"Rumpled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a sanctimonious air. But now that the wind and the sun had somewhat turned his fair skin and brought out a goodly crop of freckles, now that the vigor of his movements and the healthy perspiration had rumpled up his reddish-brown hair and put a wave in it, he could—standing up on his log—easily have passed for a husky woodsman; until some experienced eye observed him make such sorry work of a woodsman's task. He had acquired no skill with the axe. That takes time. But he made vigorous ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... portraits on the walls. One by Ricard represented Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a romantic dream. The other showed a middle-aged woman, almost beautiful in her ardent slightness. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Isabel smoothed her rumpled hair. "You've mussed me all up," she complained. "Why can't we go in? Aunt Francesca and ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... up straight, her arms back of her, her feet erect on their heels at a distance, like suspicious squirrels. She yawned against the back of her wrist and began to remember her escapade. She gurgled with laughter, but she felt rumpled and lame, and not in the least like Miss Anita Adair. She almost wished she were at home, gazing from her bed to the washstand and hearing her mother puttering about in the kitchen making breakfast; to Kedzie's young heart it was the superlative human luxury to know ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a minute or two, during which we all sat silent, considering over again what we had considered many and many a time before: whether there were not some possible way of draining off the "forty rods," Joe suddenly straightened himself in his seat, rumpled his hair once more—by which sign I knew he had some ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... agglomeration of many colored houses, less close together as they left the water, summer places in front with many stories and slender cupolas, white cabins behind, where the farm land began, the thatched coverings of the huts rumpled by the strong ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... set together; but what was their surprise to find the poor little brown Lark sitting on them with rumpled feathers, ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... flying up from her rumpled pillow. "I don't want to buy anything, and if you want to spend five dollars for a lace scarf, why you're welcome to my money. That's all. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... old Joel became as he set forth his new idea of his. He jumped up and tore round the old sitting-room. He rubbed my ears again, rumpled Tom's hair, caught Catherine by both her hands and went ring-round-the-rosy with her, nearly knocking down the table, lamp and all! "The greatest idea yet!" he shouted. "Just what's wanted for a Universal Language!" He went and drew in the old Squire to hear about it; and the old Squire admitted ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... love the sun," Johnny observed apathetically. "Lizards, even, have got sense enough to stay in the shade such weather as this." He rumpled his hair to let the faint breeze in to his scalp, and looked at her. "You're red as a pickled beet at a ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... rolled down over her back, and again Peter wanted to laugh. But he didn't. He kept perfectly still. Mrs. Quack shook herself and then began to carefully dress her feathers. That is, she carefully put back in place every feather that had been rumpled up. She took a great deal of time for this, for Mrs. Quack is very neat and tidy and takes the greatest pride in looking as fine ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... cotton, tow, or any similar substance not of animal origin. Fine excelsior is about right for large birds. The edges of the opening cut may be drawn together by a few coarse stitches. After the feet have been tied together it is time to adjust all the feathers become well rumpled in handling. ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... wicker chair. He was a nobly fronted old gentleman, with imposing head, bald at the top but tastefully hung with pale, fluffy side curls. His face was wide and full, smoothly shaven, his cheeks pink, his eyes a pure, pale blue. He was clad in a rumpled linen suit the trousers of which were drawn well up his plump legs above white socks and low black shoes, broad and loose fitting. As the shadows had lengthened and the day cooled he abandoned a palm-leaf fan ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... fallen friends. The midshipmen quickly picked themselves up, very much frightened at what they had done, but not a bit the worse for their tumble. The ecclesiastic was next placed on his legs, with robes somewhat rumpled, but happily without contusions or bones broken, though dreadfully alarmed and inclined to be somewhat angry at the indignity he had suffered. Jack endeavoured to apologise with the few words of Portuguese he could command, Tom and ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... sure, a presentable member of any bar, for a smudge detracted considerably from the appearance of one side of his face, his clothes were rumpled and covered with black dust, and his hands were black. But I had rarely seen him so calm. He recrossed his legs, peered into the bowl of his pipe for a moment, then asked, as quietly as though he were soliciting an opinion ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... hat in his hand, and his fine grizzled hair, rumpled in the excitement of the meeting, had not yet subsided ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one of her masterpieces,' said she, as she straightened her crushed hat, and arranged her hair with those quick little deft pats of the palm with which women can accomplish so much in so short a time. Rumpled finery sets the hands of every woman within sight of it fidgeting, so Maude joined in at the patting and curling and forgot all ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... door opened and a dejected apparition in a ruff and petticoats, like a rumpled remnant of a pre-war pageant, drifted in and sat down on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... arrayed with equal gayety; and I confess that though while the flowers and leaves are fresh the decorated assembly is picturesque, especially as the women wear their hair flowing, and many have beautiful wavy tresses, yet toward evening, when the maile has wilted and the garlands are rumpled and decaying, this kind of ornamentation gives an air of dissipation to the company which ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... so abruptly that the clinging Nicky dragged Marie Louise from her saddle backward. He tried to swing her to the pommel of his own, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled. She was so rumpled and so furious, and he so frightened, that he left her and spurred after her horse, brought him back, and bothered her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... by pity and sentiment. Ellen was a woman-child, and suddenly she struck the rock upon which women so often wreck or effect harbor, whichever it may be. All at once she looked up from the dazzling mosaic of the window and saw the dead partridges and grouse hanging in their rumpled brown mottle of plumage, and the dead rabbits, long and stark, with their fur pointed with frost, hanging in a piteous headlong company, and all her delight and wonder vanished, and she came down to the hard ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "And—me, Aunt Caro?" he asked with an odd note in his voice. Miss Craven glanced for a moment at the big figure sprawled in the chair near her, then looked back at the fire with pursed lips and wrinkled forehead, and rumpled her ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... and yet decidedly. "No more kisses till bedtime. I'm all ready to show myself to company, and I don't wish to be rumpled." ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... hours, "old" Henry South, who in a less-wasting life would hardly have been middle-aged, had lingered. They were hours of conscious suffering, with no power to speak, but before he died he had beckoned his ten-year-old son to his bedside, and laid a hand on the dark, rumpled hair. The boy bent forward, his eyes tortured and tearless, and his little lips tight pressed. The old man patted the head, and made a feeble gesture toward the mother who was to be widowed. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... ve-ry gently," replied Westby; and Allison, reaching for the floor with his toes, had at last the satisfaction of feeling it. He wriggled out of the noose and smoothed out his rumpled coat. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... dark, rumpled-up head for us to look, but I must say I couldn't see more than one little one all buried ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... cowboy by the neck and raised him. The fellow uttered a cry that was choked. De Launay pulled off his hat and substituted his own on the rumpled locks of the young man. He then swung him about as though he were a child, laid him over his knees and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... whether by the Alumni of the Shorthand College or under the auspices of the Piano Movers' Pleasure Club, he was right up at the Head Table with his Hair rumpled, ready to exchange a Monologue for a few warm Oysters and a cut of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... in his glass and he sighed, letting a smile crease his lean homely face. He was a tall man, a little stooped, his clothes—uniform and mufti alike—perpetually rumpled. Solitary by nature, he was still unmarried in spite of the bachelor tax and had only one son. The boy was ten years old now, must be in the Youth Guard; Lancaster wasn't sure, ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... generally ailing, though never actually ill. She never looked clean, no matter how faithfully her maid toiled over her; she could somehow reduce, in an amazingly short time, the neatest attire to the semblance of mussed and rumpled rags; she slouched and shambled rather than walked, she lolled rather ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... responded her aunt, taking up the rumpled hair ribbon which Louise had refused. "I am glad you were so kind to the poor child," she added, smiling down at her little niece. "Tell me all you can about Louise. Perhaps there will be some way ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... that knocked the breath out of a small boy's body without actually hurting much; and he never, never talked sense. Tony resented this. Like the Preacher, he felt there was a time to jest and a time to refrain from jesting, and it didn't amuse him a bit to be punched and rumpled and told he was a surly little devil if he attempted to punch back. In some vague way Tony felt that it wasn't playing the game—if it was a game. Often, too, for the past year and more, he connected the frequent disappearances of the big man with trouble ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... was now on his feet, all the dizziness gone, and rushing toward the bunk. "The map gone!" and he seized the candle from Bud's hand, and, holding it so that its light illuminated the whole bunk, stared wildly down on the rumpled surface of the rude bedtick, which now, the blankets having been thrown off, showed its entire surface to the light of the candle. There could be no doubting his own eyes. The buckskin bag ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... saw with pure joy that he refused to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his shoulders and ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Logan rumpled his hair, 'Can't I get her to lunch at a restaurant and ply her with the wines of Eastern France? No, she is Temperance personified. Can't we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother is dying? Servants seem to have such lots of mothers, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... emphatically as a sort of mental dismissal of the command, and crawled carefully past Sister and lifted a flap of the canvas cover. A button—the last button—popped off his pink apron and the sleeves rumpled down over his hands. It felt all loose and useless, so Buddy stopped long enough to pull the apron off and throw it beside Sister before he crawled under the canvas flap and walked down the spokes of a rear ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... be down at Sealford visiting your mother when your letter arrived; hence my knowledge of its contents. Mrs Leather and her daughter May were then as usual. By the way, what a pretty girl May has become! I remember her such a rumpled up, dress-anyhow, harum-scarum sort of a girl, that I find it hard to believe the tall, graceful, modest creature I meet with now is the same person! Captain Stride says she is the finest craft he ever saw, except that wonderful 'Maggie,' about whose opinions and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... it was really very hot. Professor Valeyon, occupying his usual position, had nearly finished his second pipe. He had thrown off the light linen duster he usually wore, and sat with his waistcoat open, displaying a somewhat rumpled, but very clean white shirt-bosom; and his sturdy old neck was swathed in the white necktie which was the only visible relic of his ministerial career. He had covered his bald head with a handkerchief, for the double purpose of keeping away the flies, and creating a cooling current of air. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... graver, more important things. I thought I ought to be wholly occupied with my duty to God. But mother says duty to God includes duty to one's neighbor, and that untidy hair, put up in all sorts of rough bunches, rumpled cuffs and collars, and all that sort of thing, make one offensive to all one meets. I am sorry she thinks so, for I find it very convenient to twist up my hair almost any how, and it takes a good deal of time to look after ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... introduction into the Muffats' circle, and now that his friend was in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen? "We shall see," he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look—its nether cushions had been tumbled, a fact which now ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Marie informed me that the canary was dead, and she began to cry, as she showed me the open cage and the bird which lay at the bottom, with its feet curled up, as rumpled and stark as the little yellow plaything of a doll. I sympathized with her sorrow; but her tears were endless, and I ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... his candle and retired to his room, but not to bed. He disarranged the bed-clothes and rumpled the pillow; then walked softly to and fro in his slippers until morning. On the following day he made no attempt to visit his newly acquired property, but strolled about the harbor, or stood, in sheltered and, therefore, secluded ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... stairs, Halloway sat, coatless, with his flannel shirt open on a throat that rose from the swell of his chest as a tower rises from a hill. His hair was rumpled; his whole aspect disheveled; but when he grinned there was the flash of strong teeth as white as a hound's and as even as a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... astounded listeners the sound of a fierce scuffle, then Robert descended, his hair rumpled and his tie awry, holding William by the arm. William looked pale and apprehensive. "He was there," panted Robert, "just getting out of the window. He chucked the things out of his pockets and got away. I couldn't stop him. And—and William ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... puffed and bleeding, and his chin was bloody. Sundry red and dark marks disfigured his usually clear complexion. His eyes were blazing, and his hair rumpled ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Rough, rumpled hair, two soft eyes drowned in tears, flushed, angry cheeks and pouting lips, was the picture which met Dick's view one morning when he entered the oak parlour two days after the eventful party. Christmas had passed by pleasantly and tranquilly for both children. They had had the regular Christmas ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... began to introduce himself. Shaking hands, he stuck out his elbow forward and raised it so high that the hand proved to be far lower. Now it was no longer a bank director, but such a clever, splendid fellow, a sportsman and a rake of the golden youths. But his face—with rumpled, wild eyebrows and with denuded lids without lashes—was the vulgar, harsh and low face of a typical alcoholic, libertine, and pettily cruel man. Together with him came two of his ladies: Henrietta the eldest girl in years in the establishment ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... William! Mr. Page, his hair wildly rumpled, was clapping hand to knee; even the teachers were trying not to smile. Emily Louise blushed hotter, for Emily Louise, taking the quarter back, had ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... affairs, and Mr. Peck, as Moderator, conducted the business with his habitual exactness and effect of far-off impersonality. The people waited with exemplary patience, and Putney, who lounged in one corner of his pew, gave no more sign of excitement, with his chin sunk in his rumpled shirt-front, than his sad-faced wife at the other end ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... against a spruce post, and moodily contemplated the stamping animals in the enclosure. His hat was in his hand, and the mountain breeze assailed his blond hair, which, rumpled and curly, gave him something of the appearance of a satyr at ease. He was worried. He had, an hour before, come to Ching-Fu from the boat; and Eileen had left Ching-Fu for a trip to Kialang-Hien, a village of the third order some fifty li distant, the morning ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant Missionary ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of their evenings, like three hundred evenings a year. The room grew warm, the gas-lights crept higher and higher, flared noisily, and were lowered. Mary Lou unfastened her collar, Susan rumpled her hair. The conversation, always returning to the red king and the black four-spot, ranged idly here and there. Susan observed that she must write some letters, and meant to take a hot bath and go early to bed. But she sat on and on; the cards, by the smallest ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... power which enabled her to portray "Mrs. Gineral's" instantaneous change from a posture of fury to one of rapt devotion. She could look like Hecate Hibernicized, and in one comprehensive second drop into a chair, "smooth her wrinkled front" and side curls, shake out her rumpled draperies, and rise from an instant's searching of the Scriptures with features expressive of the very acme of Christian peace and benediction. "Mrs. General" was a pet-name the lady had won from a wifely and lovable trait that prompted her to aggrandize her placid lord above ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... painting their features or washing their wounds and scratches and filling them with balsam and bruised witch-hazel, or were eating the last of our parched corn and stringy shreds of leathery venison. All seemed as complacent as a party of cats licking their rumpled fur; and examining their bites, scratches, bruises, and knife wounds, I found no serious injury among them, and nothing to stiffen for very long the limbs of men in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... front room, looking badly rumpled. He had on his yellow and brown dressing gown and a pair of pink-bowed knitted slippers of a piebald variety, that I had seen displayed by a neighboring gents' furnishing ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... meet any emergency. This mighty jerk had carried him off his feet. He was unstrung and panic-stricken. At any rate this man had promised help. He would take it. He put the paper and envelope carefully into his pocket, smoothed out his rumpled coat, and going over to Mason touched him on ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Clarence began rubbing tell-tale streaks from their countenances with their rumpled cottas, and ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... that," said she, with a little tinkling laugh. "You came in as the knight does in the jongleur's romances, between dragon and damsel, with small time for the asking of questions. Come," she went on, springing to her feet, and smoothing down her rumpled frock, "let us walk through the shaw together, and we may come upon Bertrand with the horses. If poor Troubadour had not cast a shoe, we should not have had this trouble. Nay, I must have your arm: for, though I speak lightly, now that all is happily over I am as frightened as my brave Roland. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the varied emotions of the succeeding day, lay on his side, in the deep, recuperative sleep of youth whence its energies are drawn and in which its vigors are renewed. His round cheek indented the pillow, his rumpled hair stirred in the breeze that blew in at the window, his arm and his open hand, relaxed, lay along the sheet. Another woman would have straightened the bed-clothes above him; another might have touched his hair or hand; ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... under the porch, rubbing eyes and yawning, came a rumpled little figure, bits of straw and dead leaves clinging to him, and a big red ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... which, at Court, 'tis thought, The Virgin values as she ought)— That Wig, the wonder of all eyes, The Cynosure of Gallia's skies, To watch and tend whose curls adored, Re-build its towering roof, when flat, And round its rumpled base, a Board Of sixty barbers daily sat, With Subs, on State-Days, to assist, Well pensioned from the Civil List:— That wondrous Wig, arrayed in which, And formed alike to awe or witch. He beat all other heirs of crowns, In taking mistresses and towns, Requiring ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... did not return, I ventured to pick the paper up and examine it. It was a copy of the London Times, dated a year back. I scanned the page he had been reading, but could find nothing to account for his agitation. Where his hand had rumpled it was a brief paragraph stating that the Earl of Heathermere, of Heathermere Hall, in Surrey, was dead; that his two unmarried sons had died during the previous year—one by an accident while hunting; and that the title was now extinct, and the estate in Chancery. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... you doing here? One moment"—and I saw that she was tying a bandage round the arm of the man in the bunk. His eyes caught the light from the windows and gleamed savagely at me under his rumpled black hair. A similar face looked out from an adjoining bunk. When she had finished she came quickly across ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... handkerchief, thinking he would brush the earth from them. He searched each of his pockets. His handkerchief was gone. No matter. He got to his feet, lurching for a moment dizzily. He glanced with distaste at his rumpled evening clothing. To hide it as far as possible he buttoned his overcoat collar about his neck. On tip-toe he approached the door, and, with the emotions of a thief, opened it quietly. He sighed. The ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... half-ruinous building: to them even the destruction of their finery was but added cause of laughter. But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a keen pleasure to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare feeling of perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and torn, it was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay among them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led Letty up the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few couples talking ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... turned with a swing and raised his prayer-book to read the committal. The long black box—the boy was very tall—was being lowered gently, tenderly. Suddenly the heroic vision of Santiago vanished and he seemed to see again the rumpled head and the alert, eager, rosy face of the boy playing football—the head that lay there! An iron grip caught his throat, and if a sound had come it would have been a sob. Poor little boy! Poor little hero! ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling glance at the rumpled figure ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... police superintendent opened the door and hesitatingly, one after the other, walked into the room. The following spectacle met their eyes. In the solitary window stood a big wooden bedstead with an immense feather bed on it. On the rumpled feather bed lay a creased and crumpled quilt. A pillow, in a cotton pillow case—also much creased, was on the floor. On a little table beside the bed lay a silver watch, and silver coins to the value of twenty ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hair curls as tight—" She ran a hand along her rumpled curls, then a look of dismay crossed the laughing face. She subsided into a chair and folded her hands meekly. The little feet, in their stout ankle-ties, swung back and forth beneath the chair, and the round, German face assumed ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... holding up a tiny pair of silver embroidery scissors, Fidelia's parting gift They were evidently something that had been given her, for the little silver sheath into which they were thrust was beautifully engraved in old English letters with the name "Fidelia." Around them was wrapped a strip of rumpled paper on which was scrawled: "For you to remember me by. That day you took me to the Gate of the Giant Scissors was the best time ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to join them; and it chanced that at first no one of them looked in his direction. Mark's back was half-turned; but Joel could see that his brother was lean, and bronzed by the sun. And he wore no hat, and his thick, black hair was rumpled and wild. The white shirt that he wore was open at the throat above his brown neck. His arms were bare to the elbows. His chest was like a barrel. There was a splendor of strength and vigor about the man, in the very look of him, and in his eye, and his voice, and his laughter. ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... though?" inquired Tex, rolling his eyes upon the spectators. The cat reached out cautiously and stirred it up with his paw; and once more, as his victim dashed for its hole, he caught it in full flight. But now the little mouse, its hair all wet and rumpled, crouched dumbly between the feet of its captor and would not run. Again and again the cat stirred it up, sniffing suspiciously to make sure it was not dead; then in a last effort to tempt it he deliberately lay over on his back and rolled, purring and closing his eyes luxuriously, until, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the cots of the sleeping children, and assured herself of their well-being. They slumbered on, placid and dreamless. Then she went to her dressing-table, and planting her palms flat upon it, leaned forward upon them, and gazed at herself mercilessly. She tore off her hat, rumpled her hair, rubbed her cheeks and gazed again. There were some little fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and as she looked and looked under the strong light, there stood out, silvery around her temples, amid the fairness, the first ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... about the dust of any woman's shoes. But I guess ther's times when it's good fer a man to feel he ain't as big as he's told. Anyways, you get right ahead, and leave me to the Obars. I ain't goin' to fail you now, any more than any other time." Then he rumpled his stubbly hair again, and it was an action that suggested heavy thought. "Say," he went on, a moment later, his eyes looking squarely into the face of the other, "we're hittin' the trail good an' early to-morrow. Guess you best let me say 'good-bye' ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Your riding-dress will do for the first visit. Nor let your boots be over clean. I have always told you the consequence of attending to the minutiae, where art (or imposture, as the ill-mannered would call it) is designed—your linen rumpled and soily, when you wait upon her—easy terms these—just come to town—remember (as formerly) to loll, to throw out your legs, to stroke and grasp down your ruffles, as if of significance enough to be careless. What though the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... conclusion, and wonderfully cheered and strengthened by the purpose she had formed, she washed her face, arranged her dishevelled hair, and smoothed her rumpled dress. Then sitting down behind the window-curtain, she began to watch for Cornelia, hoping her friend would not long delay her accustomed visit to the parsonage. But it happened that Cornelia had that very day begun a novel, in three volumes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... perched on the edge of his chair, rubbing his dry hands and eliciting occasional sparks in the shape of remarks, but he was no longer merry; indeed, he looked ill at ease. George, his red hair all rumpled up, and his long limbs thrust out towards the fire, spoke scarcely at all, but glued his little bloodshot eyes alternately on the faces of his companions, and only contributed an occasional chuckle. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the door slowly swung open and Percy Darrow entered. He was smoking a cigarette, his hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets; he was hatless, and his usually smooth hair was rumpled. A tiny wound showed just above the middle of his forehead, from which a thin stream of blood had run down to his eyebrows. He surveyed the room with a humorous twinkle shining behind ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... saw the sun rise with a serenity and majesty which it rarely has outside of the theatre. The dawn began over that sea which was like the rumpled canvas imitations of the sea on the stage, under long mauve clouds bathed in solemn light. Above these, in the pale tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across them like a thin dusky veil. To the right ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and looked at them. Something apparently had been going on. Quillan's tanned face was thoughtful, perhaps a trifle amused. Mantelish looked very red and angry. His shock of white hair was wildly rumpled. The Ermetyne ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... lieutenant befogged. "Jane," said the white lady, "what have you been doing?" "Nothing!" responded the coloured lady. "Yes, you have," said the white lady, not in an undertone, but in a voice that attracted the attention of all in the carriage. "See how your collar is rumpled and your bonnet smashed." Jane, poor coloured beauty, hung her head for a moment, the "observed of all observers," and then, turning round to the lieutenant, replied: "This man kissed me in the tunnel!" Loud and long was the laugh that followed among the passengers. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... over again, while they swung their booted legs under the seats. One of them came up to the hearth, and clapped the crouching Yakob on his back for fun, but it hurt. It was a resounding smack. Yakob scratched himself and rumpled his hair, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... to a bush and parted the leaves. Hanging from a twig was what appeared at first glance to be a rumpled, reddish- brown dead leaf. She touched it lightly. At once it came to life, stirring uneasily. A thin, squeaky voice peevishly demanded ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... with a hard knot.' These words are sufficiently vague, but differ materially from those of Le Commerciel. The slip was eighteen inches wide, and therefore, although of muslin, would form a strong band when folded or rumpled longitudinally. And thus rumpled it was discovered. My inference is this. The solitary murderer, having borne the corpse, for some distance, (whether from the thicket or elsewhere) by means of the bandage hitched around its middle, found ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Betty the pillow beats, And airs the blankets, and smooths the sheets, And gives the mattress a shaking— But vainly Betty performs her part, If a ruffled head and a rumpled heart, As well as the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... his bathing-towel slung around his shoulders. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and since he had characteristically omitted to provide himself with a hat, his abundant brown hair was rumpled and tossed by the wind, giving him an absurdly ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... this son of a royal house a seat on a dry-goods box, so placed that he could command a good view, and yet be fairly secure. The final skirmish was on in earnest. Two State Senators—coatless, tieless, collarless, their faces dirty, their hair rumpled, were finishing the stair carpet. The chairman of the appropriations committee in the House was doing the stretching in a still uncarpeted bit of the corridor, and a member who had recently denounced the appropriations committee as a disgrace ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Scheikowitz demanded hoarsely of Rashkind, who was straightening out his tie and smoothing his rumpled hair. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... his chair, his head in his hand. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... I," agreed Midget, gathering up more and more of her pretty dimity, now, alas! rumpled and stained ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... letter was still in the inside pocket of her jacket, and all was well at two in the morning. No eye appeared at either of the apertures, so she covered up the light once more and lay down again, sighing to think how rumpled her dainty costume would look in the morning. Now she was resolved not to go to sleep, if force of will could keep her awake. A moment later she was startled by someone beating down the partition with an axe. She sprang up, and again the scarf pulled her back. She untied it from her ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... when it was over. And then it was such a comfort to find that Betty, far from making any objection or difficulty, was pleased to approve of the arrangement, and even when Pennie, who was very untidy, rumpled the anti-macassars and upset the precise position of the drawing-room chairs, she ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... as bright as that first day in Eden; the birds sang and the air was crisp, and young blood ran pleasantly. She came down early, all radiant smiles; she kissed her mother on both cheeks and the lips, rumpled her father's hair affectionately, went for a stroll with Mr. Gratton before breakfast, craved Georgia's pardon abjectly, and made the world an abiding-place of joy ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... to answer her a third gun spoke from the ships towards which she was looking intent and wonderingly. A frown rumpled her brow. She looked from one to the other of the men who stood there so glum and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... yellowish-brown hair was rumpled and fluffed up. His ribs showed sharp, and his tail was full of burs, while his short and scraggy mane was ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... an inch taller and a year or two older than Mattie, with yellow ringlets, and more pale-blue ribbons on her white dress than poor Mattie had ever seen before. She was a clean, cold, pale, and selfish little vixen, whose dresses were never rumpled, and whose temper was never ruffled. She had not blood enough in her veins to drive her to play or to anger. But she seemed to poor Mattie the loveliest creature she had ever seen, and our brown, hard-handed, blowzy tomboy ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... in the centre, on which lay a piece of embroidery, magazines, books, the moth apparatus, and the cyanide jar containing several specimens. Polly rejoiced in the cooling shade, slipped off her duster, removed her hat, rumpled her pretty hair and seated herself to indulge in the delightful occupation of paying off old scores. Tom Levering followed her example. Edith took a seat but refused to remove her hat and coat, while Henderson stood ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... fearfully, half blinded with weeping. Her husband's thick mane of yellow hair was disordered and rumpled upon his great square-cut head; his big red ears were redder than ever; his face was purple; the thick eyebrows were knotted over the small, twinkling eyes; the heavy yellow mustache, that smelt of alcohol, drooped over the massive, protruding chin, salient, like ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... arriving at last at his apology. "I couldn't help being late. I've had a day of it." He drew his hands across his forehead, and she noticed that he was in his morning clothes and looked as rumpled and flurried as a ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Buster to a gallop and was off, the dust following her in a golden, whirling spiral. Douglas went into the house and stood before his father, face flushed, golden hair rumpled, soft shirt clinging to his big ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Sam ushered them into the musty law office of Squire Tucker, justice of the peace. The squire was a large, fat man, clothed in rusty black, with a carelessly knotted string tie pendent beneath a rumpled turn-down collar. He had a smooth-shaven, fat face, lighted by shrewd and kindly eyes, which gleamed at you now through, now over, his glasses. When the party entered he was writing, and merely looked up under his big eyebrows long enough ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... sadly "rumpled" and in addition wet through. Before Peggy could reply to her chum's half rallying ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... days back, And is in force. And we do firmly hope The loud pretensions and the stunning dins Now daily heard, these laudable exertions May keep in curb; that ere our greening land Darken its leaves beneath the Dogday suns, The independence of the Continent May be assured, and all the rumpled flags Of famous dynasties so foully mauled, Extend their honoured ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the perspiration ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... are gone to a surprise party. Don't you remember there was one at Astor M'Kree's last winter?" suggested Phil, whose tumble had dispelled some of his sleepiness, although he still talked in a drowsy tone, and rumpled his hair wildly all over ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... hurt—aber I am dead, I dink!" shouted back the badly rumpled Schmidt. "Ach himmel! der Grasshopper is a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... do all her ironing while we are away, and never disturb us more at midnight. I suppose she comes thither to iron her shroud, and perhaps, likewise, to smooth the Doctor's band. Probably, during her lifetime, she allowed him to go to some ordination or other grand clerical celebration with rumpled linen, and ever since, and throughout all earthly futurity (at least, as long as the house shall stand), she is doomed to exercise a nightly toil with a spiritual flat-iron. Poor sinner!—and doubtless Satan heats the irons for her. What nonsense is all this! but, really, it ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the hall outside, however, dispelled her boredom almost before she had time to recognize it. She suddenly remembered Max's pal, and started up in haste to smooth her rumpled hair. Surely Max would not be so inconsiderate as to bring him straight in to her without ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... hurl herself into his arms and insist on staying there. Her aunt, Miss Anne Hamilton, who had brought her up from babyhood, was always detaching her from Raven; but Nan clung as persistently. Raven would look at Miss Anne, over the girl's rumpled silk poll, with whimsically imploring eyes. Why couldn't Nan be allowed to break upon him like a salty, fragrant wave of the sea, he seemed to ask Miss Anne, bringing all sorts of floating richness, the outcrop of her fancies and affections? Aunt ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... A de luxe, a man with flushed face and rumpled hair was stamping nervously up and down. It required a second glance to recognise in him that usually well-groomed and self-possessed individual known as Lord Vernon. Two others were watching his movements with scarcely concealed anxiety—Collins leaning against the window with ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a branch-line town if he wasn't ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... of division in New York is, however, drawn much lower down. The Massachusetts Short-Hair is a man of intelligence, of some education, who wears a plain black neglige and rumpled shirt-front and soft hat, and disregards the condition of his nails, and takes a warm bath occasionally. The New Yorker, on the other hand, wears such clothes as he can get, and only bathes in the hot weather and off the public wharf. If he has good luck and makes money, either ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the habit of "running in" to see one another. Were the truth known, many a housekeeper, deep in pie-making and bread-kneading, would gladly give her handsomest loaf for two minutes in which to smooth her rumpled hair and change ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of a man, tu," she said, apropos of nothing in particular. But the newcomer understood. He rumpled his hair and snorted and frowned ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... that when the door closed behind the maid we simply looked at each other a moment, then simultaneously made a bound for the bed, where we choked with laughter among the pillows. Presently we sat up with flushed faces and rumpled hair. I reached over ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... her head. Her short hair was still damp and rumpled from contact with the foaming billows ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... the stain of her tears. Her thick brown hair was loose and rumpled under her white cap. But she had put on a clean, starched apron. It stood out stiffly, billowing, from her waist. Essy had not always been so careless about her hair or so fastidious as to her aprons. There was a little strained droop at the corners of her tender mouth, as if they had been ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... the Swan he ruffled his plumes and hissed, And with sounding buffets, which seldom missed, He walloped into that paddler gay (Bent on enjoying his holiday). He smote him here, and he spanked him there, Upset his "balance," rumpled his hair. "I'll teach you," he cried, with pounding pinions, "To come intruding in my dominions!" And the frightened flags, and the startled reeds, And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the shaking rushes and wobbling weeds, And the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... and had it held a family reunion in Emma McChesney's little hotel bedroom, it would have mattered not at all to her. For she was sick—doctor-three-times-a- day-trained-nurse-bottles-by-the-bedside sick, her head, with its bright hair rumpled and dry with the fever, tossing from side to side on the lumpy hotel pillow, or lying terribly silent and inert against the gray-white of the bed linen. She never quite knew how narrowly she escaped that picture ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... tall Lombardy poplars were throwing long shadows on the green sward of the terraces, and from the window she could see the garden, lying so sweet and still in the drowse of the late afternoon that she longed to be down in it. She hurried to change the rumpled shirt-waist in which she had finished her journey and done her unpacking, for a fresh white dress. It was proof that the room was exerting some influence to make her like her model, that even in her haste she made a careful toilet. Remembering how dainty and thorough-going Lloyd ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... excitement began they had time to think of themselves, and when they looked at each other they could hardly forbear from laughing outright at the picture they presented. They were begrimed with smoke and grease, their clothes were rumpled and soiled, and Bob's sleeve had been split from shoulder to elbow, where it had been caught by a jagged strip of the material of ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... threw a rumpled paper toward Flint, who grasped it convulsively. His hand touched a bell-rope, and before the bell had ceased tinkling, a heavy measured tramp came through the entry. Four policemen entered the room in single file, with Michel behind them making comical ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... spirit, its impressions sink deep; and its influences for good or ill form no mean part of the warp and woof of our lives. Its fresh damask, bright silver, glass, and china, give beautiful lessons in neatness, order, and taste; its damask soiled, rumpled, and torn, its silver dingy, its glass cloudy, and china nicked, annoy and vex us at first, and then instill their lessons of carelessness and disorder. An attractive, well-ordered table is an incentive to good manners, and being a place where one is incited to linger, it tends ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... her bed of boughs, the sheet on her knees, her hands clutched into her wind-rumpled hair above her temples, she read the letter which her grandfather had contrived with the help of his ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day |
