"Vixen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said. "These girls are fools to bait men of our age—" He broke off to seize Dorothy by the arm. "Give me that watch, you vixen!" ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... eh?" he sneered. "You didn't get your rat-poison at the spring after all. The Yankees are foxes after all!" He laughed his loud, nasal, nickering laugh—"Foxes are foxes but men are men. Do you understand that, you damned vixen?" ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... forward, she snapped a shell at the men on the other side. The ridge was soon gained by the regiments, however, the enemy not remaining to contest it, and they were sheltered by it from the gunboat's fire. I wish I were sufficiently master of nautical phraseology to do justice to this little vixen's style of fighting, but she was so unlike a horse, or a piece of light artillery, even, that I can not venture to attempt it. She was boarded up tightly with tiers of heavy oak planking, in which embrasures were cut ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... general?" groaned Raynal, looking down with a sort of superstitious awe and wonder at the lovely vixen. "Hate the best soldier the world ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... time Edwin had three dogs of his own named Brutus, Vixen, and Boxer. They were always with him, and so intelligent they ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... not to find an ox's leg. Brimful of joy and appetite, They were about to sack the box, So tight without the aid of locks, When suddenly there came in sight A personage—Sir Slyboots Fox. Sure, luck was never more untoward Since Fortune was a vixen froward! How should they save their Egg—and bacon? Their plunder couldn't then be bagg'd. Should it in forward paws be taken, Or roll'd along, or dragg'd? Each method seem'd impossible, And each was then of danger full. Necessity, ingenious mother, Brought forth what ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... struggle! Semiramis seems to intend to add Constantinople to the mass of revolutions ; but is not her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions! I wish—I wish we may not be actually flippancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole. What a vixen little island are we, if we fight wit the Aurora Borealis and Tippo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time! You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, "You've seen the man who ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... "Vixen," replied Ulysses, scowling at her, "I will go and tell Telemachus what you have been saying, and he will have you ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... an Eastern mind she observed the fact, and with the native acuteness of a scheming little vixen, she guessed that something might turn up. Acting on the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... described as a "vixen," or female fox; a lazy person as a "drone," or the bee which does no work. A stupid person may be called a "sheep" or a "goose" (which is not quite so insulting). Dog, hound, cur, and puppy are all used as words of abuse; and contempt ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... make a loud to-do. Our virtue should, I think, be gentle-natured; Nor can I quite approve those savage prudes Whose honour arms itself with teeth and claws To tear men's eyes out at the slightest word. Heaven preserve me from that kind of honour! I like my virtue not to be a vixen, And I believe a quiet cold rebuff No less ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... savagest brute I ever came across," said the man. "It won't let a soul come near the canoe. I would have killed it long ago if the captain of the steamer had not told me you wished it to be taken great care of. There, look out! The vixen ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... be thrust forth the very day of our poor father's burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been humored and indulged and petted and coddled by her old fool of a father, until at last she had grown to be the most whimsical, conceited, tetchy, suspicious, imperious, domineering, selfish, cruel, hard-hearted, and malignant young vixen that ever lived; yet this evil nature dwelt in a form as beautiful as ever lived. She was a beautiful demon, and I soon found ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... was nowise unusual, in this instance the circumstances were. More than one of his bachelor friends had a small family even, but then it was in the regular way of an open and understood secret: the fox had his nest in some pleasant nook, adroitly masked, where lay his vixen and her brood; one day he would abandon them for ever, and, with such gathered store of experience, set up for a respectable family man. A few tears, a neat legal arrangement, and all would be as ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... meet her in Geneva. Here she inspired him to much verse, especially his "In der Schweiz." But all this while the little vixen corresponded with Chopin. He improvised in Paris on themes she composed, and then she repeated his inspirations to keep ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... such there be. I leave that open. There must be a stoop, of course. Nothing enclosed. No flowers, by request. The sheep shall nibble to the very threshold. I don't forget that there is a fox-earth in the spinney attached. I saw a vixen and her cubs there one morning as clearly as I see this paper. She barked at me once or twice, sitting high on her haunches, but the children played on without a glance at me. They were playing at catch-as-catch-can—with a full-grown hare. Sheer fun. No after-thoughts. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... cover afforded by the heather, may be said to be a nursery for foxes for the supply of the neighbourhood. Not long ago there were six earths; and there are still three, which are carefully preserved; and the bark of the dog-fox or the answering scream of the vixen may be heard almost any night, in different directions, while out foraging. So thick is the cover, in parts, that the hounds frequently fail to penetrate it; and, after the pack have gone away without a find, I ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... afraid that you must stay with us, but you shall be properly looked after. I cannot afford to let you again be as naughty as you have been to-night. Hand her over to the supply officer,—he's acting provost-marshal, is he not? (Then turning to his staff) What a little vixen! That gives you a very considerable insight into the temper of these loyal Cape colonists: to think that while we were supping with this young lady's mamma she was planning a little sniping party, as a revenge against us for breaking ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... vixen!" she exclaimed. Sophia was stealing and eating slices of half-cooked apple. "This comes of having no breakfast! And why didn't you come down to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of Bromeholm!" he cried, "I had as soon put my hand down a fox's earth to drag up a vixen ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Chupin!" repeated the vixen, as if to engrave the name on her memory; "Victor Chupin! I should just like to see him," ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... near noon, when they called out for admittance; but receiving no answer, became apprehensive of some disaster, and forcing the door, found their chief suspended, almost lifeless, and his scars dropping blood. To their inquiries into the cause of his doleful situation, he replied, "That pretended vixen was no woman, but a brawny youth, the owner of the calf; who, in return for our roguery, has flogged me thus, and carried off all he could find in my chamber worth having." The butchers vowed revenge, saying, "We will seize and put him to death;" but their chief requested ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... tells tales, lass. If yo' treated steady Philip to many such looks an' speeches as yo'n given us now, it's easy t' see why he took hisself off. Why, Sylvia, I niver saw it in yo' when yo' was a girl; yo're grown into a regular little vixen, theere wheere yo' stand!' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... what Spring is like in America. We have had an April of really 'magnifique' Weather: but here is that vixen May with its N.E. airs. A Nightingale however sings so close to my Bedroom that (the window being open) the Song ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... to his mind. Twenty years ago he had spent a night with a middle-aged ugly vixen in Soleure, when he had imagined himself to be possessing a beautiful young woman whom he adored. He recalled how next day, in a shameless letter, she had derided him for the mistake that she had so greatly ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... fifties. Up came another, with a similar strip of paper. "You don't want me to change this, do you?" said Algernon; and heard a tale of domestic needs—and a grappling landlady. He groaned inwardly: "Odd that I must pay for his landlady being a vixen!" The note was changed; the debt liquidated. On the door-step, as he was going to lunch, old Anthony waylaid him, and was almost noisily persistent in demanding his one pound three and his five pound ten. Algernon paid the sums, ready ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the great sex passions. The vibrating life within him suddenly became tinged with new interests. One day at a party a vixen of a girl threw herself boldly in his arms and tried to push him into a chair. The bodily contact and the swift bodily reaction threw him into a panic, for the passion that was aroused was so powerful that he seemed to himself stripped of all thought and reflection ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... gentleman of the likes of him, who's been a hunting over fifty year, wouldn't do the likes of that; but the foxes is trapped, and Mr Henry'll be a putting it on me if I don't speak out. They is Plumstead foxes, too; and a vixen was trapped just across the field yonder, in Goshall Springs, no later than yesterday morning." Flurry was now thoroughly in earnest; and, indeed, the trapping of a vixen in February is a ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... in which the parts of Lobo, Wahb, Vixen, etc., are taken by boys and girls. Out of print. (Doubleday, Page ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... which his speech made to glimmer with the hues of romance: the fresh grubbed earth where a badger had been routing, the quiet glade where, that morning, a polecat had washed her face. He brought them up to a vixen and her cubs, and got them all playing together. He let them hold leverets in their arms, milk his goats, as the kids milk them for their need; and showed them so much of the ways of birds that they forgot, while they were under the spell of him, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... sister, When nobody kiss'd her, Was a saint, (at least a semi one,) Yet the vixen Scandal Made a terrible handle Of her friendship ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... talk Ned and Collins were given permission to look at the machine, which was called the Vixen. Collins expressed his thanks in elaborate language, but Ned went straight to the Vixen, which was then guarded by a Peruvian Indian. He was weary of the cheap pretense ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Arni. That miserable fox won't come near sheepcotes or houses now. Blast its hide! Yes, it had caused him many a wakeful night. All the neighbouring farmers would have the fool's luck to catch a fox every single winter. All but him. He couldn't even wound a vixen, and had in all his life never caught any kind of fox. Wouldn't it be fun to bring home a dark brown pelt, one with fine overhair? Yes, wouldn't that be fun? Arni shook his head in delight, cleared his throat vigorously, and took ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... spirits. Estelle, too, had some gossip that amused him. Her father was already practising at clay pigeons to get his eye in for the first of September; and he wished to inform Raymond that he was shooting well and hoped for a better season than the last. He had also seen a vixen and three cubs on North Hill at five o'clock in the morning of the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... "The little vixen will do it, Belle, as sure as you live," remarked Wilhelm Mencke, who had returned to the drawing-room in season to catch the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was coming up Bull Banks, and he was in the very worst of tempers. First he had been upset by breaking the plate. It was his own fault; but it was a china plate, the last of the dinner service that had belonged to his grandmother, old Vixen Tod. Then the midges had been very bad. And he had failed to catch a hen pheasant on her nest; and it had contained only five eggs, two of them addled. Mr. Tod had had ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... Mother Nanteuil! She has become most desirable, and I like her better than her little vixen of a daughter. She has ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... formerly lived in a Brahman's house, but had been frightened away by his cantankerous wife. In the Servian version (Karajich, No. 37), the opening consists of the "Scissors-story," to which allusion has already been made. The vixen falls into a hole which she does not see, so bent is she ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... a vixen or am I a fool, or is it both?" he asked the blue vault of heaven, and then went into ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... scarcely less unpleasant to hear than the perpetual lamentation of the winds, which to-day had the sound of human voices; now moaning drearily, with a long, low, wailing murmur, now shrieking in the shrilly tones of an angry vixen. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... know well, first told me how a fox manages to carry a number of chicks at once. He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her brood one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a vixen make off with a turkey chick scarcely larger than a robin. Several were missing from the brood. He hunted about, and presently found five more just killed. They were beautifully laid out, the bodies ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... Scene 2. "My blessings on your choice and you! / . . . Are nothing to a pretty face." A Spanish text gives Escarpin seventeen lines here, rather than five. The last dozen lines contain a story of a clever vixen and ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... for the preaching of a funeral sermon, forty shillings; for christening'"—began Darden for the Bishop's information. Audrey took her pen and wrote; but before the list of the minister's perquisites had come to an end the door flew open, and a woman with the face of a vixen came hurriedly into the room. With her entered the breeze from the river, driving before it the smoke wreaths, and blowing the papers from the table to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... the water, and long-tail'd mouse, too, Tiny field mouse, that turn'd up nose vixen the shrew, The harvest mouse, fresh from a settler's rick, Were condemn'd by the great ones as not of their clique; These reclined round a mole hill, and each dipp'd his paw In a cocoa-nut bowl fill'd with rice, "en pillau." And the harvest ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... end? That Tom took an early opportunity of calling himself a fool and begging Mary's forgiveness, and Mary contradicted him, and with many tears shed on his vest declared herself an unreasonable little vixen, not worth his love, and that she was willing to live in the very heart of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... shall marry this lad: you do not know any harm of him, do you? You have a good deal of influence with her, and I desire, do you see, that you will employ it to lead her to her good: you had best, I can tell you. She is a pert vixen! By and by she would be a whore, and at last no better than a common trull, and rot upon a dunghill, if I were not at all these pains to save her from destruction. I would make her an honest farmer's wife, and my pretty miss cannot bear the thoughts ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... pursued the policy of eternal warfare with France on their own account, yet also of eternal amity and league with France in case anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, and before long you might rely upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let Franco be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine or Bar insisting on having his throat cut in support of France; which favor accordingly was cheerfully granted ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... thing, calling to my missus—for you must know that I've married as handsome a Scotch terrier as you ever see. "Vixen," says I, "here's the poor old governor up at last—I knew that Police Act would drive him ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... was doing her brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there were other powerful agencies that had no small part in bringing light to the ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... and Vixen are coming down to us, sir," observed the first lieutenant; "we do not want them, and they will only be an excuse for the Frenchman to surrender to a superior force. If they recaptured the vessels taken, they would ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... up afterward, to leave no clue, and the added space would call for enormous strength to overcome the power of that suction; and enormous strength meant a powerful man. The rest you can put together without being told, Mr. Narkom. When that little vixen finished her man, she put out the lights, opened the door (deliberately locking it after her to make the thing more baffling), crossed over on that table, was helped into the other compartment by Murchison, and then as expeditiously as possible slipped ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... could have made me happy, and I know there is a good deal in my heart he never called out. I wish, however, I had not written him when I was in passion. No wonder he is thankful that he free from such a vixen. But, oh the provocation ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... angry, she is keen and shrewd: She was a vixen when she went to school; And, though she be but little, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... falling out of affairs they would ride unhindered to Teignmouth, and thence to Allonby Shaw; they counted fully upon doing this; but I, knowing Beatris, who was waiting-maid to the Lady Adeliza, and consequently in the plot, to be the devil's own vixen, despite an innocent face and a ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... also, never forgetting dear Kate! (and I do expect copies through the embassy) but I have not seen a word of the book yet. I only know that, being Caesar's wife, I am not merely 'suspected' (poor wife!), but dishonored before the 'Athenaeum' world as an unnatural vixen, who, instead of staying at home and spinning wool, stays at home[84] and curses her own land. 'It is my own, my native land!' If, indeed, I had gone abroad and cursed other people's lands, there would have been no objection. That ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... ejaculated. "What a vixen! But," he added lightly, "I like her all the better for that—eh, Rateau? Give me a wench with ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the steps in her riding-habit. And Ned, who had been waiting in the street with the horses, obsequiously held his hand while his young mistress leaped into Vixen's saddle. Leaving the darkey to follow upon black Calhoun, she cantered off up the street, greatly to the admiration of the neighbor. They threw open their windows to wave at her, but Virginia pressed her lips and stared straight ahead. She was going ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... virtuous world were not so considerate, nor so charitable. Many neighbours shunned the poor girl, as if contaminated by the crimes which Roger had undoubtedly committed: the more elderly unmarried sisterhood, as we have chronicled already, were overjoyed at the precious opportunity:—"Here was the pert vixen, whom all the young fellows so shamelessly followed, turned out, after all, a murderer's daughter;—they wished her joy of her eyes, and lips, and curls, and pretty speeches: no good ever came of such naughty ways, that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... telling you, he limped over to his easel, and took up his brush. "Just keep that charming expression on your face a few minutes longer, Kathie," he said, "until I get it on canvas; and I'll paint your picture as the 'Schoolroom Vixen,' and send it to the Academy. That's right, open your mouth just a little wider—what a wonderful cavern!—hullo! why'd you stop crying? I'm ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... Satan!" he bellowed out, as the young vixen scampered away between a dance and a run, and again commenced ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... the promised visit to his people the next afternoon. Mrs. Goodall was a large woman with smooth-parted hair, a common, obstinate woman, who had spoiled her four lads and her one vixen of a married daughter. She was one of those old-fashioned powerful natures that couldn't do with looks or education or any form of showing off. She fairly hated the sound of correct English. She thee'd and tha'd ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... she had forgotten all about it. And he had taken his name off the college books and left the university for ever. The poor, gentle tears of mortification ran down his mother's cheeks, and I hung round her neck, and scolded him like a vixen—as I am. We might have spared tears and fury both, for he is neither to be melted nor irritated by poor little us. He kissed us and coaxed us like a superior being, and set to work in his quiet, sober, ponderous way, and proved us a couple of fools to our ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... at all as to any going out of Cross Hall after Christmas. Then, if he'll make it fourteen years, I'll put the old house up and not ask him for a shilling. As I'm a living sinner, they're on a fox! Who'd have thought of that in the park? That's the old vixen from the holt, as sure as my name's Price. Them cubs haven't ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which Nessy MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my poor mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I was a wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing how disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... made no scruple to disguise her beautiful countenance by drawing on it the lines of deformity and the wrinkles of old age, and to put on the tawdry habilaments and vulgar manners of an old hypocritical city vixen."] ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... using the customary alias of female Christian names—never calling any woman Mary, for example, though Mare, being the sea, was, he said, too emblematic of the sex; but using a synonyme of better omen, and Molly therefore was to be preferred as being soft. 'If he accosted a vixen of that name in her worst mood, he mollified her. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither fitting that women should be made Dolls nor Idols. Susan with him was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... incarnation of womanliness and wit and fun, after Lovelace the most brilliant of Richardson's creations. Or take the Harlowe family: the severe and stupid father, the angry and selfish uncles, the cub James, the vixen Arabella, a very fiend of envy and hatred and malice—what a gallery of portraits is here! And Solmes and Tomlinson, Belford and Brand and Hickman; and the infinite complexity of the intrigue; the wit, the pathos, the invention; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the 16th of July we arrived at Malta, where we were detained by contrary gales until the 21st, when we left it, and arrived in sight of Tripoli the 25th, and were joined by the Syren, Argus, Vixen and Scourge. Our squadron now consisted of the Constitution, three brigs, three schooners, two bombs, and six gun-boats, our whole number of men one thousand and sixty. I proceeded to make the necessary arrangements for an attack on Tripoli, a city well walled, protected by batteries ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... herself away," he murmured. "That little vixen, Fluff, is right—she's in love with the fellow, and she's throwing herself at his head; it's perfectly awful to think of it. She has forgotten all about her old father. I'll be a beggar in my old age; the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... thou o' my dame's humours, thou curl-crop vixen?" said Gregory, unwarily drawn forth again from his taciturnity. "How should her inclinations be subject to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... when you wanted to discourse with Mary Matchwell? Where was the good of my poor dear mother? Why, she's as soft as butter. 