"Fretful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forget and wound the hearts of your children with frowns and the dagger of cruel words, and sometimes with a blow? Do you sometimes, in your own peevishness, and your own meanness, wish yourself away from their fretful cries and noisy sports? Then think that to-morrow may ripen the wicked wish; tomorrow death may lay his hand upon a little fluttering heart and it will be stilled forever. 'Tis then you will miss the sunbeam and the sweet little flower that reflected heaven ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... hitherto untouched by remedies, and beyond the comprehension of the old Northwold surgeon, Mr. Walby. As yet, however, the idea of peril had not presented itself to Louis, though he was perfectly sensible. Severe pain and illness were new to him; and though not fretful nor impatient, he had not the stoicism either of pride or of physical indifference, put little restraint on the expression of suffering, and was to an almost childish degree absorbed in the present. He was always considerate and grateful; ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to say at supper. She sat by her father and ate her muffins like a very hungry, tired child—like a very cross child, Gypsy thought. Joy's face was always pale and fretful; in the bright lamplight now, after the exhaustion of the long journey, it ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... not till the next day when the house was tolerably quiet, and Molly, rather fretful and grumbling, had helped Judith down to her place by the fire, that she ventured the question, "Molly, you have not a bit more of that pretty wall-paper you gave ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fashion; and even Blue Books Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow busy as rooks; And the postman (that Genius, indifferent and stern, Who shakes out even-handed to all, from his urn, Those lots which so often decide if our day Shall be fretful and anxious, or joyous and gay) Brings, each morning, more letters of one sort or other Than Cadmus, himself, put together, to bother The heads of Hellenes;—I say, in the season Of Fair May, in May Fair, there can be ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... and peevishness of our times are chiefly attributable to tea and coffee. The digestive organs of confirmed coffee drinkers are in a state of chronic derangement which reacts on the brain, producing fretful and lachrymose moods. The snappish, petulant humor of the Chinese can certainly be ascribed to their immoderate ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... give her a guitar lesson. Now Mike himself was a sad musician, and the sound of him fandangoin' uncertainly up and down the fretful spine of that instrument was a tribulation I'd put up with on account of friendship, pure and simple, but when that discord-lovin' lady cliff-dweller set all evenin' in our tent and scraped snake-dances out of them catguts with a fish-bone, I pulled my freight and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... However, they were taken out of the cupboard by some friends of theirs—friends, indeed! who care as much about them as I do for the sea-serpent; but who happened, at the moment, to find it necessary to play at soldiers, to amuse their fretful children, who didn't know what they wanted, and, what was worse, would have it—and so the Bulls got back to Rome. And at Rome they are any thing but safe to stay, as you'll find, my dear, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... declared, half fretful, half amused. "You're features aren't so very much alike—except the eyes, they are—and your hair's darker. But you move and carry yourself and turn your head as she did. And that position you're in now—why I've seen her in it ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... "Some in a letter-of-credit that my father earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... whose aspect was always a shock to those who connected her with the two Margarets whose name she bore. She had inherited her father's heavy mould of feature and dark complexion, and the black eyes had neither sparkle in themselves nor relief from the colour of the sallow cheek; the pouting lips were fretful, the whole appearance unhealthy, and the dark bullet-shaped head seemed too large for the thin bony little figure. Worn, fagged, and aged as Flora looked, she had still so much beauty, and far more of refinement and elegance, as to be a painful foil and contrast to the child ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... occasion he spoke too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably but with justice. This is among the indications of orderly and elevated minds; and here stands the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to overturn it on the road, and has pursued ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... close circle round the ship. Clouds hung low, running before the wind, and bringing intermittently little dashes of rain that seemed still further to compress the walls of horizon. The sea was not what could be called rough, but merely choppy and fretful, with short waves that would not have troubled a larger craft. The steamer proved to be a small, undistinguished dingy-looking boat, more like a commercial tramp than a government vessel. An officer, apparently the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Mummy?" A rather fretful little voice interrupted the speaker, as Molly pressed closely to her side. "What's me and Rosa going to do? There isn't any beds and the bench is ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Harrenburn, hurrying with breathless haste to avert some catastrophe that was about to happen somewhere to some one; now, that he was intently painting a picture of the corpse of a beautiful young lady—terribly oppressed by nervousness, and a fretful sense of incapacity most injurious to the success of his labours—when suddenly, O horror! he beheld the body move, then rise, in a frightful and unnatural manner, stark upright, and with opened lips, but rigidly-clenched ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... before the two friends met in George's room. George was in low spirits, nervous and fretful. It was plain to see his friend's protest had come too late to be of much use, for he had grown more and more worn every day; and the additional hours spent in bed had only been a source of worry and vexation. Jim, on the other hand, was doing his best to keep up, not his own spirits only, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... For a long time I was only dimly conscious of it, in a puzzled way, in myself. Why was it that my spirit stood no longer on the heights? Why did the moonlight look cold and metallic? Why had the rushing sound of the river got on my nerves, like the monotonous crying of a fretful child? Why did our frequent silences no longer tingle with a meaning which there was no need to express in words? Why was my brain empty of impressions as a squeezed sponge of water? Why, in fact, though ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... left alone—to meet that crisis most fatal to wedded happiness, the discovery of the first deceit Captain Rothesay sat silent, with averted face; Sybilla was weeping—not that repentant shower which rains softness into a man's heart, but those fretful tears which ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and Florence were neither fretful nor dissatisfied; they were never disrespectful, perhaps because Mrs. Ledwith demanded less of deferential observance than of a kind of jolly companionship from her daughters; a go-and-come easiness in and out of what they called their home, but which was rather the trimming-up ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... shrouded darkness of the elbow of the veranda. Street noises died. The smell of damp came out. Occasionally a motor-car sped by, or a passer-by, each step clear on the asphalt. The song of crickets grated against the darkness. An infant in the right-side house raised a fretful voice once or twice, and then broke into a sustained and coughy fit of crying. Lights flashed up in the windows, silhouettes moving across drawn shades. Then silence again. The university clock, a mile out, chimed twelve, and finally ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... droning chant of the chapel. I had before found the exercises of the cloister wearisome; they now became intolerable. The dull round of duties wore away my spirit; my nerves became irritated by the fretful tinkling of the convent bell; evermore dinging among the mountain echoes; evermore calling me from my repose at night, my pencil by day, to attend to some tedious and mechanical ceremony ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy! O, rippling river of laughter; thou art the blessed boundary line between beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O, Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheek to catch and hold and glorify ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the manner of a fretful child. And presently, as she talked, the cloud lifted from his gray, haggard face, and he grew calm. Soon, when she made some smiling remark, he even smiled back at her with the affectionate companionship ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... children, the world would cry out astonished. I know a little girl, ten years old, of nervous temperament, whose whole physical condition is disordered, and seriously, by her mother's habitual atmosphere of rude fault-finding. She is a sickly, fretful, unhappy, almost unbearable child. If she lives to grow up, she will be a sickly, fretful, unhappy, unlovely woman. But her mother is just as much responsible for the whole as if she had deranged her system by feeding her ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... make up for the loss of the little gestures, the little touches, the little ways, we shall never through all eternity know again? Ah! those reluctances and hesitations, over now, quite over now! Ah! those fretful pleadings, those strange withdrawals, those unheeded protests; nothing, less than nothing, and mere memories! When the life of the senses invades the affections of the heart—then, then, mon enfant, comes the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... began to doubt her lover that she was now occasionally fretful and uneasy. No; the idea to doubt him never reached her, but nevertheless she felt that things were not quite as ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... the nursery, and did her best to comfort Jessie, but the poor child was languid and fretful, and could hardly put away the thought of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... me who it is?" she retorted, in an impatient, fretful tone, not having the discernment to see that he wished to prepare her for what was coming. "Can't you speak, Jan, if he won't? People have no right to come, dressed up in other people's clothes and faces, to frighten us to death. He ought to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the herd were now in a state of pitiable dejection, and pressed closely together as if under a sense of common misfortune. For the most part they stood at rest in a compact body, fretful and uneasy. At intervals one more impatient than the rest would move out a few steps to reconnoitre; the others would follow at first slowly, then at a quicker pace, and at last the whole herd would rush off furiously to renew the often-baffled ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... her was unimpaired, and that her heart was yet her own, he ceased his exhortations, and turned the discourse to subjects more gay and general, judiciously cautious neither by tedious admonitions to disgust, nor by fretful solicitude to alarm her. He did not quit her till the evening was far advanced, and then, in returning to his own house, felt all his anxieties and disappointments recompensed by the comfort this long and satisfactory conversation ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... long dust-coat. He had pushed up his motor-goggles and was wiping his forehead with a limp handkerchief. His round, fat face, with pursed-up lips and wide-open light-blue eyes, bore the expression of a fretful child. On his left was a lean, thin-faced fellow with a black mustache who looked scared and nervous. There was no sign of the third person who had been in the car, and even at this crucial moment Buck found time ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... vague sense that there was a broader, grander kind of life possible to womanhood; a life as different from her own as the broad river that lost itself in the sea was different from the placid mill-stream that bounded her father's orchard. But she had no sick fretful yearning for that wider life. To win her father's affection, to see her brother restored to his abandoned home—these were her girlish dreams ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... white priests, and veiled girls, with a cold averted eye. Lucy looked back with a pang to Marinata, and to the indulgent pleasure that Eleanor had once taken in all the many-coloured show of Catholicism. Now she was always weary, and often fretful. It struck Lucy too that she was more restless than ever. She seemed to take no notice of the present—to be always living in the future—expecting, listening, waiting. The gestures and sudden looks that expressed ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as she grew, she grew worse; for she never tried to grow better. She became more and more peevish and fretful every day—dissatisfied not only with what she had, but with all that was around her, and constantly wishing things in general to be different. She found fault with every thing and everybody, and all that happened, and grew ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... intellect and the development of noble sentiments is as essential for the perfection of the one, as of the other, fretful, envious, malicious, ill humoured feelings must never be indulged by those who value their personal appearance, for the existence of these chronic maladies of ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... for Douglas a period of much anxiety, days of fretful restlessness, sleepless nights full of vague and shadowy dejection. Emily de Reuss was ill, too ill to see him or any one. All callers were denied. Daily he left flowers and messages for her—there was no response ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... to complete failure. The messengers set out at eleven o'clock at night, and Herkimer thought they would surely reach the fort by three in the morning. But he waited in vain the whole night through; no sound of cannonade disturbed the quiet air. As the hours crept by his officers became fretful and impatient; in the end they declared for an immediate advance, denouncing Herkimer as a faltering coward. At length the old man, sorely against his will, gave the order to march. The relief party streamed through the forest with disordered ranks. In the meantime Brant's Indians had ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... seat and began awkwardly coaxing the fretful child to drink, the Cubans voiced their appreciation of the picture. They were courteous, they did not laugh; nevertheless, the sight of their eccentric, irascible, rebellious El Demonio tamely nursing a child in the fire-light filled them ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rooked him in his linden cradle, Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 'Hush! the naked bear ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... rolls uneasy, Very fretful, for he hears, Near at hand, the shout of battle, And the din of ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... down, dear. I can't get Aggy out of my arms a minute. It's nearly supper time, and I havn't been able even to put the kettle on the fire. She's very fretful." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... lovely Peggy's foe, Such sweetness would relent her; As blooming spring unbends the brow Of surly, savage Winter. Detraction's eye no aim can gain, Her winning pow'rs to lessen; And fretful Envy grins in vain ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... search the brambles for stray hips, or locks of wool the sheep had not left there willingly; men and women even worse off had been there before them, and they came home at night, tired out and footsore, only to hear Zitza's fretful cry for food, and the constant chatter of Meister Hans, croaking for his own share ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of Dexie to cause so much annoyance!" was her fretful comment. "I am quite sure I shall have the headache, for the way she slammed that door was enough to upset the strongest nerves. I thought of going to the concert myself if I finished my book in time, but it seems my fate to be robbed of all pleasure. Why don't you use your authority, Clarence, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... distance no sign of age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age—merely of time; for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow, and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure control from corner to corner. A little had the years ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... sleepy faces began going below; a young and very beautiful lady, the one who had been so angry with the Customs officers at Volotchisk, stopped before Shamohin and said with the expression of a naughty, fretful child: ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... still appeared the same impassible, precise, and grave man, he showed himself at home more fretful than an old maid, —nervous, agitated, and subject to the oddest whims. After remaining three or four days without opening his lips, he would begin to speak upon all sorts of subjects with amazing volubility. Instead of watering ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... quiet, but it kept whispering to the children. It wanted to know why there was no altar, no fire, no incense, and became so excited and fretful and tiresome that four at least of the party of five wished deeply that it ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Keane was a bright-eyed, curly-haired maiden of fifteen, wild as an antelope, and as full of fun and frolic as any one of her pet kittens. Their mother was an invalid, seldom able to leave her couch;—not a fretful invalid, you must understand, but a sweet, gentle, unselfish woman, who bore her pain and weakness without a murmur, so that those she loved might be spared pain on her account. Mr. Goldthwaite often said that Mrs. Keane's life was the best sermon he had ever ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... get out, and he grew rather fretful sometimes, even with Christie. It was very dull for him sitting alone all day; and he had nothing to comfort him, not even his old friend the organ. And when Christie came home at night, if the store of pence was not so large as usual, poor old Treffy ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... lately Stella's form display'd The beauties of the gay brocade, The nymphs, who found their power decline, Proclaim'd her not so fair as fine. 'Fate! snatch away the bright disguise, And let the goddess trust her eyes.' Thus blindly pray'd the fretful fair, And Fate, malicious, heard the prayer; But brighten'd by the sable dress, As Virtue rises in distress, Since Stella still extends her reign, Ah! how shall Envy soothe her pain? The adoring Youth and envious Fair, Henceforth ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... humorist in "Humphrey Clinker"; of a fretful temper, yet generous and kind, who has a sister, MISS TABITHA, an ungainly maiden at forty-five, and of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... animal centres, it lets loose all the passions, and gives them more or less of unlicensed dominion over the man. It excites anger, and when it does not lead to this extreme, it keeps the mind fretful, irritable, dissatisfied and captious.... And if I were to take you through all the passions, love, hate, lust, envy, avarice and pride, I should but show you that alcohol ministers to them all; that, paralyzing ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... was fretful, and hard to please: patient persuasion was needed to induce her to take her medicine. Even when she was thirsty, she had an irritable objection to being disturbed, if the lemonade was offered to her which she had relished at other times. Once or twice, when ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... finally turned in for a forenoon nap, I was busier plottin' out just how it ought to be done than I was at makin' up lost sleep. I ain't one of them that can romp around all night, though, and then do the fretful toss on the hay for very long after I've hit the pillow. First thing I knew, I was pryin' my eyes open to find that it's almost 1:30 P.M., and with the sun beatin' straight down on the deck overhead I don't need to turn on any steam heat in ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... had lost my place in the class, I came home discouraged and fretful. I went to my mother's chamber. She was paler than usual, but she met me with the same affectionate smile that always welcomed my return. Alas! when I look back through the lapse of thirteen years, I think my heart must have been stone not to have been melted ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... again to be so naughty. The good tempered Julia readily forgave her, and for a few days after this misfortune Fanny behaved much better than usual. However, as ill habits are very difficult to be overcome, she soon relapsed into her former fretful and passionate ways; indeed, she made the family so uncomfortable that her mother determined to send her from home, and for that purpose wrote to a relation, entreating her to take the care of Fanny for some time, and try if ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... we are poor—VERY POOR," said he, "for we are neither contented nor thankful. We ask for more than we possess, and, because it is not given, we are fretful and impatient. Yes, yes—we, not the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... all. Be careful what you say about those near you, as a thoughtless remark to a friend in too loud a tone may cause a real heartache. Many a weary mother has been pained by hearing complaints of a fretful child, whose crying most probably distresses her more than any one else. Instead of saying, "Why will people travel with babies?" remember that it is sometimes unavoidable, and do not disfigure your face by a frown at the disturbance, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... she was very active and merry and displayed an abundant fund of good health and spirits. She early learned to talk and walk and was considered an unusually bright and precocious girl. Her earliest months gave a hint of her love for music. If fretful or peevish with weariness or ill-health she could soon be pacified by a gentle song from her father as he carried her ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... Fortune in vain. She will have nought to do with his addresses, and it would be just as foolish to afflict oneself because of an eclipse of the sun or moon, as to be grieved on account of the changes which Fortune is pleased to cause. Many other writers speak in the same fretful strain. There is now work in the vast field of literature for all who have the taste, ability, and requisite knowledge; and few authors now find their books fatal to them—except perhaps to their reputation, when they deserve the critics' censures. The writers ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... saw such laziness! No wonder old Sampson won't keep you longer than the holidays if you're no smarter than that. Goodness, if I don't settle that boy!"—as the sound of fretful crying came ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... labors of the household is the killing of conversation. There is perhaps no more general weakness in the average American family than glumness! The silent newspaper-reading father, the worried watchful mother, the surly boy, the fretful girl, these are characters typical in both town and country. In one of Mrs. Daskam Bacon's lively tales, "Ardelia in Arcadia," the little heroine is transplanted from a lively, chattering, sweltering New York street to the maddening silence of an overworked farmer's table. She stands it as long as ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... the combination prevented Daniel from napping. Nerves were a new acquisition of Serena's; at least she had never been conscious of them until recently. Now, however, they were becoming more and more in evidence. She was fretful and impatient of trifles, and the least contradiction or upset of her plans was likely to bring on fits of hysterical weeping. It was so in this case. Daniel, trotting for smelling salts and extra pillows and the hot water bottle, was not too calm himself. His plans, the plans founded upon John ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... but of a most humane and benevolent heart, which showed itself not only in a most liberal charity, as far as his circumstances would allow, but in a thousand instances of active benevolence. He was afflicted with a bodily disease which made him often restless and fretful; and with a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking. We therefore ought not to wonder at his sallies of impatience and passion at any time, especially when ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... patience is still tried in waiting for the action of Congress on my bill. With so much at stake you may easily conceive how tantalizing is this state of suspense. I wish to feel right on this subject; not to be impatient, nor distrustful, nor fretful, and yet to be prepared for the worst. I find my funds exhausting, my clothing wearing out, my time, especially, rapidly waning, and my affairs at home requiring some little looking after; and then, if I should after all be disappointed, the alternative looks dark, and to human ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... had not been able to hide an harassed frown that day under his usual vigor of speech and look. It became more palpable after this; his voice, when he did speak, was fretful, irritable,—his lips compressed; he stopped at a village-well to drink, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... earnestly. "But she was so fretful, she was always ailing; and it's better they should go when they get like that. But now we're soon going to get married again—when Father Lasse's found somebody ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... over, Mrs Juno said to Jove, to whose arm she clung as they trudged home along the snowy paths: 'Fritz dear, Christmas is a good time for new resolutions, and I've made one never to be impatient or fretful with my beloved husband again. I know I am, though you won't own it; but Laurie's fun had some truth in it, and I felt hit in a tender spot. Henceforth I am a model wife, else I don't deserve the dearest, best man ever born'; and being in a dramatic mood, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... in the school-room and in the nursery; and children—left to their own devices—accept it with wonderful courage and sagacity. If we allow to their souls some noble and free expansion, they may be trusted to divert themselves from that fretful self-consciousness which the nurse calls naughtiness, and the doctor, nerves. A little wholesome neglect, a little discipline, plenty of play, and a fair chance to be glad and sorry as the hours swing by,—these ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... possessed those qualities of leadership that bind party and friends by ties of unflinching services, he might have reaped the reward his ambition so ardently craved; but his peculiar temper unfitted him for such a career. Jealous, fretful, sensitive, and suspicious, he was as restless as his eloquence was dazzling, and, although generous to the poor, his political methods savoured of selfishness, making enemies, divorcing friends, and darkening his pathway ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... very bad indeed; but for the last fortnight he had been decidedly worse, and his heart and hopes were sinking, though he would not own it to himself, and that and the pain made his spirits fail so, that he had been more inclined to be fretful than any time ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... utter weariness and pain, Betty's fear left her and all the tenderness and passionate desire for service that had made her such a wonderful little "hand" with ill and fretful babies in her old home at Pineville came ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... known a quieter thing than ships, Nor any dreamers steeped in dream as these, For all that they have tracked disastrous seas, And winds that left their sails in flagging strips; Nothing disturbs them now, no stormy grips That once had hurt their sides, no crash or swell, Nor can the fretful harbour quite dispel This quiet that they ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... vernacular as Air, Hazybrook, Betoon, Arm-in-tears, Ballyhool (occasionally Belial), Poperingy, and Kassel. The fairest of these is Cassel. For Cassel is set upon a hill which rises from the interminable plain, salient and alluring as a tor in Somerset, and seems to say to the fretful wayfarer, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary, and I will give you rest." For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a great peace. The motor-lorries ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... see how I can get ready soon. The baby is fretful, and I'm all worn out between broken rest and worry. Won't you take ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... sure of sorrow; And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure; And love, grown faint and fretful With lips but half regretful Sighs, and with eyes forgetful Weeps that ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... you from the first there is no remedy. Our hopes are lost: lost by one miserable trifler, ignorant, fretful, fitful - who will have disappeared to-morrow, who ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the fretful whining winds that came down from the north chilled the Dream. The winds whispered of the coming of the Snow King, and the river grumbled as it listened. Big Ivan kept out of the way of Poborino, the smith, and Yanansk, the baker. The Dream was still with him, but ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... now and to-morrow—when the souls of men were sick, When wives were fickle or fretful or the bills were falling thick, When the youth was minded to marry and the maiden withheld consent, Heeding the words of NIMROD, they packed their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... and himself, and no longer in that vein of incidental adventure in which he had begun. He thought, too, of the fretful invalid who lay in the next room to his, whose money had created his business and made his ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... was the fretful comment of the adventurer. "I have too much at stake to be drowned like a rat in a trap! You must send me up first if it becomes ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... last, and came to know him very well; and then I discovered how the nervousness, the bashfulness, the mauvaise honte, which made him so shy and retiring in private, stood him in wonderful stead on the stage. The nervous man became the fretful and capricious tyrant of mock tragedy; the bashful man warmed at the foot-lights with passion and power. The manner which in society was a drawback and a defect became in the pursuit of his art a charm and an excellence. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... dance, nor in the three successive dances did Maitland appear. The precious moments were slipping by. Patricia was becoming more and more anxious and fretful at the non-appearance of her hero. Also, Hugh began to notice and detect a lagging ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... into yet finer lines, closely- set lips drooping out into lines of fretful impatience, sunken eyes beneath overhanging brows. She studied them one by one, until, struck by her silence, the old man looked up ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... No, she cannot imagine; and that is the trouble. If she could, all would be righted. It is quite probable that she is a far more anxious, self-sacrificing, hard-working mother than the neighbor, whose children are rosy and frolicking and affectionate and obedient; while hers are pale and fretful and selfish ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the brilliancy of deathless romance. Was he, Guy Beausire de Fontenelle no better, no nobler, no higher, in his desires and ambitions than Miraudin? What was he doing with the three lilies emblazoned on his escutcheon? He thought with a certain fretful impatience of Sylvie, of her captivating grace, her tender eyes, her sweet laughter, and sweeter smile. She had seemed to him a mere slight creation of the air and the moonbeams,—something dainty ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... chin by a diamond that sparkled in the dim greenish light of the drawing-room; the feathers of the hat were unusually large and drooping; they curled heavily round the thin neck and long, hollow-eyed face, so that its ivory whiteness, its fatigue, its fretful beauty were framed in and emphasized by them; her bloodless hands lay upon her lap, and the folds of the sweeping dress drawn round her showed her slenderness, or rather her emaciation. Two years before this date Madeleine Verrier ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... athwart, transverse, intersecting; adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible acrimonious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... taking the hint, Master Putnam, like a dutiful husband, who really loved his somewhat peevish and fretful wife, acknowledged by his silence in the future that the Harmons were much superior to any family that could not boast of possessing a minister and an island; the latter ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... it will not be the refreshing sleep of health. When the stomach is filled beyond the proper medium, it induces a similar kind of heaviness to that arising from opiates and intoxicating liquors; and instead of awakening refreshed and lively, the child will be heavy and fretful. By the time that children begin to run about, the increase of their exercise will require an increase of nourishment: but those who overload them with food at any time, in hopes of strengthening them, are very much deceived. No prejudice is equally ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved points of theology. Up among the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from his shoe with a certain matter-of-fact grace characteristic of him, Mr. Poynter, who had been invisible all day, arrived in the camp of the enemy. Diane saw with a fretful flash of wonder that he was immaculate as usual. She saw too that the minstrel was annoyed and that he dropped the volume of Herodotus into his pocket with ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... are fretful and irritating, for all that. But I see, hard of heart as you are, my chance of beating hemp, or drawing out flax into marvellous coarse thread, affects you as little as my condemnation to coif and pinners, instead of beaver and cockade; so I will spare myself the fruitless ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... book from a bookcase fitted in there—but this last rarely, because Mr Smith used to declare "I am no reader" with something like pride in his low tones. Very often after kissing her good-night on the forehead he would treat her to some such fretful remark: "It's like being in jail—'pon my word. I suppose that man is out there waiting for ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... complaint must of course be beneficial to yours?' It was in vain you pleaded your being perfectly well,—your detesting the medicine,—your being certain it would not agree with you—none of the apologies were received as valid. You might be warm, pathetic or sulky, fretful or patient, grave or serious in testifying your repugnance, but you were equally a doomed man; escape was impossible. Your host was in his turn eloquent,—authoritative,—facetious, —argumentative,—precatory,—pathetic, above all, pertinacious. No guest was known to escape ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... when he was hungry. She knew that he was never fretful after he had eaten a good meal. So her feet twinkled across the cellar floor and she ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... this afternoon," replied Jerome, in the tone with which he might have pacified a fretful child. There was ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... very sake of peevishness, because they know not the pain of denial. As I have not much more time to speak, I would, with my last breath, recommend discontented people to travel; but if they should come back in the same fretful condition, well, let them ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... said, with gratifying conviction. "And you're—you're a trump, you know. I'm ashamed of acting like such a boor. If you'll bear with me I'll try from now on to be more like a man and less like a fretful ghost." ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... unwittingly established itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings. ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... other half with matters still more absorbing and exciting. Even now his mind was in a perpetual ferment, and no comforting spirit spoke quietness to his soul—no stout heart strengthened his—no lively intelligence animated his own to worthy doings. He was very cross and fretful, and knew himself to be so that particular evening—worried and in want of rest. What a chance, if perhaps he found Nettie, whose very provocations were somehow more interesting than other people's most agreeable and tranquillising efforts, all alone and at leisure! ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... through her; she opened her eyes wide and wider, looking round the room no longer in fear, but in a sort of wonder. Her gaze rested an instant on my face, she drew her arm from round my neck and rose to her feet, pushing away my arm. There she stood for a moment with a strange, fretful, ashamed look on her face. She tossed her head, flinging her hair back behind her shoulders. I had taken her hand and still held it; now ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... hand; but when Mistress Marian was an-angered, the blood rushed back to her heart, and she was whiter than a lamb at the shearing, and her lips like white threads. Then would the light shoot and spin in her eyes, and her nostrils suck in and out, like those of a fretful horse. And she was fierce after the manner of a man rather than of a maid. Moreo'er, she was full a year younger than the Lady Patience; but she looked it not; rather did her ladyship look full two years younger than Mistress Marian. And I loved ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... have no alternative, just as Beaumaroy had none. Yet while she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... especially, no one can doubt about. When first he saw St. Mark's, he threw up his arms in wonder, and then, clasping them round Wilson's neck (she was carrying him), he kissed her in an ecstasy of joy. And that was after a long day's journey, when most other children would have been tired and fretful. But the sense of the beautiful is certainly very strong in him, little darling. He can't say the word 'church' yet, but when he sees one he begins to chant. Oh, he's a true Florentine in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... shouted with his tiny thin voice, and enjoyed it all immensely, and rained cakes and biscuits on both the poodle and its master. Lolo crumped the pastries with willing white teeth, and Moufflou did no less. Then they got up to go, and the sick child on the couch burst into fretful lamentations ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... voyagers turned their eyes a new creation seemed to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil—the lordly oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm—while here and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant to concern any body on the stage,—he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... pledging himself to Mercy, he became thoughtful and rather fretful; for he was still most averse to go to Hernshaw, and yet could hit upon no other way; since to employ an agent would be to let out that he had committed bigamy, and so risk his own neck, and break ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the Great Prompter's hand shall ring Down the last curtain upon earth and sea, All the Good Mimes will have eternity To praise their Author, worship love and sing; Or to the walls of Heaven wandering Look down on those damned for a fretful d——, Mock them (all theologians agree On this reward for virtue), laugh, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... respect to show him that our case was quite different; but he was so ignorant of our manners and customs that he took everything by the wrong handle. He ended the conversation very abruptly and rudely, and referred me to the Queen. I found her Majesty in a fretful mood, and all I could get out of her was a promise to hear the chapter upon this affair, without whose consent—I had declared I could not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Not so poor Hilda. The mistress of the mansion slept far less than any of those who obeyed her orders. She invariably retired long after the household were in bed, rose early, and probably seldom obtained more than an hour's continuous sleep. On this evening her child had been somewhat fretful, and Bertha insisted on carrying the little fellow off to sleep in her room with her grandson, Ronald Morton. Hilda had reluctantly consented to the arrangement, and frequently awoke with a start of terror on missing her little companion from her side. At length she had fallen into a comparatively ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the inscrutable relation between the seen and the eternal, of which music alone unlocks the gate by inarticulate expression, has never had an articulate utterance from a poet before 'Abt Vogler'. This is of a higher order of composition, quite nobler, than the merely fretful rebellion against the earthly condition imposed here below upon heavenly things, seen in 'Master Hughes' {of Saxe-Gotha}. In that and other places, I am not sure that persons of musical ATTAINMENT, as distinguished from musical SOUL AND SYMPATHY, do not rather find a professional ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the State begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking, he's a great ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... these virtuosos looked on all his associates as wretches of depraved taste and narrow notions. Their conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their behaviour brutal, their merriment bluntly sarcastick, and their seriousness gloomy and suspicious. They were totally ignorant of all that passes, or has lately passed, in the world; unable to discuss any question of religious, political, or military knowledge; equally strangers ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... Mrs. Staines; for some time she had been uneasy, fretful, and like a person with a weight on ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... in his bearing he could not have shown much of it, though at his deeply sun-burned temples the thick, close-cut hair was silvery; for Austin said with amused and at the same time fretful emphasis: "How the devil you keep the youth" in your face and figure I don't understand! I'm only forty-five—that's scarcely eight years older than you are! And look at my waistcoat! And look at my hair—I mean where the confounded ebb has left ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... in the very grasp of death, did this faith fail him. He kept, in the midst of a fretful, slothful, wailing world, where prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and despondent, as the decadents they despised, the temper of his Herakles in Balaustion. He left us that temper ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... fretful-looking little pair went solemnly to Christie's knee, and stood there staring at her with a dull composure that quite daunted her, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... not good form in Morovenia for a husband or father to discuss his home life, or to show enthusiasm on the subject of mere woman; but the Count, prompted by a fretful desire to dispose of his rapidly maturing offspring, often remarked to the high-born young gentlemen of his acquaintance that Kalora was a most remarkable girl and one possessed of many charms, leaving them to infer, if they cared to ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... weary of my life here, and wish, if I can, to find a new one. I go out into the world, dissevered from every link which binds me to the hateful past, to seek another home and another fortune. Forgive me if I have been fretful, capricious, changeable. You should forgive me, for you know why I have been so. You know the secret which is ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... foolish as to expect to find a pleasant taste in physic, but she expects that it will be of service to her; and she would rather have a bitter taste in her mouth for a few moments, than endure days, weeks, and months of pain and sickness. As peevish, fretful tempers often bring disease on the body, so a patient, even temper not only lessens all suffering, but helps to cure the diseases of the body; Miss Emma, therefore, will perhaps in a short time regain her health, and should such an event happen, what joy it will give to ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... betake himself to the schoolroom and employ his idle time in making it nearly impossible for Ada and Phyllis to learn, by talking, laughing, teasing the canary, overturning everything in pursuing wasps, making Emily fretful by his disobedience, and then laughing at her, and, in short, proving his right to the title he had given himself at the end of the only letter he had written since he first went to school, and which he had subscribed, 'Your affectionate ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had drunk enough only to make him fretful, he leaned with his elbow surlily upon the table, began to quarrel with the landlord, and swore that he had not of late treated him like a gentleman. To which the landlord coolly replied, "That as long as he had paid like a gentleman, he had been treated like one, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... devoted than ever to her sick sister, she was soft and bright to nobody else. She did not complain, but she thought that things had been very hard with her; and when people repine their troubles do not make them kinder, but the brave grow stern and the soft grow fretful. ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I never heard it without thinking of her. Many and many a time had she sung me to sleep with that tune. I had scarlet fever when I was five years old, and my mother had nursed me through it, and when I was weary and fretful she would sing to me—my pretty fair-haired mother. Even as I sat before my easel I could see her, as she sat at the foot of my bed, with the sunshine streaming upon her through the half-darkened window, ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... his way, and before Jerton had had time to assimilate his information he found his whole attention centred on an angry-looking lady who was making loud and fretful-seeming inquiries ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... minutely, and nobility has neither bench nor joint-stool for them in the vestibule. During the whole course of your life, have you ever seen one among this, our King James's breed of curs, that either did not curl himself up and lie snug and warm in the lowest company, [81] or slaver and whimper in fretful quest of the highest. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... to every Scottish custom, or be laughed at—"Will ye hae some jeel? Oh fie, oh fie!"—his flighty imagination quite cramped, and be obliged to study Corpus Juris Civilis and live in his father's strict family; is there any wonder, sir, that the unlucky dog should be somewhat fretful? Yoke a Newmarket courser to a dung cart, and I'll lay my life on't he'll either caper or kick most confoundedly, or be as stupid and restive as an old battered post-horse.' Among the many clubs of the time Boswell instituted a jovial society called the Soaping Club ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... allowance of praise, if I would afford him occasion, &c.; but he must do what he thinks his duty, &c.! I laugh to think of the effect my reply will produce upon Hogg. How it will make every bristle to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine!"—Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by his Son, vol. iv., p. 93. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt, had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!' he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem, an apparent contradiction, in ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... had set out to stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home, designing to nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat barren expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in Kensington Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper bag. The birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the feeder ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it is right?" Wilford asked, for now that the time drew near when the little crib at home would be empty, the nursery desolate, with no fretful, plaintive wail to annoy and worry him, he began to feel that after all that cry was not so very vexing as he had imagined it to be; that he might miss it when it was gone, and wish back the little creature which had been ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... still hour between the night and day; I saw the answering tides, green robed and gray, Turn to her with a low contented sigh; Marching with silent feet they passed me by, For the white moon had taught them to obey, And scarce a wavelet broke in fretful spray, As they went forth to kiss the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... operating room. The hospital was a very large place, and there were a great many odours she did not like. She hated herself for being so silly about things! Through the open door she saw many faces: white faces, thin faces, faces drawn with pain, faces robbed of hope, faces fretful, and faces indifferent, and she caught sight of one girl whose very happy eyes looked out from a face which bore the record of much pain. A story easy to read: she had been very ill, but now she was getting well. ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the circuit that it makes by that restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood, to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through life's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... his kind offices without speaking; but after a few minutes he turned his head from him with a fretful, impatient, "There, that'll do," and stretched out his hand for his crutches. Georgie brought them to him, and helped him to get upon them. But poor Alick had severely sprained his shoulder in trying to save himself as he fell, and ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... His provisions were exhausted; he had eaten nothing since last night, and he felt excited and fretful. He said to himself: "If to-day my enemy is not delivered into my hands, I must go out into the open and seek him at all risks, at all costs." It was a dominant idea now. Nothing ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... after a time by a moaning of troubled breathing and a fretful stirring in the bed. He went across. Aaron's eyes were ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence |
