"Shrank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequences he rushed forward at the line. Every gun was belching fire and lead at him, while tufts of fur floating in the air told that several shots were effective. Wounded he met the horsemen, striking right and left in splendid savage ferocity. The horses snorted and shrank from him, and several suffered from his ugly thrusts. An occasional effective shot was placed, but every time he forced his way through the cordon he was confronted by a second line. A successful cast of a rope finally checked his course; ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... nerves for suffering and impels to noble acts, which moulds life and takes the sting and the terror out of death? Nor is that the only encouragement given to the twelve, who might well be appalled at the prospect of standing before Gentile kings. Jesus seems to discern how they shrank as they listened, at the thought of having to bear 'testimony' before exalted personages, and, with beautiful adaptation to their weakness, He interjects a great promise, which, for the first time, presents the divine Spirit as dwelling in the disciples' spirits. The occasion of the dawning ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fallen from his hand. Both arms wildly sawing the air, Ike shivered and shrank like the arrant craven he was ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... girls in Madame Reichard's excellent establishment who did not decide that she was cold and unsympathetic. Courteous, well-bred, self-possessed, she was to a fault, but—unpardonable sin in school-girl eyes—she shrank from those dear and delicious intimacies, those mushroom friendships of our tender years, that are as explosive as fire-crackers and as evanescent as the smoke thereof. The volumes of satire that have been written on the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... up with a startled air. She glanced inquiringly toward her husband. He was leaning forward, a look of interest on his dark face. The child at his knee shrank a little. Her eyes were full of a strange light. On the opposite side of the room her sister Marie sat unmoved, her placid doll eyes resting on the player with a ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... must have seen I was. As I leaned forward, holding by the curtains, he pulled one of them suddenly back, threw open the shutters, and the full glare was upon my face. I shut my eyes—I could not help it—and shrank; but, gathering strength from absolute terror of his silence, I spoke: I asked, 'For Heaven's sake! Clarendon, what is the matter? Why do ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... you to talk?" cried her husband, with a face as black as when the cure's name had first been mentioned. The echo shrank into the wall. "As I was telling these ladies"—he resumed here his boot work, clamping the last between his great knees—"as I was saying, we have not been fortunate in cures, we of our parish. There are cures and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of mind questions from anybody would be intolerable, and I shrank back into the corner of the carriage whenever a passer-by reminded me, however vaguely, of anybody I had ever known; the mental strain increased mile after mile, for the names of the stations grew more familiar. I began ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... have grown nervous, I fear,' said Aunt Sarah. 'I can remember when you greatly enjoyed a good discussion, and never shrank from ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... to his lips, and stretched out his hand toward Uarda; but she shrank back, for a little figure slipped through an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Graceful looked about him; he was alone—alone with the remains of his two companions, which the waves had washed on the shore. Exhausted with suffering and excitement, he dragged himself to the brook and bent over the water to refresh his parched lips, when he shrank back with affright. It was not his face that he saw in the water, but that of an old man with silvery locks who strongly resembled him. He turned round; there was no one behind him. He again drew near the fountain; he saw the old man, or rather, doubtless, the old ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... been said here, doth it appear to me that its honour hath anywise been sullied. Again, who is there knoweth not your virtue? Which, not to say mirthful discourse, but even fear of death I do not believe could avail to shake. And to tell you the truth, whosoever should hear that you shrank from devising bytimes of these toys would be apt to suspect that you were guilty in the matter and were therefore unwilling to discourse thereof. To say nothing of the fine honour you would do me in that, I having been obedient unto all, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The old man shrank away nervously, mumbling all sorts of excuses, for he above all people lived in deadly terror of Cruel Coppinger, also of his vicious mare, and the idea of being at the mercy of them both nearly scared away ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... for long; a burst of voices heralded a new danger, and he shrank into a doorway. Along one of the lanes a troop of children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing and leaping round something which they dragged by a string. Now one of the hindmost would burl it ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... you consider it? The same disability is clear in that character. The thing which he foresaw, which he thought over, which he imagined in the act and in the consequence—that he shrank from, upbraiding himself even as you have done. Yet when the moment of action comes, sharp and immediate, does he fail? No, he excels, and just by reason of that foresight. I have seen men in the Crimea, tortured by their imaginations before the fight—once the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the fiery furnace of the Terror?[14] But this miscalled satire of James Gillray, which he dubs "a fact," is nothing less than a poisonous libel. As for le petit Caporal himself, everyone now knows, that while he viewed the carnage of the battlefield with the indifference of a conqueror, he shrank in horror from the murderers of the Swiss; from Danton and his satellites, the Septembrist massacrists; from the mock trials and cold-blooded atrocities of the Terrorists. Standing apart from these last by right of his unexampled genius, with Danton, Marat, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... about poor Koto. There was a tale that some police-officer, late at night, saw a woman's head without a body, nibbling fruit from a tree overhanging some garden-wall; and that, knowing it to be a nuke- kubi, he struck it with the flat of his sword. It shrank away as swiftly as a bat flies, but not before he had been able to recognize the face of the kamiyui. 'Oh! it is quite true!' declared Jin, the morning after the alleged occurrence; 'and if you don't believe it, send word to Koto that you want to see her. She can't go out: her face ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... evidence commenced, which continued up to the 11th day of the trial, January 26th, on which day the case for the prosecution closed. On the next day Mr. Shiel opened the case for the defence, as counsel for himself and Mr. John O'Connell. In his speech he contended that Mr. O'Connell shrank with abhorrence from the sanguinary aims imputed to him; and bitterly complained that poems and articles in newspapers should be brought as evidence against him, as if he were the editor of the several journals from which that evidence had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... She shrank back from him. "Mulier enim sum." Would he get the force of the particle? What could he ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown
... appeal to his ancient friends, the usurers, a matter of much difficulty, if not totally useless. Manasseh Ben Israel, indeed, he knew had an inexhaustible store, and a not unready hand, as he had upon more than one occasion, experienced; but, villain as he was, he shrank from the idea of applying to him for assistance, at the very moment when he was thrusting ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... movement of the shoulders, almost caressing, "in the beginning we social revolutionists agreed with them and believed in them. Why not? Kerensky was an incapable dreamer—so sensitive that if you spoke rudely to him he shrank away wounded to ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... knees, then stopped and uttered piteous little bleats. Encouraged by the soft crooning it plunged into the deep water and with great splashing and floundering managed to swim the short distance. Its slender legs shook as it staggered up the bank. Exhausted or frightened, it shrank close to its mother. Together they disappeared in the willows which fringed ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the inevitable tragedy, the idea of which I shrank from afterward more than at the time. We each threw a lasso over the neck of the doomed wolf, and strained our horses in opposite directions until the blood burst from her mouth, her eyes glazed, her limbs stiffened and then fell limp. Homeward then we rode, carrying ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... unquestioned but, as they at least conceived it, paternal authority. The conditions of bureaucratic rule inevitably tended to produce an autocratic temper. But it was not merely in obedience to that temper that they shrank from any changes that would weaken the administration; the best of them at least had a strong sense of their responsibilities as guardians and protectors of the simple and ignorant masses committed to their care. They might ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... disappearance must be noted,—perhaps his body would be found—and while she had little fear that anyone would associate her with the tragedy it was a most unpleasant thing to think about. Sometimes she wondered if she should not tell her father or Transley just what had happened, but she shrank from doing so as from the confession of a crime. Mostly she was able to think ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... chord of strings vibrated through the night, another followed, and then a brief pattern of sound was woven from the serious notes of a guitar. Lavinia shrank back within the room—it was, incredibly, a serenade on the stolid Lungarno. It was for Gheta! The romance of the south of Spain had come to life under their window. A voice joined the instrument, melodious and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... vultures were assembled in flocks around. It was curious to observe the mixture of boldness and timidity which these birds exhibited; for although they advanced within two feet of the jaguar, they instantly shrank back at the least motion he made. In order to observe more nearly their proceedings, the travellers went into their little boat, when the tyrant of the forest withdrew behind the bushes, leaving his victim, upon ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... open for her to come to him. She swayed forward as if to give herself into the clasp of those strong arms, but instantly checked the movement and shrank back ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... a doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined office and a low salary; but no one shrank from the possibility of having been called upon to assume the functions of Peggy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... sand into open crevices. It will be seen that some of the cracks, as at b, c, traverse the footprints, and produce distortion in them, as might have been expected, for the mud must have been soft when the animal walked over it and left the impressions; whereas, when it afterwards dried up and shrank, it would be too ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... broader basis, suffered from the same difficulties. There was only one alternative to the old orthodox view of independent creation, namely the bold acceptance of land-connections to an extent for which geological and palaeontological science was not yet ripe. Those who shrank from either view, gave up the problem as mysterious and beyond the human intellect. This was the expressed opinion of men like Swainson, Lyell and Humboldt. Only Darwin had the courage to say that the problem was not insoluble. If we admit "that in the long course of time the individuals of the same ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... her to the test at last, but my eyes shrank from her face as I spoke. There was a dead silence, which I broke by adding lamely: "But no doubt Signor Briga ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Mary blandly curious. Pauline alone seemed as though by instinct to realize what lay beneath their hostess's words. Her face seemed suddenly to grow tense. She shrank back—a slight, involuntary movement, but ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... minister's barn under the elms on the hill Cynthia pulled the harness from the tired horse with an energy that betokened activity of mind. She was not one who shrank from self-knowledge, and the question put itself to her, "Whither was this matter tending?" The fire that is in strong men has ever been a lure to women; and many, meaning to play with it, have been burnt thereby since the world began. But to turn the fire. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appearance of man on the planet, and during all the period since his appearance, natural laws have been steadily in force in Palestine as elsewhere; this conviction obliged men to consider other than supernatural causes for the phenomena of the Dead Sea, and myth and marvel steadily shrank in value. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... she could not control shook Doris's voice. She shrank from touching the exquisite detachment of Sister Angela by the truth, and yet she must have as much sympathy as possible ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... at the sound of his friend's voice, but he did not turn his head. He began to descend the stairs slowly, a step at a time, staring at the mob so fiercely that they shrank back before the look of wounded pride and anger in his eyes. Those in the rear raised and levelled their rifles. Without taking his eyes from theirs, Stuart drew his revolver, and with his sword swinging from its wrist-strap, pointed his weapon at ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... me," he asked gently. She lifted her blue eyes miserably to his, and tried to smile. But unconsciously she shrank a little as she did so, ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... I followed the wagon down the narrow street towards the police station. A strange reserve had crept into her manner during the latter portion of our walk. There was something in her mind which she shrank from putting into words. Did she believe that I was responsible for this grim tragedy which had so suddenly thrown its shadow over my humdrum ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the speaking eyes of Lucy, just clear of the grey coat of her father, behind which she instinctively shrank, the instant she caught ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... come forward to the open hatch, slender and topped with tawny curls. It paused and shrank back at the sudden apparition of Parr and his men leaping forward. Tentacles swarmed out, trying to push or pull the figure aside so as to close the hatch again. That took more seconds—then Parr had crossed the intervening ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... stood, to shoot down the savage and appropriate his horse for himself. There was an instant when he meditated such a step, but though many a veteran of the frontier would have seized the chance with eagerness, he shrank from such a ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... watch this good little creature expanding under the splendours of Art and Nature! When she had got free from the commonplace atmosphere in which she had lived, she would, in a little while, become a charming companion. M. Roque's wealth, moreover, tempted him. And yet he shrank from taking this step, regarding it as a weakness, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... pertinacious. It has been the fate of every civilization we know anything about to be wiped out by hardy races. Rome went down before the Northmen, and England had its oversea conqueror. Greece and Italy succumbed to the might of brawny arms, and civilization shrank back for hundreds of years. So China fell before the men of the mountains, and her records ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... be moments that prolong, but there are others in which time no longer is; and as Mary shrank in the blight of Judas' stare, both felt that the culmination of ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... matter coolly also. He looked at it till the bugbears shrank into utter insignificance; till they became no more than forms of shreds and patches put up to frighten birds ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... step further, and the rebuking hand was still uplifted. The soldiers shrank back and more than one crossed himself. Yet they were relieved, as Father Montigny had interfered with a task ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Beatrice shrank from saying good-bye to her father. It was more than her usual dislike of entering the sick room. She had come to realize that though her father caused her to be the sort of person she was, he himself had remained both real and simple, succeeding by force of this fact, and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... noticed Ellis's withdrawal of fellowship, vaguely attributing his silence to unexpressed sympathy. But later, when he broached the subject of Milly's death, he was met with a stony avoidance which inspired both astonishment and resentment. Sub-normal as he now was in nervous strength and tension, he shrank from having it out with Ellis. But he felt, for the first time in ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Langleys to a theatre where some new and successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance only a natural ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... vulgarity. Here, however, although the resemblance was extraordinary, and every feature almost identical, there might be read in the countenance of her brother a low, commonplace expression, that looked as if it were composed of effrontery, cunning, and profligacy. Lucy for a moment shrank back from such a countenance, and the shock of disappointment chilled the warmth with which she had been prepared to receive him. But, then, her generous heart told her that she might probably be prejudging ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... triumph on his countenance, Joshua Daunton bowed submissively to all but myself. To me he advanced with an insulting smile and an extended hand. I shrank back loathingly. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... she shrank from the noise of growing boys and girls. But she had a warm, kind heart, and—she told me this herself—the sight of the beautiful young mother in her deep mourning made her quickly forget her prejudice. "If she had brought ten bawlers instead of five," ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sentiment but little comprehended, and he had certainly not learned it among the Romans, who frequently massacred their prisoners wholesale. Woe to the vanquished! was almost a maxim with them. But Beric shrank from witnessing the scene, now that the tables were turned upon the oppressors. Nationally he hated the Romans, but individually he had no feeling against them, and had he had the power he would at once have arrested the effusion of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... had been brought forward by the party of measured propriety and imperative moderation, of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When he urged the differences in every situation and every problem, and shrank from the common denominator and the underlying principle, he fell into step with his friends. As an Irishman, who had married into an Irish Catholic family, it was desirable that he should adopt no theories in America which would unsettle Ireland. He had learnt to teach government ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... big fella mullet!" George exclaimed, as he gleefully splashed the water, and the cloud contracted and shrank back. The stream was about ten feet wide. Our equipment for sport consisted of a tomahawk and a grass-tree spear so frail that any of the mullet could have swum ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... The two shrank closer toward the wreck. They might get under the prow of that and be safe. But even as they started to move, several of the sea wolves darted quickly at them. Tom glanced at the captain. What could they do? Strong as were the diving suits, a combined attack ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... of all this about Dillsborough Wood?" asked Mrs. Masters. The attorney shrank at the question, and shook himself ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... predicted that, if it came upon them in that place, they would not be able to save even one of the ships. And it was as they said. So they slackened their sails for a short time and deliberated; and they did not think they ought to try for Mandracium (for they shrank from violating the commands of Belisarius, and at the same time they suspected that the entrance to Mandracium was closed by the chains, and besides they feared that this harbour was not sufficient for the whole ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... going sketching.' Her eyes plainly added, 'with Ingersoll Armour,' but she as obviously shrank from the roughness of pitching him in that unconsidered way before us. For some reason I refrained from taking the cue. I would not ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... I shrank back. Then I waxed rebellious. I refused to answer the question. He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affront upon the landscape. And a dignity entered into me, and my neck was stiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates of goods ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... as the large tumor in her breast shrank. While it had been getting larger and pressing ever harder on all the nerves, she had little or no sensation, but as it shrank, the nerves were reactivated. Most people think that a growing tumor would cause more pain than a shrinking one. Often the opposite is true. Pain can be a good sign that ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... no doubt from mistaken considerations of kindness, partly because he shrank from losing her affection—to take effective steps to put an end to Vanessa's hopes. It would have been better if he had unhesitatingly made it clear to her that he could not return her passion, and that if she could not be satisfied with friendship ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sufficient occasion to bring into play. Notwithstanding the polite tone which Mr Bellamy had cunningly adopted in placing his mission before him, even he, the ignorant and obtuse Brammel, could not fail to see that he had been made the tool, the cat's-paw in a business from which his partners shrank. Now, had the young man been as full of courage as he was of vulgar conceit, he might, I verily believe, have turned his hatred, and his knowledge of affairs, to very good account. Lacking the spirit of the smallest animal that crawls, he was content to eject his odious malice in oaths and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... thought of it the more unendurable her position appeared. In her vivid self-consciousness the old relations could not continue. Heretofore his caresses had been a matter of course, of habit. They could be so no longer. She shrank from them with inexpressible fear, knowing they would bring what little blood she possessed to her face and very brow in tell-tale floods. The one event from which her sensitive womanhood drew back in deepest dread was his knowledge of her love. To prevent this she would rather die, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... She shrank back from touching the inanimate figure, her face very pale in the dim light, yet it required the combined efforts of both to force the stiffening body through the port hole, and then lower it slowly to the surging water below. The cord cut our hands cruelly, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... describe the impression that they made in no other way. I no longer wondered at Edmund's ability to converse with her, for I felt that, with a little instruction, and more of our leader's mental penetration, I could do it myself. At times I shrank from encountering her gaze, for I verily believed that she read my inmost thoughts. And I could see that thought came out of her eyes, but it escaped all my efforts to grasp it; it was too evanescent, or ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... medical lights in the world; so that really when the personage in question, following up a tinkle of the bell, solidly rose in the doorway, it was to impose on Densher a vision that for the instant cut like a knife. It spoke, the fact, and in a single dreadful word, of the magnitude—he shrank from calling it anything else—of Milly's case. The great man had not gone then, and an immense surrender to her immense need was so expressed in it that some effect, some help, some hope, were flagrantly part of the expression. It was for Densher, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the bed of the river was raised. At last came the time when the Tarim sought for an outlet to the south, where the country was somewhat lower. The old bed was dried up by degrees and the water in the lake evaporated. The sheet of water remained, indeed, for a long time, but it shrank up from year to year. At last there was not a drop of water left, and the whole country dried up. The poplar woods perished, and the reeds withered and were blown away by the wind. The men left their huts ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... in carrying through the major portion of his reform programme. But he was opposed by the Republicans, by the professional politicians of the older parties, and by the entire hierarchy of administrative and judicial officials who shrank from impending investigation. His task was enhanced tremendously by the growing unpopularity of King Carlos, and in defense of the sovereign it was found necessary to deprive the House of Peers of its judicial functions, to replace the district ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... can't I? I'll show you whether I can." And the girl faced Marian so threateningly that she shrank away. ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... knew, and had seen. Ellesborough roused himself from his stupor, and came to assist the police in the preliminary examination of witnesses and inspection of the farm. Once he and Janet passed each other, but they did not attempt to speak. Each indeed shrank from the other. A word of pity would have been merely ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smoke from the cleft in the cliff and the foremost warrior fell, shot squarely through the forehead. A second puff and a second warrior was gone to a land where the hunting is always good. Before such accurate shooting with only the moonlight to aid, the other warriors shrank back appalled, and quickly ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... steps they ran against a crowd of college boys. Johnson shrank up miserably against the stone fence, and tried to look as small as possible. Glances of recognition passed, and Joel spoke to right and left as the boys went by. But a few hisses, low and insistent, were ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... library she was forced several times to ask her way, as she visited office after office, of the evening papers first, till she had placed her notice with each one of them. Her courage almost failed her, her heart did quite, after two or three. It was a trial from which her whole nature shrank, to go among the people, to face the eyes, to exchange talk with the lips, that were at home in those purlieus; look at them she did not. Making her slow way through the choked narrow streets, where the mere ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Dr. Talmage did not consider his autobiography of vital importance to posterity; his chief concern was for his sermons and other voluminous writings. The intimate things of his life he held too sacred for public view, and he shrank from any intrusion thereupon. His autobiography, therefore, was a concession to his family, his friends, and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... sprang up with a smothered shriek. The girls heard her chatter something, in which the word "merci" was plain. She shrank from the big man; but he was only bowing very low before her, with the cap held out for a contribution, and ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... Laura shrank visibly. "I will not go," said she. "Let the Countess Canossa select my costume. It matters little to me: but be so good as to see that the gondola ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... She shrank at his voice almost as if he had struck her. The blood flew into her brother's face as he noticed the action; but he controlled himself, and, taking her hand, led her ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... accept, I could not swallow this terrible cup. I thought of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He understood and knew all pain; I had His companionship, but He offered me no cessation of this pain. It must be borne; had He not borne His own up to the bitter end? I shrank, appalled, from the suffering I was already in and the suffering that lay before me. Relief from this agony, relief, relief! But there was no relief. In utter darkness all must be gone through. At least I was not so foolish as to attribute ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... fear that the marchese's paternal corrections must have sometimes taken a more practical shape than mere verbal upbraidings; for poor Bianca shrank back, throwing up one arm, as if to shield her face, and, with a wild cry of "Alberto! come to me!" fell into the arms of that tardy lover, who at that appropriate moment had made his appearance, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... thee go, thou'lt go; and when I bid thee come, thou'lt come; and when I say, 'Here, follow me!' thou'lt follow like a dog to heel!" He drew up his lip until his white teeth showed, and Nick, hearing them gritting together, shrank back dismayed. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... of the old man shrank sensitively within him for a moment. Then he said to himself, "He will know of it some day, and I may as well tell him." For the heart that had been frozen for years this youth had had ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... settle, and muttered to himself. Then his thoughts wandered. Supposing the pigeons were gone for good, would he ever make up his mind to take that money out of the money-hole, and buy a fresh stock? He knew he never would, and shrank into a meaner heap upon the settle as he said so to himself. He did not like to look his ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... struck me that I had said an awful thing, and I looked up to see the results. When I spoke, Sorais' face was hidden in her hands, and as my words reached her she slowly raised it, and I shrank back dismayed. It was ashy white, and her eyes were flaming. She rose to her feet and seemed to be choking, but the awful thing was that she was so quiet about it all. Once she looked at a side table, on which lay a dagger, and from it ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy to determine the direction of the main stream. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... worth all the reasons in the world. "I am old and well stricken in years," he was wont to say; and I never found any one bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was full of tales of greater situations in his younger days. He spoke of castles and parks with a humbling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mellicent shrank back aghast. What a confession to have heard from Peggy's own lips! Peggy, the reserved and dignified; Peggy, who was so scrupulously reticent about her own feelings! She could hardly believe her ears. It seemed unnatural, alarming, almost shocking. Her ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the moment escaped him; and at other times, Daisy's manner so asked for a shield rather than a trumpet, and the little face that looked up from being covered with her hand was so bright and sweet, that perhaps his heart shrank from saying anything that would change the expression. At any rate, Daisy had ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... it; and Kahwa did the same, snuggling up close to my mother's side. Was it an animal, or a fungus, or only a mound of earth? The way to find out was to smell it. So, without any idea of hurting it, I trotted up and reached out my nose. As I did so it shrank a little more into itself, and became rounder and more like a fungus than ever; but the act of shrinking also made the black and white grass stick out a little farther, so that my nose met it sooner than I expected, and I found that, if it was grass, it was very sharp ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... announced to sing that night, as the new Spanish prima donna, La Senorita Rosita Campaneo; and though she had been applauded by manager and musicians at the rehearsal that morning, her spirit shrank from the task. Recent letters from America had caused deep melancholy; and the idea of singing, not con amore, but as a performer before an audience of entire strangers, filled her with dismay. She remembered how many times she and Flora and Gerald had sung together from Norma; and ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... economic embargo over a dispute about the country's constitutional name and flag hindered economic growth until 1996. GDP subsequently rose each year through 2000. In 2001, during a civil conflict, the economy shrank 4.5% because of decreased trade, intermittent border closures, increased deficit spending on security needs, and investor uncertainty. Growth barely recovered in 2002 to 0.9%, then averaged 4% per year during ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love—only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory. Strangely Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves {161} into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life, so that he produced the same sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has no meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to look trusting and dreamy, now looked as if ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the door, but shrank back as the man, with a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on it daily ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the ruffians stood aside, staring hard at them. Mrs. Willoughby shrank in terror from the baleful glances of their eyes; but Minnie looked at them calmly and innocently, and not without some of that curiosity which a child shows when he first sees a Chinaman or an Arab in the streets. Girasole then led the way up stairs to a room on ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... tongue was loosed, and he overwhelmed the girl with torrents of abuse. Such fire, such directness, such a choice of ungentlemanly language, none had ever before suspected Morris to possess; and the girl trembled and shrank ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sinful malignant hearts from which the sufferings came, of His pained and rejected love thrown back on itself, of His clear sight of what their heartless infliction of tortures would end in for the inflicters, of His true human feeling which shrank from being the object of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and the hot weather had become oppressive, before Allan thought once more of still further trips into the Abyss. Beatrice tried to dissuade him. Her heart shrank from further ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... it it made her tremble and burn. So far as Helen could see at that moment, a marriage with this Mr. Harrison would mean the command of every source of happiness; and upon a scale so magnificent, so belittling of everything she had known before, that she shrank from it as something impossible and unnatural. Again and again she buried her heated brow in her hands and muttered: "I ought to have known it before! I ought to have had time ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... frontierswoman though she was, put her fingers to her ears and shrank away from the stove,—for she had been taught that all metal "drew lightning." Her husband busied himself stemming the stream of water that seeped beneath the door with empty grain or coffee bags, snatched from the top of a cupboard ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Elinor shrank back a little. She had not minded dining with her father when Howard was at home, but Howard was at college. Howard had a way of good-naturedly ignoring his father's asperities, but Elinor was a suppressed, shy little thing, romantic, aloof, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... foremost of his rank, In sturdy steel forth stept the warrior bold, The first he smote down from his saddle sank, The next under his steel lay on the mould, Under the Saracen's spear the worthies shrank, No breastplate could that cursed tree outhold, When that was broke his precious sword he drew, And whom he hit, he felled, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... regarded him first in semi-recognition, then with blank astonishment,—as well she might. She shrank ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Bridemaids and bridegroom shrank in fear, But I stood high who stood at bay: 'And if I answer yea, fair Sir, What man art thou to ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... sensitive and keen from suffering, saw through it all and shrank, not from fear or cowardice, but unselfish love, away from the stir and excitement and his mother's sigh of humiliation. He lived his life much alone; misunderstood, but silently brave. His chance would come. ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... records of his Gallic and British campaigns, simply as notes, or memoranda, afterwards to be worked up by regular historians; but, as Cicero observes, their merit was such in the eyes of the discerning, that all judicious writers shrank from the attempt to alter them. In another instance of his literary labors, he showed a very just sense of true dignity. Rightly conceiving that every thing patriotic was dignified, and that to illustrate ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... vitality merely because I had happened to see those initials was miraculous. I pretended to myself that I should like once more to see Mrs. Butts- -perhaps she might be in want and I could help her. I shrank from writing to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King's Arms hotel upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow lady ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... for the best, the disagreeable always is. You are responsible, my beloved cousin, and the consequences be on your head. You thought my salvation lay in leaving Kentucky and seeking my fortune in strange lands. Your tender sensibilities shrank from having me exposed to the world as a young widow who is not sorry. So you "shipped me some-wheres East of Suez" and tied me up with ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... her. He must have known that he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working! He must have known that he would never take his father's place at the desk by the dusty window! But if he shrank from an avowal it was because he had no other proposal to make. His mother understood him, though the others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he would put his hand to, she had spoken of Annie McGrath. She didn't say ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... they started again, half glad to go, half unwilling to leave. It was the terrible uncertainty that told on them. They shrank from facing the thought of what it would mean if they didn't find Peter, and forced themselves to believe that they would ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... weight Of Sabine shields and bracelets basely sank, Stifled and dying, at the city-gate, Lies buried there—and now the long weeds, dank With baneful dews, bend o'er her, and the rank Entangled grass, the timid lizard's home, Covers the sepulchre—the wild flower shrank To plant its roots in that polluted loam— Pity that such a tomb should look o'er ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Shave, shaved, shaved, shaven. Shear, sheared, sheared, shore, shorn. Shed, shed, shed. Shine, shone, shone. Shoe, shod, shod. Shoot, shot, shot. Show, showed, shown, showed. Shred, shred, shred. Shrink, shrank, shrunk, shrunk, shrunken. Shut, shut, shut. Sing, sang, sung. sung, Sink, sank, sunk, sunk, sunken. Sit, sat, sat. Slay, slew, slain. Sleep, slept, slept. Slide, slid, slidden, slid. Sling, slung, slung. slang Slink, slunk, slunk. Slit, slit, slit, slitted, slitted. Smell, smelt, smelt, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and he came in, carrying in his hand a box of cigars, which he placed in the middle of the table. Wallie Hine at once stumbled across the room to Sylvia; he walked unsteadily, his features were more flushed than before. She shrank a little from him. But he had not the time to sit down beside her, for Captain Barstow ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the legions crossed the Rhine they found a vast impenetrable life which had no voice. They met the faceless silence of the Black Forest. This huge, huge wood did not answer when they called. Its silence was too crude and massive. And the soldiers shrank: shrank before the trees that had no faces, and no answer. A vast array of non-human life, darkly self-sufficient, and bristling with indomitable energy. The Hercynian wood, not to be fathomed. The enormous power of these collective trees, stronger in their somber ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... he was, he shrank from the task. "No, no!" he said, looking wildly into Donald's face. "Not I. I am not the one to tell her, that ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that State. But for a long time, he was at a loss to decide, whether to take his beneficiaries generally from the meritorious poor or only from the deserving Negroes. He said, "I could not put a bounty on color. I shrank from the least appearance of doing so, and if I know my heart, it was equally compassionate toward such white and black men as are equal sufferers."[501] In the end, however, he concluded to confine his gifts ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... presents the still youthful king in a very lovable light. The same temper which had marked his first acts after Saul's death is strikingly brought out (2 Sam. ii.-iv.) He seems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to Joab, as if he shrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. When he does interfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferocious vengeance and dastardly assassination. The incidents recorded all go to make up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... is as unmistakably personal as the tenderness of the dramatic artist who has made the last night of the little princes in the Tower as terribly and pathetically real for the reader as Millais has made it for the spectator of the imminent tragedy. Why Shakespeare shrank from the presentation of it, and left to a humbler hand the tragic weight of a subject so charged with tenderness and terror, it might seem impertinent or impossible to conjecture—except to those who can perceive and appreciate the intense and sensitive love of children ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... own relief, and support General Pollock if the report should turn out to be true. This plan of action was especially urged by Havelock upon the General, and though at first Sir Robert Sale, brave as he was, shrank from the responsibility of ordering so daring an effort, he in the end agreed. On the 7th of April the infantry marched out in three columns. The centre, under Colonel Dennie, consisted of the 13th, 500 strong; the left, of the 35th, under Colonel ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... But Sarah shrank from him. To her, he appeared ugly and loathsome. His smile was a vicious leer, and his voice sounded ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... her, and imploring his succour; but Sir Patrick brought word that the King and Dauphin were going forth together to visit the Abbot of a shrine at no great distance, and as soon as she heard that the Dauphin was with his father, she shrank together, and gave up her purpose for the present. Indeed, Sir Patrick thought it advisable for him to endeavour to discover what had really become of the princesses before applying to the King, or making their loss public. Nor was the Dauphiness in a condition to repair ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ever shrank from an act that would have resulted in his own aggrandizement, for, although the monarchy was elective, not hereditary, the succession of Hamlet had been proclaimed by the King ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... homes of mutual friends, and she had come to loathe the pressure of his hand when it clasped hers. The undeniable caress in his low, suggestive voice disturbed her; his manner was unmistakable. One night he held her hand long and firmly in his, and while she shrank helplessly before him he even tenderly asked why she had not invited him into her home. It was what she had expected and feared. Her cup of bitterness was filling rapidly—too rapidly. His invitation to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Shefford shrank at the idea. Months of toil and pain and travail had not been enough to make him forget the strange girl he had loved. But he had remembered only at poignant intervals, and the lapse of time had made thought of her a dream like that sad dream which had lured him into the desert. With the query ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... man than the breeched and stockinged Jonathan, whose only deed of valiance was to hang, terrier-like, by his teeth to an evasive enemy. While he cheated at cards and cogged the dice, she trained dogs and never missed a bear-baiting. He shrank, like the coward that he was, from the exercise of manly sports; she cared not what were the weapons—quarterstaff or broadsword—so long as she vanquished her opponent. She scoured the town in search of insult; he did ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... this? Here was no water, but a yawning shaft gaped black and dismal where the pool had been. The shipmen shrank back in dismay. 'Here is magic!' they muttered fearfully, crossing themselves. N'buqu laughed. He also had learnt something of our tongue, and understood. 'No magic is here,' said he, ''tis but a spring from yonder hill that fills ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... him I could not help reflecting that in such cases from the name to the thing itself is but a step. I suppose you will understand that by that time I could not think of washing my hands of him. I took him away from Bankok in my ship, and we had a longish passage. It was pitiful to see how he shrank within himself. A seaman, even if a mere passenger, takes an interest in a ship, and looks at the sea-life around him with the critical enjoyment of a painter, for instance, looking at another man's work. In every sense of the expression he is "on deck"; but my Jim, for the most part, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... did not shine now for her, that there was a cloud between her husband and herself, which she could neither brush away nor penetrate, she made no outward sign of being anything different from the cheery and affectionate Hilda of old. There were subjects now, however, which she shrank from touching on in Jasper's presence. One of them was her engagement ring, another the furniture in Judy's room. That ring she had been told by more than one connoisseur was worth at least fifty pounds, and Hilda was certain that the simple furniture which made Judy's little ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... as something strange and fallacious; and a certain lapse of time is necessary, a certain coordination of the intelligence, to enable the "novelty" to enter. Yet some day it will be considered clear as crystal. It was not the "nature" of man which shrank from it, but his "errors." These errors not only make man incapable of production, but are in themselves hostile to receptivity. Thus it often happens that the pioneers of salvation are persecuted by a sort of unconscious ingratitude, which ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... something else to "nash," but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the great Bar-mitzvah cake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the Shalotten Shammos shook off his awe and stretched out his hand leisurely towards the cake, as became the master of ceremonies. But when Sugarman the Shadchan ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... trying to steal my wife from me is the curse, the foul fiend, the shadow, the shame. I met him in the City only yesterday. He tried to bow, but I looked him in the face and cut him dead. He paled and shrank away." ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... many years, shows how deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he had come to the place where he met his death. Little wonder if Torquay was thenceforward a memory from which she shrank, and if even the sound of the sea became ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... through th' mill, bo!" said one, a great, rough fellow; but meeting M'Ginnis's answering glare, he quailed and shrank away. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... under his robe the Chinese dirk. He felt the edge of it again and gazed significantly at Elaine. She shrank back even further, as far as ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... valley below me full of lights, and descending reached houses and a tramway. I had blazes now all around me. I went through a filthy slough, over a bridge, and up a street, from which dirty lanes branched off on either side, passed throngs of savage-looking people talking clamorously, shrank from addressing any of them, and finally, undirected, found myself before the Castle Inn at ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... something apart from its existence as a citizen, is apparent in the Roman of Cicero's day, and still more in the hard-working functionary of the Empire. Twice in his life the morbid emperor Tiberius shrank from the eyes of men, once at Rhodes and afterwards at Capreae,—a melancholy recluse worn out by ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... A'tim shrank into a very small parcel on the log. "I, too, have been sick for the need of food. I have starved, actually starved, for a moon; why, I am nothing but skin and bone; the smallest creature, even a weasel, would find it difficult to fill his stomach from my ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... passing people, the lad Heraklas shrank back. When the sacred basket of Ceres had met him, he had bent his eyes downward, deeming himself unworthy of the sight. And now, as the crier's invitation rang from the portico, "All ye who are guiltless in thought and deed, come to ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... much lower now that there were two listeners, and her modesty shrank somewhat from exposing to Festus the appreciative modulations which an intelligent interest in the subject drew from her when unembarrassed. But she still went on that he might not suppose her to be disconcerted, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... Galloway, surprised at his hesitation; but now that the moment of preferring the request had come, Arthur shrank from doing it. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and press her nails against her palms. She looked across at the group opposite. More children being born! Week in and week out they seemed to come in spite of all the talk of not having any more. She could have cried over this holocaust of the innocents, and yet she shrank with an unreasoning shrinking from the barrenness that was coming to be regarded as the most comfortable state and being sought after, as she knew well, by the younger married women. What were they all coming to? Were they ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... to live here?" asked Geoff. He liked the idea of working there, but he rather shrank from being seen as a gardener's boy by the new squire and "the ladies." "Though it is very silly of me," he reflected; "they wouldn't look at me; it would never strike them that I was different ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... from unavailing prayer, And rose and faced the Goddess steadily, Till even the laughter-loving lady fair Half shrank before the anger of her eye, And Helen cried with an exceeding cry, "Why does Zeus live, if we indeed must be No more than sullen spoils of destiny, And slaves of an adulteress ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the house tenfold more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to go forwards, but he was ashamed to seem churlish to so hospitable a man; and he was curious to see that wondrous bed; and, besides, he was hungry and weary; yet he shrank from the man, he knew not why; for though his voice was gentle and fawning, it was dry and husky like a toad's; and though his eyes were gentle, they were dull and cold like stones. But he consented, and went with the man up a glen which led from the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... She shrank a little, but she did not resist him. He looked searchingly into her eyes. The lids flickered nervously under his gaze, but he did not ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the Manor household,—that of Edward Neville. Since the night at the Brilliant, when he had left the theatre so suddenly, and gone home on the plea of illness, he had never been quite the same man. He looked years older—he was strangely nervous and timid—and he shrank away from Thelma as though he were some guilty or tainted creature. Surprised at this, she spoke to her husband about it,—but he, hurriedly, and with some embarrassment, advised her to "let him alone"—his "nerves were shaken"—his ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Manor to find Aunt Hannah ready to hurry out and meet him, and he shrank from giving his tidings, fearing that it would be ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... He shrank from the idea, but it would not down. He was not ready to admit its truth—but there was no denying its logic. There was something inexpressibly repugnant in the thought. He infinitely preferred to ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... dreading the arrival of the answer. After her life as a slave, her present existence seemed to her so perfectly happy that she shrank from the idea of any fresh change. She had no memory, whatever, of her parents, and had already a very strong affection for Mrs. Holland. She liked the ranee very much also, and the absence of all state and ceremony, in the household of the Rajah, was to her delightful. She was already ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... little into Christina's way. He meant to be kind to her, but she was dreadfully afraid of him, and, when he came to visit his daughter, shrank out of his notice as much as possible, shuddering most of all at his attempts at civilities. His son she viewed as one of the thickwitted giants meant to be food for the heroism of good knights of romance. Except that he was fairly ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paid for four places, and thereby secured a first-class solitude, visited the telegraph office, and shrank the few pounds in his pocket by sending a number ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... landing was reached and passed. Kars alone disembarked, his canoe remaining ready to overhaul his companions at their next night camp. He was going to tell his story to those who must learn the truth. It was a mission from which he shrank, but he knew that his lips alone must tell it. He hoped and believed it was the final act of the drama these cruelly injured people must be forced to witness. Then the gloomy curtain would be dropped, but to rise again on scenes ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... him Who haply might have kept afar the day Of thy captivity. O let the earth Be heaped above my head in death before I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!" So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms To take the boy; the boy shrank crying back To his fair nurse's bosom, scared to see His father helmeted in glittering brass, And eying with affright the horsehair plume That grimly nodded from the lofty crest. At this both parents in their fondness laughed; And hastily ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... them very much." Blondin's languid, rich voice corrected her. Nina shrank sensitively. "I think they're very charming little schoolgirls. But I don't ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... approaching experience there is shrinking. It is a normal human trait to shrink from pain and danger. Jesus' experiences in the suffering they brought to Him far outreach what any other human has known. He shrank in spirit over and over again as the expected experiences approached. He shrank back as none other ever has, for He was more keenly alive to the suffering involved. He suffered doubly: in the shrinking beforehand; ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... this time without any help from Tuly. The linkage fairly snapped together and shrank instantaneously to a point. Hilton thought of Terra and there it was; full size, yet occupying only one infinitesimal section of a dimensionless point. The multi-mind visited relatives of all eight, but could not make intelligible contact. ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... matter to that true reality that the man's brain shrank, shrank, till it was nothing; that the man's body could not retain the huge pain of his heart, and heaved it out through the red exit riven at the neck; that the black noise came again hurtling from behind, reinforced ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... muscle, and sinew was in proportion to the colossal size of the animal. The gravel inside the paling flew like splashing water as they alighted with a crash, and widow Marston, uttering a faint cry, shrank within the doorway as the wild horseman seemed about to launch himself, with Quixotic recklessness, against ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... only an alto rilievo carved on the wall. Pushing the door open, Mrs. Singleton entered, and deposited on the iron bed a waiter covered with a snowy napkin. At the sound, Beryl turned, and her arms fell to her side, but she shrank back against the wall, as if solitude were her only solace, and human ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... go with a look of keen distress upon her fresh and beautiful young face. She must not let him say what he had almost said, for she shrank from the thought of wounding him with the answer she felt in her heart that she would have to make. He had slouched off, half-way down the trail and out of sight, before she put the thoughts of the unpleasant situation from her mind and turned again to the great matter which had ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... of his christening they withered and shrank; he no longer kicked them out either in passion or play, and when, as he got to be nearly a year old, his nurse tried to make him stand upon them, he ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Desiree shrank back against the wall, covering her face with her hands. Harry stood above the prostrate figure of the king, ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... without waiting for a reply. Doggie had not kicked it because he had never kicked a football in his life and shrank from an exhibition ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... moment's reflection to make her decide that in bare justice she could not refuse. She shrank from it; she dreaded the thought of seeing him again, of listening to his just and passionate reproaches; she dreaded also the possibility that she might once again have to give up Diana's secret. But, since he wished it, she ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson |
