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More "Fidget" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long started before he begins to fidget and shuffle, and presently he hauls up a wicker basket beside him, undoes it, and fishes out a very nice dark purple kimono. His top hat goes into the rack. His collar, tie, and stud disappear. His coat comes off and is carefully folded on the seat. We watch the gradual unpeeling ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... not seem to follow that because men are capable of doing hard work they like it. Some, indeed, fidget and fret if they cannot otherwise work off their superfluous steam; but on the other hand there are many big lazy fellows who will not get up their steam to full pressure except under compulsion. Again, the character of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... cold, with high winds and a very stormy sea. The Nancy had been expected to make her port all that week, and Mrs. Arthur was very uneasy at her delay. She was never happy or contented when her sons were at sea, but in a constant fidget of anxiety and fear. She did not like both sailing in the same vessel. 'It is too much,' she would say—'the safety of two lives out of one family—to be trusted to one keel.' This morning she was more fretful ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... well if it weren't for this heat," she said pettishly. "Do put that photograph down, George!—you do fidget so! Haven't you got any news for me—anything to amuse me? Oh! those horrid papers!—I see. Well! they'll wait a little. By the way, the 'Morning Post' says that young scamp, Lord Ancoats, has gone abroad. I suppose that girl was ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... got up, drew her round again and kissed her. 'I think you would fidget me,' she remarked as she released her. Then, as if this were too cheerless a leave-taking, she added in a gayer tone, as Laura had her hand on the door: 'Mind what I tell you, my dear; let her go!' It was to this that the girl's lesson in philosophy reduced itself, she reflected, as she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern crowded out of my life and out of my companions' lives (in a convent boarding-school) by the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics when we were learning to skate, and our very dreams were a medley of ice and bumps? How could we worry over 'natural laws' in the face of a tyrannical interdict which lessened our chances of breaking our necks by forbidding us to coast down a hill ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... is in a dreadful fidget whenever the little gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility. She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,—and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... from the road on his right, and the flash of moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare began to fidget. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little absently). He is still pacing up and down restlessly—to and fro—along and across—he that is usually so innocent of fidget or fuss. "Nancy," he says, half seriously, half in rueful jest, "if you want a thing done, do it yourself: mind that, all your life. I am a standing instance of the disadvantage of having let other people do it for me. The fact is, I ought to have gone ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the hostess with her woman guest. This was the rule of courtesy; kings observed it as well as burgesses. Children were taught how to behave towards a sleeping companion, to keep to their own part of the bed, not to fidget, and to sleep ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, "If you'll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over—to-night. I guess we can go down here by the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... more than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child's is not?—and he had inherited an ample store of the joie ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... sheath," Leonie had replied, pulling the sheathed dagger out as she spoke, so that her hair had fallen in a jumbled scented mantle all over her, causing the men to put their hands in their pockets, or behind their backs, and the women to mechanically pat their heads; just as you fidget unconsciously with your veil, or the curls above your ear, when someone of your own sex, and far better ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... emancipated woman; but the expression of her face produced a disagreeable effect on the spectator. One felt impelled to ask her, 'What's the matter; are you hungry? Or bored? Or shy? What are you in a fidget about?' Both she and Sitnikov had always the same uneasy air. She was extremely unconstrained, and at the same time awkward; she obviously regarded herself as a good-natured, simple creature, and all the while, whatever she did, it always struck one that it was ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... not he? But if Gering was bent on trouble, why, there was the last resource of the peace-lover. He tapped the rapier at his side. He ever held that he was peaceful, and it is recorded that at the death of an agitated victim, he begged him to "sit still and not fidget." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... opened. A woman's head looked out, with suspicion. "Oh, thank Heavens!" it said with abrupt fervor. "I was afraid it mightn't be you, Miss Sylvia. I'm so glad you're back. There ain't—hasn't been a minute these past two nights that I haven't been in a fidget." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... to create a disturbance and lead to a furious dispute and an exchange of insults and obscenities. When we were all in bed, no one could stir without causing inconvenience to his neighbours. A sleepless night, invariably accompanied by the restless impulse to stir and fidget, was unforgettable misery, but fortunately our work was so hard that sleepless ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the campaigning; but that don't grate on a fellow; if he's worth his salt he's sure to understand that he must move like clockwork in a fight, and that he's to go to hell at double-quick march, and mute as a mouse, if his officers see fit to send him. That's all right, but they don't fidget you here about the little fal-lals; you may stick your pipe in your mouth, you may have your lark, you may do as you like, you may spend your decompte how you choose, you may settle your little duel as you will, you may shout and sing and jump and riot on the march, so long as you march on; you ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at each and all, but as few could tell their names I was at a loss to distinguish one from another; my head and eyes were in a perfect fidget, flying from Marshal to Marshal ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of a scuffle, a cry, came faintly from the fore-deck. Then dead silence fell again. Time flew on. The tide was beginning to run out; the galley swung with it. The Indians, stolid enough as a rule, began to fidget on their seats. A lantern appeared at the fore end of the rowers' ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... pleased at his success, and flung a laughing glance of triumph back at his comrade, who still sat at the lady's feet, though he, too, was beginning to fidget and look about for a way of escape. Mrs. Campbell had seen all with eyes that seemed to notice nothing, and was indignant enough, for she was inordinately vain, and desired attention even from boys, if no other was forthcoming. To have any one preferred before her was gall to her foolish pride. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... that she could comprehend what she heard; though not in general backward to credit what was for the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Felly, relentless. Fen', a shift. Fen', fend, to look after; to care for; keep off. Fenceless, defenseless. Ferlie, ferly, a wonder. Ferlie, to marvel. Fetches, catches, gurgles. Fetch't, stopped suddenly. Fey, fated to death. Fidge, to fidget, to wriggle. Fidgin-fain, tingling-wild. Fiel, well. Fient, fiend, a petty oath. Fient a, not a, devil a. Fient haet, nothing (fiend have it). Fient haet o', not one of. Fient-ma-care, the fiend may care (I don't!). Fier, fiere, companion. Fier, sound, active. Fin', to find. Fissle, tingle, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... they made a collection, which wor pratty oft, an' th' chaps used to goa raand wi' th' box allus when they wor singin th' last hymn, he used to be soa takken up wi' th' singin wol th' chap had to nudge him two or three times; then he'd throw daan his book an' fidget in his pocket as if he'd forgetten all abaat it, an' bring aght sixpenoth ov hawpneys, an' put 'em in wi' sich a rattle wol ivery body'd knew 'at ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... sat down on the edge of the stool, but even there it was warm, and after a while he began to fidget, saying, 'Dear me, mother-in-law! how hot your house is! ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... spoken to. And when you are spoken to you are to acquiesce in whatever anybody says to you, and you are to do whatever anybody requests you to do. And, above all, don't be surprised at anything that may happen. You'll be nervous enough; I expect that. You'll probably color up and flush and fidget; I expect that; I count on that. But don't lose your nerve entirely; and don't think of ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... to the ladies' knees, or trample out the gathers of their dresses, and fidget with their ornaments, startling some luckless lady by the announcement, "I've got your bracelet undone at last!" who would find one of the divisions broken open by force, Amelia not understanding the working ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... instant, Watson—this instant, I say!" His head sank back upon the pillow and he gave a deep sigh of relief as I replaced the box upon the mantelpiece. "I hate to have my things touched, Watson. You know that I hate it. You fidget me beyond endurance. You, a doctor—you are enough to drive a patient into an asylum. Sit down, man, and ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—and, checking himself just as he was starting with his part ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... just going to laugh at her for being such an "old fidget," when we were startled by a loud cry, and the sound of something falling down the roof. At the same moment we saw Harry rushing up to the house—he was just home from his lessons at the curate's—throwing his arms about in ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... natural, then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower, and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right with ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the perfect adaptation of means to an end—one well worthy the attention of all future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath, under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling. How they must have longed to gobble him up, were it only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Mr. Stuart made answer, with the easy insouciance concerning all things earthly which sat so naturally upon him; "bad shillings always come back—let that truthful old adage console them. Why should I fidget myself about them. Take my word they're not fidgeting themselves about me. The governor's absorbed in the rise and fall of stocks, the maternal is up to her eyes in the last parties of the season, and my sister is just out and absorbed body and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... left at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... into a fidget about me, Aunt Belinda," said Oliver, pushing the pile of newspapers out of her way, while she sat down nervously on the end of a packing-case and wiped her eyes on the fringe of her purple shawl. The impulsive kindness ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... ruefully over boots too small and skirts too short—and she had become so pale and lanky and angular in the process that Winnie unfeelingly compared her to a plant raised in a cellar. Her unlucky hands and feet seemed bigger than ever, and more inclined to fidget and shuffle, and to her bad habit of wrinkling up her forehead she had added a ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... path, kept bringing them back to his mother's face with a dreamy upward gaze. 'I will try, mother, I really will. I will keep my hands tight in my pockets, and my feet close together; I will pretend I'm going to be shot by a file of soldiers, and then I really think that will help me not to fidget. I promise ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... knelt in prayer and she could hide her tears in a corner of the old sofa. Prayers were very much longer on Sundays than on other mornings, but, though the boys might fidget a little, the most active member of the family never moved. Elizabeth's soul was carried away far above any bodily discomfort. But not even the smallest Gordon made a sound. There had been a dreadful day once ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... don't fidget. Don't you see how tired Aunt Raby looks?" exclaimed Rose. "Prissie can't be here yet, and you are such a worry when you jump up and down like ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... tool box and hides himself under the car again, while Runyon Q. Sampson begins to fidget around and look at his watch like it was the ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... It started out all right, but pretty soon a man and a woman on the stage began to quarrel. They were married (not really, but in the play, I mean), and I guess it was some more of that incompatibility stuff. Anyhow, as they began to talk more and more, Mother began to fidget, and pretty soon I saw she was gathering up our things; and the minute the curtain went down after ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... my Lord Warden, oh! why should you fidget Your mind about matters you don't understand? Or why should you write yourself down for an idiot, Because "you," forsooth, "have the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hold on to the pole, JOKIM, or we shall be all adrift. We'd better have kept to our first pitch; it was quiet there, and we hooked one or two sizeable ones. (Aside.) Fact is, you're such a fidget, you lose your fish, and then want to change ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... fidget to send me travelling up again, just because he fancied he saw something amiss at the window. Nothing but a curtain flapping, or a shadder, for the poor dears is sleeping like lambs.' We heard her say this to herself, and a general titter agitated the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... looked so utterly miserable that a smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so impertinent ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... a monastic student's notebook on conduct which has been preserved, and which "prescribes that the young man is to kneel when answering the Abbot, not to take a seat unasked, not to loll against the wall, nor fidget with things within reach. He is not to scratch himself, nor cross his legs like a tailor. He is to wash his hands before meals, keep his knife sharp and clean, not to seize upon vegetables, and not to use his ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... apparent from the increased frequency with which we were obliged to edge away to keep her square abeam. And now the anxiety which I had all along felt began to be shared by the others, one or another of whom kept Cunningham's telescope continually bearing upon the barque. They began to fidget where they sat, to mutter and grumble under their breath, and to cast frequent looks at the sky astern, which had not materially altered its aspect since the morning, except that the haze had thickened somewhat. At last the boatswain could restrain ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... I'll tell you about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is Low Church, is very well connected—and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... with, Toni was always in a fidget to get to work. Miss Gibbs took her annual week's holiday just then, and had plenty of time to note her cousin's behaviour; and the way in which Toni swallowed her breakfast and clad herself for the start was a revelation to one who knew ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... dead! Would that I had been brute enough to slay him!— Great Zeus, Hipparchus had so turned his head, His every smile and word As we sat by our fire, stung my fool's heart.— How we laughed to see him curtsey, Fidget strings about his waist,— Giggle, his beard caught in the chlamys' hem Drawing it tight about his neck, 'just like Our Baucis.' Could not sleep For thinking of the life they lead in towns; He said so: when, at last, He sighed from dreamland, thoughts I had ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... obviously useless, and Mulford, perceiving that Rose began to fidget, had sufficient tact to ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... lady, with a sweet face, who had held his hand as he stood by her chair, and that he had half liked it, and felt half awkward as she spoke to him. He remembered that as he had stood there, he had felt afraid to move or fidget in the least bit, and that every now and then, as he had stolen a glance at her, he had seen that her large dark eyes had been fixed upon him. He had been very glad when the nursery dinner-bell rang and he was obliged to go, without seeming to wish ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... conclusion of their first difficulties, and present promising state of affairs; relating everything with so blind an interest as made him not only totally unconscious of the uneasy movements of many of his friends as they sat, the change of countenance, the fidget, the hem! of unquietness, but prevented him even from seeing the expression of the face on which his own eyes were fixed—from seeing Sir Thomas's dark brow contract as he looked with inquiring earnestness ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... were found in their beloved temperance hotel near Bloomsbury—a clean, airless establishment much patronized by provincial England. They always perched there before crossing the great seas, and for a week or two would fidget gently over clothes, guide-books, mackintosh squares, digestive bread, and other Continental necessaries. That there are shops abroad, even in Athens, never occurred to them, for they regarded travel as a species of warfare, only to be undertaken by those who have been fully armed ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. No one ever knew it, but this sermon haunted me, and day and night it crossed me. I began to pray a good deal, though only night and morning, with a sort of fidget and impatience, almost angry at feeling so unhappy, and wanting and expecting a new heart and have everything put straight and be ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... suppose I mun. I shall catch it downstairs, I know. He'll be in a fidget till you're getten to bed, I know; so you mun be quiet if you are ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Enough to make anybody fidget. Why, you're making me sick! Why can't you look after yourself?... What's the use of eating things that ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... remained quite quiet; but when the minutes lengthened into a quarter of an hour he began to fidget. Would the talkers never stop? Why, their chattering seemed to be endless? Even through the door he could hear Mr. Crowninshield's curt tones and the eager rise and fall of his voice. Once he laughed as if pleased, and twice Walter heard a cry of "Good!" When he did appear on the piazza his face ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... said all she wanted. Breakfast went on more vigorously than ever. But after breakfast it seemed to Ellen that her father never would go away. He took the newspaper, an uncommon thing for him, and pored over it most perseveringly, while Ellen was in a perfect fidget of impatience. Her mother, seeing the state she was in, and taking pity on her, sent her up stairs to do some little matters of business in her own room. These Ellen despatched with all possible zeal and speed; and coming down again, found her father gone, and her mother alone. She ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... retreat backwards from her mother as if she were the queen; but when she found that these freaks of hers were regarded as interruptions to the serious business, and as such annoyed her mother, she became grave and sedate. What had possessed the world (her world) to fidget so about her dress, she could not understand; but that very after noon, on naming her engagement to Bessy Higgins (apropos of the servant that Mrs. Thornton had promised to inquire about), Bessy quite roused up at ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and clattering melted vaguely into my ears; I was a lay-figure in the scene, and my soul wandered elsewhere. Mr. Somers began to fidget gently, which father perceiving, rose from the table. Soon after the guests departed. The remains of the feast vanished; the fires burnt down, "winding sheets" wrapped the flame of the candles, and ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... window curtain and letting a glare of sunshine fall over her book, knocking the corner of the study table, pushing a chair; no matter how trifling the disturbance, it meant a distracted attention, and lost time; or, Susan would fidget in her chair, draw long and loud breaths, push away one book noisily and take up another, fix her eyes steadily on Marion, look as if she were watching the slow progress she made, and ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... sanguine prediction, however, she did not return as promptly as she had promised, and Mr. Tolman began to fidget uneasily. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... my curiosity and Rambouillet's also. The marquis, indeed, began to betray his impatience, and the great clock immediately over our heads presently striking the half-hour after ten, he started and made as if he would have approached the king. He checked the impulse, however, but still continued to fidget uneasily, losing his reserve by-and-by so far as to whisper to me that his Majesty ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... well on towards the end of the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget. From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch and lean towards her husband to say something. An actor who was going through a piece of business perceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and stopped. Just then Mrs. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting when she did nothing else—said it concealed her lack of repose and liability to fidget. She was able to draw la quintessence de tout: she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. She also had a touch of temper: those who are perfectly amiable are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... length, and some electricity within him made the animal under him fidget and prance, for he stirred neither hand nor foot. "And you tell ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... me, to begin with, very restless—made me, instead of going straight to the station, fidget a little about that many-coloured Common which gives Wimbledon horizons. There was a worry for me to work off, or rather keep at a distance, for I declined even to admit to myself that I had, in Miss Anvoy's phrase, been saddled with it. What could ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... The fidget of silk and of crinoline, the rattling of keys, the creaking of stays and of shoes, will do a patient more harm than all the medicines in the world will do ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... Skinner came, and again Cappy eyed him over the tops of his spectacles; again the terrible silence. Skinner commenced to fidget. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... pasture than such a yard as that shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and unpretentious; but the yard would be full of effort and fidget. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... provided. No one thought of going to Sunday-school, as Ruth had once timidly suggested, although Julia sometimes went to church when there was a special musical service. At other times she would begin to read; then she would fidget or strum on the piano, greatly to the annoyance of her father, who always took a Sunday afternoon nap, and of Ernest, who buried himself in a book. Gerald went out, Rupert got into all sorts of mischief, and Ruth was left to her ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... broken-hearted, particularly at parting from her dearest beloved papa, whom she idolises. How we miss her, I can't say, and never having been separated from her since thirteen years above a fortnight, I am in a constant fidget and impatience to know everything about everything. It is a great, great trial for a Mother who has watched over her child with such anxiety day after day, to see her far away—dependent on herself! But I have ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... probably put you in a fidget. But the devil, who ought to be civil on such occasions, proved so, and took my letter to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... necessary time at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed the ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... mannerly woman, was Nana's old friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat's presence seemed to fidget her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was Nana's aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-away smile. In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up without bread. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... some lovely lady that was one of the living graces and glories of our city, those that spelled the cryptic riddle of its meaning clapped their hands for pleasure and turned their eyes to where the lady thus bepraised stood and smiled at her, and she, delighted, would bridle and fidget with her fan and seek to maintain herself as if she did not care one whit for what in reality she prized very highly. So the river of sweet words ran on, sweetly voiced, and flowing in its appointed course with a golden felicity of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that no expense should be spared to make the proceedings go off with eclat, and Mr. Mumbles began to fidget himself concerning the tournament laws, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... ceaselessly occupied in fetching and carrying books, biscuits, pillows and cloaks, scent-bottles, the Italian greyhound, and the thousand and one necessities of the pale and interesting bride. Oh, how she did fidget! how she did grumble! how she altered and twisted her position! and how she did make poor ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... because other people did not talk fast enough to suit him, his mind leaping on ahead of their tongues, his fingers wriggling to wrap themselves around something valuable—preferably the eggs of the golden goose—and a general eagerness to be up and about and onwards. He was one round fidget on two legs, yet a good man for any project ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... dawn of a winter's morning creeping over the gray sky of London?—somehow, things seemed less dismal already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish that some one would come with my hot water and say it was ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... ought to have hung behind them, or when a palm tree was introduced into a scene representing the Berlin Zoological Gardens, or a cactus in a view of the Tyrol, or a beech tree in the far north of Norway. As if that was of any consequence. Is it not quite immaterial? Who would fidget about such a trifle? It's only make-believe, after all, and every one is expected to be amused. Then sometimes the public applauded too much to suit his taste, and sometimes too little. "They're like wet wood this evening," ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Yes it is. Don't fidget. Have you got the wine out? We should have a dozen of champagne. Mind you make no mistake; '80, that is the wine you must get. Jimmy is most particular what he drinks, and Alfred has the most frightful headaches if he drinks anything but the very best. I hope he'll find the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... like you, did I, Winston?" he chuckled feebly. "Just because I chose to go to sleep and didn't fidget round much you thought I'd ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... witty, pretty, pompous, and glorious in our songs; but we ever want the essential quality of gaiety—gaiety of heart—the dancing life of the spirit, that makes the voice hum, the fingers crack merrily, and the feet fidget restlessly on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... Such a fidget, such a fuss! There is no escape for us; We shall have it shortly. How I wish that both would go Off to Bath ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... innocent stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your nerves and cr'd-cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And the worst is, that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel obliged to look pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor always be shaking your flounces and looking into a dark corner of your apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects. One has a secret care, an abstraction, a something between the memory and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr which one ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... walk and to curtsey alone, I did not, at first, perceive the great man, who followed so close to his wife's skirts as to be nearly hid. But he was soon flying about the room at large, and betrayed himself immediately to be a fidget. Instead of remaining stationary, or nearly so as became his high quality, he took the initiative in compliments, and had nearly every diplomatic man walking apart in the adjoining room, in a political aside, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... miss part of his letter," she thought, nervously. "What would he say if I gave it to him, and told him I had read it? No! I dare not do that. I will say nothing about it, and let him fidget as much as he ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalised him considerably. As for me, there was matter ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... sometimes gives them the appearance of "fidgeting," but it is an easy, graceful fidget and not as disturbing as that of ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... conceive the bliss— There is so little of the goose about 'em, One's safe from any hiss! Ah! who can paint that first great awful night, Big with a blessing or a blight, When the poor dramatist, all fume and fret, Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright, Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness—more f's yet: Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat, Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that, Funeral, fate-foreboding—sits in doubt, Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... get into a fidget; I'm only tryin' to find out if you've got a license to travel over this ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his hands ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Prudy, "you niver gave no answer at all. 'Far as I could see you've done naught but fidget like an angletwitch and look ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now, mater! Keep calm. This is really your own doing. Pater wanted to go to the post himself, but it was raining a bit, and you're always in such a fidget about his getting his feet wet you wouldn't let him go, ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... theory," said the stranger with a slight fidget, eying his companion with some inquisitiveness, "indeed, Frank, a most slanderous thought," he exclaimed in sudden heat and with an involuntary look almost ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... still. She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too. She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came and went, brought or sent small ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I am concerned, batuchka, Rodion Romanovitch, I will tell you something which shall reveal to you my disposition," answered Porphyrius Petrovitch, continuing to fidget about the room, and, as before, avoiding his visitor's gaze. "I live alone, you must know, never go into society, and am, therefore, unknown; add to which, that I am a man on the shady side of forty, somewhat played out. You may have noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that here—I ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... for I left him to attend my father in sickness. And, taking Nicodemus' arm, he drew him close, that he might more safely whisper that two men seemed to be searching in their garments as if for daggers. Nicodemus knew them to be hirelings in the pay of the priests. Look, he said, how their hands fidget for their daggers; the opportunity seems favourable now to stab him; but no, the crowd closes round his ass again, and the Zealots draw back. God saved Daniel from the flames and the lions, Joseph answered. But will he, Nicodemus returned, be able to ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was never comin' to lastly, and I find myself wonderin' whether Laura is listenin' to what the preachin' is about, or is writin' notes to Sam Merritt in the back of the tune book. I get thirsty, too, and I fidget about till Father looks at me, and Mother nudges Helen, and Helen passes it along to me ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... dilatory, Tom had finished his letters before that artificer arrived, thus saving Dorothea all responsibility in the valuable packet confided to his charge, for Mr. Ryfe received it himself in the outer office, whither he had resorted in a fidget to compare a time-table with a railway-map of England. He fretted to set off at once. He had finished his business; he had nothing to do now but eat an early dinner at his uncle's, and so start by the afternoon train on the path of love, triumph, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... he exclaimed, so vehemently that the others looked round, and old Damia again began to fidget in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I'm blind, and three parts shell, Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall. Both arms have mutinied against me—brutes. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... might underlie the surface of this gay and melodious existence! Why was the stout man looking for 'B. F.'? Why did he turn away with such a set countenance? Why was that old bore at the club in such a fidget about ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... a savage country, to which my thoughts often wander, I would stumble over every taboo, and soon find myself in the oven. As it is, I stumble over everything, stools and lady's trains, and upset porcelain, and break all the odds and ends with which I fidget, and spill the salt, and then pour claret over it, and call on the right people at the wrong houses, and put letters in the wrong envelopes: one of the most terrible blunders of the Social Duffer. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... a good sailor, but new to the islands, and too fond of his grog; but luckily the second mate had been here before. His ship had once been attacked and nearly half the men killed before they could beat the Malays overboard, and he was always in a fidget. ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Stevie, from the same reason, kept on shuffling his feet, as though the floor under the table were uncomfortably hot. When Mr Verloc returned to sit in his place, like the very embodiment of silence, the character of Mrs Verloc's stare underwent a subtle change, and Stevie ceased to fidget with his feet, because of his great and awed regard for his sister's husband. He directed at him glances of respectful compassion. Mr Verloc was sorry. His sister Winnie had impressed upon him (in the omnibus) that Mr Verloc would be found at home in a state ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... perpetual worry to you to hear aunt going on, on, on—nagging, nagging, nagging for ever and ever at us. She is fond of you and kind to you, and you would get on quietly enough without us, while now she is in a fidget whenever you are with us, and is constantly at you not to learn mischief and bad ways from us. Besides you are always in a fright now, lest we should get into some awful scrape, as I expect we should if we stopped here. If it weren't for you, we should not ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... while it was speaking, because the light was too bright. They looked instead at the green radiance on the faded Kidderminster carpet at the edge of the circle. They all felt very quiet, and not inclined to ask questions or fidget with their feet. For this was not like the things that had happened in the country when the Psammead had given them their wishes. That had been funny somehow, and this was not. It was something like Arabian Nights magic, and something ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... under the influence of which calm and prosperity reigned in France. We had a magnificent army, in which my brothers took as much interest as I did in the navy. And the head of the army was an eminent Minister of War, Marshal Soult, who, although he looked on M. Thiers as a tiresome little fidget, employed the fruits of his great experience and long service in the Ministry in bringing every branch of our land forces to perfection gradually, and in the most admirably consistent spirit. This army was waging an incessant war in Africa under a commander no less eminent than the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... and looked so utterly miserable that a smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so impertinent to her ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... your fine cookery, miss? Lor' bless me, I could die of laughing to think a pair of hands like yours could make better paste than mine! You'd best be careful or you'll catch it. If ever there was a fidget about his food it's Master Lambert. Come, now, Tom, I am going to clear away, so you must budge. Why, you've left half your victuals on the platter. I'll ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... see (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... comes to that, why, as human nature is weak—excuse what I may feel compelled to do; but for the present pray oblige me by keeping your seat and the peace; or, if you must move and fidget about, go and make that pugnacious Tim Carroll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... "resource." There were other resources—one of which WOULD be most decidedly to clear out. What did I know after all about the girl except that I rejoiced to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother, it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange her conscience should have begun to fidget in advance of my own. It was strange she should so soon have felt Archie's peril, and even stranger that she should have then wished to "save" him. The ways of women were infinitely subtle, and it was no novelty to me that one never knew where they would turn up. ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... maintained silence, quietly quivered all over like a spider, looked glum and dull, and grew animated only when Lavretzky began to take his leave. Even when he was seated in the calash, the old man continued to be shy and to fidget; but the quiet, warm air, the light breeze, the delicate shadows, the perfume of the grass, of the birch buds, the peaceful gleam of the starry, moonless heaven, the energetic hoof-beats and snorting of the horses, all the charms of the road, of spring, of night,—descended into the ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... his eyes, as the saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have not come to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you may be. Count on me; I would pull you through all by myself, I would! Keep still, don't you fidget like that." ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... as I am concerned, batuchka, Rodion Romanovitch, I will tell you something which shall reveal to you my disposition," answered Porphyrius Petrovitch, continuing to fidget about the room, and, as before, avoiding his visitor's gaze. "I live alone, you must know, never go into society, and am, therefore, unknown; add to which, that I am a man on the shady side of forty, somewhat played out. You may have noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that here—I mean in Russia, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... this, jes' about so long as you cou'd count twenty; an' the rest o' the congregashun began to fidget an' whisper round that suthin' was up, when all 'pon a sudden my ould rook straightens hissel' up an' begins to cuss and to swear. What's that you say, sir? Rooks don't swear? Don't tell me. Blasphemin'? Why, in two minnits ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Don't fidget. Have you got the wine out? We should have a dozen of champagne. Mind you make no mistake; '80, that is the wine you must get. Jimmy is most particular what he drinks, and Alfred has the most frightful headaches ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. No one ever knew it, but this sermon haunted me, and day and night it crossed me. I began to pray a good deal, though only night and morning, with a sort of fidget and impatience, almost angry at feeling so unhappy, and wanting and expecting a new heart and have everything put straight and be ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... cut it off,—like a boy's. It is miles too long. You might as well head Zachariah off. She has been gone since one o'clock. I am sure I heard the front door close before I dropped off to sleep. Don't fidget, Kenny. They've probably got old Martin in the calaboose by this time. Mother never fails when she sets out to do a thing. That good-for-nothing sleepy-head, Hattie, never heard a sound last night. What a ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... way. Keble and Froude advocated their continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalised him considerably. As for me, there ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... hoyden—Pastorella had with him the allowance of being blameless: but what was that towards being praiseworthy? To be only innocent, is not to be virtuous. He afterwards spoke so much against Mrs. Dipple's forehead, Mrs. Prim's mouth, Mrs. Dentifrice's teeth, and Mrs. Fidget's cheeks, that she grew downright in love with him: for it is always to be understood, that a lady takes all you detract from the rest of her sex to be a gift to her. In a word, things went so far, that I was dismissed, and she will remember that evening nine months, from the 6th of April, by ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... this sanguine prediction, however, she did not return as promptly as she had promised, and Mr. Tolman began to fidget uneasily. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... please Phil than from any wish for "supper," for she was really in a fidget to get home, Griselda let the little boy lead her into the parlour. But she was for a moment perfectly startled by the cry that broke from him when he opened the door and looked into the room. A lady was standing there, gazing out of the window, though in the ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... the open, the skipper let his quartermaster take the wheel. "'Old her to the wind, lad," he cautioned. "A beam sea 'ud swamp us." Next he whistled down to the engine room. They were to stoke with turpentine and cotton. At once Murguia began to fidget. "It, it ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... had grown to accept him as part of the household, and were civil to him again. Mrs. Kettering liked to get him to herself of an evening and talk to him for two hours at a time. Kettering himself would fidget a good deal at such times, but scarcely ventured to intrude, though apparently his greatest delight was also to converse with Morgan. But Mrs. Kettering showed no such scruples about entering into the conversation ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... is expecting me to come! What a silly! I can just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her tournure will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I shan't go, though. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you would not fidget with your feet. You know your dear father often told you of it;" or, "As your dear father used to say, Ned;" until the boy in despair would throw down his book and rush out of the room to calm himself by a run in the frosty ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... sight, you despicable thief!" he cried. "My control is going. If you stand and fidget ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... if the flies was bothering th' horse," surmised Mrs. Dodge; "he does fidget an' stamp somethin' terrible when the flies gets after him; his tail ain't so long as some.... Well, I'll let you know; and if you could drop around and see the table and all— Yes, some day this week. Of course I'll have to buy new furniture to put in their places; so will ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Hugo Van Diest. "S'bad business. Must tink all the time and be worried by dese things. For God's sake you don't fidget. You tink all the suffering was wit you, but it was inside of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... gift from a fair. Fairn-year, last year. Faitour, vagabond. Fand, found. Farl, meal cake. Fash, bother. Fatt'rils, falderals, finery. Faut, fault. Feck, bulk. Fell, deadly, pungent. Fend, keep off. Ferlie, ferly, wonder. Fetive, festive. Fidge, fidget. Fient, fiend, devil. Fiere, chum. Fit, foot. Flainen, flannen, flannel. Flang, kicked. Fleech, wheedle. Flet, remonstrated. Flitchering, fluttering. Fling, waving. Flott, fly. Flourettes, flowers. Foggage, coarse grass. Forswat, sunburned. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... that I had been brute enough to slay him!— Great Zeus, Hipparchus had so turned his head, His every smile and word As we sat by our fire, stung my fool's heart.— How we laughed to see him curtsey, Fidget strings about his waist,— Giggle, his beard caught in the chlamys' hem Drawing it tight about his neck, 'just like Our Baucis.' Could not sleep For thinking of the life they lead in towns; He said so: when, at last, He ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... monastic student's notebook on conduct which has been preserved, and which "prescribes that the young man is to kneel when answering the Abbot, not to take a seat unasked, not to loll against the wall, nor fidget with things within reach. He is not to scratch himself, nor cross his legs like a tailor. He is to wash his hands before meals, keep his knife sharp and clean, not to seize upon vegetables, and not to use his ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... up with her musical studies. It was the long evenings she used to dread; now they had become part and parcel of her daily pleasures. They dined about four, and when dinner was over it was time to talk about what kind of house they were going to have, to fidget about in search of brushes and combs, the curling-tongs, and to consider what little necessaries she had better bring down to the theatre with her. At first it seemed very strange to her to go tripping down these narrow streets at a certain ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... to break down at the "never, never, never," part of the tune. Dr. O'Grady began to fidget nervously in his chair. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below him do not hurry either, for which reason most things in Finland are dominated more by chance ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... with him or for him many hours in each day. Her thin pallor became more pronounced. She ate little, and Miss Manisty believed that she slept less. The elder lady indeed began to fidget and protest, to remonstrate now and then with Manisty himself, even to threaten a letter to 'the General.' Eleanor's smiling obstinacy, however, carried all before it. And Manisty, in spite of a few startled looks and perfunctory dissuasions, whenever his aunt attacked ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hands on a table behind him, his long spare frame in a nervous fidget, his eyes bright and hostile, and a spot of red on either thin cheek. Beside Chicksands, who was of middle height, solidly built, and moderately stout, with mental and physical competence written all ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... end—one well worthy the attention of all future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath, under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling. How they must have longed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... not so wet as I look. I'll change my coat, and come in to supper in one minute. Don't you fidget about me so, good Marty." Never was Stephen heard to speak discourteously or even ungently to a human being. It would have offended his taste. It was not a matter of principle with him,—not at all: he hardly ever thought of things in that light. A rude or harsh word, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not yet worn out, went to Sunday-school, and after his return the winter day was soon gone. Then he began to fidget, and was very desirous that his mother should put the little girls to bed; while, strange to say, his father was desirous that the whole family should go to bed, except himself. In course of time the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... directions to Dusty Dick, he descended to the beach. A small boat lay there which he was able to launch by himself, and pulling off in her he went on board the lugger. He had left the most trusted part of his crew in her, including his mate, Tom Fidget, on whom he could always rely, not that Tom objected to get drunk "at proper times and seasons," as he observed, but duty first and pleasure afterwards was his maxim. His notions of duty were, to be sure, somewhat lax, according to the strict rules of morality, and his only idea ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... their own Thoughts, a Chair or a Chariot would be thought the most desirable Means of performing a Remove from one Place to another. I should be a Cure for the unnatural Desire of John Trott for Dancing, and a Specifick to lessen the Inclination Mrs. Fidget has to Motion, and cause her always to give her Approbation to the present Place she is in. In fine, no Egyptian Mummy was ever half so useful in Physick, as I should be to these feaverish Constitutions, to repress the violent Sallies of Youth, and give each ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... dress announcing indisputably whither I was hieing, was such an Astonishment, that they looked at me rather as a recollected spectre than a renewed acquaintance. When we came to the iron rails poor Miss Planta, in much fidget, begged to take the books from M. d'Arblay, terrified, I imagine, lest French feet should contaminate the gravel within!—while he, innocent of her fears, was insisting upon carrying them as far as to the house, till he saw I took part with Miss Planta, and he was then compelled to let us ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... in the fidget he fell into, trying this and that effect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, his hand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion's Head, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... watching them? Well, no, she isn't. I saw her talking to a man at the gate. He looked to me like a burglar. No doubt she let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Kobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so, it will be bad for ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... in charge began to fidget. "Excuse me, miss, but I was ordered not to answer questions. I'm sorry, and I wish you wouldn't worry so much. If I can ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... goes around tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... should be assiduously cultivated. Do not fidget or loll about in your chair, or twist your fingers constantly, or play with something while you talk, or restlessly beat a tattoo with fingers or feet. All such faults render your companionship a burden to those ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Talks to Teachers and Students, or Annie Payson Call's books, of which the best known is Power Through Repose.] This nervous leakage is a notoriously American ailment; we knit our brows, we work our fingers, we fidget, we rock in our chairs, we talk explosively, we live in a quiver of excitement and hurry, in a chronic state of tension. We need to follow St. Paul's exhortation to "Study to be quiet"; to learn what Carlyle ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... burning and with our tents almost buried in the tall grass, we celebrated Thanksgiving in a way that must have made old Lucullus fidget in his mausoleum. The wealth of the plains was compelled to yield tribute to our table; eland, grouse and Uganda cob appeared and disappeared as if by magic; the vast storehouses of Europe and America poured their treasures upon ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Brahma, guard in sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya, And may no restless fay, with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping; give him ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... observation is better bestowed in taking a large number of distances." So much delicacy of hand and of eyesight is requisite in taking lunars that shall give results reliable to seven or eight miles, and so small an exertion or flurry spoils that delicacy, that economy of labour and fidget is a matter to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... what this world IS," Martie reflected. "Workers needing jobs, and jobs needing workers." And suddenly she hit upon the keynote to her new philosophy. "MEN don't worry and fidget about keeping their jobs, and I'M not going to. I'm just as necessary and just as capable as if I were—say, Len. If Len came on here for a job I wouldn't worry myself sick about his ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... him a note, and said it was from her mistress. Bassett took it rather contemptuously, and said, "The little woman is always in a fidget now when you come here. She is all for peace." He read ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... be too particular, because I'm late and must hurry down or Jane won't get things straight, and it does fidget me to have the saltcellars uneven, the tea strainer forgotten, and your uncle's paper not aired," returned Miss Plenty, briskly unrolling the two gray curls she wore at ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... knitting the island women were (reminding me of those notable spinsters of Herodotus) working the needles all the while they tended cattle, and with the pile of some costly shawl upon their heads while they fidget at the fringe; its various devices being of natural unstained wools, white, grey, or brown. In those interesting islands I can dimly recall many other noticeable things and people, everywhere having received the warm welcome which is usually ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures—startling ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... see one, pumpkin and sugar being their delight. To the half of a shrivelled pumpkin hanging at the door of my tent on my first essay in settling, one of our sooty satyrs could do nothing for some minutes but fidget and skip; and with his eyes sparkling, and countenance beaming with ecstacy, exclaim, "Dam my eye, pambucan; dam my eye, pambucan!" such being the nearest point they can attain to the right pronunciation of their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... Don't ask explanations. That was all there was in the dream. You were upstairs. And the dream had been all my life. Don't fidget about particulars." ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the floor under the table were uncomfortably hot. When Mr Verloc returned to sit in his place, like the very embodiment of silence, the character of Mrs Verloc's stare underwent a subtle change, and Stevie ceased to fidget with his feet, because of his great and awed regard for his sister's husband. He directed at him glances of respectful compassion. Mr Verloc was sorry. His sister Winnie had impressed upon him (in the omnibus) that Mr Verloc would be found at home in a state of sorrow, and must ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... follow that because men are capable of doing hard work they like it. Some, indeed, fidget and fret if they cannot otherwise work off their superfluous steam; but on the other hand there are many big lazy fellows who will not get up their steam to full pressure except under compulsion. Again, the character of the stimulus that induces ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... confess I would rather stand in your place than mine; especially since my wife's brother Garland was called in as consulting physician, last month at the penitentiary. He has so stirred her sympathies for the woman whom he pronounces a paragon of all the virtues and graces, that I begin to fidget now at the sound of the prisoner's name, and can hardly look my wife straight in the face. When I go up to court next week, I will call on the Governor, and add a personal appeal to the one I have already signed. According to the evidence, she is ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... first a little condescending preamble concerning the virtues of the deceased, which every one but Roger listened to respectfully. The son felt it as much as he could put up with to sit still and hear it, and began to fidget ominously, and greatly to the disturbance of the speaker. When Mr Pottinger, after a few reproachful pauses, left this topic and began to discourse on his own relations with the late Squire, it was the turn of Dr ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... teachers, as, for example, who 'massacred' St. Bartholomew. But vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern crowded out of my life and out of my companions' lives (in a convent boarding-school) by the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics when we were learning to skate, and our very dreams were a medley of ice and bumps? How could we worry over 'natural laws' in the face of a tyrannical interdict which lessened our chances of breaking our necks by forbidding us to coast down a hill covered with ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... good will made the baronet fidget and swear to hide his compunction. But his evil angel got the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... tell you about that afterwards. Sit down, do, and don't fidget.... Well, I've been thinking, Sidney, that we really ought to ask the Chevril Thistletons to a quiet little dinner. Not to meet any of our usual set, of course! We could have the dear Rector, who, if he is Low Church, is very ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... lad, but you may make your mind happy about that. One man's not bound to find his general, but his general's pretty sure to find him, or the legion he is in. There, don't you fidget about that. If you and me hadn't done any harm we should be pretty safe, but so sure as one does what one ought not to do, one may make up one's mind that he'll ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... is, a small book seldom does lie quiet, and you have to cramp your hand by holding it or else put it on the table with a paraphernalia of matters to keep it down, a tablespoon on one side, a knife on another, and so on, which things always tumble off at a critical moment, and fidget you out of the repose which is absolutely necessary to reading; whereas, a big folio lies quiet and majestic on the table, waiting kindly till you please to come to it, with its leaves flat and peaceful, giving you no trouble of body, so ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... but one was the Gorla Mustelford debut, and the house settled itself down to yawn and fidget and chatter for ten or twelve minutes while a troupe of talented Japanese jugglers performed some artistic and quite uninteresting marvels with fans and butterflies and lacquer boxes. The interval of waiting was not destined, however, to be without its ...
— When William Came • Saki
... when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... to fidget. Her pretty white serge frock had come in contact with some muddy ropes and some oily screws, and several unsightly spots were the result. This made her cross, for she hated to have her costume spoiled ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... worried. Seems to me the minister was never comin' to lastly, and I find myself wonderin' whether Laura is listenin' to what the preachin' is about, or is writin' notes to Sam Merritt in the back of the tune book. I get thirsty, too, and I fidget about till Father looks at me, and Mother nudges Helen, and Helen passes it along to me ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... things to pass in free of duty. We then steamed round New York through much shipping and under a most marvellous new suspension bridge, which is to join New York and Brooklyn, to the dockyard; where we had another most hearty reception from our hostess. They had all been in a fidget at our being so many days late, and directly the ship was telegraphed off Sandy Hook the last night, in spite of the pouring rain, the Commodore had gone down in the tug to the Quarantine Harbour to try and ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium. Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his game. Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later, something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... not that the accident will somewhat incommode Douglas, and greatly fidget you, I should not much regret it, for to me there is a peculiar charm about this old stone house and its quaint surroundings. But the greatest charm of all, perhaps, lies in my fair nurse, Maggie Miller, for whom I risked my neck. You two would be fast ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in which they ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... a brief account of what had taken place since the letter he had posted to them before starting for the mountains, but saying very little of their adventures with Indians. "I am afraid you have been in a great fright about me," he said, "but you must never fidget when you don't get letters. We may often be for a long time away from any place where we can post them, or, as they call it here, mail them, though I certainly do not expect to be snowed up again for a whole winter. Owing to the Indians being hostile we did not do nearly so well as we expected, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... says: "But what is the matter, my dear? You fidget and fidget—I want to sleep." He turns ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not fidget about poison, my lad. The place will soon heal. Now then, any sign of ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... again Cappy eyed him over the tops of his spectacles; again the terrible silence. Skinner commenced to fidget. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... five minutes to five he started to fidget with his rifle, and then suddenly springing up on the fire step with a muttered, "I'll send over a couple of souvenirs to Fritz, so that he'll miss me when I leave," he stuck his rifle over the top and fired two shots, when "crack" ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... Sophy. 'I never thought Aunt Maria could have done anything but fidget everybody that came near her; but old nurse says a gentleman was once in love with her, and a very handsome young gentleman too. Old Mr. Pringle's nephew it was, a very fine young officer in the army. I want you to ask papa if it is true. Nurse says that he wrote to make an ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if she were the queen; but when she found that these freaks of hers were regarded as interruptions to the serious business, and as such annoyed her mother, she became grave and sedate. What had possessed the world (her world) to fidget so about her dress, she could not understand; but that very after noon, on naming her engagement to Bessy Higgins (apropos of the servant that Mrs. Thornton had promised to inquire about), Bessy quite roused up ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sedulity; laboriousness; drudgery &c (labor) 686; painstaking, diligence; perseverance &c 604.1; indefatigation^; habits of business. vigilance &c 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium^, insomnium^; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, pottering, fidget, fidgetiness; flurry &c (haste) 684. officiousness; dabbling, meddling; interference, interposition, intermeddling; tampering with, intrigue. press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... while the fiddlers and zimblers scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless and the dancers wearied. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry; while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... it often behaved, like the Angel in H. G. Wells' novel, "The Wonderful Visit," as if somewhat frightened at, or of, with, or by its new abode, and no wonder, for it was indeed a novel guest, and the goblins of "Worry and Tease, Fidget and Fear," who had hitherto been allowed to riot about and come and go at their own sweet mischievous wills, were ill-pleased at being made to keep quiet by this new lady of the manor. And indeed no mere state ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readily relax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I could see it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, and this intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, in a way of speaking, the woman to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... dagger out as she spoke, so that her hair had fallen in a jumbled scented mantle all over her, causing the men to put their hands in their pockets, or behind their backs, and the women to mechanically pat their heads; just as you fidget unconsciously with your veil, or the curls above your ear, when someone of your own sex, and far better ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... superficial acquaintance with its mechanism. The hammer, which by its stroke upon the string has produced the sound, falls immediately when the tone resounds; and after that you may caress the key which has set the hammer in motion, fidget round on it as much as you please, and stagger up and down over it, in your intoxicated passion,—no more sound is to be brought out from it, with all your trembling and quivering. It is only the public who are quivering ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... at the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, and now the six horses, all together, and at a rattling pace, tear up the hill, over the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... her friends. She set out in peevish resignation, leaving her house, and when she had sat half an hour with Lizzie or Sarah or Connie she would begin to fidget, miserable till she got back to it again; to ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... to carry victory into Greece, till at last his navy went under at Salamis. We saw the pathetic figure of Byron swimming where Leander swam; and, in all, such an array of visions that the lure of the Eternal Waterway gripped us, and we were a-fidget to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... bright, after all, Beriah. I'm sorry I was blue, but it did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. Open the letter—open it quick, and let's know all about it before we stir out of our places. I am all in a fidget to know what ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Jan,"—turning to the bureau—"it's that which has made me feel ill. One comes to me with some worry or other, and another comes to me: they will come to me. The complaints and tales of that Roy fidget ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... did you tell me that I wonder?" said Glory, and Lord Robert began to fidget with ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... we can be sentimental, tender, witty, pretty, pompous, and glorious in our songs; but we ever want the essential quality of gaiety—gaiety of heart—the dancing life of the spirit, that makes the voice hum, the fingers crack merrily, and the feet fidget restlessly on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... becomes irksome to children, they mitigate the mental pain by wrinkling their brows, or they fidget and put themselves into strange attitudes. These odd motions, which at first are voluntary, after they have been frequently associated with certain states of mind, constantly recur involuntarily with those feelings or ideas with which they have been connected. For instance, a boy, who has been ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... grasp, while they fasten eagerly on the light and insignificant. They fidget themselves and others to death with incessant anxiety about nothing. A part of their dress that is awry keeps them in a fever of restlessness and impatience; they sit picking their teeth, or paring their nails, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... "I'm not a nasty fidget, am I?" It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... make a very pleasant travelling companion," returned Isabel, laughing. "Don't mention it pray," exclaimed Emily, "you have no idea what I endured coming down. Poor Charles, he must have been almost worried to death, she is such a horrid tease, and the old gentleman too, is an awful fidget. I think Arthur Barrington knew what he was about, when he refused to be of our party, and went on by express. Talking of Lady Ashton, how abominably she behaves to you. I was saying so to Harry the other day, and he really seemed quite hurt ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... Spontoon with an anxious countenance. By his regimental acquaintances he had traced out Madam Nosebag, and found her full of ire, fuss, and fidget at discovery of an impostor who had travelled from the north with her under the assumed name of Captain Butler of Gardiner's dragoons. She was going to lodge an information on the subject, to have him sought for as an emissary of the Pretender; ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... whirring sound from the road on his right, and the flash of moving lamps. He saw that a small motor was approaching, and his mare began to fidget. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not noted for long memories, but their intentions were good, and the first day of Aunt Anne's visit passed very well, the children remembering to rub their feet on the mat, shut the door softly, and not fidget at meals. But the exertion seemed too much for them, and the second day began rather boisterously, and did not improve as it went on. After lunch, when the twins came into the drawing-room, Lucy drew a footstool near her aunt, and sat down meekly upon it, thinking ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... Crawley's face. After all, others besides himself had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile, and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table, and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so unreverend,—so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to manage;—the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been so ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... now more than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child's is not?—and he had inherited ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Lucy that he had arranged the matter with her landlady, and that she was to pay a dollar a week as rent. "I should not tell your patient about this," he said. "It will look to him as if I considered his stay was likely to be a long one, and it might fidget him." ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... party that journeyed to Duesseldorf that afternoon in that gorgeously gilded compartment, though three out of the six were in deep mourning; the only person not quite happy being Lady Jane, who, in addition to her trouble about her eyes (which was really nothing to speak of), began to fidget herself miserably about Barty Josselin; for that wretched young detrimental was evidently beginning to ingratiate himself with the divine Julia as no young man had ever been known to do before, keeping her in fits of laughter, and also ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... stomach of the monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The man knew that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men that are so lethargic they would have given the matter up, and lain down ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... question at a time, I might be able to answer you," said Lady Castlefort. "Do not hurry me so; you fidget my nerves. First as to the spite, you know yourself that Katrine, from the beginning, never could endure Helen Stanley; for my part, I always rather liked her than otherwise, and shall defend ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the ritualistic ministrations of Brother Raymond, the ceremonial doffing and donning of his mitre. It was very still in the little Oratory, for it was the season when birds are hushed; and even Sir Charles Horner who was all by himself in the ante-chapel did not fidget or try to peep through the heavy brocaded curtains that shut out the quire. Mark dared not look up when at the offertory Brother Anselm stood before the Altar and answered the solemn interrogations ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... like a long green-house upon wheels; the seats, which each contain two persons (a pretty tight fit too), are placed down the whole length of the vehicle, one behind the other, leaving a species of aisle in the middle for the uneasy (a large portion of the traveling community here) to fidget up and down, for the tobacco-chewers to spit in, and for a whole tribe of little itinerant fruit and cake-sellers to rush through, distributing their wares at every place where the train stops. Of course nobody can well sit immediately in the opening of a window when the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... come on till almost within springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head, wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; while the young bull would stand wondering, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... the neck of his horse, which was inclined to fidget, and disregarding me. He nodded over his shoulder and followed. His movement seemed to release a train of memories in her. She glanced suddenly at him and then back at me with a flash of recognition that warmed instantly to a faint smile. She hesitated as if ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was understood to be consecrated to rest, but every one except Violet Grey turned up at the theatre. Wayworth looked at Mr. Loder, and Mr. Loder looked in another direction, which was as near as they came to conversation. Wayworth was in a fidget, unable to eat or sleep or sit still, at times almost in terror. He kept quiet by keeping, as usual, in motion; he tried to walk away from his nervousness. He walked in the afternoon toward Notting Hill, ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... round the house, and away they flew, just as Bevis was going to ask all about it. He went to the window as soon as he was dressed, and as he opened it he saw a fly on the pane; he thought he would ask the fly, but instantly the fly began to fidget, and finding that the top of the window was open out he went, buzzing that Kapchack was in love. At breakfast time a wasp came in—for the fruit was beginning to ripen, and the wasps to get busy—and he went all round the room ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the post fret, and fidget, and curvet about. At length they are again in line. Down goes the white flag! 'Good start!' shouts an excited planter. Down goes the red flag. 'Off at last!' breaks like a deep drawn sigh from the crowd, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... of rare fidget from the discovery that he had lost one of his precious winged shoes, and had in consequence dawdled away a whole week in company with Venus, not having dreamed that it was that crafty goddess herself, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... now went on finishing their breakfast; but Uncle Moses began to fidget in his chair, and look around, and sigh, and gave other signs of growing uneasiness of mind. Feeling in himself, as he did, the care of all the boys, he never was altogether free from anxiety; and ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... 'Don't fidget,' said the Queen, 'and listen to me. When you were a baby a fairy, who was your godmother, gave you a most valuable present—a Charmed Life. As long as you keep it safely, ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... this stare that Blake began to be embarrassingly conscious of it, to fidget under it. When he looked up he did so circuitously, pretending to peer beyond the white face and the staring eyes of the young woman confronting him. Yet she ultimately coerced his unsteady gaze, even against his own will. And as he had expected, he saw written on her ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... talk much as they were rowed towards the Loulia. Both were preoccupied. As they drew near to her, however, Doctor Hartley began to fidget. His bodily ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... been left unsaid. It was my duty to go accurately from guest to guest, to shake hands, and to say perfectly naturally not "Hunh!" as so many modern children do, but "How do you do, Mrs. Lessing," or "How do you do, Mrs. Green," and not to stare and fidget or be awkward. Then I had my tea, discolored hot water with sugar and cream, my buttered toast, and a bit of cake. After that my mother would make it exceedingly easy for me to get away. My second public appearance was just before dinner. Then, dressed ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... why do you fidget? You're hurting my shoulder, you troublesome midget! Perhaps it's that hole that you told me about. Why, darling, ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the foothills, faint and clear, the sounds of the chase could now be heard. Dean's men were closing on the fleeing warriors, for every little while the silence of the range was broken by the crack of rifle or carbine. Shaughnessy's fellows began to fidget and look eagerly thither, and he read their wish. "Two of you stay with Mr. Folsom," he said, "and the rest come with me. There's nothing we can do here, is ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too. She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... He began to fidget. He took his legs out of the fender and put them back again. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, but without relief. He turned over his Spectator to see what it had to say about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and found that he was not interested ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... of means to an end—one well worthy the attention of all future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath, under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Froude advocated their continuance strongly, and were angry with me for consenting to stop them. Mr. Palmer shared the anxiety of his own friends; and, kind as were his thoughts of us, he still not unnaturally felt, for reasons of his own, some fidget and nervousness at the course which his Oriel friends were taking. Froude, for whom he had a real liking, took a high tone in his project of measures for dealing with bishops and clergy, which must have shocked and scandalized him considerably. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... can think I was cross. However, I paid her out, for I just looked at the Marquis, who was seated by his Victorine almost silent and like a dummy (they are allowed to talk together now, as long as they are not alone in the room). It made him fidget so, he could not attend to what she was saying. And when finally he got up and came over to us and said, had I seen the new "Nattier" the Comte had just bought, which was in the other salon, and would I come and look at it?—I think Godmamma wished she had left me safe with the Vicomte. She could ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... purchased fancy in house-building, without prejudice to the prevailing sober sentiment of their neighbors, in such particulars. The man of money, simply, may build his "villa," and squander his tens of thousands upon it. He may riot within it, and fidget about it for a few brief years; he may even hang his coat of arms upon it, if he can fortunately do so without stumbling over a lapstone, or greasing his coat against the pans of a cook-shop; but it is equally sure that no child of his will occupy it after him, even if his own changeable fancy or ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... "Very good," I thought; "you may fume and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I'll keep you from the edge of ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the necessary time at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... guard in sleep The merry lambs and the complacent kine, The flies below the leaves and the young mice In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya, And may no restless fay, with fidget finger Trouble his sleeping; give him dreams ...
— Sleep-Book - Some of the Poetry of Slumber • Various
... to which my thoughts often wander, I would stumble over every taboo, and soon find myself in the oven. As it is, I stumble over everything, stools and lady's trains, and upset porcelain, and break all the odds and ends with which I fidget, and spill the salt, and then pour claret over it, and call on the right people at the wrong houses, and put letters in the wrong envelopes: one of the most terrible blunders of the Social Duffer. Naturally, in place of improving, MACDUFFER ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... sorry for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Would that I had been brute enough to slay him!— Great Zeus, Hipparchus had so turned his head, His every smile and word As we sat by our fire, stung my fool's heart.— How we laughed to see him curtsey, Fidget strings about his waist,— Giggle, his beard caught in the chlamys' hem Drawing it tight about his neck, 'just like Our Baucis.' Could not sleep For thinking of the life they lead in towns; He said so: when, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... so nice if he hadn't been disagreeable," she thought after a bit. Then he began to fidget and to kick the floor a little with one foot, and she began to cry and to wipe her tears away very softly and quickly, so that he might not ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... would rather stand in your place than mine; especially since my wife's brother Garland was called in as consulting physician, last month at the penitentiary. He has so stirred her sympathies for the woman whom he pronounces a paragon of all the virtues and graces, that I begin to fidget now at the sound of the prisoner's name, and can hardly look my wife straight in the face. When I go up to court next week, I will call on the Governor, and add a personal appeal to the one I have already signed. According to the evidence, she is guilty; but when justice ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... maidens danced, and the matrons fanned themselves, while the fiddlers and zimblers scraped and tinkled. But as the hours went by, the matrons became restless and the dancers wearied. The poor relations grew impatient for the feast, and the babies in their laps began to fidget and cry; while the bride grew faint, and the bridegroom's party began to send frequent messengers from the house next door, demanding to know the cause of the delay. Some of the guests at last lost all patience, and begged leave ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... custom in those days for the host to share his bed with his man guest and the hostess with her woman guest. This was the rule of courtesy; kings observed it as well as burgesses. Children were taught how to behave towards a sleeping companion, to keep to their own part of the bed, not to fidget, and to sleep ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... sat anew upon her stool and her hands on her lap, listening with a sense so long at double exercise that now she could not readily relax the strain on it M'Iver was in a great fidget to be off. I could see it in every movement of him. He was a man who ever disliked to have his feelings vexed by contact with the everlasting sorrows of life, and this intercourse with new widowhood was sore against his mind. As for me, I took, in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... loved. It made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against the sombre background of the Roscarna oak. Then Jocelyn would begin to yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared for him, and at last discreetly vanish. And so the most ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... diligence. All the way he amused me with tales of his little parish up in the mountains, and I in my turn told him stories about the camp; but, my faith, I had to pick my steps, for when I said a word too much he would fidget in his seat and his face would show the pain that I had given him. And of course it is not the act of a gentleman to talk in anything but a proper manner to a religious man, though, with all the care in the world, one's words may get out ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not alone when your voice is near me. Now don't you fidget yourself, dear friend. I like these little excitements. I have told you so before. Listen. How calm and silent it all is; the place; the night! The mind seems to fill with great ideas, and to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was a tone of contempt in the last words which piqued me to the quick; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... you, gentlemen, you may believe me or you may not, but from that night for six weeks the same thing was repeated. In the end I actually got used to it and began putting out the candle, because I couldn't get to sleep in the light. 'Let him fidget,' I thought, 'he doesn't do ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... tell you, it was so very odd! I didn't mean to do so, because you children would tease me; but now I will to make you laugh, for it's a bad omen to cry over a bride, they say. My dear, that gouty Mr. MacGregor, when I went in with some of my nice broth last week (Hugh slops so, and he's such a fidget, I took it myself), after he had eaten every drop before my eyes, wiped his mouth and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... sides were playing "canny," risking nothing, nursing their energies for the last furious five minutes. Damer began to fidget; than he dropped out of the front rank of spectators. He couldn't stand still to see his boys win—or lose. He paced up and down behind the fags, who ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then—he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. He knew that Marjory knew it, too. It began the day Dr. Marcellin advised him to take a ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... which is a blessing in these awful, sad, heart-breaking times. From the first I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk were—Politics; but I never was calmer and quieter or less nervous. Great events make me quiet and calm, and little trifles fidget me and irritate my nerves. But I feel grown old and serious, and the future is very dark. God, however, will come to help and protect us, and we must keep up our spirits. Germany makes me so sad; on the other hand, Belgium is a real ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... gloomier than to watch the cold dawn of a winter's morning creeping over the gray sky of London?—somehow, things seemed less dismal already. The fact was I had had a very good night, and was feeling rested and refreshed, so much so that I soon began to fidget and to wish that some one would come with my hot water and say it ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... am concerned, batuchka, Rodion Romanovitch, I will tell you something which shall reveal to you my disposition," answered Porphyrius Petrovitch, continuing to fidget about the room, and, as before, avoiding his visitor's gaze. "I live alone, you must know, never go into society, and am, therefore, unknown; add to which, that I am a man on the shady side of forty, somewhat played out. You may have noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that here—I ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... purpose and scene of action, it settles here,—conglomerated into a baby. Probably that lot has befallen me: my monad, meant for another region in space, has been dropped into this, where it can never be at home, never amalgamate with other monads nor comprehend why they are in such a perpetual fidget. I declare I know no more why the minds of human beings should be so restlessly agitated about things which, as most of them own, give more pain than pleasure, than I understand why that swarm of gnats, which has such a very short time to live, does not give itself a moment's repose, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... declared that no expense should be spared to make the proceedings go off with eclat, and Mr. Mumbles began to fidget himself concerning the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... and sought a cigarette-case in his waistcoat pocket with a deliberation that made his companion fidget in his chair. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... cannot have this trick of your fancy you will just fidget yourself sick! I see it. Just as you went driving all about Melbourne without company to take care of you. I am sure I don't know. It is not in my way to meddle with overseers—How many people do you want to read to at ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... gate. He looked to me like a burglar. No doubt she let him take the impression of the door-key in wax, and then he'll get in and murder you all. There was a family at Kobble Hill all killed last week for fifty dollars. Now, don't fidget so, it will be bad ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... tray down some time ago." Helen watched her father fidget with his watch fob for several minutes, then asked with characteristic directness. "What do ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... nearer and nearer to the rectory, as Lucilla began to flush and fidget in eager anticipation of her re-union with Oscar, that uneasiness of mind which I had so readily dismissed while I was in Italy, began to find its way back to me again. My imagination now set to work at drawing pictures—startling pictures of Oscar as a changed being, as a Medusa's ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the ice till the end of war, they had turned him on to this show. He was bored by the business, and didn't understand it very well. The river charts puzzled him, and though it was pretty plain going for hundreds of miles, yet he was in a perpetual fidget about the pilotage. You could see that he would have been far more in his element smelling his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth, or beating against a northeaster in the shallow Baltic. He had six barges in tow, but the heavy ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... a gambler in the ordinary sense. He never plays cards. Little pictures on paste-board fidget him, he says; he loathes Monte Carlo because it's vulgar, and he dislikes roulette and bridge. He's only a gambler in the best sense of the word—and that's a very ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... After this little explanation Griffin showed a marked disinclination for the company of Bellefont, and became, indeed, quite a useful member of the community, though he always retained such acute memories that an angry tone from Stover would cause him to fidget and calculate the distance ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... on tiptoe as Dashall broke the seal of a letter that was handed to him on arrival at home. Mortimer was on the fidget, and Tallyho straining his neck upon the full stretch of anxiety to hear the news, when Dashall burst into a laugh, but in which neither of the others could join in consequence of not knowing the cause of it. In a few minutes however the mystery was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... round once when Dr. Poulain had given him over; he had the shroud up to his eyes, as the saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have not come to that yet, God be thanked, ill though you may be. Count on me; I would pull you through all by myself, I would! Keep still, don't you fidget like that." ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... low-breeding to fidget with the hat, cane or parasol during a call. They are introduced merely as signs that the caller is in walking dress, and are not intended, the hat to be whirled round the top of the cane, the cane to be employed in tracing out the pattern of the carpet, or the parasol ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... resources—one of which WOULD be most decidedly to clear out. What did I know after all about the girl except that I rejoiced to have escaped from marrying her mother? That mother, it was true, was a singular person, and it was strange her conscience should have begun to fidget in advance of my own. It was strange she should so soon have felt Archie's peril, and even stranger that she should have then wished to "save" him. The ways of women were infinitely subtle, and it was no novelty to me that one never knew where they would turn up. As I haven't hesitated in this ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... sudden alarm, of the sort that I had got now, nine times out of ten the place you feel it in is your stomach. When you feel it in your stomach, your attention wanders, and you begin to fidget. I fidgeted silently in my place on the sand. Mr. Franklin noticed me, contending with a perturbed stomach or mind—which you please; they mean the same thing—and, checking himself just as he was starting with his ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... consider themselves much wiser, have not the same consideration," thought Humphrey as the pony trotted along. Humphrey thought a good deal about the danger that Edward had been subjected to, and said to himself, "I really think that I should be more comfortable if Edward was away. I am always in a fidget about him. I wish the new king, who is now in France, would raise an army and come over. It is better that Edward should be fighting in the field than remain here and risk being shot as a deer-stealer, or put in prison. The farm is ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... twilight had deepened into darkness; the fire, which was blazing when we entered, had settled into a glow, and the room was lit by one shaded lamp. To me the dimness was restful, but Dale, who, with the crude instincts of youth, loves glare, began to fidget, and presently asked whether he might turn on the electric light. Permission was given. My hostess invited me to smoke and, to hand her a box of cigarettes which lay on the mantelpiece, I rose, bent over ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... that I would not have to speak of this," he said. "But, since you have asked, it is right that I should tell you." He hesitated again, until the Kwanns in front of him had begun to fidget. Then he asked old Shatresh: "Speak of the beliefs of the People about ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... her in check. He had realized very clearly, however, that Mirabelle wasn't to be put off indefinitely; and he had been glad that he had a readymade ruse which he could employ as a blinder whenever she began to fidget. This ruse was his amendment; and although he could no longer see any value in it for the purposes of his private feud, yet he was passing it for two reasons; Mirabelle was one, and the public was the other. Even a reformer must occasionally justify his title; and besides, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... to stop her, he dropped straight into the seat. "I assure you there has really been nothing." With a continuation of his fidget he pulled out his watch. "Won't she come ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... I want to get done. Queer how these details fidget me. Nerves! I ought to have had a holiday this ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... all, she seemed easier if he were at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen different ways. She? oh, she took it coolly, but that was all feminine bosh, or coquetry ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... I could cut it off,—like a boy's. It is miles too long. You might as well head Zachariah off. She has been gone since one o'clock. I am sure I heard the front door close before I dropped off to sleep. Don't fidget, Kenny. They've probably got old Martin in the calaboose by this time. Mother never fails when she sets out to do a thing. That good-for-nothing sleepy-head, Hattie, never heard a sound last night. What a ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... more discussion.' 'Talk away, Phil,' said the king. 'Well, sir,' says I, 'since you're always a-looking—leastways in winter—through the bars of grates, it's possible you've seen a bit yourself of human nature. Don't it fidget you?' 'Why,' says he, 'Phil,' a-stretching out his arms for a great yawn so suddenly as very nigh to set my coat on fire with his red fingers, 'I have been tolerably patient, haven't I?' 'If it's sarcasm you mean,' says I, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would be interesting to write ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... she sat so perfectly still that the Princess began to fidget, looked at the tall old clock in the corner and then compared her pretty watch with it, laid her olive-green parasol across the table, but took it off again almost immediately and dropped the tip to the floor. The Sister's ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... is cotched fast somewheres long about the straits. An' a bottle o' rum for a cold night! Well, well! I bet ye, Dannie," says he, "that the Likely Lass is gripped by this time. An' ye got a bottle o' rum!" cries he, in a beaming fidget. "Rum's a wonderful thing on a cold night, lad. Nothin' like it. I've tried it. Was a time," he confided, "when I was sort o' give t' ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of quarrel that isn't? It is impossible to say beforehand what Colonel Gainsborough might like to do. He's a fidgety man. If there's a thing I hate, in the human line, it's a fidget. You can't reason ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... her mother, "can't you tell me just as well sitting still? You fidget so that you make me dreadfully ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... mean?" whispered Dickenson, for his pony stopped short, as did the others, the sergeant's mount uttering a sharp, challenging neigh and beginning to fidget. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... answered, but the landlord does not move—not he; what is to be gained by being in a hurry? why fidget? an hour hence is quite as good as the present quickly fleeting by. So soothing his conscience by the word straxt, he leisurely goes on with his work, and as "like master, like man," those below him do not hurry either, for which reason most things in Finland are dominated ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... commenced to fidget. A hundred days passed, and Cappy visited the hydrographic office and spent a long time poring over charts of the air currents in the China Sea, along the coast of Asia ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... horribly," Ralph said. "I suppose they don't like me; and that would be all well enough if I had done anything to offend them, but it was just as bad the first day I came. I am sure Mr. Penfold does not like it. I can see him fidget on his chair; and he talks away with me pretty well all the time we are at table, so as to make it less awkward, I suppose. Well, I am stopping with him, and not with them, that's one thing; and it doesn't make much difference to me if they ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... said it was much more useful to learn to sit still and not fidget than to fill the ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... is distressed If you fidget when you're dressed. If you fidget like Miss Midget, Hopper, or her sister Bridget. Goops like that are so much bother, That they ought ...
— The Goop Directory • Gelett Burgess
... I walk about in his room. One can't be too particular, when rest is of such importance to your young lady—and it has struck me as just possible, that the floor of his room may be in fault. My dear, the boards may creak! I'm a sad fidget, I know; but, if the carpenter can set things right—without any horrid hammering, of course!—the sooner he is sent for, the more relieved ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... bustle, bustle," exclaimed that fidget John; and in less time than my lady-readers would believe, I had put on my pink bonnet and my white dress, and was bowling down to Richmond by the side of my cousin, behind a roan and a chestnut that stepped away in a style that it did one ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... frequently observed how diligent in knitting the island women were (reminding me of those notable spinsters of Herodotus) working the needles all the while they tended cattle, and with the pile of some costly shawl upon their heads while they fidget at the fringe; its various devices being of natural unstained wools, white, grey, or brown. In those interesting islands I can dimly recall many other noticeable things and people, everywhere having received the warm welcome which is usually the privilege of a bookwright all the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that the trunks were to go on to Lindau. "There," said he, "I should have lost my trunks. Nobody understands what I tell them: I can't get any information." Especially was he unable to get any information as to how to "get on." I confess that the restless American almost put me into a fidget, and revived the American desire to "get on," to take the fast trains, make all the connections,—in short, in the handsome language of the great West, to "put her through." When I last saw our traveler, he was getting his luggage through the custom-house, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... glad he is going with you, Mark; for although I know well enough that they could never be watching for those diamonds to turn up all these years, I feel sure I should fidget and worry if you were alone. You are not going to take ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... could not have told you either. Indeed, they could not look at the charm while it was speaking, because the light was too bright. They looked instead at the green radiance on the faded Kidderminster carpet at the edge of the circle. They all felt very quiet, and not inclined to ask questions or fidget with their feet. For this was not like the things that had happened in the country when the Psammead had given them their wishes. That had been funny somehow, and this was not. It was something like Arabian Nights magic, and something like being ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... not taken pains to obtain even a superficial acquaintance with its mechanism. The hammer, which by its stroke upon the string has produced the sound, falls immediately when the tone resounds; and after that you may caress the key which has set the hammer in motion, fidget round on it as much as you please, and stagger up and down over it, in your intoxicated passion,—no more sound is to be brought out from it, with all your trembling and quivering. It is only the public who are quivering ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... Elise, equally rapturous; "I don't wonder, Patty, that people like to shop in Paris. It is truly fascinating. But just wait until we get mother out here with us instead of father. She won't fidget around as if she wanted us to go home before we've ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... announced, beginning with her sister. "Three for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow after all! The Bristol ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... box and hides himself under the car again, while Runyon Q. Sampson begins to fidget around and look at his watch like it was the first one he ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... frequently accomplishes His purposes by means which appear very singular to the eyes of men, and at the same time to observe that the manner in which that relief is obtained, is calculated to read a lesson to the proud, fanciful, and squeamish, who are ever in a fidget lest they should be thought to mix in low society, or to bestow a moment's attention on publications which are not what is called of a perfectly unobjectionable character. Had not Lavengro formed the acquaintance of the old apple-woman on London Bridge, he would not have had an opportunity ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... each and all, but as few could tell their names I was at a loss to distinguish one from another; my head and eyes were in a perfect fidget, flying from Marshal to Marshal and from Picture ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... insults and obscenities. When we were all in bed, no one could stir without causing inconvenience to his neighbours. A sleepless night, invariably accompanied by the restless impulse to stir and fidget, was unforgettable misery, but fortunately our work was so hard that ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... you like. Have some of the cold entree with jelly, that's the best. They'll bring the pancakes directly. Have they given the children some? Polenka, have you got everything? (Cough-cough-cough.) That's all right. Be a good girl, Lida, and, Kolya, don't fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman. What ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... command by pulling away his pillow and dragging her brother into a sitting posture in spite of his laughing resistance and evident desire to exhaust her patience; for Dick excelled in teasing, and kept his sister in a fidget from morning till night, with occasional fits of penitence and petting which lasted till next time. Therefore, though dying to 'fess,' he was undecided as to the best method of executing that task in the manner most aggravating to his listener and most agreeable ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... daughter's presence. A dozen times he said that the man was heartless to come to the house at such a time, and he spoke of his cousin always as though the man were guilty of a gross injustice in being heir to the property. But not the less on that account did he fidget himself about the room in which Belton was to sleep, about the food that Belton was to eat, and especially about the wine that Belton was to drink. What was he to do for wine? The stock of wine in the ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... She didn't fidget, as Nina did. She listened, too. She was not as beautiful as she appeared on the stage, but she was attractive, and he stilled his conscience with the knowledge that she placed no undue emphasis on his visits. In her world men came and went, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the fidget he fell into, trying this and that effect, with his head slanted one way and then slanted the other, his hand held up to shut out the mountain below the granite mass of Lion's Head, and then changed to cut off the sky above; and then ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... does this mean?" whispered Dickenson, for his pony stopped short, as did the others, the sergeant's mount uttering a sharp, challenging neigh and beginning to fidget. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... gone well on towards the end of the first act, and Godolphin was beginning to fidget. From where she sat Louise saw him take out his watch and lean towards her husband to say something. An actor who was going through a piece of business perceived that he had not Godolphin's attention, and stopped. Just then Mrs. Harley ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... indeed an intruder. She gave us the permission we waited for, however. There were many good copies of lessons: those I did not dwell upon. But the sketches, spirited though imperfect, I studied as if they had been those of an Allston. Etty was evidently in a fidget at this preference of the smallest line of original talent over the corrected performances which are like those of every body else. I drew out a full-length figure done in black chalk on brown paper. It chained Flora's wondering ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... German mercantile marine was laid on the ice till the end of war, they had turned him on to this show. He was bored by the business, and didn't understand it very well. The river charts puzzled him, and though it was pretty plain going for hundreds of miles, yet he was in a perpetual fidget about the pilotage. You could see that he would have been far more in his element smelling his way through the shoals of the Ems mouth, or beating against a northeaster in the shallow Baltic. He had six barges ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The man knew that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men that are so lethargic they would have given the matter up, and lain down so quietly that ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... for the first time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my bills weekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week I knew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. The neighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping. And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours with my wife I ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... flies was bothering th' horse," surmised Mrs. Dodge; "he does fidget an' stamp somethin' terrible when the flies gets after him; his tail ain't so long as some.... Well, I'll let you know; and if you could drop around and see the table and all— Yes, some day this week. Of course I'll have to buy new furniture to put in their places; so will ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... sufficient to try and task the fidelity of any woman. It is the last grain that turns the scale—the last drop that overflows the goblet—and the last moment of delay that exhausts the patience. By the time the sun sank below the horizon, the duchess was in a fidget that passed all bounds, and, though several hours were yet to pass before the day regularly expired, she could not have remained those hours in durance to gain a royal crown, much less a ducal coronet. So she gave orders, and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... are quite safe," she said; "but the ledge is so narrow you must not fidget about. I am going to make you a dear little bed like ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... arranged the matter with her landlady, and that she was to pay a dollar a week as rent. "I should not tell your patient about this," he said. "It will look to him as if I considered his stay was likely to be a long one, and it might fidget him." ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the men into a drawing-room here, knowing how to walk and to curtsey alone, I did not, at first, perceive the great man, who followed so close to his wife's skirts as to be nearly hid. But he was soon flying about the room at large, and betrayed himself immediately to be a fidget. Instead of remaining stationary, or nearly so as became his high quality, he took the initiative in compliments, and had nearly every diplomatic man walking apart in the adjoining room, in a political aside, in less than twenty ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... (labor) 686; painstaking, diligence; perseverance &c 604.1; indefatigation^; habits of business. vigilance &c 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium^, insomnium^; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, pottering, fidget, fidgetiness; flurry &c (haste) 684. officiousness; dabbling, meddling; interference, interposition, intermeddling; tampering with, intrigue. press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of men, battle of life, thick of the action. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... drift into a state of dreamy content as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then—he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. He knew that Marjory knew it, too. It began the day Dr. Marcellin advised him to take a walk in the ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... silence, quietly quivered all over like a spider, looked glum and dull, and grew animated only when Lavretzky began to take his leave. Even when he was seated in the calash, the old man continued to be shy and to fidget; but the quiet, warm air, the light breeze, the delicate shadows, the perfume of the grass, of the birch buds, the peaceful gleam of the starry, moonless heaven, the energetic hoof-beats and snorting of the horses, all ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... fine cookery, miss? Lor' bless me, I could die of laughing to think a pair of hands like yours could make better paste than mine! You'd best be careful or you'll catch it. If ever there was a fidget about his food it's Master Lambert. Come, now, Tom, I am going to clear away, so you must budge. Why, you've left half your victuals on the platter. I'll feed the cat ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... then, that I should turn as red as a cardinal flower, and fidget uneasily, and stutter when I tried to set myself right with my ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... victory into Greece, till at last his navy went under at Salamis. We saw the pathetic figure of Byron swimming where Leander swam; and, in all, such an array of visions that the lure of the Eternal Waterway gripped us, and we were a-fidget to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Tom had finished his letters before that artificer arrived, thus saving Dorothea all responsibility in the valuable packet confided to his charge, for Mr. Ryfe received it himself in the outer office, whither he had resorted in a fidget to compare a time-table with a railway-map of England. He fretted to set off at once. He had finished his business; he had nothing to do now but eat an early dinner at his uncle's, and so start by the afternoon train on the path of love, triumph, and success, leaving ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... at four days and nights after opening. It was hard to wait, hard not to fidget under the watchful—the only word—eyes of the GG. They were up to something, undoubtedly. But there was something far more important: I'd narrowed the ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... there ever such a aggravating boy to take anywheres! Set quiet, do, and don't fidget, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... for assent, she packed Christabel and her belongings away again, and went to get the book. Annie waited sullenly. Then, as her friend did not come back immediately, she began to fidget. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... anxiously, the ladies saw his bright face become overclouded with anxiety. "I am the wretched bearer of bad news," he resumed, "and if I fidget in my chair, that is the reason for it. Let us get to the point—and let us get off it again as soon as possible. Here is a letter, written to me by Mr. Linley's lawyer. If you will take my advice you will let me say what the substance of it is, and then put it back in my pocket. I doubt ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... after all always been the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the slim fingers speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning, insinuating, deriding, a little history ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... And then what a fidget the landlord was in about his wines, for he doubted not but such a guest would be extremely critical and hard to please; but, to his great relief, the baron declined taking any wine, merely washing down his repast with a tumbler of cool water; and then, although the hour was very ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... time sped away. It was the second week in March I passed in Sark; the second week in May came upon me as if borne by a whirlwind. It was only a month to the day so long fixed upon for our marriage. My mother began to fidget about my going over to London to pay my farewell bachelor visit to Jack Senior, and to fit myself out with wedding toggery. Julia's was going on fast to completion. Our trip to Switzerland was distinctly planned out, almost ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and some electricity within him made the animal under him fidget and prance, for he stirred neither hand nor foot. "And you tell ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... like a nightmare. To add to the misery of her secret, her mother began to fidget over the continued lack of any communication from her husband. Had the weather been fair, Ruth would have insisted on her going out with her; but to the rain of the day before was added a heavy windstorm that made any unnecessary expedition ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... great day all the visitors were to come, and during the forenoon old Miss Stanbury was in a great fidget. Luckily for Dorothy, her own preparations were already made, so that she could give her time to her aunt without injury to herself. Miss Stanbury had come to think of herself as though all the reality of her life had passed away from her. Every resolution that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... at Jurgen for a while without speaking: and in the eyes of the Centaur was so much of comprehension and compassion that it troubled Jurgen. For somehow it made Jurgen fidget and consider this an unpleasantly personal way ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... noted for long memories, but their intentions were good, and the first day of Aunt Anne's visit passed very well, the children remembering to rub their feet on the mat, shut the door softly, and not fidget at meals. But the exertion seemed too much for them, and the second day began rather boisterously, and did not improve as it went on. After lunch, when the twins came into the drawing-room, Lucy drew a footstool near her aunt, and sat down meekly upon it, thinking that the sooner Aunt Anne ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... be kept from getting their proper supply of nourishment from the food-canal, the state of affairs is quickly revealed in the mouth mirror. Those muscles which open the mouth, instead of resting peacefully in the consciousness of duty well done, are in a state of perpetual fidget, twitching, pulling, wondering whether they ought not to open the portal for the entrance of new supplies of material, since the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and quite well. What a fidget you are! Apparently you attach as much importance to rosy cheeks as ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... listened intently, like children who hear and do not understand, yet who are spellbound. The children themselves sit spellbound on the benches till the play is over. They do not fidget or lose interest. They watch with wide, absorbed eyes at the mystery, held in thrall ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... for you, girl," cried Polly. "You're in a diseased frame of mind; you are in a fidget of work; you don't know the enjoyment of idleness, the luxury of laziness. You'll spoil your complexion; your hair will grow grey; no man will dare to trifle with such a ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... an' there's more important things up to me than the dustin', I give it a lick an' a promise, same as the next one, an' let it go at that, till the time comes I can do better. Life's too short to fuss an' fidget your soul out over trifles. It ain't always what you want, but what you must. You sometimes got to cut short at one end so's you can piece out at another, an' you can take it from me, you only pester folks by gettin' 'm down where they can't resist you, an' forcin' a lot of hard facks ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... to say that you will be a good deal with her,' Miss Darrell said, shaking her head gravely; 'for you are to take the second English class under her—I heard them say so at dinner to-day— and I am afraid she will fidget you almost out of your life; but you must try to keep your temper, and take things as quietly as you can, and I daresay in time you will be able ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... roof, we had a musical ride, performed by six men and six women mounted on very shiny horses. Mrs. Ascher, of course, objected strongly to the music. I could see her squirming in her seat. Ascher did not find the thing interesting and began to fidget. It was, indeed, much less suggestive than either the learned horse or the acrobats. You cannot discover in a musical ride any parable with a meaning applicable to life. Nothing in the world goes so smoothly and pleasantly. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... no doubt the condition of human existence which statuary most easily and most naturally expresses; and few things are more obnoxious to a refined taste than that sculpture which, like that of Roubiliac, affects movement, fidget, flutter, and unquiet. But in the Phoenician sculpture the repose is overdone; except in the expression of faces, there is scarcely any life at all. The figures do nothing; they simply stand to be looked at. And they stand stiffly, sometimes ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... pleasant travelling companion," returned Isabel, laughing. "Don't mention it pray," exclaimed Emily, "you have no idea what I endured coming down. Poor Charles, he must have been almost worried to death, she is such a horrid tease, and the old gentleman too, is an awful fidget. I think Arthur Barrington knew what he was about, when he refused to be of our party, and went on by express. Talking of Lady Ashton, how abominably she behaves to you. I was saying so to Harry the other day, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... suppose you will stay with your Aunt Ellen long,' said Miss Morton, 'because there is no doubt your father and mother will soon be in England, and then they will be able to look after you. Now,' she added, 'if you think you can keep still and not fidget, you may sit down by the window and watch for ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... "You need not fidget about Victor, Marie. Elise is with him, and will come and let you know if he wakes; but I hope that he has gone off fairly to sleep for the night. He knew me, and I think I have put his mind at rest a little as to how he came here. I have told him it was an accident in the street, and that ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... to children, they mitigate the mental pain by wrinkling their brows, or they fidget and put themselves into strange attitudes. These odd motions, which at first are voluntary, after they have been frequently associated with certain states of mind, constantly recur involuntarily with those feelings ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... on the edge of the stool, but even there it was warm, and after a while he began to fidget, saying, 'Dear me, mother-in-law! how hot your house is! Everything I touch ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... sighed, the fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against each other. The Rector had begun to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and in the first right-hand pew six of his children at once began to fidget. Mrs. Barter, sideways and unsupported on her seat, kept her starry eyes fixed on his cheek; a line of perplexity furrowed her brow. Now and again she moved as though her back ached. The Rector quartered his congregation with his gaze, lest any amongst them should incline to sleep. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... say as she looks any worse to me either; but Dr. Van Anden is in a fidget, and I suppose he knows what ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... said at the shops, on approval. Maggie, certainly, would have been as far as Charlotte herself from positively desiring this, and Charlotte, on her side, as far as Maggie from holding him light as a real value. She made him fidget thus, poor girl, but from generous rigour ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... would be honest, that's all. Now don't you fidget about her, for there are on board this ship six men—I was going to say and a boy, but I can't, for that boy counts as a man in the spirit to do all he can, so I shall say seven good men and true—who will do everything they can to protect as sweet a young English lady ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... knew nothing of all this yesterday, so entirely was I taken up with the rocks and meadows; no chance of meeting either card or billiard players in their solitudes. Both abound at Ems, where they hop and fidget from ball to ball, unconscious of the bold scenery in their neighbourhood, and totally insensible to its charms. They had no notion, not they, of admiring barren crags and precipices, where even ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... lady's, began to fidget confusedly, and, the silence continuing, she coughed several times, to effect the preface required by her sense of fitness, before she felt it proper to observe, with a ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... than two and a half years old; a personage in a jersey and minute knickerbockers, full of dancing energy and spirits, full of vital interest in the smaller problems of life. He was a fidget and he was a talker. Out of a full mind he poured forth an abundant stream of words, carelessly chosen at times, yet on the whole apt to the occasion. His intelligence was marked, of course,—what very young child's is not?—and he had inherited an ample ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... grieve, and presently there stood by her bedside a phantom Harry, a pouting lad complaining of his own mortality. She put out her hand to him and crooned, "There, there!" and told herself she must not fidget if he were there, for the dead were used to quietness; and profound ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... without fretting, and yet, after all, she seemed easier if he were at hand. I remember, one day, he was tied in front of the house, and she was loose, grazing near by. As long as he could see her, all went well enough, but the moment she sauntered around the fence, he began first to fidget, then to paw and neigh, and finally to struggle, until in the end, he broke loose and rushed after his inamorata. And what a time he made over her! whinnying, and demonstrating his delight in a dozen different ways. She? oh, she took it coolly, but that was all feminine bosh, or coquetry on ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... conversation with him to trade exigencies; but after a few days they had grown to accept him as part of the household, and were civil to him again. Mrs. Kettering liked to get him to herself of an evening and talk to him for two hours at a time. Kettering himself would fidget a good deal at such times, but scarcely ventured to intrude, though apparently his greatest delight was also to converse with Morgan. But Mrs. Kettering showed no such scruples about entering into the conversation and eventually taking Morgan ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... his mother's face with a dreamy upward gaze. 'I will try, mother, I really will. I will keep my hands tight in my pockets, and my feet close together; I will pretend I'm going to be shot by a file of soldiers, and then I really think that will help me not to fidget. I promise you I'll ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... mother's face, saw a smile there which said all she wanted. Breakfast went on more vigorously than ever. But after breakfast it seemed to Ellen that her father never would go away. He took the newspaper, an uncommon thing for him, and pored over it most perseveringly, while Ellen was in a perfect fidget of impatience. Her mother, seeing the state she was in, and taking pity on her, sent her upstairs to do some little matters of business in her own room. These Ellen despatched with all possible zeal and speed; and coming down again found her father gone and her mother alone. She flew ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... shuffling his feet, as though the floor under the table were uncomfortably hot. When Mr Verloc returned to sit in his place, like the very embodiment of silence, the character of Mrs Verloc's stare underwent a subtle change, and Stevie ceased to fidget with his feet, because of his great and awed regard for his sister's husband. He directed at him glances of respectful compassion. Mr Verloc was sorry. His sister Winnie had impressed upon him (in the omnibus) that Mr Verloc would ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... are monarchs! Our strength and weight Can flatten the huts of the frightened men! But the glory of smashing is lost of late, We raid less eagerly now than then, For pits are staked, and the traps are blind, The guns be many, the men be more; We fidget with pickets before and behind, Who snoozed in the noonday heat of yore. Yet, hear ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... you fidget yourself about that. There's a pawnbroker's in the next street. I'll take it round there in the evening, if you ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... old fidget to send me travelling up again, just because he fancied he saw something amiss at the window. Nothing but a curtain flapping, or a shadder, for the poor dears is sleeping like lambs.' We heard her say this to herself, and a general titter agitated the white ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Celia blew away the threatening cloud, however, and for her sake her brother promised to try to be patient; for her sake Ben declared he never would "get mad" if Mr. Thorny did fidget, and both very soon forgot all about master and man and lived together like two friendly lads, taking each other's ups and downs good-naturedly, and finding mutual pleasure and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... peas left," she returned, "and when I've reset them I'll give you your answer. That'll be in fifteen minutes. Now go away, or you'll fidget round, and I sha'n't get 'em straight." And without another word she ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... nice if he hadn't been disagreeable," she thought after a bit. Then he began to fidget and to kick the floor a little with one foot, and she began to cry and to wipe her tears away very softly and quickly, so that ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, 'Come, don't YOU fidget. YOUR bones are young enough, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... he, hobbling quickly down. 'Niver fidget theesel' wi' gettin' ready to go search for her. I'll tak' thee a bet it's Philip Hepburn's voice, convoying her home, just as I said he would, an ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that has a spark of individuality is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you; for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities fortunately disappear with daylight; even cross children are wheedled into quietness, and servants forget to fidget and giggle; and, for mosquitoes, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to half finish my eating Ere Merdle is done; such a fidget is then, He'd starve me I think rather 'n miss of a meeting Where brokers preside o'er the fate of the stocks, As Pales presided o'er shepherds ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... of hours must have passed, and Pomp began to fidget about terribly, making so much noise that if the Indians had been anywhere at hand, they ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... his hand a moment, and seemed to ponder the propriety of what he was about. Mr. Harley said nothing, but sat a-fidget with curiosity. It is not given every American to be taken, via a Count with estates on the Caspian, into the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... efforts, he had but picked up Mr. Freeborn, a young Evangelical Master, with whom Sheffield was acquainted; a sharp, but not very wise freshman, who, having been spoiled at home, and having plenty of money, professed to be aesthetic, and kept his college authorities in a perpetual fidget lest he should some morning wake up a Papist; and a friend of his, a nice, modest-looking youth, who, like a mouse, had keen darting eyes, and ate his bread ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... worry and fretfulness. [Footnote: Cf. W. James's essay on "The Gospel of Relaxation," in Talks to Teachers and Students, or Annie Payson Call's books, of which the best known is Power Through Repose.] This nervous leakage is a notoriously American ailment; we knit our brows, we work our fingers, we fidget, we rock in our chairs, we talk explosively, we live in a quiver of excitement and hurry, in a chronic state of tension. We need to follow St. Paul's exhortation to "Study to be quiet"; to learn what Carlyle called "the great art of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... nasty fidget, am I?" It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, in the other ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... of course not. Matty is nothing to any one who hasn't money, and you'll have none to pay her, or any one else, after I'm gone. You must eat and live for three long years. Do you understand that?... Sit back in your chair and don't fidget," he concluded. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... to that, why, as human nature is weak—excuse what I may feel compelled to do; but for the present pray oblige me by keeping your seat and the peace; or, if you must move and fidget about, go and make that pugnacious Tim Carroll as decent as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... thing; but it struck me immediately that this was the attitude at High Mass, and I gave it up as out of place. Then I assumed an air of frigid composure, and toyed with my watch-chain. But a little girl screwed her eyes into me, and said, evidently, in her mind: "That old gentleman is a fidget." Then I leaned back gracefully, but something whispered: "That's all right at home, Father Dan, but please remember that the convenances of society require a different posture;" and I sat bolt upright in a moment. My eye caught in a blissful ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? You gape and fidget: one would think you had never sat up a night before in your life. I verily believe you are afraid to trust yourself with us. Which of us are you afraid of, Lawless, or me, or yourself?' There was a tone of contempt in the last words which piqued me to the quick; and however ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... these awful, sad, heart-breaking times. From the first I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk were—Politics; but I never was calmer and quieter or less nervous. Great events make me quiet and calm, and little trifles fidget me and irritate my nerves. But I feel grown old and serious, and the future is very dark. God, however, will come to help and protect us, and we must keep up our spirits. Germany makes me so sad; on the other hand, Belgium is a real pride ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Guest, with a laugh. "Married? Looked as if he was going to be hanged. Wonder whether I shall be as nervous and upset if—if—I ought to say when—it comes off? No, not likely, bless her. Might be all in a fidget to get it over for fear of a slip, but I don't think I should look ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... nothing done; we would not even trouble to stare at the intruder. Yet he would seldom stop to finish his consommation, or he would bolt it. He would feel something in the air; he would know he was out of place. He would fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace in the bush. From half a dozen to a score of us dined at her long table every ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
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