"Rumpled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the sitting room huddled close together, Keziah holding the broom like a battle-ax, ready for whatsoever might develop. From the dimness of the tightly shuttered study stepped the owner of the voice, a stranger, a young man, his hair rumpled, his tie disarranged, and the buttons of his waistcoat filling the wrong buttonholes. Despite this evidence of a hasty toilet in semidarkness, he was not unprepossessing. Incidentally, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a rumpled Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and Sergius, and an antique gold ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... was a mother of many, hardly knew which to pity more,—Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her antimacassars rumpled by a young Jackanapes, or the boy himself for being brought ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... message, which Rangar read and returned to him. Then Rangar drove to the office from which the boy had come and dispatched a message of his own, one not covered by his instructions from Mr. Foote. It was a private matter with him, inspired by an incident of the morning having to do with a rumpled necktie and a ruffled dignity. The malice which had glittered in his ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... everything three or four times, until Malone was just as sick of being an FBI agent as he had ever been of being a padded-cell case. But, at last, he stood before Dr. Blake in the corridor outside, once again fully dressed. Slightly rumpled, of course, but fully dressed. It did, Malone thought, make a difference, and if clothes didn't exactly make the man they were a long way from ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... plumbing. A window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... a man, tu," she said, apropos of nothing in particular. But the newcomer understood. He rumpled his hair and snorted and frowned at the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the school lessons they had had in common, and a great many of the teacher's uncalled-for remarks. Suddenly Hulda said: "But you must make haste, Effi; why, you look—why, what shall I say—why, you look as though you had just come from a cherry picking, all rumpled and crumpled. Linen always gets so badly creased, and that large white turned down collar—oh, yes, I have it now; you look like ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... showed him some wrinkles which he had not observed before—a condition of decrepitude unnoticed in the imperfect light of Parisian rooms. He thought, as he examined the corners of his eyes, and saw the rumpled lids, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Frank. The room was rocking. Plaster fell about them. The girl screamed. To his astonishment, Frank found his arms around her waist. He was patting her dark, rumpled hair. Her hands were on his shoulders, and her piquant, wistful face close to his own. She had sought him like a frightened child. And he, with masculine protective impulse, had responded. That was all. Or was it? They looked ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... which he returned left the question open as to how he got out of the District Attorney's office. He claimed to have bowed himself politely out the door—but, from the condition of his clothes and the rumpled state of his hair, his comrades cherished the secret but sure conviction that he was kicked down the stairs. Be that as it may, from that day Stuart was left to his own devices by the professional politicians, who were loud ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... presently managed to articulate, "if you look like that I shall die," and as the god of Momus once more seized her, she dragged the quilt into a rumpled pile, and buried her face in it, as if indeed attempting ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... prodigious watch-chain of steel, and a huge incroyable under his arm. This last article, indeed, was an appendage of 1802, but all the rest presented a genuine portrait of an indigent and coxcombical journeyman tailor. He must have known that pantaloons and an incroyable rumpled and folded together are incongruous articles of apparel—that no gentleman, much less Sir Brilliant Fashion, would make his appearance in a threadbare coat; and that steel watch-chains, as the chronicles of the Birmingham manufactories plainly evince, have been out of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... daughter came on the fifth. Mr. Barrett, who was in an easy-chair, wooing slumber with a handkerchief over his head, heard their voices at the front door and the cordial invitation of his housekeeper. They entered the room as he sat hastily smoothing his rumpled hair. ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the perspiration from ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... ran to pick them up. When he came back, dangling the ducks by their feet, Marie held her apron and he dropped them into it. As she stood looking down at them, her face changed. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of feathers with the blood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked at the live color that still burned on ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... now began to swoop up and chuckle at him, and others flew around him, as the hat spun along through the air, gravely staring him in the face for a while, and then sailed away, sadly bleating like sheep. Then a great creature, with rumpled feathers, perched upon the brim of the hat where the Goblin had been sitting, and, after solemnly gazing at him for a few moments, softly murmured, "I'm a Cockalorum," and flew heavily away. All this was very sad and distressing, and Davy was mournfully ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... that's settled, anyway," Lucile murmured, as she hung up the receiver. "Now I will have to rush," and away she flew to her room, hair rumpled and eyes shining, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... that