"Old lady" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the sphynx. The critics assert with authority and some show of erudition that the Spohrs, the Mendelssohns, the Humperdincks, and the Montemezzis are great composers. They usually admire the grandchildren of Old Lady Tradition but they neglect to justify this partiality. Nor can we trust the public with its favourite Piccinnis and Puccinis.... What then is the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... her window, they all stopped to bow and curtsy. One curly-headed urchin made bold to take off his well-worn cap and wait to be recognized as "little Johnny,"—"no great scholar," said the kind-hearted old lady to me, "but a sad rogue among our flock of geese. Only yesterday, the young marauder was detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his pocket!" While she was thus discoursing of Johnny's peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the gay parterre," said Dick. Then he turned to Cicely and took hold of her chin between his thumb and finger. "Look here, don't you worry any more, old lady," he said kindly. "You've been a little fool, and you've had a knock. Tell Muriel about it and I'll tell Walter. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... owners of those terrestrial paradises fitted in with the idea of fairyland. They were always old ladies and gentlemen, and they were old-fashioned in their attire, but very magnificent. There was one old lady who was the very Fairy Godmother of the stories. She was the one who had the magnificent mulberry-tree in her garden. One day in every year the children were called in to strip the tree of its fruit; and that was a great ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... p. 377.).—IGNORANS no doubt refers to the oft-repeated allusion to "Dame Partington and her mop;" and taking it for granted that he does so, I will enlighten him a little on the subject. The "original Mrs. Partington" was a respectable old lady, living, at Sidmouth in Devonshire; her cottage was on the beach, and during an awful storm (that, I think, of Nov. 1824, when some fifty or sixty ships were wrecked at Plymouth) the sea rose to such a height as every now and then to invade ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... nothing out of him, out of his lean, ironical face, his eyes screwed up behind his glasses, benevolent, amused at her. She was nobody in that roomful of keen, intellectual people; nobody; nothing but an unnecessary little old lady who ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... the old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, "these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital—the bark has, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... his second marriage, was alive when I was in Russia,—a charming old lady. She gave me her own copy of her "favorite book," a volume (in French) by Khomyakoff, very rare and difficult to obtain; and in discussing literary matters, wound up thus: "They may say what they will about the new men, but no one ever ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... advisable to remember the boy's name. It was Peter Erwin, and he was a favourite in the bank, where he had been introduced by Mr. Leffingwell himself. He was an orphan and lived with his grandmother, an impoverished old lady with good blood in her veins who boarded in Graham's Row, on Olive Street. Suffice it to add, at this time, that he worshipped Mr. Leffingwell, and that he was back in a twinkling with the information that Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hands with the old lady and the young one, and then seated himself in the big chair opposite ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... say, she always eluded the police. At first there were two or three times when she started to return to her grandmother, but went no farther than the stairs; she was afraid of being punished, and could not endure the thought of having to listen to the old lady's complaints. Later on she became accustomed to her new way of living, and no longer felt any desire to leave it, probably because she had begun to take strong drink. Now and again, however, she stole ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... decent livelihood by throwing stones, but I much question whether I should ever have attained to the position in society which I now occupy, but for my knowledge of animals. I lived very comfortably with the old gentleman till he died, which he did about a fortnight after he had laid his old lady in the ground. Having no children, he left me what should remain after he had been buried decently, and the remainder was six dickeys and thirty shillings in silver. I remained in the dickey trade ten years, during which time I saved a hundred pounds. I then embarked in the horse line. One day, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... first it seemed an odd kind of thing to admit a mere working man to her table; but she was so bored with the loneliness of the place that she hailed with delight anything that would break its monotony. Andre at once accepted the proposal, and the old lady would hardly believe her eyes when her guest entered the room with the dress and manners of a highbred gentleman. "It is hardly to be believed," said she, as she was preparing to go to bed, "that a mere carver of stone should be so like a gentleman. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing her ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... allowed to dramatize stories of a kind so poetic, so delicate, or so potentially valuable that the material is in danger of losing future beauty to the pupils through its present crude handling. Mother Goose is a hardy old lady, and will not suffer from the grasp of the seven-year-old; and the familiar fables and tales of the "Goldilocks" variety have a firmness of surface which does not let the glamour rub off; but stories in which there is a hint of the beauty just beyond the palpable—or of a dignity suggestive ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... not have to repay them to me necessarily, my child; you can pass them over, as you will be constantly doing, to all these groups of children, day after day. I am a sort of stupid, rich old lady who serves as a source of supply. My chief brilliancy lies in devising original methods of getting rid of my surplus in all sorts of odd and delightful ways, left untried, for the most part, by other ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Pamela, "how people who don't care for clothes get through their lives. Clothes are a joy to the prosperous, a solace to the unhappy, and an interest always—even to old age. I knew a dear old lady of ninety-four whose chief diversion was to buy a new bonnet. She would sit before the mirror discarding model after model because they were 'too old' for her. One would have thought it difficult to find anything too ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... The old lady went on talking about her son, and Tom, listening to her kindly attempts to draw him out of his own troubles, grew interested, and by the time they reached Winchester, where she left the train, he had shaken off his first depression. It was a long journey with several ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... sister, granny. Well, one day (I remember it so well) she brought a beautiful ring to show us. Oh! it was a beauty, grandmother. There was a ring of lovely large diamonds all round it. She told us that some old lady had given it to her for a keepsake, just before she died, and that she would not lose it for a great deal. "Now," she said, "you are all my friends, and I want a bit of advice. I'm going to start to-morrow on a long journey; ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... by her daughters and granddaughters. Soldiers arrested for breach of discipline often pleaded that they had been 'sent for to finish a job of work for Madame'; and this excuse was usually sufficient to secure an acquittal. If not, the old lady would on her own authority order the culprit's release, and 'no further enquiry was made into the matter.' One British officer, who had incurred her displeasure, was told that 'Me have rendered King Shorge more important service dan ever you did or peut-etre ever shall, and dis is well known ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... could see no one but his old friend. At length the fat man said to him, 'Thou canst now talk as much as it may please thee;' but when he attempted to move his tongue it would no more stir than if it had been a lump of ice, which greatly frightened him. At this point, a fine old lady, with health and benevolence beaming in her face, came to them and slightly smiled at the shepherd. The mother was followed by her three daughters, who were remarkably beautiful. They gazed with somewhat playful looks at him, and at length began to talk ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... to-day!" exclaimed the old lady at the first notes; "you have split our heads long enough. You would do better to study ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... at all. The road was infernal: streams, snow, watercourses, and the dyke had suddenly burst there—that was the worst of it! However, I arrived at last. It was a little thatched house. There was a light in the windows; that meant they expected me. I was met by an old lady, very venerable, in a cap. "Save her!" she says; "she is dying." I say, "Pray don't distress yourself—Where is the invalid?" "Come this way." I see a clean little room, a lamp in the corner; on the bed a girl of twenty, unconscious. She was in a burning heat, and breathing heavily—it was fever. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... feigned. Afterwards, on going ashore with Captain Cook, Omai met a sister of his mother. "She threw herself at his feet, and bedewed them plentifully with tears of joy," says the captain, adding, "I left him with the old lady, in the midst of a number of people ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... villain, he has the philosophy, the humour of his egotism. "I am an old camel, familiar with genuflections," he exclaims. "What harm have I done?" he asks, speaking of his robbery of his relative, the old Madame Descoings. "I have merely cleaned the old lady's mattress." And he is equally indifferent to what destiny reserves for him. "I am a parvenu, my dear fellow; I don't intend to let my swaddling-clothes be seen. My son will be luckier than I; he will be a grand seigneur. The rascal ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to look for the manifest," said Mr. Swann, "and I read it before I could make out what it was. You must admit it's a bit cryptic. I thought it was a new game at first. Getting hold of the old lady sounds like a sort of blind-man's buff. But why not get hold of the young one? Why waste ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... was not at home. He inquired her whereabouts of the waiters in the cafe, the grocer's assistants, the girls at the laundry, the police, and the postman. At last, following the direction of a neighbour, he found her poulticing an old lady, for she was a nurse. Her face was purple and she reeked of brandy. He sent her to watch the corpse. He instructed her to cover it with a sheet, and to hold herself at the disposal of the commissary and the doctor, who would come for the particulars. She ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... measured out in this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained us with minute and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We seemed to be in another ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... some years longer, seeing but few acquaintances, and chiefly in the company of a pious old lady, with whom he occupied the same dwelling, and who lived on the rent of an adjoining house, her only income. During this interval, he gained one of his law-suits, and soon after the other; but his health was destroyed, and his future prospects blasted. A slight cause brought on a relapse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... The old lady was thin and flat of line, like a bas-relief that had come alive and lost its background. She had in her forget-me-not blue eyes the look of a child who has never been allowed to grow up; and I knew at once that she was one of those women ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Governor Bellingham's lamp, the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness—into which, nevertheless, he could see but ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he loved her, and had asked her to be his wife. Something whispered that she would not refuse him, and with this hope to buoy him up, his two miles walk that warm afternoon was neither long nor tiresome, and the old lady, by whose bedside he had read and prayed, was surprised to hear him as he left her door whistling an old love-tune which she, too, had known and sung fifty ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... virtuous Brutus virtuously assassinated his father. The virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary had herself whipped by her confessor, the virtuous Conrad, and the virtuous Janicot doted on virtuous little boys; and finally Monseigneur is virtuous, but his old lady friends look down and smile when he ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... at the gate. There was Alexander, brisk and smiling, very glad to see his "little misses" again, and to find them so glad to go home. Mrs. Worrett, however, did not discover that they were glad; no indeed! Elsie and John were much too polite for that. They thanked the old lady, and said good-by so prettily that, after they were gone, she told Mr. Worrett that it hadn't been a bit of trouble having them there, and she hoped they would come again; they enjoyed every thing so much; only it was a pity that Elsie looked so peaked. And at that very moment Elsie ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... is absent at Havana, and will probably remain so for a few days, until his wrist gets well; in the meantime, his sister acts as duenna over Donna Clara. She is quite a nice old lady, however, and allows my sister far greater liberty in her brother's absence than ordinarily, as, for instance, to-day. I will get her to permit Clara to spend a few days at my villa down the bay—Alvarez himself ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... to the Devonshire village, and introduced himself to George Jernam's aunt. The old lady was much altered since she had last welcomed a visitor to her pretty, cheerful cottage, and had listened with simple surprise and pleasure to her nephew Valentine's tales of the sea, and they had talked together over the troublous days of his unhappy childhood. The untimely and tragic death of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... gave the girls at her school a holiday on the tenth of June. It was her birthday; and though the old lady would not allow her pupils to make her any presents, saying, in her firm manner, "Such things speedily become a tax, my dears," yet she was always pleased that they should decorate the schoolrooms in her honor, and hang a handsome wreath ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... for that! I'm suspicious of men who are devoted to your grandmother, charming old lady though she is. But, in spite of Dr. Burns's invaluable opinion, I must beg to differ with him. You can't be comfortable in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... Miss Crawford will break down. Poor old lady! it goes to my heart to see her. She tries so hard not to see that she is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... haunt certain places,” and a writer in the “Archæological Review” (for January, 1890) says that “Shag” is an old term for an elf, or Brownie, or “goblin dwarf.” He adds, “The Hog-boy, or Howe-boy, of the Orkneys, in Lincolnshire is pronounced Shag-boy.” An old lady, born at the beginning of the eighteenth century, is quoted, in “The Cornhill Magazine” (August, 1882) as saying she had often heard of fairies and shag boys, but had never seen one herself, “though lasses were often skeart (i.e., scared, frightened) at them.” And the weird-looking figure of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... Lady Ann Carthew," he said, in an august whisper. And looking over his shoulder I was aware of an old lady with a stick, hobbling somewhat briskly along the garden path. She must have been extremely handsome in her youth; and even the limp with which she walked could not deprive her of an unusual and almost menacing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old lady, don't let me down!" he was saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called above his head: "Captain ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of obstacles had attended his intrusion into the castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs. Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while talking ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... said courteously, "I've just been a-hearing how you-all suffered from the storm. Mr. Greeley done told me the old lady is ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... anxiety, Mrs. de Vaux was unaffectedly pleased to see her eldest son. She was a fine, white-haired old lady, dignified and handsome, but with very few soft lines about her ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have been attending to nothing but how to give the words effect as they existed, I was feeling the chilling consciousness, that they might have been, and ought to have been, a great deal better. However, we kindled up at last when we got to the East Indies, although on the mention of tigers, an old lady, whose tongue had been impatient for an hour, broke in with, "I wonder if Mr. Croftangry ever heard the story of Tiger Tullideph?" and had nearly inserted the whole narrative as an episode in my tale. She was, however, brought to reason, and the subsequent mention of shawls, diamonds, turbans, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... thanked her, and had been infinitely comforted and refreshed by her care, and that all he meant was to express his distaste to Mother Jugge, the lavender (i.e. laundress), and his desire for Richard Fowen's company; but he was little attended to, and apparently more than half offended, the brisk old lady trotted away. ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waved his hand with an air of finality—"in the shop what you says goes, but in this here home I take my orders from the old lady. See?" ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... of Hannah More. Samuel Goodrich, at least, confessed that his many tales were the direct result of a conversation with Miss More, whom, because of his admiration for her books, he made an effort to meet when in England in eighteen hundred and twenty-three. While talking with the old lady about her "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," the idea came to Mr. Goodrich that he, himself, might write for American children and make good use of her method of introducing much detail in description. As a child he had not found the few toy-books within ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... fricassee, boiled chicken, roast hare, omelette, bread, cheese, figs, and wine—for such a bill of fare had Dhemetri made ready for us—we swallowed it hastily, huddled our beds about the fire, wrapped ourselves in our blankets, and lay down at once. The inquisitive old lady below, on seeing the extensive preparations for the supper of three fellow-mortals, was struck with reverence for us, and expressed her belief that those, who lived on such marvelous and unheard-of delicacies would never die. We, indeed, had requested Dhemetri to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It was the home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that ever was brought together. At the head of the establishment Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs Desmoulins, whose family he had known many years before in Staffordshire. Room was ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man and the woman did not go to the porch where the old lady sat. With a wave of their hands, they passed from her sight around the house, and, a few minutes later, stood face to face in that quiet, secluded, corner of the garden, under the old cherry ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... 17th September, they reached Tette on the 23d November, 1860, whence they started for Kongone with the unfortunate "Ma-Robert." But the days of that asthmatic old lady were numbered. On the 21st December she grounded on a sand-bank, and could not get off. A few days before this catastrophe Livingstone writes to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... aunt in London," Lenora told him, "the dearest old lady you ever knew. She'd give anything to have ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after the council, the king went to spend the evening with the Countess of Castro, an old lady who had dandled him on her knees when an infant, and who alone could recall to him the sweet memories of his childhood and youth. She was very ugly, and something of a witch, it is said; but the world is so wicked that we must never believe more ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... summer months he went to a school in {13} the city, taught by a Mr Bromley on Lancaster's system. 'What kind of a boy was Joe?' was asked of an old lady who had gone to school with him sixty years before. 'Why, he was a regular dunce; he had a big nose, a big mouth, and a great big ugly head; and he used to chase me to death on my way home from school,' was her ready answer. It is easy to picture ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... distrusted by James at Rome. 'She is a mad woman,' said James. She and Carte, the historian, were working up an English rising to join the Prince's Scottish adventure, but were baffled by James's cautious, helpless advisers. Then came the Forty-Five. Eleanor was not subdued by Culloden: the undefeated old lady was a guest at the great dinner, with the splendid new service of plate, which the Prince gave to the Princesse de Talmond and his friends in 1748. He was braving all Europe, in his hopeless way, and refusing to leave France, in accordance with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Ted's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka's remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... under Miss Van Harlem's attentions and gentle Mrs. Beatoun's tact, and the winning ways of the last Beatoun baby. She took this absent cherub to her heart with such undissembled warmth that its mother ever since has called her "a sweet, funny little old lady." ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... Sir William took Coach with his Sister, for the old Lady's Enchanted Castle, taking only one Trunk of hers with them for the present, promising her to send her other Things to her the next Day. The young Lady was very joyfully and respectfully received by her Brother's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Soldiers and Sailors Dental Aid Fund (43, Leicester Square), which has done exceptional service during the War, comes the story of an old lady who applied for a set of teeth for her soldier grandson. When asked if he would know how to take care of them, she replied that she would give him the benefit of her own experience, having always made it a rule to remove her artificial teeth at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... time there was a Little Old Woman who lived in a Shoe. This shoe stood near a great forest, and was so large that it served as a house for the Old Lady and all her children, of which she had so many that she did not know what to do ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... life; but this only proved a lightning[196] before death. He has bequeathed to this lady, as a token of his love, a great pearl necklace, and a couple of silver bracelets set with jewels, which belonged to my good old lady his mother: he has bequeathed the fine white gelding, that he used to ride a-hunting upon, to his chaplain, because he thought he would be kind to him; and has left you all his books. He has, moreover, bequeathed to the chaplain a ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... Berkeley after dinner clapped my hat on another lady's head, and she in roguery put it upon the rails. I minded them not; but in two minutes they called me to the window, and Lady Carteret(18) showed me my hat out of her window five doors off, where I was forced to walk to it, and pay her and old Lady Weymouth(19) a visit, with some more beldames. Then I went and drank coffee, and made one or two puns, with Lord Pembroke,(20) and designed to go to Lord Treasurer; but it was too late, and beside I was half broiled, and broiled without butter; for I never sweat after dinner, if I drink any ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... for the Crow, and he almost forgot to be miserable. He followed old lady Ostrich about for some time before he dared tweak a handful of feathers from her tail. But finally he succeeded; and though she squawked horribly and turned, quick as a flash, she was not quick enough ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... remember with satisfaction an old picture in Punch, representing a festive old gentleman in a state of collapse on the pavement, and a philanthropic old lady anxiously calling the attention of a cabman to the calamity. The old lady says, 'I'm sure this poor gentleman is ill,' and the cabman replies with fervour, 'Ill! I wish I 'ad 'alf ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... paid a visit to a delightful little old lady, with a face, full of wrinkled sweetness and humour, which Denner might have painted. She insisted upon showing us all over her home, and a little miracle it was of thrift and neatness and order; from the spotlessly ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in the village, though not, as it proved, in the right direction, regarding a poor old lady, several years dead, of whom I had known a very little considerably more than a quarter of a century before, and whose grave I would have visited, bad as the night was, had I met any one who could have pointed it out to me. But ungrateful Portsoy seemed to have forgotten poor ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... forlorn. The paternal creditors proved insatiable. The gipsy home in Gower Street had to be broken up. Mrs. Dickens and the children went to live at the Marshalsea. Little Charles was placed under the roof—it cannot be called under the care—of a "reduced old lady," dwelling in Camden Town, who must have been a clever and prophetic old lady if she anticipated that her diminutive lodger would one day give her a kind of indirect unenviable immortality by making her figure, under the name of "Mrs. Pipchin," in "Dombey ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... fronted him: a tall, handsome, dark girl faced him, holding an oil-lamp in her hand. He did not know her, but I could have told him that she was old Mother Holf's youngest child, Rosa, for I had often seen her as I rode through the town of Zenda with the king, before the old lady moved her dwelling to Strelsau. Indeed the girl had seemed to haunt the king's foot-steps, and he had himself joked on her obvious efforts to attract his attention, and the languishing glances of her great black eyes. But it is the lot of ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... get no help. I live with the girls. My girl in Memphis sends me a little change to buy my snuff and little things I have to have. She cooks for a lawyer now. She did take care of an lady. She died since I been here and she moved. I rather work in the field than do what she done when that old lady lived. She was like a baby to tend to. She had to stay in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... But he thought he would adventure it if he could get a safe-conduct from the tiger. The matter was arranged: the duke sent Bonivard his passport, limited to a single month; and the prior arrived at Seyssel, and nearly frightened the poor old lady out of her last breath with her sense of the peril to which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... came on the scene in the unwonted form of an old lady. Margaret, sister and survivor of the brothers Van Eyck, left Flanders, and came to end her days in her native country. She bought a small house near Tergou. In course of time she heard of Gerard, and saw some of his handiwork: it pleased ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... dressed in black cloth trousers, black alpaca blouse, and spotless, faultlessly-ironed linen, received us with great cordiality and the ease of a well-bred man. His mother lived with him, a charming old lady, like himself peasant-born, but having excellent manners. She wore the traditional black hood of aged and widowed Huguenot women, and her daughter-in-law and little granddaughter, neat stuff gowns and coloured cashmere ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... think of going, admiral; it is too late in the day, and you are not fit for such a walk," said the old lady, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... on a cheery bald little old gentleman in Java, and a mild little spectacled old lady, with knitting proclivities, in England, whose chief solace, in a humble way, was an ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... that this inference coincided with suspicions he had formed, since our last interview, in consequence of certain communications from his housekeeper. It seems the character of Clithero had, from the first, exercised the inquisitiveness of this old lady. She had carefully marked his musing and melancholy deportment. She had tried innumerable expedients for obtaining a knowledge of his past life, and particularly of his motives for coming to America. These expedients, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... horse, Harry, and take the Czar," Guy said. "I'll ride Kathleen home. Steady, old lady—don't fret. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... also, if these were insufficient, was, that the proprietor of the boat dropped his turban overboard, with two rupees in the folds of it, and the old lady his spouse had stopped the fleet for at least an hour to cry over the misfortune. Before breakfast we had a swim, and found ourselves only just able to make way against the stream. Breakfasted on the river bank, under the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... ain't much on cathedrals I never went to Rouen. Of course it's the old trick, bringing a pretty girl to a fashionable watering place to marry her off, but these folks are not poor. Not what we'd call rich, perhaps, but good and solid. I don't fall for the old lady; she's a cool proposition or I miss my guess, but the girl's all right. I've seen too many girls in this Mecca for adventurous females and never made a mistake yet. I wish some of our grand dames would extend the glad hand. But I'm afraid they ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... little weaknesses of my seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant. Without the slightest provocation from me, with nothing passing him at the time but a pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from a state of sluggish depression to a state of frantic high spirits. He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully. I sat on him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell off. No, Francis! this is not ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... long time, and welcomed him with even a brighter smile than usual. But her head rested wistfully on her aunt's bosom after that; and when he asked her if she was almost ready to go, she hid her face there and put her arms about her neck. The old lady held her close for a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... graduated scale of duties on foreign grain. 'Manners and I,' he says, 'were returned as protectionists. My speeches were of absolute dulness, but I have no doubt they were sound in the sense of my leaders Peel and Graham and others of the party.' The election offered no new incidents. One old lady reproached him for not being content with keeping bread and sugar from the people, but likewise by a new faith, the mysterious monster of Puseyism, stealing away from them the bread of life. He found the wesleyans shaky, partly because they disliked his book and were afraid of the Oxford Tracts, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that very eccentric old lady whom Mrs. Godfrey always calls Mother Quixote, who is so rich, and always travels with a white Persian cat? Of course I have seen her at church. She is stout, rather addicted to gorgeous raiment, and wears a ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... travellers to look up amazed, she wove a web in her brain something like this:- "I know what my aunts will be like: they will be just like ladies in a book. They will be dreadfully fashionable! Let me see—Aunt Barbara will have a turban on her head, and a bird of paradise, like the bad old lady in Armyn's book that Mary took away from me; and they will do nothing all day long but try on flounced gowns, and count their jewels, and go out to balls and operas—and they will want me to do the same—and play at cards all Sunday! 'Lady Caergwent,' they will ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been afraid that family misunderstandings might deprive her of her yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the first day of December Alexandra telephoned Annie that to-morrow she would send Ivar over for her mother, and the next day the old lady arrived with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Lee had always entered Alexandra's sitting-room with the same exclamation, "Now we be yust-a like old times!" She enjoyed the liberty Alexandra gave her, and hearing her own language about her all day ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... much every Roebuck in that circle, even the old lady, looked like Roebuck himself—the same smug piety, the same underfed appearance that, by the way, more often indicates a starved soul than a starved body. One difference—where his face had the look of power that compels respect and, to the shrewd, reveals relentless strength relentlessly ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... A: Victim an old lady, aged 71, who died as the result of a struggle, in which prisoner committed ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... clouds dropped their rheum upon. She is always ready for jacobinical scoffs at a man for being a lord, if he happens to fail; she is always ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. Ah, dear sycophantic old lady, I kiss your sycophantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... those members ply the smoking pestle; and airy squadrons of flies, borne on the breeze, enter boldly, as though free of the house, and, taking advantage of the fact that the glare of the sunshine is troubling the old lady's sight, disperse themselves over broken and unbroken fragments alike, even though the lethargy induced by the opulence of summer and the rich shower of dainties to be encountered at every step has induced them to enter less for the purpose of eating than for that of showing ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... son!" continued the old lady, "I see that, like most young frogs, you are very obstinate, and will not listen to reason. But why on earth you should wish to go gadding after a poor, hungry little mouse, is more than I can tell—you with your beautiful legs and speckled coat, ...
— The Frog Who Would A Wooing Go • Charles Bennett
... soft," said Ralph Flare. "She has brightened many a bit of Belgian pike road, and the brown turban on her head is in clever contrast to the silver shimmer of her hairs. How anomalous are life and art! How unconscious is this old lady of the narrow escape she is making from perpetuation! Doubtless she works afield beside that old Jacques Bonhomme, and drinks sour wine or Normandy cider on Sundays. That may be the best fate of Suzette, but it must be an amply dry reformation for any ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... stern old lady; "my brother Bridgenorth hath permitted you to make a Herodias of Alice, and teach her dancing. You have only now to find her a partner for life—I shall neither meddle nor make more ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... was Bitwaddad Hailo, the best of the lot; he was in charge of the gaol, but was never known to abuse his position. His two brothers had commanded our escort from the frontier to the Emperor's camp in Damot; his mother, a fine old lady, also accompanied us part of the way: the brothers and the mother had been well treated by us, so that even before we came to the Amba we were known to him, and he always conducted himself very civilly, and proved useful on many occasions. When he heard of ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... joined the church he attended, and seemed only waiting with her dollars for the very call which he was destined to make. She was hardly settled in a little three-room cottage before he hastened to her side, kindly intent, or its counterfeit, beaming from his features. He found a weak-looking old lady propped in a great chair, while another stout and healthy-looking woman ministered to her wants or stewed about the house in ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... down into the drawing-room he was surprised to find another old friend sitting there alone. "Mr. Finn," said the old lady, "I hope I see you quite well. I am glad to meet you again. You find my niece much ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... have to ride out of here on my horse, ma'am," he said, "if you reckon you'd care to. Why, yes, I expect that's right; I'd ought to take the old lady an' gentleman first, ma'am," ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... so soft, so sorrowful and sympathetic, that Crow felt as he followed her as if, in the hour of his deepest disgrace, he had found a friend; and when presently he stood in a great square room before a high arm-chair, in which a white-haired old lady sat looking at him over her gold-rimmed spectacles and talking to him as he had never been spoken to in all his life before, he felt as if he were in a great court before a judge who didn't understand half how very ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... boy and girl has seen the chalet-like "weather-house," where one might suppose the clerk of the unreliable elements to reside, and which is certainly tenanted by a gay old lady, who comes out when the sun shines, and a military gentleman, who, disregarding catarrh, parades in front of the cottage whenever there is a rain-cloud in the sky. In this case the figures are held on a kind of lever sustained by catgut: this, being very sensitive to moisture, twists ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... seems to get on pretty well. Now Dodd came to me in some distress, and said, 'Would you be so good, sir, as to see mother? she wants a word with you bad, very bad.' I of course said I was very ready to hear what she had to say. So I called at the little shop, which I often pass. I found the old lady in great trouble about a young woman who had been lodging with her for some time. She, Mrs. Dodd, did not know that her lodger was absolutely ill, but she scarcely eats anything, she never went out, she sometimes sat up half the night. Hitherto she had paid her rent regularly, but on ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... in the proper direction, but not always on the rector, would reach for his hat, get up and slip out. On these occasions, however, he would first identify the owner of the hand and then bend over the one permanent occupant of the pew, a little old lady. His speech was as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay, for he either said, "I'll be back for dinner," or "Don't look for me ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... him, his frank and animated face predisposed me in his favor. On the mantel, I observed a picture of an old lady. I stepped up to look at it, and he said it ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... advice of the aunt was sought. She was a woman of an eccentric, masculine character, who had herself experienced a love-disappointment in early life, and had never married. She gave her opinion unreservedly and abruptly, as she always gave it. "Do as Jane tells you!" said the old lady, severely; "that poor child has more moral courage and determination than all the rest of you put together! I know better than any body what a sacrifice she has had to make; but she has made it, and made it nobly—like a heroine, as some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... as 'an old lady, who talks broad Scotch with a paralytick voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen.' Piozzi Letters, i.109. Lord Shelburne says that 'her husband, the last Duke, could neither read nor write without great difficulty.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 11. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the old lady in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... occurred some years after this when two gentlemen of position in Norfolk, with twenty-five followers, who appear to have been their regular retainers, and a great multitude on foot and horse, came to Little Barningham, where in the Hall there lived an old lady, Petronilla de Gros; they set fire to the house in five places, dragged out the old lady, treated her with the most brutal violence, and so worked upon her fears that they compelled her to tell them where her money and jewels were, and, having seized them, I conclude that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... holding it open for them to look inside. "You see it no more answers the young lady's description than the others do. And I haven't another to show you. You have seen all those in front, and this is the last one in the rear. You'll have to believe our story. The old lady never ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... staring at the old lady who sat nodding her head in emphasis until her jet and gold earrings were all a-twinkle. "It was as easy as that,—yet no ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... liking to disturb her faith either in the man or the bottle, he had himself helped her to the first dose, and had then begun to talk about the creature comforts before described, the very mention of which seemed to cheer the old lady's heart, and to interest her at least as much as the biography of ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... unfailing good humor of their dusky tribe. The eyes of the children were large and lustrous, and they revealed the clear pearls beneath their lips as they clung bashfully to their mother's lap. The old lady was smoking a clay pipe; the man running over some castaway jackets and boots. I remarked particularly the broad shoulders and athletic arms of the woman, whose many childbirths had left no traces upon her ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... said, "a dear old lady," sweet of face, yet stately, though now she looked careworn too; and rising I bowed respectfully, as, acting under one of those sudden impulses which are sometimes better than ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... trunk!" barks out a big, round man. "That's my bandbox!" screams a heart-stricken old lady, in terror for her immaculate Sunday caps. "Where's my little red box? I had two carpet-bags and a—My trunk had a scarle—Halloo! where are you going with that portmanteau? Husband! Husband! do see after the large basket and the little hair-trunk—Oh, and the baby's little chair!" "Go ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... is a truly international bond between them) feel at the thought of a foreigner, though the shock of finding oneself amongst such peculiarities of clothes, or frisure, or table-manners may be almost unbearable. "Can you tell me," said a charming but agitated old lady from Bath one day, "of a hotel where there are no foreigners?" "I am afraid I cannot," I answered. "The hotel you have in mind would be full of foreigners in Switzerland, and you would but add to ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... laughter and yet they never grimace. As for their voices, they soon get them into tune. Some of them have been known to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they have been presented to Royalty they all roll their R's as vigorously as a young equerry or an old lady-in-waiting. Still, they never really lose their accent; it keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter together they are like a bevy of peacocks. Nothing is more amusing than to watch two American girls greeting each other in a drawing-room ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the colonel, "Forbes is a damned idiot. The old lady can stay on, and if anybody annoys her, ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... say I can't, because I'm going to—somehow. So don't be surprised at anything. Leslie Manor is not so many miles away and ways and means can be contrived in spite of all the old maid guardians that ever lived. Wonder if the old lady knows how it feels to have a man kiss her? I bet she don't! I've never seen your Suffragette queen, but I don't need to after all you've told me about her. She ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... and degrading superstition, that I am not sure I could have found myself liberal enough for voting the repeal of the penal laws as they existed before 1780. They must and would, in course of time, have smothered Popery; and I confess that I should have seen the old lady of Babylon's mouth stopped with pleasure. But now that you have taken the plaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot see the sense of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... to examine more minutely the strange objects around me. There were some persons in the place whose punishment, like my own, was light compared with others. But near me lay one old lady extended on a rack. Her joints were all dislocated, and she was emaciated to the last degree. I do not suppose I can describe this rack, for I never saw anything like it. It looked like a gridiron but was ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... to the young man's house and he told them his history. The circus people had carried him off. For three years he traveled with them in various countries. Then the troupe disbanded, and one day an old lady in a chateau had paid to have him stay with her because she liked his appearance. As he was intelligent, he was sent to school, then to college, and the old lady having no children, had left him all her money. He, for his part, had tried to find his parents, but as he could remember ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Thornton girl's marriage. It was too much for Thornton himself, though she was his sister. He used to go and sit in his own room perpetually. He's getting past the age for caring for such things, either as principal or accessory. I was surprised to find the old lady falling into the current, and carried away by her daughter's enthusiasm for orange-blossoms and lace. I thought Mrs. Thornton had been made of ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... possessor of a few cattle. He had butter too, waiting to be sent to Reykjavik, which we tasted and found very good, and an old-fashioned churn, some three feet high, like a chimney-pot with a rod down the middle, terminating in a piece of flat wood. Of this churn the old lady seemed very proud, and she was quite delighted when I lifted the rod up and down, to find I knew how to use it. I believe that ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of this kind Mrs. Parmigan used to cry out, "My dear—pray, now—do consider." And Miss Grantley used to smile at her, and then the old lady would laugh till she shook the room. That was the way with our governess; she seemed able to make some people laugh by only smiling at them; and she could make people cry too by looking at them with quite a different sort of grave smile and the strange light in her ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... William Rogerson, her father, was one of many brothers, all men of uncommon strength and great force of character, quite worthy of the Border Rievers of an earlier day. Indeed, it was in some such way that he secured his wife, though the dear old lady in after days was chary about telling the story. She was a girl of good position, the ward of two unscrupulous uncles who had charge of her small estate, near Langholm; and while attending some boarding school she fell devotedly in love with the tall, fair-haired, gallant ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... have," she went on. "This morning an old lady dropped her handkerchief under my very eyes and I was in such a hurry to get to you that I didn't stop to pick it up. And all my clothes need mending. That good waist is all ripped where you ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of Junia drew to her aunt—her slim feet, in the brown, well-polished boots, the long, full neck, and then the chin, Grecian, shapely and firm, the straight, sensitive nose, the wonderful eyes under the well-cut, broad forehead, with the brown hair, covering it like a canopy—the old lady reached out and wound her arms round the lissome figure. Situated so, she read the telegram, and then the old arms gripped ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The old lady who said to her friend, "My dear, it is impossible to exaggerate the unimportance of things," had learned what it meant to drop everything that interferes, and must have been truly on her way to the concentration which should be the very central power of all life,—obedience ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... the morning-glory as the loveliest example of a graceful yielding to the inevitable. It is beautiful before its twisted corolla opens; it is comely as it folds its petals inward, when its brief hours of perfection are over. Women find it easier than men to grow old in a becoming way. A very old lady who has kept something, it may be a great deal, of her youthful feelings, who is daintily cared for, who is grateful for the attentions bestowed upon her, and enters into the spirit of the young lives that surround her, is as precious to those who love her as a gem in an ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... feelings in the hall, Teddy was undergoing torments in the kitchen that are past description. He had had a grandmother—with no nose to speak of, a mouth large enough for two, four teeth, and one eye—who had stuffed him in his youth with horrible stories as full as a doll is of sawdust. That old lady's influence was now strong upon him. Every gust of wind that rumbled in the chimney sent a qualm to his heart. Every creak in the beams of his wooden kitchen startled his soul. Every accidental noise that occurred filled him with unutterable horror. The door, being ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... Champs-Elysees; I was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and the white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had been cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a long pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady herself, having folded up her Debats, asked a passing nursemaid the time, thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the road-sweeper to tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding "A thousand ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... child, and the accounts of her health and spirits which her governess, Mademoiselle Vadevant, gave Lady Coke, did not satisfy that dear old lady. She did not like to hear that Estelle was apt to cry on the slightest excuse; that she had no energy, no appetite; that she was listless in her play, never happy except when with her father, and soon grew tired with the least exertion. Every breath of wind appeared ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various |
