Dean, and that she was an orphan. Although scarcely fifteen years of age she had for more than two years gained a livelihood by working in a skirt factory in Chicago, paying her board regularly to a cross old aunt who was her only relative in the big city. Three months ago, however, she had met with an accident, having been knocked down by an automobile while going to her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... is a sickness," she said, looking at me thoughtfully. She was wearing a shirtwaist and skirt that had the bright colors and fullness you ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett

... you're carrying the pull. Show that you are. Make your face stiff till it cracks. Show determination, will-power. Show great muscular effort. Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles through your skirt just as if you was really working. Let 'em pull you this way a bit and that way a bit. Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make a noise on your face as if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all that holds you is will-power.—That's the idea! ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... traveller on the skirt of Sarum's Plain Pursued his vagrant way, with feet half bare; Stooping his gait, but not as if to gain Help from the staff he bore; for mien and air Were hardy, though his cheek seemed worn with care 5 Both of the time to come, and time long fled: Down fell in straggling locks his thin grey ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... the house. Madame, in her chic little black hat and spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood there at the street-corner staring before her, shivering a little with cold, but saying ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... surprising that he had not seen her earlier. She wore a green coat and skirt and a most curiously shaped hat of the same hue, so that her colors blended with the landscape. Moreover, she was walking rapidly, and had covered the intervening quarter of a mile in four ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to rise. Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her like jewels; and she now ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... had disappeared, and Wanda flew over the smooth ice on tiny skates. Her white satin skirt fluttered and crackled; the ermine of her jacket and cap, but especially her face, gleamed whiter than the snow. She shot toward me, inclosed me in her arms, and began to kiss me. Suddenly I felt my blood running ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... DRESS of a beautiful lavender taffetas, the front of the skirt trimmed with folds of the same, confined at regular distances with seven flutes of lavender gauze ribbon, put on the reverse of the folds; a double fluted frilling, rather narrow, encircles the opening of the body, which is made high at the back, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... renewed their way. Philip had made up his mind to steer for a town in the thick of a hunting district, where he hoped his equestrian capacities might again befriend him; and their path now lay through a chain of vast dreary commons, which gave them at least the advantage to skirt the road-side unobserved. But, somehow or other, either Philip had been misinformed as to an inn where he had proposed to pass the night, or he had missed it; for the clouds darkened, and the sun went down, and no vestige of human habitation ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Empire—his Ministers and Marshals! I involuntarily recurred to the 19th Brumaire, and all this splendid scene vanished; when I thought of Bonaparte stammering to such a degree that I was obliged to pull the skirt of his coat to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... was, in comparison with those rugged types she knew, effeminately delicate. His slim, long-fingered hands reminded her of a bird's claws. The up-rolled sleeves of a blue flannel shirt disclosed forearms well-enough sinewed, but instead of being browned to the hue of a saddle-skirt, they were white underneath and pinkly red above. Moreover, they were scaling in the fashion of a skin not inured to weather beating. Though the man had thought on setting out from civilization that he was suiting his appearance to the environment, ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... was partially blown away from the skirt or ground cloth, and the tent bulged in a good deal. I got into burberries and went out to secure it; it was useless to shovel on snow as it was blown off immediately. I therefore dragged the food-bags off the sledge and dumped them on. The wind and drift were so strong that I had several ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... who was pacing composedly up the aisle. We might be excused for so doing, for seldom were the decorous aisles of Carlisle church invaded by such a figure. Peg was dressed in her usual short drugget skirt, rather worn and frayed around the bottom, and a waist of brilliant turkey red calico. She wore no hat, and her grizzled black hair streamed in elf locks over her shoulders. Face, arms and feet were bare—and face, arms and feet were liberally powdered ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... of the other's eyes. A man stood in the doorway, naked but for the wisp of skirt at his waist. Hamilton got up quickly, for he recognized ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... can do almost anything," she said, in a tone of a self-possessed, careless, and vivacious woman. "I sing well enough, and I can dance anything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind of step, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn't learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm not afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... down before the house, on the opposite side of the way, two or three times, when as he returned to it again, he caught a glimpse of a fluttering skirt at the door. It was Dolly's—to whom else could it belong? no dress but hers had such a flow as that. He plucked up his spirits, and followed it into the workshop of the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... but rural sounds, Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood Of ancient growth, make music not unlike The dash of Ocean on his winding shore, And lull the spirit while they nil the mind; Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. Nor less composure waits ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... a morning which impelled a man to great deeds, a morning which shouted to him to chuck his chest out and be romantic. The sight of Billie Bennett, trim and gleaming in a pale green sweater and white skirt had the effect of causing Marlowe to alter the programme which he had sketched out. Proposing to this girl was not a thing to be put off till after lunch. It was a thing to be done now and at once. The finest efforts of the finest cooks in the world could not put him in better form ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... rampant embroidered twice on her long gown. Her jewels are magnificent. Anne, Dauphine d'Auvergne, wife of Louis, second Duke of Bourbon, married in 1371, displays an heraldic dolphin of very sinister aspect upon one side of her corsage, and on the skirt of her long gown,—which, divided in the centre, seems to be composed of two different stuffs, that opposite to the dolphin being powdered with fleurs de lis. Her circlet of jewels is very elegant, and is worn just above her brow, while the hair is braided close to the face. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... that mingled with his own on the sunny road—when it wasn't Miss Penny's. It was Margaret's pleated blue skirt that swung beside him to a tune that set his pulses leaping. Miss Penny's skirt was there too, indeed, but a thousand of it flapping in a gale would not have quickened his pulse by half ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... approached it, a girl appeared and glanced at him with very obvious curiosity; but as he supposed that she was the sister of his late companion he did not expect any diffidence from her. She was short in stature and slight in figure, and dressed in grayish brown; hat, coat, and remarkably short skirt all of the same material. Her hair was of a copper color; her eyes, which were rather narrow, of a pale grayish-green. He would have called them hard, and there was a hint of arrogance in her expression. Yet ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... seen pointing upward at the ship in evident consternation. Then on over the chain of hills beyond the town, and they once more found themselves with the sea beneath them, the ship's course causing her to just skirt the Gulf of Hammamet, whilst they obtained a splendid view of Lake Kairwan and the three streams which it absorbs. Then past Capes Dimas and Kadijah, across the Gulf of Cabes, and so on to Tripoli, which ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the brief pause that followed. Mrs Manderson smoothed her skirt with a preoccupied air, as ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... skirt, and pulled him down towards the puppies; took up one of the puppies and lifted it towards him; and then ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... Ballinger myself this mornin'. He blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a jacket on him, and he's to be all right in a week. I say, young fellah, I hope you don't mind—what? You see, between you an' me close-tiled, I look on this South American business as a mighty serious thing, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... quickened his steps; but this pace was not kept long. At the end of a few moments, having crossed a small clearing, he found himself at the entrance of a lawn where the road divided in two directions, one continuing to skirt the river banks, the other, broader and better built, turning to the left into ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... extremest surprise. "Oh, wear your dark skirt, dear; it's plenty good enough. Do you mean to say he asked ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... arousing the fat worm of sarcastic humour under the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. He would not have it laughed at; still he could not admit it as more than a skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let none think him a mere City merchant, millionnaire, boon-fellow, or music-loving man of the world. He had ideas to shoot across future Ages;—provide against the shrinkage of our Coal-beds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Charlie appeared with his skates over his arm and with a very contented face, which brightened wonderfully as Rose came downstairs in a sealskin suit and scarlet skirt, so like the one she wore years ago that he involuntarily exclaimed as he took her skates: "You look so like little Rose I hardly know you, and it seems so like old times ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... made by my nurse, in which we went down to dessert. These dresses gave me my first impression of civilised life. Just as the Speaker, before clearing the House, spies strangers, so, when I saw my black velvet skirt and pink Garibaldi put out on the bed, I knew that something was up! The nursery confection was of white alpaca, piped with pink, and did not inspire the same ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... her mistress' money, when she fled. Her only sin, she told herself, was leaving without notice. She had only made a little bundle of her own worn, scanty, extra clothes, which, now, was tied about her waist and hung beneath the skirt she wore. There were not many of those clothes, so the dangling bundle did not discommode her when she dodged behind the cab, ran beside it (on the far side from the lodging-house) till it turned a corner, and then sought her perch upon its springs ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... once more, and released the child's head from the skirt of her dress in which he had wrapped and buried it. The end of her alarms was not yet come, however, for a troop of the young heathen came flying across the square in wild retreat before a division of the heavy cavalry, which had intervened to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... with hands demurely folded, was the most grotesque figure that Hinton had ever seen. Clad in a queer, old-fashioned garment of faded blue cloth, with very full skirt and flowing sleeves, with her hair gathered into a tight knot at the back of her head, and a necklace of nutshells about her neck, a strange little lady sat and watched him with parted ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... not the glittering vision Kitty had anticipated, Ydo was a sufficiently vivid and picturesque figure. Her short corduroy skirt had faded with wear and washing to a pale fawn-tint with a velvety bloom upon it; her brown boots were high and laced, her blue blouse had faded like her skirt to a soft and lovely hue. A red sash confined her waist, a handkerchief of the same color was knotted ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... of brass and steel in the shape of these skirts? As to the waste, it is already so large as to have become a public nuisance. An old hat or shoe may be given away to somebody,—an old scrubbing-brush may be disposed of by putting it into the stove; but as to an old skirt, who wants it? You cannot burn it; the very beggars will not take it; and hence it is thrown into the street, or into the alley close to your door, where it continues for months to trip up the feet of every wayfaring man quite as provokingly as it sometimes tripped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... prefers the shortest and most convenient route to Prague, namely, via Paris. You may get right through from London to Prague in thirty-six hours if you just skirt round Paris by the ceinture, but a right-minded wayfarer, who should never hurry, will not miss an opportunity of taking the tonic of a few days in the "Ville Lumiere." If he be a true wayfarer—that means not only an enterprising traveller but also given to contemplation—he ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... Ada was shelling peas. The pods split with a sharp crack under her fingers, and the peas rattled into a tin basin. She wore an old skirt, torn and shabby; her bodice was split under the arms, showing the white lining. Her hair lay flat on her forehead, screwed tightly in curling-pins, which brought into relief her fiat face and high cheekbones, for she was no beauty. By a singular coquetry, she wore her best ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... flags skirt the pool; there, you see, is the common branched bur-reed, with its sword-like leaves and round heads of flowers; a little way in the pool is the pretty arrowhead with its large conspicuous arrow-shaped leaves and flesh-coloured ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... covering, e.g., the sheath of a sword is a sarong, and the envelope enclosing a letter is likewise its sarong. The sarong or sheath of the Brunai human being is a piece of cotton cloth, of Tartan pattern, sewn down the side and resembling an ordinary skirt, or petticoat, except that it is not pleated or attached to a band at the waist and is, therefore, the same width all the way down. It is worn as a petticoat, being fastened at the waist sometimes by a belt or girdle, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... the "rheumatiz" has been getting all the spare money since then, so there has been nothing to sew. A peddler sold them a piece of gingham which they made up for Cora Belle. It was broad pink and white stripes, and they wanted some style to "Cory's" clothes, so they cut a gored skirt. But they had no pattern and made the gores by folding a width of the goods biasly and cutting it that way. It was put together with no regard to matching the stripes, and a bias seam came in the center behind, but they put no stay in the seam and the result ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... but neither uttered a word. The canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration. The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... seen her on her way to mass, with a lace shawl across her shoulders, with a high comb and mantilla, he would have declared her to be Spanish, and of the highest type of Spanish beauty. Now, in her linen riding-skirt and mannish coat and stock, with her hair drawn back under a broad-brimmed hat of black straw, she reminded him only of certain girls with whom he had cantered along the Ocean Drive at Newport or under the pines of Aiken. How ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... folding the white satin skirt at the moment, but she stopped with it in her arms and sat down weakly on the foot of the bed with it all spread out in her lap and looked at her ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... slipped into the seat behind the tray. In honour of the fine day she had discarded her black frock for a serge skirt and a girlish-looking white blouse, open at the throat; and now that she had thrown aside her veil, her black hair, prettily loosened beneath her soft little hat, made an ebony frame for ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... water. Distant about three hundred yards on his right is a large, oblong square building, resembling in appearance the red low roofed blockhouses peering above the outward defences of the fort. Surrounding this, and extending to the skirt of the thinned forest, the original boundary of which is marked by an infinitude of dingy half blackened stumps, are to be seen numerous huts or wigwams of the Indians, from the fires before which arises a smoke that contributes, with the slight haze ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... stood leaning on the low cart; some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the world,—some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather. The great veranda was deserted; the corridors were desolated; no footfall echoed in the passages; the lazy rustle of a wandering skirt, or a passing sigh that was half a pant, seemed to intensify the heated silence. An intoxicated bee, disgracefully unsteady in wing and leg, who had been holding an inebriated conversation with himself in the corner of my window pane, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... without a loose nail in the stair-carpet, which, apparently resenting her hasty progress past it, had torn a yard of filmy ruching off her skirt before ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... Prince James is so short that he stands on a platform at the side, to bring his figure into harmonious relation to the group. His dress is blue satin, of stiff, full skirt, which, with the close white cap on his head, makes him a quaint little figure. A chubby, innocent looking baby, he is nevertheless a personage who fully realizes the important place he occupies in the family group, and is determined to fill it ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... was very glad of this job, as times were slack. So he took the cloth, and at once set to work. Half of it he made into a beautiful dress for the Thrush, with a skirt and jacket, and sleeves in the latest fashion; and as there was a little cloth left over, and he was an honest Tailor, he made her also a pretty little hat to ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... of Yunnan's capital is extraordinarily picturesque. It stands in a wide plain, its northern wall running along a low rocky ridge from which there is a charming view over city and lake to the great mountains that skirt the plain on all sides. Lying at an elevation of nearly seven thousand feet, it is blessed with a white man's climate. Eighty-five degrees in the shade marks the highest summer temperature, and the winters are ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... up the torn skirt; and then, with a loving hand-clasp, the little girl went away up one road, and Marjorie and the Dream turned to ...
— By the Roadside • Katherine M. Yates

... hear the cherub-chorus of their mirth. Undamp'd by dread that want may e'er unhouse, Or servile misery knit those smiling brows: The pride to rear an independent shed, And give the lips we love unborrow'd bread; To see a world, from shadowy forests won, In youthful beauty wedded to the sun; To skirt our home with harvests widely sown, And call the blooming landscape all our own, Our children's heritage, in prospect long. These are the hopes, high-minded hopes and strong. That beckon England's wanderers o'er the brine, To realms where foreign constellations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various

... she struggled with the intricate hooks of her evening frock. Out of it finally, and slipping off her silk stockings and thin shoes she went quickly to the big clothes closet, chose a short country skirt, a pair of golf stockings, thick shoes and a tam-o'-shanter, made for the drawer in which were her sport shirts and sweaters and before the old round-faced clock on the mantelpiece could recover from his astonishment became once more the Joan-all-alone for whom he had ticked away ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Evelyn Longman, goddess of agriculture, wreath of cereals and corn scepter. Figure conventional, prim and modish; flowing skirt. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... here?" she returned, changing her position, pointing to the other end of the sofa, and drawing the whole overflow of her skirt to one side. "It is not so very late, and Milly will return in a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... critical glance roamed from head to foot, back again from foot to head, while Esmeralda stood watching her with tightened lips and curious twinkling eyes. Then Bridgie appeared upon the scene, and stopped short, uttering shrill cries of astonishment, as she looked at the slovenly tie, the twisted skirt, the general air of ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... he came, and to tell him to keep away—away from this death-trap—away from this awful doom. But now she realised that other steps, quicker than her own, were already close at her heels. The next instant a hand dragged at her skirt, and she was down on her knees again, whilst something was wound round her mouth to ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. "I think maybe that's why she kept so much to herself. I s'pose she felt she couldn't do her part; and then, you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... lightly tripping down the pathway, followed by an old woman, who, though she supported her steps with a staff, also carried a creel of the ordinary size. She wore a large broad-brimmed black hat, and a gaily-coloured calico jacket over her winsey skirt; an apron, and shoes with metal buckles, completing the ordinary costume of a fish-wife of that district. Little Nelly was dressed very like her grandmother, except that her feet were bare, and that she had a necklace of small shells round ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston

... said, faintly. "I tripped up over my skirt as I wor comin' up to look at Arthur. My head's all bleedin'. Get me some water ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Presently she espied her victim, and with a last glance around to assure herself that everything was as she wished it to be, she mounted to the top of the piano. There she hastily tucked the hem of her skirt between the piano and the wall. The reflection in a great blue-black Chinese jar showed her when Rangely appeared between the portieres, so that she was able to step back as if to view the effect of her work just as he reached ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... undergarments edged with yellowing lace. A sweet scent rose from them, as of some gentle presence that strove to reach the light and air once more. A pair of little white kid slippers looked as though they longed to twinkle in and out beneath a soft silk skirt. Angel's mischievous brown hands dived among the light folds, discovering opera glasses,—(treasures to be secured if possible, against some future South Sea expedition), an inlaid box of old-fashioned trinkets, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... railing, Beryl dropped her mother's withered Arkja tribute on the marble slab. Her dress was caught by a sharp point of iron, and while endeavoring to disengage it, she heard the shrill whistle of the R. R. engine. Tearing the skirt away, she ran to the wall, climbed over, after some delay, and finding herself once more in the open road, darted on as fast as possible through the dusk, heedless of appearances, fearful only of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... intense surprise, there came to meet me at the door, not the usual style of native wife one generally sees in most traders' houses—a good-looking young woman with a flaming blouse, and more flaming skirt of hideously coloured print, and fingers covered with heavy gold rings—but a slenderly-built pale-complexioned woman of apparently thirty years of age, dressed in a light yellow muslin gown, such as the Portuguese ladies of Macao and the Mariana Islands wear. The moment I saw her ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... to be. Would you like to know what I've done to it? I've cut the point into a square, and taken four yards out of the skirt; the chiffon off my wedding-dress has been made into kimono sleeves; then I'm going to wear my wedding-veil as a sort of scarf thrown carelessly over the shoulders; and I've turned the pointed waist-band round, so that it's ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... way off when I saw the distant flutter of a white skirt, and—yes, sure enough, there was Lisbeth, walking quickly too, and she was a great deal ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... toast and jam, and was about to sally forth upon the delectable adventure, when there came a gentle knock on the door. She opened it, rather expecting a boy to announce that Captain Dennison was below. Outside stood a Chinaman in a black skirt and a jacket of blue brocade. He was smiling ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... dreadful skeletons. They are lying quite close to each other, near some brass cannons and a lot of rusty ironwork. I was so terrified that I forgot all about the poor kid, and—and, well, that is all; and here I am with my skirt in rags, and my face scratched, and my hair loose, and 'all of a bobbery,' as ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... hesitation of Muza would permit the glorious prize to escape them. 'You speak doubtingly,' said he, 'of the words of this Christian cavalier, but their truth is easily to be ascertained. Give me four galleys and a handful of men, and I will depart with this Count Julian, skirt the Christian coast, and bring thee back tidings of the land, and of his means to put ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... She wouldn't talk about it—just said I'd know sometime why she kept it.... Royal blue velvet, it is, the skirt halfway to the ankles, and sleeves with long pointed ends, lined with gold taffeta, and finished off with gold tassels. It's in a dress bag, hanging ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... want people laughing at her, do you?" Duty said, sensibly. "Well, then, rip out that hem and face up that skirt and stop sighing. What can't ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... he after her, in a race that grew merrier and merrier as it ran on. Ivra darted and twisted away when Eric thought he had her, rolling down little hills on the snow crust, climbing trees, jumping brooks until he was lucky enough to catch her by one of her pigtails at last, or snatch her flying skirt. "Tag!" Then away he sped, and the game would go on for ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot

... son, Vladimir, is almost ideally handsome. Her dress was at once simple and superb,—a cloud of snowy tulle, with a scarf of pale-blue velvet, twisted with a chain of the largest diamonds and tied with a knot and tassel of pearls, resting halfway down the skirt, as if it had slipped from her waist. On another occasion, I remember her wearing a crown of five stars, the centres of which were single enormous rubies and the rays of diamonds, so set on invisible wires that they burned in the air over her head. The splendor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... supposed that it would be a very strange thing to see a woman on the battlefield firing a cannon; but even if the enemy had watched Molly with a spyglass, they would not have noticed anything to excite their surprise. 25 She wore an ordinary skirt, like other women of the time; but over this was an artilleryman's coat and on her head was a cocked hat with some jaunty feathers stuck in it, so that she looked almost as much like a man as the rest of the soldiers ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... cannot understand! You do not belong to the fields as I do." He pointed ironically to her handsome riding skirt. "You are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. While I—" He made a gesture of despair,—half comic, half serious,—and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... watch the inrolling waves;—then, as now, the boy-architect would pile the moist sand into mimic town or castle, and when the work was finished, sweep it away again in wanton humour with foot and hand;—then, as now, the little tired maiden would cling to her mother's skirt, and, trotting painfully along beside her, look up wistfully and plead with moist eyes to be carried in her arms. Nay, and among the grown ones, where time has not changed the occupation, and the forms of culture have little room to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... previous understanding between them, the doctor and Guy were silent with regard to the recent farce enacted there, simply saying it was possible she was in the habit of fainting; many people were. Very daintily, Agnes held up and back the skirt of her rich silk as if fearful that it might come in contact with Madeline's plain delaine; then, as it was not very interesting for her to stand and see the doctor "make so much fuss over a young girl," as she mentally expressed it, she returned ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... off speaking, hiding Nana in her skirt, fearing a cry from the little one. Very pale, she looked up in spite of herself. At that moment Coupeau was soldering the extreme edge of the sheet close to the gutter; he slid down as far as possible, but without being able to reach the edge. Then, he ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... to do many things before bed-time, write in her journal, mend the rip in her skirt, start a letter to Jack, and maybe make some break in the wall of reserve which Ethelinda still kept persistently between them. But when she saw the preparations for retiring ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... gown, for she wore exactly the same costume to every dinner, could hardly have been more startling than Santa Paloma found it, had it gone to any unbecoming extreme. Yet it was the simplest of black summer silks, soft and full in the skirt, short-sleeved, and with a touch of lace at the square-cut neck. She arranged her hair in a becoming loose knot, and somehow managed to look noticeably lovely and distinguished, in the gay assemblies. To brighten the black gown she wore a rope of pearls, looped twice ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... she had been too busy of late to think much about her looks, and had not realized how sun and air and a free, out-door life had made her beauty blossom and glow like a rose in mid-June. With a scarlet chaplet crowning her fair locks, bands of gold about waist and neck and sleeves, and the whole skirt covered with a fantastic tracery of mingled gold and fire, she was a vision of almost startling loveliness. She gave a little happy laugh. "Dear old Farmer!" she said, "he likes to see me fine. I think this will please him." And light as a thistledown, the girl ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... game of hunting quite imaginary rabbits in the hedgerow; and when the great dog bounded up in obedience to his summons, he jumped over the stile and held out his hand to help Toni. She climbed over rather lifelessly, catching her white skirt on a splinter of wood and tearing a rent which filled Herrick ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... hurriedly made. The girl's trunk had proved a veritable storehouse, and she came down in a short tweed skirt and coat, her glorious hair hidden under a black tam o' shanter, and Malcolm could scarcely take his ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... was of medium height, very shapely, and daintily graceful. She had a good nose and a sweet, sympathetic mouth. Her hands were slender and tapering, though suggestive of strength. She wore a simple white shirtwaist and a black skirt than which nothing could have been more becoming. Hearing her uncle's step, she turned and greeted his smile with a dubious one ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... the water-holes of the camp had dried up, and that the other was very muddy, we returned to larger water-holes two miles to the south-east. After having done this, I sent Mr. Gilbert and Charley down the creek, to ascertain its course, and to see whether it would be practicable to skirt the highland of peak ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... articles of clothing were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling; now your skirt, sweetness—O! no—not yet—your shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which real infants usually show. When this was done—"Now we must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said mamma. "Yes, mamma," came the reply; and hand in hand they started to find ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... a straight line surrounded by an arabesque of fantastic flourishes. But, in fact, the young patrician, unaccustomed to exertion, was well wearied before they reached the river-bank. They had yet the long border of the swamp to skirt, and there towered Longfer Hill. Why could they not go across, she wondered. They would sink, Flor answered her; and then the moccasins! But there were all those green hummocks,—skipping from one to another would be mere play,—and there were no moccasins for miles. And before Flor could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... is a good rider. Well, I wish you would put a side-saddle and a skirt on her, and exercise her this morning. I might want to—to lend her to a lady; but she must be perfectly quiet. You can take her out ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... tumultuous noise Of each unpiloted element Upon the face of the void formless deep! Thou who didst come unbodied and alone Ere yet the sun was set his rule to keep, Or ever the moon shone, Or e'er the wandering star-flocks forth were driven! Thou garment of the Invisible, whose skirt Sweeps, glory-giving, over earth and heaven! Thou comforter, be with me as thou wert When first I longed for words, to be A radiant garment for my ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... folds of her skirt she suddenly produced a large revolver, which she leveled squarely at the ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... swaying easily to the gentle motion of the riding ship, her wide-open eyes full upon his with a look that held a world of anxious love. Her face appeared like a bright, rare flower, in contrast with her blue blouse and skirt, and the dark wood-paneling behind her. The night had placed its mark upon her features—there were dark circles beneath her eyes, and a droop at the corners of the sweet mouth. But courageous self-reliance was still her bearing; and the haggard ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... and, without answering my questions as to what she was going to do, she sped off towards the house. In about five minutes she returned with something held in the skirt of her frock, which seemed greatly to incommode her in climbing. At last she reached the pulpit, but she did not stay there. Up and on she went, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... felt that she could not do was to lie here alone in the dark, with only the silvery light of the moon creeping in weirdly through the dulled panes of the tiny window. So she picked up her black skirt, and stuffed it into the narrow window embrasure, until not a ray of light from within could be seen to peep through on the other side. She had placed the storm-lantern in the corner, and this she left alight. It threw a feeble, yellowish glimmer round ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... first step. If formal instruction is required I leave it to you to choose between a master and a mistress. How can I tell whether a dancing master should take a young pupil by her soft white hand, make her lift her skirt and raise her eyes, open her arms and advance her throbbing bosom? but this I know, nothing on earth would induce me to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... in like a Christian woman. She steps upon the stage and faces the audience that gives her hearty greeting and waits the prelude. There is time for cool survey. I am angry still about the red fiddle, and I look scrutinizingly at her dress, and think how ugly is the mode. The skirt is white silk,—a brocade, I believe,—at any rate, stiff, and, though probably full to overflowing in the hands of the seamstress, who must compress it within prescribed limits about the waist, looks scanty and straight. Why should she not, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... came out of my nest next morning—my bed was on the floor of a small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs—it was quite late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr. Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened white about the meat in the pan, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... them, the doctor and Guy were silent with regard to the recent farce enacted there, simply saying it was possible she was in the habit of fainting; many people were. Very daintily, Agnes held up and back the skirt of her rich silk as if fearful that it might come in contact with Madeline's plain delaine; then, as it was not very interesting for her to stand and see the doctor "make so much fuss over a young girl," as she mentally ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... tiny hole stuck the yellow center of a daisy, whose petals she had pulled out. On this center she marked eyes, nose, and mouth; and when a small glory was added for a bonnet, what a pretty flower doll she had, with a pink skirt, green waist, and white bonnet! Then a whole family of glories were made, and Laura gave them each a parasol ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field

... opportunity of avenging himself of his adversary; and advising him to cut off his head, and so deliver himself out of that tedious, wandering condition, and the distress he was in; he rose up, and only cut off the skirt of that garment which Saul had on: but he soon repented of what he had done; and said it was not right to kill him that was his master, and one whom God had thought worthy of the kingdom; "for that although he were wickedly disposed towards us, yet does it not behoove me to be so disposed towards ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... contemptible as wan without a priest. Is Malachi near-sighted, peevish, averse to th' suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda prisint no attraction to the young men iv th' neighbourhood, does her over-skirt dhrag an' is she poor with th' gas range? Make an authoreen iv her!' That's it, Kit, it's a poor sort of life at best, no manliness about it. Picture the contrast, girl—those fine fellows who stood at attention by their gun at Colenso when it was all up with them, and your blessed ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... endless monochromatic world that was both artificial and natural. Here, there was a neatly squared-off mosaic of ceramic tile; over there, on a little hillock of earth, squatted a colony of fat mushrooms. In one place, he had to skirt a pool of water; in another, climb over a heap of rust and debris that had ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... muscle-rings in the wall of the chest to turn first into gristle, or cartilage, and then later into bone, making what are known as the ribs; these run round the chest much as hoops do round a barrel, or as the whalebone rings did in the old-fashioned hoop skirt. When the muscles of the chest pull these ribs up, the chest is made larger,—like a bellows when you lift the handle,—air is sucked in, and we "breathe in" as we say; when the muscles let go, the ribs sink, the chest flattens and becomes ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with her gloved hands before her face. "Oh, Nan! Nan!" she sobbed. "I didn't do a thing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as you told me. I, I'm an ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... the length of the skirt should first be measured, and to this measure 6 inches should be added for the hem and the seams. One length of the material corresponding to this length should be cut. This should be folded lengthwise through the middle. Three quarters ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario

... Marnham and I withdrew ourselves, very gently indeed, purposing to skirt round the house and enter it from behind, or to be seized with a fit of coughing at the gate, or to do something to announce our presence at a convenient distance. When we had gone a little way we heard a crash in ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... an uncommonly pretty girl, and the strange costume she wore accentuated, rather than hid, her charms. A serge skirt came but little below her knees, and beneath it Martin saw feet and ankles encased in stout, trim, absurdly small ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... patriarchal beard pillowed on his breast. The blue-veined hands rested upon the back of his chair as he gazed at me from friendly eyes. Aunt Sallie, a slight bird-like little creature, reached scarcely to his shoulder. Her black sateen dress with fitted basque and full skirt was set off with a white apron edged with crocheted lace. The small knot of silver hair atop her head was held in place with an old-fashioned tucking comb. About her stooped shoulders was a knitted ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... this seems to have come on since the war. It seems to me that not only has everything doubled in price, but all the habits of the world seem to require that you shall have double the quantity of everything. Two or three years ago a good balmoral skirt was a fixed fact; it was a convenient thing for sloppy, unpleasant weather. But now, dear me! there is no end to them. They cost fifteen and twenty dollars; and girls that I know have one or two every season, besides all sorts of quilled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... long; they brought him to with water, and Westby knelt by him fanning his face with the skirt of his dressing gown. Barclay picked the boy up. "Oh, I'm all right, sir," said Price, and he insisted on being allowed to walk to the athletic house alone,—which ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... open so that the table at which Marten and Nils are seated is upset together with the mugs and cups on it. A woman wearing a red and black skirt, with a nun's veil thrown over her head, comes running into the room. For a moment Gert can be seen in the doorway behind her, but the ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... at the women who come there every morning and bring their knitting! And the "flappers" and the "knuts"—they seem never to tire of seeing each other pass and re-pass for a solid hour on end! Why do they go there? It cannot be to see clothes, because the most you see, as a rule, is a white skirt and blouse and a brown neck all peeling with the heat! They must go there, then, because to go on the pier is all part and parcel of the seaside habit—and an English seaside, anyway, is one big bunch of habits, from the three-mile promenade ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... the skirt the lawn the swan to whip the hay to suck I spend my days in reading if I could have gone to go bird-catching ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... long skirt and a fine grown-lady's hat. Mary had a scarf trailing on the ground instead of a long skirt, and she carried her mother's very best umbrella. It was a bright red one that could be used for sun as well as rain. It made Mary feel ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams

... him, but said nothing. He was led to the drawing-room, and there found Rhoda Nunn alone. This fact did not so much surprise him as Rhoda's appearance. For the first time since he had known her, her dress was not uniform black; she wore a red silk blouse with a black skirt, and so admirable was the effect of this costume that he scarcely refrained from ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... Valentine. She was swinging toward him, her bag with its clubs slung over her shoulder, her hands in the pockets of an orange-colored sweater. In her black velvet tam and short skirt she had looked like a little girl, and at first he did not recognize her. She had seen him, however, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... hill tracks to Muro, when again we struck the high road running northward to the coast. Sir John had sold Mr. Badcock's mule to our hosts in Calenzana, and here in Muro he parted with our pair also, reck'nin' it safer to travel the next stage on foot; since by all accounts we were about to skirt the Genoese outposts to the east of Calvi. The Corsicans, to be sure, held and patrolled the high road (by reason that every week-day a train of waggons travelled along it with material for the new town a-building on the seashore, at Isola Rossa), yet not so as to guarantee it safe for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... raging hundred of them, top and bottom, ripping and tearing each other, kids and squaws tumbling which way, and the camp gone wild. Tilly'd slipped away, so I followed. But when I looked over my shoulder at the skirt of the crowd, the devil laid me by the heart, and I dropped the blanket and ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... himself from the window, which was in the second story of the building, and overlooked the court, a new cause of apprehension mingled, in some measure, with her personal fears. Timidly, and with streaming eyes and uplifted hands, she approached her angry brother, and, fearfully, yet firmly, seized the skirt of his coat, as if anxious to preserve him from the effects of that despair, which so lately seemed turned against her, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... Betty Gallup came into view. Masculine in appearance at any time in her man's hat and coat, she was doubly so now. She frankly wore overalls, but had drawn a short skirt over them; and she wore gum boots. Bane stared at this ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... to her rescue. Throwing her coat across her arm she went down the steps, passed through the hooting children, one or two of whom pulled her by the skirt, passed through the bearded Jews, and the bronzed Italians, and the flat-nosed Slavs, passed through the women who had come out on the sidewalk at this accentuation of the daily din, passed through the barrows and handcarts and piles of ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... dressed in gray, which did not show the dust, and though her skirt and short jacket were well made, and her neat little hat jaunty and becoming—almost dangerously becoming—she was not half as grand in appearance as some of the ladies who drove up with him in ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson

... dawn, a motley mixture. My short bicycling skirt did beautifully for tiger-hunting. There was a vast company of native swells, nawabs and ranas, in gorgeous costumes, whose precise names and titles I do not pretend to remember; there were also Major Balmossie, Lord Southminster, the Maharajah, and myself—all mounted on ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... that I used to wear as an under-bodice and petticoat, so, you see, I have been visiting you in my petticoats. I will show you some fine day—perhaps. I have but to unfasten a half-score of hooks, and off drops the princess—I am Yolanda! I throw a skirt over my head, fasten the hooks of a bodice, don my head-dress, and behold! the princess once more. Only a moment intervenes between happiness and wretchedness. But tell me, Sir Karl, have you ever told Sir Max ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... backwoods hunter—a tunic-like hunting-shirt, of dressed buckskin, leggings and mocassins of the same material, and all—shirt, leggings, and mocassins—handsomely braided and embroidered with stained quills of the porcupine. The cape of the shirt was tastefully fringed, and so was the skirt as well as the seams of the mocassins. On his head was a hairy cap of raccoon skin, and the tail of the animal, with its dark transverse bars, hung down behind like the drooping plume of a helmet. Around his shoulders were two ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... city of France which has not seen it; which has not known the moment when the mass impended, and it lay with one man to start it or stay its course. Angers within its houses heard the clamour, and from the child, clinging to its mother's skirt, and wondering why she wept, to the Provost, trembled, believing that the hour had come. The Countess heard it too, and understood it. She caught the savage note in the voice of the mob—that note which means danger—and, her heart beating ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... Bunting out in the corral. "Cap Pike might have tagged along to discourse on the general tomfoolery of a partner who picks up a damsel in distress at every fork of the trail. Not that he'd be far wrong at that, Baby. If any hombre wanted to catch me in a bear trap he'd only need to bait it with a skirt." ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... and looked at them more carefully. She was a stout red-faced woman, her hair hanging about her face, her dirty bodice drawn tightly over her enormous bosom and her skirt pulled up in front and hanging, draggled behind her. Her long, dirty fingers went up to her face continually; she had a way of pushing ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on a terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a very large and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt, disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and calculating. She extended her hand as ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... water, which they carry about from house to house. The women are simply and cheaply dressed, and though not generally pretty, are very graceful in their movements. Their dress consists of a white cotton under-dress, a coloured cotton skirt, generally blue, brown, or grey, with some small pattern upon it, but never brilliant in colour, and a rebozo, which is a small sober-coloured cotton shawl, long and narrow. This rebozo passes over the back ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... rows beside Alston's. She wore a coarse dress of uncolored homespun cotton, of the plainest and scantiest make, low in the neck, short in the sleeves and skirt. Her feet and head were bare. A sack of like material with her dress was tied about the waist, apron-like. This was to receive immediately the pickings from the hand. When filled it was emptied in a pick-basket, holding with a little packing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... heavily-lined face, and a skin from which the freshness and bloom had long, long ago departed; but there was fire in her old eyes still, tired though they looked; there was sweetness and firmness about her lined mouth. Heaven knows who had dressed her. She wore a skimpy tweed skirt and a cheap nun's veiling blouse, and on her iron-grey hair was perched rakishly a forlorn broken picture-hat of faded green, chiffon with a knot of bright red ribbon to give the bizarre touch of colour she had learned to admire ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... lips were pressed together in a thin line of determination. Kirby could not have seen what I did, or if he did see, failed to attach the same significance to the action. Her hand had suddenly disappeared within the folds of her skirt; but the angry man, apparently blinded by the violence of his passion, his eagerness to crush her spirit, thought only that she counted on outside ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... to rise from her knees. Looking down she saw a stain of blood on her skirt, and she clung to his arm for a moment, swaying as though she would fall. There was a murmur among the people of pity and sympathy. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... in the farm-yard; her gloves reached above her elbows, and her dress, looped on one side, showed her wide striped skirt ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... that has crept in unobserved from the street. Hurriedly emptying a jug of cream in her saucer, Eleanor is about to present it to the plaintiff stranger. Tom, however, scents the cream, springs on his hind legs, and upsets the liquid over her Parisian skirt. ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... eventide One eyes another under a new moon, And toward us sharpen'd their sight as keen, As an old tailor at his needle's eye. Thus narrowly explor'd by all the tribe, I was agniz'd of one, who by the skirt Caught me, and cried, "What wonder have we here!" And I, when he to me outstretch'd his arm, Intently fix'd my ken on his parch'd looks, That although smirch'd with fire, they hinder'd not But I remember'd him; ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... night,-that is very little, you know,- and wear black or white, The dress consists of three caps, one over the forehead, one for the back, one up high, and one lower, for the veil; very pretty; and the gown is a vest, and the skirt has I don't know how many hundred plaits. I had the cross and order, but I believe I gave it away when I came to England —for you may transfer; so I gave it to the Countess of a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... in her arms the oldest-born of a new generation of Alvarados? the daughter of the governor of The Californias? Her smock, embroidered with silk, was new, and looked whiter than fog against her bare brown arms and face. Her short red satin skirt, a gift of her happy lady's, was the finest ever worn by exultant nurse. About her stringy old throat was a gold chain, bright red roses were woven in her black reboso. I saw her admire Chonita's stately figure with scornful reserve of ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... waved in the lower edge, and this flounce is trimmed with four narrow flounces, edged with narrow point lace. The sides are en revers, with sashes tied in butterfly bow in the centre of the back, below the puffing of the skirt near the waist. The front of the skirt is trimmed to correspond with the train, the short apron, flounced and trimmed with point lace, gathered up at the sides, under the revers on the train. The ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... encampment laughed. The squaw went back to the other side of the fire. Laplante leaned forward and threw the paper towards the flames; but without his knowledge, he overshot the mark; and when the trader was looking elsewhere the big squaw stooped, picked up the coveted note and slipped it into her skirt pocket. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... be found unless a heathen husband is being Christianized by Christian whiskey. The Chinese women have their feet compressed, but, unlike Christian women, they do not need their feet to give broom drills or skirt dances for the "benefit of their church." The child-wives of India need to be rescued and protected, but no more than many adult wives in Bible lands need protection from drunken and brutal husbands. The heathen wife ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... persistently, but I hardened my heart and would not yield completely to God. As I look back at those years of restlessness and rebellion, I recall with gratitude the forbearance and long-suffering of a now sainted mother. How she carried her proud, stubborn boy on her heart, and how she held onto God's skirt and tugged away until ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... been slim as well as tall and the middy blouse that Mrs. Donovan tried on Mary Rose did not look too much as if it had been made for her grandmother. The bright plaid skirt trailed on the floor but Aunt Kate turned back the hem which still left the skirt hanging considerably below Mary Rose's shabby shoe tops, much ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... are you going to sit under that tree all the afternoon? If you are too lazy to play tennis or to come for a ride, will you come with me to Lady Barchester's garden party? She has invited two hundred guests, and you must wear that lovely white muslin dress with the little frills all up the skirt, and the big white hat with the pink roses, and do not forget to take the pink chiffon parasol that was sent you from Paris last week. We have been asked to remain to dinner there, you may remember, for there will be a dance afterwards. And the moon will be shining, ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... nursing his foot and observing with keen relish the preparations of the Bear family for their morning walk. We set out at last, all three on our hands and knees, Dolly and Dermott crawling amicably side by side, heroically regardless of white skirt and Sunday sporran; I, as befitted my youth and station, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... down the room deep in thought. A spinster-looking lady in a cheap blouse and skirt, an inmate of the caravanserai, put her head through the door and, with a disapproving sniff at the occupants, retired. At length Septimus broke ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... Mergy, who was nearly breaking down under the strain of events and who herself needed repose, lest she should fall seriously ill, went, with her son, to board with a friend who had a house on the skirt of the Forest of Saint-Germain. She felt very weak, her brain was haunted by visions and her nerves were upset by troubles which the least excitement aggravated. She lived there for some days in a state of physical and mental inertia, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... female over twelve, a flannel skirt, or goods to make it, a pair of woolen hose, twelve yards calico, and twelve ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... all the beautiful steps he tried to take. Still, he contrived to go twice round the room. When at the end, standing with legs apart, he suddenly clicked his feet together and fell on one knee, a bit heavily, and she danced gracefully around him, smiling and adjusting her skirt, the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... horses into a gallop. They kept close to the sea, while Urrea was more than half a mile inland. Luckily, a thin skirt of timber soon intervened between Mexicans and Texans, and the six believed that Urrea and his men were unaware of their presence. Their own cloud of dust was much smaller than that of the Mexicans, and also it might readily be mistaken for sea sand whipped ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... hurrying the time of the song, turns it into a regular skirt dance. She dances delightfully and AUSTIN cannot resist her charm. His face lightens, he smiles, and love comes into his eyes. JINNY sees and dances and sings all the ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... the palm was for my dear Clementine, when she entered. I must tell you how she was dressed: a gown of white tulle, over China blue tarletan, with pleatings, and ruffles of tulle over the pleatings. The tulle skirt was caught up on each side by garlands of green leaves mingled with rose clusters. Thus it formed a valence which allowed the tarletan skirt to show in front and on the sides. The garlands were caught up to ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... beautiful dress in the world. They wear a rich scarf of some dark color on the head, which, on festive occasions, is almost concealed by their jewels, and the heavy scarlet pomegranate blossoms which adorn their dark hair. A Turkish vest and sleeves of embroidered silk, open in front, and a skirt of white or some light color, completes the costume. The Jewesses wear in addition a short Turkish caftan, and full trousers gathered at the ankles. At a ball given by Mr. Very, the English Consul, which we attended, all the Christian beauties of Aleppo were present. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... outbalanced the mischief in her eyes. He felt an indefinable severity in her tempting beauty, and this was new to his philosophy of woman. But as he drank in further details, his resolve stiffened. That Grecian bend to her crisp skirt was evidently an extreme from the Rue de la Paix, foretelling the end of stupendous flounces. Then there was the tilt to the large hat, and the veil falling to the level of the eyes, and the disquieting charm of both. The wine-red lips had ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... cried with a jubilant oath, and turning back to the door of the carriage, slipped the pistols into his skirt pockets. 'Come,' he said to Thomasson. 'And do you,' he continued, addressing his driver, who was no other than the respectable Tamplin, 'follow at a walking pace. Have they ordered on?' he asked, slipping a ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... almost anything," she said, in a tone of a self-possessed, careless, and vivacious woman. "I sing well enough, and I can dance anything, a skirt dance, a clog, a Mexican fandango, a Carmencita kind of step, anything at all. I don't know when I ever learned to dance. I didn't learn, it just came to me; but the best thing I do is whistling. I'm not afraid of any man in the business when it's a case of whistling. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... paralyzed, and then, with unerring instinct, holding her little one on high, runs straight forward, mutely appealing, straight for the galloping line. "Open out! Look out for the kid! Let her through, lads," are the low, hurried cautions. Somewhere on the near skirt of the village a wild war-whoop rings out on the air, a mad cry of warning, then bang, zip, comes the first shot from the tepees, whistling over Cranston's shoulder and skimming a mile away down-stream. No need of further caution now. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... the nomad Scythians shalt thou come, Who dwell in wattled homes, not built on earth But borne along on wains of sturdy wheel— Equipped, themselves, with bows of mighty reach. Pass them avoidingly, and leave their land, And skirt the beaches where the tides make moan, Till lo! upon the left hand thou shalt find The Chalybes, stout craftsmen of the steel— Beware of them! no gentleness is theirs, No kindly welcome to a stranger's foot! Thence to the Stream of Violence shalt thou come— Like name, like nature; see ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... called Nosov, and Kuvshinikov had quite a different name, he was called Shkvornev. Fenardi really was called Fenardi, only he wasn't an Italian but a Russian, and Mamsel Fenardi was a pretty girl with her pretty little legs in tights, and she had a little short skirt with spangles, and she kept turning round and round, only not for four hours but for four minutes only, and she ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... drums, the cannon, the musketry, and above all the tremendous noise of the carts, all made up together a din so confused and terrific that Don Quixote had need to summon up all his courage to brave it; but Sancho's gave way, and he fell fainting on the skirt of the duchess's robe, who let him lie there and promptly bade them throw water in his face. This was done, and he came to himself by the time that one of the carts with the creaking wheels reached the spot. It was ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... she quite for-got how large she had grown in the last few min-utes, and jumped up in such haste that the edge of her skirt tipped the ju-ry box and turned them all out on the heads of the crowd be-low; and there they lay sprawl-ing a-bout, which made her think of a globe of gold-fish which she had up-set the ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham

... took a knife, scalped the dead, and concealed the scalp under her skirt. It was now toward evening. All at once the woman heard a voice calling to her, 'Sister!' She was frightened, and looked about, but saw nobody. She lay down. Again a voice spoke close to her, 'Sister, stay here ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... a space in the railing, Beryl dropped her mother's withered Arkja tribute on the marble slab. Her dress was caught by a sharp point of iron, and while endeavoring to disengage it, she heard the shrill whistle of the R. R. engine. Tearing the skirt away, she ran to the wall, climbed over, after some delay, and finding herself once more in the open road, darted on as fast as possible through the dusk, heedless of appearances, fearful only of missing the train. How the houses multiplied, and what interminable ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... came at all. But as we neared the place I ceased my chatter, and so we went on in silence, each busy with his own thoughts, We did not come in front of Aldobrand's house, but turned out of the main street down a side lane which we guessed would skirt the garden wall. There were few people moving even in the streets, and in this little lane there was not a soul to meet as we crept along in the shadow of the high walls. We were not mistaken, for soon we came to what we judged was the ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... the old woman rummaged for a few moments in a heap of clothes thrown into the corner of the room,—the result, apparently, of many a day's begging or theft. From them she presently produced a child's nightgown, petticoat, and woollen skirt, a pair of coarse shoes much worn, and an old plaid shawl: ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... and, when he had found it, lay down upon the rug before her bed. With her other hand Effi had pressed three times on the button of the bell and in less than half a minute Johanna was there, in her bare feet, her skirt hanging over her arm and a large checkered cloth thrown over her head ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... a foolish thing have we done, To bind what gods have sundered unkindly into one. Why should a lowly lover have touched Taheia's skirt, Taheia the well-descended, and Rua ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... quite hot. She got out the skirt board, which had been put away in the closet, spread her shawl out smooth, and began to press it back and forth with ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... of Paris in the early Eighteenth Century, the inventor, indeed of the short ballet skirt, and the possessor of many lovers, retired from the stage in 1751 with a large fortune, besides a pension of fifteen hundred francs. Thenceforth she led a secluded life. She was an assiduous visitor to the poor of her parish and she kept a dozen dogs and an angora cat which ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... gait, at a leisurely pace. She (for, after a moment's hesitation, we decided that it was a woman) was of gipsy colouring, but not of gipsy beauty. Her black hair was in a loose knot on her back, she wore a curious skull-cap of black cloth embroidered with beads, a short cloth skirt, a pair of old trousers tucked into leather socks, a small blanket with striped ends folded cunningly over her shoulders, and on her breast a gold cross about twice as large as the one concealed beneath the Irish boy's shirt. And I looked at her with a curious feeling ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... science, the Expedition was indebted for the use of a most valuable chronometer. Its shores are picturesque; sloping hills receding from the beach, and clothed with verdure, bound its bottom and western side; and lofty cliffs of slate clay, with their intervening grassy valleys, skirt its eastern border. Embarking at midnight, we pursued our voyage without interruption, passing between the Stockport and Marcet Islands and the main, until six A.M. on July 30th; when, having rounded Point Kater, we entered Arctic ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... Don't! (Her cough increases. She puts her handkerchief to her lips. Poe takes it from her hand and looks at it.) Blood! (Throws handkerchief into the fire, and stands as if paralyzed, gazing at Virginia. Falls at her feet and begins kissing her skirt) My angel! my angel! I ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... Moslems and naught will purify her save the striking off of an hundred Mohammedan heads." Whereupon the King sent for the True Believers he had imprisoned; and they decapitated them, one after another, beginning with the captain, till none was left save Nur al-Din. They tare off a strip of his skirt and binding his eyes therewith, led him to the rug of blood and were about to smite his neck, when behold, an ancient dame came up to the King at that very moment and said, "O my lord, thou didst vow to bestow upon each and every church five Moslem captives, to held us in the service thereof, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... negligently into the morning room, his hands in his trouser pockets, the skirt of his jacket rumpled on his wrists. He gave the impression of having been strolling about the house all day and of now strolling in here for want of a better room to stroll into. He nodded negligently to Sabre, "Hullo, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... crudely—they saw in him the essential, elemental male. Of that I am convinced. It was the open secret of his many successes. And he had a buoyant, boyish, disarming, chivalrous way with him. If he desired a woman's lips he would always begin by kissing the hem of her skirt. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... I marry Sam Gibson, and had a nice trousseau dat time. Blue over-skirt over tunic, petticoats wid tattin' at de borders, red stockin's and gaiter shoes. I had a bustle and a wire hoop and wore a veil over ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... of the sofa, Bridget glided to his, and standing close in front of him, so that her skirt brushed his knees, she looked insinuatingly into ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... of the former on the very day fixed for his departure, by being deterred both by ill omens, and the hazard of the voyage. For while he was making the circuit of the temples, having seated himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck fast; and he was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus [580]; and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... from millinery and elaboration of skirt through any superiority of simplicity. It is only because such appendages would be a blockade to business. What would sashes and trains three and a half yards long do in a stock market? And yet men are the disciples ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... by an old woman, who, though she supported her steps with a staff, also carried a creel of the ordinary size. She wore a large broad-brimmed black hat, and a gaily-coloured calico jacket over her winsey skirt; an apron, and shoes with metal buckles, completing the ordinary costume of a fish-wife of that district. Little Nelly was dressed very like her grandmother, except that her feet were bare, and that she had a necklace of small shells round her throat. Her face was pretty and ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston

... chair of blackened oak a stately old lady was sitting straight and stiff, with her useless legs stretched out upon an elaborately embroidered ottoman. She wore a dress of rich black brocade, made very full in the skirt, and sleeves after an earlier fashion, and her beautiful snow-white hair was piled over a high cushion and ornamented by a cap of fine thread lace. In her face, which she turned at the first footstep ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... cried Nic aloud, as he bore off more to the right so as to skirt the little wood some fifty yards away; when out from the other side dashed half a dozen large animals, some of a ruddy hue, others of a bluish-brown colour, bounding over the ground like gigantic hares more ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... now it seemed to her one of the greatest trials in the whole world that the dress she wore had been made over from one of Prudy's. It was a fine white organdie with a little pink sprig, but there was a darn in the skirt. Then there was no feather in her hat, and no breastpin ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May

... "we skirt these rocks and then we shall ride through the village. One can very well imagine it has been the ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... blind woman crying: "Children, oh children, where are you?" and the stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. She came towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a rabbit ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... and more polished yet; the panier and scarf were of yellowest point lace; and a necklace of filigree and of large pale topazes, each carved in cameo, illuminated the whole. Maudita went out with Florimonde, too, that night, as she had gone every night for two months before. Skirt over skirt of fluffy net flowed round Maudita, and let their misty clouds blow about the trailing ornaments of long green grasses and blue corn-flowers that she wore, while puffs and falls half veiled the stomacher of Mexican turquoise and diamond sparks, whose device ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... and she did not dare to return home, so fearful was the misery there. Amidst the downpour of her tears she raised such beautiful eyes to his that he ended by drawing some money from his pocket. But at this, crimson with confusion, she sprang to her feet, hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt, and refusing to take anything. She added, however, that he might follow her if it so pleased him, and give the money to her mother. And then she hurried off ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... purer silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing green, where they run up between the purple trunks: and the sweet field footpaths skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and then hopelessly among the violets, and ground ivy, and brown sheddings of the fibrous leaves; and, at last, plunging into some open aisle ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... errents,—the man she works for is deef, deef as a post,—and I a noddin' to her firm, honorable nods, that I would do 'em), and I wus a slickin' up the settin'-room, and Martha, who had jest come in, wus measurin' off my skirt-breadths, when Josiah Allen drove up, and Cicely and the ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... to apologize for the Giant," said the Scarecrow, raising the Patchwork Girl to her feet and dusting her skirt with his stuffed hands. "Mister Yoop is a perfect stranger to me, but I fear, from the rude manner in which he has acted, that he is ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... has held his piccolo so long, and before the middle of the month there will not be a tuft of grass nor a shelter of low-lying leaves that is not alive with the shrill, complaining sweetness of his theme. The goldenrod has lighted the candles in the candelabra that skirt the borders of the wood, and the aster has already hung out her purple gown and her yellow laces upon the bushes that follow the windings of the steep ravine. Only six weeks to frost! Only six weeks to the time for the unbottling of the year's vintage and the exchange of tea ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... when Daisy was next roused by the fairy music, and the ponies were standing at the door. "Are we going far?" she asked, as Wee put on her riding-skirt, and tied ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... breakfast," said John York. "Wife said she was inquirin' about the circus, but she wanted to know first if they couldn't oblige her with a few trinkets o' mournin', seein' as how she'd got to pay a mournin' visit. Wife thought't was a bosom-pin, or somethin' like that, but turned out she wanted the skirt of a dress; 'most ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... sold, seemingly quietly reproachful under the public gaze, baptismal crosses, jewelled girdles, gloves, Paris blouses, English costumes. The refugees must sell all that they have, and some have sold all. I met the wife of a colonel of Life Guards. She was dressed in a cotton skirt, a cream-coloured "woolly," a waterproof, and a wretched cheap collar of fur. Once she never stepped out of her house but into a car. Now in weather-beaten thin old boots she must tramp from place to place over the cobbles, living in one room with her family, washes ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... whom Mrs. Brent, now in her ample grave, had slapped and kissed and teased, to the edification of the Canipers. She had grown tall and very straight; her thick dark hair was twisted tightly round her head; her skirt was short, revealing firm ankles and wooden shoes, and she wore a jersey which fitted her body closely and left her brown neck bare. Her watchful eyes were like those of some shy animal, but her lips had the faculty of repose. Helen had once compared her to a mettlesome young horse and there was ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... the extraordinary nature of the situation, and lost in admiration of the picture she presented. Were she posing for a portrait to be painted, she could not have chosen her position more effectively. The firelight brought out a golden tone from her brown skirt. It was lost in the softness of her velvet waist and hair, to reappear mysteriously in her eyes. She had thrown her crimson cloak over the back of the chair, and it formed a rippling band of colour on each ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... cried cheerily. She tossed her hayfork into the empty rack and climbed in after it. Her sun hat was tied under her chin, and she had donned a white waist and a blue denim skirt. "Come on now ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... effect on him, but the mere presence of the heretic quenched his courage. He would have fled, but his eyes met those of Thais, and he felt at once strengthened. He read in her soul that she, who was predestined to become a saint, already protected him. He seized the skirt of her long, flowing robe, and inwardly ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... round hem, or the piece set about the edge or skirt of a garment, whether at top or bottom; also a kind of stiff collar, made in fashion of a band, that went about the neck and round about the shoulders: hence the term 'wooden piccadilloes' (meaning the pillory) in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various

... furled her parasol, gathered her skirts still tighter, faced about, and said, "Go on, then." The man slipped backwards into the ranks of stalks, parting them with one hand, and holding out the other as if to lead her. But she evaded the invitation by holding her tightly-drawn skirt with both hands, and bending her head forward as if she had not noticed it. The next moment the road, and even the whole outer world, disappeared behind them, and they seemed floating in a choking green ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... C—— had nothing on but a bodice made of light silk and a skirt of the same description, but she was charming in that simple costume! My amorous looks went through those light veils, and in my imagination I saw her entirely naked! I sighed with burning desires, with a mixture of discreet reserve and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction was afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still. When she began to extricate herself it was by turning round ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... The girls exchanged glances of horror and amazement at the thought of this headgear, but made no sound. "I shall never forget that bonnet," continued Miss Wealthy, pensively, "nor that dress. In getting out of the carriage her skirt caught on the step, and part of a row of braid was ripped; this made a loop, in which she caught her foot, and tumbled headlong to the ground. I mended it in the evening, after she was in bed, as it was the ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... permit the glorious prize to escape them. 'You speak doubtingly,' said he, 'of the words of this Christian cavalier, but their truth is easily to be ascertained. Give me four galleys and a handful of men, and I will depart with this Count Julian, skirt the Christian coast, and bring thee back tidings of the land, and of his means to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... children, where are you?" and the stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. She came towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a rabbit as ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... Van Waggoner and Lieutenant Black, of the 58th Indiana. And still further to the left, along the Chattanooga Railroad, are the remains of Elias M. Scott, 82d Indiana; near this, but across the road, on the skirt of a wood, are Sergeants Potter and Puttenry, of the 24th Ohio, Henry Allen, of the 65th Ohio, and Frank Nitty, of the 58th Indiana. Continuing our course to the left, just crossing a dirt-road leading toward Murfreesboro, upon a little knoll, are the ruins of a once handsome mansion. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... there was again disappointment. He wandered along the piers, but could not find a single vessel bound for France or Germany, and not daring to enter the cafes, where perhaps the captains might have been, he left Archangel in sadness, determined to skirt the coast towards Onega. He would thus pass the celebrated monastery without the necessity of stopping, and pretend that he was proceeding to Novgorod and Moscow on the same ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... courage. He would have fled, but his eyes met those of Thais, and he felt at once strengthened. He read in her soul that she, who was predestined to become a saint, already protected him. He seized the skirt of her long, flowing robe, and inwardly prayed to ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... two worlds, in the valley of tears, such as the ghetto presented during the reign of Nicholas, and in the radiant recollections of the far-off biblical past. The inspired dreamer, while strolling on the banks of the Niemen, among the hills which skirt the city of Kovno, was picturing to himself the luminous dawn of the Jewish nation. He published these radiant descriptions of ancient Judaea in the dismal year of the "captured recruits." [1] The youths of the ghetto, who had been poring over talmudic ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... not in her arms the oldest-born of a new generation of Alvarados? the daughter of the governor of The Californias? Her smock, embroidered with silk, was new, and looked whiter than fog against her bare brown arms and face. Her short red satin skirt, a gift of her happy lady's, was the finest ever worn by exultant nurse. About her stringy old throat was a gold chain, bright red roses were woven in her black reboso. I saw her admire Chonita's stately figure with scornful reserve of the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white, with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of the Long ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... faded away into paleness; her lips closed. Without speaking, she turned and walked slowly away, her head drooping. The philosopher heard the rustle of her skirt in the long grass of the orchard; he watched her ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... children, yet here am I a queen and a leader of men, and if I would go to battle a hundred thousand spears shall sparkle in my train like stars glimmering down the path of the bent moon. And although my beauty be a little thing in the eyes of my lord,' and she lifted her broidered skirt and curtseyed again, 'yet here among my own people am I held right fair, and ever since I was a woman the great lords of my kingdom have made quarrel concerning me, as though forsooth,' she added with a flash of passion, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... very simple and scant, before being initiated into the use of a more ample and complete style of covering while living at the reservations. The ordinary full complement of dress for a man (Nung'-ah) was simply a breech-clout, or short hip-skirt made of skins; that for a woman (O'-hoh) was a skirt reaching from the waist to the knees, made of dressed deerskin finished at the bottom with a slit fringe, and sometimes decorated with various fancy ornaments. Both men and women frequently wore moccasins made ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark

... Jenkin to the door of her house, with an ailing babe tucked under her arm and two small children clinging to her ragged skirt. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... after another day, though it had assumed more prominent proportions, they were still at some distance, and it was not until the third morning that the little party stood on the reedy shores of a long narrow winding lake, one end of which they had to skirt before they could ride up to the foot of the flat-topped mountain which looked as if it had been suddenly thrust by some wondrous volcanic action right from the plain to form what appeared to be a huge castle, some seven or eight hundred feet high, and with no ravine ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... Kent's lagoon yesterday. In order to skirt the scrub, I had to keep to the north-east, which direction brought me, after about three miles travelling through open forest, to Mr. Hodgson's creek, at which John Murphy and Caleb had been lost. The creek here consists of a close chain ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... threats. If she felt any fear, there was no trace of it in her expressionless face. Nor did she seem relieved when Mordecai pushed between her and the angry Indian and demanded what business had brought him there. She merely shrugged a little, hitched up her buckskin skirt and resumed her task of pounding corn between two stones at the door of the hut, appearing to take no interest in the quarrel that followed. For like a good squaw, she did not think it seemly to interfere ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... husbands had no uniform to be copied—called it fast, or at least 'spirited,' (Gerrard had heard Mrs James Antony animadverting upon it only that morning,) but the severe lines of the coat suited Honour well in combination with the long trailing skirt and the broad hat with its drooping feather. As he rode up to the pair, and noted the serious face and the firm lines of the mouth, it struck Gerrard as curiously ironical that to a girl of this type should have fallen such a prolonged period of indecision as Honour had ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... Metford. The girl was sauntering about, swinging a walking-cane carelessly. She was still rationally dressed, but I observed with relief that the rational part of her costume was more in the nature of the divided skirt than the plain knickerbockers of the previous day. She accosted me cheerfully by my surname, and not to be outdone by ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... whistle with which Miss Todd was wont, on country walks, to collect her scattered flock. The two sinners jumped so uneasily that Wendy slipped from a stone and splashed into a pool, with rather disastrous consequences to her skirt. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... but, putting her gently on one side, stepped to the inner room. There, pale with anxiety and terror, Mistress Vane leaned forward in her chair, while Cicely, half-frightened, half-defiant, grasped her mother's skirt. Before the fire stood Annis, her blue eyes shining like stars, a round, red spot burning feverishly in each cheek, her lace ruff rising and falling distressfully with the heaving bosom within. The mandolin had fallen from her hands; the ruddy ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood Of ancient growth, make music not unlike The dash of Ocean on his winding shore, And lull the spirit while they nil the mind; Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... jewels are magnificent. Anne, Dauphine d'Auvergne, wife of Louis, second Duke of Bourbon, married in 1371, displays an heraldic dolphin of very sinister aspect upon one side of her corsage, and on the skirt of her long gown,—which, divided in the centre, seems to be composed of two different stuffs, that opposite to the dolphin being powdered with fleurs de lis. Her circlet of jewels is very elegant, and is worn just above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... with hope and spirit, Who think to storm the world by dint of merit, To you the dotard has a deal to say, In his sly, dry, sententious, proverb way! He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle, That the first blow is ever half the battle; That tho' some by the skirt may try to snatch him, Yet by the foreclock is the hold to catch him; That whether doing, suffering, or forbearing, You may do miracles ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... afternoon and she was sitting on the grass with her doll and her two companions. Sue had stolen some matches and was using them as Jackstraws. Suddenly I heard a scream, then I saw Sue racing like mad toward the garden hose, and I saw that the white skirt of Eleanore's dress had caught fire. As yet there was only a little flame. She was sitting still motionless on the grass, hugging her doll, with scared round eyes. I got to her first and with my cap I beat out the flame. I was suddenly panting, my hands were cold. But a few moments later, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... end of the upper house, I saw a young woman just coming out of the back door. I had spoken to her in the summer. She recognised me at once, and waved to me. She was carrying a pail, wearing a white apron that was longer than her preposterously short skirt, and she had on the cotton bonnet. I took off my hat to her and was going on. But she put down her pail and darted with a swift, furtive ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence

... living flowers', that skirt the eternal frost'! Ye wild goats', sporting round the eagle's nest'! Ye eagles', playmates of the mountain storm'! Ye lightnings', the dread arrows of the clouds'! Ye signs' and wonders' of the elements'! Utter forth GOD', and fill the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... convent, and might have become a nun if you hadn't fallen in love. You might have shut yourself up there and lived in grey habit and penances!' That day I wore a grey silk dress, and I remember lifting the skirt up as we passed the door and hitting the kerbstone with it. 'Shut up in that prison-house! Did I ever seriously think of such a thing?' These were my words, but God, in his great goodness and wisdom, resolved to bring me back. A great deal is required to save our souls, so deeply ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... the mother.—Either a folded sheet should be adjusted around the waist as the only skirt, so as not to interfere with the walking, or a second chemise should be put on, with the arms outside the sleeves, to extend from the waist to the feet. Then the chemise next the body should be drawn up ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... slowly behind her, at a respectful distance. To reach the beginning of the ascent they had to make their way through the many boats hauled up beyond the slip upon the dry sand. Beatrice gathered her light skirt in her hand as she passed Ruggiero's newly painted skiff, for she was familiar enough with boats to know that the oil might still ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... afternoon Mrs. Baird came to Madame David's to have a black velvet gown fitted. Madame called on Jean Hay to attend her in the fitting and to hang the long skirt properly—for it is a difficult job to hang a velvet skirt, and Jean Hay is thought to be very expert anent the set and swing of silk velvet, which has a certain contrariness of its own. Let that pass. I was kneeling on the floor, setting ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... rooms are people writing short stories. "Want to see a freak?" asks the young man in the bookshop as we are looking over his counters. We do, of course, and follow his animated gesture. Across the street comes a plump young woman, in a very short skirt of a violent blue, with a thick mane of bobbed hair, carrying her hat in her hand. She looks rather comfortable and seemly to us, but something about her infuriates the bookseller. He is quite Freudian in his indignation that any young woman ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... drawing the laundress to her by the skirt, "I have not the courage to confess to him the reward with which I am about to pay his silent love and his charming belief in the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... hands heartily. She was smartly dressed in a wine-colored velveteen, the over-short skirt of which barely reached to the tops of her freshly whitened spats. Her wide hat was tipped to a rakish angle. She was young (twenty-eight or thirty at most, but she looked less) and distinctly pretty. Her features were ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... and when men should go to sleep Grettir would not put off his clothes, but lay down on the seat over against the bonder's lock-bed. He had a drugget cloak over him, and wrapped one skirt of it under his feet, and twined the other under his head, and looked out through the head-opening; a seat-beam was before the seat, a very strong one, and against this he set his feet. The door-fittings were all broken from the outer door, but a wrecked ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... For the first time she was not followed by her dog. The only change in her appearance he could see was a short skirt of rough material instead of her usual ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... his dark complexion, and flashes in tips of flame from his eyes. Another pale and emaciated person, in neglected and scarcely decent attire, and distinguished by the abstracted fervor of his manner, presses through the crowd, and attempts to lay hold of Pepperell's skirt. He has spent years in wild and shadowy studies, and has searched the crucible of the alchemist for gold, and wasted the life allotted him, in a weary effort to render it immortal. The din of warlike preparation has broken in upon his solitude; and he comes forth with a fancy of his half-maddened ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... July afternoon he was standing on the narrow sidewalk surrounded by a group whose members his enthusiasm had drawn out of doors. Few others were abroad; an occasional Mexican woman in her black skirt and tight-drawn reboso, a peon or two slouching gracefully by with the inevitable brown cigarette, and a solitary horseman who ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... his adversary, after growling a little while and showing his teeth, when he found that this was not sufficient to deter him from intermeddling, entirely quitted the sheep, and making a sudden spring, seized upon the skirt of Tommy's coat, which he shook with every expression of rage. Tommy behaved with more intrepidity than could have been expected, for he neither cried out nor attempted to run, but made his utmost efforts to disengage himself from his enemy. But, as the contest ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... which one wears in Canada are not more in use here. The very small children have all their clothes stuffed into them, and tumble safely about in the snow like little Dutchmen. Older wearers of petticoats cram all in except the outermost skirt. It is a very simple garment made of three pieces,—two (straight) legs and a large square. The square is folded like a kerchief, and the leg pieces attached to the two sloping sides. A broad elastic and small openings on each side and at the top enable these very baggy knickerbockers ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the room, which I knew well, knocked and got no answer. Then I walked into the room, and this is what I saw. Your aunt was lying on the sofa in her wedding dress (that is, in half of it, for she had only the skirt on), as I first thought, asleep. I went up to her, and saw that by her side was a brandy bottle, half empty. In her hand also was a glass containing raw brandy. While I was wondering what it could mean, she woke up, got off the sofa, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... spoke as if she had expected to find cataclysmic changes after an absence of three weeks. "Dogs overrunning the place, and Big Liza warbling at the top of her lungs in the kitchen, and you in your second-best riding skirt at this hour in the afternoon—naughty mother! Everything just the same as if—" Her roving eyes chanced to rest on her sister's ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... brown leg from the unknown, and arranged her skirt with a dexterity altogether feminine. "I think I'll stay on the wall," she decided. "So long as some of me's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... in a deep seat, shaped something like an old-fashioned school form, backed and cushioned with leather, to watch the audience gather. Every phase of dress was present, from the ball gown to the rainy weather skirt, and enough of each grade to keep one another in countenance. About half the men wore evening suits, but those who did not were completely ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... moor had been tried in the fire heated seven times, it would not have been to the strong-minded, broad-chested, dark-browed Lilias that they would have clung. They would have come crouching in their extremity and taken hold of the skirt of round, soft, white Joanna, with the little notable ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... fold of his hunting skirt, and quietly exposed the fatal tuft of hair, which he bore as the symbol of victory. Chingachgook laid his hand on the scalp, and considered it for a moment with deep attention. Then dropping it, with disgust depicted in his strong ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... ended in a high key. He was trembling with nervous exhaustion. In an effort to jerk higher in the pillow his knee struck the tray, the crockery slid and crashed, and Johanna found him in the middle of the room, fiercely shaking the skirt of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... Sir, how much blood had stain'd Old England, since we left her, finding thus All things so peaceful; but one thing I mark'd As we did skirt the village. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... think it was who made the remark that so delighted Father, and J. T. Trowbridge recounts it in "My own Story." It was a bitter cold night and covers were scanty; and more than that, there were several panes out of the window. Field rummaged about in the closet and found the hoops of an old hoop skirt, just then going out of fashion, and these he hung over the broken window, saying "That will keep out the coarsest of the cold!" "Coarsest of the cold," Father would repeat the expression and laugh again. I remember his envious acknowledgment of an apt illustration: two famous wood choppers ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... following his return to Badajos, Desmond started on his way to Madrid. Although this time he had no apprehension whatever of a planned attack, he thought it safer and better to travel north from Badajos, and skirt the foot of the sierras until he reached the banks of the Tagus, where there was a strong garrison in each of the towns, and the country was, in consequence, free from the incursions of bands from the hills. The journey passed without an incident, and on reaching Madrid and ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... riding habit of brown corduroy which consisted of a divided skirt—a "doubled-barreled" one in the sarcastic phraseology of the male cowpuncher, who affects to despise such an article of feminine apparel—a brown woolen blouse with a low collar, above which she had sensibly tied a neckerchief to keep the sun and sand from blistering her neck; and a black ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... skirts and take the saddle under your right arm, so as not to frighten him with it as you approach. When you get to him rub him gently a few times with your hand, and then raise the saddle very slowly, until he can see it, and smell and feel it with his nose. Then let the skirt loose, and rub it very gently against his neck the way the hair lies, letting him hear the rattle of the skirts as he feels them against him; each time getting a little farther backward, and finally slipping it over his shoulders on his back. Shake it ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... sweet, old-world picture she makes, standing beneath the great overhanging gables of the wooden chalet. She, too, favours the national green; but, as relief, there is no lack of bonny red ribbons, to flutter in the wind, and, underneath the ornamented skirt, peeps out a bright-hued petticoat. Around her ample breast she wears a dark tight-fitting bodice, laced down the front. (I think this garment is called a stomacher, but I am not sure, as I have never liked to ask.) Her square shoulders are covered with the whitest ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... Nedda Marsh. Alone?" She ran soft hands along the hard biceps under his short jacket sleeves. The motion threw open her shriekingly bright orange cloak, displaying saucy breasts, creamy abdomen and, beneath her brief jeweled skirt, long smooth thighs. And the perfume assailed his nostrils with almost ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage

... a fragment of calico, large enough for a dress and skirt, with enough over, a queer, three-cornered piece, which she pinned about the unequal shoulders for a shawl. Upon the bonnet she ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury

... Thinking the day had dawned; and anon the lowing of cattle Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs interrupted. Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping encampments Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska, When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed of the whirlwind, Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and the horses Broke through ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... moment's hesitation, we decided that it was a woman) was of gipsy colouring, but not of gipsy beauty. Her black hair was in a loose knot on her back, she wore a curious skull-cap of black cloth embroidered with beads, a short cloth skirt, a pair of old trousers tucked into leather socks, a small blanket with striped ends folded cunningly over her shoulders, and on her breast a gold cross about twice as large as the one concealed beneath the Irish boy's shirt. And I looked at her with a curious ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... he was leaving, a shy, big-eyed girl of ten had slid out from the shelter of her mother's poppy-patterned skirt, had proffered three strings of beads, and had fled. Luck had smiled his smile again—a smile of white, even teeth and so much good will that you immediately felt that he was your friend—and called her back to him. Luck was chief; and his commands were to be obeyed, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... on the top of a steep, grassy slope, was engaged in the conventional pastime of enjoying the view. It was a fine view, but it was not half as good to look upon as was Beatrice herself, in her fresh white waist and brown skirt, with her brown hair fluffing softly in the breeze which would grow to a respectable wind later in the day, and with ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... precious freight. Pietro Barbaro, the chief, stands with one foot upon his vessel's side and the other on the shore. Still insensible, the lovely Francesca lies upon his breast. At this moment the skirt of his cloak is plucked by a bold hand. He turns to meet the glance of the Spanish Gypsy. The old woman leered on him with eyes that seemed to mock his triumph, even ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... showy gondola, fashioned like a dragon, with flashing torches and many paddles, approached; and a Siamese official mounted the side, swaying himself with an absolute air. The red langoutee, or skirt, loosely folded about his person, did not reach his ankles; and to cover his audacious chest and shoulders he had only his own brown polished skin. He was followed by a dozen attendants, who, the moment they stepped from the gangway, sprawled on the deck like ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... the fireplace. Malachi saw her coming—he was always in the room during the interludes—and with an alacrity common to him when the distinguished little lady was present, drew up a low chair beside his mistress and stood behind it until she took her seat. Miss Clendenning smoothed out her skirt and settled herself with the movement of a pigeon filling her nest. Then she laid her mits in her lap and fanned ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of silk is used in Japanese men's clothing. The kimono, except the cheaper summer kind and the bath kimono (yukata), which are cotton, is silk. So are the hakama (divided skirt) and the haori (overcoat). Japanese women's clothes are largely silk. The dress of working people is cotton, but even they ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... "that instead of crossing the Cordilleras to the west, as we had intended, it will be better for us to go south, skirt the lake of Junin, and make for Oroya. That is the route generally taken, for the passes west are terribly difficult. I have traversed this route many times, and when going with merchandise I always go through Oroya, though in returning from Cerro ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... dress skirt "tucked up," and she wore a faded, blue-checked apron. Her hair was rather straggly and she had on a pair of Uncle Henry's old slippers. In one hand she held a dish-towel and in the other a cracked earthenware plate, which she had been engaged in wiping when so suddenly transported to the Land ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... sea burst over the bulwarks, and swept him into the scuppers. The same wave wrenched the child from the grasp of the man who held it and carried it right overboard. Like an eel, rather than a man, Charlie cleft the foam close behind her, caught her by the skirt and bore her to the surface, when a few strokes of his free arm brought him close under the lee of the wreck just in time to prevent the agonised father from leaping after his child. There was terrible suspense ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... in aunt Corinne's clothing, giving it a graceful shape in spite of the broad tucks in sleeve, skirt and pantalet, which kept it from draggling over her hands or on the floor, She leaned against the wall, gazing around her with half-awakened interest. The dark circles were still about her eyes, but her pallor was flushed with a warmer color, Grandma ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Alan, "but I see something that looks like the corner of a hunter's shelter sticking out behind that big boulder, and I say, let's skirt around this ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... were quite beautiful. One had a blue-laced bodice over white and a red velvet skirt with a high pointed black straw hat; another had a black bodice with a white under vest and a blue skirt, the hat being of white lace. Others which I cannot now remember in exact detail were very interesting ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... am—" Without looking at me, or listening to a word I said, she set up an ear-splitting shriek and started up the stairs as quickly as her great weight would permit. Seized with inexpressible terror, I clung to her skirt and went down on my knees. This only made matters worse. "Help! seize the assassin! Oh, my God! release me! Take my ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian

... man. See?" He showed how the skirt of her deerskin parki, reaching, like her brother's, a little below the knee, was shaped round in front, and Nicholas's own—all men's parkis were ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... glad of this job, as times were slack. So he took the cloth, and at once set to work. Half of it he made into a beautiful dress for the Thrush, with a skirt and jacket, and sleeves in the latest fashion; and as there was a little cloth left over, and he was an honest Tailor, he made her also a pretty little hat to put ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... I assented, and half past two saw the three of us, Worth in corduroys and puttees, Barbara with high boots and short, dust-brown skirt, tramping out past the homes of people toward the open country. At the Vandeman place Skeet's truck was out in front, piled with folding chairs, frames, light lumber, and a lot of decorative stuff. The tall Chinaman came from the house ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... and pushed the strangest of figures through the doorway. Butcher Truman had discarded the shawl from his head and shoulders, or perchance it had been snatched away by the infuriated carriers. For expedition, too, he had caught up his feminine skirt and petticoat and twisted them and caught them about his waist with a leathern belt, over which they hung in careless indecorous festoons, draping a pair of corduroy breeches. But he still wore a woman's bodice, though half the buttons were burst; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... flying into woods, which skirt the road, ran straight forward on the road itself: THIS, AGAIN, IS ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... reaching their stations in the carefully arranged order of march. At 9.30 p.m. all being ready, the column, guided by Colonel Dartnell, went quietly down the mountain side towards Dundee, the southern boundary of which it was necessary to skirt to gain the Helpmakaar road. By 11.15 p.m. the last company was clear of the mountain, and, striking the track to Dundee at the foot of Indumeni, the troops passed close to the bivouac ground of ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... mean, Hosy. That's what that blunderin' steward said when he stepped on my skirt and tore the gatherin' all loose. I told him he wasn't half ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... had been far enough in the rear to escape this general stampede, but they, too, saw the dark object trying to skirt the newly broken-down embankment, and they slid quickly down the wet weedy bank to get away from this ghostlike creature ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... red-haired bunch of galatea, stylish of cut as to upturned nose and straight little skirt but wholly and defiantly unshod save for a dusty white rag around one pink toe. A cunning little straw bonnet, with an ecru lace jabot dangled in her hand, and her big brown eyes reminded me of Jane's at her most ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... mingled with his own on the sunny road—when it wasn't Miss Penny's. It was Margaret's pleated blue skirt that swung beside him to a tune that set his pulses leaping. Miss Penny's skirt was there too, indeed, but a thousand of it flapping in a gale would not have quickened his ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... piece of thick woods bearing an evil reputation as the home of footpads. But the two pass through in safety, for the robbers are either asleep or absent from their haunts. Reaching the head-waters of the Yuqueri, which empties into the Canabe, a tributary of the Paraguay, they skirt the heights of Angostura, where Lopez, after the evacuation of Humaita, planted his batteries, and which he made his final strategic point. Near by, on the right bank of the Canabe, is the field of Las Lomas Valentinas, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... at all to put in it except her clothes. Alice told about the places in which she kept them—it was like a museum! There was a gown-room, made dust-proof, of polished hardwood, and with tier upon tier of long poles running across, and padded skirt-supporters hanging from them. Everywhere there was order and system—each skirt was numbered, and in a chiffonier-drawer of the same number you would find the waist—and so on with hats and stockings and gloves and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... hedge and presented a loaded pistol. "Give up that money," said he to the boy.—"Sure, then, I will if you give me time, but you won't have me go home wid my finger in my mouth, widout looking as if I made a stand for it, anyhow. Look here!" continued Jerry, dismounting and holding up the ragged skirt of his coat, "couldn't you put a ball through this for me?"—"'Tis riddled enough in all conscience, but here goes," said the highwayman, firing off a pistol at it.—"Here's my ould caubeen now, and I'll just give my face a scratch to draw the blood if you put a hole through that too." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... lay on the bed in her little summer frock, her face very white now after the shock, Nurse had come carrying the youngest child: and little Annabel stood holding her skirt. Winifred, terribly serious and wooden-seeming, was bending over the knee, from which she had taken his blood-soaked handkerchief. Egbert bent forward, too, keeping more sangfroid in his face than in his heart. Winifred went all of a lump of seriousness, so he had ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... muttering to herself, with palsied lips, about the guardians and the workhouse; while upon a few rags on the floor lay a girl, ugly, small-pox marked, hollow eyed, emaciated, her only bed clothes the skirt of a large handsome new riding-habit, at which two other girls, wan and tawdry, were stitching busily, as they sat right and left of her on the floor. The old woman took no notice of us as we entered; but one of the girls looked up, and, with a pleased gesture of recognition, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... under it wiped every day. It will then keep good three or four days in hot weather. Take care also to cut out the pipe that runs along the chine of a loin of veal, the same as in beef, to hinder it from tainting. The skirt of the breast of veal is likewise to be taken off, and the inside of the breast wiped and scraped, and sprinkled ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... the inhabitants are noted at the same time for the strength and excellence of their wines and for the quarrelsomeness of their dispositions. Palestrina, a little way off on the hillside, with a flowing skirt of vines all about it, breathes laughter in its very air. One may sit in Bernardini's—known to all visitors to the city of Fortune—and hear the travellers who come there laugh over mishaps which they would have growled over anywhere else. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... resources of their section and were constantly irritated by the neglect of the parent State to aid in their development. They enjoyed a climate as genial as that of the Italians who dwell on the slopes of the Apennines; they had forests more valuable than those that skirt the upper Rhine; they had mineral wealth as great as that which has given England her precedence in the manufacturing progress of the world. They were anxious for self-government. Their trustworthy senator, Waitman T. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... company. They encompassed her in a chatter of lace and lingerie. There were held up to her all the interests of her every-day existence; but these seemed to have no part in her real life. They had never appeared more remote and trivial. She kept her conscious hand in the folds of her skirt. She would have liked to strip off her glove and show them the ring. It would have entertained them so much. To herself its entertainment was of the Arabian Nights—the way of its finding, its beauty in the false setting, the struggle over it in the shop—all ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... moment, before she could wink, she found herself in a beautiful room, with mirrors reaching from the ceiling to the floor. By these she saw that she was no longer clad in an old dingy dress, nor were her feet bare; but she had on a beautiful skirt of light-blue velvet, and a bodice of the most costly lace, trimmed with ribbons; while diamonds were in her hair, and a pair of gold slippers on ...
— The Nursery, September 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 3 • Various

... white rounded arms, and only partially hindered the view of a figure of the most elegantly voluptuous tournure. Around her waist another scarf of bright scarlet formed a sort of cincture or belt, leaving its long fringed ends to hang over the skirt of her silken robe, and blending its colours with those of the light veil that fell down from her shoulders. It was a costume that seemed well-suited to her striking beauty, and the effect of the coup d'oeil ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... guests are met at the door and conducted to the parlor by a youth, dressed in a red blouse with full bishop sleeves and long pointed yellow cuffs, and a full-gathered, double skirt, half way to the knees, made in pointed scallops—the scallops of the lower skirt of yellow alternating with the scallops of the upper one of red with a jingling gold bell sewed to each scallop. One stocking is red, and the other yellow, and one foot is thrust into a red sandal, and the ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... not help laughing heartily at this mistake, which might have proceeded from the circumstances of my appearance, my footman having been obliged to change hats with the peasant, and myself being without buckles on my shoes and buttons on my riding-skirt, while my countenance still retained marks of the fear and confusion I had undergone. After all, perhaps the fellow was a droll, and wanted to entertain himself at my expense. The day was so far consumed in these adventures, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... runner, was only in time to catch Johnnie by the skirt upon the third step of the staircase, crying out, "The pig!" but Johnnie, tired of the subject, and in a provoking mood, twitched away his pinafore, crying, "Bother the pig!" and rushed up after the four who had preceded him, leaving such lumps of dirt on the edge of every step, that when ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her efforts served only to increase his unhappiness and his love. And he loved her! Oh, how he loved her! Since first his dreading eyes had clung for a breath's space to her "like man's shoes" and had then crept timidly upward past a black skirt, a "from silk" apron, a red "jumper," and "from gold" chain to her "light face," she had been mistress of his heart of hearts. That was more than three months ago. And well he ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... dangers from extended territory, multiplied States, accumulated wealth, and augmented population has proved to be unfounded. The stars upon your banner have become nearly threefold their original number; your densely populated possessions skirt the shores of the two great oceans; and yet this vast increase of people and territory has not only shown itself compatible with the harmonious action of the States and Federal Government in their respective constitutional ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... so near the fire, Marcella. You'll have all the colour taken out of your skirt. Not that it matters particularly," said ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... made in that way; but they must have long skirts and no feet, and when finished a cut is made in the skirt—as in the picture—and the framework thus produced is bent back. When the doll is placed on the table and gently blown ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... lovely morning when Daisy was next roused by the fairy music, and the ponies were standing at the door. "Are we going far?" she asked, as Wee put on her riding-skirt, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... Aunt Effie-like-I-thought-she-was," she said gayly, "and I'm going to come and visit!" And then she set to work pulling stuff out of the box and hunting just the right thing to dress in. She finally put on a gay plaid skirt, a big black hat trimmed with a great pink rose, a yellow waist and a red scarf. Then she pulled on the pair of gloves, picked up the shopping bag ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... the echo swung round behind the matron's capacious person and rolled themselves in the folds of her full skirt, which performance hid them from the view of anyone outside and as effectually ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... with embroidered handkerchiefs on the head; magnificent red shirts, rich glass beads hanging from the neck; silver medals fastened to the breast; large gold earrings with strings of beads; a jabol or dagmay which serves them as a skirt, and is very skilfully woven and figured with crocodiles and other designs; at the girdle, in the midst of fragrant flowers and hawk's-bells, they carry the balarao or dagger with which the sacrifice of the victim is made; on the arms precious bracelets of sagai-sagai ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... Mrs. Lyman says is too true," thought Willy, taking a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and drawing a profile of Miss Judkins on the door-sill, while that young lady tripped along the road, brushing the golden-rod and sweet-fern with the skirt ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May

... She can help Leota, I daresay, and I'll give her a few dollars a month. But why isn't she dressed in the usual flaming style of your other pupils—skirt, blouse, brown paper-soled boots, and a sixpenny poke bonnet with artificial flowers, and otherwise made up as one of the 'brands plucked from the burning' whose photographs glorify the parish ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... hammocks; Mr. Agassiz and myself being accommodated in the other one, where we were very hospitably received by the senhora of the sitio, an old Indian woman, whose gold ornaments, necklace, and ear-rings were rather out of keeping with her calico skirt and cotton waist. This is, however, by no means an unusual combination here. Beside the old lady, the family consisted, at this moment, of her afilhada (god-daughter), with her little boy, and several other women ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... which in happier times had very likely dispensed pleasure to many a small tea-party; a cracked bell, which had rung many to prayers during the siege, and which I bore away on my saddle; and a parasol, given me by a drunken soldier. He had a silk skirt on, and torn lace upon his wrists, and he came mincingly up, holding the parasol above his head, and imitating the walk of an affected lady, to the vociferous delight of his comrades. And all this, and much more, in that fearful charnel city, with death and suffering ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... granted it, he enquired, "What may be the amount of the dower?" The mother replied, "Four thousand dinars of gold and the like sum in ready coin." "Dost thou accept?" quoth the Kazi to the Caliph, and quoth he, "Yes." Accordingly, the Judge wrote out the writ upon the skirt of his Farajiyah-robe for in his agitation he had forgotten to bring paper, and he set down the name of the Sovran and his father and his grandfather without question for that he knew them well; after which he enquired of the old woman her daughter's name[FN129] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Sally to the door. It is good form to ring the bell of the front door several times, before going to the back door, for it may be that the lady of the house is dressing, or is hastily taking the folded paper "curlers" out of her front hair, or slipping on her "other skirt" before admitting the visitor. Few indeed are the front doors in Iowa that open promptly to a knock or a ring. Primping time must be allowed, ad if this, followed by a second ring or knock, does ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... of food and water. The Mexican cook, or rather the cook's assistant, was the only one present when Sundown drifted in, for the Concho was, in the parlance of the riders, "A man's ranch from chuck to sunup, and never a skirt on the clothes-line." ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... were eighty hostile caracoas at the island of Mindanao; so his Lordship, in order to surprise them, sailed with five champans for the opposite and outer coast of the island, and directed Captain Ugalde to skirt the inner coast, with the rest of the boats, as far as Point Nasso, [78] on the shore of the island of Othon. The fact that they found no trace of enemies anywhere, stamped the report as false, and as inspired by the effort of the devil for the purpose of hindering us in our journey; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... for the appointed day— Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray; 1065 Amid the dwellers of this lonely land I shall remain alone—and thy command Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet trance, And, multitudinous as the desert sand Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance, 1070 Thronging ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... drew back into the shadow. I waited also in the shadow for nearly ten minutes, then I passed on, ascended some steps and reentered the hotel. In the lounge I sank into a seat in a hidden corner and lit a cigarette. Presently I heard the swish of a woman's skirt behind me, and rising, peered out. It was Lady Lydbrook on her way out. She was carrying the cheque to the ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel, the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her house to go to church or pilgrimage, the mal maridada imprisoned by her husband, the peasant bride singing and dancing in skirt of scarlet, the woman superstitiously devout, the beata alcouviteira who would not have escaped the Inquisition had she been printed like Aulegrafia in the seventeenth century, lisping gypsies, the alcouviteiras Anna and Branca and Brigida, the curandera with ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... delightful and rather dangerous amusement. Ladies wear warm wool dresses that water will not injure, made short in the skirt, and jaunty of cut, with sailor-like emblems for adornment. No young lady should go out alone with a gentleman either yachting or rowing. In yachting especially a boat is sometimes becalmed for hours and even all night. A party composed entirely ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... was standing at the window, looking down into the street below. She wore the simple dress of the citizen class, a rather full skirt of cloth—of a finer texture perhaps than some, and of a dark crimson colour which well became her—and the laced bodice and full sleeves of the day. Round her throat she had a fine white muslin kerchief edged with lace, and her apron was of the same. She had ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... nothing of this. The white gauzy fabric which had covered Isabel's satin petticoat on the previous evening still filled his eyes. Those perfect boots, the little glimpses of party-coloured stockings above them, the looped-up skirt, the jacket fitting but never binding that lovely body and waist, the jaunty hat with its small fresh feathers, all were nothing to him. Nor was the bright honest face beneath the hat anything to him now;—for it was an honest ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... to help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a young ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... know all about it. I'll just ketch up with her and git the news out of her, if there is any. Say, say, Jane!" she called to the girl, as she ran up the road with the cow-like gait which her swirling skirt gave her. The girl stopped for her; then in apparent haste she moved on again, and Sally moved with her out of sight; her voice still made itself heard ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... at the utmost. I know not if she had ever been as he described her, or whether it was but some ideal which he carried in his brain. The person upon whom I looked was tall, it is true, but she was thick and shapeless, with a ruddy, full-blown face, and a skirt grotesquely gathered up. There was a green ribbon in her hat, which jarred upon my eyes, and her blouse-like bodice was full and clumsy. And this was the lovely girl, the ever youthful! My heart sank as I thought how ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... him in the doorway. Not wholly of unpleasing exterior, she was dressed in a well-fitting, high-necked morning dress of pale-coloured silk; and as the visitor entered the room her small white hands threw something upon the table and clutched her embroidered skirt before rising from the sofa where she had been seated. Not without a sense of pleasure did Chichikov take her hand as, lisping a little, she declared that she and her husband were equally gratified by his coming, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... of the deceived followers of the latest false Prophet arrived at this post in a most deplorable condition. One mater familiar had crossed the mountains during very severe weather in almost a state of nudity. Her dress consisted of a part of a single skirt, part of a man's shirt, and a portion of a jacket. Thus habited, without a shoe or a thread more, she had walked 157 miles in snow, the greater part of the way up to her knees, and carried in her arms a sucking babe less than six weeks old. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew. A moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks. He went a step nearer to the door, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... loan. Debts, bailiffs, and lawsuits, and creditors gruff, At the crack of day knocking, (Importunity shocking!) Our trio kept busy enough. The bush, ever ready and on the alert, Now caught all the people it could by the skirt:— 'Pray, sir, be so good as to tell, if you please, If you know whereabout the old villanous seas Have hid all our goods which they stole t' other night. The diver, to seek them, went down out of sight. The bat didn't venture abroad in the day, And thus of the bailiffs ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... this incident by wise forethought. His next success is unpremeditated. Making a pull at Sally's skirt, he glides quickly out of her way as she wheels round, and hits Mainmast an unintentional backhander on the nose. This is received by Mainmast with a little scream, and by the children with an "Oh! o-o" ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... Cromwell wiped her face with her apron skirt. "Shore hot today," she thought. "You hot ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael

... half drew my sword on it. But that, too, drew sword, and I knew it for my own shadow on the thick vapour. Then a sheet of water stretched out almost under my feet, and thousands of wildfowl rose and fled noisily, to fall again into further pools with splash and mighty clatter. I must skirt this pool, and so came presently to a thicket of reeds, shoulder high, and out of these rose, looking larger than natural in the moonlight, a great wild boar that had his lair there, and stood staring at me before he too made off, ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... you have it trimmed?" she asked. "This sort of stuff will make no sort of an appearance unless it is well trimmed. It wants that. You might have a border of dark green leaves—dark green, like the colour of this stripe—going round the skirt; that would have a good effect; the leaves set in and edged with a very small red cord, or green if you like it better. We trimmed a dress so last week, and it made a ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along the edge of the canyon until you see my house. Ask for my wife—that's Mrs. Bradley—and give her your letter. Stop!" He drew a carpenter's pencil from his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheet and tossed it back to the stranger. "See you at tea! Excuse me—Mr. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... fulfillment of his final hopes, for which, in reliance on some old predictions, he professed to be sustaining himself. For when he was yet but very young, and lived in the country, he caught in the skirt of his garment an eagle's nest, as it was falling, in which were seven young ones, which his parents seeing and much admiring, consulted the augurs about it, who told them that he should become the greatest man in the world, and that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... mother. I shan't neglect a thing." Sue swayed a little, to the clutch of a small hand dragging at her skirt. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates

... where his wife could be plainly seen in her white chemise and red skirt, bending over the water and beating the linen with a stick until the valley rang. Stasiek had already strayed farther towards the ravines. Sometimes he knelt down on the bank and gazed into the river, supported on his elbows. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... in light green and lilac. The skirt trimmed with four rows of fringe of green and lilac silk intermingled. The corsage low and plain, with a pelerine which passes along the back and shoulders, and is brought down to the front of the waist in a point. This pelerine is edged with two rows of fringe. The sleeves of the dress, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... upon the sidewalk, where he stood waiting to assist his companion, who, however, was trying to pin the rent in her skirt together. Then gathering up some packages that were lying on the ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... for her sobbing embrace. That is not Bert's way. He knows—he is not a fool—that his mother looks a trifle absurd as, with bonnet awry, she surges perspiringly past the sentries, the tails of her skirt dragging in the dust and her feet flattened with the weight of over-clad, unwholesome obesity they have to bear. But he hobbles sprily to meet her, and his salute is no mere peck, but a smacking kiss, so noisy that it makes everyone laugh. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... and then stretched her hands over her lustreless satin skirt, as if the perilous side of her situation were defining itself. "Oh, sir, I am fond of my ...
— The American • Henry James

... plethora of firewood. But here was ax, shovel, and saw, and he asked no more. First he shoveled out a path along the eaves of the house where she might walk in sentry fashion to take the deep breaths of clear sharp air he insisted upon. He made it wide enough so that her skirt would not sweep against the snow-bank, and trod down the trench till the footing was hard and solid. Then with ax and saw he climbed the hillside back of the house and set himself to get as much fuel ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... the door opened and Miss Cox entered. She wore a short-sleeved, low-neck, pink-satin blouse, a white-satin skirt, open-work stockings, and slippers so high in the heels that her ankles turned inward. Her hair was treated with henna and piled untidily on the top of her head. She was exactly what Klein had described—a self-respecting, self-supporting girl, but, on a superficial acquaintance, men of Cord's ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller

... rather than worn; hideous plaques and plush decorations abounded. A crimson chair had lost a leg, and was pushed ignominiously in a corner of the tiny room; a table was crowded with bottles and fragments of food, and a worn, velvet jacket and much-beplumed hat lay amongst them. A ragged lace skirt hung over the blue sofa, on one corner of which Miss De Courcy threw herself down, revealing a pair of high heeled scarlet slippers. "Sit down," she said, in a rather metallic voice, that ill accorded with ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... drunken husbands, while in heathendom a drunkard's wife cannot be found unless a heathen husband is being Christianized by Christian whiskey. The Chinese women have their feet compressed, but, unlike Christian women, they do not need their feet to give broom drills or skirt dances for the "benefit of their church." The child-wives of India need to be rescued and protected, but no more than many adult wives in Bible lands need protection from drunken and brutal husbands. The heathen wife seeks death on her husband's ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... little group on the piazza with one consent kept silence, watching her as she came. She drew near with busy, pleased thoughts, and leisurely happy steps, and never looked up till she reached the foot of the steps leading to the piazza. Nor even then; she had picked up her skirt and mounted several steps daintily before she heard her name and raised her eyes. Then her face changed. The glance of surprise, it is true, was immediately followed by a smile of civil greeting; but ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... tiny and trembling fingers that could scarce guide the needle, though tiny still, were now swift and skilful: but there was the same busy knitting of the brow, the same little dainty mannerisms, the same quick turns and movements—now to replace a stray tress, and anon to shake from the silken skirt some imaginary atom of dust—some clinging ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the time, and, besides, she played on his family pride—lineal descendant of the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its being ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... almost like madmen, and all with a delightful glee which became contagious, first in the clerical body, and then among the spectators. The aged Dean of the Chapter, Protonotary of his Holiness, held up his purple skirt a little higher, and stepping from the ranks with an amazing levity, as if suddenly relieved of his burden of eighty years, tossed the ball with his foot to the venerable capitular Homilist, equal to the occasion. And then, unable to stand inactive any longer, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... ribs and extending from the second or third rib to the breast bone is a thin strip of muscle known as a skirt steak. This is removed before the ribs are cut for roasts, and, as shown in Fig. 13, is slit through the center with a long, sharp knife to form a pocket into which stuffing can be put. As a skirt steak is not expensive and has excellent flavor, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... charmante as she stood there in the dim candle-light, her great innocent eyes dilated with child-like wonder, her thick blond braids hanging over her shoulders, and the picturesque Tyrolese costume—a black embroidered velvet waist, blue apron, and short black skirt—setting off her fine figure to admirable advantage. She was a tall, fresh-looking girl, of stately build, without being stout, with a healthy blooming countenance and an open, guileless expression. Most people would have pronounced her beautiful, but her beauty was of that rudimentary, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... free, and there was complete silence. He had screamed himself out of breath, but Dona Rita muttering; "Too late, too late," got her hands away from my grip and slipping altogether out of her fur coat seized some garment lying on a chair near by (I think it was her skirt), with the intention of dressing herself, I imagine, and rushing out of the house. Determined to prevent this, but indeed without thinking very much what I was doing, I got hold of her arm. That struggle was silent, too; but I used the least force possible and she managed to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... me by their greatness, some amuse me, while others only spoil my appetite. Of the latter class is the chronic kicker who is forever fuming about feminine fashions. If the hoop-skirt comes in this critic is in agony; if the "pull-back" makes its appearance he has a fit and falls in it. Ever since Eve attired herself in a few freckles and fig-leaves he's been reforming the fashions. Don't mind him, ladies. Like a peacock crying in the night, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... sideways on the edge of Mern's desk, thus testifying to her sure standing in the establishment, her tightly drawn skirt displaying an attractive contour. For a fleeting moment—hating Latisan so venomously—Craig rather envied Latisan his prospects as ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... Tahiti, for example, is surrounded by a barrier reef which is really an immense wall. The large barrier reef on the northeast coast of Australia extends in a continuous line for 1,000 miles, and varies from 10 to 90 miles in breadth. Some reefs are mere fringes which simply skirt the coast lands, and seem to be mere extensions of the beach. Still another variety of reef is known as the "atoll" or "lagoon" reef. This latter form is seen in circular rings of coral of various breadths which enclose a body of still water—the lagoon. There are many ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... much further, when, happening to look around for something, Nannie caught a glimpse of her dress skirt and saw that it was creased ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... very nice starch, and clap it into them, after they are hung on the line, they iron much better this way, and look almost like new, sometimes to wash the cuffs and lower part carefully, and press it all over, will do without washing the whole dress. For ironing the skirt have a narrow ironing board, covered with a piece of blanket, to slip inside ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... Anthea kindly - 'would you like to come and sit on my lap? You'd be warmer, and I could turn the skirt of my frock up round you. I'd ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... contrast life with that of those who have loved more after our fashion, and have more seeming weight in the world, and always humbly as though he were only sure his way is best for him: 'Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.' At another time, remembering how his life had once a different shape, he will say, 'Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore

... to-night will Dian cheer The swain, and chase the boatman's fear; Till then—no beacon on the cliff May shape the course of struggling skiff; 540 The scattered lights that skirt the bay, All, one by one, have died away; The only lamp of this lone hour Is glimmering in Zuleika's tower. Yes! there is light in that lone chamber, And o'er her silken ottoman Are thrown the fragrant ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... national dress, Hindoos with turbans and robes, Japanese and Chinese women dressed in the silks and brocades of their lands. Oh, don't worry about bead-trimmed leggings and a few feathers. And your skirt in that costume is nowhere near as short as those worn by three-fourths of the girls ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... girl—another of the laboriously fitted out of the night before, has a marvellous affection for the little stool, and the skirt of her frock seems drawn about her feet ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... few old rails. You can see the water mark on Red Mike right here at the bottom of the saddle skirt." And the old man reached down and put his finger on the smoking horse. "The Gauley ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... rice, or of the seed sown, will thereby secure a good crop. Moreover, when the Siamese representative of the king is guiding the plough, the people watch him anxiously, not to see whether he drives a straight furrow, but to mark the exact point on his leg to which the skirt of his silken robe reaches; for on that is supposed to hang the state of the weather and the crops during the ensuing season. If the Lord of the Heavenly Hosts hitches up his garment above his knee, the weather will be wet and heavy rains will spoil the harvest. If he lets it trail to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... its northern edge, east of the Sagartians, were the Parthians, the Arians, and the Gandarians. occurring in that order as we proceed from west to east. The Parthians held the country known now as the Atak or "Skirt," the flat tract at the southern base of the Elburz from about Shahrud to Khaff, together with a portion of the mountain region adjoining. This is a rich and valuable territory, well watered by a number of small streams, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... full skirt of fifty years ago, with huge red roses on a white-and-green dotted background, and, as aprons, would have made the snake doctor look like a very young circus. I couldn't stand the thought and cranked my mind as hard as I could for a half minute. The idea came, and ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... their vessel, loaded a large brass gun that occupied the centre of the schooner's deck, and sent a shower of cannister shot among the savages, killing and wounding not only many of the men, but some of the women and children who chanced to be on the skirt of the wood. They then set sail, and, as they coasted along, fired into several villages, the people of which had nothing ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... ... tski, how loveable and charming was that lady, une vraie francaise par l'esprit,—the French have no higher praise than this,—what an extraordinary musician she was, and how wonderfully she waltzed. (Varvara Pavlovna did really waltz so as to allure all hearts to the skirt of her light, floating robe.) In fact, he spread her fame abroad throughout the world; and this we know, whatever ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... young lady retorted. "I hardly think it fair in Ellen, but I shall accept, of course, and I must go to town to-day to see about having my pink silk fixed. I think I'll have some black lace festooned around the skirt. How I wish I could have a new one. Do you suppose Hugh ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... which, of course, she wore no corset, but only a narrow belt—was very becoming: a light blouse, a mouse-coloured skirt, close fitting over the hips and not reaching to her ankles, grey silk stockings, and white ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... way to these little sitters, while all the other children, clinging to her skirt, attended her, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... near spoiling the whole thing," declared Jack, grinning at Jimmie. "You and your talk about twisted spark-plugs! You'd have been finding worn places in the spark next! You know about as much of a motor boat as a pig knows of the hobble skirt. Good thing the Major knows less about a ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... from the unknown, and arranged her skirt with a dexterity altogether feminine. "I think I'll stay on the wall," she decided. "So long as some ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... pass through. There is no shoulder seam. A straight piece set over the shoulder extends down in square, both front and back, to a line about even with the breast, where it is sewed to the garment proper. A narrow skirt (dingwa), with colored border, extends from the waist to the knees. It is held in place by drawing it tightly and then tucking one corner under the upper edge, or by pressing it beneath ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... old women wore the fringed skirt, made of cloth spun and woven from the soft inner bark of the young cedar, which they used to wear ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... home, they have no place in the outdoor life, and you will be freer if you discard the dress skirt when at camp and on the trail. Have your muscles free, be able to take in long, deep breaths, to move readily all portions of your body, and not be hampered in any way by ill-fitting, uncomfortable clothing. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... Three youths with him in company appear, With golden lilies wrought in their array: A lion seems against that monster drear To issue, with the same device as they: The name of these are on the marble read, Some on their skirt, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... pitcher, and slipped out into the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on her in pillars of whirling dust as soon as she appeared. But the sun that pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on old Boreas—it showed her a way between the pillars, and only just her skirt was caught by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into her alley. It peeped after her halfway down its dark depths, where it seemed colder even than in the bleak street, but there it had to ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... lucky enough to catch the kit she threw at him before its precious contents spilled. But it wasn't luck that guided his hand to the back of her skirt hard enough to ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... as it can be!" Lena went on, half-coaxing, half-defiant. "You ought to see it, Mame! A silk waist, every bit as good as new, only of course it's mussed up, lying in the bag; and a skirt, and lots of other things, all as nice as nice! I can't think what the folks that had them meant, putting such things into the rags: why, that waist hadn't much more than come out of the shop, you might say. And do you think I'm going to let it go through ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... the dark partition came the quick, rustling stir of a skirt, and the slight scrape of a chair pushed either backward or forward. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... the lawn by the footmen, and afterwards, being tired of the game, I found myself strolling with Muriel Leithcourt, a bright, dark-eyed girl with tightly-bound hair, and wearing a cotton blouse and flannel tennis skirt. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... reside in caves scooped in the sides of the ravines which lead to the higher regions of the Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in iron, and it is not unfrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... calls a "Polanaise". Hid wat kinder like a wrapper made of calico made wid tight in de waist en wide in de bottom. Den I've remembers de basque waist on de over skirts dese war made real tight waists wid a point in de back en ober de stomach. De skirt wer real full dem a skirt ober dis ter de knees wid a big ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... though how Pomp changed his grasp of my hand after a struggle, by getting his teeth well into the skirt of the loose black garment I wore, thus setting both my hands at liberty, so that I was able to get a double hold upon the boughs, and drag and draw with such good effect that Pomp was soon ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... the last light at night, she said, she had toiled at making cloth dress-skirts, lined up and with two flounces, for seven shillings a dozen. Cloth dress- skirts, mark you, lined up with two flounces, for seven shillings a dozen! This is equal to $1.75 per dozen, or 14.75 cents per skirt. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... selfish and you're not fusty; but you remind me of him when you make remarks like your first." She brushed a caterpillar from her light summer skirt, and noticing the draggled edge held it up. "There's one answer to your question about taking an active interest in clubs. There are twenty others, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... the firm of Lucas & Enwright. George had never until that day conceived the man apart from Russell Square. And here he was smoking a cigarette in an easy-chair and wearing red morocco slippers, and being called 'father' by a really stunning creature in a thin white blouse and a blue skirt. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... we anchored, lies in north, inclining to the west, and seemed to be sheltered from all winds. The middle cape, or point of land that disjoins these two bays, rises to a considerable height, especially inland; for close to the sea is a skirt of low land, off which lie some pointed rocks, but so near to the shore as to be noways dangerous. Indeed, the navigation of this side of the Strait seems much safer than the other, because the tides here are not near so strong. Cape Teerawhitte ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... entered modestly and shyly, with her eyes upon the ground, knowing the rudeness of the gallants, and the large sum she was priced at. Her dress was of the purest white, very sweet and simple, without a line of ornament, for she herself adorned it. The way she walked and touched her skirt (rather than seemed to hold it up) with a white hand beaming one red rose, this and her stately supple neck, and the flowing of her hair would show, at a distance of a hundred yards, that she could be none but Lorna Doone. Lorna Doone of my early love; in the days ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... endeavouring to find—or endeavouring to catch her. In vain Mrs. Stoutenburgh's crimson and Miss Essie's blue floated past him and rustled behind him. In vain Mrs. Somers' purple stood in his way. The skirt of that one black silk could go nowhere that some one of the doctor's senses did not inform him of it. Closely he followed upon her flight, and keen work Faith found it, play as well as she would. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... though it had assumed more prominent proportions, they were still at some distance, and it was not until the third morning that the little party stood on the reedy shores of a long narrow winding lake, one end of which they had to skirt before they could ride up to the foot of the flat-topped mountain which looked as if it had been suddenly thrust by some wondrous volcanic action right from the plain to form what appeared to be a huge castle, some seven or eight hundred feet high, and with no ravine or rift in ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... lady in the city; and what is more, she keeps on doing it. To give the reader a taste of her quality, it is only necessary to describe a dress she wore at the Dramatic Fund Ball, not many years ago. There was a rich blue satin skirt, en train. Over this there was looped up a magnificent brocade silk, white, with bouquets of flowers woven in all the natural colors. This overskirt was deeply flounced with costly white lace, caught ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... us, got a mouthful and spluttered. 'Come, come, come!' Yermolai shouted roughly to him—and Sutchok, scrambling, hopping and skipping, managed to reach a shallower place, but even in his greatest extremity was never so bold as to clutch at the skirt of my coat. Worn out, muddy and wet, we at last ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... so short that he stands on a platform at the side, to bring his figure into harmonious relation to the group. His dress is blue satin, of stiff, full skirt, which, with the close white cap on his head, makes him a quaint little figure. A chubby, innocent looking baby, he is nevertheless a personage who fully realizes the important place he occupies in the family group, and is determined to fill ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... all to put in it except her clothes. Alice told about the places in which she kept them—it was like a museum! There was a gown-room, made dust-proof, of polished hardwood, and with tier upon tier of long poles running across, and padded skirt-supporters hanging from them. Everywhere there was order and system—each skirt was numbered, and in a chiffonier-drawer of the same number you would find the waist—and so on with hats and stockings and gloves and shoes and parasols. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... Suddenly a playful expression beams upon your countenance; your mouth expresses the irony of a wise man tempered by the indulgence of a friend; you have caught a glimpse, through an opera-comique cloud, of a miller's pretty wife with powdered hair, a waist all trimmed with gay ribbons, a light and short skirt, and stockings with gilded clocks; in short, one of those fair young millers' wives whose heart goes pit-a-pat with hautboy accompaniment. But the graces who are ever sporting in your mind sometimes lead it astray; my ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... he was standing on the narrow sidewalk surrounded by a group whose members his enthusiasm had drawn out of doors. Few others were abroad; an occasional Mexican woman in her black skirt and tight-drawn reboso, a peon or two slouching gracefully by with the inevitable brown cigarette, and a solitary horseman who was coming down ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... from the tip of her small, dainty boot, peeping out from under the hem of the skirt, up to the beautiful coloring of her face and the purity of her low, white feminine brow Dick noted in turn. He had never seen Laura look so attractive, not even in her dainty ball finery of the night before. He had never felt so strongly drawn toward her as he did ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... every day. He took us all three on his knees at the some time. I loved him. When he was gone, I said, 'Miss Sue, where is Master Alex?' She say, 'Maybe he be back pretty soon.' While he was gone they had a battle in a little skirt of woods close by. We hung to Miss Sue's skirt tail. I seen the Yankees run by on horses and some walking. Mr. Jordan, a southern soldier, was shot in his ribs. Mr. Buford was shot in his knee. Some of the other southern soldiers drug them up to our house. Miss Sue nursed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... the low cart; some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the world,—some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... her feet to the white rug beside the bed, stood up, and lifting her gown as if for a skirt dance, skipped lightly to a willow rocker which stood invitingly before one of the tall windows overlooking the terrace ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... admits of an explanation; that the disappearance of the great man was necessary for the advent of a great age; that in the battle of Waterloo there was more than a storm, that is, the bursting of a meteor. "At nightfall," he continues, "Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat in a field near Genappe a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, carried so far by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, passed the bridle over his arm, and was now with wandering eye returning alone to Waterloo. It ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... companion in excessively bad humor at the fruitlessness of the expedition. We were caught in the skirt of a snowstorm as we got into the chestnut woods. The sight of the snow falling gently, of the earth and bushes whitened all round, made me feel back at Posen, once more a child. I sang and shouted, to my companion's horror. This will be a bad point against me if reported ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... and the dreams and confidences I am bubbling over with have no outlet. Sara couldn't understand—she is so practical. When I go to her with some beautiful thought I have found in a book or poem she is quite likely to say, "Yes, yes, but I noticed this morning that the braid was loose on your skirt, Beatrice. Better go and sew it on before you forget again. 'A stitch in time ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... deceivingly Man and wife are one, and that that one is the husband Mean more by its suggestions and allusions than is said Must we be always either vapid or serious? Newspaper-made person No power on earth that can prevent the return of the long skirt No room for a leisure class that is not useful Persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs Poor inhabitants living along only from habit Repose in activity Responsibility of attractiveness Responsible for all the mischief her ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... base and brickish skirt there, sours That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded Rural rural keeping—folk, flocks, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... seen others do, I anointed mine head with oil and covered my face thickly with powder. Then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in folds down to my shoulders, and tied an enormous bustle round my small waist, so that it dangled behind, almost meeting the hem of my skirt. Thus attired I went down to ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... Theodore's fun in acting ogre behind the great aloe, or Mr. Alexis's achievements with the croquet ball, or his information about the Red Indians and Onomootka, she was equally ungracious to all; she scolded Thekla for crumpling her skirt, and was quite sure that Paula had on the wrong fichu that was meant for her. Each bridesmaid had been presented with a bracelet, like a snake with ruby eyes; but Vera, fingering hers with fidgeting petulance, seemed to have managed to loosen the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... until yo' see my noo black silk. I'se got me a tight skirt, an' a Dutch neck—Lawzee, honey, but dis ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... against the native habit of "squatting" the leaves—that is, boiling and squeezing them to extract the tannin. The little lady called Katharyne (a fearless forest-maid who roamed the woods in leathern jacket and short blue skirt, followed by an enormous and admiring guide, and caught big fish everywhere) offered to lend us anything in her outfit, from a pack-basket to a darning-needle. It was cheerful to meet with such general encouragement in our small adventure. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... directors, in July, 1911, announced a decision. It caused general surprise. There should be three sites: Harbor View and a strip of the adjoining Presidio, Golden Gate Park and Lincoln Park, connected by a boulevard, specially constructed to skirt the bay from the ferry ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... the narrow hallway her gingham skirt brushed the crouching form of Joe, who had been waiting at his sister's door, but the aged lady did not ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... garden is like those pernicious machineries we read of every month in the newspapers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible destruction. In an evil hour he pulled down his wall and added a field to his homestead. No land is bad, but land is worse. If a man own land, the ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... the large kitchen making preparations for the Christmas dinner. She was a picture of dainty loveliness in a lavender gingham dress, made with a full skirt and a shirred waist and big leg-o'-mutton sleeves. A white apron was tied ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... improve the favourable opportunity; and his enemies (who were, for that matter, the whole Court) always found means to throw him out of favour again. The celebrated Archie Armstrong offered Sir Mungo, in his generosity, a skirt of his own fool's coat, proposing thereby to communicate to him the privileges and immunities of a professed jester—"For," said the man of motley, "Sir Mungo, as he goes on just now, gets no more for a good jest than just the king's pardon ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... better take some provisions along?" asked Ruth, as she slipped the cartridges into her revolver and put the weapon in the pocket of the sports skirt that she had donned. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... came quietly a tall white Lady in a dark cloak. Hey! powers of earth and air, but this was not to be doubted! Evenly forward she came, without a footfall, without a rustle or the crackling of a twig, without so much as kneeing her skirt—stood before them so nearly that they saw the pale oval of her face, and said in a voice like a muffled bell, "I am hungry, my friends; have you any meat?" She had a face like the moon, and great round eyes; within her cloak, on the bosom of her white ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... pale eyes were fastened upon her in a way she had known in Katleean. She felt suddenly that he had taken in every detail of her appearance—her heavy braided hair, her worn and faded blouse, her short ragged skirt, and her feet incased in home-made moccasins of canvas. She felt a rush of hot blood rising to her hair. He noted it and smiled, his sardonic, thin-lipped smile. The peculiar warmth that crept into his eyes caused Ellen's heart to contract with ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... declare yourself to be an idler! prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is the rolling-mill. You must be on your guard against it, it is crafty and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you will be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time, and save yourself! Otherwise, it is all over with you; in a short time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, hope for nothing more. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... dressed in the old Scotch fashion, with short stockings, bare knees, and kilts (a short skirt which comes nearly to the knee). Over their shoulders hangs the "plaidie," which is a long shawl. They wear a tight coat, and in front of them hangs the sporran, a pocket made of white fur. The crowning ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... with your dress!" was the regretful rejoinder. "Uncle Phil said the skirt was ruined; but papa says you shall have another every bit ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... morning when Daisy was next roused by the fairy music, and the ponies were standing at the door. "Are we going far?" she asked, as Wee put on her riding-skirt, and tied back ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... dresses have been made. Not to go back to those bristling horrors of the Middle Ages and the renaissance, look at this ball-dress of 1810: a night-gown without sleeves, made of two breadths of pink silk, very low in the neck, and very short in the skirt. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... which was a stile, and beyond it a green field, and the foliage of trees. Turning down this lane, he entered the field, and crossed it in a diagonal direction, till he reached its further corner. Here, on the skirt of a coppice, and under the shade of some large chestnut-trees, a group was assembled, and a scene presented itself, that might be sought for in vain in any country but Spain. Above a wood-fire, which burned black and smouldering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... through the villages, and a certain number of acolytes, or companions, made their cortege. This magician was alone. His whole breast was zebraed with white marks, done with pipe clay. The lower part of his body disappeared under an ample skirt of grass stuff, the "train" of which would not have disgraced a modern elegant. A collar of birds' skulls was round his neck; on his head was a sort of leathern helmet, with plumes ornamented with pearls; around his loins a copper belt, to which ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... have been accidental, but it looked neglected—was not merely dingy, but plainly shabby, and, to Mary's country eyes, appeared on the wrong side of clean. Presently, as those eyes got accustomed to the miserable light, they spied in the skirt of her gown a perfunctory darn, revealing but too evidently that to Letty there no longer seemed occasion for being particular. The sadness of it all sunk to Mary's heart: Letty had not found marriage a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... heart began to quap,* *quake, pant Hearing her coming, and *short for to sike;* *make short sighs* And Pandarus, that led her by the lap,* *skirt Came near, and gan in at the curtain pick,* *peep And saide: "God do boot* alle sick! *afford a remedy to See who is here you coming to visite; Lo! here is she that is *your death to wite!"* *to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... from under and got himself aloft, rubbing his indignant back. If Serina was no Aurora rising from the sea, her husband was no Phoebus Apollo. His gown looked like hers, only younger. It had a frivolous little pocket, and the slit-skirt effect on both sides; and it was cut what is called "misses' length," disclosing two of the least attractive shins ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... woman's mouth. "Dad always liked to see me wear nice clothes. He said it advertised the store." Then her glance fell to her coarse, wretched skirt, and ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... deal, Mysore being as low as 1,400 feet, the greatest depth sunk at present, while the least depth sunk is about 300 feet. Ladies going underground have to wear suitable attire. Skirts would be quite useless. A long coat, or short skirt reaching to the knees, and knickerbockers, is the most comfortable dress for the occasion. Very ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... as if it were yesterday, going to drive with Lady B-, the British ambassadress, in just such a conveyance. She drove four horses with feathers on their heads, when she used to come to Meurice’s for me. I blush when I think that my frock was so scant that I had to raise the skirt almost to my knees in order ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... tapestry, he fancied he saw the skirt of a dress disappear into the next room, and immediately Bussy appeared at his post in the middle of the corridor. Suspicion grew ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... the negro wailed, and turning in despair from the last speaker, imploringly caught the Methodist by the skirt of his coat. But a change had come over that before impassioned intercessor. With an irresolute and troubled air, he mutely eyed the suppliant; against whom, somehow, by what seemed instinctive influences, the distrusts first set on foot were now generally reviving, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... not for long; they brought him to with water, and Westby knelt by him fanning his face with the skirt of his dressing gown. Barclay picked the boy up. "Oh, I'm all right, sir," said Price, and he insisted on being allowed to walk to the athletic house alone,—which he ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... sound of hard c, and is used before e and i, where, according to English analogy, c would be soft, as kept, king, skirt, skeptick, for so it should be written, not sceptick, because sc is sounded like ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... in a mess and muddle like this,' came the smothered voice, as the figures pulled and pushed with increasing energy.' And my tarpaulin skirt is all askew. The winds are ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... gowns, and shielding the sun from their eyes with huge fans of black and silver. But the Infanta was the most graceful of all, and the most tastefully attired, after the somewhat cumbrous fashion of the day. Her robe was of grey satin, the skirt and the wide puffed sleeves heavily embroidered with silver, and the stiff corset studded with rows of fine pearls. Two tiny slippers with big pink rosettes peeped out beneath her dress as she walked. Pink and pearl was her ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... the middle of Billerica, the fields on either hand had a soft and cultivated English aspect, the village spire being seen over the copses which skirt the river, and sometimes an orchard straggled down to the water-side, though, generally, our course this forenoon was the wildest part of our voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly cultivators of the earth, and lived ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... on sixty, with a heavily-lined face, and a skin from which the freshness and bloom had long, long ago departed; but there was fire in her old eyes still, tired though they looked; there was sweetness and firmness about her lined mouth. Heaven knows who had dressed her. She wore a skimpy tweed skirt and a cheap nun's veiling blouse, and on her iron-grey hair was perched rakishly a forlorn broken picture-hat of faded green, chiffon with a knot of bright red ribbon to give the bizarre touch of colour she had learned to admire ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... occasion we found several visitors of the better class in the room devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the medium, her eyes, a soft expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair which exactly matched their color, and, at ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... emergency; hold open a gate on a windy day, or perform the numerous kindly acts which fall to the lot of the mere male. Besides, however active and well-intentioned we may be, we are hampered by our dress, and still more so by the want of it, in the case of an apron skirt. If a crop is used for hacking, say in the Row, the thong should be taken off, for it would look as much out of place there as a pink hunting coat. The whip should be always carried handle downwards, on the off-side, as if we were trying to conceal its ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... pink skirt, Mona danced gaily round the kitchen, the breeze blowing in at the open door ruffled her hair a little. She drew herself up, breathless, and glanced out. Everything certainly looked very tempting out of doors. She longed to go and have a run, the breeze and the sunshine seemed ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... in which it seems to be my self-elected guardian's pleasure that I shall travel; and what does it prove to be?—A skirt, or upper-petticoat of camlet, like those worn by country ladies of moderate rank when on horseback, with such a riding-mask as they frequently use on journeys to preserve their eyes and complexion from the sun and dust, and sometimes, it is suspected, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... shield of the Knight of the Burning Tower, with the suit of polished steel, cap-a-pied armour, with skirt of ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... starting up, "Mrs. Forbes thought I'd better wear my sailor suit instead of this, and she told me not to sit down on anything dirty." She carefully turned up the skirt of her little frock and seated herself again on a ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... photograph, because I can never describe her. There is a bodice of black satin, short in the back, over a plastron of pasteboard of the same, and a huge black-satin cravat sticking out on both sides of her cheeks, a wadded skirt of blue alpaca, and pink leg-of-mutton sleeves. I can make nothing of this description when I read it. I ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... in life." When she started home afoot across the city, Clara was alarmed for her safety. "You must get a cab or let me wake up uncle's man; something may happen," she said. Kate laughed and went off, striding along the street like a man. Sometimes she thrust her hands into her skirt pockets, that were like the trouser pockets of a man, and it was difficult for Clara to remember that she was a woman. In Kate's presence she became bolder than she had ever been with any one. One evening she told the story ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... distance. A darker shade is upon the woods, the hills, the waters, and by the time we approach Fredericksburg it will be dark. This too is a very pretty place on the north side of the bay; beautiful orchards and meadows skirt the water, and fine bass-wood and willow-trees grow beside, or bend over the waves. The green smooth meadows, out of which the black stumps rotted long ago, show noble groups of hiccory and butter-nut, and sleek fat ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... at the two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on the ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... meeting at home (though she discovered that, thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the preparations which now seemed more irksome than before, and at twelve o'clock all was ready again. Feeling that the neighbors were interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of yesterday's ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... Italy, not only because of the richness of the soil and the magnificence of the vegetation, but also as regards the language, the manners, and the picturesque costumes. In each valley the dress is different; in one place the women wear a short skirt, an apron held in by a girdle, and a bright colored bodice; in another they wear a cap above which is a large shady hat; in the Val Maroblio they have a woolen dress not very different from that of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... caught occasional glimpses of East Hill winter-wrapped in its white mantle. Just north of the city shone the resplendence of the ice-cloaked rocks and waterfalls of Fall Creek Gorge, like a massive garniture emblazoned on the mantle's skirt. The unbroken calm of the quiet winter afternoon touched the rider's overwrought heart and awoke in him a sense of the peace and the dignity of the visible creation. The untroubled serenity and repose which all nature presented, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... his linen tunic embroidered with gold and girded himself with the skirt of the beggar. It gave him the look of a real slave. The queen soon reappeared dressed in the blue seamless garment of the women who ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France

... Bunker had apparently walked there for other reasons than to see the view. He did stop once or twice, but it was only to scan the downs ahead, and at the sight of a fluttering skirt he showed no interest in anything else, but made a straight line for its owner. For her part, the lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an expression of as perfect unconcern ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... in front," Mrs. Hart said, as she bent forward and squinted sidewise with quite a visible sneer. "You'd look powerful funny walking along kicking up the skirt behind. With a veil on nobody could tell whether you was going or coming. Take my word for it—that stuff'll fade, even in the sun. You won't get more than one or two wearings ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... of the steps a boy—a head taller than Chad perhaps—was rigging up a fishing-pole. A negro boy was leading a black pony toward the porch, and, to his dying day, Chad never forgot the scene that followed. For, the next moment, a little figure in a long riding-skirt stood in the big doorway and then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little girl bound lightly to her saddle; ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... was in a whirl of excitement. She even offered—an unheard-of concession—to wipe the supper dishes so that Elizabeth might get through her work the sooner, and she plastered a huge white bow across the back of her head, and pulled down the skirt of her dress to make it as long as possible. Sadie would gladly have thrown away three years of her life so that she might be sixteen, and really grown up ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... larger, wider, but not so incisive, so deep, or so intense. Then how loose and general Hogarth's composition would seem compared to this marvellous epitome, this essence of things! That open space in front of the table, into which the skirt and the lean legs of the man come so well—how well the point of view was selected! The beautiful, dissonant rhythm of that composition is like a page of Wagner—the figures crushed into the right of the canvas, the left filled up with a fragment of marble table running ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... my young friend," he exclaimed. "Those are returning tourists from Switzerland; the thin, sharp-featured girl there, with a plaid skirt and a satchel, is an American. Heavens! how she talks! She has lost a trunk. The whole system will be turned upside down until she has found it or been compensated. The two young men with her are silent. They are wise. Alone she will prevail. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... trying to follow it breathlessly on the back of that broken-kneed and sorry steed, late middle-age. There was something ridiculous in the girlish attire intended to convince her fellow creatures that her day was not over; something terrible in the low blouse, short skirt, silk stockings, gauze, lace and fluttering ribbons with which she sought to delude the sneering ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... sudden changes of mood Alfaretta dropped down upon the floor and pulled from the pocket of her old-fashioned skirt a cheap paper pad. It was well scribbled with penciled notes which the girl critically ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... they'll come here. Troops may not be here for an hour yet. Fifty per cent. Hooligans in the crowd, and the more furnished flats they go into the better they'll like it. Obviously.... They mean a clear out. You put this skirt and bonnet on, Bensington, and clear out ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... their horses into a gallop. They kept close to the sea, while Urrea was more than half a mile inland. Luckily, a thin skirt of timber soon intervened between Mexicans and Texans, and the six believed that Urrea and his men were unaware of their presence. Their own cloud of dust was much smaller than that of the Mexicans, and also it might ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... advertisements, wedding cards, etc., that came to them through the mail, and developing a paper business on that basis; and the Skeleton in the Closet, which shows how the fate of the Southern Confederacy was involved in the adventures of a certain hoop-skirt, "built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark." Mr. Hale's historical scholarship and his exact habit of mind have aided him in the art of giving vraisemblance to absurdities. He is known in philanthropy ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... flowering into bruises. I pity him when he wakes up to-morrow. He'll be too stiff to move an inch, without grunting. His pluck and his nerve are no match for his strength .... Here we are!" he broke off, beginning to skirt the hither edge of the swamp. "Unless all my dope is wrong, it ought to be somewhere close ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... from the twopenny bus as it drew up, she gathered her trim tailor-made skirt about her with neatness and decorum, being well used to getting in and out of twopenny buses and to making her way across muddy London streets. A woman whose tailor-made suit must last two or three years soon learns how to protect it from splashes, and how to aid it to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... he was conscious of an abundant black skirt vanishing through the door into the restaurant, and of Annette with her hands up to her hair. It was the attitude in which of all others he admired her—so beautifully straight and rounded and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... "I shouldn't have thought it would have got so much jammed, coming fifty miles," she soliloquized. "But they seemed to take a pleasure in seeing how much they could bang the trunks." She rose to her feet and shook out the dress, and drew the skirt several times ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of gold-fish she had accidentally upset the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... of something terrible, Rollo now came up to her, sought her hand with his head, and, when he had found it, lay down upon the rug before her bed. With her other hand Effi had pressed three times on the button of the bell and in less than half a minute Johanna was there, in her bare feet, her skirt hanging over her arm and a large checkered cloth thrown over her head ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... hour and a half, and unimaginable was the destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast —the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing at the start—nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt; and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in gold, and peacocks' eyes of vivid deep blue and green; her feet were bare, for Hamilton, in his revolt from English ways, had kept up Oriental traditions as far as possible in the clothing of his new mistress, and weighty anklets of solid gold gleamed beneath the border of her skirt. Round the perfect column of her neck, full and stately as the red deer's, were twisted great strings of pearls, throwing their pale irridescent greenish hue onto the velvet skin. Above the splendour of her dress rose the regal and lovely face, its delicate carving and the marvel ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... cut. But with this here play iv 'Cyrus O'Bergerac' 'tis far diff'rent. Th' curtain goes up an' shows Bill Delaney an' little Tim Scanlan an' Mark Toolan an' Packy Dugan, that wurruks in the shoe store, an' Molly Donahue an' th' Casey sisters, thim that scandalized th' parish be doin' a skirt dance at th' fair, all walkin' up an' down talkin'. 'Tin to wan on Sharkey,' says Toolan. 'I go ye, an' make it a hundherd,' says Tim Scanlan. 'Was ye at th' cake walk?' 'Who stole me hat?' 'Cudden't ye die waltzin'?' 'They say Murphy has gone ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... the white tents came down and disappeared as the Mavericks took a side-road to Umballa. It did not skirt the resting-place, and Kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under fire of comments from soldiers' wives, was not so confident as overnight. He discovered that he was closely watched—Father Victor on the one side, and Mr Bennett ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... fixed upon the open volume in her hand. Belle-bouche is very richly clad, in a velvet gown, a satin underskirt from which the gown is looped back, wide cuffs and profuse lace at wrists and neck; and on her diminutive feet, which peep from the skirt, are red morocco shoes tied with bows of ribbon, and adorned with heels not more than three inches in height. Her hair is powdered and woven with pearls—she wears a pearl necklace; she looks like a child dressed by ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... the village of Antri in the Gwalior territory, over a fine plain of rich alluvial soil under spring crops. This plain bears manifest signs of having been at no very remote period, like the kingdom of Bohemia, the bed of a vast lake bounded by the ranges of sandstone hills which now seem to skirt the horizon all round; and studded with innumerable islands of all shapes and sizes, which now rise abruptly in all directions out of the cultivated plain.[2] The plain is still like the unruffled surface of a vast lake; and the rich green of the spring ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... called an estuary, for it receives at its head the waters of the Derwent. Near the mouth there are some extensive basaltic platforms; but higher up the land becomes mountainous, and is covered by a light wood. The lower parts of the hills which skirt the bay are cleared; and the bright yellow fields of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant. Late in the evening we anchored in the snug cove on the shores of which stands the capital ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... post of the folding-door, she took a pair of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Vanstone (from whose view she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen's attention by speaking to her, and then bent forward, with the scissors ready in her hand. The skirt of the false Miss Garth's gown—the brown alpaca dress, with the white spots on it—touched the floor, within the housekeeper's reach. Mrs. Lecount lifted the outer of the two flounces which ran round the bottom ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black, the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness. And the wonder of her great eyes fairly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... stole into the lane with the air of a guilty child. She gave a little gasp as she came face to face with Saton, and picking up her skirts, seemed for a moment about to fly. He stood quite still—his face was sad—almost reproachful. She dropped her skirt and came slowly, doubtfully ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Her body and limbs, notwithstanding her extreme slightness, were graceful, perhaps, but with the grace of the tigress. She wore a green silk dressing jacket, pulled together with a belt of lizard skin, and her neck was bare. Her skirt was of some thin black material. She was obviously in deshabille, and yet there was something neat and trim about the smaller ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of the lightest. Clothing should consist of one pair of stout, high, waterproof, hob-nailed boots; one pair of light moccasins, to rest the feet in camp; short skirt; middy; riding breeches or bloomers (for in crossing difficult passes skirts must be discarded); hat; gauntlet gloves; one change of underclothes; three pairs of wool stockings; one sweater; one comb (no brush); one small pocket mirror; ivory soap or ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... neck, crooning over him, talking to him in her motherly way, telling him what a ruffian he was and how ashamed she was of him for getting the hair worn off under his collar, and he a horse old enough to know better, Bobby's "Toodles," an animated doormat of a dog, sniffing at her skirt, when Otto and his ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of three, four, or five when they went through the villages, and a certain number of acolytes, or companions, made their cortege. This magician was alone. His whole breast was zebraed with white marks, done with pipe clay. The lower part of his body disappeared under an ample skirt of grass stuff, the "train" of which would not have disgraced a modern elegant. A collar of birds' skulls was round his neck; on his head was a sort of leathern helmet, with plumes ornamented with pearls; around his loins a copper belt, to which hung several hundred bells, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... too much for poor Sancho. He fell fainting on the Duchess' skirt. She ordered her servants to fan him and to throw water in his face, and he regained consciousness just as one of the carts was passing. It was drawn by four oxen, completely covered with black cloth, and attached to each horn was a lighted wax taper. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... revolution, so that the gun has a clear sweep. It can be locked by means of a lever operated by the gunner. The gunner sits on a seat fastened to the frame which supports the turret. The running machinery of the car which comes below the floor, is, of course, protected by a steel skirt, which extends around the car. The machine gun is aimed through a loop-hole in the steel turret. It can fire from 300 to 600 rifle bullets a minute, and has an effective range of a mile and a half. The bullets are ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... novel before; nobody at all except Des Grieux, and he is but as a sketch to an elaborate picture. She will wander after Pallas, and would like to think that she would like to be of the train of Dian (one shudders at imagining the scowl and the shrug and the twist of the skirt of the goddess!). But the kiss of Aphrodite has been on her, and has mastered her whole nature. How the thing could be done, out of poetry, has always been a marvel to me; but I have explained it by the supposition that the absolute ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... men were making up their quarrel, Schoenleben noticed that the skirt of the other's coat ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... I'm proud out of him, the poor child! But I wisht it was home in his own house he was to be," she replied, raising her skirt, and stuffing the purse into a large pocket that hung round her waist over a red flannel petticoat; "han't ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... no second bidding; but, instinctively clutching the front breadth of her skirt in her hands to conceal the stains, she jumped out, ran in at the little gate, and into the house, up to ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... is given by Rousselet in his magnificent work entitled "L'Inde des Rajahs," and quoted by Guyot-Daubes. It is called in India the "dance of the eggs." The dancer, dressed in a rather short skirt, places on her head a large wheel made of light wood, and at regular intervals having hanging from it pieces of thread, at the ends of which are running knots kept open by beads of glass. She then brings forth a basket of eggs, and passes them around for inspection to assure her spectators ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... saving of one half the quantity of these ingredients will be effected, as, with long boiling, the flavour almost entirely passes away. The shank-bones of mutton, previously well soaked, will be found a great assistance in enriching gravies; a kidney or melt, beef skirt, trimmings of meat, &c. &c., answer very well when only a small quantity is wanted, and, as we have before observed, a good gravy need not necessarily be so very expensive; for economically-prepared dishes are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... Priscilla's leg particularly; but with a slight lift of an already short skirt she surveyed her own calf curiously. She wanted to know exactly how thick Frank's ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... ride, if a gentleman cannot offer the use of his own horses, or the lady does not name a horse to which she has been accustomed, he must be careful to select one of proved gentleness, and trained to the side-saddle and riding-skirt. It is exceedingly dangerous to allow a lady to mount a horse which may be entirely strange to a lady's hand or habit; and it is not well to trust this important matter to a ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... slim little maiden, with yellow, flossy hair in short curls all over her head. Her eyes were very sweet and round and blue, and she wore a quaint little snuff-colored gown. It had a short full waist, with low neck and puffed sleeves, and the skirt was straight and narrow and down to her ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... the way, and thus the ridiculous descent was made with those girls in high spirits behind. Indeed, the darker, rockier, steeper it got, the more they shrieked from pure joy—but I was anything than happy. It was dangerous. I didn't know the cliffs and high rocks we might skirt and an unlucky guidance might land us in the creek-bed far down. But the blessed stars came out, the moon peered over a farther mountain and on the last spur there was the gray horse browsing in the path—and the sound of ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... these bewilderments she was to have to do. She wondered if she would know how to dress him. Once she had watched Mis' Winslow dress a child, and she remembered what unexpected places Mis' Winslow had buttoned—buttonholes that went up and down in the skirt bands, and so on. Armholes might be too small and garters too tight, and how was one ever to know? If it were a little girl now ... but a little boy.... What would she talk to him about while they ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... means, accursed heretic. Having felt the snake (which is very short, but very thick in the body, with a head like a toad) several times moving under my feet, and then moving no more, I then stepped off the garment, and turning it over, I lifted it up by the skirt, so that the dead snake rolled ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... Nic aloud, as he bore off more to the right so as to skirt the little wood some fifty yards away; when out from the other side dashed half a dozen large animals, some of a ruddy hue, others of a bluish-brown colour, bounding over the ground like gigantic hares more than anything else, while the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... a walking skirt and stout shoes, for the way to the river was rough, and set out. On the way she thought of many things, and chiefly of the man pacing his lonely walk back and forth behind windows that ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... hoe. Then came the planting, when bare feet loved the cool earth, and trotted over other untold miles, while little fingers carefully counted out seven grains from the store carried in my apron skirt, as I chanted: ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... idea—these things and an unscrupulous man, Constantine the Great, put the Christians firmly in the saddle. And soon came cataracts of blood. If the tales of the imperial persecutions are true, then hath Christianity been revenged a million fold; where her skirt has trailed there has been the cruel stain of slaughter. It must not be forgotten, too, that immorality of the grossest sort was promised the deluded sectarians, compared with which the Mahometan paradise is spiritual. And the end of the world was ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... and the man swung his partner behind him, and then would turn and take up the step with her where they had dropped it; or they swung around and around each other several times, as people do in fancy skating, and sometimes he spun her so quickly one way that the skirt of her walking-dress was wound as tightly around her legs and ankles as a cord around a top, and then as he swung her in the opposite direction, it unwound again, and wrapped about her from the other side. They varied this when it pleased them with balancings and steps and posturings that were ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... as the home of footpads. But the two pass through in safety, for the robbers are either asleep or absent from their haunts. Reaching the head-waters of the Yuqueri, which empties into the Canabe, a tributary of the Paraguay, they skirt the heights of Angostura, where Lopez, after the evacuation of Humaita, planted his batteries, and which he made his final strategic point. Near by, on the right bank of the Canabe, is the field of Las Lomas Valentinas, where the Paraguayan ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... cheeked maid hesitated a little, and her eyes wandered doubtfully from the veil to the cloak and the shabby skirt. ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... glace silk, shaded in light green and lilac. The skirt trimmed with four rows of fringe of green and lilac silk intermingled. The corsage low and plain, with a pelerine which passes along the back and shoulders, and is brought down to the front of the waist in a point. This pelerine is edged ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... faithful adherent in a degree much deeper than the harsh treatment he had himself received. Having in vain attempted to raise his hand to his eyes, he said to Wamba, who, seeing his master's ill humour had prudently retreated to the rear, "I pray thee, do me the kindness to wipe my eyes with the skirt of thy mantle; the dust offends me, and these bonds will not let me help ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... key, and put a four-portion jug under the spout, dialing the cocktail they always had when they drank together. As he did, he noticed what she was wearing: short black jacket, lavender neckerchief, light gray skirt. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... laid her down. And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid [startled], and turned himself; and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, "who art thou?" And she answered, "I am Ruth thine handmaid; spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman." And ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... where it presently disappeared from view. The station owner picked up a sliver of wood and began to whittle industriously. The horseman remained with his bridle reins in hand, amusedly looking at his captive. The maid sat down upon the suitcase, dropped her skirt in a modest little manner, and cast ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... obviously bored, sat Catherine Flint, only daughter of the Billionaire. A rare girl, she, to look upon—deep-bosomed and erect, dressed simply in a middy-blouse with a blue tie, a khaki skirt and low, rubber-soled shoes revealing a silk-stockinged ankle that would have attracted the enthusiastic attention of gentlemen in any city of the world. No hat disfigured the coiled and braided masses of coppery hair that circled ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power, and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She looked forward, and, seeing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse part on the world's theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the road, and the white dot was gone from the bare green flank of the hill. Nigel bowed his steel head to the nuns, gave his bridle a shake, and bounded off upon his welcome mission. The round-eyed sisters saw yellow horse and twinkling man sweep round the skirt of the wood, caught a last glimmer of him through the tree-trunks, and paced slowly back to their pruning and their planting, their minds filled with the beauty and the terror of that outer world beyond ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was long. She had worn it at the funeral, with a black skirt and a heavy veil. But the veil she had put into her bag as soon as they had left the town, and the cloak thrown back revealed rich colours, the glitter and glint of a diamond brooch; and she wore a small blue feathered hat which threw out changing colours in the play of ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... and after hastily lighting the candles on her toilet-table, she began to unlace the bodice of her light-coloured silk mantua, and in a few minutes had changed her elegant evening attire for a dark cloth gown, short in the skirt, and loose in the sleeves, which had been made for her to wear upon the river. In this costume she could handle a pair of sculls as ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... him nearly every day. He took us all three on his knees at the some time. I loved him. When he was gone, I said, 'Miss Sue, where is Master Alex?' She say, 'Maybe he be back pretty soon.' While he was gone they had a battle in a little skirt of woods close by. We hung to Miss Sue's skirt tail. I seen the Yankees run by on horses and some walking. Mr. Jordan, a southern soldier, was shot in his ribs. Mr. Buford was shot in his knee. Some of the other southern ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... as if by frequent potations of stout, and his bulky figure was artificially enlarged by the presence of two overcoats, the outer of which was a waterproof and the inner a blue garment appreciably longer both in sleeve and skirt than the former. The effect produced was one of great novelty. Gunn touched the brim of his soft felt hat, which he wore turned down all round apparently in imitation ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... through the mountains, out of the way, as they hoped, of the lurking bands of Blackfeet. They succeeded in making the frontier in safety. We remember to have seen them with their band, about two or three months afterward, passing through a skirt of woodland in the upper part of Missouri. Their long cavalcade stretched in single file for nearly half a mile. Sublette still wore his arm in a sling. The mountaineers in their rude hunting dresses, armed with rifles and roughly mounted, and leading their pack-horses down a hill of the forest, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... Millicent, who was distributing a basket of peaches among a group of untidy immigrant children. One toddling baby clung to her skirt. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... us in disgust. "Say," he replied, "if I wanted a skirt to help me in such a job, believe me I know plenty that could put it all over that girl. Naw, I did it all myself. I picked the lock, burnt the safe with that powder the guy give me, and took out something in soft leather, a ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... shifting, and in the bright spot sat a figure on a rock, a brown head, a face with one freckle, and an impetuous, graceful foot that sometimes stamped in impatience. Into the light there came another figure, strong, ruddy, and with a calico skirt tucked up. One was refinement, the other strength; one nerves, the other muscle. Onward he strode, the road damp from its nearness to the creek. Out upon the higher land he turned, the shale clicking under his feet. He had the feeling that some one was walking slowly ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... few of them clubbed together and bought him a harmonium. Their idea was that they would sing hymns and play high- class melodies, but it wasn't his. His idea was—'Keeping up the old girl's birthday' and 'She winked the other eye,' with chorus and skirt dance, and that's ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... her skirt, and without waiting to fasten her blouse, she ran across the stone passage to the room into which she had been drawn as a trembling bride, and in which her little girl had been born. There he was, still lying in the big ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... and saucepans strapped to their knapsacks, and loaves of bread stuck aloft on their bayonets, moved in the direction of Porte Maillot. By the side of the captain in command of the first company marched a woman in a strange costume, the skirt of a vivandiere and the jacket of a National Guard, a Phrygian cap on her head, a chassepot in her hand, and a revolver stuck in her belt. From the distance at which I was standing she looked both young and pretty. I asked some Federals who she was; one told me she was the wife of Citizen Eudes,[47] ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... her attention to an inch of kilted silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of her blue skirt. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... way, did she get that charmingly-cut skirt in the Second Act? She certainly hadn't it in her bundle when she left the hotel. And yet the stage-manager will go to the trouble, for the sake of a quite misguided realism, of making the hotel orchestra play against the dialogue as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... other two runaways were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off—in preparation for deep water—sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the self-concern ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... toilet is just as simple. A scrimpy woollen skirt is tied around the waist with a girdle, and over the shoulders is worn a short tunic, with which, however, many dispense when at home in the barranca. The women, too, have blankets, though with them they are not so much the rule as with the men. Still, mothers with babies always wear blankets, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... the street Thornton heard the clatter of horses' hoofs coming on rapidly. He paid no attention until they were close to him, so close that from the corner of his eye he caught the flutter of a woman's skirt. Then he knew who it was before she passed on. One was Pollard looking white and sick; the other, rosy cheeked and bright ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... make any preparation. He did not even divest himself of his manga, but only threw it carelessly back, and left its long skirt trailing over the hips ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... a comfort to be pretty. I should grow so tired of being with myself if I were plain!" she reflected complacently as she settled herself in her corner, and flicked a few grains of dust from the front of her skirt. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... we had finished our dessert, and proposed coffee in the lounge. There we found Colonel Bunnion at so wilful a loose end that I could not find it in my heart to refuse him an introduction to Lola. He manifested his delight by lifting the skirt of his dinner-jacket with his hands and rising on his spurs like a bantam cock. I left her to him for a moment and went over to say a civil word to the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I regret to say I noticed a certain frigidity in their demeanour. The well-conducted man ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... till from its summit Judgment drops her damning plummet, Pronouncing such a fatal space Departed from the founder's base: He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit, as now I do, Awaiting his return outside. —'Twas thus my reason straight replied And joyously I turned, and pressed The garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried—What has been abusing me That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? Do these men praise him? I ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... is the Tagalog name given to the Chrysopogon aciculatus, Trin. (Spanish, Amor seco)—the little particles like pointed grass-seeds which stick to one's trousers or skirt when crossing an uncultivated field and can only be removed by picking them ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... as her room was in order on the day of the reception, Sylvia began the delightful task of opening boxes and parcels, and laying their contents on the bed. The satin skirt was spread out with careful fingers, and over it a foam of frills and flounces which must surely have grown, since it was inconceivable that they could have been fashioned by mortal hands. Fan, and gloves, and little lacy handkerchief lay side ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fresh in a white shirtwaist, a black walking-skirt, a ribbon of black velvet about her neck, and her long, black hair laid in a heavy braid low over her forehead and held close by a white celluloid comb, looked at him with pleased and grateful eyes. She had been used to such different types of men—the earnest, fiery, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... big rosettes Peeped out under your kilt-skirt there, While we sat smoking our cigarettes (Oh, I shall be dust when my heart forgets!) And singing that self-same air: And between the verses, for interlude, I kissed your throat and your ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... total population. One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... beating in upon her through the fiery glass, tending her flowers. I remember how she used to come in in the evenings exhausted, and lie down on the little sofa. Her husband, with an anxious, quiet, kindly look in his eyes, used to draw the skirt over her feet and sit down at her feet, tender, loving, soliciting the right to clasp her hand, as if they had not been married thirty years, but were only sweethearts. At that time we used all to implore her to allow us to send for the London doctor, and I remember how proud I was ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... reflection, as not unfrequently happens, closed the hand that kindly intentions had opened. Feeling frightened and uneasy lest her husband might be drawn into something unpleasant, she tried to catch at the skirt of his coat, to hold him back, but he, good soul, obeying his charitable first thought, brought out his offer to see the lady home, before his wife could ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac

... habitual stillness offered a submissive medium to the sound of a distant church-bell. The young girl listened to the church-bell; but she was not dressed for church. She was bare-headed; she wore a white muslin waist, with an embroidered border, and the skirt of her dress was of colored muslin. She was a young lady of some two or three and twenty years of age, and though a young person of her sex walking bare-headed in a garden, of a Sunday morning in spring-time, can, in the nature of things, never be a displeasing ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... girl was carefully folding the white satin skirt at the moment, but she stopped with it in her arms and sat down weakly on the foot of the bed with it all spread out in her lap and looked at ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... to the sister hills that skirt her plain, To lofty Harrow now, and now to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow, In lovely contrast to this glorious view, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various

... room door open. From where I stood, looking across the dining room into the living room, I could see the edge of my sister's skirt and—and a man's leg, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... there were eighty hostile caracoas at the island of Mindanao; so his Lordship, in order to surprise them, sailed with five champans for the opposite and outer coast of the island, and directed Captain Ugalde to skirt the inner coast, with the rest of the boats, as far as Point Nasso, [78] on the shore of the island of Othon. The fact that they found no trace of enemies anywhere, stamped the report as false, and as inspired by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... succeed is the first step. If formal instruction is required I leave it to you to choose between a master and a mistress. How can I tell whether a dancing master should take a young pupil by her soft white hand, make her lift her skirt and raise her eyes, open her arms and advance her throbbing bosom? but this I know, nothing on earth would induce me to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... using more than ordinary caution, when her foot tripped against something, and she stumbled forward. It was in vain that she tried to save the pitcher. Its balance was lost, and it fell over and was broken to pieces at my feet, the water dashing upon the skirt of my dress. ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... word. I am wearing the fantaisie as I write. For a fantaisie, it is fairly quiet, except that it has three pockets on each side outside, and a rolled back collar suitable for the throat of an opera singer, and as many buttons as a harem skirt. Beyond that, it's a first-class, steady, reliable, quiet, religious fantaisie, such as any retired French ballet master ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... their faces towards home. The boys had their forest pony, and mounted him by turns. It was Tom's turn now, and Bessie was leading Jerry, and carrying the socks and boots of the other two in the skirt of her frock, gathered up in one hand. She was a little subdued, a little downcast, it might be with fatigue and the sultry air, or it might be with her present disappointment; but beyond and above all wearied sensations was the jar of unsettledness that had come into her life, and perplexed ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... woman, but it is cruel to the child. There is no reason for distinguishing sex by dress in young children. "Jumpers" form the best dress for either a little boy or little girl in which to play. Even when they are older and a skirt distinguishes the girl, bloomers or knickerbockers of the same material beneath, approach the ideal of dress for comfort, health and decency more nearly than white petticoat and drawers. Indeed, the skirt is best when it is a part of a blouse, which ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... the window, filled a tiny basin with precious water, shrugged out of her negligee and sponged her small, perfect body. She donned form-fitting tunic, briefs and short skirt, pulled on knee-length socks and laced up Martian walking shoes. She spent some time preparing ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... sinister possibilities were slowly framing themselves in his mind. While he stood there he was suddenly conscious of the sound of the opening gate, brisk footsteps up the tiled way, the soft swirl of a woman's skirt. The latch was raised, the door opened and closed. The newcomer stood upon the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... to himself, laughed—or rather chuckled—shrugged his shoulders, and appeared to be as unconscious of what had taken place as an automaton. When the coast was clear he rose up and plucking Phelim's skirt, beckoned him ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... her twenty-second birthday, Ruth seemed to be in her element. She had donned, in a spirit of mischief, a gown she had worn five years before on the occasion of some festivity. The girlish fashion of the white frock, with its straight, full skirt to her ankles, the round baby waist, and short puffs on her shoulders made ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... cross-dragging it in preparation for the planting of the corn. As she drove up and down, she walked hatless in the sun. Her hair was down, and hung forward in two braids. She wore the snug jersey that had been her mother's. Her skirt was tucked up, back and front, to be out of the way. It disclosed no red ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... them. Each drawing must be examined minutely. The pose of this figure, the artistic arrangement of this group of figures, whether the arm is too short or too long, or any part out of proper proportion; the way this skirt hangs, and the effect that fold produces, the completeness and accuracy with which the detail of trimming is shown; whether this hat or bonnet should be shown with front, side, or back view, the faces to be baby-like, youthful, or otherwise, thus indicating who suitable ...
— How Department Stores Are Carried On • W. B. Phillips

... brought the most southerly extremity of the island square upon our starboard beam, some two miles distant, we shifted our helm, and, jibing over, brought the wind on our starboard quarter, hauling up to the northward and westward to skirt the lee side of the island. This course soon brought us in under the lee of the land and into smooth water, when, maintaining an offing of about two miles, that we might not be becalmed and so invite the risk of capture ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... quick-drawn breath of many excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, and the scratching of the judge's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... echo in my memory.) We had that day a native crew and steersman, Kauanui; it was our first experience of Polynesian seamanship, which consists in hugging every point of land. There is no thought in this of saving time, for they will pull a long way in to skirt a point that is embayed. It seems that, as they can never get their houses near enough the surf upon the one side, so they can never get their boats near enough upon the other. The practice in bold water is not so dangerous as it looks—the reflex from the rocks sending the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Aunt Elizabeth find that they had not been kept carefully. "They are not all here," said the child, sitting down on the floor. "Lilypaws tore up the muff, and Gyp ate up one of the books; then the wind blew away an apron and a skirt that day I washed them and put them out on the grass to dry. I'll have to tell Aunt Elizabeth about that. She'll know it was an accident. Maybe sister will make me some more. I'll ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard

... the side of the Dauntless on the day of the Prince's visit, a seaman smiled down, as seamen sometimes do, at a vivid little Newfoundland Flapper in a sunset-coloured jumper bodice, New York cut skirt, white stockings and white canvas boots. The Flapper looked up from her seat in the stern of her "gas" launch (gasolene equals petrol), and smiled back, as is the Flapper habit, and the seaman promptly opened conversation by asking ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... declared his love to Estela; but she would have nothing to do with him. Ashamed to return to the palace without having won her affection, Fortunato stole her underskirt and took it to the king, stating that Estela had given it to him as a remembrance. Rodolfo was summoned: and when he saw the skirt with Adela's name on it, he was thunderstruck. The king then said, "You see, your wife is no more virtuous than my daughter Leocadia. Remember your boast; your life is forfeit." Rodolfo, however, asked for a complete investigation of his wife's alleged treachery. Estela ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... arrangements for one of their most imposing dances. It was a barbarian cotillon, performed by eight partners in the presence of admiring hundreds. Queen Wetamoo and her husband, Quinnapin, were conspicuous in this dance. He was dressed in a white linen shirt, with a broad border of lace around the skirt. To this robe silver buttons were profusely attached. He wore white cotton stockings, with shillings dangling and clinking from the garters. A turban composed of girdles of wampum ornamented his head, while broad belts ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... grateful smiles at the two Europeans. Muriel, in return, smiled her most gracious and girlish recognition. As the bride drew near, she couldn't refrain from bending forward a little to look at the girl's really graceful costume. As she did so, the skirt of her own European dress brushed for a second against the bride's train, trailed carelessly many yards on ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... not disguised. I am disguised when I am forced to wear those things, which do not suit me," said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. "Oh, I know why mamma keeps me like that—she is afraid I should get too fond of dress before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted from serious subjects. It is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis

... side of the dark partition came the quick, rustling stir of a skirt, and the slight scrape of a chair pushed either backward or forward. Then ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... feel the old woman's shocked silence behind her. "You mustn't carry it in a pie plate, it's dangerous," Simone said to her child, but she could see Nina was in no danger. "How often have you done this?" She could feel her skirt and her hair ...
— The Putnam Tradition • Sonya Hess Dorman

... scrupulously clean and modest, and always wore, when in their casa, a low-necked and short-sleeved white linen camisa, fitting neatly, with bands around neck and arms. Over this they wore a calico skirt; always white stockings and black slippers. When they ventured out, the younger women put on muslin gowns, and carried parasols. The older women wore a linen towel thrown over their heads, or, in ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes

... respectable family on either side, ever been visited with blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found it out for himself, perhaps, but he had got hold of it somehow; and therefore he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept hold, until Mrs. Peerybingle and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy and the basket, were all got ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... his future wife, but upon his return the hill has vanished (p. 86). In other instances the finger rings of people meeting for the first time exchange themselves (p. 92). The headband of Ligi flies away without his knowledge and alights on the skirt of a girl who is bathing in the river. As a result she becomes pregnant, and when the facts become known Ligi is recognized as the child's father (p. 144). It seems probable that the superior powers are responsible for these occurrences, for in at least ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... she?" declaimed she with oratorical eloquence. "Did she? Not a bit of it. Minnie got pictures an' patterns from Boston; scanted the skirt; took in the sleeves; made a wide girdle with the breadths she took out of the front—an' there she was again, ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... New York you often see the most outlandish costumes on people—Turks in their national dress, Hindoos with turbans and robes, Japanese and Chinese women dressed in the silks and brocades of their lands. Oh, don't worry about bead-trimmed leggings and a few feathers. And your skirt in that costume is nowhere near as short as those worn by three-fourths of the girls you ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... wall, and they did not notice me; but I gathered from their discourse who they were and what was their design. I allowed Amabel to ascend, but just as the apprentice was following, I laid hold of the skirt of his doublet, and, pulling him back, desired him to come with me to his master. He answered by drawing his sword, and would have stabbed me, but I closed with him, and should have secured him if my foot had not slipped. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... look awfully nice with your hair powdered—let me see—your chintz curtains will do for panniers—put on your frilliest blouse and a white skirt, pull down your curtains, and I'll drape you in a minute ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... with Florence as she comes on. He takes her arm. She stops dead still. Sudden fear shows in her face. Tearing herself free, she fairly runs from the scene, Frank staring in surprise, and indicating "Holy Mackerel—stuck up little skirt!" ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing" No better than she should be, With her skirt at her shameful knee, And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... there were strains of slow, dirgelike music; then it lighted again, presenting a view of a broad hallway, thronged with men and women in bright varicolored costumes. In the foreground, wearing a tight skirt of deep blue and a short red jacket, was Hadron Dalla, just as she had looked in the solidographs taken in Dhergabar after her alteration by the First Level cosmeticians to conform to the appearance of the Malayoid Akor-Neb people. She was holding the arm of ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper

... inside the ballroom, following Millicent round with her eyes and beaming whenever she caught her eye. Beside her were two middle-aged sycophants who were saying what a perfectly exquisite child Millicent was. It was at this moment that Mrs. Tate was grasped firmly by the skirt and her youngest daughter, Emily, aged eleven, hurled herself with an "Oof—!" into her ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... of Westland Row Station in good time for the train he meant to catch. He was soon joined by Miss O'Dwyer, who appeared with her head and neck swathed in a fluffy shawl and the train of a silk skirt gathered in her hand. The view of several flounces of nebulous white petticoat confirmed Hyacinth in his conjecture that she was bound for Miss Goold's party. No one who could be supposed to be a member of Captain Quinn's ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... freely once more, and released the child's head from the skirt of her dress in which he had wrapped and buried it. The end of her alarms was not yet come, however, for a troop of the young heathen came flying across the square in wild retreat before a division of the heavy cavalry, which had intervened to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... women had to submit. Nor did he refuse to acknowledge, on Ridley's representation, that Grisell ought to have an attendant of her own, and the lady of the castle, coming down with Bernard clinging to her skirt with one hand, and leaning on his crutch, consented. "If the maid was to be here, she must be treated fitly, and Bell and Madge had enough to do ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of her exile. The world was very far away, behind the violet rim of mountains, and she was just a speck in the desert. Her high laced boots were heavy, and the dust settled in the creases around her slim ankles, that could be perfectly fascinating in silken hose and dainty slippers. Her khaki skirt, of the divided kind much affected by tourists, had lost two big, pearl buttons, and she had no others to replace them. Her shirt-waist had its collar turned inside for coolness, and the hollow of her neck was sun-blistered and beginning to peel. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... could carry black envy at one's heart. It was during the bathing hour that the Monster again asserted himself—this time for no indefinite stay. As a rule, the bathing hour was one in which Dorothea reveled. Arrayed in her faded bathing suit, guiltless of skirt or sleeves, her prowess as an amphibious creature had been highly commended by that one for whose praise she would gladly have precipitated herself ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... sobbed I, catching the skirt of her dress and hiding my head in it, and forgetting all about Mrs. Duffy; "I don't care what you do, mamma. You may send 'em home, and tell 'em they didn't be invited; you may go to the front door and say ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May

... Saint-Cloud. "Sire," said one of the negotiators, "if in an hour the ordonnances are not rescinded, there will be neither king nor kingdom." "Could you not offer me two hours?" said the king, sarcastically, as he turned to leave the chamber. The envoy, an old man, fell on his knees and seized the skirt of the king's coat. "Think of the dauphine!" he cried, imploringly. The king seemed moved, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... be careful," added Melville, as he was about to ride into the current, "for there are some deep places which the horse will have to skirt closely. If he steps into one, he will go over his depth, and that will make it bad for you and Dot; I think I had better ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis

... paper, the rustling of a dress, the noise of feet paddling about. "Oh! it is nice,—what did it cost?—who made it?" "I made the skirt, and Miss Skinner the body,—she charged me seven and six,—it's not dear, is it?—I'll hang it up, then the creases will come out." "Let's hang it up first." And then on a peg at the back of the door the dress was hung ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... follerin', mother went up to the house-ruf. She wanted to see arter the washed things, she said, how they was a-dryin' and all; but I knowd well enough she wanted to see arter him, and didn't pull at her skirt and foller, as I generally did. I stayed down stairs, and, to kind o' break up my sorrer, I chucked my head aginst the knob that was atop o' the andiron! A curus way to git relief; but my diversions, them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... away with a sweep and a rustle of her shimmering silk skirt, and left behind her such an atmosphere of hearty good-nature as made the last rush and crowd of preparations easily ordered and quickly accomplished. Before her arrival there had been some doubt as to the weather. She brought the shining sun with her, and when he set, he left them with the promise ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr

... inclining to the west, and seemed to be sheltered from all winds. The middle cape, or point of land that disjoins these two bays, rises to a considerable height, especially inland; for close to the sea is a skirt of low land, off which lie some pointed rocks, but so near to the shore as to be noways dangerous. Indeed, the navigation of this side of the Strait seems much safer than the other, because the tides here are not near so strong. Cape Teerawhitte and Cape ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... grasping his arm. "I'm Mrs. Dall, the Indian agent's wife. They said you wouldn't let anybody see you—and I determined I would. That's all!" She stopped, threw back her tangled curls behind her ears, shook the briers and thorns from her skirt, and added: "Well, I reckon you aren't afraid of a woman, are you? ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... Mrs. Vervain, gathering some shawls together, "make him wrap those about him. He'll die, I know he will—with that reeking skirt of his. If you must go into the water, I wish you had worn your abbate's dress. How ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... while all were given Some choice memorial of the happy day— Cinctures to all athletes to gird the loins And falling just below the knee, the belt Of stoutest leather, joined with silver clasps, The skirt of softest wool or finest silk, Adorned with needlework and decked with gems, Such as the modest Aryans always wore In games intended for the public view, Before the Greeks became degenerate, And savage Rome compelled those noble men Whose only crime was love of liberty, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... flooded the space in his vicinity and reached far along the floor, touching the skirt of her dress. Behind her the old tapestry with the two marble busts formed a stately background. To the new arrivals she ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... faded, and Hebraism ruled the world. Then was seen that astonishing spectacle, so well marked by the often-quoted words of the prophet Zechariah, when men of all languages and nations took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew, saying:—"We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."[451] And the Hebraism which thus received and ruled a world all gone out of the way and altogether become unprofitable, was, and could not but be, the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... outer door he stopped short upon the threshold. A figure in a white blouse, blue serge skirt, and little white, beruffled apron, was arranging his table. The table had been drawn into the middle of the room, his simple supplies of linen and silver had been discovered, and the preparations were nearly complete. In the middle of the table in a glass bowl was a huge bunch ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... we'll rush out on all-fours and pretend we're bears." The maneuver was executed with spirit. At the preconcerted signal, out they all waddled and galumphed with horrid grunts—only to find something unfamiliar about mother's skirt, and, glancing up, to discover that it hung upon a strange ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... him she did; and home the two went, arm in arm together, while Ayacanora held fast, like a child, by the skirt of Mrs. Leigh's cloak. The self-help and daring of the forest nymph had given place to the trembling modesty of the young girl, suddenly cast on shore in a new world, among strange faces, strange hopes, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... a delicately-formed but upright little figure, which looked all the straighter and more like the stalk of a flower, because it was never adorned with any flounces or furbelows. Lilac was considered in the village to be very old-fashioned in her dress; she wore cotton frocks, plain in the skirt with gathers all round the waist, long pinafores or aprons, and sunbonnets. This attire was always spotless and freshly clean, but garments of such a shape and cut were lamentably wanting in fashion to the general eye, and were the subject ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... meal begun when, unnoticed by either of the women, a fisherman entered. His muscular arms were uncovered; the short skirt of his garment scarce reached his knees. His heavy dark hair was pushed back from his forehead and the dying sunset falling over his swarthy face and neck gave him the appearance of bronze. He stopped behind ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... lilac; and undergarments edged with yellowing lace. A sweet scent rose from them, as of some gentle presence that strove to reach the light and air once more. A pair of little white kid slippers looked as though they longed to twinkle in and out beneath a soft silk skirt. Angel's mischievous brown hands dived among the light folds, discovering opera glasses,—(treasures to be secured if possible, against some future South Sea expedition), an inlaid box of old-fashioned trinkets, a coral necklace, ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... you don't, you old dear!" and Alice leaned over—they were both sitting on the floor in front of trunks—and made a motion as though to embrace her sister. But a warning rip caused her to desist, and, looking over her shoulder, she found her skirt caught on a corner of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... brownie-like creature, dressing itself with careful haste. It lifted a plaid dress from the chair—large squares of red and green plaid—and looked at it with raised brows and dropped it over the cropped head. The skirt came to the top of the rough shoes on the small feet. Betty Harris looked down at the skirt—and smoothed it a little... and dropped on her knees beside the bed—the red and green plaids sweeping around her—and said the little prayer that Miss Stone had taught ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... absurd. But if anyone at fifty could carry such a name gracefully, it was Miss Hazel Wilder; her fifty years sat as jauntily as Constance's twenty-two. This morning she was very business-like in her short skirt, belted jacket, and green felt Alpine hat with a feather in the side. No one would mistake her for a cyclist or a golfer or a motorist or anything in the world but an Alpine climber; whatever Miss Hazel was or was not, ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster









Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |