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Nosing   Listen
noun
Nosing  n.  (Arch.) That part of the treadboard of a stair which projects over the riser; hence, any like projection, as the projecting edge of a molding.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nosing" Quotes from Famous Books



... that, especially since you found the Magic Flower and learned the animal talk. We all trust you. You may come to see me as often as you like, but be careful not to leave any trail near my nest. I don't want Old Boze nosing around here. And when you come along with any of the house people, just go right by and don't look this way. I am more afraid of Old John the Indian than of anyone else. He looked right at me the other day and I was sure he saw ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... bum detective nosing around. We've got his number now, all right," the boy went on, "and there's something in the mine that he wants to find and he doesn't know where to look for it. He isn't looking for Jimmie and Dick ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... his life in the wilderness, had ever seen, and he mentally figured that there were at least half a hundred animals in it. Like ravenous dogs after having a few scraps of meat flung among them, the wolves were running about, nosing here and there, as if hoping to find a morsel that might have escaped discovery. Then one of them stopped on the trail and, throwing himself half on his haunches, with his head turned to the sky like a baying hound, started ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... engines' bated pulse Scarcely thrills the nosing hulls; When the wash along the side Sounds, a sudden, magnified; When the intolerable blast Marks ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... dipped behind her, and between her and the sun the tide—a long bright-edged knife—came sweeping and cut her down. Then it seemed as if the wolves had relinquished to the waters not their prey only but their own fierce instinct; for the waves paused at the body and played with it, nosing and tumbling it over and over, lifting it curiously, laying it down again on the green knoll, and then withdrawing in a circle while they took heart to rush upon it all together and toss it high, exultant and shouting. And during that pause the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the heavy downpour on the outskirts of the group that waited outside the post-office; he was sick with suspense and fatigue, and hardly troubled to move as a motor came slowly nosing its way through the crowd. It passed within a few inches of him and stopped. He heard ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... undeveloped wealth of the Western World. So it was that when France stretched forth her hand to seize the coveted prize, she found rivals in the field, Spain and {279} Great Britain struggling for a foothold, Spain already planted at Pensacola, the English nosing about ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... replied, in his usual unctuous tones, "but I naturally wished to ascertain all the facts possible regarding this new deal, and, seeing Whitney nosing about on the trail, I decided to remain within ear-shot and pick up what ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... citizens sentenced to prison in Fort Jackson was Dr. Craven, the Methodist minister. A soldier nosing about his house at night had heard the preacher at family prayers. He had asked God's blessing on the cause of the South while kneeling in prayer. When Jennie heard of it, ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... the elect of God, with a reserved seat in heaven, and partly, since even the most infatuated idiot cannot spend his life admiring himself, the less innocent excitement of punishing other people for not admiring him, and the nosing out of the sins of the people who, being intelligent enough to be incapable of mere dull self-righteousness, and highly susceptible to the beauty and interest of the real workings of the Holy Ghost, try to live more rational and abundant lives. The abominable amusement of terrifying children ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... head as though he were disgusted with himself, and began nosing the ground for the wisps of hay which a high wind had blown there. Starr retreated to a point in the room where he could see without risk of being seen, and watched. In a few minutes, when the horse had forgotten all about the incident and was feeding ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... About half a mile down the beach I thought I caught a glimpse of a bonefish. It was a likely-looking contrast to the white marl all around. Here I made a long cast and sat down to wait. My brother lagged behind. Presently I spied two bonefish nosing along not ten feet from the shore. They saw me, so I made no attempt to drag the bait near them, but I called to my brother and told him to try to get a bait ahead of them. This was a little after flood-tide. It struck me ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... rumour, go where we wish it to go. Then shall the pigs of Taiarapu raise their snouts in the air; But we sit quiet and wait, as the fowler sits by the snare, And tranquilly fold our hands, till the pigs come nosing the food: But meanwhile build us a house of Trotea, the stubborn wood, Bind it with incombustible thongs, set a roof to the room, Too strong for the hands of a man to dissever or fire to consume; And there, when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sure you want me to come and I don't know of any other place where I'd rather be. I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me, and in so many different ways. Are you sure there won't come a time when you'll think, 'Oh, if only I had never asked that noisy, nervous, nosing, messy, meddlesome, moping, miserable, growling, grumbling, grouchy, greedy, galloping, galumphing Emma Dean to room ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... take three or four men with me, and we'll hang around Wade's ranch until we get him. He'll probably be nosing around the range trying to locate the gold, and we shouldn't have much trouble. When we've got him safe...." His teeth ground audibly upon each other as he paused abruptly, and the sound seemed to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... deep—four!" warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song. The two gongs clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher's speed was reduced at once to her point, of minimum stability. She rolled and quivered like a living thing in fear, falling on and off, nosing out a passage on her own account apparently, and seeming to be gathering all her ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... answered to her helm with a quiver, and in twenty minutes more was nosing her way again through the ooze of weed. The German officer calmly completed his survey, folded his telescope, then disappeared down the hatch. A few minutes later the submarine dived and the ocean lay empty in the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... funny-looking thing with plates on his back, nosing under the brick over there, is a South American armadillo. The little chap talking to him is a Canadian woodchuck. They both live in those holes you see at the foot of the wall. The two little beasts doing antics in the pond are ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... he had apparently hunted that whole cabin over from one end to the other, he kept "nosing around," as his cruising mate observed, rooting here and ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... These things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have nothing to pay on them. It is live issues that draw on my heart. You American girls ought to be at home looking into the negro problem, or Tammany, or the Sugar Trust, instead of nosing into Rembrandts, or miracles at Lourdes, or palaces. These are all back numbers. Write n. g. on them and bury them. So, by the way, is your Mrs. Waldeaux a back number. My own opinion is that all men and women at fifty ought to go willingly and be shut ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... came again to the farm. The ashes were still glowing where the big barn had so recently stood. Here and there a cow or a horse could be seen, nosing around in the half light, picking at the grass in forbidden corners, and evidently about done with ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... fish which had got away from some other boy, perhaps weeks before; they were all swimming about, in a lively way, and the largest hungrily took his bait. The great pleasure of fishing in these pools was that the waters were so clear you could see the fat, gleaming fellows at the bottom, nosing round your hook, and going off and coming back several times before they made up their minds to bite. It seems now impossible that my boy could ever have taken pleasure in the capture of these poor ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... at the ship. "Naturally," she interrupted, "the nose will float downward in the canal, hoisting the hot tubes out of the liquid at the end of the glide-ins. But you've got pilot, power plant, and wings frontside. How can you affect glide-ins at surface air density without nosing in?" ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll

... Just at present, things are rather sultry in the immediate vicinity of Deadwood, so far as we are concerned, and we sought this locality to escape a small army of the Deadwood military, who have been nosing around after ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler

... jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep me located and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with my knees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines from the play wouldn't be able to come nosing back around the trunks and tables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listen to them, even if they're sort of sepulchral and drained of overtones by their crooked trip. But they're always tense-making. And tonight (I ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... from the tree, with wild, uncertain movements, nosing everywhere. Presently he struck the scent again, and darted off ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... was the inevitable fate of Germany if she prolonged the war. And for what? Prostration, physical, financial, economic. To suffer for a generation, at least, the fate of the outlaw, mangy dogs nosing among rotten bones, kicked by the victors whenever they stood on their hind legs and ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton

... new-fashioned beads for counting of prayers. They were large brown nuts or seeds, and hanging from his girdle with his penner and inkhorn they clashed when he walked. His place was in the great fireplace. There was his table of accounts, and there he lay o' nights. He feared the hounds in the Hall that came nosing after bones or to sleep on the warm ashes, and would slash at them with his beads—like a woman. When De Aquila sat in Hall to do justice, take fines, or grant lands, Gilbert would so write it in the Manor-roll. But it was none of his work to feed our guests, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... all three peering down at the yearling, who stood motionless, nosing for tainted air, listening, peering ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... across a pewter plate, On the grey disk of the unrippling sea, Beneath an airless, sullen sky of slate Dazzled destroyers zig-zag restlessly, While underneath the sleek and livid tide, Blind monsters nosing through the soundless deep, Lean submarines among blind fishes glide And ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... her at all." For the moment Dan forgot his complaint in the tender thought of his foster-sister. "It probably is absurd," he added presently, "but I don't like it; I don't like him, Tom! He plays the fiddle well, I admit but he is so queer and shifty, nosing about, looking this way and that, never meeting your eyes. It's just as though he were waiting, biding his ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... was to carry them to the South Sea King at this moment started nosing into the dock, on a turbulent zig-zag across the harbour; and the men forgot their quarrelling. It brought up at the foot of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... to come back to him, and to come back to him true! To close about him and wrap him in its sunny folds; to steep his senses in the light and the life, the sound and the smell of the plains; to hear the wind rushing over the treeless hills; to see the wild range cattle nosing the crisp, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... think I'd arouse the suspicion of the whole neighborhood by bringing a whole posse up here with me?" retorted the official. "They're scattered around the square, nosing about quietly. If they can pick up anything it mightn't come amiss. We'd all better saunter around a little, first. We'll go over to Erlich's drug-store and have a soda. A couple of my men will fall in with us there. Later we'll go into the saloon ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... were nosing among some empty barrels in a dark corner, he shouldered his gun more firmly and went ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... may be compared to the aimless drifting of a house-dog professing to busy himself about a lawn. He goes nosing about, tacking and turning here and there with the most intense apparent earnestness; and finally seizes a blade of grass by the middle, chews it savagely, drops it; gags comically, and curls away to sleep as if worn out with some ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... and Katharine Howard. For in his heart he could not believe that the woman was virtuous, since he believed that no woman was virtuous who had been given the opportunity for joyment. As a spy, he had gone nosing about in Lincolnshire where Katharine's home had been near her cousin's. He had heard many tales against her such as rustics will tell against the daughters of poor lords like Katharine's father. And these tales, before ever he had ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... turn troubled eyes On shaggy Science nosing in the grass, For by that way poor Poetry must pass On her long pilgrimage to Paradise. He snuffled, grunted, squealed; perplexed by flies, Parched, weatherworn, and near of sight, alas, From peering close where very little was In dens secluded ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... dismayed to find them tangled with each other and the wreck of the partition. Louis crawled in under the big hairy feet, and, after much labor, got one wet knot untangled, the horses meanwhile smelling and nosing about the top of his head. He said he expected at every moment to have it bitten off, for, he argued, if the horses found a stable edible, in these outlandish parts, they might easily conceive the idea of sampling the hostler.... I am interrupted ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... same thing as we did in Luna City," he said. "Split up. Only this time, we'll all go to the same place, the Spacelanes. Tom and I will go in first and do most of the nosing around. Astro and Roger will drift in later and hang around, just in case ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... their union, rendering it more permanent, more holy. If they had their trivial disagreements, what then? It was the place of him, the stronger, the steadier, to end them for all time. Even while they lasted, he was a priest and bound to patient service, not a fiction-monger, like little Prather, nosing about in every situation that arose, with the faint hope of picking up an occasional crumb of melodramatic copy. He was a priest, a man not so much of words as of holy life. And the way to priestly holiness did not lie along the hummocks ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... Spurge. "Guv'nor—they've done us! They're off! I see it—she must ha' caught sight o' me, nosing round, and she came here and gave the others the office, and they bucked out at the back. The back, Guv'nor! and Lord bless you, at the back o' this shanty there's a perfect rabbit-warren o' places—more by token, they ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... his shoulders and rested his hand upon his horse's neck. It straightway cuddled its head against his body and began nosing his pockets. Mead brought out a lump of sugar and made the beast nod its age for the reward. Tom watched him helplessly, noting the hopeless, gloomy look on his face, and wondered what he ought to do or say. He wished Nick had come along. Nick never was at a loss for words. But his great love ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... cautiously, swiftly, to the hitching post, fumbling with the straps. The horses whinnied a little, nosing one another and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... was as I said. This dog was our savior. Without his nose I could not have traced out the little travois trail; but he, seeing what was needed, and finding me nosing along and doubling back and seeking on the hard ground, seemed to know what was required, or perhaps himself thought to go back to some old camp for food. So presently he trotted along, his ears up, his nose straight ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... evening's discussion with Alec they made out a tentative list of class probabilities for the senior council, they placed themselves among the surest. The senior council was composed presumably of the eighteen most representative seniors, and in view of Alec's football managership and Amory's chance of nosing out Burne Holiday as Princetonian chairman, they seemed fairly justified in this presumption. Oddly enough, they both placed D'Invilliers as among the possibilities, a guess that a year before the class would have ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... day and night it lasted, nor two. For four days the uproar showed no sign of ever lessening, and on the fifth the eighteen hundred voices were so hoarse that the calves merely whispered their plaint, gave over in disgust and began nosing the scattered piles of hay. The cows, urged by hunger, strayed from the blackened circle around the corrals and went to burrowing in the snow for the ripened grass whereby they must live throughout the winter. They were driven forth to the open range ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... house that evening with divers things from the farm, and had put up their asses in a stable that adjoined the veranda, but had neglected to water them; and one of the asses being exceeding thirsty, got his head out of the halter and broke loose from the stable, and went about nosing everything, if haply he might come by water: whereby he came upon the hen-coop, beneath which was the boy; who, being constrained to stand on all fours, had the fingers of one hand somewhat protruding from under the hen-coop; and so as luck or rather ill-luck would have it, the ass trod on them; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... hadn't been, that ball would have fallen fair, and Tom Binns would have lost his game. Really, though, you're the one that deserves the credit for winning it, for your batting put your team ahead, and your fielding kept the Whip-poor-wills from nosing you out in ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... love to see them." Marian despatched the remainder of her cake and was ready to follow Patty out-of-doors to where five tiny fox terriers were nosing around their little mother. They were duly admired, then Patty showed the pigeons and the one rabbit. By this time it was quite dark, so they returned to the house to see the family of dolls who lived in a pleasant ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard

... a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, an old white pack horse nosing windward of the smoke; one figure with sheepskin chaps to his waist, thumbs in his belt, standing erect with back to the trail; and face in light, a shaven face with a strong jaw and oily geniality, a corpulent ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... talked with came over for freight and used one of the teams. Said they couldn't spare it. But that's your only chance. I don't know of any other horses in twenty miles, unless it's a wild band that passed this morning. They stopped down the draw, nosing out the bunch grass for an hour or ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... fury of the hurricane had blown itself out and the sun rose on a sea that while still storm-tossed was moderate compared to the terrific upheaval of the preceding night; by noon, in fact, so suddenly did the wind drop, the Bolo was nosing her way along through what seemed a glittering, sunlit desert ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... apparently never leave yours, but in reality they see everything behind you and about you, above and below you. They tell of him that one day, while out with a patrol on the veldt, he said he had lost the trail and, dismounting, began moving about on his hands and knees, nosing the ground like a bloodhound, and pointing out a trail that led back over the way the force had just marched. When the commanding ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... wave rolled To shore-bubble, pebble and shell. A morning of radiant lids O'er the dance of the earth opened wide: The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: There was milk, honey, music to make: Up their branches the little birds billed: Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake. O shining in sunlight, chief After water and water's caress, Was the young bronze-orange leaf, That clung to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... some men take as naturally to it as the duck to water. They have an eye to business, as well as pleasure, and the life of a "forager" becomes almost an art. They have a peculiar talent, developed by long practice of nosing out, hunting up, and running to quarry anything in the way of "eatables or drinkables." During the most stringent times in a country that had been over-run for years by both armies, some men could find provisions and delicacies, and were never known to be ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... hold on, if the rest do," he declared, "though it's pretty tough if I'm goin' to be the only one that's in danger of bein' chawed up by savage tomcats that roam about here. But, Max, if we go nosing around to-day, I want to keep close to you, and that bully little gun of yours, understand. Them's my conditions for agreein' to stand pat, and stay here on ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... become so much more difficult now, as indeed it always does in such cases. Moreover, he was certain that these two vagabonds of curs would return. And they would be sure to find him out. Dogs were unnecessary and inconvenient beasts, always sniffing and nosing about. He decided to wait. The new-comer of the kilts was after all no Naiad or Hebe. Her outlines did not resemble to any marked degree the plates in his excellent classical dictionary. She was not short in stature, but so strong and ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... of laughter which rang like a silver chime through the vine-shaded, airy spaces of the pergola. Old Mr. Sommerville, nosing about in his usual five-o'clock quest, heard her and came across the stretch of sunny lawn to investigate. "Oh, here's tea!" he remarked on seeing Arnold, lounging, white-flanneled, over his cup. He spoke earnestly, as was his ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... I tell you what it is? Your head is turned right around! When royalty speaks to me, do I swell out? No! I know my place! I take no notice! But you—you are nosing but ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg

... by natural and veritable productions, and would rather not share in the process from which that gratification is extracted. There is a superabundance of ugliness and deformity which one is obliged to see, without running after and nosing any out. It was, therefore, with some reluctance that I obeyed a polite invitation to visit the Aztec children, and ratify or dispute the commendations hitherto bestowed on them, in these columns and elsewhere. I did not expect to find ogres nor any ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... he growled. "I've got private business with this king. And see that you don't come nosing round either, or I'll slit that soft ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... trail to Washington, and there met a crook named Sacord. He, so I discovered, got his money from two men, one the owner of this ranch. Where the bad bills were manufactured was a mystery, but, by nosing around, I soon learned that the owner of the ranch never allowed strangers near his place, and that he sometimes had strange pieces of machinery shipped there. Then I put two and two together and came to the conclusion ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... aspects of the advance was its variability and unpredictability. To the west, it had hardly gone five blocks from the Dinkman house, while southward it had crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and was nosing toward Melrose. Its growth had been measured and checked, over and over again, but the figures were never constant. Some days it traveled a foot an hour; on others it leapt nearly a city block between sunrise ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... fond of nosing worms," he remarked at last. "When we brought them out to India they used to trot off into the jungle and begin sniffing at what, they imagined to be worms there. But the worm turned out to be a venomous snake, and so poor ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Jerry sat by their clothes and watched the frolic. Then the drifting shadow of a huge butterfly attracted his attention, and soon he was nosing through the jungle on the trail of a wood-rat. It was not a very fresh trail. He knew that well enough; but in the deeps of him were all his instincts of ancient training—instincts to hunt, to prowl, to pursue living things, in ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... death through the same weakness. It was at Manchester, I think. A carpenter had thrown down his coat with a ham sandwich in the pocket, over an open trap on the stage. Fussie, nosing and nudging after the sandwich, fell through and was killed instantly. When they brought up the dog after the performance, every man took his hat off.... Henry was not told until the end ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... had seen a monster cayman nosing against the current, and at times their progress had been retarded by turtles, but they had never before seen anything like this. Their fire had certainly brought out a combination in nature which would have been decidedly interesting if ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... day we landed, however, they were seen again. We were nosing northward through a dimpled duckpond of a sea, with the Welsh coast on one side and Ireland just over the way. People who had not been seen during the voyage came up to breathe, wearing the air of persons who had just returned from the valley of the shadow and were mighty glad to ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... up to meet him and he began judging the spot where he would take his bath in the icy water. Suddenly he heard the roar of plane motors and looked up and back. A Fort was nosing down toward him. Stan squinted to see if he could catch the markings. He could not make them out, but he knew the ship was a bomber returning ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... the act of vaulting from the saddle, struck the ground all in a heap, crumpled up as though he were broken in pieces and was hurled down the hill, reaching the bottom stunned. He was unconscious for several minutes, but when he came to himself, Kit was standing over him, nosing him with her soft muzzle as though to bring him round. Weakly he staggered to his feet, and seeing Kit standing patiently, managed to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... is it in the world-hive; most where men Lie deep in cities as in drifts—death drifts— Nosing each other like a flock of sheep; Not knowing and not caring whence nor whither They come or go, so ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... approaching missile, which was still invisible. The stars swung slowly across the screen until Richardson recognized the ones he had spotted at the zenith. In a moment, now, the rocket, a hundred miles overhead, would be nosing down, and then the warhead would open and the magnetic field inside would alter and the mass of negamatter ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper

... freight each run. But they died, the pore little beggars! At sea she had 'em—they died. Only you, an' you stood it; you haven't stood much beside— Weak, a liar, and idle, and mean as a collier's whelp Nosing for scraps in the galley. No help—my son was no help! So he gets three 'undred thousand, in trust and the interest paid. I wouldn't give it you, Dickie—you see, I made it in trade. You're saved from soiling your fingers, and if you have ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... your nosing round. Quit the whole job. Let them stew in their juice. You're being used for a thing you ain't fit for. People don't take a fine-tooth ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... nosing of dat kind is necessaire under dese circumstances—only your mos' gracious and graceful consent!" He spoke eagerly, with bowed head and clasped hands, standing mutely before me when ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... colored man took note of him. "You-all thay yit?" he would sing out over a shoulder; or, "Have Ah done los' you, kid?" Upon being reassured, he would return to his problem of nosing a way along with other vehicles, large and small, and Johnnie would once more be left to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... answered that he for his part was practising self-restraint, and practising it hard. He loved his mistress before all the world, but he had no opinion of books, and would have vastly preferred to be on the beach with Arthur Miles, nosing about the boat or among the common objects of ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... black patch over one eye, and weighs, I should imagine, between eighty and ninety pounds. During luncheon he takes his place under the table, and from there emits blood-curdling howls with sufficient frequency to make conversation extremely difficult. This he varies by nosing about the visitor's legs and growling. I am not fond of dogs under the best of circumstances. I always labour under the presumption that they will bite. Their habit of suddenly dashing across the floor, ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... with an attempt at lightness. "But as a general thing nosing out a rustler is a pretty ticklish proposition. Nobody goes about that work with a ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the boathook, which he took from Jack's hand, and jabbed at the creature, which did not appear to mind the presence of the boys at all, but continued his nosing of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... night Kit roused from the depths sufficiently to realize that sleep is one of the greatest gifts to man. Once Clodomiro was stretched by the little fire inspecting the paper he could not read, the second time he thought Baby Bunting was nosing around trying to get close to human things. Both times he reached out his hands to the precious packs beside which he slept on the trail. All were safe, and he drifted again into ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... Maclaren "making it fast," so that the big car was continually nosing its way around the machines in front with much honking of the horn. At Fifty-Ninth Street they turned across to the bridge and hummed softly across the black, shimmering waters of the East River; by ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... house. You keep talking about this chap at Cannes, and there never was a chap at Cannes, and I'll tell you why I'm so sure about this. During those two months on the Riviera, it so happens that Angela and I were practically inseparable. If there had been somebody nosing round her, I should have ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... had been when she arose early, at perhaps seven, and after dressing noiselessly in their little bathroom, crept upstairs without waking Caroline. Sunshine would be flooding the ocean, or perhaps the vessel would be nosing her way through a luminous fog—but it was always beautiful. The decks, drying in the soft air, would be ordered, inviting, deserted. Great waves of smooth water would flow evenly past, curving themselves with lessening ripples ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... being adverse, compelled us to wait outside for a favourable change. While comfortably anchored at this place, a huge whale, nosing about, came up under the canoe, giving us a toss and a great scare. We were at dinner when it happened. The meal, it is needless to say, was finished without dessert. The great sea animal—fifty to sixty feet long—circling around our small craft, ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... was empty of Boer-log. They held up their hands and swore it. That was about the time of the evening meal. I stood near the verandah with Sikander Khan, who was nosing like a jackal on a lost scent. At last he took my arm and said, "See yonder! There is the sun on the window of the house that signalled last night. This house can see that house from here," and he looked ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... little family grocery-store; that is, one kept by a family, including among others two very comely young women. Here we found O'Rourke, an Irishman of our company, who had a talent for nosing out good things—both solids and liquids. We were served with a good repast of native wine, bread, butter, etc.; and, in case we should not have leisure for milder beverages, had a ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... in the outermost seaward corner of the breakwater, as though they had never moved, when the Assistance came nosing round Les Laches next morning, and made for the harbour. And to Graeme, the sight of his wife, after a separation of eighteen hours, was like a life-giving stream to a pilgrim of the desert, or the blessing of light to a darkened soul. His heart swelled almost to paining-point ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... said Stetson. "About a year ago, an R&R archeological team was nosing around some ruins on Dabih. The place was all but vitrified in the Rim War, but a whole bank of records from a Nathian outpost escaped." He glanced sidelong at Orne. "The Rah&Rah boys couldn't make sense out of the records. No surprise. They called in an I-A crypt-analyst. ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... most valuable slave on his plantation was working his way toward the North and freedom. He did not go back home, but paced the floor all night long. In the early dawn he hurried out, and the hounds were put on the fugitive's track. After some nosing around they set off toward a stretch of woods. In a few minutes they came yelping back, pawing their noses and rubbing their heads against the ground. They had found the trail, but Josh had played the old slave trick of filling his tracks with cayenne pepper. The dogs were soothed, ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... from the main thoroughfare; to its blazing light the bare boards and ugly plankings of the booth, splashed here and there with torn paper that rustled a little in the evening breeze, were all that offered themselves. Near by a horse, untethered, was quietly nosing at the trodden soil. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish- piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in chairs on the brick pavements before their ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... him; he was a small gas-bag of diminutive size, beneath which was suspended a little car, the most ridiculous little travesty of an airship I have ever seen. He was nosing along at about 800 feet and making ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... his sentence from his mother, Elizabeth spent in her parlor in the hotel, looking idly out of the window at the tawny current of the river covered with its slipping sheen of oil. Steamboats were pushing up and down or nosing into the sand to unload their cargoes; she could hear the creak of hawsers, the bang of gangplanks thrown across to the shore, the cries and songs of stevedores sweating and toiling on the wharf that was piled with bales of cotton, endless blue barrels of oil, and black avalanches ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... on Castlereagh Street, his offices occupied three floors. But he was rarely in those offices. He preferred always to be on the go amongst the islands, nosing out new investments, inspecting and shaking up old ones, and rubbing shoulders with fun and adventure in a thousand strange guises. He bought the wreck of the great steamship Gavonne for a song, and in salving it achieved the impossible and cleaned up a quarter of a million. In the Louisiades he ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... languages, understood the universal call of distress, and together crawled in the dark and felt their way to the feeble voice. Chopini reached the voice first. Grant could just distinguish in the darkness the powerful movement of the Italian, with his head upon the ground like a nosing dog's as he wormed under the fallen body and got it on his back and bellied over to the group that was slowly moving down the passage toward the glimmering light. As they passed the rooms vacated ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... intelligence is limited by the world he lives in, and while there are many marvelous things here, nobody has the slightest conception of inter-atomic force. They have never heard even of radioactivity. At the same time I don't mean that they shall go nosing about the car. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... seminarist. Always nosing about where there are dead around. What does he want? He is a dreadfully disagreeable fellow. Never misses a funeral. He smells death ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... stolen softly along the whole base of the dam, and back again, nosing each little rivulet of overflow, the otter seemed satisfied that this was much like all other beaver dams. Then he mounted to the crest and took a prolonged survey of the stretch of water beyond. Nothing unusual appearing, he dived cleanly into ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... meanwhile was doubtfully nosing her new master, deciding whether or not she liked him; but when he offered her a cube of sugar her uncertainties disappeared and they became friends then and there. He talked to her, too, in a way that would have won any female heart, and ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... on the platform—and walked on ice. But that wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... a long pause. The buckskin began blowing among the pebbles, nosing for grass, and Annixter shifted his cigar to the other corner ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... Quiz to wondering what he could do to occupy his spare moments; for the drifts were too deep for him to continue his beloved pastime of bicycling, and he had to put his wheel out of commission. So he went nosing about, trying a little of everything, and being satisfied ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... he was nosing around up there, and smelled our grub," suggested X-Ray, a sudden gleam of light dawning ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... Keeling, who had been left in England while her husband went to America to make his fortune, and tumbled down a hole instead, felt aggrieved at the company. The company said that Keeling had no business to be nosing around dark places on the deck at that time of night, and doubtless their contention was just. Mrs. Keeling, on the other hand, held that a steamer had no right to have such mantraps open at any time, night or day, without having them properly ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... three cars pacing us, cutting off our retreat Southward. They hazed us forward to the East like a dog nosing a bunch of ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... to her feet in utter disregard of Sir Lancelot who had come back and was nosing in her lap ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... went "nosing round," taking no notice of the stores, and putting off all invitations with a "Thank'ee ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... wriggled out of the niche, rose to meet another swimmer. As Ashe descended, Ross relayed his news via the sonic. The dolphins were already nosing into the depths in ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... between two racing clouds far to port, her flanks blood-red in the glare of Sheerness Double Light. The gale will have us over the North Sea in half an hour, but Captain Purnall lets her go composedly—nosing to every point of ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... for the Hairless One fell down before him and lay along the ground, and the First of the Tigers struck him and broke his back, for he thought that there was but one such Thing in the Jungle, and that he had killed Fear. Then, nosing above the kill, he heard Tha coming down from the woods of the North, and presently the voice of the First of the Elephants, which is the voice that ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... man look at me. I go quick, ant ze carriage go quick, ant ze man stop its two horses, ant look at me. 'Young man,' says he, 'where go you so late?' I says, 'I go to Frankfort.' 'Sit in ze carriage—zere is room enough, ant I will trag you,' he says. 'Bot why have you nosing about you? Your boots is dirty, ant your beart not shaven.' I seated wis him, ant says, 'Ich bin one poor man, ant I would like to pusy myself wis somesing in a manufactory. My tressing is dirty because I fell in ze ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy

... police-boat finished her circuit, nosing into every dark nook and spying out every black corner; but blacker than either the night or the water was the gloom in the hearts of Captain Hardy and his fellow members of the wireless patrol. With bowed ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... more you follow in Bellona's train, (Her train de luxe) in search of cheap reclame; Once more you flaunt your rearward oriflamme, A valiant eagle nosing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... more than likely. Lot you'll care, Ted Holiday. You'll never come back to see whether it leaves a scar or not. See that bee over there nosing around that elderberry. Think he'll come back next week? Not much. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... was counting the turns of the vrille. Six, seven, eight; then the airman came out of it on an even keel, and, nosing down to gather speed, looped twice in quick succession. Afterward he did the retournement, turning completely over in the air and going back in the opposite direction; then spiraled down and passed over ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... hundreds daily, but the wonder was immediately forgotten in a new subject for thought. The cab had stopped, although several yards of clear road lay ahead of it. The driver was climbing down. The motor-car was nosing its way along nearly a block ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... The gang went nosing about the place and passed under an arch bearing the inscription: "Stallion Stables." Behind the structure that looked like a convent they came upon some shanties furnished with filthy, grimy mats: African huts built upon a framework of rough ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... kitchen and got some warm milk. She dipped her finger in it, and offered it to the puppy, but he went nosing about it in a stupid way, and wouldn't touch it. "Too young," Miss Laura said. She got a little piece of muslin, put some bread in it, tied a string round it, and dipped it in the milk. When she put this to the puppy's ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... arms and tried to sleep, but she was too excited, and soon gave up the attempt. And in any case, she argued with herself, she might sleep too long and lose precious time. She stretched luxuriously on the soft ground, thankful for the shade from the burning sun. The grey, tired of nosing round the well and blowing disdainfully at the thorn bushes, wandered over to her side and nuzzled her gently. She caught at his velvety nose and drew it down beside her face. He was a very affectionate beast and gentler than most of the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... at the wheel of the runabout. "Climb out on the bow," he suggested. "Take the boat hook with you. I'll just keep nosing in until ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... hallway. Spring had not entered here. At the top of a second flight of stairs a slavey sat back on her heels and twisted a dribble of gray water from her cloth into her bucket. At the last and third landing an empty coal-scuttle stood just outside a door as if nosing for entrance. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... plot of well-kept turf running down to the pavement. It is always Sunday in these streets of a morning. The cable-car has taken the men down town to business, the children are at school, and the big dogs, three and a third to each absent child, lie nosing the winter-killed grass and wondering when the shoots will make it possible for a gentleman to take his spring medicine. In the afternoon, the children on tricycles stagger up and down the asphalt with due proportion of big dogs at each wheel; ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... Curly had been in Mrs. Shaw's kitchen before, and when he considered that he had received enough petting, he calmly trotted off to a corner of the room where he had once had a very good dinner, and began sniffing and nosing about. No dish was there this time, and so he trotted back again and sat down, looking expectantly at the group of amused watchers. Mrs. Shaw went and got some bread and milk for him, and he was soon very busy with it, seeming none the worse ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... and where they saw him stop and turn from the road. There was divine providence in Satan's flight for one little dog that Christmas morning; for Uncle Carey saw the old drunkard staggering down the road without his little companion, and a moment later, both he and Dinnie saw Satan nosing a little yellow cur between the palings. Uncle Carey knew the little cur, and while Dinnie was shrieking for Satan, he was saying ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... his sleeves again, and was busy with the press. Tavia was "nosing around," as she expressed it. The door opened suddenly and little Johnnie ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... how he got wind of it, but as soon as Thode showed up and began nosing about I knew what his ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... Sandy. 'We have a bit of a graft here, and it wasn't difficult to manage it. Old Moellendorff will be nosing after the business tomorrow, but he will find the mystery too deep for him. That is the advantage of a Government run by a pack of adventurers. But, by Jove, Dick, we hadn't any time to spare. If Rasta had got you, or the Germans had had the job of lifting you, your goose would have been ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... Northwest Chicago," said Drouet. "This is the Chicago River," and he pointed to a little muddy creek, crowded with the huge masted wanderers from far-off waters nosing the black-posted banks. With a puff, a clang, and a clatter of rails it was gone. "Chicago is getting to be a great town," he went on. "It's a wonder. You'll find lots ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering, until he suddenly disappeared behind a nosing headland. When she rounded it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. The sand drifted like snow half-way up to its windows. It had been painted red once, but now its old ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... extended a beautiful brown hand; the ragged youth grasped it with courtly deference. The two horses had been arrogantly nosing each other's muzzles, and now the Judge's began to work his hinder end around as if ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... walled away the rose-garden. Beyond the sunk fence a gap showed an acre or so of Bull's Mead—a great deep meadow, and in it two horses beneath a chestnut tree, their long tails a-swish, sleepily nosing each other to rout the flies; while in the distance the haze of heat hung like a film over the rolling hills. Close at hand echoed the soft impertinence of a cuckoo, and two fat wood-pigeons waddled about the lawn, picking and stealing as they went. The sky was ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... sisterhood house that stood perhaps an eighth of a mile beyond the pines. His mother, following his look, saw the figure of a girl dodge around the corner of the house. Before she could answer, Rag, the Irish terrier, who had been nosing disconsolately about on the barren rock, suddenly lost his head. With one short suppressed yelp, he laid his heels low to the slippery granite shelves and scuttled, scurried, scrambled, tore across the intervening quarry hollow ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... nolens volens into a place of refuge for timid animals, hiding from a prowling panther which is not unlikely to follow them inside, is anything but a desirable experience in the dark. Should his panthership come nosing inside the bungalow, in his eagerness to secure something for supper he might not pause to discriminate between brute and human; and as his awe-inspiring voice is heard again, apparently quite near by, I deem it expedient to warn him off. So reaching my Smith & Wesson ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... human signs there; here a woodcock had peppered the mud with little holes, probing for worms; there a raccoon had picked his way; yonder a lynx had left the great padded mark of its foot, doubtless watching for yonder mink nosing us from the bank of ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... At first an ugly steamboat nosing into view and belching smoke from its long funnel; then a double line of soldiers crowding the deck, and between their lines what seemed at first to be a black mound with a scarlet bar across it. But the mound was the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... where a shaded lamp cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers. A big, white-breasted gray cat yawned and stretched itself from the hearthrug and leaped lightly upon him with great rumbling purrs, nosing its head under one of his hands suggestively, and, when he stroked it, looking up at him with lazily ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... Blinky nosing round the room, quite alone. Betty had disappeared, and the old scoundrel was having quite an enjoyable time poking into matters that did not concern him and disapproving of them on general principles. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... here to-morrow night to adjust my accounts finally. He will be a week or so at Delhi. I want you to represent me and receive him here. I've telegraphed back to Abercromby that you will bring him up in a special car. He does not want old Willoughby to think he is nosing around Delhi. Now, do the handsome thing. Abercromby knows you. Here is a pocket-book. Lose a few fifty-pound notes to the old boy on the train. Amuse him, mind you, and set him up well! The car will be well stocked. I leave my two men here to wait on you and him. That's all. I want to go off 'in ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Will, "if it had been any sort of animal bent on getting something to eat, wouldn't we see signs of his nosing around in ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... brigantine, and once aboard I could not go ashore again, partly because the strange, ill-assorted crew detained me at every turn, and partly because the longing was so strong upon me to see the things I had read of so often. And that night found me still upon the vessel, nosing down to the harbor light, with the lamps of my father's house winking less and less brightly on the ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... stealing through the woods all together, one late summer afternoon, having beaten a cover without taking anything, when the puzzled cubs suddenly found themselves alone. A moment before they had been trotting along with the old wolves, nosing every cranny and knot hole for mice and grubs, and stopping often for a roll and frolic, as young cubs do in the gladness of life; now they pressed close together, looking, listening, while a subtle excitement filled all the woods. For ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... a blessed thing but a young rabbit, that came nosing around. Guess that swift bunch hasn't showed ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... Huckleberry, the friendly little pinto with the white eyelashes and the blue eyes, and the great, liver-colored patches upon his sides, and the appetite which demanded food at unseasonable hours, who was now munching and nosing industriously in the depths of his manger, and making a good ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... crawl'd upon the tongue, And putrid water, every drop a worm, Until they died of rotted limbs; and then Cast on the dunghill naked, and become Hideously alive again from head to heel, Made even the carrion-nosing mongrel vomit With hate ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... mare you drove in died in the stable. It's hot weather, and I guess you were pretty badly excited. I told the men in the livery to shut the colt up; it kept nosing around the carcass and it isn't good for it. You'd better get in as early as you can and look after it yourself. Those stable men don't care for anything ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... here broke in upon Manila's laughing answer, the Hi! Hi! Hi! of the amused radio man; and Peter listened in some annoyance to the peremptory summons of a United States gunboat, probably nosing around ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... commissary and female industrial department; the others are female and family sleeping places. Each compartment is partitioned off with a hanging carpet partition; light portable railing of small, upright willow sticks bound closely together protects the central compartment from a horde of dogs hungrily nosing about the camp, and small "coops" of the same material are usually built inside as a further protection for bowls of milk, yaort, butter, cheese, and cooked food; they also obtain fowls from the villagers, which they keep cooped up in a similar manner, until the hapless ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... find out anything definite, she would have to get into the forbidden rear portion of the building. But obviously there were legitimate classrooms there, in addition to the activities she suspected, and if she were caught nosing around the classrooms she would be discharged at once for violation of the rules, without finding out what she sought. She would have to hit it right ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... me, with her so busy at our funny housekeeping. When I coasted around the island, trading, she 'ud stay behind and guard the place like a bulldog, and never took a thing except a little soap or tobacco or maybe a tin of meat for her Pa, a nosing old gentleman dressed in a mat, who always bobbed up when I was out of the way, being discouraged at other times from living and dying ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... devil himself. But this shipwrecked company found it the most delightful country in the world, the climate was enchanting, delicious fruits abounded, the waters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag the fishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosing about the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eaten covered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered the island that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminish ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... work Monday, and went to the Court House in Hartley and told who you were, and spent the day nosing into my father's affairs, before his SONS had done anything, or you had any idea WHAT was to ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... for it; that we have not changed the age, though the age has changed us. We feel very much as the Scotchman did who entered the fish market. His dog, being inquisitive, investigated a basket of lobsters, and while he was nosing about incautiously one of the lobsters got hold of his tail, whereupon he went down the street with the lobster as a pendant. Says the man, "Whustle to your dog, mon." "Nay, nay, mon," quoth the Scotchman, "You whustle for your lobster." We are very much in the same position with reference ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... himself could not have given a leer at anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough, yet this nosing rascal ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... thing was put in," says one of the workmen, sullenly. "Mr. Grandon made money. We had decent wages and decent wool, and we weren't stopping continually to get this thing changed and that thing altered. Now you're thrown out half a day here and half a day there, and the new men are nosing round as if they suspected you would make way with something and meant to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas



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