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Sill   Listen
noun
Sill  n.  The shaft or thill of a carriage. (Prov. Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sill" Quotes from Famous Books



... perambulation of the deserted chambers. In the kitchen the whitewash was grimy, the ceiling and windows unclean. Ashes of a peat fire still lay upon the cracked hearthstone, and a pair of worn-out boots, left by a tramp or the last tenant, stood on the window-sill. Dust and filth were everywhere, but no indication of dampness ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... steps had nearly dropped through into the area, the rails of which had been wrenched up. The knocker was still on the door,—a large modern lion-headed knocker; but half the door was gone; on creeping to the door-sill, I found about six feet of the floor of the hall gone also—stolen for fire wood. But the joists of the flooring were there, and the whitewash of the walls showed that but a few, a very few years back, the house had been inhabited. I leaped ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... severe headache as an excuse for retiring to her own room. When once she was alone, having dismissed her maid, she heaved a deep sigh of relief. She never thought of retiring to bed, but throwing open her window, leaned out with her elbow on the window-sill. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... you still Bounding to the window-sill, Over which I vaguely see Your small mound beneath the tree, Showing in the autumn shade That you moulder ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... should, his labor compensate. Hence his wise caution as the wind grows stronger, Until the "burning" needs his care no longer. This o'er he drags the ground, and sows his grain, And of the toil required does not complain. He "sows in hope;" and, if he take due care, A splendid crop sill soon be growing there. In view of this, let us suppose him singing The LOGGER'S SONG, while peaceful thoughts ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... day or two after they returned that Phyllis was leaning on the window-sill in the drawing-room, watching a passing shower, and admiring the soft bright tints of a rainbow upon the dark gray mass of cloud. 'I do set my bow in the cloud,' repeated she to herself over and over again, until Adeline entering the room, she eagerly exclaimed, 'Oh ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... crossed the sagging porch and stepped through the open door into the store. For a moment he thought it empty. Then a chair scraped, and over in one corner a short, stout, grizzled man dropped his feet from the window-sill and ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... a little over the sill, as if to rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in sailor's garments—heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, shivering, and then he retired a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... personal peril. In the midst of shrieks and cries and shouts of encouragement, Edward, a practised gymnast, saw a chance. He ran up the ladder like a cat, begged the fireman to clasp it tight; then got on his shoulders and managed to grasp the window-sill. He could always draw his own weight up by his hands: so he soon had his knee on the sill, and presently stood erect. He then put his left arm inside the window, collared the old fellow with his right, and, half persuasion, half force, actually lowered him to the ladder with one Herculean ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... house. Within it was the quiet of a Sunday afternoon. Her mother had gone to a distant church, and there was none left "to keep house," save one of the maids and the old grey cat, that dosed on the window-sill in the sunshine. The cat was a great pet of Olive's; and the moment it saw its young mistress, it was purring round her feet, following her from room to room, never resting until she took it up in her arms. The love even of a dumb animal touched her then. She ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... faded strip of cheap carpeting in the centre, the little stand with a white towel over the top, upon which was a lamp and a Bible,—she was glad to see the Bible—the woodcuts from illustrated journals tacked to the walls, and the one straggling geranium in a tin can on the window sill, then examined more closely the girl ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... the fire, left the hot water, said a few words, and went to wake Rogron and do the same offices for him. Then she went down to take in the milk, the bread, and the other provisions left by the dealers. She stood some time on the sill of the door hoping that Brigaut would have the sense to come to her; but by that time he was already on his way ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... sight of the animal moving about in the snow, holding up first one foot then another. Farther away, among the bushes of the clearing, stood another fox; and, still farther off in the woods, a third was barking querulously. Tracks in the snow led to a large hole under the sill of the house where a part of the cellar wall had ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... of fresh linen, buoyant perfumes, (camphor, cinnamon, violets, rose) and the hot, sweet odor of newly-mown grass lying under the sun just outside of the windows. The wind pulsed in through the half-swung window, a bee came buzzing wildly along, a butterfly rested an instant on the window sill, and the preacher prayed on in an oratorical way for the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... with a grateful look, and a faint attempt to smile through her tears; then hurried on to her room, where she seated herself in a chair by the window, and laying her arms upon the sill, rested her head upon them, and while the bitter tears fell fast from her eyes she murmured half aloud, "Oh! why am I always so naughty? always doing something to displease my dear papa? how I wish I could ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... reached out his thin white hand, as if the motion required an effort, and beckoned twice. Marcus answered with two bows, and immediately rose, and laid down his pipe on the window sill, thereby implying that he would come over at once. The old gentleman smiled faintly, to express ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... Leaning on the window-sill, so that her profile was turned towards him, stood a girl of two or three and twenty, looking with strained curiosity, as if she were following some one with her eyes, down to the bank of the Volga. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... climb on ter de rudder chain, where I'se hang wid my head out ob de water till it was come dark, an' de night grow ober de sea. Den, when I'se tink de cap'en drink nuff rum to get drunk, an' not fo' see me come on board agen, I'se let my ole leg wash up wid de wave to de sill ob de stern port; an' den, when I'se look an see dere was nobody in de cabin, I'se smash de glass ob de window ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... was in the garden saw it also; for she stood at the open window of the garret, by which hung the cage containing the linnet, who then had no water-glass, but was obliged to be contented with an old cup. In the window-sill stood a myrtle in a pot, and this had been pushed a little on one side, that it might not fall out; for the old maid was leaning out of the window, that she might see. And she did see distinctly the aeronaut in the balloon, and how he let down the rabbit in the parachute, and then drank ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... theory, Sally chose one of the windows of the servants' dining-room from which to spy out stealthily, between the shade and the sill, over a flooded area and street; first remarking a sensible modification of the gloom in spite of an unabated downpour, then that the house was near the Park Avenue corner, finally a policeman sheltered in the tradesman's entrance of the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... the gathering slowly dispersed. Avoiding the offered companionship of Congressman Harkins and Douglas, Dr. Surtaine took himself off by a side passage. At the end of it, alone, stood the Reverend Norman Hale, leaning against the sill of an open window. The old quack ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... broad framework, curiously and elaborately carved, and black as polished ebony. Flowers grew all about it,—sweet peas, mignonette, and large purple pansies—while red and white climbing roses rioted in untrained profusion over its wide sill. Above it was a quaintly built dovecote, where some of the strutting fan-tailed inhabitants were perched, swelling out their snowy breasts, and discoursing of their domestic trials in notes of dulcet melancholy; while lower down, three or four ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... them abutted on the pavement. The narrow street was almost dark, in spite of the moonlight, but Hamilton saw that some one sat at a lower window but a few feet ahead of him. It was a woman, for her arm hung over the sill There was nothing to arrest his attention in the circumstance, beyond the vague beauty of the arm and hand, for on these dog nights many sat at their windows until the chill of early morning; but he suddenly remembered that he was in Pearl Street. For ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... sharpness of their outlines, in this combination of intense brightness and death-like stillness, there was something weird and mysterious. A rather large grey bird suddenly flew up without a sound and settled on the very window sill.... I looked at it, and it looked at me sideways with its round, dark eye. 'Were you sent to ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... Felix's big figure blocked against the stars. Judy's head could be seen in silhouette against the other window, but Tim and Maria, being smaller, were merged in the pool of shadow below the level of the sill. A large, spread thing passed flutteringly up and down the room a moment, then came the rest. It settled over everything at once. A rustle was audible ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... said Standish. "I've got just the thing for you. Sit over on the window-sill and be a lily. Flowers brighten up ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... the wide kitchen table, which was scarred with generations of use of cleaver and bread-knife and steak-pounder. The kitchen door was open to the broad land, which flowed up to the sill in a pleasant sea of waving grass. But she was turned from it, staring apprehensively toward the tea-room. Round her swirled the heat from the stove, and restless flies lighted on her cheek and flew ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... their connection. He was, however, a man of resource, and whatever the loss involved in the severance, he was not dismayed. He made up his mind to quarrel with eclat, and sitting himself down upon the window-sill, laughed with a sardonic glee at the rencontre he had just brought about. In a little while, however, he began to wonder at its length, and after a while he was startled by Le Prun's voice calling him by name, and at the same time by a furious knocking ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... come nigh me," sobbed Eppy. "—Ye see what ye hae dune!" she cried, turning in anger on Kennedy, and her tears suddenly ceasing. "Never but ill hae ye brocht me! What business had ye to come efter me this gait, makin' mischief 'atween my lord an' me? Can a body no set fut ayont the door-sill, but they maun be followt o' them they wud ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... coort was thronged with ex-mimbers iv th' Fr-rinch governmint. Th' gin'ral staff, bein' witnesses f'r th' prosecution, sat with th' coort: th' pris'ner, not bein' able to find a chair, sat on th' window-sill. His inthrest in th' proceedin's was much noticed, an' caused gr-reat amusement. Ivrybody was talkin' about th' mysteryous lady in white. Who is she? Some say she is a Dhryfussard in th' imploy iv Rothscheeld; others, that she is an ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... the entertainment at the Burns warehouse exceeded the young minister's estimates. The standing audience was greater than the number that found seats. A few venturesome lads who had never seen a midget climbed up to the braces that held sill to pillar to get a better view. But withal it was a quiet, orderly gathering of the men, women, and children of the little ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... full of melancholy, went and leaned against the sill of the open window. The moon had just risen, the sky was beautifully clear, whiffs of delicious perfumes assailed my nostrils. I saw in the shadow of the trees glowworms sparkling on the grass, and, in the masses ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... hurried, once, down the purple road, When a storm hung low in the sky; And we gained the door of Love's abode As the silver rain flashed by. Our steps rang out as we crossed the sill, And the place was dimly bright, And even our hearts seemed strangely still, While ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... in the second degree, or against the peace and dignity of the people of the State of Kansas or Virginia, and the statue in such case made and provided leaving a bottle of near-beer uncorked on the window-sill until it worked itself into a condition of being fermented or intoxicating liquor under section six sub-section (b) of the said act, y'understand, it is surprising to me that the police didn't by accident ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass

... the lady," said the mother, trying to pull the child away. "My land, if I ever live to get you children to your grandmother's I'll be thankful! Lottie, stop making scratches on that window sill!" ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... to where one of the old-fashioned windows, that swung inward from the center like double doors, was open, and, reaching in his hand, tapped sharply twice in succession with his knuckles on the pane. The sill was not quite on a level with his shoulders and he could see inside—it was Helena's room, and the door to the hall was open. Again he knocked. Came then the sound of footsteps—and from the hall the Flopper's ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... than done! Accustomed as he was to exercise and games, Fandor, agile as a young man in good training can be, squirmed up the pipe as far as Elizabeth's window. He caught hold of the sill, recovered his balance, jerked himself up, and, two seconds after, had landed ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... tempestuous and unstable manner, making all things seem unreal; now clear out in its bright light, now trembling and quivering in shadow. The pain at her heart seemed to make Jemima's brain grow dull; she laid her head on her arms, which rested on the window-sill, and grew dizzy with the sick weary notion that the earth was wandering lawless and aimless through the heavens, where all seemed one tossed and whirling wrack of clouds. It was a waking nightmare, from the uneasy ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the frame work was inclosed in rough boards with no floor laid. There is never but one entrance to an Indian hut. This is in front, and elevated several feet from the ground, so that you must go down from the door-sill inside as well as out. No windows were yet in the building, and it was really in a crude state. These grand festivities last five days, and this was ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... sit the whole day long Beside the window-sill, And listen to the joyous song That ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... the clouded window-panes and spattered off the English-ivy leaves below the sill. They quivered up and down on pale stems—bright, waxed leaves, as shining as though they had ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... kitchen, leaving the door open. Job slunk after him, and crouched with his muzzle across the sill, evidently not yet certain that his victory was complete. He did not howl, however, and his late adversary was ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... about how they should drive the robbers away. At last they made a plan that they thought would work. The donkey was to stand on his hind legs and place his forefeet on the window-sill. The dog was to stand on his back. The cat was to stand on the dog's shoulders, and the rooster promised to light ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... had seated herself on a bench beside the window, her face turned away, looking out—and warm drops fell on the sill. ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... dwell with him in it, there was "a raising." On an appointed day, the neighbors far and near assembled; all together put their shoulders to the work; and, before the shadows of night enveloped the scene, the house was up, and covered from sill to ridgepole. The same was done if the house of a neighbor had been destroyed by fire. In this case, often the timbers, joists, and boards were contributed as well as the labor. These were made the occasions of general merriment, in which all ages and both sexes participated. Then there ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... low screen consisting of a coping or rail supported on balusters (q.v.). Sometimes it is employed purely as a decorative feature beneath the sill of a window which was not carried down to the ground. Sometimes flowing foliage takes the place of the parapet, and sometimes so-called balustrades are formed of vertical slabs of stone, pierced as in the Ca' d'oro at Venice and the balconies of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... scent of his master's coat, and started rapidly down the road, his nose to the ground. The testimony as elicited at the trial showed that the brute had bounded along to the Grant cottage, leaped upon the window sill, sniffed eagerly about the spot, then ran down the path to a clump of bushes on the river cliff. Here the creature stopped and set up a piteous howl. The pursuing party hastened to the spot, and there lay the body of Belt, who had fallen and died, as ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... about old Nip. It was getting dark, and I knew he was not strong. My hope was that he had taken shelter somewhere; but I could not rest, for I was sure he would try and get home, if only to quiet me. While running in and out in my anxiety—the water having meanwhile risen above the sill of the door, and poured into our little house, where it was already above my paws—I spied a dark figure crawling along the street, and with great difficulty making way against the beating of the storm. I at once rushed out, and swimming rather than running towards the object, I found my poor ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes

... way, that she couldn't afford it, and she couldn't spare us, if she had the means, and then I flung up into our room, that was a lean-to in the garret, with a winder in the gable end, and there I set down by the winder with my chin on the sill, and begun to wonder why we couldn't have as good luck as the Perrits. After I'd got real miserable, I heerd a soft step comin' up stairs, and Major come in and looked at me and then out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... he was dimly conscious of a scuffling sound outside his window, and, getting softly out of bed, went to the opening. In a few minutes the head of a man rose gradually above the window-sill close to the house, and a moment later he was looking into the face ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... with a washed face, fresh like an innocent young girl, suave in welcoming one's respects like—like a Roman prelate. I love such days. They are perfection for remaining indoors. And I enjoyed it temperamentally in a chair, my feet up on the sill of the open window, a book in my hands and the murmured harmonies of wind and sun in my heart making an accompaniment to the rhythms of my author. Then looking up from the page I saw outside a pair of grey ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... candle which she had left on the window-sill of the empty room. Only then a sort of bewilderment came over her; she extinguished the candle and, gliding quickly along the dark corridor, entered her own room, undressed and went to bed ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... donkey rubbed one hoof after the other on the straw mat before the sill, then advanced into the room. Felicia, who was in Roger's lap, trembled with ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... say so! Do tell us more about yourself!" Joy was always teasing and the girls were used to her ways. Kit leaned over the door sill, grabbed a handful of snow, aimed it at ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm

... gleam of shining water, something black squirming among the weeds, a yell, a volley of half-choked profanity, and a fleeing figure, apparently pursued by a huge snake. Naida shook with laughter, clinging with both hands to the sill, but ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... said: "Not at all. If you want to hang yourself, first youve got to get up on the window sill. And who will open the gas jet for you if you want to poison yourself? You could only buy a revolver secretly through a servant. But suppose the shot misses? To drown yourself youve got to take an automobile and have yourself carried down to the river on a stretcher ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... was easy. I swung myself aloft on the spikes and stones leading to the donjon window. When I was high enough I gazed in, my chin about even with the sill. And there I saw the prettiest girl I ever beheld, gazing down at a book tranquilly, as though gentlemanly rescuers were common as toads around that tower. She wore something soft and golden; her hair was night-black, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... she replied. "There was a heavy knock upon the door while I was busy, and when I went there after a moment's delay I found this lying upon the sill, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... their eyes, which were as keen and flashing as those of the eagle, they gazed searchingly upon the position of the enemy and that of their own forces. The line from the village of Wiltau down to the river Sill was occupied by the French troops under General Bisson; on the right side of Wiltau to the Inn stood Lieutenant-Colonel Wreden with the Bavarians, his front turned ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... down the mirror and turn it lengthways above the mantel-shelf over the fireplace. We put the new rocker in the bright, sunny corner, where it would be easier for dim old eyes to see to read or sew. We set the geranium on the broad clean sill of the window, and I think you would have agreed with us that it was a cozy, cheerful home to come to after fifteen years of lonely homelessness. We couldn't get the dinner question settled, so ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... rapidly going to decay. Everything he saw related to a past period of existence. The window was high, and deep set in the wall. There was a bench under it, upon which one was obliged to climb to obtain a view of the country, and Henley pulled himself up into the sill ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... perfection, which, out-of-doors, was urging on the sap and loosening firm green buds: he had a day's imprisonment behind him, and all spring's magic was at work to ferment his blood. How small and close the room was! He leaned out on the sill, as far out as he could, in the sun. It was shining full down the street now, gilding the canal-like river at the foot, and throwing over the tall, dingy houses on the opposite side, a tawdry brightness, which, unlike that of the morning with its suggestion of dewy shade, only served to bring out ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... he once had an inquisitive little Chickadee perch on the end of his boot and sit there watching him inquiringly. They have even been known to feed from the open hand. If you will daily scatter some crumbs for them before the door, or upon the window-sill, you will learn for yourselves ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... morning—making his way towards one of the windows in the front of the building. His pocket was full of wheat, taken from a bag on one of the sample tables. Opening the window, he scattered the grain upon the sill, and stood for a long moment absorbed and interested in the dazzling flutter of the wings of innumerable pigeons who came to settle upon the ledge, pecking the grain with little, nervous, fastidious taps of their ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... Savona 17th October, 1323, a few months before the most illustrious of his prisoners, and his bones were laid in a sarcophagus which may still be seen forming the sill of one of the windows of S. Matteo (on the right as you enter). Over this sarcophagus stood the Bust of Lamba till 1797, when the mob of Genoa, in idiotic imitation of the French proceedings of that age, threw ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... himself with water, returned to the house, cooked the remnant of the eggs and bacon, and ate his breakfast with the same exultant peace with which he had eaten his supper the night before. Then he sat down in the doorway upon the sunken sill and fell again to considering his main problem. He did not smoke. His tobacco was nearly exhausted and he was no longer reckless. His head was not turned now by the feeling that he was at home. He considered ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the finest lace for miles about," said Michael, unhearing, unheeding. "Rare tales she would be telling me and I no higher than the sill of the window there, and I'd thought to find her long dead and buried surely, the way she was always as old as the Abbey itself. But no—there she was still in her bit of a cottage, the time I was just home, the oldest old woman I ever ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... lowly, fighting on without complaint, all over the world, he forgot himself in them. He who was not usually sentimental now had periods of that mystic tenderness which is the flower of weakness and sickness. In the evening, as he sat with his elbows on the window-sill, gazing down into the courtyard and listening to all the mysterious noises of the night,... a voice singing in a house near by, made moving by the distance, or a little girl ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... after that day of mourning with which Northern towns solemnized John Brown's death. What wonder that an ardent Southerner like Toombs, speaking to his constituents a few months later, called on them to "meet the enemy at the door-sill." And what wonder that the Southern people were inclined as never before to look upon the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after me ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... the lightning play over the hilltop and the streams of rain chasing each other down the lightning rod. And this was the day that had dawned so joyfully! It had been a red sunrise, and she had leaned on the window sill studying her lesson and thinking what a lovely world it was. And what a golden morning! The changing of the bare, ugly little schoolroom into a bower of beauty; Miss Dearborn's pleasure at her success with the Simpson twins' recitation; the privilege of decorating the blackboard; the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... went to the window, secured the ladder again and more firmly, then getting up on to the sill and holding to the bars with one hand, he stretched out the other to the queen, who, as resolute as she had been timid a moment before, mounted on a stool, and had already set one foot on the window-ledge, when suddenly the cry, "Who goes there?" rang ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... fish-shop, whence is shed So strong a smell of fishes dead That people of a subtler sense Hold their breath and hurry thence. Miss Thompson hovers there and gazes: Her housewife's knowing eye appraises Salt and fresh, severely cons Kippers bright as tarnished bronze: Great cods disposed upon the sill, Chilly and wet, with gaping gill, Flat head, glazed eye, and mute, uncouth, Shapeless, wan, old-woman's mouth. Next a row of soles and plaice With querulous and twisted face, And red-eyed bloaters, golden-grey; Smoked haddocks ranked in neat array; A group of smelts that take the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... porter climbed the steps of a sleeping-car. She followed and sat down beside her valise, resting her elbow on the polished window-sill, and her flushed cheek ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... mother's drawer, for she kept on looking round to see if any one was coming, and the best of it was I was watching all the time, and she never knew it. I saw her put one piece of paper down on the window-sill; she was saying very funny things to herself. 'Meg shouldn't have done it; she wouldn't take my advice. Ah! she'll rue it some day, I well believe,' and all on like that. Of course Meg means mother, and I was just wondering what it was she was talking about, when the wind blew quite a puff, and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... all the windows were alight. He crept up to a clump of bushes under a window and waited there a moment while he drew out and cocked his revolver. Then he slowly reached upward until his head cleared the sill and he could look into the room. "A big, warm ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... from church, Clarence's aunt was reading, when the dinner-bell rang. So she left her book on the window-sill, and laid her ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... noiselessly through the passage, I took up my station beside the one low window which opened upon it from the blank back premises of the house. Even with the glimmer of snow to help me, I had to grope for the window-sill to make sure of my bearings. The minutes crawled by, and the only sound came from a stall where one of the horses had kicked through his thin straw bedding and was shuffling an uneasy hoof upon the cobbles. Then ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... called Mr. Bobbsey, as the children's pet came leaping along beside the track. Snap gave one look up at the high sill of the baggage car door, and then, with a loud bark, he gave a great leap and landed right ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope

... defend it also against his own entrance. But he did not attempt to enter. Though he had been running, it was his pallor, not his heat, which struck Claire in that first moment. He was white, with the pallor of intense anger; the flash of his eyes was like cold steel. He rested his hands on the sill of the window, and ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... ways in which He comforts His children. Leaning her tired head on the low window-sill, Christie slept and dreamed, and in her dream, peace came to her spirit. A strange, soft light spread around her, like the gleam she had once seen fall on the sea in the early morning. Only the sea seemed ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... the cheek was 4-2/3 diameters of the shot, unless some change in height had to be made to fit a gun port or embrasure. To prevent cannon from pushing shutters open when the ship rolled in a storm, lower tier carriages let the muzzle of the gun, when fully elevated, butt against the sill over the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy

... between solid hedges of yew, was the bespoken lodging, and M. and S. were quickly out of the cart, and roaming the garden among fruit trees, autumn flowers, and beehives. Thence they were summoned to the little front room, the oaken window-sill bright with fuchsias and geraniums, the walls adorned with an old eight-day clock, a copper warming-pan and antique trays, while over the mantel-piece was a small fowling piece, years ago reduced from flint to percussion. Upon the rafters there were half a side ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... the receiver into the hook in a blaze of temper, hurt and unreasonable, and striding to the rear window flung it up to cool his face. There were bouillon cups upon the sill. Bouillon cups! Bouillon cups! Thunder-and-turf! There were bouillon cups everywhere. Nobody but Brian would have bought so many handles. A future of handles loomed drearily ahead. Brian could talk of disorder all he chose. Half of it was ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... wooden table, the piles of fruit, the busy figures of the nuns as they moved to and fro. Outside in the courtyard the sun would be shining perhaps, the trees would wave, and cast flickering shadows on Madelon, as she sat, the pigeons would come fluttering and perching on the window-sill, and Soeur Lucie, whilst paring, cutting, boiling, skimming, would crone out for Madelon's benefit the old tales she knew so well that she could almost have repeated them in her sleep. Madelon only begged to be let off ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... nor Merritt had waited to give Tubby any answer when he made that really generous offer. They knew there would be no need of his back as a means for elevating one of them to the sill of the upper window. In fact, Rob had made a sudden discovery that must have been the main reason ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... shoulder. She stood for a moment at the closed window, then opened it and looked out. The night was cold and dark; but she braved it, and sat humming a tune, her hand playing with the ivy that crept up to the window-sill. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... "I seen him come down the hall at dawn this morning. Us Westerners are early risers, you know, and when he reached Miss Turtle's door, he pulled a little slipper out of his pocket and kissed it and put it in front of the sill." ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... opened the winder,—I see his head! He stretches it out, an' pokes it about, Lookin' to see 'f the coast is clear An' nobody near: Guess he do'no' who's hid in here! He's riggin' a spring-board over the sill! Stop laffin', Solomon! Burke, keep still! He's a climbin' out now—Of all the things! What's he got on? I van, it's wings! An' that t'other thing? I vum, it's a tail! An' there he sets, like a hawk on a rail! Steppin' careful, he travels the length ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... On my grated window's sill, Singing, as the mornings follow, Quaint and pensive ditties still, What would'st tell me in thy lay? Prithee, pilgrim ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... Floriani, falling in with the count's mood, "without costing him the slightest trouble, without anyone thinking to examine the condition of the window, or to observe that the window-sill was too clean—that window-sill which he had wiped in order to efface the marks he had made in the thick dust. We must admit that it was sufficient to turn the head of a boy at that age. It was all so easy. He had simply to desire the thing, and reach ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... sitting by the window of the parlour overlooking the pilasters of the front door. She held little Louis wrapped in a blanket, and kept both herself and him out of sight as much as possible behind the curtain. But she had the horse pistol I had given her on the ledge of the sill close at ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... A loud "Whoop!" from the direction of the window brought them both to their feet. The room was upon the second floor of the house, and opposite the window to which their attention had been attracted was a large tree, a branch of which spread to within a few feet of the sill. Upon this branch now they both discovered the subject of their recent conversation, a tall, well-built boy, balancing with ease upon the bending limb and uttering loud shouts of glee as he noted the terrified expressions upon the faces ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... River"; and in the scuffle which followed, first one and then the other policeman in charge of Sleeny became involved. Sleeny was standing with his back to the window, quite alone. The temptation was too much for him. He leaped upon the sill, gave one mighty spring, caught the pipe, and slid safely to the ground. One or two passers-by saw him drop lightly to the sidewalk, but thought nothing of it. It was not the part of the jail in which prisoners were confined, and he might have been taken ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... a procession of these cousins," said the Doctor, as they reached his study. He then opened a glass case, took out six birds, and stood them on the window-sill. "See, this is the way they go arm in arm when they walk in the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... she leaned across the stone sill, unmindful of the cold, to blow a tiny kiss to the fountain cupid, "How stupid I was not to see! You just live in half the oval and the kitchen garden and the stables are ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... leg over the sill a golden square sprang into existence across the way. Immediately he forgot his foraging instincts. In a moment he was all Latin, always susceptible ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... and a carved chimney-piece of almost black oak. A sombre place in gloomy weather, yet so decorated with old china vases, and great brass salvers, and silver cups and tankards catching every ray of light, that the whole room glistened in this bright May-day. In the broad cushioned seat formed by the sill of the oriel window, which was almost as large as a room itself, there sat the elder Mrs. Sefton, Roland Sefton's foreign mother, with his two children standing before her. They had their hands clasped behind them, and their faces were turned toward her with the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... Fido asked,—she flew to the window where they had once seen the little boy, and alighting upon the sill, she peered into the room. In another moment she was back on the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... nineteen. He was not a youth, but a man. He had never had any youth. He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years, then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill. He was curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do independent thinking on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions regarding them, and stick to them—stick to them and stand by them at cost of bread, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... tea first and see your mother afterward," observed Uncle Geoffrey; but I would not take this prudent counsel. On the stairs I came upon Jack, curled up on a window-sill, with Smudge, our old black cat, in her arms, and was welcomed by both of them with much effusion. Jack was a tall, thin girl, all legs and arms, with a droll, freckled face and round blue eyes, with all the awkwardness of fourteen, and none of its precocity. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... awakened two or three hours later by renewed conversations, which now and then died away into hoarse whispers. I always imagined they were discussing myself, and devising some scheme to step over the low sill into my room on the chance of finding any loot. I complained one day to the nurses of the fact that their extreme loquacity really prevented my sleeping, and, as she told me that the patients suffered in the same way, I advised her to speak to the sentinels ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... am writing in my sitting-room window. I raise my eyes and see first the broad window-sill, whereon stand pots of musk and geranium, not yet in flower; then through the clear latticed panes, the bee-haunted garden, descending by tiny grassy terraces to the kitchen-garden with its rows of peas and beans, its beds of lettuce and potatoe, its neat patches of parsley and thyme; then ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... wished to take it at once and leave it on the sill of her open window. He walked quietly, immersed in the wood's darkness—and his feet felt the contact of warm moss, the dew-wet grass, and the simple, rough, beloved earth. A refreshing breeze blew from the river in the ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... one murky night, an autumn night, he finished cutting through the bars, tied the cord firmly to the stump, and perched himself on the sill outside, holding on by one hand to the piece of iron remaining. Then he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not long before dawn. He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... hotel entrance, but I noticed a couple of men at the door, of sharp features and unkempt dress, and heard a laugh as I went in. My head swam as I stumbled up the stairs and fumbled at the knob, when I heard voices raised inside, and the door was suddenly and violently thrown open. Across the sill stood a big, rough-looking man with his hands on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the other side of the lens, and when he looked at me he had a thousand eyes, all sober. For a minute I thought he was going on dusting, but then he came out and sat down on a sill. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... seemed even more unfavorable. The window was situated on the fourth floor. There was still another floor above, with a window similarly located. Anyone might, of course, have been lowered from this window above, to the sill of the one at which he now stood, and entered the room in that way. He examined with care the white woodwork of the window sill, also freshly painted. It showed no marks. This, of course, was not conclusive. He determined ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... as the North Bridge. The manse was occupied by the Reverend William Emerson, the minister of the town, and from its western windows was an excellent view of the bridge. One of these windows was open, and the pastor himself, with his arms resting on the sill, was looking from this coign of vantage when the minute-men came up, crossed the bridge, and stationed themselves on the rising ground just beyond. He remained there, a deeply interested spectator, during the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... possession, Flood back to the city, the ranch, the farm, The church and the college and mill, Back to the office, the store, the exchange, Back to the wife with the babe on her arm, Back to the mother that waits on the sill, And the supper ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... which he grasped with both hands as high up as he could reach, drew up his legs to get the rope twisted round, and then began to—climb? No— gently swing to and fro. It was a very pleasant motion as he brushed against the shrubs and once bumped up against the sill of one of the lower windows, but it was not ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... this matter over with you," he began. "We aren't making much progress. We can't afford to hang up the drive, and the water is going down every day. We've got to have more water. I'll tell you what we'll do: If you'll let us cut down the new sill, we'll replace it in good shape when we ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... ways if you would," she said, breaking down and beginning to sob weakly, with her head resting on the sill of the carriage-window. "Oh, what have we not been through together, we two! Piece by piece ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... fifth bay a quaint door leads from the aisle to the Bishop's Cloister. This has a square heading which rises above the sill of the window over it. There is an interesting series of heads in the hollow moulding, which are said to be copies of earlier work in the same position. The iron-work of the door itself is modern by Potter. A lofty Norman arch leads ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... altogether very disquieting. He propped his sword against the chair and undressed. Wogan cast back in his memories for the first sensations of loneliness. They were recent, since he had left Ohlau, indeed. He opened the window; the rain splashed in on the sill, pattered in the street puddles below, and fell across the country with a continuous roar as though the level plain was a stretched drum. No; he had only felt lonely since he had come near to Schlestadt, since, in a word, he had deemed himself to have outstripped pursuit. He got ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... good feeding, warmth and rest. But in summer, when we came back to the house, the sun would not have set; and while we were upstairs paying our visit to aunt Leonie its rays, sinking until they touched and lay along her window-sill, would there be caught and held by the large inner curtains and the bands which tied them back to the wall, and split and scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would fall upon and inlay with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... fairies, I could swear I have seen them busy where Rose-leaves loose their scented hair, * * * * * Leaning from the window sill Of a rose or daffodil, Listening to their serenade, All ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... only course left him, and in the last GALAXY claims that HE wrote the criticism himself, and published it in THE GALAXY to sell the public. This is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take the trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article in the SATURDAY REVIEW of October 8th, which, on comparison, will be found to be identical with the one published in THE GALAXY. The best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ourselves why so many of our more recent poets have died young. Was it the hand of God, or the effort to do the work of two in a hostile environment, that struck down before their prime such spirits as Sidney Lanier, Edward Rowland Sill, Frederic Lawrence Knowles, Arthur Upson, Richard Hovey, William Vaughn Moody, and the like? These were poets whom we bound to the strenuous city, or at least to hack-work which sapped over-much of their vitality. An old popular fallacy keeps insisting that genius "will out." ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... paid it, they would have laid themselves open to thousands of similar demands. Dividends would dwindle. The stockholders have a right to a fair return on their money. Galligan claims that there was a defective sill on the car which is said to have caused the wreck. If damages are paid on that basis, it means the daily inspection of every car which passes over their lines. And more than that: there are certain defects, as in the present case, which an inspection would not reveal. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... where once had been a stately porch or wide veranda, looking no doubt over a broad sweep of lawn and the shining river. The high-arched doorway was still intact, with elaborately carved but now defaced woodwork, which, rising from the sill on either side, was continued in various old-fashioned designs until it culminated over a large square window in the second story. Generations had watched the sunsets from that window, but now high brick walls threw it in ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... see the sudden throb of her breast under her hair, but the frightened light did not leave her eyes even when he repeated the words he had spoken. Suddenly she ran to the window, and Philip saw the grip of her hands at the sill as she looked out. Through the gate Bram was driving his wolves. When she faced him again, her eyes had in them the look of a creature threatened by a whip. It amazed and startled him. As he advanced a step she cringed back from him. It struck him then that her face was ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... them. They applauded, sang a rollicking farewell, and were gone. If I could have removed my heart painlessly, I believe that would have gone out too. They had gone, but the blissful memory! I leaned on the window sill, and the moon with its bounteous mellow radiance filled my room. But listen, hark! Only two doors beyond, the same voices, the same melodious tones, and alas, yes, the same words, every verse and the same chorus—same ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... task of finally subduing the Apache, which was consummated by the recapture of Geronimo and his band in the Sierra Madre in September, 1886. These hostiles were taken as prisoners to Florida, later to Alabama, and thence to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where, numbering 298, they still are, living as farmers in peace and quiet, but still under the control of ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... lips went up, and the thicket of false hair swept the window sill, so low did the white man bow; but the Indian eyes were watchful. Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away and her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let her pass, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the trader ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, he discovered that light took time to traverse space. Its velocity is 186,000 miles per second. In 1681 he took up his duties as astronomer at Copenhagen, and built the first transit circle on a window-sill of his house. The iron axis was five feet long and one and a-half inches thick, and the telescope was fixed near one end with a counterpoise. The telescope-tube was a double cone, to prevent flexure. Three horizontal and three vertical wires were used ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... and drew back her head as if to see whether there were any one in the room behind her, her white hand lying over the stone sill, meanwhile, as if to show that she was not going away. Gilbert even thought that the slender fingers tapped the stone ledge in a reassuring way. Then she looked out again. A few late flowers and sweet herbs grew in an earthenware trough in one division of the window. There was sweet basil ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... your hand, and hitched my apron off my head. When you told me I had been dreaming. When you wouldn't believe the noises.' After this explosion Affery put her apron into her mouth again; always keeping her hand on the window-sill and her knee on the window-seat, ready to cry out or jump out if her ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... up an' told Jack Nickerson if he warn't man enough to do his own courtin' he warn't man enough for any self-respectin' woman to marry. An' furthermore, I said he needn't step foot over the sill of this shop 'till he'd took some action in the matter. That hit him pretty hard, I can tell you, 'cause he used to admire to come in here an' set round whenever he warn't on duty. But he saw I meant it, an' he ain't ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... parents, and mounted the steps four at a time. A candle was burning at the sill of the chamber door. Leon took it, and pushed the door ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch, red, perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, and turned upon the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes. In the listening crowd he observed to his immense annoyance the deacon Avdiessov. The deacon, a tall thick-set man with a red pock-marked face, and straw in his hair, stood leaning against ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... his eye on the window. Once or twice it was a question whether there was—not a bat, but something more considerable—that had a mind to join him. How unpleasant it would be if someone had slipped noiselessly over the sill and was crouching ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... thinking of the sparkling eyes—the lady's-maid came tripping through the twilight—"The gracious Lady fair sends you this to drink her health, and a 'Good-Night' besides!" And in a twinkling she put a flask of wine on the window-sill and vanished among the flowers and shrubs ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... for the outside rope, and when he had got it, he worked it in between the palms of his feet, and kept it there tight: then he uttered a short prayer, and, all the calmer for it, put his left hand on the sill and gradually wriggled out. Then he seized the iron bar, and for one fearful moment hung outside from it by his right hand, while his left hand felt for the rope down at his knees; it was too tight against the wall for his fingers to get round it higher up. The moment he had fairly grasped ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... There was only one window, but it was large and in the west. It took a little time to wash that, but it paid to do it. When a few asters and sprays of rabbit-brush were placed in a broken jar on the window-sill, there was a picture worth seeing. Some planks were laid on the saw-horses, some papers over them, and a clean white cloth over all. I sorted the dishes myself; the prettiest the house afforded graced our table. I rubbed the glassware ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... valley," from every brook and low place in field and pasture, betokening a warm, fair day. As I opened the heavy front door of Mr. Wetherell's old gambrel-roofed house, and stepped out onto the large flat stone at the door-sill, every blade of grass was glistening with dew-drops; such a sweetness pervaded the air as one only realizes when the dew is on the grass and bushes. At my right, close to the door-stone, a large bush of southern-wood, or man's-first-love, was growing; just beyond it and under the "middle-room" ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... by shock, sometimes take queer and irrelevant channels of thought, and now the only thing on which she seemed able to concentrate was a duel she had witnessed on that very schoolhouse window sill but the previous day: a duel between a locust and a wasp. They had fallen there in deadly embrace, the clumsier holding his antagonist by brute strength that ultimately would break its frail body; but the wily wasp, conscious of this danger, sent thrust after ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... a window," Bunny said. But he was not tall enough to reach more than past the window sill. The middle of the sash was far away, and he could see that the catch was on. If there had been a chair in the house, perhaps Bunny might have stood on it and opened a window, but there ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope

... ever! You've got youth, and all of the world at your feet. You've got beauty, and confidence, and faith. And I—well, I'm getting to be an old woman! I feel sometimes as if I've been sitting on the window sill, watching life go by, for centuries. You mustn't—" She paused, and there was a sudden change in her voice, "You're not tiring yourself, Rose-Marie? You're not doing more than your strength will permit? If you could ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... amount to, now that he felt a sudden liking for it? And he found that he could memorize the laws while he was stringing beads. When he paused, either in one line of effort or the other, it was to do a good turn: put crumbs on the window sill for the sparrows, feed Boof, take Mrs. Kukor up one of the small pies (lifting off Grandpa's hat to her at the door), and give the little old veteran not one, but several, short railway journeys. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... suddenly, Madame Wachner uttered a hoarse exclamation of terror. One of the gendarmes had climbed up on to the window-sill, and was now half into the room. She waddled quickly across to the door, only to find another ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... I did say yes, I believe; but I did not know how or why, at this question there seemed a coming together of gladness and pain which took away my breath. My head dropped on Darry's little window-sill, and my tears rushed forth, like the head of water behind a broken mill-dam. Darry was startled and greatly concerned. He wanted to know if I was not well—if I would send him for "su'thing"—I could only shake my head and weep. I think ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... decrees. He remembered her listening intelligence, her gentle but quick replies, her interest in all that concerned the church, in all that concerned him; and then he struck his riding-whip against the window-sill and declared to himself that it was impossible that Eleanor Bold ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... window be darkest of every one, In the dark house on the hill, Yet I turn to it here from this ruin of grass, She has leaned on that window's sill, And dark it is, but there is, there is An echo of ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... fighting blood swelled his pulse. He and pop had been partners. And partners always "stuck." Pete crept cautiously to the window. Halfway across the clearing the blurred hulk of running horses loomed in the starlight. Young Pete rested his carbine on the window-sill and centered on the bulk. He fired and thought he saw a horse rear. Again he fired. This was much easier than shooting deer. He beard a cry and the drumming of hoofs. Something crashed against the door. Pete whirled and fired point-blank. Before he knew what had happened men were in the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... lowered the level by presenting himself as a hard worker in the cause—"a dirty shirt" of the body. After the meeting, the marchers surrounded the speaker's "public carriage" to escort him to the mayor's house. His introducer was Sill, later lieutenant-governor of the State. To him the guest observed ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... house in that part of the parish, and stood in a hollow by the roadside so that cart-wheels and horses' legs were about level with the sill of his shop-window. This was low and wide, and was open from morning till evening, Mr. Penny himself being invariably seen working inside, like a framed portrait of a shoemaker by some modern Moroni. He sat facing the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... rejoined the detachment. Gianetto was already lying on the litter ready to set out. When he saw Mateo and Gamba in company he smiled a strange smile, then, turning his head towards the door of the house, he spat on the sill, saying: ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... the hot water bottle to Aunt Selina's back, and it had been too hot. Just then something hit against the door with a soft thud, fell to the floor and burst, for a trickle of hot water came over the sill. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Wherever her eyes fell, those sharp dark eyes that resembled buttons covered with shiny American cloth, they saw nothing that jarred, as so much in London jarred. There were bright brass jugs on the window sill, a bowl of pot-pourri on the black table in the centre, an oak settee by the open fireplace, a couple of Persian rugs on the polished floor. The room had its quaintness, too, such as she had alluded ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... in his cage And heard what he did say; He jumped upon the window sill, "'Tis time I was ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good enough for any one. Florence ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... no impression upon her. Eight o'clock—nine o'clock. It was now dark. Ten o'clock. She did not hear. Still at the window, her elbow on the sill, her chin resting in her hand, she kept watch on the river—but did not see the river: but saw the sea, wind-tossed and dark, where the lights go wide apart. Eleven o'clock. Ghostly moonlight filled the room. The ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... found scant room for one foot on the inner edge of the sidewalk; all the rest was under water. By noon the sidewalks were completely covered in miles of streets. By two in the afternoon the flood was coming into many of the houses. By three it was up at the door-sill on which he stood. There ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... climb, hauling myself up by the rope, whereon I had made knots to this end; nor was the climbing more difficult than to scale a branchless beech trunk for a bird's nest, which, like other boys, I had often done. So behold me, at last, with my legs hanging in free air, seated on the sill of the casement. Happily, of the three iron stanchions, though together they bore my weight, one was loose in the lower socket, for lack of lead, and this one I displaced easily enough, and so passed through. Then I put the wooden bar at the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... with blue velvet, that the white straw was hardly seen; had a little watered-silk jacket, and a little flounced frock of a dark silk figured with blue, that looked slightly fuzzed out; and perhaps she was not at ease in this fine dress, for she stood with her head down, and one hand on the window-sill, pretending to look out of window, but ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... indescribable anguish. Whilst day lasted, he stood leaning upon his window sill, hoping all the time that Stephane would appear at hers, and that he could communicate to her by signs; but he waited in vain, and already night began to fall. He deliberated, wavered, hesitated. At last, in this internal struggle, one thought prevailed ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observe the same slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this: that the sill is a strong, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... rushed for the nearest. The moon was bright, and I was in time to see three cats jump down from the shelf on which the cottage was "situated," and dart away in as many different directions. One ran close along the wall of the house, and I recognized Preciosa. Hurling myself over the window-sill, I was the first of our startled party to reach ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... chair tipped back against the sill of a window, his feet on a stool, watched us work, and smoked his cigar ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... returning to Calista's mind made her look at Mary for a minute as though the child had manifested strange powers. She went to the window and her thimble clicked on the sill as she leaned forward; then she touched her cheek. "Do you feel good?" ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... face a moment in the bowl of pink roses. Then she went to the window and drew back the curtain. Leaning her head against the window-sill, she began stringing on the thread of a tune the things that just then thrilled her with ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston

... given with a splendid lilt and swing. The tune crept into Ned's blood and his hand beat time on the stone sill. But the music increased his longing for liberty. His thoughts passed away from the narrow street and the marching regiment to the North, to the wild free plains beyond the Rio Grande. It was there that his heart was, and it was there ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... semi-detached villa in the same long, straight road whereon the church and parsonage faced, which was to be hers as long as she chose to live in it. Here she now resided, looking out upon the fragment of lawn in front, and through the railings at the ever-flowing traffic; or, bending forward over the window-sill on the first floor, stretching her eyes far up and down the vista of sooty trees, hazy air, and drab house-facades, along which echoed the noises common ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Sill" :   threshold, doorstep, geology, rock, stone, structural member



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