nook afar (If it were but reading the evening star): And the Swan he ruffled his plumes and hissed, And with sounding buffets, which seldom missed, He walloped into that paddler gay (Bent on enjoying his holiday). He smote him here, and he spanked him there, Upset his "balance," rumpled his hair. "I'll teach you," he cried, with pounding pinions, "To come intruding in my dominions!" And the frightened flags, and the startled reeds, And the willow-branches hoar and dank, And the shaking rushes and wobbling weeds, And the wave-worn horns of the echoing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... personality then. He was simply a studious young man with a sanctimonious air. But now that the wind and the sun had somewhat turned his fair skin and brought out a goodly crop of freckles, now that the vigor of his movements and the healthy perspiration had rumpled up his reddish-brown hair and put a wave in it, he could—standing up on his log—easily have passed for a husky woodsman; until some experienced eye observed him make such sorry work of a woodsman's task. He had acquired no skill ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... expression of a pretty woman in danger of using elementary means to dry her tears, made Dick Bellamy chuckle with laughter of a quality that Amaryllis had not heard from him before, while he chose the least rumpled handkerchief from his stock of four, and shook it ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... of them ran to assist the bishop and his fallen friends. The midshipmen quickly picked themselves up, very much frightened at what they had done, but not a bit the worse for their tumble. The ecclesiastic was next placed on his legs, with robes somewhat rumpled, but happily without contusions or bones broken, though dreadfully alarmed and inclined to be somewhat angry at the indignity he had suffered. Jack endeavoured to apologise with the few words of Portuguese he could command, Tom and Gerald assisting him to the best of their power, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... and speak very kindly. Of course you know,' he added, after a moment's pause, as he drew his chair towards the fire again, 'I should not hesitate to avail myself of your services if you could help me at all; but mercy on us!'—Here he rumpled his hair impatiently with his hand, and looked at Tom as if he took it rather ill that he was not somebody else—'you might as well be a toasting-fork or a frying-pan, Pinch, for any help you can ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... falsetto, and the ruins had a more than usually dejected look, as though they had suddenly lost all hope of themselves. He called again, and this time, like an earth-sprite, Frances Wilmot rose up from a sheltered corner and waved to him. She had a book in her hand, and she rubbed her eyes and rumpled up her short hair as though rousing herself from ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... cold wind which penetrated his clothes and shrivelled the very meat of his bones. The river's surface, which he had come to regard as a shimmering, polished floor, was now rumpled and broken into lumpy waves, like mud on a road, and the waves broke into dull yellow foam caps. There was not a light gleam on the whole surface, and dark shadows seemed to crawl and twist about in the very substance of the heavy and ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... fellow! But never you mind that; I do not doubt that I shall find more in you upon further acquaintance. As coy and bashful as you seem, I dare say you are rogue enough at bottom. When I have touzled and rumpled you a little, we shall see. I am no chicken, miss, whatever you may think. I know what is what, and can see as far into a millstone as another. Ay, ay; you will come to. The fish will snap at the bait, never doubt it. Yes, yes, we shall ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... him. Nikky and his companion bowed, and Nikky surveyed him through his goggles. The same mocking face he remembered, from Karl's visit to the summer palace, the same easy, graceful carriage, the same small mustache. He was in evening dress, and the bosom of his shirt was slightly rumpled. He had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated. He was slightly flushed, his eyes were abnormally bright. He looked, for the moment; rather amiable. Nikky was to learn, later on, how easily his smile hardened to a terrifying grin. The long, rather delicate nose of his family, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... house, like most in the country, and nearly without partitions. The old man had his warm box-bed, and slept on feathers where no draught could reach him, and the poor woman had her bed of short rumpled straw on the earthen floor at the foot of the wall in the coldest corner. Yet the heart of the man had been moved by her story, for, without dwelling on her sufferings, she had been honest in telling ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... astounded listeners the sound of a fierce scuffle, then Robert descended, his hair rumpled and his tie awry, holding William by the arm. William looked pale and apprehensive. "He was there," panted Robert, "just getting out of the window. He chucked the things out of his pockets and got away. I couldn't stop him. And—and William ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... by the neck and raised him. The fellow uttered a cry that was choked. De Launay pulled off his hat and substituted his own on the rumpled locks of the young man. He then swung him about as though he were a child, laid him over his knees and stripped from him ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Barnabas felt his rumpled cravat, and nodded. "And your vatch, now—don't tell me as they ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... Walker see it. We was sitting inside 'ere with scythes, and pitchforks, and such-like things handy, when we see 'im come in without 'is hat. His eyes were staring and 'is hair was all rumpled. He called for a pot o' ale and drank it nearly off, and then 'e sat gasping and 'olding the mug between 'is legs and shaking 'is 'ead at the floor till everybody 'ad left off ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... A. Mitscher, the famed commander of Task Force 58, coming on board a flagship to take command of a force of carriers. Officers and men are lined up at spick-and-span attention. The Admiral himself appears as a little man in a rumpled khaki uniform, tieless and wearing an informal garrison cap. Under his arm is a book, and in the photograph the title can be read as "Send Another Coffin." Mitscher liked detective stories; he didn't like ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... crawling rather than walking, a laborious performance on the polished surface of the glass and a performance which, with any other surface, would still be very awkward, as the wings are bound to rub against the wall with their free end and are liable to get rumpled or bent. She goes out backwards, reaches the outside, turns round and goes in again, but this time the opposite way, so as to brush off the load of pollen from her abdomen on to the heap. If the gallery is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the silk tent on top of Apache, and out from under wriggled the Red Fox Scouts, as fast as they could move. Their hair was rumpled up, they were pale in the moonlight, and Van Sant had his twenty-two rifle ready. That must have startled them, to be waked by a big thing like Apache forcing ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... Logan rumpled his hair, 'Can't I get her to lunch at a restaurant and ply her with the wines of Eastern France? No, she is Temperance personified. Can't we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother is dying? Servants seem to have such lots of mothers, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work, The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes; The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps, The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert, The natural, perfect, varied ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, "the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the New Minister didn't seem to see anything at all except her hands. Being a Suitor for her hands it was natural, I suppose, that he wasn't interested in anything except her hands. Her hands were on her hair. The scraggly gray wig had rumpled all the seriousness out of her hair. It looked quite jolly. The New Minister stared! And stared! And stared! Except for having no lovingness in them, her hands looked very much like ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... starting for a street car, when up the long, broad platform there came hurrying a short-legged little man, with a bloodshot, watery eye. He paused hesitant at a couple of yards, smiled tentatively, and the remnant of an old glove fumbled the brim of a rumpled, semi-bald object that in its distant youth had ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... little later, his eyes reddened with tears, his hair rumpled, his face flushed. He seemed like a man awed by an entirely new experience. He could not speak, he ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the door, I stopped in amazement. The Countess was sound asleep in my big armchair, a forlorn but lovely thing in a pink peignoir. Her rumpled brown hair nestled in the angle of the chair; her hands drooped listlessly at her sides; dark lashes lay upon the soft white cheeks; her lips were parted ever so slightly, and her bosom rose and fell in the long ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a branch-line town if ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... and heavenly lovely," he thought as he rumpled his crisp brown curls meditatively, all forgetful of the earnest attempts he had just made to smooth them decorously with the aid of a damp towel and a pocket comb. "White and gold and a silver spoon, and a back seat ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the porch, so that if it threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know, in England, people will not be afraid to sit down; and the other you will put under the yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be immaculate; no spotted, rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort Cottage, which is to be a strictly first-class tea station. You will put vases of flowers on the tables, and you will not mix red, yellow, purple, and blue ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her, rumpled her short hair, straightened her crumpled body on the bed, pulled the sheet ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... thought drowsily. "Did I have it last?" She stirred uneasily and the pain of movement caused her to gasp. She opened her eyes, and instead of her great airy chamber in Aunt Rebecca's mansion by the sea, she was greeted by the sight of the hot, stuffy room of the Watts cabin. A rumpled pile of blankets was mounded upon the bed against the opposite wall, and a shake-down similar to her own occupied a space beside the open door through which hot, bright ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... will sleep well to-night—in jail?" I stopped him, and instantly differentiated the two men before me. Cummings took it, with an ugly little half smile; Dykeman rumpled his hair, and bolstered his anger by shouting ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... state of wild excitement, ready to fight the world, hit his own mate a violent blow in the eye, and was only quieted by receiving a sound thrashing, and being placed in a sitting posture in the verandah of the public house, from which he saw Doctor Mulhaus come forth from the surgeon's with rumpled feathers, but triumphant. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... and came down apologising for having overslept himself. But he had a warm, sleepy, rumpled look about him which made her forgive him. He was like a little boy—her little boy ... she dropped her eyelids ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... that this bright array was so soiled, rumpled, ragged, and begrimed, that she hardly liked to touch it, but to Steadfast, who had only seen the child in the moonlight, she was a wonderful vision in the morning sunshine, and his heart was struck with a great pity at her clear, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome the approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the yellow lamps. There are mornings ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scissors, Fidelia's parting gift They were evidently something that had been given her, for the little silver sheath into which they were thrust was beautifully engraved in old English letters with the name "Fidelia." Around them was wrapped a strip of rumpled paper on which was scrawled: "For you to remember me by. That day you took me to the Gate of the Giant Scissors was the best time I ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... turn across the room and rumpled his hair. He pointed to a clipping on his desk from the Indianapolis "Advertiser" of that morning. The ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... round the house by this time, and presently Diavolo appeared in the drawing room alone. His thick fair hair stood out round his head like a rumpled mop: his face and hands were not immaculate, and his clothes were creased; but he entered the room with the same courtly yet diffident air and high-bred ease which distinguished his uncle Dawne, whom he imitated as well as resembled in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... tall Lombardy poplars were throwing long shadows on the green sward of the terraces, and from the window she could see the garden, lying so sweet and still in the drowse of the late afternoon that she longed to be down in it. She hurried to change the rumpled shirt-waist in which she had finished her journey and done her unpacking, for a fresh white dress. It was proof that the room was exerting some influence to make her like her model, that even in her haste she made a careful toilet. Remembering how dainty and thorough-going Lloyd always was in her ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... worn with folding and unfolding. Mr. Clairdyce's condition was one of desperate calm, Florence's father said, but Mr. Plum's agitation left him rather unpresentable for the street, though he had finally gone forth with his hair just as he had rumpled it, and with his hat in his hand. They wished the truth, they said: Was it true or was it not true? Mr. Atwater had told them that he feared Julia was indeed engaged, though he knew nothing of her fiance's previous marriage or marriages, or of the number of his children. They had responded ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... with them," he cried, as he swept them off, got them on his hands, saw them racing up his arms, and found them so quick and so tight-clinging that the task grew painful in the extreme before he could get rid of them, and when he did he tossed the rumpled, disfigured ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... But she was now without the grin, and was running a practised eye over what might have been called his production. The hat was jaunty enough, truly a hat of the successful, but all below that, the not-too-fresh collar, the somewhat rumpled coat, the trousers crying for an iron despite their nightly compression beneath their slumbering owner, the shoes not too recently polished, and, more than all, a certain hunted though still-defiant look in the young man's eyes, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... something touching, too, in their attitude, for perhaps each one was thinking of his mother or sister at home as he looked down on these weary girls, rolled up in the brown blankets, with their neat little brown shoes in couples under their cots, nothing visible above the blankets but their pretty rumpled brown hair. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... call to talk about the dust of any woman's shoes. But I guess ther's times when it's good fer a man to feel he ain't as big as he's told. Anyways, you get right ahead, and leave me to the Obars. I ain't goin' to fail you now, any more than any other time." Then he rumpled his stubbly hair again, and it was an action that suggested heavy thought. "Say," he went on, a moment later, his eyes looking squarely into the face of the other, "we're hittin' the trail good an' early to-morrow. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... business transactions and money circulation. Some of them even undertook the long, difficult journey to Warsaw, in order to be near the source of news, and from there they sent their brethren who remained in the little town of Bialorus, long letters, rumpled and spotted newspapers, and leaves torn from different pamphlets, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... sadly "rumpled" and in addition wet through. Before Peggy could reply to her chum's half rallying remark ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... four o'clock in the afternoon and he was only half drunk. He wandered aimlessly down the street and crossed in the direction of hell's half-acre below the Baltimore depot. His uniform was wrinkled, his boots had not been blacked for a week, his linen was dirty, his hair rumpled, his handsome black moustache stained with drink, but he was hilariously conscious that he had two thousand dollars of Joe Hall's ill-gotten money in his pocket. There was a devil-may-care swing to his walk and a look in his eye that no decent woman ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Cabanal, the Canamelar, the Cap de Fransa, a rambling agglomeration of many colored houses, less close together as they left the water, summer places in front with many stories and slender cupolas, white cabins behind, where the farm land began, the thatched coverings of the huts rumpled by the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... longest march, through mud and rain and wind and sun, would find him as trim and clean at the finish as though he had just stepped out of a bandbox. Jumma had the happy faculty of never looking rumpled, a trick which I tried hard to learn, but all in vain. He was as black as ebony, yet his features were like those of a Caucasian; in fact, he strikingly resembled an old ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... candle and retired to his room, but not to bed. He disarranged the bed-clothes and rumpled the pillow; then walked softly to and fro in his slippers until morning. On the following day he made no attempt to visit his newly acquired property, but strolled about the harbor, or stood, in sheltered and, therefore, secluded places ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... feathers so very much rumpled?' said Eugene, coolly going up to the looking-glass. They ARE rather out of sorts. But consider. Such a night ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... irony seemed to escape zu Pfeiffer. He gave a guttural order to the sergeant, who saluted and disappeared. The stranger placed his Tirai hat on the table, revealing rumpled brown hair flecked with grey, a high white forehead, and long features; the slight stoop of the shoulders and general carriage rather suggested a professional type than a hunter or trader. He regarded the slim figure staring insolently at him with a ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... cotton blouse, the sleeves of which were a little rumpled as if they had been rolled up above her elbows, and her skirt of some ugly brown stuff was shabby and partly frayed about the edges—but when she looked at him with her sincere blue eyes, he forgot the disorder of her dress in the touching pathos of her gallant little figure. She was very ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... horses and to care for them; and he had an intuitive knack for safeguarding his self-respect. And Johnny's mother was perfectly competent to cook and to keep house—even above a stable—most neatly. If Johnny's curtain was rumpled, that was Johnny's own incorrigible fault. The window-sill was a wide one, and Johnny, I found, used it as a catch-all. He kept there a few boxes of "bugs," as we called his pinned-down specimens, and an album of postage-stamps that was always in a state of metamorphosis. He had ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... to town at dusk, drawing his little red wagon behind him, his new suit was rumpled into many wrinkles and marked by dust and grass stains; his flame-colored tie was twisted under one ear; his new straw hat was mashed quite out of shape; and in his eyes was a light that sundry citizens, on meeting him, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tall man, with a rusty brown beard, very much on his dignity) entered the room, followed by a short, bullet-headed citizen in a rumpled blue suit with a big star on his breast. Behind on the sidewalk Ballard and a dozen of his gang could be seen. Sam Gregg, the moving cause of this resurrection of law and order, followed the constable, bursting ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... going over the proofs now, and my brain is in perfect working order. On the other hand, there is Professor Bidwell, who is likewise correcting proofs. Poor devil, he is in despair. He can do nothing with them. "I positively cannot think," he complains to me, his hair rumpled and face flushed. He did not answer my knock the other day, and I came upon him with the neglected proofs under his elbows and his absent gaze directed through window and out of doors to some rosy cloudland ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... the bully. The latter began to feel uncomfortable, but he could not stop at this point without turning the laugh against himself, and that he had not the courage to do. So in order to avoid rousing the father's wrath, and yet preserving his own dignity, he went over to Bonnyboy, rumpled his hair with both his hands, and tweaked his nose. This appeared such innocent sport, according to his notion, that no rational creature could take offence at it. But Grim, whose sense of humor was probably defective, failed to see it ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and quite sorry when it was over. And then it was such a comfort to find that Betty, far from making any objection or difficulty, was pleased to approve of the arrangement, and even when Pennie, who was very untidy, rumpled the anti-macassars and upset the precise position of the drawing-room chairs, she ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... drunkards in the streets. What made Putois ever-present and familiar to us, what interested us in him, was that the remembrance of him was associated with all the objects about us. Zoe's dolls, my school books, in which he had many times rumpled and besmeared the pages; the garden wall, over which we had seen his red eyes gleam in the shadow; the blue porcelain jar that he cracked one winter's night, unless it was the frost; the trees, the streets, the benches—everything recalled ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... and there they found Charley at work in the little room that the two men had built. Charley nodded pleasantly when the Cure introduced his brother, but showed no further interest at first. He went on working at the cupboard under his hand. His cap was off and his hair was a little rumpled where the wound had been, for he had a habit of rubbing the place now and then—an abstracted, sensitive motion—although he seemed to suffer no pain. The surgeon's eyes fastened on the place, and as Charley ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and feet, her dark hair unbound, and the face of the PROFESSOR'S WIFE. Hypnotized, she slowly sways towards him, their eyes fixed on each other, till she is quite close. Her arms go out to him, cling round his neck and, their lips meet. But as they meet there comes a gasp and the PROFESSOR with rumpled hair is seen starting from his chair, his hands thrown up; and at his horrified "Oh!" the Stage is darkened with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hours later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting. But the leg still drags. I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will soon disappear. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself in his stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent. A gasp proclaims that all is over. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... wanted to jump out and put my arms around you and tell you that you are the best and dearest mother a girl ever had. My things were so beautifully packed that there wasn't a single crease anywhere—not even in the black silk polonaise that we were so afraid would get rumpled. I don't see how on earth you folded them so smoothly. By the way, I hardly think I shall have any need of my wedding dress while I am here, so you may as well put it away at home until I come back. This place seems to be just a mining town, with very few people of our ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... you."—"Language and conduct, Me'm!"—"Yes, Polly, language and conduct. Do you think, if I had set me down in my lady's bed-chamber, sung a song, and hemm'd twice, and Mr. B. coming to me, upon that signal (for such I doubt it was), I had kept my place, and suffered myself to be rumpled, and only, in a soft voice, and with an encouraging laugh, cried—'How can you do so?' that I should have been what I am?"—"Me'm, I dare say, my lord" (so all the servants call him, and his aunt often, when she puts Jackey to it), "means ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... his charity kept faith... Fred Starratt sat down and laughed unpleasantly. What a contempt everybody must have for him! What a contempt he had for himself! He threw himself sprawling his full length upon the rumpled bed. But this time it was not to sleep. Instead, he stared up at the ceiling and puffed cigarette after cigarette until morning flooded the room... At eight o'clock he phoned down to have his breakfast ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... giants' brides Ye sleep in ravine-rumpled draperies, And weep your springs in tearful memories Of days that stained your robes with stains ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... curiously. "And—me, Aunt Caro?" he asked with an odd note in his voice. Miss Craven glanced for a moment at the big figure sprawled in the chair near her, then looked back at the fire with pursed lips and wrinkled forehead, and rumpled her hair more thoroughly ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... however, that she personally was to have very little to do with smoothing the rumpled rose-leaves ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much, that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... friar, setting his rumpled frock in order, "are ye minded still to adventure breaking ope the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Mistress sitting in the roadside dust, Lady's head in her lap. She was smoothing lovingly the soft rumpled fur; and was trying hard not to cry over the inert warm mass of gold-and-white fluffiness which, two minutes earlier, had been a beautiful thoroughbred collie, vibrant with life and fun ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... perched on the edge of his chair, rubbing his dry hands and eliciting occasional sparks in the shape of remarks, but he was no longer merry; indeed, he looked ill at ease. George, his red hair all rumpled up, and his long limbs thrust out towards the fire, spoke scarcely at all, but glued his little bloodshot eyes alternately on the faces of his companions, and only contributed an occasional chuckle. But the soul of this witches' gathering ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... had been too busy talking to notice where they were. To the right, through wind-rumpled, tree-dotted meadows ran the Thames, still intensely silver in the sunshine, but somehow blither and more young than in London. Clouds flew high; everything was riotously spacious. Scattered through the vivid stretch of landscape ivy-covered houses stood squarely in their park-lands. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and bearing. He was tall, trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... got under Niag'ry Falls, by mistake!" said Bubble, dryly. "Let me see, now!" He rumpled up his short tow-colored hair with his favorite gesture, and meditated. "I guess I'll begin at the beginning!" he said. "Well!" (it was observable that Bubble no longer said "Wa-al!" and that his speech had improved greatly during the year ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... said Bob, sitting up with rumpled hair and a face like a happy child's. "And there'll be a bit over to play with. What shall we put it into, Tommy? Want ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... places neighbors contract the habit of "running in" to see one another. Were the truth known, many a housekeeper, deep in pie-making and bread-kneading, would gladly give her handsomest loaf for two minutes in which to smooth her rumpled hair and change ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... his head against the window of a rushing train, staring ahead toward the Rockies and the rainbow they held for him. Back to the place where his father had gone with dreams aglow was the son traveling now,—back into the rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man and one alone. Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path by a beaten, will-broken father. ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... fully aware of having committed a faux pas. Looking back, he saw Miss Scarlett leaning against a newel-post as if in agitation; saw Mr. Cox come up and lead her down; and as she disappeared, leaning weakly on her escort's arm, the mop of rumpled hair faded from his sight like a receding fire-ship. Who could she be? Suddenly Alvord's whispered caution flashed on his mind, and he knew that he had encountered, embraced and repudiated the Strawberry Blonde. He paused for a moment to think over the situation—considerations of policy were ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage, and seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled an almond less white than her teeth. 'This is a true charm, my life, and do not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota the other.' Mian Mittu with careful beak took his share from ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... conference room, a red-faced, four-star general cast a chilling glance at the rumpled figure ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... had finished, he found himself relieved and comforted. Fix got up in a somewhat rumpled condition, and, looking at his adversary, coldly said, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... has, if we could wake it up. This scene ought to do it, if anything would," agreed Josephine. "Look at Mr. Rudd, with his hair all rumpled and his sleeping-cap still on. See Mary Ann out there; doesn't she look dazed and serious? Here I am, with my hair in two tails down my back—and it's the first time I've thought of it. As for you, in that red sweater jacket, with your curly mop of hair, you look more like ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... face, and jumping up she ran over the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue. A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride in ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... slip of a thing, a trifle too tall for her years, perhaps, yet with no lack of development apparent in the slim, rounded figure. Her coarse home-made dress of dark calico fitted her sadly, while her rumpled hair, from which the broad-brimmed hat had fallen, possessed a reddish copper tinge where it was touched by the sun. Mr. Hampton's survey did not increase his desire for more intimate acquaintanceship, yet he recognized anew her undoubted claim ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... her studio floor to kneel down beside him. She drew the boyish head, rumpled into an irresistible state of curliness, ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... neither spoke. Karyl's hair was rumpled; his eyes darkly ringed, and the line of his lips close set. Benton glanced out of his window. Across the gardens the wall was growing blanker, as lighted panes fell dark. One window, which he knew ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you ma'am," said Anne gravely. Then aside to Marilla in an audible whisper, "There wasn't anything startling in that, was ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... about her dress to send for others. Her head-dress was a little discomposed; her charming hair, in natural ringlets, as you have heretofore described it, but a little tangled, as if not lately combed, irregularly shading one side of the loveliest neck in the world; as her disordered rumpled handkerchief did the other. Her face [O how altered from what I had seen it! yet lovely in spite of all her griefs and sufferings!] was reclined, when we entered, upon her crossed arms; but so, as not more than one side of it could ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... aged ten, came in first, all rumpled gauze and tarnished spangles, to sing. In a poor little voice, feebler and shriller than the chattering of the monkeys, she sang a song about the "Grecian Bend," and enacted the same, walking round and round the stage whirling her tawdry finery. Then Anne, aged twelve, came in ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... bits that make the whole. And even some of the littlest bits I can remember the most clearly—is not that queer? I can remember the dress mother had on the last morning, I can remember just how the scarf round her neck was tied, and how one end got rumpled up with the way Tom clung to her, and hugged and hugged her with his arms round her, so tight, that papa had ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... was rumpled and in disorder, her deep-blue eyes looked pathetic owing to the tears she had shed. The young man's whole heart went out to her at a great bound. How beautiful she was! How unlike any other girl he had ever seen! How much he loved her in her hour ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... myself very miserable in a ghastly dawn, where guttering candles flickered in their sockets, casting an unearthly light upon bottles, silverware, and more bottles that stood or lay amidst overturned and broken glasses; an unseemly jumble that littered a long table whose rumpled cloth was plentifully besplashed with spilled wine ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... in my house once more; If I could mend a broken cart to-day, To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky, There is no woman in God's world could say She was more blissfully content than I. But ah! the dainty pillow next my own Is never rumpled by a shining head; My singing birdling from its nest is flown; The little boy I ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... had been demolished by those who were inviolable. The hand of gendarmes had become as accustomed to the collar of the Representatives as to the collar of thieves: the white tie of the statesman was not even rumpled in the grasp of the galley sergeants, and one can admire the Vicomte de Falloux—oh, candor!—for being dumfounded at being ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... circle, and now that his friend was in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell what might happen? "We shall see," he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the idea kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on and his animal nature aroused. The big chair had a rumpled look—its nether cushions had been tumbled, a ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... I say!" Mrs. Tate's right foot was held out to the blazing coals, and her hands held tightly the rumpled shirt. "I tell you we have to follow the fashion, and it's the fashion now to forget what we used to remember. The Pughs certainly are plain, and that oldest girl, the fat, married one, must be hard to swallow, but they say that young one, Kitty I believe is her ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher |
