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Flirtation   /flərtˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Flirtation

noun
1.
Playful behavior intended to arouse sexual interest.  Synonyms: coquetry, dalliance, flirt, flirting, toying.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Flirtation" Quotes from Famous Books



... be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"—with which Christian advice Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... to confessing your sins," said Doctor Sloane crossly. "You're coming out of the woods all right, and you'll be sorry if you tell her too, much. I'll begin a little flirtation with you, Miss Laura, if you please." And he motioned to her to follow ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... is simple in taste, yet exquisite in poetical feeling and musical gifts. The character is the nearest one gets in Hebrew to the best heroines of the troubadours. Immanuel and she exchange verses, but the path of flirtation runs rough. They are parted, she, woman-like, dies, and he, man-like, sings an elegy. Even more to Immanuel's credit is his praise of his own wife. She has every womanly grace of body and soul. On her he showers compliments from the Song of Songs and the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... want me to speak to him! And even to be cordial to him! You want to go ahead and carry on a sentimental flirtation with him—" ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... down before her in such cruel bareness? Was she not young, very young to be unhappy? She began to fight a little with herself and Providence in savage mood; favored the crimped hair and Scotch plaids again, tried a nutting-party and a sewing-circle, as well as a little flirtation with Jim Snow. This lasted for another week. At the end of that time she went and sat down alone one noon on a pile of kindlings in the ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... impatiently, "you will not be involved. I did not understand before why Bruce had deserted us lately. I see now that he has acted very properly. It was not his fault nor yours—this flirtation—preference—or whatever you may choose to call it. But Bruce knows the world, and knows just how long-lived such fancies are, and he intends that it shall be no hinderance to your marriage—making ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a living companion for his trying journey to England so much ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... was consolidated while she amused herself with other people's secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet, after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; he was taking a ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... beat faster. Was her husband going to open up a discussion of the thing that had been turning her life to gall during these last weeks—his flirtation, his liaison—if it were a liaison; she did not know—with the American? The woman who had begun to idealise Fritz and the woman who was desperately jealous of him both seemed ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... ventures, and one unhappy day he lost more than he could repay without mortgaging his family estate. To that step he was driven at last. At the same time his gallantry brought him into trouble. A love affair, or slight flirtation, with a lady of the name of Villiers,[1] exposed him to the resentment of a Mr. Wilson, by whom he was challenged to fight a duel. Law accepted, and had the ill fortune to shoot his antagonist dead upon the spot. He was arrested the same day, and brought to trial for murder by the relatives ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... into the country of the Ojibways. After many days' journey, they discovered a small village of the foe. The wicked Tamahay proposed to his associate that they should arrange their toilets after the fashion of the Ojibways, and go among them; "and perhaps," he added, "we will indulge in a little flirtation with their pretty maids, and when we have had enough of the fun we can take the scalp of a brave or two and retreat!" His friend construed his daring proposition to be a test of courage, which it would not become him, as a brave, to decline; therefore he ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... her age, you know," said the first, who might have been perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not herself averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then why should she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet become subject to the will ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope

... flirting shamelessly with a young doctor. Perhaps Jimmy should have reflected that men were being killed rapidly these days, and it was necessary that some should concern themselves with supplying the future generations; but Jimmie was in no mood to probe the philosophy of flirtation—he remembered the Honourable Beatrice Clendenning, and wished he was back in Merrie England. Also he remembered his pacifist principles, and wished he had kept out ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... flirtation was interrupted by the rapid approach of a courier. This was the signal announcing the impending arrival of Josephine Bonaparte. In fact, the heads of four horses were seen already in the distance; they came nearer and nearer, and now the carriage drawn by these horses, and a lady occupying ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... industrial avocation to which women have not heretofore applied themselves. But there is no such toleration for the rich. Many of these are now striving to kill time with fancy-work and fiction, with flirtation and flaunting. Some are destitute of aspiration for anything better. These could be moved only by some convulsion in the social system, like the earthquake, or like the volcano that opens the ground at our feet and shows us our danger. But there are others whose ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... were all heavily veiled, their faces jealously hidden from the eyes of men, except when some giddy girl with a taste for flirtation allowed her veil to slip down as if by accident, and one then, as a general thing, beheld a very ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... this, and without vanity the best-dressed woman wherever I go. Last night I wore a blue satin trimmed fully with magnificent point lace—light-blue velvet hat and feather, with an aigrette of sapphires and diamonds. Voila! Lord Jeffrey came up to me, and we had such a flirtation! When he comes to Ireland we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together: in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of my enemies before we meet, 'Let me at them!'" Of the same soiree she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... found his love-making hard work. She was not the type of girl whom he admired; her delicacy irritated him; he preferred what the poet has called "an armful of girl," buxom and hearty. Often, therefore, when she had gone to bed, he would refresh himself by a vigorous flirtation with Madame Seraphine de Belle-Ile, a brisk and vivacious young widow, who affected always gowns of a peculiarly vivid and searching scarlet. And this self-indulgence proved in the end the ruin of his fine scheme of establishing himself in life on ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... turned in astonishment. She had expected Mary's assent to her original remark as a matter of course. Mary's old flirtation with Geoffrey Cliffe, and the long breach between them which had followed it, were things well known to her. They had coincided, moreover, with her own dropping of the man whom for various reasons she had come to regard as ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... offences, such as laziness, neglecting to keep the rifle clean and in good shooting order, attempting to strike up a flirtation with a married woman, to the annoyance of the lady, or any other little matter of the kind, the wayward one is "tossed." Tossing is not the sort of pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... in them, they were trained by the same precocious successes, only six years apart in age, and beginning with that hearty mutual aversion which is so often the parent of love, in impulsive natures like theirs. Their flirtation was platonic, but chronic; and whenever poor, heroic, desolate Clemence de Maille was sicker than usual, these cousins were walking side by side in the Tuileries gardens, and dreaming, almost in silence, of what might be, while Mazarin ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... I will keep away from the canteen because it isn't right to leave her see to much of me even if she does know I am married but if I do write her something I will make it comical and no mushy stuff in it. But it does seem like fate or something that the harder I try and not get mixed up in a flirtation I can't turn around you might say but what they's some gal poping up on my trail and if it was anybody else only Miss Moselle I wouldn't mind but she is a darb and I wouldn't do nothing to hurt her for the world but they can't nobody say this is ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner

... and graceful Westphalian girls who were also schoolmates. But the girls occupied a very small place in our lives. They could neither wrestle, shoot, nor climb, so we gave them little thought, and anything like actual flirtation was unknown—we had so many better things in our heads. Wrestling and other sports threw everything else into the shade. Pretty Marie, however, probably suspected which of my school-mates I liked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested with a certain ideal glamour, and we are thrilled and absorbed by an array of figures of receipts and expenditures, equally with the changeful incidents of flirtation, courtship, and matrimony. Fun and pathos, sense and sentiment, are mingled throughout, and the combination has resulted in one of the brightest ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... are more vulgar than the readiness to infer a flirtation from every case of marked mutual interest between a man and a woman. The interchange of bright ideas, interspersed with the spontaneous sallies of gallantry and the instinctive repartee of innocent coquetry—an ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... says that the Providential indications are a salary of $1,800 and a parsonage; and Mr. Wheaton says if any other young man succeeds in playing us off against a rival parish he is mistaken; that's all. Even gentle Jennie is indignant. "Of all flirtation, ministerial flirtation seems to me to be the worse," she says; and truth to tell, she never had much patience ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... easily have replied: "A woman's jealousy!" The king probed his friend to the bottom of his heart to ascertain if he had learned the secret of his flirtation with his sister-in-law. But Saint-Aignan was not an ordinary courtier; he did not lightly run the risk of finding out family secrets; and he was too good a friend of the Muses not to think very frequently of poor Ovidius ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... the car behind, and if he were personable—for not even the impending doom of the city and the public demoralization caused by the "air balls" had dulled the proclivities of the Han women for brazen flirtation. And turn ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... discuss a gross misstatement in one of your articles (which you refused to acknowledge until I had sent for you to put the matter clearly before you), you did not conduct yourself like so many other girls who came to discuss their work with me. You did not attempt to engage in a mild flirtation, make eyes, bend over me as I glanced ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... woman, even including herself. She knew that what she had seen last night was not the evidence of a mere flirtation or passing fancy, and reproached herself bitterly because she had ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... thought me and my comrades good enough for a flirtation," said the commercial traveller. "But she looks higher in these days, especially since her namesake in the Spahis joined his regiment at Bel-Abbes. She told me they had found ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... modern types are a little wanting. Whatever happens they could for the most part speak of quietly and without bitterness. Love with them does not mean a passion so much as an interest, deep, silent, not quite incompatible with a secondary flirtation. Marianne Dashwood's tears are evidently meant to be dried. Jane Bennet smiles, sighs and makes excuses for Bingley's neglect. Emma passes one disagreeable morning making up her mind to the unnatural alliance ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... any warmer feeling than kindness on the one side and gratitude on the other; and this unconsciousness was her greatest charm, especially to Captain John, who hated coquettes, and shunned the silly girls who wasted time in idle flirtation when they had far better and wholesomer pastimes to enjoy. The handsome sailor was a favorite, being handy at all sorts of fun, and the oldest of the young men at the Point. He was very courteous in his hearty ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... not Ray. He will accept your invitation—less with the idea of letting Ray hook him in the matrimonial net, than for the opportunity it affords for a renewed flirtation with you. Oh, quite innocent, of course, but still a flirtation. Have I forgotten what close friends you used to be before I appeared on ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... is in love with Margaret," he said, laughing unmirthfully. "Was there ever such a tangle! If I indulge in a violent flirtation with Miss Layton, and I persuade Winter to ogle Mrs. Jiro, the affair should ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... intuitive understanding that lie at the root of all true and deep affection. His delicacy of appearance, his stunted stature, his invalid requisitions, nay, his very deformity, for his twisted limb amounted to this, put aside all thought of infantile flirtation (for we know that, strange as it may seem, such a thing does exist) from the first hour of our acquaintance. He always seemed to me much younger than he was, or than I was—as boys, even under ordinary circumstances, are apt to appear to girls of their own age, from their slower development ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... he exclaimed, "let the girl have a flirtation without making a tragedy of it. She is quite right. The world is what she wants. If ever there was a woman whom Nature did not intend for a nun it is Rachael Levine. Let her carry out her plan, and in a week she will be the belle of the Island, and my poor cousin will be consoling ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... once that you would always put your idol pro tem, down for the sweets, which would become as fertile a source of flirtation as "love" in tennis. Of course the same tact and discretion would be needed in filling your menu as in filling your programme. Some ladies who are excellent at the entree may be inadvisable for the joint, which they may ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... it glassed in for to-morrow night. We couldn't say we hadn't plenty of rooms before, and plenty of room in them. That's just the trouble: there aren't any nooks in this big, square house. So I've made one. This is Flirtation Alcove. Here a loving couple can come to cool off after dancing and look up at the stars together. Oh, it's going to be so pretty! You can't tell anything about it as it looks now; I've only got these few things in it. But the gardeners are going to bring all sorts of tall plants and flowers ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... of the temple lounged the Amazonian guard, intent only on irreverent amusement, even in the form of a grotesque and grim flirtation here and there with the custodians of the temple, who have charge of the sacred fire that burns before the altar. About eighty-five years ago this fire went out. It was a calamity of direful presage, and thereupon all Siam went into a consternation of mourning. All ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... no interest at all in Jack, but he wanted to talk with this dark-eyed violin-playing damsel. Sydney had indulged in a good deal of flirtation in his time, and he had no objection to whiling away an hour in the company of any pretty girl; and yet there was some sort of dignity about this girl's manner which warned him to be a little ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... he mentioned the Rue de Suresnes, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, "Stop, stop," cried Souchet lightly. "A little girl I see every morning at the Church of the Assumption, and with whom I have a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. The mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a Baroness living up four flights of stairs? Brrr! Why, you are a relic of the golden age! We see the old mother here, in this avenue, every day; why, her face, her appearance, tell everything. What, ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... remember a talk we had down on Flirtation Walk one day last summer, when you asked me about possible political movements at the South, and I asked you what ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... came to the house as seldom as he could, that he might not quarrel with his employer before it was to his own interest to do so. Netta discovered that he pitied her; and once or twice, drawing on the arts of flirtation, with which the Florentine woman is always well acquainted, she complained to him of her loneliness and her husband's unkindness. But his north-country caution protected him from any sentimentalizing, however innocent. And ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... again. She looked at the confused, blushing boys on the wagons, who could hardly be expected to understand that Dolly was only teasing them, and wanted nothing better than a perfectly harmless flirtation. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart

... no need to disguise the fact, since we have it in cold print, that the acquaintance of the couple, begun at Naples in 1794 as a flirtation, developed rapidly, on the lady's side, into a love affair which was only ended by her death. In 1794, when it all began, Lady Bessborough was thirty-two, had been married for fourteen years, and had four children. Granville Gower was twenty, well born, rich, exceedingly ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... beech-copse he came up; and then that small flirtation of the drawing-room, which has caused you so much anger and me such a sharp lesson, stood me in good stead, and enabled me to arrest his progress by some chance word or two, and at last so far to interest him that he got down and walked along at ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... considered the greatest beauties I presume, since with the Turk obesity is the chief element of comeliness. As the carriages passed along in review, every now and then an occupant, unable or unwilling to repress her natural promptings, would indulge in a mild flirtation, making overtures by casting demure side-glances, throwing us coquettish kisses, or waving strings of amber beads with significant gestures, seeming to say: "Why don't you follow?" But this we could not do if we would, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... more important business in the world than gossiping with a girl. She began to feel, after a time, that she actually disliked him. The station agent, Kid Follansbee, admired her exceedingly, and had timidly ventured some words of hopeful flirtation as a preliminary to more serious proposals. Two or three other youths of Carcajou only needed the slightest sign of encouragement, and there was a conductor of the passenger train who used to blow kisses at her, once in a while, from the steps of the Pullman. In spite of all this Sophy continued ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... hear no more, but taking advantage of a pause in the dancing, and the approach of Mr Cheggs to pay his court to the old lady, swaggered with an extremely careful assumption of extreme carelessness toward the door, passing on the way Miss Jane Wackles, who in all the glory of her curls was holding a flirtation, (as good practice when no better was to be had) with a feeble old gentleman who lodged in the parlour. Near the door sat Miss Sophy, still fluttered and confused by the attentions of Mr Cheggs, and by her side Richard Swiveller ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... arrangement; as, if a young male acquaintance of any damsel took a seat beside her, it would be certain to attract the papa or chaperon, to the spot, to see what was going on, as their most likely subject of conversation would have a strong leaning towards a flirtation, or downright love-making, at which nearly all the Spaniards are great adepts; the flowery expressions of their language being peculiarly suitable ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... implied declarations. Marianne had pretended not to understand him. At that time, she loved Guy or thought that she loved him, which amounts to the same thing. She contented herself with smiling at the flirtation of Monsieur ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... man who is head-over-ears in love. The tender passion affects us differently, according to our constitutions. One set of fellows, who are generally the pleasantest, seldom get beyond the length of flirtation. They are always at it, but constantly changing, and therefore manage to get through a tolerable catalogue of attachments before they are finally brought to book. Such men are quite able to take care of themselves, and require but little admonition. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... Eulalie swelled like an incensed turkey, but the mutiny was quelled: the conceited coquetry and futile flirtation of the first bench were exchanged for a taciturn sullenness, much more convenient to me, and the rest of my lesson passed ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... said, regretfully, shaking his head. "I have sometimes wished I could avoid it, but that is impossible. Ahem! When my great-aunt's grandmother rashly and inopportunely changed me into a robin, I was having a little flirtation with a little creature who was really quite attractive. I might have decided to engage myself to her. She was very charming. Her name was Gauzita. To-morrow I shall go and place flowers ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... declined the lady's invitation to dance, but being pressed by,' I can't make up the lancers without you,' somewhat reluctantly accepted, performed his part so well that his partner was quite eprise with him, and even ventured on a little flirtation. You can imagine her dismay when, a little later in the evening, she saw her charming acquaintance carrying up a pile of plates from the kitchen to the supper-room. For the first time in her life, she had danced with ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... difficult it is for a doctor to remain heart-whole. Sometimes his lady patients deliberately set themselves to capture him, and will speak ill-naturedly of him if he refuses to fall into their net. At others, sympathy with a sufferer leads to a flirtation during convalescence, and often a word spoken in jest in order to cheer is taken seriously by romantic girls who believe that to marry a doctor is to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... a cautious woman, who never allowed flirtation to go beyond certain decorous lengths, and she was used to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... you seemed to be having a tremendous flirtation with that youth," laughed Mrs. Baldwin. "Such a hand-clasp at parting! Don't dance too hard, child." She turned to the half-dozen parents supporting her. "These crazy girls of mine will dance themselves to death if I don't keep an eye on them," she explained. "Amelie says, 'Mother, how can I help ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... would pretend that this demonstration had no effect upon her heart, that she'd seen a dozen pigeons within an hour handsomer than he; but the instant a rival belle chanced (only it wasn't chance really) to hop that way and offer outrageous inducements to flirtation, she decided that, after all, he was worth having—and, alas! sometimes decided ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... having been, from the first, a comedy of degrees in which his heart had never been involved; begun while he was a helpless invalid dependent upon this woman for nursing and companionship. That she had started the flirtation, and had taken advantage of his loneliness and temporary weakness to bring him almost to the verge of a deep dishonour, were memories he would have given much to forget. Mrs. Dalton was a type of woman he ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... conviction that James was kind if you took him the right way. He was irritable, and very annoying when he was sarcastic; but he was good at heart. And it was odd, she thought, that directly she got into an awkward place with a flirtation, her first impulse was to go to James to get her out. In her dream she had called to him, though Urquhart had ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... should always wear a forbidding expression, and should scowl at people who dare to smile at you or otherwise pay homage to your feminine charms. But there is a difference between a friendly expression and flirting. However, when your husband begins to neglect you, then a mild flirtation may be justifiable. It will always do your husband good to know that there are other males in the world beside him, and that some of these males find interest in the female whom he considers his ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... said she was flirting with this, that, or the other man—and the curious thing is that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she found that she was in love—in love—in love, and with a man who did not seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt, therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... of sunshine, meadowy rambles, forest explorations, the majestic tranquillity of Nature spiced with the sauce of flirtation, or something stronger. Sometimes we took our morning happiness on foot, sometimes our mid-day ecstasy served up on horseback, sometimes our evening rapture in an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... the neck, and an irresistible tendency to retire for a brief season within herself. A little farther off still, having taken fortune at the flood and secured De Forest at last, Bell Masters was embarked on another kind of craft, a thorough-going, fully-freighted flirtation, all sails set; and through the trees were glimpses of lazily moving figures beyond, generally in twos and twos, following some occult rule of common division peculiar to picnics. By degrees the children wandered off up ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... Orgul's evvvv'ry Sunday, and have a husband and child, and am not at all, really, you know. I hope that there has been nothing I said that has given you the idea that I have been looking for a flirtation." ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... he had no business, so Mary V placed the tablet open on the table just as she had found it, and left the bunk house without deigning to fulfill the errand of mercy that had taken her there. Why should she trouble to sew the lining in a coat sleeve for a fellow who pined for a silly flirtation with Venus? Let Johnny Jewel paw and struggle to get into his coat. Better, let Venus sew that lining ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... utterly different. Audrey would never dream of falling in love with Mr. Blake. Fancy a girl in her position encouraging the attentions of a junior master. No, indeed; I was only afraid of a little flirtation. Of course Audrey declares she never flirts, but she has such a way with her—she is too kind ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to succeed. He limited his war against the powers that were to the shooting of an arrow or to a veiled allusion, the key and meaning of which he would by means of his friends convey to the various salons. As a matter of fact, he was carrying on a flirtation, rather than hostilities, with the Government in power. Drawing-room acquaintances, people whom he met in society, brought him within reach of Government influence and into touch with Government patronage. He would prepare the works and correct the proofs of some high official who was always busy ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... been dancing and flirtation, upon which those of the guests who did not join gazed for an hour or so as they sat in the chairs arranged around the walls, doubtless enjoying themselves intensely, and the gaiety was at its height, when some ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... dance with the man you like and are not asked by the man you want; at which you are forced to make a note that that full-blown hope is futile, and that this little bud will surely never come to flower. And then the toil of smiles, the pretence at flirtation, the long-continued assumption of fictitious character, the making of oneself bright to the bright, solemn to the solemn, and romantic to the romantic, is work too hard for enjoyment. But our heroine had no such work to do. She was very ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... continued to sit under the editorial shade — Sir Charles Grandison was "published" by the "editor of Pamela and Clarissa" — enjoying the sunshine of his authorship. His introduction to Pamela and the care he took with it suggest more succinctly than anything else Richardson's flirtation with his adorers, which is not at all unlike that of his so ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... choose for himself whither they should lead him; he would fight with all his nerve and will against the unholy fascination of those few thrilling hours. He looked impatiently towards the door, and longed for the return of his late companion that he might continue his half-laughing flirtation. Then he remembered the album still upon his knee, and opened it quickly. He had dabbled a little in photography; he would find something here to keep his thoughts from the forbidden place. And he did indeed find something—something which set his heart thumping, ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a thing taken for granted. It was a novel experience for Marian as well as for Sam, as now for the first time she meant business. It is impossible in cold ink to reproduce the ecstasies of those many hours on Flirtation Walk, during which Sam opened his heart. For the first time in his life he had found a person as deeply interested in military matters as he was, and as much in love with military glory. He told her his whole history, including the lead soldiers and ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... mistake, perhaps. He never was very hard upon himself even when the evidence was clear against him. It angered him to feel humiliated. What a fuss to make about a little thing! What a tiresome old cad to care about a little flirtation with his wife! He wished he had let the pretty baby alone entirely. She was of no finer stuff than many another who had accepted his advances with pleasure. He stiffened his neck ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... Mynheer van Vandervelt, and went off to her pantry to drink some cold tea which the English people had left, and to clean the lamps. Having done that, and knowing that the matron was busily engaged carrying on a flirtation with a young Frenchman, Marie took out her writing materials, and began a letter to her old mother. These peasants know how to love each other, and some of them know how to tell each other too. Marie knew. And she told her mother of the gifts she was bringing home, ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden

... relieved her of her despair regarding Charles's future. No doubt his present suffering was keen, but there was hope for him. Secondly, it was a decidedly "pretty" speech for a ghost, and I am not at all sure that Mivanway was the kind of woman to be averse to a little mild flirtation ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... rather proud of it; but immediately afterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and his own long-suffering, he related, at length, the story of his flirtation with Ephie, and the infinite pains he had been at to keep Louise in ignorance of what was happening. He grew very tender with himself as he told it. For, according to him, the whole affair had come about without any assistance of his. "What the deuce was I to do? Chucked herself full at my head, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... big Northern business fellows had often shown a preference for Southern women. Many of them had married poor girls of the South and they had become the leaders of their set. Nan's opportunity for intrigue and flirtation had been boundless, but so far not a whisper about her had ever found its way into the gossip of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... no idea till last night how difficult it was for a Queen to indulge in a bit of flirtation! A most elaborate intrigue is, it seems, necessary to procure for her a tender interview with her innamorato. A plan was invented, whose intricacy would have bothered the inventor of spinning-jennies, whereby Henrico was to be closeted with her most Christian Majesty,—its grand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... vowed to rescue the lady or perish in the attempt, the little boys applauded vehemently, especially one little fellow who was apparently on a visit to the family, and had been carrying on a child's flirtation, the whole evening, with a small coquette of twelve years old, who looked like a model of her mamma on a reduced scale; and who, in common with the other little girls (who generally speaking have even more coquettishness ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... rock which Flint, in his self-satisfied musings, had failed to keep a lookout for. It had struck "The Aquidneck" full (or vice versa, which amounts to the same thing); and here was a pretty pickle. Navigation is like flirtation: all goes smoothly till the shock comes, and then everything capsizes, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... she was going to get fond of! The things that her poor, round foolish eyes gloated upon the moment that she saw them! Joan tried to enlist the shopman on her side, descending even to flirtation. Unfortunately he was a young man with a high sense of duty, convinced that his employer's interests lay in his support of Mrs. Phillips. The sight of the furniture that, between them, they selected for the dining- room gave Joan a quite distinct internal pain. They ascended ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... watched her a few moments and, convinced perhaps that she meant business, struck up his liveliest tune, then listened for her response. As it came back timidly but promptly, he left his perch and sought a nearer acquaintance with the prudent female. Whether or not a match grew out of this little flirtation ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... bon enfant, so little of a wit titre'; and Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, handsome, insolent, and unamiable; and Allan Cunningham, 'immense fun'; and Thomas Hood, 'a grave-looking personage, the picture of ill-health'; and her old critical enemy, Lord Jeffrey, with whom Lady Morgan started a violent flirtation. 'When he comes to Ireland,' she writes, 'we are to go to Donnybrook Fair together; in short, having cut me down with his tomahawk as a reviewer, he smothers me with roses as a man. I always say of my enemies before we ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... you think!" she said the minute they were in their rooms. "There was I, leaning meditatively over the boat, thinking solemnly on the truths I had heard, and that absurd little water-proof morsel was having a flirtation with a nice young man. Here is one of the fruits of the system! What on earth was he saying ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... of a perfume he noticed when he first entered the room. That particular perfume is used by Mademoiselle Duplaix, and I should hazard a guess that Mr. Nixon had stolen her handkerchief that evening, not a criminal offense, but a matter of flirtation." ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... high dudgeon. She had not yet completed her flirtation with Mr. Bowie, and felt it hard to have her one amusement in life snatched out of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... was not agreeable to the latter was having to entertain Major Guthrie Brimston sometimes during his lady's absence, and the lady herself when she stayed to tea. For there was really no harm in the flirtation, as Evadne was acute enough to perceive. Mrs. Guthrie Brimston was one of those women who pride themselves upon having a train of admirers, and are not above robbing other women of the companionship of their husbands in order to swell their own following; while many men rather affect the society ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... a pretense of leaving her at this point, without the slightest intention of persisting in it. This curious conference had all the zest of a most novel kind of flirtation, which was none the less piquant for ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... charmed without knowing it. Let us do her full justice. She had not the remotest idea of opening a flirtation with Sir Lionel Bertram. She had looked on him as the future father-in-law of her own dear child; never as anything more: no idea of becoming Lady Bertram had ever for an instant flashed upon her imagination. But, nevertheless, by degrees the warrior's attentions ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... deep as that in the farther division, broke the outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent, and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation. With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and harmonized well ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Although my host and charming hostess would have made any place agreeable, Quetta is, from everything but a strategical point of view, dull and uninteresting. It is an English garrison town, and all is said. The usual nucleus of scandal, surrounded by dances, theatricals, polo, flirtation, drink, and—divorce. Are they not all alike from Gibraltar to ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... you mean," said her mother, rather white about the lips. "You mean the scandal about me. Yes, that would make a difference.—You think it is only a flirtation, then?" ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... the honours genially and gracefully, and not have her head turned by being the chief young lady in the place. She ought to be well bred, if not high bred, enough to give a tone to the society of her contemporaries, and above all she must not flirt. If I found flirtation going on with the officers, I should send her home on the spot. Of course, all this means that she must have the only real spring of good breeding, and be a thoroughly good, religious, unselfish, right-minded girl; otherwise we should have to rue our scheme. In spite of all you ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... disturbed Hanson more than he would have dreamed to notice the change in voice and manner. The warm, provocative, inherent coquetry was gone from both smile and eyes; instead of a soft, alluring girl ready to play with him a baffling, blood-stirring game of flirtation, she was again the sphynx of last night, whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the scarlet curves of her mouth ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... annexing it to Russia at the first opportunity, but he was incapable of abusing the hospitality of the Arguellos by making love to their sixteen-year-old daughter. Had she been of the years he had assumed, he would have had less scruple in embarking upon a flirtation, both for the pastime and the use he might make of her. A Spanish beauty of twenty, still unmarried, would be more than his match. But a child, however precocious, inevitably would fall in love with the first uncommon stranger she met; and Rezanov, less vain than most men of his kind, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... further meetings with Jerrold. For nearly a week, said Cub, Madame Beaubien had dogged Nina so that she could not get a moment with the man with whom she was evidently so smitten, and the girl was almost at her wits' end with seeing the depth of his flirtation with Alice Renwick and the knowledge that on the morrow her mother would spirit her off to the cool breezes and blue waves of the great lake. Cub said she so worked on Fanny's feelings that they put up the scheme together and made him bring them out. Gad! if old Maman only found it out there'd ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... estate, a sportsman, proud of his pretty wife. Mrs. Guy Flouncey was even very pretty, dressed in a style of ultra fashion. However, she could sing, dance, act, ride, and talk, and all well; and was mistress of the art of flirtation. She had amused the Marquess abroad, and had taken care to call at Monmouth House the instant the Morning Post apprised her he had arrived in England; the consequence was an invitation to Coningsby. She came with a wardrobe ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... has introduced a novelty into the tragedy by inventing fresh business. Unauthorised by the text, he has included Ophelia amongst the Court "attendants," and, finding her on the stage, has indulged in a dignified flirtation (in dumb show), worthy of the hero of L'Enfant Prodigue himself. Now I think this a great improvement, and were the masterpiece to be "written up" throughout on the same lines, I am sure the representation ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various

... room at the hotel with many conflicting emotions struggling in his heart. Jack Smeaton was evidently a man of strong character, and a flirtation such as he had carried on with Thursa would mean nothing to him—he had probably forgotten it by this time. Couldn't he honestly go back and tell Thursa that one of the church-wardens, to whom the clergyman had sent him for information, had told him emphatically to have nothing to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... last is the best, and the last shall be first. Through Eve, sayeth Moses, old Adam was cursed; But I cannot agree with you, Moses, that Adam Sinned and fell through the gentle persuasion of madam. The victim, no doubt, of Egyptian flirtation, You mistook your chagrin for divine inspiration, And condemned all the sex without proof or probation, As we rhymsters mistake the moonbeams that elate us For flashes of wit or the holy afflatus, And imagine we hear the applause ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... A few people are straitlaced, and a good many feel they have been taken in. But, anyway, this flirtation is a mistake." ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fellow,—just a little spoiled and self-indulgent, and as headstrong as his proud father. He seemed a young man pleasant to look upon, as he sat on the great black stump at the edge of the pines idly swinging his legs and smoking. "Why, there isn't even a girl worth getting up a respectable flirtation with," he growled. Just then his eye caught a tall, willowy figure hurrying toward him on the narrow path. He looked with interest at first, and then burst into a laugh as he said, "Well, I declare, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... partly seen; and, by enquiry at the hospital named, had ascertained the truth of the rest. "The two people in the Incurable Hospital.—The poor incurable girl lying on a water-bed, and the incurable man who has a strange flirtation with her; comes and makes confidences to her; snips and arranges her plants; and rehearses to her the comic songs(!) by writing which he materially helps ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Thirty, the 'woman of forty' was still to be studied by a clever novelist; unless, indeed, Sophocles had made an end of her for ever when Jocasta hanged herself. One thing, however, was clear: the Princess had not sought him out with any idea of casting upon him the spell of a flirtation to make him a sort of posthumous substitute for his brother. She had faced the light boldly several times in the course of her visit, so that he had seen the fine lines of middle age about her mouth and eyes very distinctly, and she had not made any attempt to show herself ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... not only the fair lady who had thrown it, but her joyous companions also. The day was as gay as the preceding one, perhaps even more animated and noisy; the count appeared for an instant at his window, but when they again passed he had disappeared. It is almost needless to say that the flirtation between Albert and the fair peasant continued all day. In the evening, on his return, Franz found a letter from the embassy, informing him that he would have the honor of being received by his holiness the next day. At each previous visit he had made to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... have none of the languor of their continental sisters, but are overflowing with vivacity and spirit. We remember these buds of humanity at the church door; they seemed to be "spoiling" for a chance flirtation, looking out from deep black eyes full of roguishness. Within the dimly-lighted church the smell of burning incense, the sharp tinkling of the bell before the distant altar, the responsive kneeling and bowing of ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... the grounds. They did not wander far before they came across the bishop's son, who was paying elaborate attention to the daughter of a squatter who could count his sheep by millions. With ill-concealed satisfaction, her fond mother watched her daughter's flirtation with one of England's nobility, as she supposed him to be. Further on, they met their man, evidently in the full swing of enjoyment. He was talking to a young English lady with whom he was seated under a spreading eucalyptus, and satirising colonial manners. The lady herself was on the look-out ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... seems by no means so complete. To London Bridge, seven years ago, I took a simple child of twelve: to-day I bring back a young lady of nineteen—a woman, in point of fact—who, I have no doubt, understands more of flirtation than she does of French, and would rather graduate in coquetry than ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... to Russia, Bismarck even indulged in a passing flirtation with England. At the close of 1879, Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador at St. Petersburg, was passing through Berlin, and the Chancellor invited him to his estate at Varzin, and informed him that Russian overtures had been made to France through General ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... time plays havoc with the uninhibited girl. Unable to find interest in her work, which too often is uninteresting, desiring good clothes and excitement, she discovers that these are within her reach if she follows her instincts. What starts out as a flirtation ends in social disaster, and a girl finds out that some men who give good times expect to be paid ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... only the beauty and the veneer. He made the mistake of thinking that Tannis was what she seemed to be—a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind—the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake—a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom a little book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "Don Giovanni." There, I said, was a record of my flirtation and inconstancy. I waited long for the decision, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... by a streak of minx, and eager enough to catch the heir of Jervaise if he were available. How low my thought of her must have sunk at that moment! But they were, now, exchanging courtesies with an air that gave to their commonplaces the effect of a flirtation. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... scornfully. A panting couple who stopped just in front of them imagined they were interrupting a flirtation, and, doing as they would be ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... single word or glance from their daughters unmarked by that provoking ease and compassionate familiarity, which tell them, better than words, that their day of influence has closed for ever. Let such unhappy men fly from the scenes of former pleasure and power, of former flirtation and gaiety, to the quieter and surer triumphs of a country town. Here crowds of young women, as certainly devoted to celibacy as the inmates of a nunnery, accustomed from necessity to make beaux out of the most unprecedented materials, and concoct flirtations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... a mutual indifference. However, after having braved the affair out for a few days, the young lady returned amongst her friends, who had the sincerity and candour to represent to her the imprudence of her conduct; and this flirtation, which was so innocent in fact, but so injurious in its result, was at once put an end to. I have related this seemingly uninteresting affair, first to shew and admit the folly of which I was guilty, for ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... these, most are pure fiction. As a matter of fact, Ibsen was shy with women, and unless they took the initiative, he contented himself with watching them from a distance: and noting their ways in silence. The early flirtation with Miss Rikke Hoist at Bergen, which takes so prominent a place in Ibsen's story mainly because such incidents were extremely rare in it, is a typical instance. If this young girl of sixteen had not taken the matter into her own hands, running up the steps of the hotel and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... a pretty Scheveningen lassie entered and greeted me. Alas! I knew but five words of Dutch, and when I thought the matter over I concluded that they were not very appropriate for carrying on a mild flirtation. Still, it's wonderful how much you can do with facial expression. Just before the train started a man entered. He knew English, and with more kindness than knowledge of humanity he offered to act ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... Churchill Castle, and you reproach me for my errors! But what are they? Seriously, I do not see them! We lived in a noisy world; where we enjoyed the liberty which English manners allow to young people. Your aunt found no fault with the charming chatter which the English call flirtation. I told you I loved you; you allowed me to think that I was not displeasing to you. We, thanks to that delightful agreement, spent a most agreeable summer, and now you do not wish to put an end to that ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... the lounge, as had become the custom, to spend an hour or so before bedtime in reading, conversation, dancing, light flirtation and even lighter drinking. Most of the girls, and many of the men, drank only soft drinks. Hilton took one drink per day of avignognac, a fine old brandy. So did de Vaux—the two usually ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... into the belief that I was some other woman, and so the temptation to cozen him further was irresistible. Am I not a good actress? I asked him. I went on to say, with some show of anger, that a quiet flirtation in the gallery was all very well in its way, but when it came to a young man rushing in a frenzy bare-headed into the street after a respectable married woman who had just got into her carriage and was about to drive ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... only a foolish flirtation—just the snatching at something to fill his empty days. Everard Barett's heart had been his wife's all along. He knew it for a certainty, looking at the woman and her child together, kneeling before them, with a sudden conviction of his own ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... gloves, and, above all, of scent. The quantity of scent that a lad of sixteen will pour on his handkerchief is something perfectly astounding. In this stage of his development he is addicted to falling into love, or rather into flirtation. He keeps up a correspondence with a young lady in Miss Pinkerton's establishment. They see each other in church, when he looks unutterable things from the gallery. This kind of boy is not unlikely to interest himself, speculatively, in horse-races. He has communications with ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... what worried me." All of a sudden, his hearers got a clear idea of what the man had suffered. It was plainly to be detected in his voice. "It might have been a harmless love affair, a flirtation, with letters involved, letters which she thought would distress me ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... part that Shakespeare played; at any rate, he was very good in it. Gilbert and Sullivan, in very far-off days, used to be concerned in these amateur theatricals. Their names were not associated then, but Kate and I established a prophetic link by carrying on a mild flirtation, I with Arthur Sullivan, Kate ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... know," he said slowly. "Let us try and look at it quietly, boy. Don't do anything in a hurry. You're in love with the girl, are you? It isn't a mere flirtation? How the deuce do you know the difference, at ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... representative of the tone of modern life in dealing with love that was chaste, and with passion so honest that it could be openly spoken of before the tenderest society bud at dinner. It might say that the guilty intrigue, the betrayal, the extreme flirtation even, was the exceptional thing in life, and unless the scheme of the story necessarily involved it, that it would be bad art to lug it in, and as bad taste as to introduce such topics in a mixed company. It could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... they were too familiar with their kind of flirtation with death to clap. Then Florette and her partner would invent something a little more daring. They would learn to balance themselves on chairs tilted on two legs on the trapeze, or Florette would hang by only one hand, or she would support her partner ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... out that silly talk. You belong to me and don't you ever think your flirtation with Sara is serious for a minute. If I thought you really did, I'd give up the Reclamation idea and go into partnership with Sara so as to watch him and keep him from ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... went on from polo to golf and gossip until the group broke up into flirtation couples. As Sommers was about to stroll off to the beach, Lindsay came out of the dining room and sat down by him with the amiable purpose of giving his young colleague some good social doctrine. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... You may put it at that if you like. Maybe it wouldn't have been just the square thing to do if you'd been a different sort of man—but you wanted to be taught that you couldn't have all the fun of flirtation on your side, and I wasn't afraid the emotional strain was going to shatter you up to any serious extent. Now it's left off amusing me, and I guess it's time to stop. I'm as perfectly aware as I can be that you've been searching ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various

... heart which could throb in answer to a dream, but which all reality left untouched. He played at love lightly; he had an ingrained reverence for women that even intercourse with Anglo-Indian grass-widows and the girl who revels in a board-ship flirtation was unable altogether to eradicate. He made love, that is to say, only to those women who first and openly made love to him; but it is to be doubted whether even the most ardent of them could boast that Dicky Grant had ever been in love with them. They ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... made a worse mistake just before his departure from the railroad settlement. He had spent two nights at a little wooden hotel, which was not the one where Winston put up when he drove into the place, and to pass the time commenced a flirtation with the proprietor's daughter. The girl was pretty, and Courthorne a man of different type from the wheat-growers she had been used to. When his horse was at the door, he strolled into the saloon where he found the girl alone ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... from her elderly admirer, the young lady had walked down the path away from the officers' quarters and disappeared from view in the direction of the trader's store. Some of the ladies were beginning to believe that, faute de mieux, the doctor was consoling himself in a flirtation with his lackadaisical patient; but it was speedily noted that he stayed only a few moments when Miss Forrest left the premises, and the idea was as speedily scouted by the entire sisterhood, unless, indeed, we except the lady herself. Poor Mrs. Forrest! In these days of her faded beauty, she ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... among unsympathising watchers; and when her hope was gone led her in her dull despair to do as they pleased, try to distract her thoughts, let herself be hunted hither and thither, and laugh at and play with Pigou St. Glear quite enough to pass for an encouraging flirtation, and to lead all around her to think their engagement immediately coming on. The only thing she refused to do was to go to the Farnese Palace, where was the statue to which there had more than once been comparisons ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... going to deny me my reward?" He made as if he would put his arm about her, but she shrank away with such emphatic and spontaneous denial that he desisted in chagrin. "After all there has been between us," he protested, "are you going to let a passing flirtation outweigh the fact that we are man ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Clifford, "you're a very different sort from the young Frenchwoman the doctor had here before you came—all paint and powder, busy making herself up whenever she thought you weren't looking, always ready for a flirtation." She made a grimace. "Not that she got very far with the doctor, I may tell you," she added, then nodding good-bye, joined her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... try and make friends with the twins. Desmond would be easy, but he's going. Pamela will be more difficult. However, I shall do my best. As I have already said, if she would only set up a flirtation—a nice one—that I ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... I was eighteen when I had my first flirtation with a charming young lady, but I courted her just as though it were nothing new to me; just as I courted others later on. To speak accurately, the first and last time I was in love was with my nurse when I was six years old; but that's in the remote past. The details of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... order to avoid the risk of ruin. About the same time he was involved, through intemperance, in another and more painful quarrel. It has been already noticed that at Woodley Park he was a continual guest. With Mrs. Riddel, who was both beautiful and witty, he carried on a kind of poetic flirtation. Mr. Walter Riddel, the host, was wont to press his guests to deeper potations than were usual even in those hard-drinking days. One evening, when the guests had sat till they were inflamed with wine, they entered the drawing-room, and Burns in some way grossly insulted the fair hostess. Next day ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... miss, there are few things I hold in such abhorrence as flirtation." As I said this I looked at her severely, and she looked at me quizzically. She had gray eyes, which were capable of a great variety of expressions, and her face, suffused by the light of a bantering jocularity, was an attractive one. I was obliged to admit ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... kind, Mr. Frere, really you are," says Mrs. Vickers, a recollection of her flirtation with a certain young lieutenant, six years before, tinging her cheeks. "It is really most considerate of you. Won't it be nice, Sylvia, to go with Mr. Frere ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... look—and does not know the perfide tongue of the perfide Albion well enough to be aware that nothing shocking is said, and that it is pretended that the cocotte is a mere kindly friend, the collage a trifling flirtation, the debauche a viceless lark, and that the foulest conduct of husband or wife does not reach a real breach of the commandment more often broken in England than the rest of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... willingly as, being well acquainted with the former, she was anxious to prove to him that he was not so perspicacious as he deemed himself. An Opera ball was chosen for the adventure; and Balzac was duly baited and taken in tow by the lady, whose mask only half concealed her beauty. Thus began a flirtation, with subsequent clandestine meetings, allowing the fair unknown to fool him to the top of her bent. The author wanted to propose for her hand to the Duke her father; but, cleverly using her knowledge of his books, the sly jade showed him that he would ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... Aristocracy of men brought the divinest of its Arts, heavenly Music itself; and, piling all the upholsteries and ingenuities that other human art could do, had lighted them into a bonfire to illuminate an hour's flirtation of Singedelomme, Mahogany, and these improper persons! Never in Nature had I seen such waste before. O Colletti, you whose inborn melody, once of kindred as I judged to 'the Melodies eternal,' might have valiantly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... of her life she would keep clear of, what she called, girlish messes. Like other young ladies she had read much poetry and many novels; but her sympathies had never been with young ladies who could not go straight through with their love affairs, from the beginning to the end, without flirtation of either an inward or an outward nature. Of all her heroines, Rosalind was the one she liked the best, because from the first moment of her passion she knew herself and what she was about, and loved her lover right heartily. Of all girls in prose or poetry she declared that Rosalind was the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... warmly and voluntarily renewed the proposal which he had made ere she was yet known to him—and yet, far from seeking an opportunity to be introduced to her, he had even left the party abruptly, in order to avoid the necessary intercourse which must there have taken place between them. His lordship's flirtation with Lady Binks had not escaped the attention of the sagacious Mowbray—her ladyship also had been in a hurry to leave Shaws-Castle; and Mowbray promised to himself to discover the nature of this connexion through Mrs. Gingham, her ladyship's attendant, or otherwise; vowing deeply at the same ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... went on, "If the Draper woman were the ordinary type of model there would be no problem at all. Dicky has always been a sort of Sir Galahad of the studios and he had been too proud to engage in even a slight flirtation with any girl in his employ. He is very sincerely in love with you, too, and that safeguards him from any influence that is not ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... flirtation, to pass the time, on both our parts. A woman of forty who is a beauty and a flirt has no time to waste, and Lady MacNairne is not wasteful. She was the handsomest woman at Kinloch Towers, my cousin Dave Norman's place, and a Dutchman was a novelty ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... courts were crowded. The red earth and the green grass formed a background against which the women, in their new Parisian toilets, under their bright parasols, stood out like wondrous bouquets of moving flowers. The whole atmosphere was a delightful mingling of idle gaiety, flirtation, and graceful sensuousness. A modern Watteau would have seized upon the scene ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... sisters with Mrs. Best. She was glad that at the moment the sound of the piano set them listening. She did not feel bound to mention to "sister" any more than she would to the head mistress, that when staying at Mr. Waring's country house a sort of semi-flirtation had begun with Hubert Delrio, a young man to whose education his father had sacrificed a great deal, and who was a well-informed and intelligent gentleman in all his ways. He had engaged himself to the great firm of Eccles and Beamster, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... singularly handsome and possessed of that strange quality which at once impresses women. Most girls would have remembered the fact, but Ida was different to the general run of her sex. She had been brought up in an out-of-the-way place in which the modern novel, the fashionable pastime of flirtation, were not known; and her secluded life in the lonely dale had deepened that sense of aloofness from the world, that indifference to the sentiment which lurks in most girls' bosoms. This tall, handsome man who had stepped into her life and shared the secret of her ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... of excuse for her, Agatha, and down in the bottom of your heart you know perfectly well she doesn't deserve it. I cannot forgive her for this flirtation with Mr. Willett. I only welcomed the idea of taking her with us because of the hope it gave me ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... interests me," said Hadria. "It is a tiny field for the exercise of the creative forces. Every one has some form of active amusement. Some like golf, others flirtation. I prefer this ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... observe what bitterness will creep into the heart and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even where a common-place dangling sort of flirtation is going forward; this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any means to the fair sex. Young men pick each other to pieces with even more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort of sarcasm, and do not hesitate ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... old Roman soul, but then he had his doubts about Sylvia's love for him—that is, as a husband. Mr. Plummer was too old for her. Tremaine, by a curious inconsistency, never looked upon himself as old, and thought it perfectly natural that he should carry on a mild flirtation with any girl, provided she be handsome, although young enough to be ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler



Words linked to "Flirtation" :   romp, dalliance, caper, frolic, play, coquetry, gambol



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