"Knuckles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... CARED—like mumsey here—" He threw out his hand, choked back a sob, then turned his head away again. "I'm not the Jamie you want. I—can't—go," he said. With the words his thin, boyish hand fell clenched till the knuckles showed white against the tattered old shawl that covered ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... forward with a clatter of his chair legs and trudged down to the roadside. He walked around the outfit with an inquisitive sniffing of his nose and a crinkling of eyebrows, and at last set himself before the man of the chaise top, his knuckles ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... soft and delicate playing of the muscles In the white hand upon its work intent. The graces that around the lady stoop Clothe themselves in new forms, and from her fingers Sportively flying, flutter to the tips Of her unconscious rosy knuckles, thence To dip into the hollows of the dimples That Love ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of once stalwart frame, now bowed and broken, he walked habitually with the knuckles of one hand in the small of his back, as if he feared that his frail framework might give way at that point; silvery hair straggling about his temples, faded blue eyes, kindly and clouded under white shocks of eyebrow—such was the Reverend Fergus Symington, now for some ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... to win. In war, favors might be shown; but in life, with a man's own at stake, it was every one for himself. Peter himself would agree to that. He was not one to ask favors. A fair fight was all he demanded. Then let it be a clean, fair fight with bare knuckles to a finish. Let him show himself to Marjory as the grandson of the man who gave him his name; let ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... anything about it. But this sixty thousand dollars which belongs to Miss Field, who is the best, purest, and kindest woman I have ever known, and who has given away more money than you ever stole, is going back with me to-morrow to New York." Holcombe leaned forward as he spoke, and rapped with his knuckles on the table. Allen confronted him in amazement, in which there was not so much surprise at what the other threatened to do as at the fact that it was he who had ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... team, but all Oakland against all San Francisco, festooned with a free-for-all fight. Hands overlaid hands two and three deep in the struggle to grasp the rope. And hands that found no holds, doubled into bunches of knuckles that impacted on the jaws of the watchers who strove to tear hand-holds from ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... he swallowed manfully and hoped for the best as it burned like acid down his throat into his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had eaten. Weeks' thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed with malicious enjoyment, that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the table which made his knuckles stand out in polished knobs—proving that there were things which could upset the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... and walrusses, which then crowned the stratum-board. All piled together, glorious profusion!—fillets and briskets, rumps, and saddles, and haunches; shoulder to shoulder, loin 'gainst sirloin, ribs rapping knuckles, and quarter to none. And all these sandwiched right over all that went before. Course after course, and course on course, my lord; no time to clear the wreck; no stop nor let; lay on and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... formed by the fitting of the ovoid (egg-shaped) end of one bone into an elliptical cavity of a second bone. Examples of condyloid joints are found at the knuckles and where the wrist bones articulate with the radius and ulna. They move easily in two directions, like hinge joints, and slightly ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... two to five dollars each and are made of hickory with rawhide strings. The players wear specially padded gloves to protect the knuckles. The usual uniform for lacrosse is a tight-fitting jersey and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... apartment as minutely as they might desire. Prior and Lang were the only ones to accept. The former wandered about among the pasteboard scenery, whistling to himself and occasionally tapping a part of it with his knuckles. Lang, who was in his element, ignored the rest of his party and commenced a patient, systematic search, on his own account, for secret apparatus. Faull and Mrs. Trent stood in a corner of the temple, talking together in low tones; while Mrs. Jameson, pretending to hold Backhouse in ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn't think I'm a hero any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... gouging, Fig. 82, the blade is gripped firmly by the left hand with the knuckles up, so that a strong control can be exerted over it. The gouge is manipulated in much the same way as the chisel, and like the chisel it is used longitudinally, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... her hand and applied his knuckles to the back of it with all his force. That hurt her, and she gave a cry, and twisted away from him and drew back; then, putting her left hand to his breast, she gave a great yaw, and then a forward rush with her mighty loins, and a contemporaneous shove with her amazing left arm, that ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... views to the early passengers, as they washed off the accumulation of the previous day from the steps of the front door. "Milk below," (certainly much below "proof"), was answered by the assent of the busy cooks, when a knock at the door of Mrs Smith's room from the red knuckles of the housemaid, awoke her to a sense of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tongue, little plague," cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, "and behave thyself, or theaw shanna go out ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... her, striking backward with his open hand. His great knuckles struck her across the eyes, a cruel, heavy blow that would have felled a man. She staggered back a pace, then sank limply forward on her knees, her hands outreaching on the floor, her hair falling wildly, her posture that of a suppliant ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... to be some street quarrel, I endeavoured to separate the parties by remonstrance. I rushed between them, holding out my cane; but a sharp cut across the knuckles, which I had received from one of the small men, together with his evident intention to follow it up, robbed me of all zest for pacific meditation; and, keeping my eye upon the one who had cut me, I drew a pistol (I could not otherwise defend myself), and fired. The man fell dead in his tracks, ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... and wondering what to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... gasped Landy the first thing, for he was digging his fat knuckles into his heavy eyes as though trying to rout the last atom of ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... steps were already on the landing at the top of the stairs, and Shorthouse, still sitting upright in bed, heard a heavy body brush past his door and along the wall outside, almost immediately afterwards the loud knocking of someone's knuckles on the door ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... constructed on the same general pattern as our own, but are far less perfectly adapted for diversified uses. Their hands do not serve for locomotion so well as the feet of a dog; as may be seen in such monkeys as the chimpanzee and orang, which walk on the outer margins of the palms, or on the knuckles. (69. Owen, 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. 71.) Their hands, however, are admirably adapted for climbing trees. Monkeys seize thin branches or ropes, with the thumb on one side and the fingers and palm on the other, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... left of the hand, he thought. Bones and ugly tight-stretched hide spotted with brown. Bulging knuckles with yellow cigaret stains. My hand. He tried to tighten it, tried to squeeze Martha's thin one in return. He watched it open and contract a little, but it was like operating a remote-control mechanism. Goodbye, hand, you're ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... closed to the public to-morrow—to the public, mind you. My English customers and friends, if they come to the little door in the Arcade, and give two knocks, and then three little ones with their knuckles on the door, will find it open, and can be served as long as there is any liquor left; but for the last three days I have been clearing out nearly all my stock. The demand has been tremendous, and I was glad ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... single-stick with bone poles instead of wooden ones. Two men stand apart, and pommel each other with their fists (a hard bunch of knuckles permanently attached to the arms, and made globular, or extended into a palm, at the pleasure of the proprietor), till one of them, finding himself sufficiently thrashed, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the glass down on the table. "It's horrid! It draws the mouth!" She started up and stood rubbing her knuckles into her cheeks and twisting her lips. She had never thought wine was like this. It was not so much a drink as a blow in the mouth. And yet somehow she felt ashamed of not liking it. "The matron at school used to give us something for toothache that was as bad as this!" she said peevishly, and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... laughter greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned remarks ready ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and fear of disparaging him. Seeing how much shaken we were, she sent for wine, and I was surprised to see Eustace take some almost furtively, but his little sister, though still sobbing, glared out from behind the knuckles she was rubbing into her eyes, and exclaimed, "Eustace, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "Now, let's see. You leave it to me. I know Carter. He's going to be at a stag dinner where I am invited ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... Wat's arrow had sped, and the Butcher sprang back with a howl of pain, his hand skewered by a cloth-yard shaft. As he shook it furiously at his enemies a second grazed his knuckles. With a brutal kick of his metal-shod feet he hurled young Alspaye over the edge, looked down for a few moments at his death agonies, and then walked slowly from the parapet, nursing his dripping hand, the arrows still ringing loudly upon his ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing, though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... The preacher bit his knuckles and took a turn or two up and down the cabin. Douglas noted with a little sense of pity the extreme thinness of the rounded shoulders under the denim jumper. Douglas dished the bacon and put a loaf of Mary's ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... two shoulders, two elbows, two wrists, Now bind up your knuckles, make two little fists; Two legs and two ancles, two knees, and two hips. His fingers and toes have ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... great master-lever, protected by its bell of glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped it experimentally with his knuckles.... ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... argument with Joe...Still the crowd waited. Still Dad and Joe argued the point...There was a murmur and a movement and much merriment. Dad was coming; so was Joe—perched behind him, "double bank," rapidly wiping the tears from his eyes with his knuckles. ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... with his own distemper, in hopes that by his jesting, among his merry Companions, he may from them understand what is best, upon such occasions, to be done or avoided; and they seriously jesting say to him: O friend, wean yourself from your wife and Tobacco, and drink Chocolate, and eat knuckles of Veal, or else you'l become like one of Pharaohs lean Kine. Oh ho, thinks he, if that be true, I have spent my reckoning this ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... forehead with his knuckles and punched irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel. The ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... scrub, at the reeking tub, for eighteen hours at a stretch, perchance, Till our bowed backs ache, and our knuckles smart, and the lights through the steam like spectres dance; Ankle-deep in the watery sludge, where the tile is loose or the drainage blocked! Oh, I haven't a doubt that the dainty dames—if they only knew!—would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... by sea. He was less dark than Jenny, and his hair was almost auburn, so rich a chestnut was it. His eyes were blue and heavily lashed; his hands were long and brown, with small freckles between the knuckles. He stood with incomparable ease, his hands and arms always ready, but in perfect repose. His lips, for he was clean-shaven, were keen and firm. His glance was fearless. As the phrase is, he looked every inch a sailor, born to challenge the winds and ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... others, and not Normanby's own accounts, there is an end of confidence; but I must say his last letter appears to me a sort of exuberance of anger, which spends itself on many subjects rather than the one which first caused it, and therefore I suspect he has received some rap on the knuckles at home, which he resents here, or on the first person who is not of the same opinion as himself; but it is a curious anomaly that he should quarrel with Normanby in support of arbitrary and absolute Government. All is quiet here now, and will, I hope, continue ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon his curly head as it rose now and again out of the storm—blows of guns, of knives, of bony knuckles. Yet he staggered forward, bleeding, exhausted, feeling nothing of the blows, seeing only the distorted faces that snarled on every side ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... mother rock under the lip of a clashing fall. The fee promised was by no means large, and, because current wages prohibited assistance, he did all the work himself. So he shoveled debris and drilled holes in the hard blue grit; and drilling, single-handed, is a difficult operation, damaging to the knuckles of the man attempting it. He waded waist-deep in water, learned to carry heavy burdens on his shoulder, and found his interest in the task growing upon him. He felt that much depended upon the successful completion of his contract. It was not, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... his broken knuckles and bruised cheek, he wondered if, after all, the affair hadn't been for the best. True, he had made an enemy of Shad, but then according to the girl, Shad had already been his enemy. Peter abhorred fighting, as he had told Beth, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... movements of her wrists, really doing her best by physical force to separate her hands, but the harder she tried the more her grip increased in strength, until the knuckles turned white with the pressure. Her hands seemed locked together by a ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... is according to the statistics, I believe. But to the best of my recollection, our previous captain brought us through eighty-eight skirmishes before anyone got hurt." He shook his head and thoughtfully contemplated the big, raw knuckles ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... troubles! Think of poor Northcliffe. He thinks he's saved the nation from its miserable government, and the government now openly abuses him in the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his brass knuckles and turns the Times building upside down and sets all the Daily Mail machine guns going, and has to go to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and deepens. The Government keeps hell in the prayer-book because without ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... scarred by time and weather; wrinkled, and in a manner twisted like the fantastic turns of a gnarled tree-trunk, hollow and decayed. Through these jags and tearings of weather, wind, and work, the nakedness of the countenance—the barren framework—was visible; the cheekbones like knuckles, the chin of brown stoneware, the upper-lip smooth, and without the short groove which should appear between lip and nostrils. Black shadows dwelt in the hollows of the cheeks and temples, and there was a blackness about ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... face with his arms and kicked to be let down; and he also made an attempt to bite. "Eh, and he bites, too, the little devil!" Gustav had to hold him firmly so as to manage him. He held him by the collar, pressing his knuckles against the boy's throat and making him gasp, while he spoke with derisive gentleness. "A clever youngster, this! He's scarcely out of long clothes, and wants to fight already!" Gustav went on tormenting him; it looked as if he were making a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sent over half a dozen more like me a dozen years ago, there's no saying but they might be rubbing their knuckles into their eyes by now, and beginning to wake up! I've got to butt right in, if I'm to make any mark by the end ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... day, ninety-nine out of a hundred of them, came from such an illustrious ancestry of hard knuckles and homespun. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... gill and a half of water, and pour it hot on to one pound of flour, to which a good pinch of salt has been added. Mix into a stiff paste, pinch off enough of it to make the lid, and keep it hot. Flour your board and work the paste into a ball, then with the knuckles of your right hand press a hole in the centre, and mould the paste into a round or oval shape, taking care to keep it a proper thickness. Having put in the meat, join the lid to the pie, which raise ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... explanation, Jill remained silent for a space, and then approached her camel, feeling that the rapping of her knuckles, however slight, had been quite unwarranted, for her sympathy in human beings and their feelings was great, and the understanding which kept her from wounding the sensibilities of those ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... that in conversation I am not a brilliant success. Partly, indeed, that may be owing to the assiduity with which my aunt suppressed my early essays in the art: "Children," she said, "should be seen but not heard," and incontinently rapped my knuckles. To a larger degree, however, I regard it as intrinsic. This tendency to silence, to go out of the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, is largely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... mused, and, glancing at Madame Beavor, said, "And yet, madame, your charming gaiety consoles me amidst all my suffering;" upon which Madame Beavor called him "flatterer," and rapped his knuckles with her fan; the latter proceeding the brave Pole did not seem to like, for he immediately buried his hands ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one forgets with. To be able to forget means sanity. Incessantly to remember, means obsession, lunacy. So the problem I faced in solitary, where incessant remembering strove for possession of me, was the problem of forgetting. When I gamed with flies, or played chess with myself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot. What I desired was entirely ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... unseasonably, through night and storm, to the door of the lonely farmhouse,—so it happened that nobody, for an instant or two, arose to answer the summons. Pretty soon there came another knock. The first had been moderately loud; the second was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles of the applicant must have left their ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cruelty of the village schoolmistress to her offspring. The cruelty of the teacher was almost as unendurable to him as that of a bad father or husband. He would not hear of any justification for rapping school-children over the knuckles with a ruler. If one ventured to say that there were such things as demon- children and that they had a power to probe and prod even the best of good people into a kind of frenzy in which they were hardly accountable for their acts, the plea roused his deepest indignation. Indeed, it ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... with a quick "Kreeg-ah!" telling him to run high into a tall tree. Evidently Teeka was not favorably impressed by her new suitor. Toog realized this and altered his methods accordingly. He swelled his giant chest, beat upon it with his calloused knuckles and swaggered to ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bandages concealing them from view then fell off, and to my agonised sight were disclosed objects that struck me as strangely familiar. There is something about fingers, a marked individuality, I never forget. No two persons' hands are alike. And in these fingers, in their excessive whiteness, round knuckles, and blue veins, in their tapering formation and perfect filbert nails, I read a likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall. Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean—" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? Mightn't it ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... queer, battered man, who bent moodily over his glass of gin and stole furtive glances at me with bleared, sullen eyes. His blood was charged with bile, and he could not prevent the sudden muscular twitchings of his hands. His knuckles were swollen, and his fingers were twisted slightly. Evidently he was diseased to the very bone through alcoholic excesses. He was dressed in a shiny overcoat, and his bony shanks threatened to pierce his trousers. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... too, the Prince suffered a little from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel that had blown into them while viewing the works at "Soo." His right hand was also painful from the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. To set these matters right, the doctor went up from the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the mail and the daily news ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... rawboned woman in crepe, with a mourning comb in her hair which curiously lengthened her long face sat stiffly upon the sofa, her hands, conspicuous for their large knuckles, folded in her lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the coffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant in the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad and gentle. She was ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Knuckles quavered at the door. She straightened herself, turned, and called out definitely, "Come in." Mrs. Benson stood before her, vast, massive, black-gowned, cloudy for trouble, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... pounding on the door above, and occasionally the sound of the porter's voice, but the straight, erect figure at the window remained motionless. Finally "Red" came down, nursing his knuckles. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... Unlike Hope Cottage, it did not look at all the residence of Miss Janet and Miss Anne. Its appearance, indeed, was woe-begone. Aristide, however, went up to the door; as there was neither knocker nor bell, he rapped with his knuckles. The door opened, and there, poorly dressed in blouse and skirt, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... of the group rode Beaduheard himself, red and hot with his ride, and plainly in a rage. His rough brown beard bristled fiercely, and his hand griped the bridle so that the knuckles were white. He had armed himself, and his men were armed also, but their gear showed poorly beside the Danish harness. He had hardly more than twenty men after him, and I thought he had outridden his followers ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade. Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... was really too much of a good thing. In this state of intense antagonism he was startled to observe tips of fingers fumbling with the dark stuff. Then they grasped the edge of the further curtain and hung on there, just fingers and knuckles and nothing else. It made an abominable sight. He was looking at it with unaccountable repulsion when a hand came into view; a short, puffy, old, freckled hand projecting into the lamplight, followed by a white wrist, an arm in a grey coat-sleeve, up to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... already swollen lip, but the lower knuckles landed against the tip of Dodge's jaw with a force which, while not complete, nevertheless sent Bert to the floor, where he lay on ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... said the other, stopping short his walk, "I broke my knuckles on an Irish hackman's teeth. Last week the fellow drove me from the North River boat to my house in Union Square, and I offered him seventy-five cents. He was very insolent and demanded a dollar. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... was not a trace of embarrassment or of suspicion. The little dynamo with the prodigious head and the baby mouth and the intense, deepset, restless eyes stood by his chair, and with knuckles on the table much of the time, talked down into the flowers directly in front of him. He spoke sometimes in a husky, low voice, now and again in a smothered shriek, again in a tragic whisper. He was in a small ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... returning from dinner at the Beau Rivage to his own hotel), was disturbed by a whimpering noise behind him, like the mewing of a little cat. Turning round, he saw a small and ragged form padding barefoot after him, its knuckles in its eyes. The Norwegian explorer, unlike most great men, was tender-hearted to children. Bending down to the crying urchin, he inquired of it the cause of its trouble. Its answer was in Russian, and to the effect that it was very hungry. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... and the Call will come to him strong. He will go into the forests. He will disappear at times. But we must not fasten him. He will come back. Ka, he will come back!" And he rubbed his hands in the moonglow until his knuckles cracked. ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... her eyes childishly with her knuckles; she stared at him for a moment unrecognisingly, then, as memory returned, she shrank back into ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Bentley had roamed the jungles hidden in the great hairy body, the only part of him remaining "Bentley" being the Bentley brain which Barter had placed in the ape's skull-pan. Bentley would never forget the horror of that grim awakening, in which he had found himself walking on bent knuckles, his voice the fighting bellow of ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... "psalm book," and bade him copy the hymn carefully. He did not dare to touch the dainty little volume, for his hands were far from immaculate after his morning's work. He managed, though, with his knuckles to steady it against Baxter's "Saints' Rest" and "Thomas a Kempis," which in choice bindings found their place among Alma's devotional books, more in memory of her mother, to whom they had belonged, than for any special use they were ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... the history of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... came running down a street in Islington. He knocked at the door of No. 16, and in his impatience, until it was opened, commenced a tattoo with his knuckles upon the panels. ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... toward Hillard, but fortunately Merrihew heard the slithering sound of the saber as it left its scabbard. Kitty screamed and O'Mally shouted. Merrihew, with a desperate lunge, stopped the blow. He received a rough cut over the knuckles, but he was not aware of this till the excitement was past. He flung the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... For the unknown who had so unceremoniously brushed against him on the dark stair had been attired in tartan clothes. It had been a bare knee that had touched him on the leg; it had been a plaid-fringe that had brushed across his face; and his knuckles had been rapped lightly by the protuberances upon the sheath and hilt of a mountain dagger. M. le Baron's proscription of arms seemed to have some strange exceptions, he told himself. They were not only treated with contempt by the Macfarlanes, but even in Doom ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... tatterdemalions against eighty thousand swaggerers of Germans—fine tall men and well equipped; I can see them yet. Then Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte in those days, breathed goodness knows what into us, and on we marched night and day. We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to thrash them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let them go. The army came to have a liking for winning battles. Then Napoleon hems them in on all sides, these German generals did not ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... companion was meandering, and would never come to the point unless forced to face it, so she rapped her knuckles with the lorgnette. "What about ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... of having noticed nothing, I resumed my meal, but out of the corner of my eye I watched his left hand on the table near the flask. It was most interesting, all the veins stood out like ropes, and his knuckles almost burst through ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... tearing down the motor began at once. Gregory wore the skin from his knuckles in loosening the stud-bolts while Howard instructed him from the doorway how to take off the carburetor and rip up the feed-line. As they worked the girl made a rapid survey of the parts she desired ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... my papa," said Anthony; "I wish he were. Oh, if you could see my papa—ha! ha!—you would not forget him in a hurry; and if he chanced to box your ears, or pinch your cheek, or rap your head with his knuckles, you would not forget ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Marsh, Gaylor, Rainey, Professor Strombergk entered the cabinet. With their knuckles they beat upon its sides. They moved it to and fro. They dropped to their knees, and with their fingers tugged at the carpet upon ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... to his room but came down again with considerable celerity, rubbing his knuckles, and breaking the highly charged silence of the office with a caustic comment upon the inconvenience of ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... resignedly; and tossing the man a five-franc piece, applied his knuckles to the door of an outwardly commonplace hotel particulier in the rue Chaptal between the impasse of the Grand Guignol and ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat. One thing was clear: there was no sign ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his whistling stopped suddenly and the knuckles of his clasped hands whitened. Atherton looked away quickly and his eyeglass fell with a little tinkle against a waistcoat button. There was another long pause. Finally the music died away and the stillness was broken only ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... "I dressed and come here, but when I asked fo' Dave he wouldn't step outside, so I just lost patience with his foolishness and took a crack at him standing where I'm standing now, but he ducked and you can still see, ma'am"—turning to the embarrassed Mrs. Ferris—"where my knuckles made a dint in the door-jamb. I got him the next ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a day—which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden brim of his tub; as little wonder that you, when you are left to yourselves, without your rectors—myself, and Hall, and Boultby—to back you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to my hair, and I have a great dislike of bats. At last, after some minutes of jerking and dangling, I found myself standing in a narrow passage by the side of the worthy Ali, covered with bats and perspiration, and with the skin rubbed off my knees and knuckles. Then another man came down, hand over hand like a sailor, and as the rest were told to stop above we were ready to go on. Ali went first with his candle—of course we each had a candle—leading the way down a long passage about five ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... other hand, stood upright and hit straight, with the result that he hurt his knuckles very much on his opponent's skull, without seeming to disturb the latter to any great extent. In the process he received one of the windmill swings on the left ear. The crowd, strong ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... I am of you, Miss Dunstable," and he put out his hand to take hold of hers. She then lifted up her own, and slapped him lightly on the knuckles. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... and such old-wivery; Wonderful chess-men made from ivory; Cut-glass bottles for wines and brandies, Sticks once flourished by bucks and dandies; Deep old glasses they drank enough in, And golden boxes they took their snuff in; Rings that flashed on a gallant's knuckles, Seals and lockets and shining buckles; Watches sadly in need of menders, Blackened firedogs and dinted fenders; Prints and pictures and quaint knick-knackery, Rare old silver and mere gimcrackery— Such was the shop, and in its middle ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... physical inadequacy. About Anne there was playing the very spirit of tragic anger, none of it for effect, not in the least gauged by any idea of its efficiency. Those slender hands, gripping each other until the knuckles blanched, were ready for their act. The girl's white face was lighted with eyes of fire. Madame Beattie rose and slowly assumed ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Miss Prue's bonnet slipped and hung rakishly above one ear. Her hair loosened and fell in straggling wisps of gray to her shoulders. Her eyeglasses dropped from her nose and swayed dizzily on their slender chain. Her gloves split across the back and showed the white, tense knuckles. Her breath came in gasps, and only a moaning "whoa—whoa" fell in jerky rhythm from her white lips. Ashamed, frightened, and dismayed, Miss Prue clung to the reins and kept her straining eyes ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... used to say, "More of your lining, and less of your dining." However, I dined with him, and could hardly leave him at eight, to go to Lady Jersey's, where five or six foreign Ministers were, and as many ladies. Monteleon played like the English, and cried "gacco," and knocked his knuckles for trump, and played at small games like Ppt. Lady Jersey whispered me to stay and sup with the ladies when the fellows were gone; but they played till eleven, and I would not stay. I think this letter must go on Saturday; that's certain; and it is not half full yet. Lady Catherine ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... month tree. On its stem he was to cut a mark every time his week tree told him a month had passed. But he must be careful, for the months were not of equal length. But he remembered that his teacher had once said in school that the months could be counted on the knuckles and hollows of the hand, in such a way that the long and short months could be found easily and he could tell in this way the ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... was lodged (in pantomime) under the captain's ribs. 'Sure, of coorse, they can't be up to his thricks, an' he an ould sojer!' And here Andy let fly vivaciously beneath his unconscious adversary's left ear, restraining the knuckles within about half ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... ghostly in the waning light, knee-high, I should judge. Once I passed the skeleton of a stable—the remnant of the buildings put up by a pioneer settler who had to give in after having wasted effort and substance and worn his knuckles to the bones. The wilderness uses ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... me,—and mufflers I'll carefully pull O'er my knuckles hereafter, to make them, well-bred; To mollify digs in the kidneys with wool, And temper with leather a punch of ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... used to knock him down like a log if he didn't please him, but he never offered to turn upon him. He seemed to like it, and looked regular put out once when Starlight hurt his knuckles against his hard skull. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... even square with me—after I have worked politics with you for twenty-five years!" He marched up to the table and rapped his hard little knuckles on it. "It's this way, gents," he said, "and I'll be short and sweet. What's the matter with politics when a man like I've always been gets pi-oogled out ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... again, and all the schools in the town (including the National, who had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for they were always throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or clutching their heads of hair. A pretty birthday speech when Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed he really must beg to express ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... globe to find it;— This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it!— He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till they crack their iron knuckles! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... son of about five years old, who was pitifully crying so as to break one's heart, and as if that were not punishment enough, he shook him violently by his little pig-tail, and pounded him on the head with his knuckles, a performance that would have killed, or, at all events, rendered insensible nine children out of ten of other nationalities; but no, to my utter astonishment, the moment the father, tired of beating, retired into the house, the little mite, wiping ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... and pretty, and take it hard when she is not. But possibly the secret of enduring so much state as the English have lies in knowing how and when to shirk it, to drop it. No doubt, the alien who counted upon this fact, if it is a fact, would find his knuckles warningly rapped when he reached too confidingly through air that seemed empty of etiquette. But the rapping would be very gentle, very kindly, for this is the genius of English rule where it is not concerned with criminal offence. You must keep off wellnigh all the grass ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... it off, rapped him on the knuckles with my thimble, told him he was naughty, and said we must not suffer merit to think itself neglected. Clifton began to sing Britons strike home; which he soon changed to Rule Britannia: sure tokens that he was not pleased; for these ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be fidgetty,' said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses with his knuckles. 'I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Europe is cowed; England knuckles down; and there is universal peace, with all the kings and people pretending to ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... only on the arms. This tattoo begins close back of the knuckles on the back of the hands, and, as soon as it reaches the wrist, entirely encircles the arms to above the elbows. Still above this there is frequently a separate design on the outside of the arm; it is often the figure of a man with extended arms ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the house, trying to lessen his weight as if he were walking on thin ice; and the old house cracked its knuckles, but his foot-fall made not a sound. She placed a chair for him and sat down with her hands in her lap, and how expressive they were, small and thin, but shapely. She was pale and neat in a black gown. To him she had never looked ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... a last effort to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. "I don't know what you've been talking about," he grated wildly. "But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! Do you understand—whoever, ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Whysot Whysot and Company, dealers in church ornaments. Called April 3rd. Reputation damaged on the race-track. Known as a welcher. Reputation to be repaired by August 1st. Retainer Five Dollars." He turned the page and ran his fingerless knuckles down ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... was provided with a heavy bronze knocker, but strangely enough the newcomers did not avail themselves of its use, but rapped on the wooden panels with their knuckles, giving three successive raps ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... dry tinder about you, your honor? I have been trying to strike a light for the last half-hour till the tinder box is full of water, and I have knocked all the skin off my knuckles." ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... carry him down, the boat had trimmed well enough; but now, taking a long breath, he leaned forward, and dug his sculls into the water, pulling them through with all his strength. The consequence of this feat was that the handles of the sculls came into violent collision in the middle of the boat, the knuckles of his right hand were barked, his left scull unshipped, and the head of his skiff almost blown round by the wind before he could restore order ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... yourself, Lawless," replied I, for, as the reader has doubtless discovered from the style of his address, it was none other than the subject of my late reverie with whom I had come in collision. "I don't know whether I have scratched your varnish, as you call it, but I have knocked the skin off my own knuckles against the tree in ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... but kept the young people in their places, and well did every youngster know that did he not conduct himself in the sanctuary with becoming propriety, the cane the elder carried would likely come rapping down smartly on his unrighteous knuckles. J. P. Thornton's welcome was kindly but stately. He had grown stout and slightly pompous-looking during the passing years, and his fine, well-dressed figure lent quite an air of dignity to the whole church. But Lawyer Ed, ushering a stranger into ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... lawyers. There was even talk of sending him to the legislature, where her own father, the Honorable Prim, had achieved his title. She wished, of course, that Mr. Willits's hair was not quite so red; she wished, too, that the knuckles on his hands were not so large and bony—and that he was not always at her beck and call; but these, she was forced to admit, were trifles in the make-up of a fine man. There was, however, a sane mind under ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... followed on Billebedam's departure by heaping the dirty plates higher on the table and drumming a tattoo on the cleared space with his knuckles. Hutchinson snuffed the smoky candle and reflectively rubbed the soot from the wick between ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... no serious regret to Flor on her own account: the less viands, the less dishes, she could oftener pause in the act of wiping a plate and perform an original hornpipe by herself, tossing the thin translucent china, and rapping it with her knuckles till it rang again. She had, however, a pang once when she saw Miss Emma lunching with relish on cold sweet potato. She spent all the rest of the day floating on the tide in an old abandoned scow secured by a long rope to the bank, and afterwards wading up and down the bed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... that meets the 4.52. He'd a handbag and a sort of hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. He wouldn't let the Boots touch the hamper, but carried it up into his bedroom himself. He carried it in front of him by the handles, and grazed his knuckles at every second step. He slipped going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked his head a rattling good thump against the balustrade; but he never let go that hamper—only swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous and excited, but one gets ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... came back to Harvey. "He looks ill," he said, which is true. His honestly-painted knuckles make diagnosis easy. My friend thought that this great man would probably have dosed him well, and, as he added, would not have bothered him about too much sugar, nor forbidden champagne. I had ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... Jersey gate and climbed the icy steps, hanging onto the railing with both hands. She saw Em Jersey rise from her chair in the parlor and go into the back sitting-room. Abbie pulled the bell-knob and waited. No one answered. She pulled it again. No answer. She rapped on the door with her knuckles. Big Mary, the Jersey hired girl, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it! kill the boy and seize the box!" His hand was outstretched to take the box from the table, when the same stick which had extinguished the lights gave his knuckles such a rap that he uttered a yell of pain. Though the lights were extinguished, through the windows the faint starlight dimly illuminated the scene. Charles Stevens saw the outline of his uncle, who seized the box and hurried with ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... that was a source of misery and shame to his doting mother." Old Nanny pressed her eyeballs with her knuckles as if ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fluting voice, with a preciseness of enunciation akin to the more feebly clerical, and with smiles which became almost lachrymose in their expressiveness as he dropped from phrase to phrase of embarrassed circumlocution. And his long bony hands writhed together till the knuckles were white. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Collar got one from me that made him remember home and mother, I'll bet. Anyhow, my knuckles ached for two days afterwards. And Jonadab was just as busy. But I cal'late we'd have been ready for the oven in another five minutes if the door hadn't bu'st open with a bang, and a loud dressed chap, with the sweat pourin' down ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... forward. She saw Raymond's knuckles grow white and hard as his hands gripped the back of his chair. His eyes dilated, and for a moment he could not speak. Finally ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, I had ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... her knuckles on the glass of a near-by window. "Supper!" she announced. "Hurry in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... gloves on with him often enough before, and knocked him about to his heart's content. But he had now to learn that Richard Frayne, the white-handed lover of music, fought better without gloves than with, while the soft-palmed hands had knuckles as bony as ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the Model Man being the next to succumb. He had performed well, in something approaching style, for thirty runs. After him came the Treasure. He played forward very tamely at everything, until a ball suddenly got up and skinned two of his knuckles. Then he grew excited, and began hitting very hard, and making runs at ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... first this was a light duty, but as time passed by it became extremely irksome, and when Larry was awakened by Will to take his second spell of watching, he vented his regrets in innumerable grunts, growls, coughs, and gasps, while he endeavoured to rub his eyes open with his knuckles. ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... stepped forward. He was dressed in a long black topcoat, high collar and string tie. The clicking noise was explained when he rubbed his long white hands together, making the knuckles pop like ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... voices. He cowered, cast hunted glances at the bloody figure on the floor, bit his knuckles ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the chair where he had flung himself on his knees when Walden had entered his mother's cottage,—and rubbed his knuckles hard into his eyes with a long and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... But I love hard work!" (Interruption from Mr. Meadows, sounding like "I don't think!") "Being tired, I shall depute to my dear young friend here the task of removing the parcels from the tree." He tapped Wally severely on the head with his knuckles, and that hapless youth ejaculated, "Beast!". "You'll get thrown out, if you don't watch it!" said the ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie felt obliged to applaud by knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. On the whole, he was so overjoyed as to be led to commit all manner of eccentricities, and conducted himself generally in such a ridiculous manner, that Charlie laughed himself ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb |
