"Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... school education will produce all female excellencies. The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are squeamish. They show by ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a mild and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow while she studied the parrots who were ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... miles the grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment every sentry is chipping his pert, querulous challenge until the disturbers of the peace are close upon him, then diving headlong into the bowels ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... a foolish action I've committed. The icy bonds of matrimony are upon me already; I feel myself turning into a fond, faithful, rational, humble, meek-spirited wife! Alas! I must now turn my head into a museum, and hang up all my smart sayings inside my brain, there to petrify, as warnings to all pert misses. Dear Mary! if ever I am good for anything, it will be to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... got to be out of this place in half an hour, less. The fact is, Cyrus Carve has been extremely—er—pert. He's paid me a month's salary and I'm off at once. In under thirty minutes I shall be ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... cautiously (as Irish girls always do), and admitted them into the entry, where one light only was burning in a branch lamp. "Shall we go upstairs?" said Mrs. Morland. "And what for would ye go upstairs?" said the girl in a pert tone. "It's all dark there, and there's no preparations. Ye can lave your things here a-hanging on the rack. It is a party ye're expecting? Blessed are ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip of her tongue, but she was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... nothing of these; but I know that in my time a pert French satirist, one Boileau, made so free with your character, that I tore his book for having abused my favourite hero. And now this saucy Englishman has libelled us both. But I have a proposal to make to you for the reparation of our honour. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... his neck, his crisp hair against my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it. Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the limit. He sat motionless for a long time, while over ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... putty consid'able pert o' it air made up o' Mormings; an' they'll be boun' to the Salt Lake. We kin foller them an' drop t'other. In the Morming settlements, we kin swop our unyforms for suthin' else, an' the berra too. Es to the knepsacks an' cartridge-box, I guess as how ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... came a crumbling At the back of his mouth and a rumbling, And a sort of sound like a grumbling, And out there popped, as pert as you please, A milky back tooth that had taken its ease For too many weeks and months and years. An object, when loose, of anxious fears, It had now debouched and lost its place At the back of a startled schoolboy's face. Oh, out it popped, And down it dropped In the middle of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... were times when everything about you and your house hurt me. You had so many dear little things I couldn't have. Do you know—it's ridiculous—but I had an especial spite at those china dogs of yours. There were times when I wanted to catch up Gog and Magog and bang their pert black noses together! Oh, you smile, Anne—but it was never funny to me. I would come here and see you and Gilbert with your books and your flowers, and your household goods, and your little family jokes—and your love ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... discussion was in progress, and meanwhile the door of the study was open—an unprecedented circumstance. As I approached the portals I could hear loud voices raised, for mingled with the pert, venomous accents of De Griers were Mlle. Blanche's excited, impudently abusive tongue and the General's plaintive wail as, apparently, he sought to justify himself in something. But on my appearance every one stopped speaking, ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... stage soubrette, demurely pert from crown to sole. Possibly—just possibly—she guessed; probably she guessed nothing. The suggestion was no more than a suggestion in the mind of the watcher of all these ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all sad-coloured, but quaint, with the tail-feathers sticking up on end, and exactly like those of an emu; on the very smallest scale, even to the peculiarity of two feathers growing out of the same little quill. I was much amused by the varieties ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... for Young Working Girls—it's all very well to be sympathetic with them, but when it comes to a settlement-house, and Heaven knows I have given them all the counsel and suggestions I could, though some of the professional settlement workers are as pert as they can be, and I really do believe some of them think they are trying to end poverty entirely, just as though the Lord would have sent poverty into the world if He didn't have a very good reason for it—you will remember the Bible says, 'The ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... him. He was distinctly handsome, with the boy-doll style of beauty—curly, dark hair, rosy cheeks, and a small, very carefully tended mustache. He wore a very long and fashionable coat, and was evidently pleasantly conscious of its flop around his ankles. His handsome face wore an expression of pert triumph as he passed on into the inner office.... Carroll, who had lingered with an idle curiosity to ascertain who was the successful applicant, heard a voice so near his ear that it whistled. The voice was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made but scholars must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more obviously, and she accordingly compelled the poor girl to do all the drudgery of the household. It was she who washed the dishes, and scrubbed down the stairs, and polished the floors in my lady's chamber and in those of the two pert misses, her daughters; and while the latter slept on good feather beds in elegant rooms, furnished with full-length looking-glasses, their sister lay in a wretched garret on an old straw mattress. Yet the poor thing ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... all the specialties of the old kind, but in a higher degree. So they named this one Eutamias, which means "good" or "extra good" Chipmunk. And extra good this exquisite little creature surely is in all that goes to make a charming, graceful, birdy, pert and vivacious four-foot. In everything but colours it is Eutamias or Tamias of a more intensified type. Its tail is long in proportion and carried differently, being commonly held straight up, so that the general impression one gets is of a ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... during that time sufficed to enable him to win so easy a victory, that it was some months before he had again occasion to use his fists in earnest. This time it was in the streets. He was returning home with his cousins, when a pert young clerk thought it a good joke to twitch off his cap and throw it into a shop, and was astounded when, before the cap had reached the floor, he himself ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... traverses this wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... little roughly, it may be, but still—properly. Directly it grew familiar, he became careless; and he had a most wilful habit of aggravating his customers, which could not, of course, continue without seriously injuring his trade. For instance, when some pert young puppy would come forward, and civilly enough request his "one or two penn'orth of natives," Bruin would first insist on having the money paid down, and would then tantalise his customer by offering him the opened oyster and hastily withdrawing it just as the impatient ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... was right behind, and they saw him), and he stood right up in the sleigh and shook his fist, he was so mad; but afterwards he bu'st out laughin'. It did look kind of curi's; it wa'n't bigger than a front entry, and it set up so pert right there on the heater-piece, as if he was calc'latin' to farm it. The folks said Susan Ellen covered up her face in her shawl and began to cry. I s'pose the pore thing was discouraged. Joseph was awful mad,—he was kind of laughing and cryin' together. Our folks stopped ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... A pert young Mouse, to whom the world was new, Had once a near escape, if all be true. He told his mother, as I now tell you: "I crossed the mountains that beyond us rise, And, journeying onwards, bore me ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... New England yankee mind could concoct such humours and fascinatingly pert phrases as are found here. They are like the chatterings of the interrupted squirrel in the tree-hole at nut-time. There is so much of high gossip in these poetic turns of hers, and so, throughout her books, one finds a multitude ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... to hear no more from you, Miss Pert! Go to Miss Loring, and tell her that she will confer a favor by seeing me this evening. I can receive ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... not easily to be appeased. "I am not wont to be so browbeat," said he hotly. "This is your Squire, Master John. How comes it that you can stand there and listen to his pert talk, and say no word to chide him? Is this how you guide your household? Have you not taught him that every promise given is subject to the King's consent, and that with him only lie the springs of life and death? If he is sick, you at least ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the domestic, with pert familiarity, and took her time in arranging the shade of the lamp. When she returned from the door it was to announce, smilingly, that Mr. Cobb ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... on which he was working, and went out to see if he were needed in front. He sold a lip-stick to a pert miss who from sheer instinct made eyes at him, and he wished that Helen May had such plump cheeks—though he thanked God she had not the girl's sophisticated eyes. (Yes, a bungalow out there against the hills ought ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... more about it." He wandered across the room, pulling a leaf from the azaleas, stopping at the window for a long look out. The wind was blowing some riotous young clouds over the sky like inarticulate shouts. There was an arrogant bird in the elm; there were pert crocus-buds in the window-boxes. The place was full of foolhardy little dare-devils who trusted their fate and might never find it out. After all, that was the way to live—as long as one was allowed. He turned suddenly with his whimsical smile. "I look ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the pert assurance of a pretty girl who is only playing the servant "to oblige." The agent looked irritably at the ugly gap in the fine tracing overhead, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... small pert man, was the skipper, with a sharp face, an edge to his voice, and two little points of eyes that glowed. Salt water had not drenched his dry cockney speech, and he was a gamin of the sea and as keen to its gammon ways as ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... mirthful meed Had won, ere Tibbald of Stow,— With look as pert as the pouncing glede When he eyeth the chick below,— Scraped his crowd, And clear and loud, As the merle-cock shrill, Or the bell from the hill, Thus tuned his throat to his rough sire's praise— His sire the ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... saw his face, he became suddenly and totally disconcerted; walked two or three steps backward, and still gazed on Ravenswood with an air of fear and wonder, which had totally banished from his features their usual expression of pert vivacity. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... I don't know if I make myself clear at all.... You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only that—Lord, no! It was a great deal more than that, and it was just beginning; ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... of homesick, don't it, this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... women now? Tell an English creve that Miss Maria is clever at a custard, and he will sneer at her. No. She must be witty, pert; able to give him as good as he sends, as people say. Young Dumas has done a very great deal of this harm; and he has made a fortune by it. He has brought the Casino into the drawing-room, given ces dames a position in society, and ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... his own importance and authority, ushered aunt Corinne and Robert into the fair, and limped after them whenever he thought they needed admonition or advice. The landlord's pert young son noticed this and made his intimates laugh at it. Besides, he was gorgeously attired in blue velvet jacket and ruffles and white trousers, and among the crowds of grown people coming and going, other children shone in resplendent ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a certain portion of St. Paul's epistle ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... robe and a species of tinsel crown, out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, haying evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and accoutred as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while at Briarwood Hall," she said, in her quick, pert way, "you'll learn that that's the only way to do with Old Dolliver. Make your bargain before you get into the Ark—that's what we call this stage—or he surely will overcharge you. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... friend with a little money to enable him to buy what he might most pressingly require. At first, on seeing Pierre's cassock, the old man had growled some coarse words; but, despite his extreme feebleness, he still retained the pert chaffing spirit of the Parisian artisan: "Well, then, I'll willingly drink a drop," he said distinctly, "and have a bit of bread with it, if there's the needful; for I've lost taste of both for a couple of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of twenty hardly seemed to expect an answer; but the man addressed in this pert manner, though the senior of the pair by six years, felt that the emotion throbbing in his heart must be allowed to bubble forth lest he ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly like ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollow'd deep, Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk a while, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, Ascends the neighbouring beech; there whisks his brush, And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud, With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm, And ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this man says, I will do."—[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]— ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... slab of granite, and ate the luncheon we had brought, cold venison steak and bread. By and by a marvelous thing happened. A flash of wings sparkled in the air, a brave little voice challenged us cheerily, a pert tiny rock-wren flirted his tail and darted his wings and wanted to know what we were thinking of anyway to enter his especial territory. And shortly from nowhere appeared two Canada Jays, silent as the wind itself, hoping for a share in our meal. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a pretty creature, with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and it makes their friends very uneasy, since the only excuse ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded 'two ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... having whole groves of humming-birds, tatne tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, and a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of a punishment than a pleasure; but for sheer discomfort this stay capped the climax. Under Zara's incompetent rule John's home had degenerated into a lawless and slovenly abode: the meals were unpalatable, the servants pert and lazy, while the children ran wild—you could hardly hear yourself speak for the racket. Whenever possible, Mahony fled the house. He lunched in town, looked up his handful of acquaintances, bought necessaries—and unnecessaries—for the voyage. He also hired a ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... who payeth first The Exchequer's pert purse-stormer: As the year wags still worse and worst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... with much energy upon the table. Mrs. Tag-rag wiped her eyes, sighed, and resumed her book. Miss Tag-rag began to make tea, her papa gradually forgetting his rage, as he fixed his dull gray eyes fondly on the pert skinny countenance ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... sure," said Mrs. Leigh, "some girls here are that pert and forward, I can't bear it myself; and yet the gentlemen all encourage it, and think it real smart. Lilla Tremaine, you ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... stunner? I'll gurgle so. What had become of that extra 20 pounds I wouldn't even try to guess. But she's right there with the svelte figure, the school girly flush, and the sparklin' eyes. Maybe it was the way the gown was built. Fits like the peel on a banana. Or the pert way she holds her head, or the general excitement of the occasion. Anyway, mighty few 20-year-old screen favorites would ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an abundance of the following breed of items, and they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... send you a good little Bit of, which I think may do you a good turn now and then. Give a look at 'Egypt of the Pharaohs' by Zincke, Vicar of a Parish near Woodbridge; the Book is written in a light, dashing (but not Cockney pert) way, easily looked over. There is a supposed Soliloquy of an English Labourer (called 'Hodge') as contrasted with the Arab, which ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... person, if not altogether innocent of an occasional display of coarseness; his wife was good-natured, and inclined at times to be melancholy. Garlan's nephew, who was thirteen years old at the time of Bertha's arrival at the little town, was a pert, good-looking boy; and his niece, a very sedate child of nine, with large, astonished eyes, conceived a strong attachment for Bertha from the very first moment ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... you'll find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of Biblioples about ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... part, and a choosing of positions affording means of ready retreat. And old Chumbley, still cobbling shoes in his tiny cave. On the bench before him in a row they sat and watched him while he tapped and tapped and hammered: pert little shoes piping "Be quick, be quick, we want to be toddling. You seem to have no idea, my good man, how much toddling there is to be done." Dapper boots, sighing: "Oh, please make haste, we are ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... conspicuously his inferior. She had been chamber-maid in a noble family, and had succeeded in marrying Mr. Hahn simply by the fact that she had made up her mind not to marry him. Mr. Hahn, however, was not a man to be baffled by opposition. When the pert Mariana had cut him three times at a dancing-hall, he became convinced that she was the one thing in the world which he needed to make his existence complete. After presenting him with a son, Fritz, and ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren considered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... admiring with distant awe and spectacle of virtue and purity; but if he does so sincerely, he must also do so with the profoundest feeling of the error of his own ways, and the resolution to amend them. His admiration must be humble and silent, not pert and loquacious. Mr. Hunt praises the purity of Wordsworth as if he himself were pure, his dignity as if he also were dignified. He is always like the ball of Dung in the fable, pleasing himself, and amusing by-standers with his "nos poma natamus." For the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of my much-regretted school-friends. When all my preparations were ready, and I had dated the first of these effusions, I was disturbed by a timid knock at the door. I laid down my pen resignedly and went to open: it was the pert housemaid, who delivered "Mrs. Hampden's request that Miss Amelia would ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... went on in company. The Crow pretended to feed along with the Pigeon, but ever and anon he would turn back, peck to bits some heap of cow-dung, and eat a fat worm. When he had got a bellyful of them, up he flies, as pert as ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... had plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece of millinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... I fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise, Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that teapot—and don't kitikize." And one evening about ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... mature Venus of thirty-six, of middle height, and with the voluptuous figure of a true Viennese, with bright eyes, thick dark hair, and beautiful white teeth, while her daughter Ida, who was seventeen, had light hair and the pert little nose of the china figures of shepherdesses in the dress of the period of Louis XIV., and was short, slim, and full of French grace. Besides them and the Count, a son of twelve and his tutor were present at supper. It struck the hussar as strange that the tutor, who was a strongly-built ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... like—like anything," says downright Harry. "I never heard a young girl go on so. She made fun of everybody—hit about at young and old—so that I couldn't help telling her, sir, that in our country, leastways in Virginia (they say the Yankees are very pert), young people don't speak of their elders so. And, do you know, sir, we had a sort of a quarrel, and I'm very glad you've told me she spoke kindly of me," says Harry, shaking his friend's hand, a ready boyish emotion glowing in his cheeks and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I like to give lodgings to a stranger in these ticklish times," said the female, in a pert, sharp key. "I'm nothing but a forlorn lone body; or, what's the same thing, there's nobody but the old gentleman at home; but a half mile farther up the road is a house where you can get entertainment, and that for nothing. I am sure 'twill be much ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt closer to her in that locality because of that. From Euston Square he walked on aimlessly, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... good-looking, then? They say it's sinfu' to be a witch—if so, how comes grandmother Demdike to be one? Boh ey'n observed that those folks os caws her witch are afeard on her, so it may be pure spite o' their pert." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wintry days were beginning to lengthen, the sun rose earlier and staid up longer. Now and then a bluebird was heard twittering a welcome to the coming spring. As for the robins, they were as pert and busy as usual. The little streams were beginning to find their way out of their icy prison slowly and with trembling, as if they feared old winter might take a step and catch them, and ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... "Don't be pert, nurse! You know it is one of the strictest rules of the hospital that none of the nurses are to ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... what in plain English the theme was? The school-boy's smart answer rather surprised her Ladyship—'What is that to you?' She replied—'How can you be so rude? I asked you very civilly a plain question, and did not expect from a school-boy such a pert answer.' The reply was, 'Indeed, my Lady, I can only answer once more, 'What is that to you?' In reality the theme was—Quid ad te pertinet!"—From Holliday's Life of the Earl ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... of the morn A butterfly (but newly born) Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings (all glorious to behold) Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in her attitude to the others and in her own point of view, the warmth of a true, evenly-balanced nature. JESSICA is a typical second child,—nice, good, self-effacing, sympathetic, unspoiled. CLARA is her opposite,—spoiled, petulant, pretty, pert, and selfish. ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Percy Eastman said he was called Wings "because he hadn't any feet." Susy was vexed at this remark, and Prudy, taking her part, said, "Percy is such a pert boy;" adding next moment, "What is pert?" ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few of the chain-shot which strike our eyes in turning over the yellow faded files. They are all quiet now, those eager, snarling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... that changed the whole purpose of my life. I can see him now as he came up to me with his frank smile and said in his cheery voice: 'My name is Oliver Whyte, sir.' My heart went out to him after his hearty greeting, and we soon became fast friends. Then he introduced me to his dear old wife, and a pert little kid—" ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... miracle was reported in Valladolid. Don Luis Ramonez was not in his place in the Cafe de la Luna. Sebastian the goldsmith, Gomez the pert barber, Pepe the waiter, Micael the water-seller of the Plaza Mayor knew nothing of his whereabouts. The old priest of Las Angustias might have told if his lips had not been sealed. But in the course of the next morning it was noised about that his Worship had left the ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... pretext, and yet was vexed with the stupidity that made the witnesses so evidently find the pretext sufficient. He inwardly groaned at the delusion under which he had saddled himself with the Tragic Muse—a tragic muse who was strident and pert—and yet wished his visitors would go away and leave ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... little sigh, as she said to herself: "I don't see but I look as much like a traveler as any of them. I'm sure I don't feel in the least confused. I'm glad I'm not as ridiculously dressed as that pert-looking girl in brown. I should call it in very bad taste to wear such a rich silk as that for traveling. She doesn't look as though she had a single idea beyond dress; probably that is what is occupying her thoughts at this very moment;" and Ester's speaking face betrayed ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... careful!" Sam called. "You'll slide off and fall down in the alley if you don't look out. I come pert' near it last time we was up there. Come on down! Ain't ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... the bell timidly, and in a moment or so a pert girl with a dirty cap on her head came and ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Maistre Rusticien que Sagamoni Borcan mourut iiij vint et iiij foiz et tousjourz resuscita, et a chascune foiz d'une diverse maniere de beste, et a la derreniere foyz mourut hons et devint diex, selonc ce qu'il dient.'[17] Et fist encore Messires Marc: 'A moy pert-il trop estrange chose se juesques a toutes les creances des ydolastres deust decheoir ceste grantz et saige nation. Ainsi peuent jouer Misire li filsoufe atout lour propre perte, mes a l'ore quand tiex fantaisies se respanderont es joenes bacheliers et parmy la ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... ignorant of anything ever I heard of," interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... called Tinette, but in such an ill- tempered voice that the maid came tripping forward with even more mincing steps than usual, but she looked so pert that even Fraulein Rottenmeier did not venture to scold her, which only made ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... or clenched such claw-like fingers. Was this the best she could give Arthur by way of son and heir? Yet she looked as proud and exulting as if he had been the loveliest of children, and the little wretch himself had a pert, lively air of speculation, as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unknown: 60 She was my friend; I taught her first to spread Upon her sallow cheeks enlivening red: I introduced her to the park and plays; And, by my interest, Cozens made her stays. Ungrateful wretch! with mimic airs grown pert, She dares to steal ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... any sucking Socrates, why it is that these feathered choristers have their "revival seasons," and are terrible backsliders during the moulting period. When you looked out of the nursery-window, into the poultry-yard, and heard the noisy confabulation of the motherly hens and pert pullets, you should be prepared to state upon what theological principles it is that psalmody is not the wont of the Gallinacae. Are the Biddies given over to a reprobate mind, because you don't happen to like their vocalization? Is it only the Piccolomini and Linds of the feathered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... other hand if Kitty had not been related to me in some way I should have missed a pleasant intimacy. I should probably very seldom see her if she were the daughter of a casual acquaintance, and when I did see her she would be shy, perhaps, or pert. I should almost certainly be awkward. I am, I regret to say, fifty years of age. Kitty is just sixteen. Some kind of relationship is necessary if there is to be real friendship between an elderly man and a young girl Uncles, if they did not exist in nature, would have to be invented ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And contradicts what all ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... specially for her use by her son and his friend Tim Lumpy. It stood at the foot of the garden, from which could be had a magnificent view of the neighbouring lake. Rich foliage permitted the slanting sunbeams to quiver through the bower, and little birds, of a pert conceited nature, twittered among the same. Martha Mild—the very embodiment of meek, earnest simplicity, and still a mere child in face though almost a woman in years—sat on a wooden stool at Mrs Frog's feet reading ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the pert shopkeeper, whose throbbing ear Aches with orchestras which he pays to hear, Whom shame, not sympathy, forbids to snore, His anguish doubled by his own 'encore!' Squeezed in 'Fop's Alley,' jostled ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sophisticated, nervous, product of a society perhaps not quite as free and Nietzschean as it deemed itself, but yet cultivated and illuminated and refined, it nevertheless seemed exuberantly sound. The sweet, broad, diatonic idiom, the humor, the sleepy Bavarian accent, the pert, naive, little folk-tunes it employed, the tranquil, touching, childlike tones, the close of "Tod und Verklaerung," with its wondrous unfolding of corolla upon corolla, were refreshing indeed after all the burning chromaticism of Wagner, the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, an' I never hearn a cross word out o' her in all the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... I see at the threshold? It is not a dripping love, and I am not an old Anacreon; but it is a very pretty little boy of about ten years old. He is alone; he raises his face to look at me. His cheeks are blushing; but his little pert nose gives one an idea of mischievous pleasantry. He has feathers in his cap, and a great lace-ruff on his jacket. The pretty little fellow! He holds in both arms a bundle as big as himself, and asks me if I am Monsieur ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... act the deferential lover with more delicate or graceful attention. Poor fellow, the pert, intruding sparrows plague him abominably; and really it becomes almost an affair of police that some measures should be adopted for their exclusion. He is subject to fits, too, and suddenly, without the least apparent warning, falls ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... pert—probably an older form. Bartlett cites an example of peart as far back as Sir Philip Sidney; and Halliwell finds it in various English dialects. Davies, afterward president of Princeton College, describes Dr. Lardner, in 1754, as "a little pert old gent." I do not know that Dr. Daries pronounced his pert as though it were peart, but he uses it in the sense it has in the text, viz., bright-witted, intelligent. The general sense of peart is lively, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... be witty, but only succeed in being pert, are insufferable; and as for attempts to be comic they are disgraceful in women whether they succeed or fail. The comic is ungainly and exaggerated, and so is in some sort related to the sublime. The elephant is comic, the camel and the giraffe are ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Americains in matters of business and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert, imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?—and h-walked out into the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquante; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to confess that she is a miserable sinner, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the dayflower, the spiderwort opens for part of a day only. In the morning it is wide awake and pert; early in the afternoon its petals have begun to retreat within the calyx, until presently they become "dissolved in tears," like Job or the traditional widow. What was flower only a few hours ago is now a fluid jelly that trickles at the touch. Tomorrow fresh buds ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... named Thomas Read, alias Cutbert, about 25 or 30 Years of Age, 5 Feet, 4 Inches high, well set, grey Eyes, large Nose, and had short brown curl'd Hair. He is supposed to be in Boston, or some of the Northern Governments; is a Jeweller, and Motto-Ring-Engraver, and is an artful talkative pert Fellow;—can write pretty well, and has doubtless help'd himself to a Discharge, Pass, or any other Writing to deceive, and suit his Purpose; His Apparel is probably genteel, as he had Money with him, a Watch in his Pocket, and a large Stock of Pride; By what ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... A pert little wave by the sea-shore one day, Came dashing along in its impudent way; A wee little maiden was straying too near. Said the wavelet—I'll catch you my child, never fear, "I will carry you home to a bed in the sea, "I will rock you as snug as on Mother's own knee." But the ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... bite you, I'll kill you, I snap and I spring: If I only could catch you, You rude saucy thing! If you were not so little, So cunning and spry, I'd punish you quickly, Pert wretch! you should die. ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... asked. He tossed his hat into the waste-basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone of pert command: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thick hazel copses; occasionally, through a gap, he had a view of a great valley, all wild with wood; once or twice he passed a timbered farmhouse, with tall brick chimneys. The country round about was much invaded by new, pert houses, but there were none here; and Hugh supposed that this road, which seemed the only track into the valley, was of so forbidding a steepness that it had not occurred to any one to settle there. The road became ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... home it must have been, with Lucy reigning over it in her pert self-sufficiency, Gilbert and Sophy running riot and squabbling, and Maria Meadows coming in on them with her well-meant worries ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he thought; but Lucy pitied him plunging there, and cut ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... loves to linger about the orchard; and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Essex dared to demand the sacrifice of Raleigh as the price of his own devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami: Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... wren, the first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, his pert manner, his tail which was a little more than straight up, pointing towards his head; a little mite of a bird, how does he keep his little body from freezing in the furious winter storms? He seemed perfectly happy, with his two ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... knotted oak with his trunk, but the tree closed upon that member, detaining it, and causing the hapless Elphas Africanus intense pain. He shook the forest with his trumpeting, and all the beasts gathered around him. "Ah, ha, my friend," said a pert Chimpanzee, "you have got your trunk checked, I see." "My children," said a temperate Camel to her young, "let this awful example teach you to shun the bole." "Does it hurt much?" said a compassionate Gnu. "Ah, it does; it does; it must; I gnu it; I ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not long thereafter; we may suppose him competed for between lay and clerical Courts; and we may suppose him alternately pert and impudent, humble and fawning, in his defence. But at the end of all supposing, we come upon some nuggets of fact. For first, he was put to the question by water. He who had tossed off so many cups of white Baigneux or red ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Next the sash was scornfully untied, and tightened to suggest something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and dabs, till, acknowledging a master hand, they stood up, piquant, pert, smart, alert! ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books are generally bad. Also I have found it hard work to get into expression, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... magnified their sufferings, she, by a vivid imagination, placed herself in the path of fortune and obtained the thing she demanded. The simple country schoolhouse that year, dreary and cheerless enough to the pert Miss who had come out from Topeka to teach there, and incidentally to collect twenty-five dollars a month from the school board, was to be the scene of the initial change in Lizzie ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... came hopping up. Another dozen steps, and—It was beautifully dressed in one piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... was, however, always necessary that the person so signalized should be submissive. Now, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Grey's sister, had long since shown that she was not submissive enough, nor were the girls, the eldest of whom was a pert, ugly, well-grown minx, now about eighteen years old. The second sister, who was seventeen, was supposed to be a beauty, but which of the two was the more odious in the eyes of their cousin it would be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... acres of garden, surrounded by a very high, red-brick wall. It is one of those houses of which there used to be scores within the immediate neighbourhood of London—of which there still are dozens, although, alas! they are yearly disappearing to make room for gay rows of pert, upstart villas, whose tawdry flashiness ill replaces the sedate respectability of their last-century predecessors. But, uncoveted by the contractor's lawless eye, untouched by the builder's desecrating hand, Walpole Lodge stands on, as it did a hundred years ago, hidden behind the shelter ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... "Now, Miss Pert, I want you to listen to me!" That was Mrs. Ladybug's greeting to Betsy Butterfly on one of the most delightful days of the whole summer. "It's my unpleasant duty—" said Mrs. Ladybug, who by that time was enjoying herself thoroughly—"it's my unpleasant duty to tell you that people are ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... back, stared me full in the face, and bent his head, saying, 'Mr. Barry Lyndon, I believe;' turned on his heel, and began talking about the state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 'Your Ladyship.' She was angry at this pert bearing, and, when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... want the lot?' says the chap in the shop, a reg'lar little dandy-sprat, an' so pert as a jay-pie in June. ''Cos us makes a reducshun on ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see more of Newman as a Professor in class, I had arrived at the condition of a pert and very foolish boy of sixteen who had made up his mind to be an artist and failed altogether to take advantage of the splendid opportunities before him. I attended Newman's classes; saw him every day; might have acquired the knowledge ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... service of the bravest Knights and Princes. There, besides the brown-haired, fair-skinned English boy, was the quick fiery Welsh child, who owned an especial allegiance to the Prince; the broad blue-eyed Fleming, whose parents rejoiced in the fame of the son of Philippa of Hainault; the pert, lively Gascon, and the swarthy Navarrese mountaineer—all brought together in close and ever-changing contrast of countenance, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... or sufficiently drilled, yet, in her routines. But she had a pert, appealing face, a quick smile; her hair was brushed close to her head. She was a cute, utterly bold pixy to remember smiling at you—just you—like a spirit of luck and love, far out ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... into the parlour. They found him sitting with a daughter of his friend's, about three years old, on his knee, whom he was teaching the alphabet from a horn book: at a little distance stood a sister of hers, some years older. "Get you away, miss," said he to this last; "you are a pert gossip, and I will have nothing to do with you."—"Nay," answered she, "Nancy is your favourite; you are quite in love with Nancy."—"Take away that girl," said he to her father, whom he now observed to have entered the room; "she ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... whose tongue knew no control, With golden wing and satin poll, A last year's bird who ne'er had tried What marriage means, thus pert replied: "Methinks the gentleman," quoth she, "Opposite in the appletree, By his good will would keep us single, Until yonder heavens and earth shall mingle, Or (which is likelier to befall) Until death exterminate us all. I marry without more ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... readier belief, as he had, instead of desiring her to recall Jenny, professed a satisfaction in her being dismissed, saying, she was grown of little use as a servant, spending all her time in reading, and was become, moreover, very pert and obstinate; for, indeed, she and her master had lately had frequent disputes in literature; in which, as hath been said, she was become greatly his superior. This, however, he would by no means allow; and as he called her persisting in the right, obstinacy, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... walk and showed her the new church, but Mary thought the church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... to controvert the late act of parliament? Mr. Craig answered, That they would find fault with any thing repugnant to God's word; at which, the earl of Arran started up on his feet, and said, They were too pert; that he would shave their head, pair their nails, and cut their toes, and make them an example unto all who should disobey the king's command and his council's orders, and forthwith charged them to appear before the king at Falkland, on the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... father was in New York and she, consequently, was alone. They pitied her, in a covert sort of fashion, because her father was going to get married again, especially Mrs. White and Lillian. Lillian was a very pretty girl, with a pert carriage of blond head, and a ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Hutchinson):—"You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen [of a new series] is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers, who grudge at ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... much be a slight promising the peaple to let them sy a horse wt its taille wheir its head sould be: that of on Martin Merry, who on a tyme pressing to win in to sie the King, the great Tresorier of England was at the door, who seing him so pert demanded him whither he would go; he replied, he would sie the King; the Thersorer told him he could not sie the King; then, he replied, I know what I'le do then; the thresorer thinking he was bravado'ing him, demanded him what can ye do, Sir; he answered, I'le go back the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... young." Among ducks the sexual distinction of voice is remarkable; for, while the quack of the female is loud and sonorous, the voice of the drake is inward and harsh, and feeble, and scarce discernible. The cock turkey struts and gobbles to his mistress in a most uncouth manner; he hath also a pert and petulant note when he attacks his adversary. When a hen turkey leads forth her young brood she keeps a watchful eye; and if a bird of prey appear, though ever so high in the air, the careful mother announces the enemy with ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Many a young soldier and many a lass "paired off" in little nooks and corners among the stacks of bales and boxes, but at the table nearest the staging all seemed gay good humor. A merry little woman with straw-colored hair and pert, tip-tilted nose and much vivacity and complexion, had apparently taken the lead in the warfare of chaff and fun. Evidently she was no stranger to most of the officers. Almost as evidently, to a very close observer who stood a few paces away, she was no intimate of the group of women who with ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King |
