"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they went to a house on the doorstep of which Douglas's man was waiting, and ascended ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... not shut the street door after Fyne, but remained on the doorstep for a while, looking up and down the street in the spirit of independent expectation like a man who is again his own master. Mrs Fyne hearing her husband return came out of the room where the girl was lying in bed. "No change," she whispered; and Fyne could only make a hopeless ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... this house, they entered Elm Court. Here, sitting on the doorstep of the first house, was a child of apparently nine or ten, and seemingly a girl, though the nondescript attire might have concealed either sex, and the face was absolutely sexless in its savagery. Her hair was cut short, and round her neck was a bit of steel chain, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... girl had visions of the doorstep and a closed door. Two, perhaps, for I am sure Burker would not have taken her in if I had turned her out, and she ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... day being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The birds that sing all day have hushed, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... one family in the form of a pet pigeon called the Tu (Phlegoenas Stairi). When food was brought in, no water was to be spilled on the doorstep. It would make the protecting god Tu angry, and cause him to ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... blankly, despairingly, at each other. In the sunshine-flooded street one or two shabby idlers were pausing to eye the handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the two great ladies on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came the raucous voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... to the house, but stood so long on the doorstep in a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherry orchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before he knocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comical grimace at ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as he had fallen, stumbling on the doorstep, with the heavy body of Paul Patoff in his arms. Hermione fell on her knees and shrieked aloud. It was plain enough. Paul, without the least protection from the flames, had struggled up the burning staircase, and had unlocked the door, losing consciousness as he opened it. Gregorios, who was not ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the cook stove, beds, wash tubs and other household articles were soon loaded. In this fashion the possessions of the widow were saved from being water soaked, for before they had taken the last thing out the river was lapping her doorstep greedily, and ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... demanded was considered so exorbitant that but little encouragement was given him. From here he went to the home of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, where he arrived foot-sore and weary. After ringing the bell, he sat upon the doorstep weeping. Here Mr. Beecher found him and, taking him into ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... friend understand by a sign that we should do better not to insist; but, being determined to enter the inn, he slipped by the man on the doorstep and ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... the tavern, there is a doorstep, two or three paces large in each of its dimensions; and on this is inscribed the date when the builder of the house came to the town,—namely, 1731. The house was built in 1751. Then follows the age and death of the patriarch (at over ninety) and his wife, and the births of, I ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slightest attention to her laughter or the mocking light in her eyes, "if you had continued as you began, this matter would have been cleared up before this, the newspapers would never have printed your name in connection with it, and you would have been spared the mortification of a detective at your doorstep." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... that afternoon she met old Lord Groome on the doorstep, just coming to call on her, and hesitated a moment between asking him in or allowing him to accompany her as far as Mrs. Beale's, but decided on the latter because she would get rid of him so much the sooner. Her attitude ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... that he would accompany him directly. But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a moment's call to make on Mr. Grewgious as an act of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman's chambers, and rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come down there ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... had she eyed very closely, standing out on the front doorstep in the rain, and she saw that one end of it seemed to touch the ground at the foot of a pine-tree on the side of the mountain, which was quite conspicuous amongst its fellows, it was so tall. The other end had nothing especial to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... into the house—stopped there on the doorstep, staring in. "Ho!" said he, and could say no more; he seemed thrown altogether off ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... gray house, so close to the purring waves that in storms their spray splashed over its very doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily on the front door. This producing no result, she marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer. Miss Rosetta tried the door. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... life and unsettled habits, and that consequently there would be little sympathy for her or for Bobby in his mysterious disappearance. The wind blew and the rain fell upon these confidences, yet Randolph, walking again under that umbrella of felicity, parted with her at her own doorstep all too soon, although consoled with the permission to come and see her ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... three pairs of eyes watching—no, not watching, but seeing—the two girls from the doorstep, and Shenac Dhu drew her cousin down the garden-path towards the plum-tree before she answered her. Then she put her arms round her neck, and kissed her two or three times ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... leaving my native town: children love change and anything out of the common, and so I was pleased to come to Lisieux. I remember the journey quite well, and our arrival in the evening at my uncle's house, and I can still see my little cousins, Jeanne and Marie, waiting on the doorstep with my aunt. How touching was the affection all these dear ones ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... was over. I slipped into the hall, closing the door softly behind me, and listened. Silence abounded. On tiptoe I made my way to the kitchen. It was clean and empty. I noiselessly opened the back door. On the doorstep sat The Seraph ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... doorstep, pulling away at a long pipe, her hooded face almost invisible from the distance which he resolutely held. He felt that she was eyeing him with grim interest. For a few minutes he waited, a sickening doubt growing up in his soul. A single glance ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dwelling, and hit upon a thousand artifices for obtaining admittance. Sometimes disguised lackeys presented themselves in the garb of simple gardeners, but, fortunately, Teresa always recognized their crafty countenances, and let them cool their heels on the doorstep. At other times old gipsy women sneaked into the courtyard whenever they had the chance, and by way of diverting the innocent damsel, showed her in the cards that a terribly great gentleman was in love with her, and would have ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... to induce Ivy to lie down. Even if she had not been tired and sleepy she would have obeyed. John Jay's word was law in his grandmother's absence. Then he sat down on the doorstep and waited for her to go ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a tiled path to an open door from which the light of a single candle gleamed fitfully in the draught. She stumbled at the doorstep, but he held her up. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... stood dark and silent, with no light showing in the garden in front. Mary felt pretty sure that she was in time. Then the front door of the house opened, there was a sight of the hall in a blaze of light, and in the foreground the figure of a woman standing on the doorstep. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... death, ain't it? But I never did feel any call to be cockin' my eye at death just because I knew it had to come. When it do come I hope there'll be grace given to meet it handsome, and go with it like I'm glad, but I ain't a-goin' to be sittin' on the doorstep lookin' out for it. I'm not hankerin' after heaven yet. There's a long time to stay there. Funny how many people is willin' to be separated from their loved ones, and how they put off joinin' of 'em as long ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... down again on his doorstep and faced the prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the situation with that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to burn lower, brands streaming away in the current ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... armed guard, men in saffron kilts, bearing spears and swords. They formed up before the flight of marble steps. A second fanfare of the trumpets, and back swung the great oaken door, disclosing the Keeper of the Key in his bright silks and cocked hat. Out he would come on the doorstep, no attendants by him, and pulling to the great door by the famous knob he would descend the marble steps, the guard would take up position, and, thus escorted, he would cross the drawbridge of the moat and enter the town of the Seven ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... steady, punctual gnawing of comfort that destroys. That is the triumph of matter over mind; that is the last tyranny. For how are they better than slaves who must stop their work because it is time for luncheon, must break up a conversation to dress for dinner, must leave on the doorstep the friend they have not seen for years so as not to ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... through the town and inland brought her to a door in a lane and a thatched cottage with a little lawn behind it. From the doorstep she could see two figures, a man and a woman, lying back in garden chairs. Inside the house she heard the persistent, energetic sound of hammering. The woman got up and came to her. She was young, pink-faced and golden-haired, ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... seen in fields the little birds Go in between a bullock's legs to eat; But what gives me most joy is when I see Snow on my doorstep, printed by ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... hidden beauties, and one picture that she came upon held her spell bound for a moment. This was a small, poor cottage, painted only by the sun and rain, before which, on a tiny square of green, a baby was rolling about—a cunning little fellow with rings of silky light hair, while on the low doorstep sat a girl of such unusual appearance that the lady stared in ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... proprietor sighingly departed, leaving the new one smiling on the doorstep. I was just thinking how nicely the world is arranged, so that one man's trouble may turn out another man's blessing, (the illness in this gentleman's family, for instance, being the cause of my getting a neat country-house cheap,) when my attention was arrested by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and a few minutes later Colonel Faversham stood on the doorstep, looking after them with obvious approval, as they were driven away from ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... women, if they want husbands, cease to write oratorios and other things in which man is, by his very constitution, facile princeps, and let her cultivate that desideratum in which she excels—a cosy home and a bright smile to greet him on the doorstep when he returns from a tiring day in the City. Until that is done I, for one, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... enough to wake, it is enough To sleep:—With God and time he leaves the rest. But on a day death on the doorstep sits Waiting, or like a veiled woman walks Dogging his footsteps, or athwart his path The splendid passion-flower love unfolds Buds full of sorrow, not ordained to know Appeasement through the answer ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... and they worked with torches. Ashe began his inspection of the relatively simple transfer—the two upright bars, the slab of opaque material forming a doorstep between them. This was only a skeleton of the gates Ross had used in the past. But continual experimentation had produced this more easily ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... cigar as he strolled leisurely from the subway, and when he turned into White Street Abe was still standing on the doorstep. ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... Mrs. Delano; "but ladies are not accustomed to stand on the doorstep talking with clerks who ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... bare-looking place by the next evening. All day long the little mice had trotted down the dark subway, carrying their treasures to the entrance near Mr. Giant's back doorstep. Here was hidden the cart which Grand-daddy had made from a stout box and four big spools. It was piled high with furniture, boxes of food and clothing, and ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... unpack, and I looked out of the narrow window. I saw stretching out before me a bare and dull steppe; on one side there stood some huts. Some fowls were wandering down the street. An old woman, standing on a doorstep, holding in her hand a trough, was calling to some pigs, the pigs ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... thousand existing entire; and yet these were but a very small proportion of the number that must once have been there. The palaces and modern churches of Rome owe, as I have said, all their ornaments to this passion of the ancients. There is not a doorstep nor a guardstone at the corner of the meanest court in Rome which is not of marble, granite, or porphyry from some ancient building. Almost all the houses, as Raphael said, have been built with lime made of the costly old marbles. The very ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... loved to do good deeds; but he loved to do them in his own way, and his way was certain to be the one that was contrary to the advice of everybody else. Thus it happened that he determined to adopt the year-old baby boy who was left on his doorstep one stormy night, a little more than sixteen years before this story opens. He was not fond of babies, nor did he care to have children about him. Simply because everybody advised him to send this one to the county house, where it might be cared for by the proper authorities, he declared he would ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... mind telling me, if there is no harm in asking, what was the good of my birth certificate in this business?' I asked, when the little old man and I stood on the doorstep. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... have ever met. Three years ago, when I was living in Hammersmith, we caught two burglars with it. They broke open the sideboard, and swallowed five bottlefuls between them. A policeman found them afterwards, sitting on a doorstep a hundred yards off, the 'swag' beside them in a carpet bag. They were too ill to offer any resistance, and went to the station like lambs, he promising to send the doctor to them the moment they were safe in the cells. Ever since ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... disposed to look askance at Mr. Tasker. Old-fashioned matrons clustered round to watch him cleaning the doorstep, and, surprised at its whiteness, withdrew discomfited. Rumour had it that he liked work, and scandal said that he had wept because he was not allowed to do ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... a disappointment. Hilda's nerve failed her on the doorstep and she declined to go in. Lalage and I went through the exhibition alone. I observed, without surprise, that Lalage turned her eyes away from the objects she had come to inspect. I ventured, when we got out, to suggest that we might perhaps ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... of a sultry autumn day, some time after Wilfred had gone to Oxford, I had to walk past Deborah Teague's cottage, and saw the old woman sitting on the doorstep quietly smoking. ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... slight difference of (h)opinion between you and I, so to speak, as to just w'at may constitute 'business.' Now, for (h)instance—" Mr. Wigglesworth was warming to his subject, but the old lady standing on her doorstep fixed her keen blue eyes upon him and ruthlessly swept away ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... man who did not love, he was oddly angry at the sight of two young figures on the doorstep. Their clear voices came to him across the quiet street, vibrant and full of youth. It was the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... convictions drag him out of his little home at all hours to minister to the sick and exhort the wicked; they give him no rest, and never let him feel he has done enough; and when he comes home weary, after a day's wrestling with his parishioners' souls, he is confronted on his doorstep by filthy abuse pasted up on his own front door. He never speaks of these things, but how shall they be hid? Everybody here knows everything that happens before the day is over, and what we have for ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... come to be an institution that he, standing on the steps of his house, should make a short speech to each class. The rainbow of men, sweeping gloriously down the city streets with their bands, dissolves into a whirlwind at the sight of that well-known, slight, dignified figure on the doorstep of the modest house—this is a thing which one who has seen it does not forget; the three-minute speeches, each apt to its audience, each pointed with a dart straight to the heart of class pride and sentiment, these ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... cabled to me to "come and have a talk" with him—that it was unbelievable that anything essentially calamitous could happen to that place and those people. I tell you it was the very spirit of peace. And Leonora, beautiful and smiling, with her coils of yellow hair, stood on the top doorstep, with a butler and footman and a maid or so behind her. And she just said: "So glad you've come," as if I'd run down to lunch from a town ten miles away, instead of having come half the world over at the call of two ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... herself was not without sharing his excitement. Several times she made sorties from her doorstep, and seized more than one hulking fellow in the act of pummelling a youngster half his size, and shook him with a vigour which showed that constant exercise at the wash-tub had strengthened ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... for this particular machine had not originated in Francis' brain, nor had the parts for it originated in his kitchen-workshop. When he had gone out to get the milk that morning he had found a box on his doorstep, and in the box he had found the goldfish bowl and the attachments, plus a sheet of instructions entitled, DIRECTIONS FOR ASSEMBLING A MULTIPLE MOeBIUS-KNOT DYNAMO. Francis thought that a machine capable of tying knots would be pretty keen, and he had ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... after us, by my advice, and hadn't come downstairs yet. Ellaline, too, was still in her room, sulking, no doubt, and hadn't said good-bye to Sir Lionel or any of us. I know that, because my room at this hotel has been close to hers—and to his, too; so whenever a word is murmured on a doorstep I hear. No word has been murmured this morning; and E. has had her ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... outer doorstep Mark Rivers stood still and wiped the sweat from his forehead. There must be minutes in the life of the most spiritually minded clergyman when to bow a little in the Rimmon House of the gods of profane language would be a relief. He may have ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... often), he sits down on the pavement and howls till he collects a pitying crowd round him; and when they try to read his name and address on his collar he snaps at them. The servants generally find him and bring him back; and as soon as he gets home he turns round on the doorstep and snaps at the servants. I think it must be his fun. You should see him sitting up in his chair at dinner-time, waiting to be helped, with his fore paws on the edge of the table, like the hands of a gentleman at a public dinner making a ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... students often visit me of afternoons. They first send me their cards, to announce their presence. On being told to come in they leave their footgear on the doorstep, enter my little study, prostrate themselves; and we all squat down together on the floor, which is in all Japanese houses like a soft mattress. The servant brings zabuton or small cushions to kneel upon, and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... wall; on the other side, bounding a little space of unpaved ground, rather higher than the lane, there are a few old brick cottages, of very mean and dirty appearance. At the doors of some of the cottages squalid, untidy women were lounging; some of them sitting upon the doorstep, with their elbows on their knees, smoking, and looking stolidly miserable. We were now getting near where the cholera made such havoc during its last visit,—a pestilent jungle, where disease is always prowling about, "seeking whom it can devour." A few sallow, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... gentleman was assailed—not in the ostentatious manner just described, yet in a way that gave him a good deal of trouble. Dead cats appeared mysteriously in his neighborhood; weird noises arose under his windows; he tried to pick up letters from his doorstep that became mere chalk-marks at his touch, so that he took up only splinters under his nails. One night, as a seance was about beginning in his yard, he emerged from a clump of bushes, flew in the direction of the disturbance, laid ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... saw nothing more of civilization until I came near a woman seated on a doorstep, and engaged in the exciting occupation of fleaing a cat. She held the animal upon its back between her knees, and was so engrossed by the pleasures of the chase that she scarcely looked up to answer a question I put to her. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... at last on the great Esplanade, whither the little porter had taken him three days before. He was close then to the Museum, and to her house. Destiny had led him, unconsciously, towards the scene of his enterprise. It was a good omen; he would go thither at once. He might sleep upon her doorstep as well as upon any other. Perhaps he might catch a glimpse of her going out or coming in, even at that late hour. It might be well to accustom himself to the sight of her. There would be the less chance of his being abashed to-morrow before those sorceress eyes. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Used to leave the Star on your doorstep! Been away, ain't you? Home looks kinda good to you, even if it's kinda lonesome—" He checked himself as though recollecting something else. "Sure! You been over in Rooshia livin' with the Queen! There was a piece in the Star about it. Gee!" he added affably. "That was ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... horse, and go limping away down the street. The road was filled with horsemen, wandering helplessly about under the rain of bullets. One, a mere boy, rode up to a door, leaned from his horse and began to knock for admittance; another dismounted and sat down on a doorstep, head buried in his hands, regardless of the bullets which ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... wrongs of Erin in battle line; he wished also to share the grave of Sarsfield and Hugh O'Neill; but he was sure that Miss Perkins, as well as Miss Little, was desperately in love with him; and I left him on a doorstep in tears. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... place. Ted and Bobbles were playing at marbles in the lane and ran when they saw him coming. He got close up to the little low house among the apple trees before Mordecai appeared in the yard, driving the pigs around the barn. Mrs. Hayden was sitting on her doorstep, paring her dinner potatoes, and stood up hastily when she ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rushed; He hath reached the step, but the blood hath gushed; He hath crawled to the step of his own house-door, But his head hath dropped: he will crawl no more. Clasp Wife, and kiss, and lift the head, Harrington lies at his doorstep dead. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... be sure," declared Tommy. "I dreamed the cats were scratchin' me; an' then that very nex' mornin' the old doorstep scratched me!" ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Michael's tone which forbade him asking to see the horse, much as he should have liked to do so; so, giving a signal to his men, he turned his horse's head in the direction of Edinburgh, and rode off, leaving Sir Michael standing on the doorstep gazing after them, a strange ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... lay near Reynard's front doorstep. Idly curious, I picked it up. Strange paper, a form of print that I had never seen before; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... said loudly and peremptorily. "Prince or whatever you may wish to call yourself ... ere you show me a clean pair of heels, I pray you to explain your presence here on Sir Marmaduke's doorstep at ten o'clock at night, and in company ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... he set out for Church Street, and, wading through the fog, waded to the doorstep of the ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... household consumption, no tradespeople save milkman and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most light, and the world outside had no suspicion of anything being wrong in the staid, old-fashioned house opposite ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... the door waiting for Jim to return, when, in a swirl of dust, came Dade galloping around a corner and to the very doorstep before he showed any desire to slow up. At the first tightening of the reins, the white horse stiffened his front legs, dug two foot-long furrows and stopped still. Bill had no enthusiasm for the perfect accomplishment ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... his knees as high as his chin, was a big slovenly boy of about seventeen, looking lazily out from under an old ragged hat-rim, pushed over his eyes. Another big, slovenly boy, a year or two younger, sat on the doorstep, whittling quite as much for his own amusement as for that of a ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... was hesitating on the doorstep, the door opened, and the Duchessa came forth—tall, sumptuous, in white, with a wonderful black-plumed hat, and a wonderful white-frilled sunshade. She was followed by a young girl—a pretty, dark-complexioned girl, of fourteen, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... highway, now and then attacking some important town. The colonists suffered fearfully; numbers were slain; whole settlements were devastated, and the gun had to be kept at hand in church, at home and at daily toil. No one knew when the dusky foe would suddenly spring from the forest; no woman left her doorstep without fear that she might never enter it again, and the settler, whom duty summoned from home, looked anxiously on his return to see if his dwelling was there. Even the churches, with congregations armed as they listened to the Word of God, were assailed ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... But the householders of Madeira Place do not absent themselves, even in summer; they could hardly get much nearer to the sea. And if you will take the pains to seat yourself, toward the close of day, upon an opposite doorstep, between two rows of clamorous little girls sliding, with screams of painful joy, down the rough hammered stone, to the improvement of their clothing, you will see that the house ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... us as we go by, but pretend to beat him; and then they excuse him, and call him ill names, and catch him up, and hug him and kiss him. He feeds upon their slender means and the pickings that G. carefully carries him from our kitchen, and gives to him on our doorstep in spite of us, while she gossips with his mistresses, who chorus our appearance at such times with "I miei rispetti, signori!" We often see them in the street, and at a distance from home, carrying mysterious bundles of clothes; and ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... running in and out over the stone doorstep, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... world, and was happy to be alive, although she neither could have told, nor cared to know, the reason why. But when her mother unpinned the little girl's Highland shawl, and took off her hood, she said, "O mother, do let me live on the doorstep! I don't like houses to stay in. What makes everything so pretty and so glad? Don't ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... remainder of his coffee and as his heavy boots clumped noisily across the rough wooden floor he ventured to look again timidly at the very pretty young lady who sat beside the stove. Her friendly nod and smile sent him stumbling clumsily out over the doorstep with reddened face and a huge grin ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... to do? I dare not think—I took a long walk, and even now I find myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a doorstep and playing for ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... master,' I exclaimed with some heat, thrusting my card into her hand. 'He should know my name at any rate, though he seems to have trained you in strange notions of hospitality to keep a guest standing on the doorstep on a ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell, Madame and Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me bon voyage. "J'espere que vous tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice. "Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... still up and waiting when he heard the car stop at the gate. He watched them come up the walk arm in arm, their stride slow and lingering. They paused for several moments on the doorstep, once there was a short, muted laugh. The snick of the key came next and they came into ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... little residence, in nothing more remarkable than its neighbors, unless it was for a certain air of extra grooming: the area railing was sleek with fresh black paint; the doorstep looked the better for vigorous stoning; the door itself was immaculate, its brasses shining lustrous against red-lacquered woodwork. A soft glow filled the fanlight. Overhead the drawing-room windows shone ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... yourself that anyone going out through that open window could reach the front doorstep by taking a long stride. This was clearly what the burglar had done, so I went round and opened the door. Stepping out into the dark I nearly fell over a dead man who was lying there. I ran back for a light, and there was the poor fellow, a great gash in ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quickly; and with a feeling of anger. His hand was instantly on the bell-pull, and he jerked it three or four times vigorously; the loud and continued ringing of the bell sounding in his ears where he stood on the doorstep without. A little while he waited, and then the ringing was renewed, and with a more prolonged violence than at first. Then he listened, bending his ear close to the door. But he could detect no movement ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... sufficiently enlightened; it all went fast, for the little boy had been almost as great a help as the piano. Sidney haunted the doorstep of No. 3 he was eminently sociable, and had established independent relations with Peter, a frequent feature of which was an adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books criticised for not being ALL ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... steep, cobbled street leading up from the shore, and peeped into every remembered window in the row of rude thatched cottages. Slowly he recalled the names of old boy and girl companions who had played with him around the doorstep of his grandfather's house. For half the voyage the object which had prompted it was forgotten. The journey was as silent as a secret journey should be. It began in twilight and ended in darkness. The keel of the boat grated on the soft sand. Dan ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... stopped his horse in a dark spot on the edge of the village, and, with the baby cautiously held in his arms, he slunk through back ways and short cuts to the house where Jed and Martha Lewis made their home. With meticulous stealth he passed through the gate, laid the baby on the doorstep, rang the bell long and determinedly, and then, with astonishing quiet and agility, hid himself in the midst ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... short at her father's door. A young man in a Norfolk suit jumped out, threw the horse's reins to his groom, and pulled the doctor's bell furiously. Effie leaned slightly out of her window in order to see who it was. She recognized the man who stood on the doorstep with a start of surprise, and the color flew into her face. He was the young Squire of the neighborhood. His name was Harvey. His place was two miles out of Whittington. He was married; his wife was the most beautiful woman Effie had ever seen; and he had one little girl. The ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... trip to Cleveland the Republican candidate did not, during the campaign, leave Canton, though from his doorstep he spoke to visiting hordes. His opponent, in the course of the most remarkable campaigning tour ever made by a candidate, preached free coinage to millions. The immense number of his addresses; their effectiveness, notwithstanding the slender preparation possible for most of them ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... ran to fish it out the girl on lawyer Royall's doorstep noticed that he was a stranger, that he wore city clothes, and that he was laughing with all his teeth, as the young and careless laugh ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... law and order, and their manner again became constrained. The leave-taking was hurried and perfunctory; the diplomatic Heckshill again lapsed into glittering generalities about "the best of friends parting." Only the expressman lingered for a moment on the doorstep in the light of the fire and the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... I—I am ready to admit that an individual life can draw an added meaning—and richness from a service, not of the future, but of the present—not of the race but ... well, of the unfortunate on the doorstep. Do you understand," he asked abruptly, "what I am trying to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... went back to Work, having saved enough ink to finish with. But a few minutes later he called to me again, and I moved to the Doorstep, where I sat listening, while aparently admiring the sea. He explained that having been thus forced, he had almost finished the last Act, and it was a corker. And he said if he had his clothes and some money, and a key ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... presently there began to escape from him strangled sobs sounding most grotesquely like some strange mimicry of the name the native girls had for him—"Pooh-pooh, pooh-pooh, pooh-pooh," over and over again repeated. Beyond his doorstep the life of the station hummed and throbbed, quickened into joyous activity by the coming of the steamer. He was not conscious of it. That roaring still was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... as its honeysuckle blooms, and some day we will frame it with California mountains, and call it Home. I shall only want to add a gently sloping field, wherein pearly short-horns stand ankle deep in clover, while my dear old dog Hero basks upon the doorstep; and upon ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the vicar, a stout and pompous man at whom we always glared defiance, went, in Mary Grace's supposed extremity, to the Burmingtons' shop-door, and shouted: 'Peace be to this house,' intending to offer his ministrations, but that Ann, who was in one of her tantrums, positively hounded him from the doorstep and down the garden, in her passionate nonconformity. Mary Grace, however, recovered, and soon became, not merely Miss Marks' inseparable friend, but my Father's spiritual factotum. He found it irksome to visit the 'saints' from house ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... father of the family was out in the road already. Colia was carrying his bag for him; Nina Alexandrovna stood and cried on the doorstep; she wanted to run after the general, but Ptitsin kept ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... disappointed to make any remarks. The harper poses his harp—a huge instrument—upon our doorstep, sets all the strong ringing with a sweep of his grimy fingers, clears his throat with a sort of angry ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... house rested from William. But there was something in the manner of Jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the rooms, a certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had not ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the basso profondo two doors away started singing, 'Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.' He sang two bars and then crawled round to my house on his hands and knees and collapsed on the doorstep with the word ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... open the door of your old grocery, and take one long breath and die right there on the doorstep, rather than to live in luxury in any foreign country. Do you know, I sometimes go into a grocery store abroad, and smell around, in order to get my thoughts on dear old America, but nothing abroad smells as the same thing ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... Mr. Wynn was engaged in a characteristic hearty parting with one of his latest converts upon his own doorstep, with admirable al fresco effect. He had just clapped him on the shoulder. "Good-by, good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path; not up, or down, or round the gulch, you know—ha, ha!—but straight across ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... conspicuous corner of the room, as if to ask what he should say; and to this mute question Monsieur de Frejus not only made a sign with his head signifying that it was necessary to receive his royal highness, but rose and went himself to open the door. The regent stopped a minute on the doorstep to thank Fleury, then having assured himself by a rapid glance round the room that the Marshal de Villeroy had not yet arrived, he advanced ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... stood by the tower doorstep, and into it he leaped, whipping up the horse with the same motion. Then down the road he had flown like Paul Revere rousing the villagers, and followed by an excited, half-hysterical procession ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... six o'clock. She dressed herself with the dainty completeness so habitual to her that it had become an unconscious habit, and then—the instinct was irrepressible—she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went down, past the servant on her knees cleaning the doorstep, out into the fresh open air; and so she found her way down the High Street to Hellingford Castle, the building in which the courts of assize were held—the prison in which Dixon lay condemned to die. She almost knew she could not see him; yet it seemed like some amends to her conscience ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sat on his old doorstep, with his chin in his hands, watching Old Mother West Wind gathering her Merry Little Breezes into the big bag in which she carries them to their ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the next few minutes did the waiting little bride on the doorstep watch with palpitating yearning a shadowy form appear, approach—and pass by. At the third heart-breaking disappointment, Billy wrung ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... ran to the door. As Peggy opened it, a sweep of wind and a swirl of rain came in. The wind was so strong it almost blew the door to. A freckled-faced boy with a pleasant smile and honest blue eyes was standing on the doorstep. Oh, joy! He had a basket ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... great cities of impending ruin, but keepest thyself out of harm's way better than any four-footed beast of the field), we drove our headlong course; and, in less time than this paragraph has taken to write I stood on the doorstep, of the doctor's house. In another minute I had seen him and told ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... doorstep until I found I was getting a soaking, and then I went to a neighbor about a block away, who always had been very kind to me, and had a girl of her own a little younger than me. Did I tell her? Of course I did; ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... men to take him across the sidewalk and place him with his back to the wall, near where the dead woman lay, stretched across her doorstep. His boyish face had lost nothing of ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... doorstep next morning waited Alessandro Bebbini. He waited for us—an hour and a half, because momma had some re-packing to do and we were going on next day. Nobody had asked him to wait, but he had a carriage ready and the look of having been ordered three months previously. He presented ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... only accommodate seven guests. Two were favourite boys and the others were selected because of their great need. The hut was the centre of a mud puddle that January morning. I got a long plank and laid it from my doorstep to the edge of the clay bank. I took precaution not to announce the affair, even to the guests, but a grocer's boy who had been sent by a friend with some oranges lost his way and his inquiry after me created such a sensation that when he found me ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. You remember how Franklin slyly dropped ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the work of a woman. Mrs. Tibbetts, wife of a fruit grower of Riverside, was visiting in Washington and to her Mr. Saunders presented two navel orange trees, which she brought home with her. They were planted beside her doorstep in Riverside. The trees grew rapidly, and when they bore fruit it did not take the California orange growers long to discover that here they had a treasure of more value than the largest nugget of gold ever ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... when he had ridden home from the county seat after attending that session of the County Court, that Parish Thornton found Bas Rowlett smoking a pipe on his doorstep. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the anticipated milk, however, that Bessie found upon the doorstep, but no less a delightful surprise than the exquisite person ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... or frightened willingness. We three were together in the first rank of the crowd when the door of the house was flung open, and a girl ran out. Her hair was disordered, her face pale, and her eyes full of alarm. There she stood on the doorstep, facing the crowd, which in an instant grew as if by magic to three times its former size, and, little knowing what she did, she cried in the eager ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... him further on in the journey, at the other end of the town. He had stopped—again in the pouring rain—and this time to look at nothing more remarkable than a half-starved cur, shivering on a doorstep. "I had my eye on him," said the butcher; "and what do you think he did? He crossed the road over to my shop, and bought a bit of meat fit for a Christian. Very well. He says good-morning, and crosses back again; and, on the word of a man, down ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... grandeur, pretentious gentility, decent poverty, the infamy that wears a brazen front, and the crime that burrows in darkness—he knows them all at a glance. The patched window, the dingy blind, the shattered doorstep, the pot of mignonette on the garret ledge, are to him as significant as the lines and wrinkles on a human face. He grows to like some houses and to dislike others, almost without knowing why—just as one grows to like or ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... least speak; that this ignominious silence should have been broken long ago, and must be broken now. I should have broken it when he first proposed to come to Stallbridge-Minster; I should have broken it in the train; I should break it there and then, on the inn doorstep, as the omnibus rolled off. I turned toward him at the thought; he seemed to wince, the words died on my lips, and I proposed instead that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
