"Telltale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... station not an eighth of a mile down the track, and she made for it as being the nearest possible point where water might be procured. The station-master gave her a tin can and filled it for her; and ten minutes later she set about scrubbing the tinker free of all the telltale make-up of melodrama. It was accomplished—after a fashion, and with persistent rebelling on the tinker's part and scolding on Patsy's. And, finally, to prove his own supreme indifference to physical disablement, he tore the can from her administering hands, threw it over the bridge, and ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... me a telltale. Now I'll go and tell papa. You got into a fine scrape for calling ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... here and robbed the store," suggested Silas Tripp, with withering sarcasm, as he held up the telltale ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... The telltale newspaper item, reproduced above, outlines the story behind this volume. What is not made clear is the fact that the entire expedition was painstakingly planned many months ago, the publishers themselves making it financially ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... used for the struggle for existence itself if we are to have a world of balanced individuals. There is an arrogance involved in assuming ourselves more humane than human that reacts insidiously on our health and morals. Peter, looking into the twitching hectic face before him with the telltale glint of mania in the eyes, felt himself becoming helpless with pity for a mind gone so far askew. He felt curiously ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... chemist continues his tests every morning. Every morning the little crooked tubes are brought out and filled and carefully watched to ascertain if the telltale gas develops which is an index of "death in the cup." Thus is the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... persons on board, should have been the object of so unusual an assault. He was in the disagreeable plight of having subjected her to danger, and as they entered the brilliant saloon he freed himself of the ulster with its telltale gash and sought to minimize her impression of ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... believe in his escape. For the time being, at least, he stood safe. It would be easy enough later to "lose" the telltale side line in the waters of the lake. Manuelito cursed his folly in having used the knife at all. Haste prompted that piece of bad judgment. He could have unbuckled them just as well. But all the same he blessed his lucky stars for this respite. In three minutes he had "Gregg" ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... forest, alert for the telltale yelp. There it is, a whine and faint, stifled guttural sounds, but so indistinct and so obscured by the prattle of the stream and the murmuring tree tops that I fail to locate it. So I flounder on through vines and underbrush, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... back onto the table and fell to moulding her biscuit vigorously, biting her lips to hide a telltale smile. ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... them. He paced the narrow confines of his quarter-deck and felt the same kind of shame a ruined man feels when he is on his way to the pawnshop for the first time. He had his head down; he hated to look forward at the telltale ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... know, except where he had gone since. As for the other thing I found, it was behind the hemlocks when I quartered the sides of the road in the silence and the frost-fog: and it was nothing but a patch of shell ice. But the flimsy, crackling stuff was crushed into two cup-like marks, as plainly telltale as if I had seen a man fall on his knees in them. And by them, frozen there, were a dozen ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... never dreamed she possessed, she was about to hit him again when he seized the cane and threw it away. But across his pale, handsome face lay a telltale red mark, the smart of which ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... agonised suspense, with shame and death thus visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of men and officers (it seemed) must have remarked that telltale countenance and broken utterance. And still he persevered, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... orders and Mrs. Mimms began to consider the practical side of leaving Greenlawn. Packing was no problem. All CPO's were required to be Translation Alert in half an hour if necessary, inclusive of destroying all telltale evidence such as notes, papers, etc. Her apparatus was in perfect working order and the rent for that month was paid. Mrs. Mimms passed over these details quickly. She was thinking: it was invariably the priorees who suffered ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... with the coming of the night and on account of the prevalence of the fog he would find that shipping of the ordinary sort had stopped moving. However, in a few minutes he heard telltale whistles ahead, and he signaled half speed. A lumbering old lighter with a yawing derrick passed close aboard. An auxiliary fisherman, his exhaust snapping like a machine-gun, and seeming to depend on that ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Mr. Bush confined himself to affable conversation, to sundry gifts of hothouse flowers, and only allowed his feelings outlet in certain telltale glances when he thought she could not see. Hazel felt disinclined to fly from what was at ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sacrifice; I overtook small shrivelled forms, children they were, by the dim dawn. How their immature coughings racked my heart and gave me that strange tightening of the chest! I could not keep my eyes from the ground whence came the sound of small telltale splashes, after each cough. Many times I stopped to hold ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... retection^; unveiling &c v.; deterration^, revealment, revelation; exposition, exposure; expose; whole truth; telltale &c (news) 532. acknowledgment, avowal; confession, confessional; shrift. bursting of a bubble; denouement. [person who discloses a secret] tattletale, snitch, fink, stool pigeon, canary. V. disclose, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... before the first course was served, Commander Bainbridge ordered the ward-room doors closed after the attendants had passed outside. Then he stated that Captain Gales wished it understood that the finding of the telltale envelope under Ensign Darrin's mattress was the only circumstance against that officer, and that, in the captain's opinion, it was wholly likely that some one else had placed the envelope there with the intention ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... her voice and of looking into her dear face once more had passed, his skilled eyes probed the deeper. He noted with a sinking at the heart the dark circles under the drooping lids, the drawn, pallid skin and telltale furrows that had cut their way deep into her cheeks. Her eyes, too, had lost their lustre, and her step lacked the spring and vigor of her old self. The diagnosis alarmed him. Even the mould of her ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... anything," said Virgie, breathing very fast; but she too had heard it—a sound above them, a scraping sound, as of someone lying flat along the rafters and shifting his position and, while she spoke, a telltale bit of plaster fell, and broke as ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... touches were given, the transom was hung with heavy black canvas; a curtain of the same was so arranged as to permit its being drawn over the telltale cracks of the door. Dennis and Stover, sent to reconnoiter from the hall, waited while the Tennessee Shad passed a lighted candle back and forth over the sealed entrance. One traitor crack was ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... brush into the whitewash again and again, until he had covered up the last telltale mark of Johnny's feet. The cabin was bright and shining when he finished. He pulled another stool up to the fireplace ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... because Jose has a bad temper and speech hotter than the enchilladas of Margarita? I could love him for his rages! When the Blessed Mary sends me a lover—" She looked over her shoulder and sighed romantically, hiding the laughter in her eyes and the telltale twist of her lips as best she could, with lashes ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... moments seemed like hours. Gradually, however, the leader of the silent ships drew nearer. There was no mistaking the telltale reports in the wireless room. Basing his calculations on the chief electrician's reports, McClure figured the leader of the oncoming squadron to be now not more than half a mile away and moving steadily ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... forward with his elbows on his knees, murmuring lover's confidences behind the shield of his tilted hat, which hid from all but Evadna his smiling lips and his telltale, glowing eyes. He looked up at that last sentence, though it is doubtful if he had heard much of what she ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and beat the ground In a light, fantastic round, Till the telltale sun descry Our ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Skippy, how's it working out?" said Snorky at eleven P.M., producing the crackers and cheese, after having blinded the windows and hung a blanket over the telltale cracks of ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... shadows had grown heavy. As she reached the bars again, on her homeward track, she stopped suddenly, and her face broke into smiling at the pungent fragrance rising from the bruised herbage beneath her feet. She stooped and gathered one telltale, homely weed, mixed as it was with the pasture grass. "Pennyr'yal," she said happily, and felt the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Boccarini was natural. "To save appearances" is the social law. "Do what you like, but save appearances." A dignified hypocrisy none disobey. These men and women, with the historic names, dare not show each other what they are. There was no flirting, no romping, no loud laughter; not a loud word—no telltale glances, no sitting in corners. It was a pose throughout. Men bowed ceremoniously, and addressed as strangers ladies with whom they spent every evening. Husbands devoted themselves to wives whom they never saw but in public. Innocence may betray itself, seems to betray itself—guilt never. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... may meet," she said, softly, at last,—so softly that he barely heard the words. Had she uttered no sound he could have been sure of her response, for it was in her telltale eyes. His blood leaped madly. "You will be hurt if you wait till the train is running at full speed," she cried, suddenly returning to the abandoned merry mood. She pushed him gently in her excitement. "Don't you see how rapidly we are moving? Please ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to covert. They knew he had ridden into Alder before in the middle of the night and they might suspect the danger of such another attack, but they surely would not have fear of a solitary pedestrian unless a telltale light ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... come," cried Nell, in agitation, fairly running to the door to open it, but stopping aghast as her eye caught over her shoulder the sad, telltale condition ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... people" long before Tolstoy dreamed of the adventure, a man four years in prison in Siberia, and six more in that bleak country under official inspection; truly, a martyr to his country, an epileptic and a genius. You may be disappointed to learn from these telltale documents—translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne—that the Russian writer while in exile avoided his fellow convicts, was very unpopular with them, and that throughout his correspondence there are numerous contemptuous references to socialism and "going to the people." He preferred ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... it was worn long. If we knew that it might assist us. As I have already suggested, a Chinaman might have a long nail on the little finger, but he would also have the other nails long, wouldn't he? Furthermore, he might use the boards to conceal the prints of his telltale foot-gear; but why should he not have put on shoes of the ordinary type? If he had time to prepare the boards,—the whole affair shows premeditation, —clearly he had time to change his boots. The Chinese are usually small, and this might ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... gone two hours evidences grew thick and fast that tribes inhabited the island. Muro, and the different men, were continually finding traces, none of them, however, which indicated that the people were near at hand, or that the telltale ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Mr. Winters noted the telltale flush, and slowly shaking his head, remarked, "I don't know, Leslie, about the advisability of leaving you here; you were always inclined to be very philanthropic, and it would be like you to adopt some young man out ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... with every bone and muscle in him aching from his long night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he looked upon the telltale signs in the sand. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... his shoulders. "Why, I'll keep on this trail till my legs is wore off above my boots!" and he turned to guide his pony up a little branch trail at the top of which stood a tent with the telltale windlass and forge ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's eyes rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to stand there and listen to the telltale sounds with sinking hearts. Perk in particular seemed to be dreadfully put out by this fresh upset and was grinding his strong teeth as though desirous of letting out an explosive but restrained by the fact of Jack being so close ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... several moments, until a puff of wind carried the telltale scent to the moose, who is most ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... too well mannered to put into words the interrogation that trembled on his lips, but he might as well have done so, so transparent was the questioning glance that traveled to her left hand in search of the telltale solitaire. Even though his search was not rewarded, he felt certain that the hand concealed in the folds of her dress wore the fatal ring. Of course, mused he, with a shrug, he might have guessed it. No such beauty as this was wandering unclaimed about the world. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... thread paper, and, Lord bless me! my ma'am was so cross, that she was going to put the nasty fool's cap on my head, only for miscalling the first word in my lesson."—"In short she was such a notorious telltale, that she was soon dignified by her school fellows with the honourable appellation of Dolly Cagmag. As she advanced in years, the habit grew upon her; and when she was old enough to be introduced into ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... a certain square, Or court, or lane,—in short, no matter where; Time,—early morning, dear to simple souls Who love its sunshine and its fresh-baked rolls; Persons,—take pity on this telltale blush, That, like the AEthiop, whispers, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Austen Vane, and Austen himself answered the summons. He held a book in his hand, and as Rangely spoke she saw Austen's look turn quickly to her, and met it through the gathering gloom between them. In an instant he was at her side, looking up questioningly into her face, and the telltale blood leaped into hers. What must he think of her for coming again? She could not speak ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had occasion to attack, he began to go through a series of restless fidgetings, which ended with a sigh of relief and a guilty look, and producing from a hiding-place a cigarette, he smoked it out of the window, so that his room might not carry forward the faintest trace of its telltale odor. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... to break into angry tears on Elinor's neck, but the brisk and significant air with which Griffin spoke roused her to herself again. She put Elinor's arms away, and going to the mirror, smoothed her tumbled hair, and whisked away the telltale traces of her collapse, while Elinor sat quietly on the edge of the couch watching her with ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... seen of them, though had the Allied pilots been able to use their ears, which was impossible when their own motors were making such loud noises, they might have heard, in the distance and to the east, the telltale music of Teuton propellers beating the air in a rush for ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... over. The ship filled with vibration as Guns opened up. Twenty-five seconds to target. His eyes flicked from the sightscreen to the sky ahead, looking for the telltale flare of rockets—ready ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... find himself face to face with Miss Easton. Try as he would, the telltale blood slowly mounted to his tanned cheeks, suffusing his entire face with a ruddy hue. Instinctively he crumpled up the letter in his hand and thrust it into his coat-pocket, then, with a poor attempt at a smile, answered her question. "Yes; the letter contains disagreeable news, at least ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... in fierce wonder at the sudden brightness. He had passed along the shore within twenty yards of me, through dense underbrush,—as I found out from his tracks next morning,—yet so silently did he push his great bulk through the trees, halting, listening, trying the ground at every step for telltale twigs ere he put his weight down, that I had heard no sound, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... to her daughter, who was idly making chords at the grand piano. Seating herself on the ottoman at her mother's feet, the girl took the still handsome hand in her own and amused herself with examining the old-fashioned jewels that covered it, a pretext for occupying her telltale eyes, as she suspected ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... feeling now, Bumpus?" asked Thad, some time later, as he once more stopped to allow all the stragglers pull up; for some of the boys were beginning to look rather fagged, though they tried to hide the telltale signs, being too proud to own up to any weakness that ill became ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... passages, rightly thought by Calvin Ross Shelby's audience the most telling of his speech, the first and second are unmistakably plagiarisms of ideas, while the third, differing from its original in but one telltale, damning word, is shameless, flat-footed theft. Either of the first two offences committed singly might be unconscious; conjoined they betray deliberation; united with the third they 'smell to heaven.' It is high time for the voters of this congressional ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Overslept The Dancing Man The Collision How Albert Sat In The Treasure in the Strong Box The Old-Fashioned Prosecutor The Unruffled Wife and the Gallus Husband Books Made to Balance The Two Unfettered Birds The Telltale Tintype ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... became | |worried when he failed to recover from drowsiness | |which had overtaken him and she called Dr. J. N. | |Pait. The physician made an examination of the boy, | |but found nothing to account for his condition. | | | |Then he rubbed his hand over his head. The telltale | |blood revealed the fact that the boy had been | |injured. With the little brother holding on to his | |coat the boy walked bravely to an automobile and was| |taken to the Kenosha hospital, where the X-ray | |machine revealed his secret. | | | | All Functions Remain Normal | | | |This ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... looked hospitable; there was no mistaking it. Wherefore I deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must pierce through and emanate from the senseless walls like an effluvium. Who knows but that every house has its telltale aura, plain to a vision of sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a book On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses: and there will be an advance sale of at least ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... headquarters of the Foreign Legion. The soul of the Legion was speaking in its tragic-sweet voice, and the Place Carnot was full of soldiers sauntering singly or in pairs, mostly silent, as if to hear their own heart-secrets cried aloud by telltale 'cellos ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... been a fine turkey, and done to a turn. But all along Trotter had been wondering just how he was going to get rid of those telltale bones. At the merriest moments of the feast the question of the corner in which they could be secreted or the aperture out of which they could be thrust had hung over him like ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the home habits of the male biped she gleaned from the telltale hints of the inanimate garments that passed through her nimble hands. She could even tell character and personality from deductions gathered at heel and toe. She knew, for example, that F.C. (in black ink) was an ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... racing through the streets loaded with armed men. There were crowds looking for a telltale face in their own midst. Guards, deputies, coppers were surrounding houses and peering into alleys, raiding saloons, ringing doorbells. The whole city was on his heels. The city was like a pack of dogs sniffing wildly for his trail. And when they found it they would come whooping ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... presence, for there is nothing that wild young men dislike more than the constraint put on them by the presence of an innocent youth; and when they found out that this 'milk-sop' of a brother was a spy and a telltale, their wrath blazed up. So Joseph had early experience of the shock which meets all young men who have been brought up in godly households when they come into contact with sin in fellow-clerks, servants, students, or the like. It is a sharp test of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... go!" The moment she had said it, she caught herself with a nervous little laugh, and added a postscript of whimsical nonsense to disarm her utterance of its telltale feeling. "Why, I'm just getting you civilized, yourself. It took years to ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... It was no use to reason with this girl. She had been trapped like a wild thing and could not see any way out. He shot out a strong hand and clutched her shoulder and with one heave he drew her to him, so her face was under his. It went pale. The telltale eyes dilated in sudden fear. She beat at ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... if the record in my pocket burned—spontaneously—so intense was my feeling. There in the glass was that fatal, telltale white precipitate. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve |
