"Keyhole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afternoon, while Monsieur and Mademoiselle Stangerson were out for a walk, and while Daddy Jacques was away, he entered the latter by the vestibule window. He was alone, and, being in no hurry, he began examining the furniture. One of the pieces, resembling a safe, had a very small keyhole. That interested him! He had with him the little key with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... began to play with the door handle, turning it first one way, then the other, so as to make sure the door was only bolted. After this, with a great deal of puffing and blowing, he stooped down to look through the keyhole, but the key was in the lock, and turned in such a way that one could not see through. Standing up on the other side of the door, Raskolnikoff still held the hatchet in his hands. He was almost in a state of delirium ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the shutters of this grim apartment were kept closed, and an inquisitive eye, applied to the keyhole, could just faintly discern the portrait in crayon of the late Mr. Handsomebody, presiding, like some whiskered ghost, over the revels of the stuffed birds in the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... after her master had gone to the enchanted room, Cherry crept up to the door, and instead of only listening at it as usual, she knelt down and peeped through the keyhole, which, for once, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... she couldn't bear to see any one who came to see her. She used to shut herself up in the Captain's room day after day, kneeling by his bedside, and crying as if her heart would break. I have looked through the keyhole sometimes, and seen her there on her knees, with her face buried in the bedclothes. She didn't care to talk about him even to me, and I had hard work to persuade her to eat or drink enough to keep life in her at this time. When the days ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar says I mustn't expose myself, so I don't go into the room; but Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is. Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it won't spoil Fred's complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... shadows on the dimly lit stairs. From behind the doors, now closed, came the heavy breathing of sleepers who had gone to their beds on rising from the table. A faint laugh was heard from one room, while a slender thread of light filtered through the keyhole of the old lady who was still busy with her dolls, cutting out the gauze dresses with squeaking scissors. A child was crying on the next floor, and the smell from the sinks was worse than ever and seemed something tangible amid this silent darkness. Then ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... couch, hung with white silk curtains, and blazing with a bright jet of gas from each bed-post! The doors of the sleeping-rooms are often fitted with a very ingenious lock, having a separate bolt and keyhole on each side, totally disconnected, and consequently, as they can only be opened from the same side they are fastened, no person, though possessed of a skeleton key, is able to enter. The ominous warning, "Lock your door at night," which is usually hung up, coupled with the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... including the tumbler, ward, spring, etc., the key-pin, into or around which the key is inserted, the strike, the plate attached opposite the selvage, (often left out as in drawer-locks, but essential in hook-bolt locks, and self-locking locks,) and the escutcheon, the plate around the keyhole. ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... you awake?' said Cytherea in a whisper through the keyhole. 'You must get up directly, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a chest on board altogether beyond regulation size. Jack Larmour soon made short work of that. He called up the carpenters, and bade them saw a portion off the chest, cutting it through just on one side of the keyhole, so that the lock was now in the corner. Cochrane only laughed and said nothing, but I have no doubt the lieutenant expected him to say something hasty and so get himself into trouble. However, Jack soon changed his opinion of the new mid. The earnest ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... plans. Devoid of principle, idle as a scholar, morose and sullen in his manners, he was, in every respect, a true specimen of the whole class of mischief-makers, wherever they are to be found. His mischief consisted, as usual, in such exploits as stopping up the keyhole, upsetting the teacher's inkstand, or fixing something to his desk to make a noise, and interrupt ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... right to whatever." Nor can I begin to tell you the times I have exhausted all my strength putting her sturdy little self into the closet, and then standing first on one foot, then on the other, until I was ready to drop, listening at the keyhole for the first small sob ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... automatically, it poured softly forth, and the Irishman at once understood why he had first mistaken it for an echo of wind from distant hills. The imagery was entirely accurate. For it was precisely the singing cry that wind makes in a keyhole, in a chimney, or passing idly over the sweep of grassy hills. Exactly thus had he often listened to it swishing through the crannies of high rocks, tuneless yet searching. In it, too, there lay some accent of a secret, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... crop out among the blankets, and listened intently. Whosoever it might be, there was no danger of their getting at him; so he clambered out of bed, and going on tiptoe to the door, applied his eye to the keyhole. There was nothing to be seen; so walking to the window, he brought his face as close to the glass as his nose would allow. There was a figure just discernible. The lad was not trying to walk softly, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... and Singers still come round during the night time and on Boxing Days they call for their Christmas Boxes. The singers have now degenerated into two or three children who huddle together on the doorsteps of houses and sing through the keyhole and letter box as fast and as loud as they can utter the various hymns of which, "When shepherds watched their flocks by night." As soon as they receive a halfpenny away they trot to the next house to ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... not have the wit to do this: the wiser, the waywarder: make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and it will out at the keyhole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... closeted together for a long time, and the old woman's tongue hardly ever stopped. Sal explained that she would not have been such a fool as to let this conversation escape her, if she could have helped it. She took her place at the keyhole, and had an excuse ready for the old woman, if she should come out suddenly. The old woman came out suddenly; but she did not wait for the excuse. She sent the Cheap Jack's wife civilly on an errand into the kitchen, and then followed her, and shut the door ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the chancery, I put my bar in the keyhole, but finding immediately that I could not break it open, I resolved on making a hole in the door. I took care to choose the side where the wood had fewest knots, and working with all speed I struck as hard and as cleaving strokes as I was able. The monk, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... any other way, rest assured I would not have risked my neck and your peace of mind by such a suspicious means of ingress as the window; but if you will take the trouble to notice, the door is thick, and I am composed of too solid flesh to whisk through the keyhole; so I had to make my appearance ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... minnit,—soon's I fix up this hole. Them shoats, I b'leeve, would go through a keyhole, if they could once git ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... priory of the Knights of Malta—nothing but a chapel and small villa as abandoned as the rest. After toiling up a steep and narrow lane between two walls, our carriage stopped at a solid wooden gateway, and the coachman told us to get out and look through the keyhole. We were aghast, but he insisted, laughing and nodding; so we pocketed our pride and peeped. Through an overarching vista of dark foliage was seen, white and golden in a blaze of sunshine, the cupola ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... good idea," Nan had replied, laughing at her, "if there were only some furniture to pile. What are you doing, Bess? You aren't stuffing cotton in the keyhole?" ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... the old lady was ascending the stairs, and closing the door Maggie applied her eye to the keyhole, listening breathlessly for what might follow. George Douglas and Henry Warner occupied separate rooms, and their boots were now standing outside their doors, ready for the chore boy, Jim, who thus earned a quarter every day. Stumbling first upon the pair belonging ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... 22 inches long by 5 inches at its widest point. Next cut out along the pencil line with a pair of shears. Now lay the paper outline on a plank and mark out the pattern on the wood. Repeat this process with three more planks. When this is done, cut out the boards with a keyhole saw. ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... down another door, and he knew that it led to the room from which came the sounds of grief. He approached it cautiously, still holding the poker in his hands, and noticed that there was no key in the lock. The woman, whoever she might be, was locked in, as he and his comrades had been; but the empty keyhole gave him an idea. He blew through it, making a sort of whistling sound with his puckered lips. The crying ceased, all save an occasional low, half-smothered sob, as if the woman were making a supreme ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... down again and stared at the door, and again he said slowly: "Well, I never, in all my born'd days! That beats me all holler! What a thing a keyhole ith! But that feller in town didn't have ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... my Lady Wind, Went round about the house to find A chink to set her foot in; She tried the keyhole in the door, She tried the crevice in the floor, And drove ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... you an ordinary 6 inch rim-lock of English manufacture. At a short distance it looks like a superior article; the follower and keyhole appear as if they were bushed with brass. But let us take it to pieces, and see what we can find. The follower is a rough casting, not turned at the bearings, and is in no sense a fit. The screw holes are not countersunk, but merely punched in; the key is of the roughest ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... breaking the "Law" (with impunity) was worth a deal of productive, or unproductive, labour. The bread ordinance had not increased our respect for "benevolent" despotism. Any chance of setting at naught the absolute prepensities of our legislators (with a watering-can or by judicious keyhole stuffing, to hide the light) ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Immediately before him a pair of doors gave on the big room. They stood open. There were two more doors, one on each hand, both closed. Evan put out his light. As he did so a tiny ray of light became visible through the keyhole of ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... characteristically English touches in the two paragraphs is the reference to the carol sung by the boy at Scrooge's keyhole. Other countries have Christmas carols, but the custom of singing them before people's houses is peculiarly common in England. The carol of which the first two lines are quoted is perhaps the one most ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... two who said he entered by that door-that small door down the passage, sahib, where there is no light. It is a teak door, bolted and with no keyhole on the outside." ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... God save us! Him working! The last man that seen Mr. Dan working is in his grave this twenty years. (He goes over next workshop door.) I'll just peep in at him through the keyhole. (He goes over and does so, and then beckons KATE over. She peeps in and grins. As they are thus occupied ALICK MCCREADY opens the door and stands gazing at them. He is a type of the young well-to-do farmer, ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... "boring for water here, at the rate of two pounds per day for wages. The men seem to like it very much, and to be perfectly comfortable." Another of his earliest experiences (5th of September) was thus expressed: "Hop-picking is going on, and people sleep in the garden, and breathe in at the keyhole of the house door. I have been amazed, before this year, by the number of miserable lean wretches, hardly able to crawl, who go hop-picking. I find it is a superstition that the dust of the newly picked ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... by-play in which I detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion. From the corner of the gallery I one day saw her, when she thought I was out and all quiet, with her ear at the keyhole of papa's study, as we used to call the sitting-room next his bed-room. Her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her eyes absolutely goggled with eagerness. She was ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... kept an eye on what was going on, send his wife to bed; then he pressed now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole in order to try and discover what he called "the mysteries of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... keyhole without a doubt, and stooping, Lady Markham repeated her question, placing her ear close to the keyhole, as ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of those poor men that are plagued with the pox and the gout? O how often have we seen them, even immediately after they were anointed and thoroughly greased, till their faces did glister like the keyhole of a powdering tub, their teeth dance like the jacks of a pair of little organs or virginals when they are played upon, and that they foamed from their very throats like a boar which the mongrel mastiff-hounds have driven in and overthrown amongst ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Shirley, ma'am, it's awful to call you so early," came wailing through the keyhole, "but there's so much to do yet . . . and oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I'm skeered it's going to rain and I wish you'd get up and tell me you think it ain't." Anne flew to the window, hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was saying this merely by way of rousing her ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he'd been sending a lot of things to the house for days past.—When the right day was come, we goes to the front door, 'cos it looked more civil, and we knocks. Dick himself comes to the door, and says through the keyhole, 'I must ask you to go round, for the door sticks, and I can't open it.' So we goes round.—There were a very handsome clock in the passage, in a grand mahogany case. 'Seven o'clock!' says I, looking at ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... He went to the keyhole of the door leading into the passage. Then he whispered again, "And it's ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... knew the name of each member of the household. If she was asked about an absent one, she would look at his vacant seat and then at the speaker. If told to fetch him she would run upstairs to his room, take the handle of the door between her paws, mew at the keyhole, and wait to ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... wishes to know, with her respectful service, if she may have a word with you." Before father could reply mother told him to bring her. The housekeeper could not have been far off—that kind are generally near a keyhole—for she came at once. When she came in, she stood at the door curtseying ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Society of Bengal (1884, pp. 24-39) I find a Nicobar story which relates how Tiomberombi received a magic mirror from a snake whose enemy he had killed. Its slaves obeyed all his orders if he only put the key into the keyhole, but he was not allowed to open the mirror, as he was too weak to face the spirits openly. He dwelt on an island, but when a hostile fleet came against him, the gunners could not hit it, as the island ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... think of that lovely and delicate lady all alone in the great, black forest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and say, fee-faw-fum in a voice of such exceeding loudness that the castle would be ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... you are present and hear me, please step to this door and look into the keyhole. It is a friend, who will aid you, that is ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened and creaked at the keyhole last night. And more than likely you'd have gotten that creak ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... police. Suddenly everything was still outside, and presently I saw a piece of paper slowly slipping in over the threshold, oh, so slyly! I felt my hands and feet grow cold. I felt that the man himself was about to follow that narrow strip of paper; that he was bound to get in that way, or through the keyhole, or somehow. Then I recognized your handwriting. My first thought was that you had been ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... part of the cellar, used as a room for storing supplies needed in their trade. Past barrels and boxes she went to another stairway and breathlessly ascended it. At the top of eight or nine steps a door barred progress. Very carefully she found the keyhole, fitted in the key, and by infinitesimal degrees ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... pistol with me, your honour," Mike said. "I have seen doors blown in, by firing a gun through the keyhole." ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... stories dealing with this peculiarity. One man is said to have followed him around for months, taking the adjoining room at hotels, in order to find the secret of his success by hearing him practise. Once, when looking through the keyhole, he saw the virtuoso go to the violin case, take out the instrument, and after seeing that it was ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... With eye to keyhole the valet reporter saw the frequent innocent parleys of Maurice and Henriette, which he construed as an intrigue. He was quite ecstatic with happiness now. The police Prefect, finding his suspicions privately confirmed, bluntly refused police aid to the Chevalier's ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the great gate was never unlocked, and the old house had been shut up for several years. Yet voices were heard about the place, the lilacs nodded over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole that it might peep in and see what ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... Round and round the keyhole did a shaky, unsteady hand guide the wandering key. It scratched above, it dug at the door beneath, while the low indistinct murmur of one repeated word reached me within. At last, in sheer pity, I got up and opened the door from the inside. Howard came unsteadily over the threshold, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... beginning to cough, the doctor ordered the child to be taken from her. She got angry, wept, implored, but they were deaf to her entreaties. His nurse took him every evening, and each night his mother would rise, and in her bare feet go to the door, listen at the keyhole to see if he was sleeping quietly, did not wake up and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... dark eyes and beautiful complexions. On the day I refer to, Margaret Maitland came to me and whispered in my ear that if I would come with her she would show me a pretty sight. I followed and she led me to the Lady Abbess's room and told me to peep through the keyhole. I did so and saw a very strange scene which I will endeavor to describe ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... he gave a gentle knock at the door. "Hist! Mother O'Flanigan, open the door, or I'll be taken hold of by the watchmen," he whispered through the keyhole, as he heard ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... spider-clad, He, through the keyhole, maketh glad; And through the broken edge of tiles Into the laddered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the itinerancy, not matrimony. And that was my "obituary" if I had only known it. For after that, if I was not dead to the world, I only saw it through the keyhole of the Methodist Discipline, or lifted and transfigured by William's sermons—a straight and narrow path that led from the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... irreconcilable. We may imagine a ghost going through a keyhole, but is it possible to imagine broiled fish and honeycomb going through the same aperture? Or is the stomach of a ghost ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... he, "the creak of these rusty bars would have been heard had the door been made patent; and if you passed through the keyhole, truly, sir, put what face you will on it, you are not fit to be enrolled in a regiment ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Then why so ghastly pale? And why, moreover, Septimius, did you listen so earnestly for any sound in Aunt Keziah's chamber? Why did you creep on tiptoe, once, twice, three times, up to the old woman's chamber, and put your ear to the keyhole, and listen breathlessly? Well; it must have been that he was subconscious that he was trying a bold experiment, and that he had taken this poor old woman to be the medium of it, in the hope, of course, that it would turn out well; yet with other views than ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stair, Toad shouting abuse at them through the keyhole; and the three friends then met in ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... ennui my brother has suffered. It's enough that a week ago, just after you had ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket, a photograph, a trinket, que sais-je? At any rate there was a grand scene. I didn't listen at the keyhole, and I don't know what was said; but I've reason to believe that my poor brother was hauled over the coals as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been—even by angry ladies who weren't ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... the door of Elizabeth's room, knelt down and tried to look through the keyhole. The inside key was there, which seemed ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... quietly in her comfortable deal Coffin, as a peaceable well-disposed Spirit ought to do, and coming to plague me, who never wish to set eyes on her again. Forsooth, it well becomes her to go racketing about my House at midnight, popping into her Daughter's room through the Keyhole, and frightening the poor Child out of her wits! Though She be a Ghost, She might be more civil than to bolt into a Person's House, who likes her company so little. But as for me, reverend Father, the plain state of the case is this: If She walks into my House, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... try your key," said the clerk. He rattled the master-key in the keyhole, but with ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... you can persuade them to go away—" began Mrs. Tarne; but her daughter had already disappeared, and was parleying through the keyhole with the ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... well-armed, cool, strong and agile, and he arrived in front of the door of the room and heard voices. He peeped in, as the keyhole was large and there was no key in the door. He saw the man to whom he had given the sore head, and a woman. The latter was a remarkable-looking person. She was about forty, as it appeared; her complexion was sallow, her features pointed, her ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... and barricaded the inner door from the kitchens by putting tables and chairs against it. At length a parley was called, and Ford shouted his conditions through the keyhole. The besieged then learned that the distant village was still unaware of their peril. Ford offered to let them all go forth free, if now they would yield ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... wife, who could see everything through the keyhole, heard him placing her among the dead, she resolved to send him among them first. On pretence of going to borrow some money, she went to an uncle she had, named Neaufle, who was Master of Requests to the Duke of Alencon, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Suite 32 lasted until nearly midnight, with Dyckman painfully shadowing the corridor and sweating like a furnace laborer, though the night was more than autumn cool. The door was thick, the transom was closed, and the keyhole commanded nothing but a square of blank wall opposite in the electric-lighted sitting-room of the suite. Hence the bookkeeper could only guess what we ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... year ago I had been teaching in a little school-house among my Pennsylvania hills, and I recalled now, very vividly, how I used to love, on just such cold winter nights as this, when the wind whistled at every keyhole of the farm-house where I boarded during the school year to pull my rocking-chair into the chimney-corner and read magazine stories about girls who lived in hall bedrooms on little or nothing a week; and of what good times they had, or seemed to have, with never being quite ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... back bed-room door was a damp place, as if that part of the floor had been newly washed; and when led by curiosity, I peeped through the keyhole of the haunted chamber, my eye distinctly saw an open razor lying on ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... a quite different system. Its most noticeable feature is that it permits the use of a very small key, though the number of combinations possible is still enormous (several millions). In our illustrations (Figs. 219, 220, 221) we show the mechanism controlling the turning of the key. The keyhole is a narrow twisted slot in the face of a cylinder, G (Fig. 219), which revolves inside a larger fixed cylinder, F. As the key is pushed in, the notches in its upper edge raise up the pins A^1, B^1, C^1, D^1, E^1, until their tops exactly reach ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... her. The hour arrived; the house seemed quiet; but she did not come. I began to grow very uneasy. I waited half an hour more, and then, unable to endure it longer, crept to her door. I tried to open it, but found it fast. At the same moment I heard a light sob inside. I put my lips to the keyhole, and called "Alice." She answered ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... their heads, carpetless boards beneath their feet. Mabel set her waiter upon a worm-eaten, iron-bound chest, and went further down the passage to get the key of the north room. Her light footstep stirred dismal echoes in the dark corners; the wind screamed through every crack and keyhole, like a legion of piping devils; rumbled lugubriously over the steep roof. The one candle flickering in the draught showed Mabel's white bust and arms, like those of a phantom, beaming through a cloud of blackness, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... be the weight of the wood that makes it feel heavy," she reflected. "Why, it has a keyhole! I never noticed that before, it is so far down, and, besides, the box has been unlocked ever ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... he had reached the shore he went up into a birchen copse, and made the lions lie quiet. Then he stole up to the castle, like a thief, to see if he couldn't lay hands on his belt; and when he got to the door, he peeped through the keyhole, and there he saw his belt hanging up over a door in the kitchen. So he crept softly in across the floor, for there was no one there; but as soon as he had got hold of the belt, he began to kick and stamp about ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... seen their blooming charges safely within the door of the Alms-House, and vainly endeavored to look through the keyhole at them going up-stairs, scuffle away together with that sensation of blended imbecility and irascibility which is equally characteristic of callow youth and inexperienced Thomas Cats when retiring together from the society of female friends who seem to be still on the fence as regards ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... had unbuckled his empty scabbard. He sent it flying under the bed, and, lowering the point of the sword, brushed past the perplexed Lieutenant D'Hubert, crying: "Follow me." Directly he had flung open the door a faint shriek was heard, and the pretty maid, who had been listening at the keyhole, staggered backward, putting the backs of her hands over her eyes. He didn't seem to see her, but as he was crossing the anteroom she ran after him and seized his left arm. He shook her off and then she rushed ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the crucibles ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... placed the black satchel on a stand and bent over it. The lock was an unusual one. She tried all the slender keys upon her bunch without effect—they were either too large or did not fit the keyhole. Next she took a thin hairpin, bent and twisted it this way and that and tried to pry the lock open. Failure. However, she was beginning to understand the mechanism of the lock by this time. From that all-containing handbag which was her inseparable ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... till he could hear the heavy tread of Sleeny completing the first flight of stairs and going around to the head of the second. He then shut and locked his door, and hung his hat over the keyhole. He turned up his lamp and sat down by the table to count his night's gains. The first package he took from his pocket had a shining stain upon the outside bill. He separated the stained bill carefully from the rest, and held it a moment in his hand as if in doubt. He walked ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... Tabitha pressed her ear to the keyhole to catch the rest of this interesting conversation, but as she listened, her face paled and a rebellious look came into ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... wall, was another. The seats of all had been painted, repainted, and painted again; and Oleron's investigating finger had barely detected the old nailheads beneath the paint. Under the ledge over which he stooped an old keyhole also had been puttied up. Oleron ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... went out and closed the door; Jurgis, who was as sharp as he, observed that he took the key out of the lock, in order that he might peer through the keyhole. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... was gone, Reginald, whose eye and ear had been at the keyhole, alternately gloating on the face and drinking the accents of the only woman he had ever really loved, came out, looking pale, and strangely disturbed; and sat down at ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... while the porridge was cooling, that they might not burn their mouths by beginning too soon to eat it. And while they were walking a little old woman came to the house. She could not have been a good, honest, old woman; for, first, she looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole, and, seeing nobody in the house, she lifted the latch. The door was not fastened, because the bears were good bears, who did nobody any harm, and never suspected that anybody would harm them. So the little old woman opened the door and went in; and well pleased ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... pocket. I confess it was an inconvenient arrangement. It was impossible to unlock my portmanteau without either half undressing, or kneeling down so as to bring the end of the chain on a level with the keyhole, or else standing the portmanteau on a chair or table to bring it up to the key. But it was undoubtedly the smart way of carrying keys. So the tailor said, and so one or two friends in whom I confided ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... attending near at hand: to say the truth, she had conceived a suspicion at her last interview with her mistress, and had waited ever since in the antechamber, having carefully applied her ears to the keyhole during the whole time that the preceding conversation passed between ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... burn their mouths by beginning too soon to eat it. And while they were walking, a little Girl called Goldenlocks came to the house. First she looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole; and seeing nobody in the house, she turned the handle of the door. The door was not fastened, because the Bears were good Bears, who did nobody any harm, and never suspected that anybody would harm ...
— The Golden Goose Book • L. Leslie Brooke
... room as soon as possible, and, after assuring myself that my neighbor was still absent, carefully inserted my second nosegay into her keyhole, and rushed from the house as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... that clothing in his closet," announced Andy, after peering through the keyhole in the door. "He's partly undressed, so I guess he'll go to ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... faintly, like torches half stamped out. I was forcibly struck with the utter loneliness of his lot. For all human attendance, my villainous self grinning at his bedside and old Robert without, listening, doubtless, at the keyhole. The bonhomme stared at me stupidly; then seemed to know me, and greeted me with a sickly smile. It was some moments before he was able to speak. At last he faintly bade me to descend into the library, open the secret drawer of the secretary ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... is apt to select inconvenient places in which to build a mud-cell wherein to deposit its egg, and the store of live caterpillars destined to be the food of its young when hatched. You find a keyhole, or the tap of a filter, filled with mud as the result of this wasp's labours. It works so rapidly that it generally completes its job in the course of a day. An even more inconvenient site for its nest is the sleeve of a garment left hanging on a peg, especially if you put the garment on while ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... of the sounds within. He rapped a third time, to satisfy any lingering doubt in the minds of those who he felt sure were listening in some trepidation. A moment later a ray of light streamed through the keyhole. ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... conversation with his mistress; so he merely scratched his head, and thought hard to find what he'd say next. I doubt whether the conviction, which was then strong on his mind, that Meg was listening at the keyhole to every word that passed, at all assisted him in the operation. At last, some Muse came to his aid, and he ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... to the study he didn't shut the door properly. That door has always been a little tiresome since the day we took the lock off to get out the pencil sharpener H. O. had shoved into the keyhole. We didn't listen—really and truly—but the Indian Uncle has a very big voice, and Father was not going to be beaten by a poor Indian in talking or anything else—so he spoke up too, like a man, and I heard him say it was a very good business, and only wanted ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... and who was the worst bummer in Encina, went down to Fessler, and complained that he couldn't study because of the noise in that number? And Fessler forgot who roomed there and came up and gave them Tartarus through the keyhole and nearly dropped ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... trickled down from under her drooping lids. But Soelver observed that he had hit upon the truth. Immediately however he regretted that he had cast this look into the sanctuary of her soul. It was like the curious peeping of which the knight had been guilty, spying through the keyhole upon ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... was unlocked but hooked inside, so I took the key out again and put it down on the deck, and took another survey of the limited portion of the room visible to me. I could hear Harris talking in a low tone, and Captain Riggs asking questions, and by putting my ear to the keyhole I heard enough to get the drift of their conversation, although in this position I could not see what ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... entered the corridor, he saw persons grouped at the farther end of it before his door, looking through the keyhole, rapping, and calling out: ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... presumed on. She was sick, she would declare, of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move away on her "souliers de silence," and glide ghost-like through the house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole, listening behind every door. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... next, but on the third day Mary and I both thought we heard a funny sound. I said that Mr. Skinner had left his window open, and it was the blind flapping against the window-pane; but when we heard that funny noise again I put my ear to the keyhole and I thought I could hear a groan. I was very frightened, and sent Mary ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... she was also busily engaged doing. She went softly to the door and turned the key in the lock, to prevent any one from looking through the keyhole, murmuring as ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and look through the keyhole of the Imperial bed-chamber; and bring me word whether ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the year she died. It must be true, for I can show you the very bench ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... young children in her care. She would lie on her bed naked, with two or three naked children, make them suck her breasts and press them to every part of her body. Her conduct was discovered by means of other children who peeped through the keyhole, and she was placed under Penta for treatment. In this case the loss of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in those primitive contacts which are normally the beginning of love, and these, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... then he cheated; and—O, I can't, I can't tell the story. I wouldn't hurt Sculpin for the world. Carry me off, and stick me in jail, if you want to. I won't tell, so there! I'll go to jail fust, and let the pismires carry me out o' the keyhole!—But what's this, I say? Mister Cis-ai-roe Bray, Esquare, insists that I shall tell. Wal, then, as I was goin' to say, he cheated, and so, so, I cheated a little tew, and by'n by, he got mad, and knocked me into a next-week sleep, and in that sleep I seen a dream, and in that dream ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... old brass dial was nailed to the gray boards. Roughly lettered in lampblack beneath it were the words, "Clocks Mended." They climbed the shaky stairs to a landing, supported by long braces, and whereon was a broad door, with latch and keyhole in its weathered timber. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... upper part of the house, she too ascended, going on tip-toe, with a noiselessness which indicated another side of her character. Having reached the room which the visitor had entered, she brought her ear close to the keyhole, and remained in that attitude for a long time—nearly twenty minutes, in fact. Her sudden and swift return to the foot of the stairs was followed by the descent of the woman ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... in the house; and Charity Badge bade me go out of the kitchen, where I was to work, and leave 'em together, but I catched what came after through the keyhole. ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... at the keyhole. It could not have been the wind, by the way, for there was no wind that night. Something else than the wind whistled in at the keyhole, sighed through into the room as much like a long-drawn breath as anything, and fell with a ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... little zest to the rest of his food. He had walked silently when he left his post; no one waiting in the room where the tray was could have heard him, he felt sure. Then how did that person know the instant he stepped away? He could not have been spied on through the keyhole of the door since no keyhole was there; the fastening on the other side was simply that of primitive bar. But that he had been spied on he was confident. Well, why not? The house was old and no doubt had known no end of intrigue in its time. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... a corner where he could not even see his mother's face. He had to sit all day long with nothing to do but think of Mr. Peggotty's house-boat and of little Em'ly and wish he was there. The last night Peggotty, his nurse, crept up and whispered through the keyhole that Mr. Murdstone was going to send him away the next day to a school ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives |
