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Inkling   /ˈɪŋklɪŋ/   Listen
Inkling

noun
1.
A slight suggestion or vague understanding.  Synonyms: glimmer, glimmering, intimation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inkling" Quotes from Famous Books



... I got any inkling of the conception of a multiple world. I had had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation of the true position of the earth in the universe. For me, as for my fathers, the sun set and rose, and I did not ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and the people were crowded in the street. And his ill-shaped mouth fell apart, and a glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse and noisy. All he passed stopped and began staring up the road and down, and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort for the reason of ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... outward show of things, there is always a noumenon in the unseen. Behind the phenomena of human history, the noumenon is the Human Spirit, moving in accordance with its own necessities and cyclic laws. We may, if we go to it intelligently, gain some inkling of knowledge as to what those laws are; and I think that would be, in its way, a real wisdom, and worth getting. But for the most part historical study seeks knowledge only; and how it attains its aim, is shown by the falseness of what passes for history. In most textbooks you shall find, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... order to insure even perfunctory understanding of the procedure under which Bob McGraw planned to acquire his lands, and to give an inkling of the difficulties confronting him, it is necessary that the reader take a five-minute course in land law. This is regrettable, for it is a dry subject, even in the matter of swamp and overflow lands, so we shall endeavor to make the course as ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... a moment, and she'll have to be told," said Mrs. Swinton. "The bishop and the others mustn't get an inkling of what has happened. Their condolences would madden us. Send them ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... matter and its motions, says the British scientist, this electro-magnetic world is as difficult to conceive of as it would be for us to walk upon air. Yet many times in our lives is this world in overwhelming evidence before us. During a thunderstorm we get an inkling of how fearfully and wonderfully the universe in which we live is made, and what energy and activity its apparent passivity and opacity mark. A flash of lightning out of a storm-cloud seems instantly to transform ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... one at Longmeadows had an inkling of the under-master's intention. On the day of 'breaking up' he sent his luggage, as usual, to the nearest railway station, and that same evening had it conveyed by carrier to the little wayside inn, where, much at ease in mind and body, he ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... Effingham was again alone, when, being by himself in the library once more, Mr. Bragg entered, full of his subject. He was followed by John Effingham, who had gained an inkling of what ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... rest of seventy-nine years, this volcano burst again into violent activity in the beginning of September, 1845. The first inkling of this eruption was conveyed to the British Islands by a fall of volcanic ashes in the Orkneys, which occurred on the night of September 2nd during a violent storm. This palpable hint was soon confirmed by direct intelligence from Copenhagen. On the 1st of September ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... then Sebastian Serlio was summoned from Bologna in 1541 to fill the place of "surintendant des bastiments et architecte de Fontainebleau." Il Rosso-Giovambattista had been a Florentine pupil of Michelangelo, but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "a certain inkling of his own." Francois I. was delighted with him at first, and made him head of all the Italian colony at Fontainebleau, where he was known as "Maitre Roux." But in two years the king was longing to patronize some other ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... An inkling of the true state of the case began to dawn upon him, and he was on the verge of entering—indeed, his hand already touched the door-knob—when his eye, still glued to the spy-hole, detected a slight movement. Directly opposite, between him and the fireplace, something stirred. He watched ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... observed that Jackson's reticence was remarkable. No general could have been more careful that no inkling of his design should reach the enemy. He had not the slightest hesitation in withholding his plans from even his second in command; special correspondents were rigorously excluded from his camps; and even with his most confidential friends his reserve was absolutely impenetrable. During ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... constituted that we can look back at our past and see it as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain a kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are even now striking ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... (more especially news brought into town by the spies, of the Boer victories) when anything of importance became known, and in time her friends found out that her news could always be depended upon as reliable indeed, although they had no inkling of the source whence it had been derived. There was danger of her becoming altogether too "cocksure," when she was one day pulled up sharply ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... a buzz of blended approval and hisses, which came to his brain as the sound of swarming bees. He felt sick and weak. His appeal seemed hopelessly futile. But he sat erect, with no sign of discouragement, and looked fixedly at Senator Blair in the hope of seeing some inkling of change from his declaration that if he came to the capitol he should vote for Burroughs. But Blair would not look ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... be written out, grub boxes packed, a tent looked up, and many things attended to before they left, so that others in camp got an inkling of what was being done and wanted to go along. Then M. and the musician decided to put off going until midnight, when they would sneak quietly out of camp with their dogs and scamper away among the hills without the others knowing it, but ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... think you are a plain-spoken, clear-headed man of science yourself. Very well, I will. I think you might yourself become a brother some day, if you would. But you will not now, neither will in the future. Yet you understand some little distant inkling of the science. When you ask your scornful questions of me, you know perfectly well that you are putting an inquiry which you yourself can answer as well as I. I am not omnipotent. I have very little more power than you. ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... replied. "Who has any better right? I happen to be that identical man!" But that little episode has been of real value to me. It is said that if one goes through the motions he gets the emotions. I believe that I have an inkling of how a man feels when he momentarily expects a volley of cold lead to turn ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... saw a small light shining on the sea, pretty close in. 'Twas a lantern hung out from the sloop, as I concluded on the instant: and now I began to have an inkling ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... smiling ease left him. "Yes, I did see her in New York, the day I left. You didn't think—" An inkling of the other's errand dawned on him. He was suddenly alarmed, and, as usual in moments of emergency, burst into his unfortunate glibness of speech. "Why, she came to see me about studying for opera, something of that sort—that was all. I had promised her introductions. Unfortunately ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... the very last moment, when her head is swept off almost before she is aware; and from a like delicate motive the reapers at work in the fields employ a special form of speech, which the rice-spirit cannot be expected to understand, so that she has no warning or inkling of what is going forward till the heads of rice are safely ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and motives and aims were real; and he was beginning to think they were real. And although he had found himself at liberty to say to her things that were harder to hear, he felt a curious repugnance to giving her any inkling of what he thought about this. It would be a hideous thing to do, he concluded, an unforgivable thing, and an actual hurt. Kendal had for women the readiest consideration, and though one of the odd things he found ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... submission to him was, in the eyes of the Irish, merely a consequence of their own clan system. They understood the homage rendered to him in a very different sense from that attached to it by feudal nations; and had they had an inkling of the real intentions of the new comers, not one of them would have consented to live under and bow the neck to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... way back into the banking room. The examiner, astounded, perplexed, nettled, at sea, followed. He felt that he had been made the victim of something that was not exactly a hoax, but that left him in the shoes of one who had been played upon, used, and then discarded, without even an inkling of the game. Perhaps, also, his official position had been irreverently juggled with. But there was nothing he could take hold of. An official report of the matter would be an absurdity. And, somehow, he felt that he would never know ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... crossed the stream. Into Taranz the great plain entered they, And on down through that region as hard as they might fare. Twixt Fariza and Cetina would the Cid seek shelter there. And a great spoil he captured in the country as he went, For the Moors had no inkling whatso'er of his intent. On the next day marched onward the great Cid of Bivar, And he went by Alhama, and down the vale afar. And he passed Bubierca and Ateca likewise passed, And it was nigh to Alcocer that he would camp at last Upon a rounded hillock that was ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... itself at the beginning of modern times. Now although the onlooker in man, especially in the earliest stage of our period, gave itself up to the conviction that a self-contained picture of the universe could be formed out of the kind of materials available to it, it nevertheless had a dim inkling that this picture, because it lacked all dynamic content, had no bearing on the real nature of the universe. Unable to find this reality within himself, the world-onlooker set about searching in his own way for what was ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... says, for example, that because a man is a sheep-stealer he must needs be a bad husband. As well might one set out to prove that a parricide must inevitably prove an indifferent cook. In the person of Fra Palamone, of whose scoundrelly proclivities I had had more than an inkling already, it is undoubtedly true that many agreeable qualities were to be found. He was, to use my illustration again, an admirable cook; he was a good talker, a companionable man, a kindly host. Having got my measure, as it were, and won of me by persuasion, what he had failed to win by force, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... practice in dandling Sir Andrew out of his money, and paying him off with the odd hope of gaining Olivia's hand. And the funniest of it is, that while Sir Toby understands him thoroughly he has not himself the slightest suspicion or inkling of what he is; he being as confident of his own wit as others are of his want of it. Nor are we here touched with any revulsions of moral feeling, such as might disturb our enjoyment of their fellowship; on the contrary, we sympathize with Sir Toby's sport, without any reluctances of virtue ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... Why, how do you do?" She gave him her beautiful hand, but she evidently lacked the faintest inkling of his identity. Time had erased from recollection the boy who used to take her sliding on his sled, the boy who used to put on her skates for her, the boy who used to take her home on his grocery-wagon sometimes, pretending ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... process of the mind's development goes to show, that, whatever its capacities, tendencies, faculties, "potentialities," (call them what you will,) a certain external influence is necessary to awaken its dormant life; to turn a "potentiality" into an "energy "; to transform a dim inkling of a truth into an intelligent, vital, conscious recognition of it. Nor is this law confined to mind alone; all nature attests its presence. All effects are the result of properties or susceptibilities in one thing, solicited by external ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... secret consisted in the flux which he employed to make the metal melt more readily; and it leaked out amongst the workmen that he used broken bottles for the purpose. Some of the manufacturers, who by prying and bribing got an inkling of the process, followed Huntsman implicitly in this respect; and they would not allow their own workmen to flux the pots lest they also should obtain possession of the secret. But it turned out eventually ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... winced. "I'm afraid you haven't visualized the complications, dear," he said gently. "No one but ourselves knows that the Martian is on Earth, or has even the slightest inkling that interplanetary travel has been achieved. Whatever we do, it will have to be on our own. But to break in on a creature engaged in—well, we don't know what primal private activity—is ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... Princess's hand, and he laughed in his sleeve. But even after the marriage was dissolved, the Sultan forgot nor even recalled to mind his promise made to Alaeddin's mother; and the same was the case with the Grand Wazir, while neither had any inkling of whence befel them that which had befallen. So Alaeddin patiently awaited the lapse of the three months after which the Sultan had pledged himself to give him to wife his daughter; but, as soon as ever the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the Harmans' house, for there he might meet Hinton. He dreaded his office in the City, for there the other trustee might follow him and publicly expose him. He liked his club best; but even there he felt scarcely safe, some one might get an inkling of the tale, there was no saying how soon such a story, so strange, so disgraceful, pertaining to so well-known a house as that of Harman Brothers, might get bruited about. Thus it came to pass that there ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... society would never think of separating us; it would want us always together. His habits are formed; he does not suspect the humiliation which weighs upon my heart. Indeed, if he had the slightest inkling of this small sorrow which I am ashamed to own, he would drop society, he would become more of a prig than the people who come between us. But he would hamper his progress, he would make enemies, he would raise up obstacles ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... confidence in Gabrielle, his care that nobody ever got a chance inside that safe, his regular consultations with Goslin (who travelled from Paris specially to see him), his constant telegrams in cipher, and his refusal to allow even his wife to obtain the slightest inkling into his private affairs, it is shown that he fears exposure. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... In that case nothing will be left but a heap of ruins. One could shriek and tear one's hair because the German does not see that in his basement there is an awful Bluebeard's chamber. And not for women alone. He has no inkling of what an arsenal of clerical instruments of torture lie there ready for use—clerical, because they lie ready for the infliction of horrible corporal martyrdom in the service of a bloody, fanatical, papistical belief. Woe, when the door to the Bluebeard chamber opens. They are ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... made for their hole in the ice, rebroke a six-inch layer, the freeze of a few hours, and filling his bucket, returned to the cabin. Jones had no inkling of the trapper's intention, and wonderingly he soused his bucket full ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... heated side. This, and the smell of hot iron, was all that there was to tell of our smouldering coal below, but 'Frisco men from the Water Front are sharp as ferrets, and very little would give them an inkling of the state of affairs. Presently we raised the land broad on the port bow, and two of us were perched on the fore-to'gal'nt yard to look out for the pilot schooner; or, if luck was in our way, a tow-boat. The land became more distinct ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... man of war, as you know Vilcaroya, but I hope I am a man of honour. I have never breathed a syllable that could have given anyone an inkling of your secret, and I promise you solemnly that I never will. What Djama has done distresses me even more than it amazes me. I would have staked my life on his honesty, and if you will release him and let him ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... paused for a moment, the boys looked around at each other with something like consternation. Their curiosity was intense. He spoke with a tensity of feeling they had hardly ever noticed in him before, and not one of them had an inkling of what ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... between them. Besides, he didn't believe that she could understand. Perhaps it would only offend her,—that this son of the forests should give her his love. She had never dealt with men of his breed before, and she had no inkling of the smoldering, devouring fires within the man. He would not invite her pity and her distrust by letting ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... object in view. Each wished to ascertain what the other knew concerning himself. Scott, unable to determine whether Hobson had spoken at random or with an inkling of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... square of the distance. But what are the attractive forces which hold together the body politic? They are a number of human passions, which even the acutest psychologists are as yet quite unable to analyse or to classify: they act according to laws of which we have hardly the vaguest inkling; and, even if we possessed any definite laws, the facts to which they have to be applied are so amazingly complex as to defy any attempt at assigning results. There is, so far as I can see, no ground for supposing that there is or ever can be a body of precise ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... we'll fix Mr. Tad Sobber," answered Dick. "He'll wish he never saw a snake." He had an inkling of what was in his brother Sam's ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... a standing boast with Mr. Wiseacre that he had never been humbugged in his life. He took the newspapers and read them regularly, and thus got an inkling of the new and strange things that were ever transpiring, or said to be transpiring, in the world. But to all he cried "humbug!" "imposture!" "delusion!" If any one were so bold as to affirm in his presence a belief in the phenomena of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... in that brute's eyes; there was a message there, but I wasn't big enough myself to catch it. Whatever it was (I know I'm making a fool of myself)—whatever it was, it baffled me. I can't give an inkling of what I saw in that brute's eyes; it wasn't light, it wasn't color; it was something that moved, away back, when the eyes themselves weren't moving. And I guess I didn't see it move, either; I only sensed that it moved. It was an expression,—that's what ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... cannot conceal the traces that are round your—ranch. Traces which are unmistakable to those who have an inkling of the truth." ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... crime consist in knowing what details to ignore. In short, to explain everything is to explain too much. And too much is worse than too little. To return to my experiment. My success exceeded my wildest dreams. None had an inkling of the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow Mystery teased the acutest minds in Europe and the civilized world. That a man could have been murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savored of the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... As soon as the words Jesus of Nazareth had left his lips Paul regretted them, for he did not doubt that he was speaking to a madman whose name, no doubt, was Jesus, and who had come from Nazareth, and having got some inkling of the true story of the resurrection had little by little conceived himself to be he who had died that all might be saved; and upon a sudden resolve not to utter another word that might offend the madman's beliefs, he began to tell that ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... said, impulsively, "a woman's intuition is not always at fault. Tell me if you believe that any one on the post has any inkling of the truth. I ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... now as he had behaved at Bruges when he stood back and let me have my innings, and gave her her chance to free herself. And yet I was puzzled. Even he could hardly stand back to give Thesiger an innings. He may have had an inkling. There may have been something of his queer, scrupulous tenderness in this avoidance of her; there may have been his reckless propensity to take the risk; but I am convinced that even then his main object was—like Viola—to burn his boats. He was afraid that if he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... in the road. Annie knew who it was; she knew that Tom Reed was coming to see her. For a second, rapture seized her, then dismay. How well she knew her sisters-how very well! Not one of them would have given him the slightest inkling of the true situation. They would have told him, by the sweetest of insinuations, rather than by straight statements, that she had left her father's roof and come over here, but not one word would have been told him concerning her vow of silence. They would ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... good or evil. Let us make a jest of the books he admires and the schools for which he is reading." And together they manage it excellently. They talk Cambridge "shop" in terms of the wittiest scholarship. But of the very existence of a world of grown-up men and women they seem to have no inkling, or, at least, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... with this task we discussed its coming purposes very animatedly. But none of the guards appeared to have the slightest inkling of its projected application. However, this was immaterial to us. A loud cheer of triumph went up when we had hung the gates, which we had also fashioned at great effort, and the duty was completed. We were beside ourselves ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... was born and died a Catholic; though of religion of any kind he never betrayed an inkling. His Act of Supremacy, in 1534, which set his will above that of the Pope of Rome, had no religious bearing, but merely indicated that he wanted to divorce one woman in order to marry another. Nevertheless it made it incumbent upon the Pope to excommunicate him, and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... League of Cambrai had attained success through the victory of Louis XII. over the Venetians, Cardinal d'Amboise, in course of conversation with the two envoys from Florence at the king's court, let them have an inkling "that he was not without suspicion of some new design;" and when Louis XII. announced his approaching departure for France, the two Florentines wrote to their government that "this departure might have very evil results, for the power of Emperor ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... anxious time that their defection was being planned, and Adoni-zedec, the king of Jerusalem, would have heard of it in less than a couple of hours; and the Gibeonites would have been overwhelmed before Joshua had any inkling that they were anxious to treat with him. Whoever was dilatory, whoever was slow, the Gibeonites dared not be. It can, therefore, have been, at most, only a matter of hours after Joshua's return to Gilgal, before their wily ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... discloses but an imperfect inkling of knowledge on the subject of capillarity in barometers, when he speaks of this complex action as equivalent to the attraction between the mercury and the glass tube; and he commits a yet graver mistake, practically speaking, in reiterating ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... glad, too—for Joan's sake. I will be giving Nancy her best and surest happiness—with me, but not Joan. And so, David, Joan must not have the slightest inkling—she must go, when her time comes, unhampered. You, Nancy, and I must contribute that to ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... too, to study and consider, and here I had the first inkling of how far it is possible for disembodied spirits to be in touch with those who are ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 'The Evening News,' the 'Globe,' the 'Echo,' the 'Star,' the 'Sun,' the three 'Gazettes.' They, like we, were 'waiting for the verdict.' I went as far as the lower level station in the hope of finding some newspaper that might give an inkling of the position, and I found nothing at all. It was extremely warm, and I was somewhat excited. Thus I was perspiring terribly by the time I returned to the hotel, to learn that no telegram had come as yet, that things were ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... answered; "but still you don't understand. You were an intimate friend of God when He asked you for the sacrifice, whereas I—I had only an inkling, a suspicion of that Love. Besides, you were not asked to give all your possessions to your enemies! No; too much has been asked ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... from the people that their chief had the impudence to go on board an English brig-of-war— that he was pursued by her boats, and very nearly captured. I wish to goodness he had been—but nothing more is known on the subject. There is no doubt he has visited the Ione, and I only hope he has got no inkling of what she is there for, and what we are about. If he has, you see, why that is only a still greater reason for not letting the grass grow under ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... seen just such children who were not slaves, haven't you? And I think I understand the cause of their misfortunes. Shall I give you an inkling of it? It is because they are so heedless and headlong in their ways, racing and romping about with perfect recklessness. Don't you think now that I am right, little reader, you who cried this very day, because you were always getting into trouble, ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... absurd, you will agree, and you may get some inkling as to my state of mind while I walked over those same dark hills. I seemed a part of that darkness. I looked up to the stars. They were merely like the pages of a book. I named them off hand, one after the other, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... of thought and of outer sense, pleadingly assured that she would at once be sent back under flag of truce, with compassion deepening to compulsion and with a vague inkling that, failing the white flag, this might be heaven's leading back to Callender House and the jewel treasure, to Mobile and to Hilary, she gave her aid. Beyond the thicket the way continued tangled, rough and dim. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... hearing; I think him incapable of discussing any one maliciously. He's very careful of what he says. I consider him a very honorable man. At any rate, he said nothing of what Ed Sorenson suggested, and if the latter himself hadn't spoken of the thing I should have had no inkling that there had been anything justifying an inquiry on my part. There may not be. But why should he imagine Mr. Weir had told me 'lies' linking him and ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... had earned his ease As he, that windless morning when he drew Near silent Ithaca, gray in misty blue, And wondered on the old familiar scene, Which was to him as it had never been Aforetime. Say, had he but had inkling That in this hour all that long wandering Of his was self-ensured, had he been bold To plan and carry what must now be told Of this too hardy champion? Solve it you Whose chronicling is over. Mine's to ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... saw them gaping round the tortured lover; and grinned as he thought of some respectable, newly-married spectre enabled by the state of his own affections to catch an inkling of what was going on within Bosinney; he fancied he could see his mouth getting wider and wider, and the fog going down and down. For in George was all that contempt of the of the married middle-class—peculiar to the wild and sportsmanlike spirits ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... troops were obliged to actually enter the waters of the bay, which in some places rose breast-high; but they pushed through, losing rather heavily, and hurled themselves upon the Russian flank and rear, while the others, getting an inkling of what was happening from the sounds of heavy firing on the other side of the hill, pressed home the frontal attack, thus keeping the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... had some inkling as to the two brown horses Nils had been in such a hurry to get in; he goes round patting the animals in turn, to see which of them are warm. Then he comes back to us, wiping his ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... eight years of age; then to procure a lodging. That done, he had betaken himself to Montfermeil. It will be remembered that already, during his preceding escape, he had made a mysterious trip thither, or somewhere in that neighborhood, of which the law had gathered an inkling. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... crack-brained person like Ingeborg could know anything of Glory Goldie's movements; but she was one of the kind who sensed it in the air when something extraordinary was going to happen. She could see and hear things of which wise folk never had an inkling. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... me to follow them. I take exception to them only because the language in which they are couched seems to imply that operations, of whose nature one of the most powerful of human intellects could, at its utmost stretch, catch only a faint hazy inkling, may yet have been initiated and perfected without the intervention of any intellect at all. This is a falsism against which my respect for philosophy and philosophers makes me only all the more indignant when I find any of the latter falling into it, as those of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... had curled his lip died out, and though he asked my meaning I knew he already had an inkling of it. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... his letter from the Emperor, I have watched him carefully, and I believe I can honestly declare that not once in these eighteen months has he looked away from his task, nor has he given to one single person even an inkling of the thoughts which have passed through his mind. He came back from the Continent, from Berlin, from Paris, from Petersburg, with a mass of acquired information which would have made some of our blue-books ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... secret, and yet I dare not disclose it; the curse handed down from her forefathers has been perpetuated by me. She seems happy, and yet she is unhappy; the secret recesses of her soul are poisoned. And what more natural? for, by some unlucky incident, she has got an inkling of the foul means by which she was made a slave. To him who knows the right, the wrong is most painful; but I bought her of him whose trade it was to sell such flesh and blood! And yet that does not relieve me from the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... of the heights of Sari Bair, whereby he will enfilade the whole network of Turkish trenches, now hedging him round. The only thing he bargains for is that G.H.Q. so work the whole affair from orders down to movements, that the enemy get no inkling of our intentions. The Turks so far suspect nothing, and Koja Chemen Tepe and Chunuk Bair, with all the intervening ridge, are still unentrenched and open to capture by a coup-de-main. Even if the naval objections to Bulair could be overcome, Sari Bair remains the better move of the two. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... than we must expect," rejoined Jack crisply. The lad by now had begun to have an inkling of the situation. Evidently Bob Harding was a soldier of fortune fighting with the insurrectos against the troops of Diaz, while they themselves were supposed to be more of the same brand. Evidently they had been expected ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... Joe, beginning, as did his chums, to have an inkling of the truth. "Aren't you two working together against ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton

... officer who has spent a quarter-century in the East without learning that all Moslem women are circumcised, and without a notion of how female circumcision is effected; without an idea of the difference between the Jewish and the Moslem rite as regards males; without an inkling of the Armenian process whereby the cutting is concealed, and without the slightest theoretical knowledge concerning the mental and spiritual effect of the operation. Where then is the shame of teaching what it is shameful not to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... time being. The inspector at once noticed my presence, and, calling to a corner-boy lounging at the public-house door, he spoke to him, pointing me out, and this "copper's nark" followed doggedly in my steps. Yoski lived in a turning off the Mile-End Road, but anxious to give no inkling as to my destination, I turned in the opposite direction, and after a lengthy detour stopped at my own door. I stayed indoors nearly an hour, hoping that my attendant's patience would give out, but he showed no signs of moving, time was precious, and I decided to set out once more. This ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... death and of Beatrix's need for her parents. His talk with Bobby Dane was longer, and at intervals it became interjectional in its terseness. To Bobby, Thayer went over the story in all its detail, yet in such guarded phrases that no one else, listening, could have gained an inkling of the true cause of Lorimer's death. After the first shock was over, Thayer and Beatrix had discussed the matter fully and in all its bearings. The attendant had his own reasons for wishing to keep the secret, and the butler could be relied ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... saw that he was wholly unsuspecting. He trusted her; in their weeks together he had lost all fear of treachery from her. There he was, exulting over the frugal lunch she had prepared, with no inkling of the deadly peril that even now was upon him. She wished he did not trust her so completely; it would be easier for her if he was just a little wary, a little ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur, non fit"[456-1] was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a remark which I took in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... guns McLean brought a comb with him, leaving the other alongside his bed. We had to pass the Major on our way, whose dugout was close to the hives, and by that time he had an inkling of what was going on and he yelled, "Grant, throw that honey down; you too, McLean." As he yelled his orders I was passing the telephonist's hut and I threw it in to him,—"Here, Graham, here's some honey for you, it's great," and continued my run down to the guns, the bees ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... soul. "Mary, what will you do if some day you get a letter from me confessing that I am not happy? I dare not say a word to my own people. I am supposed to be at the apex of human triumph, and I have to play that role to keep from hurting them. I know that if my dear old father got an inkling of the truth, it would kill him. My one real solid consolation is that I have helped him, that I have lifted a money-burden from his life; I have done that, I tell myself, over and over; but then I wonder, have I done anything but put the reckoning off? I have given ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... Jadwin. "I'll call it a day. I'll get home for luncheon to-morrow. It can't be helped. By the way, I met Cressler this afternoon, Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious of things, to me—as though he had an inkling." ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... earlier. But calm yourself! Your life is still ahead of you. The past has been a school—hard, to be sure, but all the more wholesome. Hitherto you have given your life to whims and follies. Now you have some inkling of what reality demands of you. Outside that door your creditors are waiting with their claims. Here are their bills. The clergy of the young Church demand that you live to finish what you have begun so splendidly. The City Corporation demands its secretary ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... grateful to your mother, and we got along first-rate. Only I couldn't say things to her—and she couldn't answer. Well—one day, a few months after we were married, Dolbrowski came to New York, and the whole place went wild about him. I'd never heard any good music, but I'd always had an inkling of what it must be like, though I couldn't tell you to this day how I knew. Well, your mother read about him in the papers too, and she thought it'd be the swagger thing to go to New York and hear him play—so we went... I'll never forget that ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... every fourth or fifth word, and may then find out which particular experiences are disquieting the patient. Words like women or money or career or family or disease are often sufficient to get the first inkling of a mental story. ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... agonizing pain which Mr. Edgerton now endures. This pain is quite inconceivable by the ordinary mind. It can not be described, and the only hint by which an outsider can be let into something like an inkling of it is the supposition (which I have elsewhere used) that pain has become fluidized, and is throbbing through the arteries like a column of quicksilver undergoing rhythmical movement. If the arteries were rigid glass tubes, and the pain quicksilver indeed, there could ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know. It was some inkling of this paradox, even in the unquiet days of the Bureau, that allayed an opposition to human training, which still to-day lies smouldering, but not flaming. Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and Hampton were founded in these days, and nearly $6,000,000 was expended ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... which has my last emendations). Otherwise I have been meaning all along to offer you a copy of this edition, as I have some. Who was your informant as to dates of the poems, etc.? They are not correct, yet show some inkling. Jenny (in a first form) was written almost as early as The Blessed Damozel, which I wrote (and have altered little since), when I was eighteen. It was first printed when I was twenty-one. Of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached; and because of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... an artist, a great friend of Dickens, and author of that charming book, "A Cruise on Wheels." His design of the paper cover of the story (it appeared in monthly numbers) contained, as usual, sketches which give an inkling of the events in the tale. Mr. Collins was to have illustrated the book; but, finally, Mr. (now Sir) Luke Fildes undertook the task. Mr. Collins died in 1873. It appears that Forster never asked him the meaning of ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... awhile in the bright sunshine, and Warren soon had an inkling of the little woman's state ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... Then followed some inkling of the pain that this decision would give to Mme. de Beauseant. The man's vanity and the lover's conscience further exaggerated this pain, and a sincere pity for her seized upon him. All at once the immensity of the misery became apparent to him, and he thought it necessary ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... of holding the attention of one's readers lay in the ability to do three things: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." There is no use in making an audience wait, however, unless you first give them an inkling of what they are waiting for. The dramatist must play with his spectators as we play with a kitten when we trail a ball of yarn before its eyes, only to snatch it away just as ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... man of the Kansa tribe observed that the author had an inkling of the matter he related part of the tradition of that tribe, explaining the origin of the names and the taboos of several Kansa gentes. The ancestors of these gentes were spoken of as birds which descended ...
— Osage Traditions • J. Owen Dorsey

... All the way up in the train, whenever I was awake, an idea had been haunting me—a possible clue to this trickery of Lord Southminster's. Petty details cropped up and fell into their places. I began to unravel it all now. I had an inkling of a plan to set Harold ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... outset I was given an inkling of the irascibility of his temper, and my subsequent method, in all our intercourse, was simply to leave him whenever he became quarrelsome, and to take up our relations when next we met at the point ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... had not the slightest inkling as to the trend of events. The latter on 13th July 1792 wrote thus to Earl Gower at Paris: "My speculations are that the first entrance of the foreign troops [into France] will be followed by negotiations; but how they are to end, or what ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... started off for the middle pasture, where they were engaged in repairing a fence which had all but fallen flat. Quite by accident, and without any inkling of what was to come of his carelessness, Buck left his hammer and pliers beside the corral gate instead of sticking them into his saddle-pockets. Before they had gone a quarter of a mile he discovered the omission and pulled ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... any writer, however inexperienced, should begin his narrative in this fashion. The introductory paragraph is of course entirely unnecessary—even the author had some inkling of that fact, for he takes pains to specify when "the story" proper actually begins; but even after he is supposed to be in the midst of his narration, he stops to give us wholly gratuitous information concerning the time of day, the state of ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... vague, and its provoking elements were not clearly discernible. The young lady was conscious of a certain pleasant thrill in the view of the task to which she had been invited. It promised her possible difficulty, for even in the few short minutes just passed she had gained an inkling that Mrs. Dallas's words might be true, and Pitt not precisely a man that you could turn over your finger. It threatened her possible danger, which she did not admit; nevertheless the stinging sense of it made itself felt and pricked the pleasure into livelier existence. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... voluntary proposal to turn down Whittington-street, and see the child. Perhaps he had an inkling that the chapel in Cat-alley would be in full play, and that the small maid would be in charge; besides, it was gas-light, and the lodgers would be out. At any rate softening was growing on him. He looked long and sorrowfully ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Rambaugh's bedroom I dug the rest of the thug's safe but there wasn't anything there that would give me an inkling of why he was gunning for me. I came back with one of his needle-rays and burned the contents of the safe to a black char. I stirred up the ashes with the nose of the needier and then left it in the safe after wiping ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith

... answered Umgolo. "Perhaps I am wrong. The young chief may be an enemy of Cetchwayo, and he it is who has sent the army to destroy him. He knows the bravery and cleverness of Mangaleesu, who, had he gained an inkling of what is intended, would have made his escape into Natal. There may be some other cause for the intended attack, but I am not far wrong, master, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... I thought so; we surprised sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of 'la belle passion,' and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of our discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our dead-weights from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she got an inkling of the business, found out that it was of an immoral tendency. Did you not, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where they might be alone together. She spoke of the domestic habits she had acquired during her brief matrimonial experience; ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... for the journey, he found opportunity to reassure Kate: "Thus far, she has no inkling of what is in our minds." He closed his fist as if shaking it in the face of an implacable foe, and, through his set teeth, added: "I accept the challenge! I welcome you and all your dark band to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... reason to believe that if he had done so with success, he would have invited Raleigh to return with him, and to become Admiral of the Danish fleet. But matters never got so far as this. James I. had an inkling of what was coming, and he took an early opportunity of saying to Christian IV., 'Promise me that you will be no man's solicitor.' In spite of this, before he left England, Christian did ask for Raleigh's pardon, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... about it very soon, never fear. His is the mind of a great scientist, working on a subject of which but very few men have even an inkling. I am certain that the only reason he thought of me is that he could not finance the investigation alone. Never think for an instant that his absorption implies a lack of fondness for you. You are his anchor, his ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... intense relief, Theo Desmond took the empty chair next her own. He had missed her during the morning: and a glance at her face sufficed to give him an inkling of the truth. All his heart went out to her; and he hastened to answer the question ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... lived in Germany have not even an inkling of the deep slow secret revolt against the insolent and inconsiderate attitude of the German male that had been growing among its women for some fifteen years before the outbreak of the war. They ventured no public meetings or militant acts of any sort, for men were far ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... intricate plans will all come to nothing, except dust and rubbish. He may draw and colour like Barry himself; but unless he has some spark of the genius that animated old Inigo and Sir Christopher, some little inkling of William of Wickham's spirit within him, some sound knowledge of the fitness and the requirements of things, he had better throw down his instruments, and give it up as a bad job; he'll only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... a better impression. I gave the major the key to her room, and asked him to call her for the morning meal, already nearly ready. She came down a few moments later, freshly dressed, and looking as though she had enjoyed some sleep. Her father must have given her some inkling of the situation, for she greeted me pleasantly, although with a certain constraint in manner which left ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... not for the world," was the answer. "Let us watch them and see if we can get an inkling of what their intentions may be. They at least cannot get at us here; and any precipitate action on our part may only make matters worse for poor Gaunt. Our policy is to keep them in the dark as long as possible as to ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... for the vanity of her sex—impartially. All the school watched the battle of the hearts eagerly. The big boys, who usually know as little about the social transactions beneath them as the teacher knows, felt an inkling of the situation. The red-headed Pratt girl became deeply interested in the affair, though she was never invited to a party in the school's aristocracy. She did not even get an invitation to Bud Perkins's surprise party, where every one who had any social standing was expected. Yet ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... and fell to talk with them; and his mind it was that these foemen were but a band of strayers, and had had no inkling of Shadowy Vale till they had heard them talking together as they came up the path from the Vale, and that then they had made that ambush behind the Elders' Rocks, so that they might slay the men, and then bear off the woman. He said withal that ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... into Madam's room and made up a small parcel containing a cheap novel which Gaga had left there. This she brought to her place and kept before her. Incredulously, the other girls watched and sneered. It was the first inkling they had had of any special relationship between Sally and Gaga. To the minds of all occurred memory of that scene in the country, when Gaga had been entranced by Sally's song. They remembered the unknown girl's joyous yell, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... ten, at the great Peace Festival, the opening of the first Exhibition. Already the charming grace and rare intelligence of the Princess had attracted attention; and it is on record that at this early period some inkling of a possible attraction between the two had entered one observer's mind, who also notes that the young Prince, greatly interested by all he saw of free England and its rulers, was above all taken ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... forgot George Colfax. Yet once in a while it would occur to her that it would be very pleasant if he should drop in for a cup of tea, and she would wonder what he was doing. Did she, perchance, at the same time exert herself with an ardor born of an acknowledged inkling that these might be the last months of her service? However that may have been, she certainly was very busy, and responded eagerly to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... you do!" said he. "What an ass I was to mention it to you! I might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of our—mysteries. Whiskey?" ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... castles, and turrets, "les quatre tureles en haut," which are the four cardinal virtues, a sort of pious Romaunt of the Rose. William of Wadington had likewise written in French his "Manuel des Pechiez," not without an inkling that his grammar and prosody might give cause for laughter. He excused himself in advance: "For my French and my rhymes no one must blame me, for in England was I born, and there bred and brought up ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... something—something real, something that signified. But it was very hard to follow. She did not understand the note of hostility to men that ran through it all, the bitter vindictiveness that lit Miss Miniver's cheeks and eyes, the sense of some at last insupportable wrong slowly accumulated. She had no inkling of ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... had had a cup of tea; afterward she slept a little, and about noon she dressed herself and gave Cecil his audience. But first, at her request, I had possessed him with the main facts and given him an inkling of what was expected of him. His face changed; he looked as he did after his steeplechase the day I saw him first,—except that he was cleaner,—grave, excited, and resolved. He had taken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a cause like this! I would have ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... out, parenthetically at least, that James Watt had not only had to solve the problem as best he could, but that he had no inkling, so far as experience was concerned, that ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... notes, these ample pages, with their rhetorical and sentimental effusion, brought new life to the fretting, lonely woman. She went about in penitence. Surely she had done injustice to her John; and she dreaded lest any inkling of those foolish or morbid thoughts she had been ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fully successful, might have placed his Royal Highness in a most perilous predicament. It appears, however, from a fragment of a letter addressed by General Washington to Col. Ogden, and apparently written almost immediately after the preceding one, that some inkling of the design had reached Sir Henry Clinton, then in New York, and Commander-in-chief of the British forces. General Washington communicates, in his letter, the following paragraph from a secret despatch, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... seemed to get an inkling of what the worry was. Mr Thornycroft, when they were alone together, begged her to tell him if she had any money difficulties—debts, she supposed—and to be frank with him for old times' ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... his mind. And the wrinkled envelope she had drawn from her satin jacket and pressed into his hand. Past dealings with Chinese gave him the inkling that ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband—a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment—that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... ALEXIEVNA,—I am beside myself as I take up my pen, for a most terrible thing has happened. My head is whirling round. Ah, beloved, how am I to tell you about it all? I had never foreseen what has happened. But no— I cannot say that I had NEVER foreseen it, for my mind DID get an inkling of what was coming, through my seeing something very similar to it in ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the side of the window, Red Feather strained his hearing to catch some words that would give him an inkling of what ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis

... that by special attention to Denny and his wants at the table they might get an inkling of the mystery that had so excited the old man they were disappointed, for he never betrayed a word of it, and only an occasional absent look in his sober ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... what is essentially attainable. For man's spirit is intellectual and naturally demands dominion and science; it craves in all things friendliness and beauty. The least hint of attainment in these directions fills it with satisfaction and the sense of realised expectation. So much so that when no inkling of a supreme fulfilment is found in the world or in the heart, men still cling to the notion of it in God or the hope of it in heaven, and religion, when it entertains them with that ideal, seems ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... plans of the expedition; he would not even tell her where he was taking her, where the other filibusters had assembled, or from what port their ship would sail. He did go so far, however, as to explain that an inkling of the Junta's plans had leaked out, and that determined efforts to upset them were being made, efforts which necessitated the greatest care on his part. This, of course, whetted the girl's curiosity; ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... Thus spake Orcanes, and some inkling gave In doubtful words of that he would have said; To sue for peace or yield himself a slave He durst not openly his king persuade: But at those words the Soldan gan to rave, And gainst his will wrapt in the cloud he stayed, Whom Ismen thus bespake, "How can you bear These words, my ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... had learned to know and trust me. I told her her sobs cut me to the heart and that I would give my life to save her from trouble. In a word, I told her I loved her, and in the excitement of the moment she dropped a word or two that gave me an inkling of what Tom had said. It was casting dirt at both her and myself. Then, as I came home, I met Tom as I have ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... an inkling of it," he murmured mured. "That shows how little they've taken you into their confidence. They warned you against any one who might find the hidden path, and they even armed you for such an emergency. Yet they never told ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... anything about—" Jack stopped. He had not intended to put the question quite in this way, although he was still in doubt. Give this keen-eyed, white-haired old lady but an inkling of what was uppermost in his mind and he knew she would have ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a tolerable inkling of what awaited him, and when he found himself confronted with all the overwhelming evidence which was crowded that morning into the doctor's waiting-room, he hauled down his colours without even coming ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... sat and listened, as if the scene and all the actors in it, himself included, were only a dream too. The young girl's evidence, of which he had not an inkling before, would have astounded him, if anything could. But he had reached that point of reaction in the emotions, where a stolid and complete apathy happily takes the place of high nervous excitement. He ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... voice too, but, feeling himself in the presence of a stupendous thing, he refrained out of reverence. If suffering Hamlet had only encountered the idea of disappearing, his whole life would have been set right in a twinkling of the eye. The Dane had an inkling of the solution of his problem when in anguish he ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith



Words linked to "Inkling" :   glimmering, suggestion



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