'Twas a devil like me you wanted, you poor little darling. Do you think I'd a let her frighten you this way—the vixen—I'd a knocked her through the window as soon as look at her. She saw with half an eye she could frighten you both, you poor things. Oh! ho! how I wish I was here. I'd a put her across my knee and—no—do you say? Pooh! you don't know ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... aren't you, you red-headed vixen? Out making it hot for little Francis Kearny and his friends, according to Hoyle. Twinkle, twinkle, little devil! You're a lady, aren't you?—dogging a man with your bad luck just because he happened to be born while your boss was floorwalker. Get busy and sink the ship, you one-eyed ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Minerva came; Now if you do not scorn the same, Together let us bumpers ply." The Grasshopper, extremely dry, And, finding she had hit the key That gain'd applause, approach'd with glee; At which the Owl upon her flew, And quick the trembling vixen slew. Thus by her death she was adjudged To give what in her ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as though she knew I'd thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen." ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to his own way in most things and entirely unused to the ways of the gentler sex. He could have shaken the little vixen! But now she was standing before him and there was something in those great blue eyes besides anger; something that set his heart ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... school-bench. It was a slender, pasty young person, an inch taller and a year or two older than Mattie, with yellow ringlets, and more pale-blue ribbons on her white dress than poor Mattie had ever seen before. She was a clean, cold, pale, and selfish little vixen, whose dresses were never rumpled, and whose temper was never ruffled. She had not blood enough in her veins to drive her to play or to anger. But she seemed to poor Mattie the loveliest creature she had ever seen, and our brown, hard-handed, blowzy ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and turns in the lane To the house just left, whence a vixen voice Comes out with the firelight through the pane, And he sees within that the girl of his choice Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare For something said while he ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... good-natured and amusing; how he was always hunted by bailiffs and duns; how, to the landlady's horror, though she never could abide the woman, he did not marry his wife till a short time before her death; and what a queer little wild vixen his daughter was; how she kept them all laughing with her fun and mimicry; how she used to fetch the gin from the public-house, and was known in all the studios in the quarter—in brief, Mrs. Bute got such a full account of her new ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he to the Corporal one day, when confiding his griefs to Mr. Brock, "I wish my toe had been cut off before ever it served as a ladder to this little vixen." ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whatever else you may call her, Cousin Cenni. She is the most skilful photographer of the three, and it was she who told you not to move, and took you with spade in hand. That's the best joke I ever heard! How vexed Countess Cenni will feel on discovering the mistake! She is a little vixen, and full of mischief. If any of the young dandies tries to court her, she bids him go bear-hunting with her and show his valour. My woods are full of bears. I have shot three, but there are a lot of them alive still, and they do a deal of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... her voice, and, clutching her hands in her brother's hair, she pulled it so vigorously he was fain to drop his prize, which fell to the carpet and was devoured by a half-starved grimalkin, while he boxed his sister's ears soundly for her vixen attack ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... temper of Madame Loiseau broke loose:—"And yet we are not going to die of old age here! Since it is that vixen's trade to carry it on with all men, I think that she has no right to refuse one rather than another. Imagine, she has taken all that she found in Rouen, even coachmen, yes, Madame, the coachman of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... art critic, Vasari, who was Andrea's pupil during this time, has written that the wife, Lucretia, was abominable in every way. A vixen, she tormented Andrea from morning till night with her bitter tongue. She did not love him in the least, but only what his money could buy for her, for she was extravagant, and drove the sensitive artist to his grave while she outlived him ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... him on this lady's account. But I see not for why. She was a vixen in her virtue. What a pretty fellow she has ruined—Hey, Jack!—and her relations are ten times more to blame than he. I will prove this to the teeth of them all. If they could use her ill, why should they expect him to use her ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... none of your palavering chaps, to flummer over an old vixen for the sake of her strong-box. I hate such falseness. I speak the truth and care for no ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... wot it is now. That's a fox. I'll bet theer's a vixen wi' cubs in this coppice, an' she's smelt the rabbit an' ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... was coughin' this mornin': and Tartar was a bit lame. You might notice I was late comin' round. I didn't want the master to ride Mustapha. Not but what he's come on finely and the master has a beautiful pair of hands. You'll remember Vixen that broke her back at the double ditch at Punchestown, how she was a lamb with the master though a greater divil than Mustapha to ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... "You don't know her," she observed. "This is a cunning vixen, who has made quite a name in this establishment! In Nanking, she went by the appellation of vixen, and if you simply call her Feng Vixen, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!— To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash away, dash away, all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So, up to the housetop the coursers they flew, ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... ever invisible words were written between lines of a letter, they're there in your hand! He's asked her, to a certainty; and she has either said yes, or intends to! Wait for the next mail! The little vixen is just preparing us—see if I ain't right! Now, read the ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... feet high—eh? 'Give me the daggers!' I always knew she was a vixen. Your married life is likely to be a happy ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... years. I think there is something in it, and I believe the further they go the more they will find to support it. Now that the old chap is dead I should have less scruple in following it up—especially if the old lady is gone too. She was a bit of a vixen, but the husband was a good old ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... seems to me too good to be true. What a plucky girl she was to do such a thing! How did she know but that the little vixen had a revolver with her, ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... a vixen, sometimes the treasure and delight of an Englishman; the enlivener of his fireside, and his safeguard from ennui, is a phenomenon utterly unknown in Dahomy—that noble spirit, which animates the happier dames in lands of liberty, being ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... time, and then asked a few questions concerning Alice's home and friends. He replied, that she was in "a wretched fix." Her aunt was a vixen, her home a rigorous prison. He sighed deeply, and seemed unhappy, until the subject was changed,—a relief which Kate had too much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... certainly in error? when he described Vittoria's attitude as one of 'innocence-resembling boldness.' In the trial scene, no less than in the scenes of altercation with Brachiano and Flamineo, Webster clearly intended her to pass for a magnificent vixen, a beautiful and queenly termagant. Her boldness is the audacity of impudence, which does not condescend to entertain the thought of guilt. Her egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims whom she sacrifices to ambition seem ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... scare worth a cent," she snapped, with the virulence of a vixen. "You can't do anything to us. We ain't broke the law." There came a sudden ripple of laughter, and the charming lips curved joyously, as she added: "Though perhaps we ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... in it, but anyway you will have a better chance when I am not by to spoil you. Luck is all against me. If I want rain, comes drought; if I want sun, look for a deluge, if there is money to be made by a thing I'm out of it; to be lost, I'm in it; if I loved a vixen she'd drop into my arms like a medlar; I love an angel and that is why I shall never have her, never. From a game of marbles to the game of life I never had a grain of luck like other people. Leave me, Tom, and try if you can find gold; you will have a chance, my poor ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... talk of spirit, there's a spirit, now you have named Miss Howe! [And so I led him to confirm all I had said of that vixen.] Yet she was to be pitied too; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... to see silhouetted against the irregular path of sky that was framed by the cave's mouth the figure of a full-grown mother fox. This vixen was closely related to the red fox to whom this cave had formerly belonged. She had long since learned of Reynard's end, of course, and, indeed, had seen his corpse within twenty-four hours of the execution. Though frequently moved by curiosity, she had never before ventured ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... finish their tete-a-tete, she threw herself upon one of the seats, and commenced talking to her son, while Carrie, burning with jealousy and vexation, started for the house, where she laid her grievances before her mother, who, equally enraged, declared her intention of "hereafter watching the vixen pretty closely." ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... breeding-earth, for I heard them there this afternoon; so there is yet hope. But twenty acres of covert will not stand this sort of thing, considering that the hounds are "through" them once in three weeks, on an average, throughout the winter. Only one vixen survived at the end of last season, though another one has turned up since. We have two litters, fortunately. Where you have coverts handy to a stream of any kind, there will foxes congregate. They love water-rats and moorhens ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... wreck his mill, she had one more guess coming and then she would be right, for he had come to his senses at last. This was not the Virginia that he had known and loved—the Virginia he had played with in his youth—but a warped and embittered Virginia, a waspish, heartless vixen who had never been anything but cold. She had worked him deliberately, resorting to woman's wiles to gain what was not her due, and now when his mill was smashed into kindling wood, she danced and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... yield to that old vixen," cried Monsieur de Listomere, a lieutenant in the navy who was spending a furlough with his aunt. "If the vicar has pluck and will follow my suggestions he will soon ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... Quakerism. He lent me Madame Guyon's Life once to read. I didn't appreciate it. I told him that for all her religion she seemed to me to have a deal of the vixen in her. He could hardly get over it: it nearly broke our friendship. But I suppose he was very like her, except that, in my opinion, his nature was sweeter. He was a fatalist—saw leadings of Providence ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... It is said, and probably with truth, that he distrusts the overtures of alliance made to him. For since the government of Great Britain refused to demand redress for the capture by the Russians of the "Vixen," an English vessel trading on the coast of Circassia in contravention, as was alleged, of their laws of blockade, and thereby virtually declined to acknowledge the rights and independence of the Circassians, the latter have lost all faith in that intervention of England ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... seemed that, on the contrary, he had been wedded to Mis-fortune, and all her progeny. The rather turbulent lady of Socrates—(unless Mrs. Xantippe was scandalized by her neighbors)—was a sweet-tempered dame, and "gentle as a sucking dove," in comparison with the vixen who had been harassing his life and soul away for years. The only peaceable hours of his existence were those in which she was too much fatigued with liquor to annoy him. When awake and sober, her temper was little better, and her tormenting ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... but he shook them off, laughing, and went. Little Mary loved Mr Hope very dearly. She shot out at the door with him, and clasped her hands before Mrs Plumstead, looking up piteously, as if to implore her to do Mr Hope no harm. Already, however, the vixen's mood had changed. At the first glimpse of Mr Hope, her voice sank from being a squall into some resemblance to human utterance. She pulled her cap forward, and a tinge of colour returned to her white lips. Mr Enderby caught up little Mary ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... near her nest. Nay, child! if thou lik'st to be stifled in a nasty close room, learning things as is of no earthly good when they is learnt, instead o' riding on Job Donkin's hay-cart, it's thy look-out, not mine. She's a little vixen, isn't she?' smiling at Miss Eyre, as she finished her speech. But the poor governess saw no humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... obscured in the descending twilight. "Sacre! I truly thought I did, for the girl certainly has beauty and wit, and wove a spell about me in Montreal. But she has become as a wild bird out here, and is a most perplexing vixen, laughing at my protestations, so that indeed I hardly know whether it would be worth the risk ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... deserves," was the answer"better than he deserves, for disturbing us with his vixen brawls, and breaking God's peace ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Gruff; "a promise is a promise if there are laws in Paflagonia! And as for that monster, that wretch, that fiend, that ugly little vixen—as for that upstart, that ingrate, that beast, Betsinda, Master Giglio will have no little difficulty in discovering her whereabouts. He may look very long before finding HER, I warrant. He little knows that Miss ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a chic little vixen in a fantastic costume of black velvet with a jacket of blush pink. No one but Trudy could have worn such a thing—a semi-Dick-Whittington effect—and have gotten away with it. Though she was physically very tired from sewing late the night before, and mal-nourished because she was too indolent ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... night; and once I had a horse that was frightened in a place by the side of a road, near a great park where a man had been murdered. He ran a mile behind, but after a while came back to the waggons. A cut (castrated) dog or a vixen can hunt ghosts. Yes, they chase spirits just the same as anything in the world—bite 'em, fight 'em, tear 'em—because dogs cannot ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... even tried to pump the Irish slavey. Gee, what a vixen! She almost flew at me. She said she ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... hailed them while waiting for fire to throw signals, letting them know who we were; but the wind carried away our shoutings, and the vessel actually seemed inclined to run us down. Worse yet—what could the little vixen mean?—a bright light, flashed across her decks, showed gathering round her guns a swift-moving band of men. Her crew were training their guns upon us for our swift capture or destruction: she could not see our heavy weight of metal, for our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... darling wish?" And Ivy burst into tears, and begged to know if she should show her love to her father and mother by going away from them. This drove the nail into her old father's heart, and then the little vixen clenched it by throwing herself into his arms, and sobbing, "Oh, papa! would you turn your Ivy out of doors and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by so doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns, its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of handsome vixen among vines,—the smilax, which can climb though it cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry. If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it. Moreover, the very ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... found that of Gooreedeeana. Colbee, who was certainly, in other respects a good tempered merry fellow, made no scruple of treating Daringa, who was a gentle creature, thus. Baneelon did the same to Barangaroo, but she was a scold and a vixen, and nobody pitied her. It must nevertheless be confessed that the women often artfully study to irritate and inflame the passions of the men, although sensible that the ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... will suffice. She leaves the Alderman's House, and flies away to the Groves and Mountains. To say the truth, I believe she used to drink away her Senses; and that is the best Excuse for her. Ah! how often hath she cast a jealous Eye on some Heifer! and cried out, Why should that vixen please my Love? Behold, says she, how the Slut dances a Minuet on the Grass before him: Let me die, but she is silly enough to think her Airs become her in my Love's Eyes. At length she resolved to punish her Rivals. ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... find you a man to ride. He thoroughly understands horses, I 'll say that for him, though I have no cause to love him. He 'll ride for you, but I don't believe Boatman is as good as Vixen." ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... 'Little vixen!' exclaimed the Baroness, 'she is gone; her father took her away with him.' And as her husband looked extremely displeased, she added that Eustacie had been meddling with her jewel cabinet and had been put in penitence. Her first impulse on seeing her father had been to cling to him and poor ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nay, nay, cousin. I have forgot my gloves. What d'ye do? 'Sheart, a has locked the door indeed, I think.—Nay, cousin Fainall, open the door. Pshaw, what a vixen trick is this? Nay, now a has seen me too.—Cousin, I made bold to pass through as it were—I think this ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... or to partake of those "savoury messes, which the neat-handed Phillis dresses," he was received with sullen silence, or with taunting reproach. The old gardener, stupid as he was, Forester thought an agreeable companion, compared with his insolent son and his vixen daughter. The happiest hours of the day, to our hero, were those which he spent at his work; his affections, repressed and disappointed, became a source ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... woman likes best, which, according to her, is to bear rule over her husband and household. The prioress is conventional and weak, aping courtly manners. The wife of the host of the Tabard inn is a vixen and shrew, who calls her husband a milksop, and is so formidable with both her tongue and her hands that he is glad to make his escape from her whenever he can. The pretty wife of the carpenter, gentle and slender, with her white apron and open dress, is anything but intellectual,—a mere sensual ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... day when most vessels carried some guns for self-defense, it was a simple matter to ignore the national character of an armed ship and to stop it unceremoniously. Of such an insult Farragut heard during this stay in Havana. The brig Vixen, of the United States Navy, had been fired into by a British ship of war. "This," wrote Farragut in his journal, "was the first thing that caused in me bad feeling toward the English nation. I was too young ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... brought to the mouth of the earth in which a vixen fox—a fox with her young ones—has taken up her abode, and is sent in to worry and drive her out. Some young terriers are brought to the mouth of the hover, to listen to the process that is going forward within, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... her;—but still there was the chance. She had thrown his wife more than once in his face, after the fashion of women when they are wooed by married men since the days of Cleopatra downwards. But he had taken that simply as encouragement. He had already let her know that his wife was a vixen who troubled his life. Lizzie had given him her sympathy, and had almost given him a tear. "But I am not a man to be broken-hearted because I have made a mistake," said Lopez. "Marriage vows are very well, but they shall never bind ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... "Here are your broomsticks," an imp replied. "They've been in—the place you know—so long They smell of brimstone uncommon strong; But they've gained by being left alone, Just look, and you'll see how tall they've grown." —And where is my cat? "a vixen squalled. Yes, where are our cats?" the witches bawled, And began to call them all by name: As fast as they called the cats, they came There was bob-tailed Tommy and long-tailed Tim, And wall-eyed Jacky and green-eyed Jim, And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged Beau, And Skinny ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... last year and a half her father had retired from active service, after selling his vessel, the "Vixen," for a large price, so goodly a name had she borne in the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... made one or two forlorn attempts to break his neck. He did not care in the least whether they found or not; and when Captain Glomax was held to have disgraced himself thoroughly by wasting an hour in digging out and then killing a vixen, he had not a word to say about it. But, as he read Dolly's note, there came back something of life into his eyes. He had forsworn the club, but would certainly go when thus invited. He wrote a scrawl to Dolly, "I'll come," and, having sent it off by the messenger, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change. The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet towel—a woman of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... "You vixen!" he muttered wrathfully. Then he controlled himself with an almost visible effort and half turned in his saddle. "Will you permit me to give you a bit of purely disinterested advice? Don't go in for the financial game on your own; you are bound to lose. In your proper sphere ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... gentleman looked up. "Mah boy, you must remembah that Dixie will have otheah good hawses to beat. Vixen is the favohite and very fast, although Ah know mah little black friend heah will do heh best to honah the purple and white," glancing proudly at the headband of the black marvel. "Next Satahday will ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... one, Monsieur," the coachman said in conclusion, "a vixen such as one does not see now in the worst garrison towns, and who would open the door to the whole fraternity, and not at all ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant |
