"Maiden aunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lamentable cry. Nevertheless, it troubled her with a vast many tender fears, such as are ready to bestir themselves in every mother's heart, when she finds it necessary to go away from her dear children without leaving them under the care of some maiden aunt, or other such faithful guardian. So she quickly left the field in which she had been so busy; and, as her work was not half done, the grain looked, next day, as if it needed both sun and rain, and as if it were blighted in the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... told you; "has no nonsensical young-lady airs about her, is always ready for sport, sings all kinds of songs from grave to gay, knows a good joke when you tell one, and keeps a fellow up to the mark as well as a maiden aunt." ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... widow or widower, a maiden aunt, a homeless uncle or cousin made his home with relatives, it was "as one of the family"; only the minister was recognized as having need for a separate sitting-room. The trials of this forced companionship have been told in ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... is much too timid with its money—like an old maiden aunt of mine—always in a funk about her investments. They don't spend half enough on railways for instance, and they are slow in a general way, and ought to be made to sit up in all that concerns the encouragement of private enterprise, and coaxing ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and all depended on whether it was kept in the Lord's hands—if not, then it would fall back like the old Washingtonian movement in America. Mrs. Lucas was very wroth, and so was I. He never spoke of woman except as "maiden aunt" or "old grandmother," and advised the boys to take a little ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... easily secured Mr. Atherton: he had no engagements, so few people had got back to town. She called upon Mrs. Witherby, needlessly reminding her of the charity committees they had served on together; and then she went home and actually sent out notes to the plainest daughter and the maiden aunt of two of the most high-born families of her acquaintance. She added to her list an artist and his wife, ("Now I shall have to let him paint me!" she reflected,) a young author whose book had made talk, a teacher ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... home; but after his wife had unfolded her plans to him, he approved of them. What had considerable influence with him was the fact that he had learned, through Ginsling's lawyer, that the former had inherited a considerable fortune by the death of a maiden aunt, and, therefore, was not only a gentleman by birth, but would have the wealth to maintain a style essential to that dignity. Neither of the worthy pair ever considered for a moment the pain it would cause the young man whom they had ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... better than other men? Oh, I know you made one exception. 'Tisn't jolly likely I'd forget! But you said the One Exception didn't count. I haven't forgotten that either. He looked on you as his sister or his maiden aunt." ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... father is Lord Roscannon, and our place is Bethwick Castle, in Northumberland. It's a gloomy old place that would give you the creeps. My mother died twenty-two years ago when I was born, and my father doesn't care about anything except archaeology, so I have always been in the clutches of my maiden aunt, Lady Grizel Vernilands, who ruled Bethwick and me as long as I can remember. Everyone called her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... so, had I been over eighteen, or, had I not come from the country, where my natural love of romance had been fostered by uncongenial surroundings and a repressed life under the eyes of a severe and unsympathetic maiden aunt. ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... his vague fashion. "Ajax suggests somebody who defies lightning and fools about with a spear. It's a silly name. A maiden aunt persuaded my mother to give it to me. I think she mixed it up with Achilles. She admired the statue in Hyde Park. She got run ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... soon be gone! I therefore employed an artifice, which, on after recollection, I am convinced was wrong; very wrong! I went into the drawing-room, and bade the footman go to him and announce Miss Wenbourne. I have a maiden aunt of that name, whom I was christened after, who lives in London, and whom I believe you never saw. The trick succeeded, and Sir Arthur came into the drawing-room. He looked disconcerted at seeing me, and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he was thoroughly in earnest: for, instead of leaving his daughter under the care of a maiden aunt, as had been his custom previously, during his frequent absences from home, he took her to sea with him, and left Jo with an extra supply of food ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... fever—the fever of curiosity, the last quality which I should like my godson to possess. My only consolation is, that he will see the full deformity of the vice, as, poor little fellow, he becomes acquainted with "that worst of plagues, a prying maiden aunt." If Jane was simply curious, I should not complain, but her love of investigation is not directed to what ought to be known, but rather to find out some wretched subject for petty scandal, to blacken every action, and to add to the weight of every ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being fond of her. How much they meant she could not tell. But in spite of his warnings she became better and better friends with Pennington, always exactly, at least as far as she was concerned, as if he were a maiden aunt of great kindness and experience. Indeed, Pennington, she thought, was what kept her from missing ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... children—there were not so many of the wandering sort in 1825—he insisted that young Jacob should give a dinner to his friends among the gay young bachelors. That would be a beginning; and if all went well they would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia to spend the winter with them, and help them to give the dinner parties which do not encourage bachelorhood, but rather convert and ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... jumping into the lake. I know that most of us women are cowards when it comes to seances in dentist chairs, but all such things—like house-cleaning and writing letters to folks you don't like, and entertaining your husband's maiden aunt—all these things are heaps nicer when they're well over with. They are the events which we prefer should ornament the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... reasoning men of semi-science have returned to the notion of our fathers, that ghosts have an existence outside our own fancy and emotion; and have culled from the experience of some Jemima Jackson, who fifty years ago, being nine years of age, saw her maiden aunt appear six months after decease, abundant proof of this fact. One feels glad to think the maiden aunt should have walked about after death, if it afforded her any satisfaction, poor soul! but one is struck by the extreme uninterestingness of this lady's appearance ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... furnished. The bed-room looked like a little temple. The two beds stood side by side, like two carriages. The rays of the sun fell on the blue eiderdown quilt, the white, white sheets and the little pillow-slips which an elderly maiden aunt had embroidered with their monogram; the latter consisted of two huge letters, formed of flowers, joined together in one single embrace, and kissing here and there, wherever they touched, at the corners. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Sim; "it was the time of the war. The neighbors told of some maiden aunt, an old crone like herself, who had left Joe's ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... image of her sister. Whenever Emma spoke I seemed to hear the voice and feel the presence of the one who had been gone a whole week when I came in search of her. I entered the stricken home: father, mother and maiden aunt—that good angel of all homes—were to me as if I had parted with them but yesterday. We sat in silence for a time: it seemed to me that if any one spoke there the very walls of the house would distill sorrowful drops. Our hearts were brimming, our lips were quivering, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... after all, but we had such a long way to come home, and got over the park wall at last by the help of the limb of a tree. We had been taking a bit of wedding-cake to Frank Somerville's old nurse, and Kitty told her I was her maiden aunt, and we had such fun—-her uncle's ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms of the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stop shouting and jumping about for just ten seconds, and give me a chance to observe that I am your maiden aunt from Devonshire, all this tomfoolery ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... lightest provocation, stormily angry for a moment and easily appeased. My mother was the second daughter in a large family, in a family that grew more numerous as pounds grew fewer, and she was adopted by a maiden aunt, a quaint memory of whom came through my mother's childhood into mine, and had its moulding effect on both our characters. This maiden aunt was, as are most Irish folk of decayed families, very proud of her family tree with its roots in the inevitable "kings." Her particular kings were the "seven ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... in expectations, (Which nobody seem'd likely to supplant,) From, that prodigious bore of all relations, A fusty, canting, stiff-rump'd Maiden Aunt: The wealthy Miss Lucretia Cloghorty,— Who had brought Isaac up, and ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... not pleasant to be conquered, and she was a little sullen on the way home. They parted at the door of Edith's house. Edith went in, to join a cheerful family in a comfortable and commodious room; Emilie, to a scantily furnished, and shabbily genteel apartment, let to her and a maiden aunt by a straw ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... beg to do night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to stomachs' overcoats that are treated unkindly, some one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice was procured, about a peck, I think; ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... console her, not on account of the departure of her new relation, a boy she seldom took any notice of, but to reconcile her to her fate; besides, it was necessary she should have a female companion, and there was not any maiden aunt in the family, or cousin ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is much too timid with its money-like an old maiden aunt of mine-always in a funk about her investments. They don't spend half enough on railways for instance, and they are slow in a general way, and ought to be made to sit up in all that concerns the encouragement of private enterprise, and coaxing out into use the millions ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... urged. "These guys mean nothing in my young life except a dinner. And you needn't worry. Believe me, you'll be shown the same respect as if you were out with your maiden aunt. They know I'm refined and won't stand for anything else. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... conquered him by her charms, and he was now a slave, waiting an appropriate time for matrimonial sacrifice. William Summerkin was the young man's name; and as it was known that Mr Summerkin was to inherit a fortune amounting to five thousand pounds from his maiden aunt, it was considered that Polly Toogood was not doing amiss. "I'll give you three hundred pounds, my boy, just to put a few sheets on the beds," said Toogood the father, "and when the old birds are both ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... head. "Miles is a bachelor who lives with a maiden aunt—Miss Lavinia. Or, rather, she lives with him and housekeeps for him. 'The Lavender Lady,' I always call her, because she's one of those delightful old-fashioned people who remind one of dimity curtains, and pot-pourri, and little muslin bags of lavender. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... all well here, both bairns and grown folk, and we will be blithe to hear from you, and if you have the time to send a scraps of your pen to your auld maiden aunt, that mony a time (though Lord knows not half often enough) has garred your lugs ring for your misdeeds—she will be pleased to hear if the butter and cheese were some kitchen to your tasteless ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... are you about? My maiden aunt's legacy—a diamond of the first water. You shall be hanged for ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you remember, had a good deal of means, has built himself a house, something quite elegant. It stands on that little knoll on the other side of the town, overlooking the river. I mean to go over and take a look at it some day: it is said to be beautifully furnished, and is kept by an old maiden aunt of our friend. Bruce, by the way, is in Europe, though what took him there I cannot conjecture, unless he means to bring home a European exportation in the shape of a wife. I wish, my dear, you had taken a fancy to him: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the evening to another. If he have the misfortune to be a younger brother, many little windfalls come to his share, the results of his relationship. He has an apartment at his elder brother's town-house, or he resides with the dowager, or with a maiden aunt; somebody keeps his cab horse, and some other body keeps the saddle-horse that Lady Mary or Jack Somebody gave him; his "tiger" has the run of all his friends' kitchens as a matter of course, and, as a matter of course, himself has two or three ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Marian and Lucile. The rock-ribbed and heavily wooded island belonged to Lucile's father, a fish canner of Anacortes, Washington. There was, so far as they knew, not another person on the island. They had expected a maiden aunt to join them in their outing. She was to have come down from the north in a fishing smack, but up to this time had not arrived. Not that the girls were much concerned about this; they had lived much in the open and rather welcomed the opportunity to be alone in the wilds. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... pet and plague of the good lady's life. Other seaside visitors look after the party from Nelson Lodge, and discuss them freely among themselves; but they do not speak from personal knowledge of Lady Henrietta Jocelyn and her charges. All they know is that Lady Henrietta is the maiden aunt of the two girls, and that they were committed to her care by her brother ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... should shoot somebody. Precisely who may be the victim of this insatiable desire, fate alone can decide. I propose some day next week to commence a general fusilade from the windows of my office upon the passers-by. My sole security in this affair, is a maiden aunt now in the Lunatic Asylum. I look with confidence to her malady as my triumphant vindication. My object in writing to you is to ask whether, in your opinion, the fact is sufficient to guarantee a verdict ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... chance to lodge a shipping order, with about a hundred labels, and leave the old antiquarian fogey to send 'em off. It was inside that I met Ombos for the first time. I selected the souvenirs, and wrote labels; but old Ombos made a devil of a muddle over sending them off, and a very prim maiden aunt received a snuff box adorned with a young French lady in very scanty attire.... By the way, you don't know my aunt Sylvia, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... is to go back to this tyrant of a maiden aunt," laughed the doctor. "But by all means let her come home first, as Rachel suggests, and then we shall see for ourselves, and hear how she ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... wallflower in a corner. Nonsense to say that looks don't count! So far as I can see, the difference between your face and mine will probably make the difference in our lives. You'll marry a lord of high degree, and I'll school marm and be maiden aunt." ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mid-October when Ralph Drew, his pretty sister Constance and his devoted maiden aunt—Miss Sally Drew—arrived in St. Ange and took up their new life in the bungalow which, under Jude Lauzoon's contractorship, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock |
