"Grouch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a successful camping-out trip are personal. One must have the receptive and acceptive spirit. No matter what comes it is for the best; an experience worth having. Nothing must be complained of. The "grouch" has no place on a camping-trip, and one who is a "grouch," a "sissy," a "faultfinder," a "worrier," a "quitter," or who cannot or will not enter fully into the spirit of the thing had better ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Don't get sore. You've been a grouch ever since we asked you to come along. One would think you didn't have any interests ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... next town every man in the show had a grouch and a Katzenjammer, and their hair was so sore it was murder and suicide combined ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... was Pepper Sneed, the "grouch" of the company. Nothing ever went the way Pepper wanted it to go, from the depiction of a play to the meals he ate. No wonder he had dyspepsia. He was always apprehensive of something going to happen and when it did—well, they used to say that Pepper was the original ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... has made the difference in these two men? Their thoughts have made the difference. The grouch has, for years, entertained grouchy thoughts. The sunshiny man has cultivated the habit of seeing the bright side of things. That's all there ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... saying that Charley had handled the situation about as well as he could have done it himself. Evidently the forester did not propose to enlighten Charley, for all he said was, "Don't let him worry you, Charley. He's just naturally lazy and a grouch. He doesn't like it because I made him hustle for once, and he's disappointed not to find Jim at the point of death. These doctors are strange animals, Charley. But with all their faults we love them still." ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Carnegie medal thereby. I knew Oliver Sickles, and even better did I know his kind, who only go to battle when certain victory lies before them. The only chance I was taking was with my firm's interests. It might be that he'd have such a grouch against me that he'd carry no more coal for my firm than he ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Leverage. "President of the Capitol City Woolen Mills. Rated about a hundred thousand—maybe a little more. He's on the Board of Directors of the Second National. Has the reputation of being hard, fearless—and considerable of a grouch. Age forty-two. ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... mused Tom, on his way back, after settling the score, "he could have shown us the way through his hay field, and we might have gotten into the Hall on time. The old grouch!" ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... lovely?" asked Mr. Pepper Sneed, who was known as "the actor with the grouch." He was always finding fault. "Lovely alligators!" he sneered. "If you want to go to Florida, and be eaten ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... Sol replied. "Klein'll be glad to hear it. You know, Mawruss, Klein ain't such a grouch as most people think he is. In fact, taking him all around, Klein ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... had some sort of a special grouch; I guess he was just beginning to get his snowshoes off after a fight with his ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... it is for a man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... I've hated it for thirty-two years. I'll die here—and I'll hate it till I die. I ought to have been a business woman. I had a good deal of talent for tending to figures. All gone now. Some folks think I'm crazy. Guess I am. Sit and grouch. Go to church and sing hymns. Folks think I'm religious. Tut! Trying to forget washing and ironing and mending socks. Want an office of my own, and sell things. Julius never hear of it. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... against you, which is worse. You are something for people to laugh at. You are also expected to laugh. It is all right for a thin man to be grouchy; people will say the poor creature has dyspepsia and should be humored along. But a fat man with a grouch is inexcusable in any company—there is so much of him to be grouchy. He constitutes a wave of discontent and a period of general depression. He is not expected to be romantic and sentimental either. It is all right for a giraffe to be sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... ours, for all its thoughtlessness, was so rich in genuine friendships, so filled and bubbling over with the joy of being young, that we could not understand how any decent sort of chap could deliberately keep out of it. We put Joe Kramer down as a "grouch." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... has a grouch against garden-parties, so often does he shake his sieve with deliberate intent to spoil the affair, which is after all, merely afternoon tea out of doors. The hostess anxiously consults "the probabilities" as to weather, and if storm threatens ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his skipper had deserted. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... a grouch, Mart. For Heaven's sake, cheer up!" Wallace, rumpling and kissing his daughter, would give her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... we come to them, Gib. Cheer up, my boy, cheer up. I got a new engineer. He won't last, but he'll last long enough for Mac to forget his grouch an' listen to reason," and with this optimistic remark Captain Scraggs dropped into the engine room to get up enough steam to keep ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... all, a quiet mania which sought out the soul of things and in the seeking fed itself upon the problems of the world, a diet which too much prolonged might lead to mental indigestion. Morbid—was he? Introspective? A "grouch"? He was—he must be—all of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... they were about ten times worse in appearance than the court-martial I had previously encountered. Four of the men I did not know, but the fifth I recognized at once, having often seen his portrait. He is Admiral Sir John Pendergest, popularly known in the service as 'Old Grouch,' a blue terror who knows absolutely nothing of mercy. The lads in the service say he looks so disagreeable because he is sorry he wasn't born a hanging judge. Picture a face as cleanly cut as that ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... that means somethin'," he asserted, gropingly, "but what it means, blamed if I know! Newspapers never turn money down unless they're a'ready bought, or have got a grouch of their own.... Say!" he suddenly cried, as an inspiration struck him, "you ain't got anything agin the mill at Royal, or agin Skeelty, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... going to ask you to read that letter from Washington to-night," said Ernest, feebly, "but I feel that I need immediate rest. I'll go up in the morning to see Dick and if he still has his grouch with him, I'll bring him back ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... department. Every man there had liked and respected the competent young worker, Robinson. They all knew that he had been discharged largely because Joe Lathrop was jealous and somewhat afraid of him, and because Joe had had a bad headache and grouch. They resented the injustice. Their respect for their foreman dropped several degrees. Their interest in their work slackened. "What is the use," they thought, "to do our best when superior workmanship might get us thrown out of here instead ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of it?" said Mr. Spike in my ear. "Nothin' but an old stone barn, where he can set all day nursin' a grouch and keepin' his daughter Anita—they do say he does—under lock and key for fear somebody's goin' to ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the background of lights he could see the slender figure of the girl passing among the huge fishermen who towered like giants above her. Radiating energy wherever she went, criticizing some, commending others and joking away the early-morning grouch, she directed the movements of the constantly increasing stream of men who thronged the dock and despatched the boats one by one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Melissa flatly. "The worst grouch I've ever seen, Mr. Bingle, even if he is your own flesh and blood uncle. He's almost ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... more than you have to," advised one of the uniformed rookies, coming over to them after a few moments. "Shrimp is a terror and a grouch all the time. Sergeant Brimmer you'll find a real old soldier, and a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... his chair to fully face the lad, the grouch caustically inquired: "What 'n seven kinds of blue blazes do you think I want ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... pull off a deal like that is not worthy of the confidence of one of our sex. But, understand, I am not by any means damning the whole male sex, for I have met gentlemen who threw the lid of their grouch bag in the gutter and didn't care if they ever found it again. Those is the kind of parties that has my trust. Me grub, and I got money in the bank? Sure I do. I got to keep in training somehow, so if I did lose my inheritance I wouldn't ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... and almost losing her oar. But what cared they, yo, ho? Sometimes the boat seemed to be coming back to us, and then we could see Scout Harris sitting there with his knees together, looking fierce and terrible, like Billikins with a grouch. The rowing wasn't much of ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... "I visited him, but I didn't find out much. He's a regular old grouch. He isn't the least bit neighborly. It took me a long time to find him. He has more holes than anybody I ever knew, and I couldn't tell which one is his home. When I did find him, he gave me a terrible scare. I didn't see him until I was right on top of him, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... short, was accumulating, drop by drop, a masculine grouch. A grouch deeper than he realized, till ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... the sourest man in all o' Comp'ny G; You could sing and tell stories the whole night long, but never a cuss gave he. You could feed him turkey at Christmastime—and Tony the cook's no slouch— But Jim wouldn't join in "Three cheers for the cook!" Gosh, but he had a grouch! ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... had wicked, little greenish-grey eyes, and their stare was uninviting as he fixed them on his quondam partner. "If you want to grouch, go ahead and grouch! We've been pretty good friends for a pretty good number of years, but I ain't a fool. Sure, it's mine now! I didn't ask you to employ Grenville, did I? I was satisfied to take any old piece of paper with your fist on it, saying you'd sold out to ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hungry, but not for bacon. Alas! Our hunger was the healthier one! We talked of New York. "Mother's in Paris," he volunteered, "and Dad's in New York meeting her bills. But the Old Man's got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way out here in this God-forsaken country! Say, what did they make this country for? Got any tailor-made cigarettes about you? How did Broadway look when you were there last? Lights all there yet at night? I've been here two years—it ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... "No, don't grouch," laughed the captain. "We are losing too much time as it is. Better roll in your blankets and go to sleep. The fire will drive ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... it himself, and he used to consider that the natural form of companionship. He must be getting queer like all other hermits he had ever heard of. It occurred to him that possibly Marion Rose was not really feather-brained, but that the trouble was in himself, because he was getting a chronic grouch. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... down with a full-grown grouch upon him—that was plainly to be seen. But when he had taken in a great draught of the sweet odor of the flowers, and found his niece with her lips puckered, and standing on tiptoe to kiss him on his unshaven cheek, he somehow forgot ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... accounted for later by the fact that the ton rate had been jumped a couple of cents. And now it had been almost doubled. No wonder he wanted a confab with Marcus T. on the subject. And, from where I stood, it looked like he ought to have it, grouch ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... inside out. You overwork and shirk exercise, and let your temper run away with you, and smoke strong cigars on an empty stomach; and when you get indigestion as a natural result you look on yourself as a martyr, nourish a perpetual grouch, and make the lives of everybody you meet miserable. If you would put yourself into my hands for a month I would have you eating bricks and thriving on them. Up in the morning, Larsen Exercises, cold bath, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... proves that he was here then. He may be a hundred miles off by this time. Still, it won't do a bit of harm to keep our eyes peeled and make sure that our guns are in good working order. He's probably got a perpetual grouch, and he might be peevish if he should turn up and find us ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... matter with you lately, Mark?" remonstrated McTeague. "You've got a grouch about something. Is there anything ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... cheroots while I listened. "He ain't been in a civilized town like this since I've knowed him. For a l'arned chap, and a New Englander, he seems to have lost all curiosity, and, I reckon, he's got a grouch ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... are extravagant. I have preferences, even if I CAN'T afford them. If you were a tippler instead of a plain grouch I could tell you precisely how you'd act and what you'd talk about as the evening goes on. First you'd be gallant and attentive; then you'd forget me and talk business with Mr. Wharton—he's nearest you. About that time ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... my kitchen table, as on any part of the house. If I find later that the winning plans include these things I shall believe that Henry Anderson is a mind reader, or that lost plans naturally gravitate to him. But there is no use to grouch further. I seem to be born a loser. Anyway, I haven't lost you and I still ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the reason given was that life on the farm was "too slow, too lonely, and no fun." In country neighborhoods family life means more than it does in the city. The members of a family are at each other's mercy; and so, if the "father" always has a grouch, and the "mother" is worried, and tired, and cross, small wonder that the children try to get away. In the city there is always the "movie" to go to, and congenial companionship down the street, and so we mourn the ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... beggar. This may have been my fault; but after you've sat around in offices and corridors and been scowled at as an intruder for three or four hours and then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" you can't help having a grouch. There wasn't a man who treated my offer as ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... the rule that no successful play should be performed more than once, they decreed that 'revivals' of Aeschylus should always be in order. And Aristophanes testifies to his lasting popularity—when he shows little Tomides with a bad grouch over seeing a play by Theognis, when he had gone to the theater "expecting Aeschylus";—and when he shows Aeschylus and Euripides winning, because his poetry had died with him, and so he had it there for a weapon—whereas Aeschylus's was still ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... man's opinion for the tendency to "grouch" that always appears in veterans who know best how to fight. Men like this were "fed up" on the war, of which they never saw anything but the glimpse of their own sector. The war was over now, and between the armistice and getting home many such men had ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... this production is an experiment, a novelty? We shall but show Macbeth as it might have been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was going up the elevator he sighed and said: "It takes all kinds of people to make up a world—Mr. Hummockstone is wan of the t'others. He has a grouch agin the universe. Sure but he's been housin' a gnawin' serpent. How ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Johnny lost his grouch so suddenly and beamed upon his friends with such a superior air that they began to worry about what was in the wind. The suspense wore on them, for with Hopalong's assistance, Johnny might spring some game on them all that would more than pay up for the fun they had ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... had watched the price of porterhouse steak climb the ladder of fame, was deep in the throes of an unusually bad grouch when a would-be customer, eight years old, approached him and ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... lived with me, there was only one who did not care for the game. He refused steadfastly to play, and, having learned the penalty of alighting below the line, very carefully avoided the unsafe territory. That fly was a sullen, disgruntled creature. As the convicts would say, it had a "grouch" against the world. He never played with the other flies either. He was strong and healthy, too; for I studied him long to find out. His indisposition for play was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Harrington. No one cared whether he had a grouch or not. For Harrington was a new boy who had as yet failed to "fit in." He was emphatically not an athlete. But he was not a "sissy" either. He was quite as emphatically not a student nor a literary light; but he was as quick as a jack rabbit in his physics "lab" work and not to be scorned as a guesser ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... He was here on Friday.... Somehow I feel uneasy.... He has a way of smiling too brilliantly.... I suppose, after these experiences I'll remain a suspicious grouch all my life—but his papers were in order... I don't know just why I don't care for that type of man.... You're bound for somewhere or other via Mount Terrible, ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... your wood-carving, while you stuck around by your lonesome and watched him—eh?" Danglar's tones were jocularly facetious. "Don't grouch, Skeeny! We're not killing for fun—it doesn't pay. Supposing anything had broken wrong up the Avenue—eh? We wouldn't have had our friend the Sparrow there for the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... happened wanst in me cousin Terence's fam'ly. They was livin' down near Healey's slough in wan iv thim ol' Doherty's houses,—not Doherty that ye know, th' j'iner, a good man whin he don't dhrink. No, 'twas an ol' grouch iv a man be th' name iv Malachi Doherty that used to keep five-day notices in his thrunk, an' ownded his own privit justice iv th' peace. Me cousin Terence was as dacint a man as iver shoed a hor-rse; an his wife was a good woman, too, ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... irascibility broke out among them. They were good-natured enough while the girls were about, but over their work and during their leisure, they developed what Honey described as every kind of blue-bean, sourball, katzenjammer and grouch. They fought heroically against it—and their method of fighting took various forms, according to the nature of the four men. Frank Merrill lost himself in his books. Pete Murphy began the score of an opera vaguely heroic in theme; he wrote ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... been hearing that some of those cheap suckers from down State have been sneaking around this district. But I've never insulted you by believing you took any stock in that kind of cattle. We're neighbors here together. What's the matter with me? Out with your real grouch!" ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... a failure of the outfit that I'd have to let it go for a comic song. He got gay and I fired him. He tried to manhandle me and I plugged him. And now I am going to run my own outfit! What have you got to say about it, you grumbling old grouch with the crooked face! Put up or ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... is part and parcel of the Thoracic's makeup. But did you ever see a fiery-natured man who didn't have lots of warm friends! It is the grouch—in whom the fire starts slowly and smoulders indefinitely—that nobody likes. But the man who flares up, flames for a moment and is calm the next never lacks ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... airily, jumping into the seat beside him. "Though what has given you a grouch I really am at a loss to imagine!" ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... to mellow his own discomfiture at Maria Theresa's coldness with numerous visits to the grill. The result was a morning "grouch," an afternoon headache, and a twilight bitterness which kept him ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... from the Boss was like this: Her father, the old brigand pantanta, couldn't get over the way we'd bansheed his bunch of third rate kidnappers with our tin armor play. He accumulated a sort of ingrowin' grouch and soured on the whole push because they wouldn't turn state's evidence as to who had given us the dope ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... mentioned was a lady whom I never spoke to—it is strictly against rules for a prisoner to speak with a visitor—and never knowingly saw, though I understand she was wont to sit on the stage during the Sunday exercises. She is thus quoted: "Julian Hawthorne is nothing more than an old grouch. A short time ago this old man told me himself that he was getting plenty to eat and had no complaint to make of his own or anybody else's treatment in the prison.... When he says such things as he is reported to have said, he should be made to prove them, or keep his mouth shut." ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... perversity; obstinacy &c. 606; torvity|, spinosity[obs3]; crabbedness &c. adj. ill temper, bad temper, ill humor, bad humor; sulks, dudgeon, mumps[obs3], dumps, doldrums, fit of the sulks, bouderie[Fr], black looks, scowl; grouch; huff &c. (resentment) 900. V. be sullen &c. adj.; sulk; frown, scowl, lower, glower, gloam[obs3], pout, have a hangdog look, glout[obs3]. Adj. sullen, sulky; ill-tempered, ill-humored, ill-affected, ill- disposed; grouty [obs3][U. S.]; in an ill temper, in a bad temper, in a shocking temper, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... card on his desk that says, "Do it Now," and so he lays down his book with a patient sigh, and comes back to it with a patent grouch. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... hair was long, And graying and long was he; And I heard this grouch on the shore avouch, In ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... an interesting moment. There'll be things doing before the evening is over. I've had an anxious caller here five times already to- day. I've been standing in the barber-shop opposite getting a line on him. His card name is Grouch, his real ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... with him in the morning about 11:30. On going over to my other man's store I found that he was still in bed. Pretty soon he came in with his before-breakfast grouch. It was afternoon before I got him over to my sample room. Meantime I had gone to sell another man and sold him a bunch of children's and misses' goods—such stuff as a clothing house has no ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... sitting down there in the punt. The river's silver. Come down for a while," he implored. "All evening I've been as lonely as a leper. Ever since you motored off with Kenny, Don's been a grouch. Can't you climb down ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... being to identify me. Those I passed—there were people out of course, late as it was—saw my headlights as I went by. But I was moving fast, Jerry. I was working off a grouch; I ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... breathing. But not all investigators have got these results; and, anyway, it would be impossible to generalize to the extent of asserting that slow heart beat always gave a pleasant state of feeling, and rapid heart beat an unpleasant; for there is slow heart beat during a "morning grouch", and rapid during joyful expectation. Or, in regard to breathing, try this experiment: hasten your breathing and see whether a feeling of pleasantness results; slacken it and see whether unpleasantness results. The fact is that pleasantness ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... has sort of a grouch on me," laughed George. "Nothing much. That's our house just beyond grandfather's." He waved a sealskin gauntlet to indicate the house Major Amberson had built for Isabel as a wedding gift. "It's almost the same as grandfather's, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the Far East, too—even the one little corner of it that we've seen," retorted Sergeant Hal. "Don't be a grouch or a knocker, Noll. Own up that you wouldn't start for the United States to-morrow if you were offered double pay back ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... silk purse out of a pig's ear. Thad's an incurable grouch," at which Skeets laughed till she shook, and ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... it was more than they had expected of an "old grouch." George Allan and Danny Kelly, from out their superior wisdom in dog affairs, agreed that while improbable, it had never been impossible for a freighter to develop into a racer under favorable conditions. While most gratifying ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... "Well, parson, what's the grouch? Are you the devil or an angel sent to bring retribution?" He ended with a silly laugh that told the experienced ear of the young lawyer that the young man had been drinking heavily. And this was the man whose name was signed as Rev. Theodore Brooks, D.D., on the tawdry ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... no more, and the pictures began again, but her mind was not following them. She was very quiet on the way home, and when Jimmie asked her if she had a grouch on she shivered and said, no, she guessed she was tired. Then she suddenly asked him what time he was going out to hunt for another job. He told her he couldn't be sure. He would call her up about noon and let her know. Could she manage to get out a while and meet him? ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... spoke Griscom in a kindly tone, and then, edging nearer to his prime young favorite, he half-whispered: "Keep your eye on this grouch ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... camp and my only hope seemed to be to buy or borrow one somewhere. I asked the two or three fellows standing about the telegraph office where I might be likely to find one. No one seemed to know, but just then the old grouch—excuse me, person who keeps the ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln |
