"Maidservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bell at Number 18, Large Street, and gave his card to the trim little maidservant who opened the door. In a minute or two she returned, and invited him to follow her upstairs; her mistress was in, and would see him at once. She led the way up the broad staircase into a room which could, perhaps, be most aptly described as a feminine den. The walls, above the low bookshelves ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a glove was the hand of a man, who was prostrate upon the floor. Understanding that something terrible had occurred, she rang at the front door, roused Mrs. Woods, the housekeeper, and the two women made their way into the study, having first dispatched the maidservant to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... household of higher rank, stood to the latter in the relation of vassal to liege-lord; and between the two there existed a real bond of loyalty and kindliness. The occupation of servant was then hereditary; children were trained for the duty from an early age. After the man-servant or maidservant had arrived at a certain age, permission to [78] marry was accorded; and the relation of service then ceased, but not the bond of loyalty. The children of the married servants would be sent, when old enough, to work in the house of the master, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... with an irritable force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste, appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed rather to suggest that she might have come ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... in all the parishes of Madrid, with the result that in the course of about a fortnight 600 copies were disposed of in the streets and alleys. A house to house canvass was instituted with remarkable results, for manservant and maidservant bought eagerly of the books. Antonio excelled himself and made some amends for his flight from Labajos, when, like a torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon it. Dark Madrid was becoming illuminated with a flood of Scriptural light. In ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and food. But all appeared to be of little avail. The disease stole on through the village, as if it had been left to work its own way; from day to day tidings came abroad of another and another who was down in the fever,—the Tuckers' maidservant, Mr Hill's shop-boy, poor Mrs Paxton, always sure to be ill when anybody else was, and all John Ringworth's five children. In a fortnight, the church bell began to give token how fatal the sickness was becoming. It tolled till those ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... neglige, the momentous instants spent in choosing headgear and fixing patches, the towers of hair built by the modish coiffeur—children trooping in, in hoops and uniforms, to kiss their mother's hand, the fine gentleman choosing a waistcoat and ogling the pretty embroideress, the pert young maidservant slipping a billet-doux into a beauty's hand under her husband's nose, the old beau toying with a fan, or the discreet abbe taking snuff over the morning gazette. The grand ladies of Longhi's day pay visits in hoop and farthingale, the beaux make "a leg," ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the Code ruled that the woman was no wife, usually stated the consequences to which each party was liable for repudiating the other. These by no means necessarily agree with the Code. Many conditions might be inserted: as that the wife should act as maidservant to her mother-in-law, or to a first wife. The married couple formed a unit as to external responsibility, especially for debt. The man was responsible for debts contracted by his wife, even before her marriage, as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... mostly poor people or peasants; but it was so with the rich and well-to-do in the bloody Middle Ages. The Catholic country gentleman helping the Protestant refugee to escape disguised as a manservant (or a maidservant), and the Protestant country gentleman doing likewise by a hunted Catholic in his turn, as the battles went. Rebel helping royalist, and royalist helping rebel. And always, here and there, down through those ages, the delicate ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... in Germany among all except the very rich, and that this winter will add to the intensity of the conversations on the subject, is not difficult to understand. Most of the shopping of the world is done by women, and the German woman of the middle class, whose maidservant has gone off to a munition factory, has to spend at least half her day waiting in a long line for potatoes, butter, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... was lighted and the maidservant went to work kneading dough—yeast was not used. The loaves were baked on charcoal, as is often done among the Lapps, and at the same ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... of course if the terms were very—oh, they're beginning at last! I hope this light comedy scene will go well. (Curtain rises: Comic dialogue—nothing whatever to do with the plot—between a Footman and a Matinee Maidservant in short sleeves, a lace tucker, and a diamond necklace; depression of audience. Serious characters enter and tell one another long and irrelevant stories, all about nothing. When the auditor remarks, "Your story is indeed a sad one—but go on," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... young Mr. Warren; and we alighted, and a very small maidservant opened the portals of the baronial hall, while the cabman carried up my trunk, and Mr. Warren, senior, greeted ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... shaped into those famous lines, which are in truth the noblest in the poem of the Campaign. As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe; the little maidservant that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round the room curiously, which was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prayers; Mijnheer read a chapter from the Bible, and they sat round the table and listened, and afterwards he said, "Now we will pray," and they sat a while in silence. Julia sat, too, her keen, observing eyes cast down and a curious stillness about her. After that every one went to bed; Julia and the maidservant had two little rooms right up in the eaves of the house; the family slept on the floor below. Julia was glad of this, though it was possible to imagine her room would be very hot in summer and very cold in winter. But she was ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... insolence would be considered quite unpardonable. And yet no people appear to be troubled less with false pride than the class of whom I am speaking. Relatively large landowners, whose names count for a good deal in the district, think there is nothing derogatory in sending a maidservant to market to sell the surplus fruit and eggs. Those who buy are equally practical. They haggle over sous with their friends' servant just as if she were a peasant driving a bargain on her own account. It is the exception, however, when ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker |
