"Pert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "It was pert and unbecoming," said Father Francis, gravely, though a twinkle in his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk at Hamburg, the English correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at Marseilles has the French. For the Italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to Jew-German,—the other languages having been cut off from him,—and, by means of his frightful ciphers, brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents into a hearty laugh at ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... at right angles to the stoop of the Cheval Blanc was a grandfather omnibus, which certainly dated from the Second Empire. Its sign read: GRASSE-ST. CEZAIRE. SERVICE DE LA POSTE. The canvas boot had the curve of ocean waves. A pert little hood stuck out over the driver's seat. The pair of lean horses—one black, the other white—stood with noses turned towards the tramway rails. The Artist was still gazing skylineward. I grasped his arm, and ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... dared her lips to pout, Like many pert young misses, I'd wind my arm her waist about, And punish ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... seem more pert upon paper than they did upon her lips. Her naivete, the twinkling light in her eyes, and the smile flitting about her mouth, always modified greatly the expression ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... was with Moses, he had such grace in his soul, and such communion with God, that though he had yet a body of sin within him, it was a rare thing for him to see his wretchedness (Num 11:14,15); that is, to see it pert, lively, and powerful in him. Indeed God saith, that upon the land of his people shall come up briars and thorns; 'yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city; because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spoke repeatedly in my presence of the harm done by social drinking, and what influence women could exert for or against the custom. So I declined wine upon general principles when it was offered by the courtly host. No verbal comment was made upon my singular conduct, but the pert fifteen-year-old son of the house took occasion to drink my health with a dumb grimace, and beckoned the butler audaciously to fill up his glass, and a distinguished clergyman, whose parishioner ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... The pert messenger made no reply, but patted his ear with the fingers of his left hand, as much as to say, "I ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement of the wisdom of what ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... nonsense every second word, With fustian from exploded plays, They celebrate her beauty's praise; Run o'er their cant of stupid lies, And tell the murders of her eyes. With silent scorn Vanessa sat, Scarce listening to their idle chat; Farther than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent; And said, she valued nothing less Than titles, figure, shape, and dress; That merit should be chiefly placed In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste; And these, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... magnificent," murmured the bullet-headed Jean, who was not, like his friend, enamored of the pert Lisette. "I have never seen so splendid an Englishwoman, never! nor one who had so ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fluttered over her hat, to the shining tip of her walking boots; and she gave a complacent little sigh, as she said to herself: "I don't see but I look as much like a traveler as any of them. I'm sure I don't feel in the least confused. I'm glad I'm not as ridiculously dressed as that pert-looking girl in brown. I should call it in very bad taste to wear such a rich silk as that for traveling. She doesn't look as though she had a single idea beyond dress; probably that is what is occupying her thoughts at this very moment;" and Ester's speaking face betrayed ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment every sentry is chipping his pert, querulous challenge until the disturbers of the peace are close upon him, then diving headlong into ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... it, this talk about bills and screws and bolts and such? Wa'n't teasin' for your old job back again, was you, Al? Cal'late he could have it, couldn't he, Cap'n? We'll need somebody to heave a bucket of water on Issy pretty soon; he's gettin' kind of pert and uppish again. Pretty much so. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... old graveyard of a body, Miss Annie. My sperit is pert enough, but it's all buried up in this old clumsy, half-dead carcass. The worms will close their mortgage on it ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... each other, sober city girl, pert town girl, bucolic country girl,—a hundred fundamental differences rampant between them, yet each fervid, adolescent young mouth tamed to the same monotonous, drolly exaggerated expression of complacency ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... already; I feel myself turning into a fond, faithful, rational, humble, meek-spirited wife! Alas! I must now turn my head into a museum, and hang up all my smart sayings inside my brain, there to petrify, as warnings to all pert misses. Dear Mary! if ever I am good for anything, it will be ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... prates Of matters far beyond their pates. The grave old man he makes a bustle, And his wise sentence in must justle. Up starts th' Apprentice boy and he Says boldly so and so't must be. The dealer in old shoes to utter His saying too makes no small sputter. Then comes the pert mechanick blade, And ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words. Raleigh had now been made Captain of the Guard, and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange-tawny, while the pert and pouting boy is half declaiming, half whispering, in the ear of the Queen, whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... "8. Viola (pertinax—pert); I want a Latin word for various studies—failures all—to express its saucy little stuck-up way, and exquisitely trim peltate leaf. I never saw such a lovely perspective line as the pure front leaf profile. Impossible also to get the least of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... quickly as it had risen. But the foreign soldiers were forced to acknowledge that their tactics and stout battalions would be almost powerless, hemmed in those streets, against this new and unknown mode of warfare. In fact, the Florentines looked on the Frenchmen with a certain pert assurance, as if they would say, "We shall see!" For, having now regained its liberty, this people thought itself master of the world, and almost believed that there was nothing left for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fast girls talked as loud as possible and laughed in a corresponding style in spite of the sick man. They must have been on a picnic, from the way they talked. One in a short dress complained that she had not seen her sweetheart. A pert little miss of thirteen cried, "You can bet your head I never went to any place where I did not see one of my sweethearts." One of about seventeen, a perfect beauty, declared she would die of thirst. "So will I! and I don't want to die before I get a husband!" exclaimed her ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... himself to the boys, who did not seem to be at all afraid, and were by no means so excited as he was. Their astonishing courage called forth the unbounded admiration of the troopers, and the pert answers they gave to the questions that were asked ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... a jackknife (corporals are always borrowing), and sliced the cheese,—each slicing bringing forth a pert remark from the on-lookers as to the ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... share! Nay every breath of it is mine, Whene'er it breathes on thee; for I am thine. But pardon now—if I have seemed sometime Impatient, glib, too pert for things sublime, Remember that I meant not so to sink; Forgive your Glycera, when you come ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... if I told Mr. Kenyon not to let you see that book, it was not for the date, but because Coleridge's daughter was right in calling it a mere 'girl's exercise'; because it is just that and no more, ... no expression whatever of my nature as it ever was, ... pedantic, and in some things pert, ... and such as altogether, and to do myself justice (which I would fain do of course), I was not in my whole life. Bad books are never like their writers, you know—and those under-age books are generally bad. Also I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... without a word; to tell the truth she wasn't quite so good-looking as he had imagined, but she didn't please him any the less for that. She might be about eighteen, was brunette, rather short, with very dark, flashing eyes, a tilted, pert nose, a sensual mouth and thick lips. She was, too, a bit full behind and in the breasts and the hips; she was neat, fresh, with a very high top-knot and a pair of brand-new, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... concerning the lively Judith: "Surely you remember her, Jeff. She used to come here selling blackberries when she was a kid—a little barefooted girl and as pert as you please even then. After old Dick Buck died she used to trap rabbits and bring them here for sale and sometimes fish. It always made me mad for Aunt Em'ly to encourage her by making Mother buy the things. I think poor persons should be taken care of all ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... will have to put up with what he can get," returned the pert girl, with a disdainful ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... damoiseaux would have perfect and accomplished manners for their age when they left the apartments of the ladies at seven years old; it was a matter of course that they would fall off a good deal in their next stage. They would become "pert," as pages were supposed to be, and diffident as esquires, but as knights they would come back of themselves to the perfect ways of their childhood with a grace that became well the strength and self-possession of their knighthood. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the room, feeling as if the raven of his dream already had its beak in his heart, when a pert official reached out his hand with the demand, "Consultation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... foot to latt him understand that he was not content with the decree which the Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it will ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... narrow scull, 25 Go home, and preach away at Hull, No longer to the Senate{5} cackle, In strains which suit the Tabernacle; I hate your little wittling sneer, Your pert and self-sufficient leer, 30 Mischief to Trade sits on thy lip, Insects will gnaw the noblest ship; Go, W———, be gone, for shame, Thou dwarf, with ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... to London, I went to St. James's Church last Sunday, and there opposite me sat my beauty of the Wells. Her behaviour during the whole service was so pert, languishing and absurd; she flirted her fan, and ogled and eyed me in a manner so indecent, that I was obliged to shut my eyes, so as actually not to see her, and whenever I opened them beheld hers (and very bright they are) still ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... coolies?—you can't hear them with the naked ear, three feet off. The most hideous demon (whose complexion had not only the colour, but the precise metallic lustre of an ill black-leaded stove) at last chirruped a wish for orders, which I gave. I asked the pert, active, cockney housemaid what I ought to pay them, as, being a stranger, they might overcharge me. Her scorn was sublime, 'Them nasty blacks never asks more than their regular charge.' So I asked the black-lead demon, who demanded ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... in this country, where so many different sorts of trees and plants grow, that a man coming from almost anywhere in the world will find something that carries his heart back home. Besides the daisies we have the sparrows, just as pert and neat as our own sparrows, yet other things are odd. Yesterday we saw a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders; he wore a striped garment hanging down on each side of his neck, and even the sheep did not seem quite the same as ours. It ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... "What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have become! Comme vous voila forme!" said the young lady, "How different from Arthur Pendennis of the country! Ah! I think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though!" and she ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spaniel, bred with all the care That waits upon a favourite heir, Ne'er felt correction's rigid hand; Indulged to disobey command, In pampered ease his hours were spent; He never knew what learning meant. Such forward airs, so pert, so smart, Were sure to win his lady's heart; Each little mischief gained him praise; How pretty were his fawning ways! 10 The wind was south, the morning fair, He ventured forth to take the air. He ranges all the meadow round, And rolls upon the softest ground: When near ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Vandeford, as he rose and, with all the ceremony he would have used for a grand duchess—or Miss Patricia Adair—offered a chair to the pert little person with her funny, good-humored, rather pretty face and ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... most hopeless of all sinners, who practise such an exemplary system of outward duties, that even a deadly crime may be hidden from their own sight and remembrance, under this unreal frostwork. Yet he now finds his place. Why do that pair of flaunting girls, with the pert, affected laugh and the sly leer at the by-standers, intrude themselves into the same rank with yonder decorous matron, and that somewhat prudish maiden? Surely these poor creatures, born to vice as their sole and natural inheritance, can be no fit associates for women who have ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tongue were wonderfully good on that hot hungry day, and still better were the strawberries that succeeded them; and oh! what mirth went on all the time! Kate was chattering fastest of all, and loudest—not to say the most nonsensically. It was not nice nonsense—that was the worst of it— it was pert and saucy. It was rather the family habit to laugh at Mary de la Poer for ways that were thought a little fanciful; and Kate caught this up, and bantered without discretion, in a way not becoming towards anybody, especially one some ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in consequence, and his little pert nose is tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the clerks are not the pert and gum-chewing young persons that story-writers are wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are institutions. They know us all by our first names, and our lives are as an open book to them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bascom's for so many ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... economist, born in Logie Pert, near Montrose, the son of a shoemaker, bred for the Church; was a disciple of Locke and Jeremy Bentham; wrote a "History of British India," "Elements of Political Economy," and an "Analysis of the Human Mind"; held an important lucrative ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... their associates and friends; but young people especially are susceptible to the influence of example. And it is a painful but well known fact that young people are much more easily and quickly influenced by bad example than by good. One frivolous, vain, forward, pert young girl, coming for a season into association with a company of young people, may in a few short weeks make her impress on the manners and conversation of the whole of them. Her slang expressions ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... me!" he exclaimed. "Am I to be brought up at every second by a pert schoolgirl when I am expounding the mysteries of life? What have your twopenny-halfpenny science primers to do with the grand secret of toddy? I tell you we must catch it at the cooling point; and then, Violet—for you are a respectful ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... have been now describing affect the gravity of the lion; those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown, and then with a composition of meal and hog's lard plasters the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish whether the patient ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... other girls whom she knew there, and had a gay time. She introduced Lemuel to them, and after a few moments of high civility and distance they treated him familiarly, as Statira's beau. Their talk, after that he was now used to, was flat and foolish, and their pert ease incensed him. He came away bruised and burning, and feeling himself unfit to breathe the refined and gentle air to which he returned in Mr. Corey's presence. Then he would vow in his heart never to expose himself to such things ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... birds from the South appear with a few short notes of spring, and the pert chicadees that have braved it all winter, now lead the singing with their cheery "I told you so" notes, till robins and blackbirds join in, and with their more ambitious singing make ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... meadows were beautiful at this season with their summer snow of daisies—not dead-white snow either, for it was broken by patches of yellow buttercups, crow's-foot, lady's-finger, and vetch, and by the crimson clover flowers and the rusty red of sorrel, and the black pert heads of the nib-wort plaintain, whose black upon the white of ox-eye daisies has the rich tone ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... comes we shall have a great volume of goods to export, there is no reason why the bill on London should not retain much if not all of its old prestige and supremacy in the marts of the world. For we must always remember that finance is only the handmaid of industry. She is often a pert handmaid who steals her mistress's clothes and tries to flaunt before the world as the mistress, and so she sometimes imposes on many people who ought to know better, who think that finance is an all-powerful influence. ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... whom he had despised with all the strength of his young vanity. By to-morrow all Kinder would know, and all Kinder would laugh. 'What! yo whopped Reuben Grieve's nevvy, Jim? Wal, an a good thing, too! A lick now an again ud do him noa harm—a cantankerous yoong rascot—pert an proud, like t' passon's pig, I say.' David could hear the talk to be as though it were actually beside him. It burnt into ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perplexed details of the life of a not unworthy lady, I must do more than remind them that they do know, or might have known, or should have known the antecedents of my personages. I must let them understand how it came to pass that so pretty, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary Lovelace, without any great fault on her part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so sombre, and so old as Lord George Germain. It will not suffice to say that she had done so. A hundred and twenty little incidents ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their pert nostrils. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... about it; the blamed thing grips me now and then if I work too hard and cut out a meal," he said. "I'll fix you up for the rest of the day, but won't answer for your feeling pert to-morrow." ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... figure in the place. It was rather abnormal that any pretty little half-rustic girl should treat him with anything but reverence. If the girl had been shy, and had blushed and trembled before him a little, he could have understood it. Had she been pert he could have understood it. Young women of the rustic order, if only they were a trifle good-looking, had an old-established license to be pert to their male social superiors. But this young woman was not at all disposed to tremble before him, and was ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... a strong line. This kind of raillery must be stopped. He must steer between the serious and the flippant. He hated to be pert; on the other hand, to be solemn would be offensive to Lucy—which he would not be. For James was a gentleman. "Mabel, my dear, you stretch the privileges of a guest—" a promising beginning, he thought; but Lucy pitied him plunging there, and cut all short by a way of her own. "Oh, Mabel, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... pert, miss, correcting your own mother? Do I ever catch you reading of your Bible? But you seem to know so much about it, perhaps you have met some ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Materialist—an Atheist in disguise; that Bentley's insinuation, that looseness of living is the cause of his looseness of belief, is ungenerous, and requires proof which Bentley has not given: that the bitter abuse which he heaps upon his adversary as 'a wretched gleaner of weeds,' 'a pert teacher of his betters,' 'an unsociable animal,' 'an obstinate and intractable wretch,' and much more to the same effect, is unworthy of a Christian clergyman, and calculated to damage rather than do service to the cause which he ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Sir," I hear you cry, "This wild bombast is rather dry: I hate your d——n'd insipid song, That sullen stalks in lines so long; Come, give us short ones like to Butler, Or, like our friend Auchinleck[7] the cutler." A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne'er write verses tripping pert and short: Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you're really in the wrong; To make a line that's good, I say, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... boat's keel grated on the sand, the midshipman in command leaped ashore. He was a particularly small and pert midshipman, a smart conceited vigorous little fellow, who delighted to order his big men about in the voice of a giant; and it was quite interesting to observe how quietly and meekly those big men obeyed him, just as one sometimes sees ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... native country. She can't tell the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans. And she didn't know why we came over here, and why it was not the same God in England, and if all the gods in India were idols. Chilian, you shouldn't encourage her irreverence. It looks pert in a child." ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... almost too much for the endurance of any neighbour. Since it had become an ascertained fact that Lord Hampstead had admired the girl, Marion's popularity in the Row had certainly decreased. Mrs. Duffer believed her no longer to be handsome; Clara had always thought her to be pert; Mrs. Demijohn had expressed her opinion that the man was an idiot; and the landlady at the "Duchess of Edinburgh" had wittily asserted that "young marquises were not to be caught with chaff." There was no doubt ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... diamond; then softly and sweetly down the scale once more. Along the shore, too, there is life; guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern are busy there; the wagtail is out in search of food, advancing in little spurts, trim and pert with its pointed beak and swift little flick of a tail; after a while it flies up to perch on a fence and sing with the rest. But when the sun has set, may come the cry of a loon from some hill-tarn; a melancholy hurrah. That is the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... good bit of things in the world that we never see," he said to his companion. "The Squire's son is a pert ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... light that issued from two girandoles on the mantel-piece of figured marble, all lent their cheering aid to make complete the radiant picture of a happy home. But Montague sat nervous with anxiety. "Mother won't be a minute!" said a pert little fellow of some seven summers, who played with his hands as he sat on the sofa, and asked questions his emotions forbid answering. On an ottoman near the cheerful fire, sat, with happy faces, the prettily dressed figures of a boy and girl, older in age than the first; while by the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the "bright" woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... solid man or so in attendance who smoked his pipe or cigar and said little, but that little rather jocular. Girls tripped by, either pale with the heat, or flushed, or protected from extremes of temperature by a heavy layer of powder: and flappers with pert faces and fluffy hair swung gaily along, always with a generous display of fat neatly-stockinged leg. But it was all charming, particularly in the evening light, because there was about it all such an appealing atmosphere ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... wit, Kingly poore flout. Will they not (thinke you) hang themselues to night? Or euer but in vizards shew their faces: This pert Berowne was ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made but scholars must do it,"—a hoary misconception still cherished, or until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench. In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Gerald's gripped intensity of physical motion. Loerke let the sledge go wildly, and gaily, like a flying leaf, and when, at a bend, he pitched both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for them both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, to be laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew he would be making ironical, playful remarks as he wandered in hell—if he were in the humour. And that pleased her immensely. It seemed like a rising above the dreariness of actuality, the monotony ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her—only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan—the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... for their wine with the mirth which it qualifies them to produce. Full of this opinion, they crowd with little invitation, wherever the smell of a feast allures them, but are seldom encouraged to repeat their visits, being dreaded by the pert as rivals, and hated by the dull as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... so goodly appearing a girl. He was pleased also at the way she nodded to him and said 'good evening' and looked him over from head to foot with such open curiosity and sincere friendliness." She sings too much to please the old housekeeper! "She is so pert and too straightforward with her speech." It is noteworthy too that she talks to herself in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... The pert vivacity of La Fille at Montreuil was all we could find there worth remarking: it filled up my notions of French flippancy agreeably enough; as no English wench would so have answered one to be sure. She had complained ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... mother scrub the kitchen-floor on her knees, rather than face the irony of maternity and ask the assistance of the seventeen-year-old pert chit with bangs, who strums a mandolin in the little front parlor, gay with its paper flowers, six plush-covered chairs ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sunshine of the morn, A Butterfly, but newly born, Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings, all glorious to behold, Bedropt with azure, jet and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... condition to go back to the house, and so did not return until it was time for supper. He found a good meal awaiting him, and his wife on hand as pert as ever. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... had your imagination, Granny Snodgrass, I'd make molasses taffy out o' moonshine," remarked a pert miss. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding-places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye. He has a very pert, almost comical look. His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head. He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... large coarse habit; and De Walton, imagining that his discomposure was the consequence of guilty fear, called upon him to remember the duties which he owed to England, the benefits which he had received from himself, and the probable consequence of taking part in a pert boy's insolent defiance of the power of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... my pert wisehead! Knowest thou not, that he who mocks the words of the wise goes straight to hell, as happened to that disciple who laughed at the Rabbi Jochanan when he said that precious stones should be set in the gates of Jerusalem, three ells long and three ells broad? ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... exhibition, and the person making it happened to be fascinating. She might have offended the taste of certain people—Ransom could imagine that there were other Boston circles in which she would be thought pert; but for himself all he could feel was that to his starved senses she irresistibly appealed. He was the stiffest of conservatives, and his mind was steeled against the inanities she uttered—the rights and wrongs of women, the equality of the sexes, the hysterics of conventions, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... until the train snorted into the shed and she sniffed the mingled smell of smoke and stockyards and found it sweet in her nostrils. An unholy joy seized her. She entered the Biggest Store and made for the millinery department, yielding to an uncontrollable desire to buy a hat. It was a pert, trim, smart little hat. It made her thirty-six years seem less possible than ever, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... church-wardens and constables and other such officers, guided by the prudence of litigious attorneys and Jew brokers, and set in action by shameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns, and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hair-dressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the stage, (who, in such a commonwealth as yours, will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull, uninstructed men, of useful, but laborious occupations,) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but if her face were equal to her figure, to hide it was cheating mortals out of a pleasure. The other was a maid, a pert little baggage who ordered us ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... the shoes appeared to have come in pairs of twos. Never was there such a collection of boots in couples. Strange it was, also, to see how many little secrets these rows of candid shoe-leather disclosed. Here a pert, coquettish pair of ties were having as little in common as possible with the stout, somewhat clumsy walking-boots next them. In the two just beyond, at the next door, how the delicate, slender buttoned kids leaned over, floppingly, to rest on the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... at break-neck speed and burst into the private sitting-room. There stood Polly, with her head up, looking pert indignation and surprise, and before her stood Greenacre, discoursing in his ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house—The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port—a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... church, but Mary thought the church ugly, and the outside view of Redding as unpleasant as the inside one. Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves. The people they met were strangers; and, altogether, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... active, pert, busy animal, who mimicks human actions so well that some think him rational. The Indians say, he can speak if he pleases, but will not lest he should be set to work. Herein he resembles those naughty little boys who will not learn A, lest they ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... his paws and proceeds to chip it up for the pale, unripe seeds at its core, all the time keenly alive to possible dangers that may surround him. What a nervous, hustling, highstrung creature he is—a live wire at all times and places! That pert curl of the end of his tail, as he sits chipping the apple or cutting through the shell of a nut, is expressive of his character. What a contrast his nervous and explosive activity presents to the more sedate and dignified life of the gray squirrel! One of these passed ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... that's wrong The dung-ball of his dirty thoughts along His tiny sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such thing as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Saucy and pert beside her walked the little brownie Marie, looking for all the world like the bobbing daffies in her white basket. One wanted to sing the old nursery rhyme: "Daffy-down-dilly has come to town," for they were nodding a friendly greeting from her hat, and seemed to lend their golden ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... minute, now, till I've done a little chance of business," cried the constable, creeping out from a corner of the barn, where the husked ears had been piled, and planting himself, like a pert exclamation point, before the old man. "I've got to make a levy on this corn heap," he said; "the oxen out yonder, and sundry other goods and chattels about the Old Homestead. I want to do everything fair and above board, so just wait to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... had been invited besides those whom the maid mentioned. But Miss Beaufort continued from seven o'clock until ten, the period at which the ladies left the table, the annoyed victim of the insipid and pert compliments of Lord Elesmere. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance. A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it could not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her apron for ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... wit, kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... utterance of the words of the litany and the acts of prostrate devotion in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all some pert little hat with a red or green feather standing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly pretty and piquante; and, if she came there for a game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in very good taste; but as she comes to confess ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... amiable woman's prattle deserted her when she found herself in the cold stone hall with the great portraits and the lack of all modern frippery. It was so plainly a man's house, so clearly a place of tradition, that her pert modern speech seemed for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... her as though not fully aware whether she intended to be pert. In truth, the Lady Alexandrina was rather in the dark on the subject. It was almost impossible, it was incredible, that a fatherless, motherless, doctor's niece should be pert to an earl's daughter at Greshamsbury, seeing that that earl's daughter ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... marries another sister—likes her, takes another—likes her, marries her mother—likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Colonel at a hop Jazzing in his goloshes, With a dress-tie pert on a cricket-shirt That had shrunk in various washes; And my Major was doing the Donkey-Drop Between a couple of rippers— Yet his pink-and-white pyjama-top If anything seemed a shade de trop, And his faultless coat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... o' a angel, 'r a bird, 'r a little, bobbin' rose." He sighed, uncrossed his shaggy knees, crossed them the other way, shifted his quid of tobacco to the opposite cheek, and pulled down the brim of the wide hat till it touched his leathery nose. "Such a slim, little figger!" he added. "Such a pert, little haid! And—and a cute face! And ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... are right, my dear," responded the old lady. "It is better for old folks to keep their fingers out of young folk's pies. But what did that pert miss mean about Anne's father being an actor? I had an ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... self-conscious when she first encountered him in this attire; perhaps she was afraid of his contrasting her appearance with that of Miss Burgoyne. If he did, it was certainly not to Nina's disadvantage. No; Nina was much more distinguished-looking and refined than the pert little doll-like bride represented by Miss Burgoyne; she wore the gorgeous costume of flowered white satin with ease and grace; and her portentous white wig, with its feathered brilliants and strings of pearls, seemed to add a greater ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... weak invader of our roadsides, whose four yellow petals suggest one of the cross-bearing mustard tribe, but the pert little Lesser Celandine, Pilewort, or Figwort Buttercup (Ficaria Ficaria), one of the crowfoot family, whose larger solitary satiny yellow flowers so commonly star European pastures, was Wordsworth's special delight—a tiny, turf-loving ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... liberal be with those you meet E'en though they may offend, And wish them well as on they go Till all the journey end. Sometimes we think our honor's hurt When some one speaks a little pert; But never mind, just hear the good, And ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a pretty creature, with bright blue eyes, and an arch expression, all the droller under her prim round cap; and Sylvester was a good deal amused with her pert bold little nods and airs. He paid a good deal of attention to her, and she in return grew more forward and chattering. It is what little girls will sometimes do under the pleasure and excitement of the notice of gentlemen, and ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot briefly explain to you the character and situation of the persons on the stage with him. The first (a dialogue between Quick and Mrs. Mattocks [Footnote: Isaac and Donna Louisa.]), I would wish to be a pert, sprightly air; for, though some of the words mayn't seem suited to it, I should mention that they are neither of them in earnest in what they say. Leoni takes it up seriously, and I want him to show himself advantageously in the six lines beginning ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... me to get into bed if you like," she said. "The muggy day has made me wonderfully drowsy, and I'll be glad to lie down. It's only that. I'll be as pert as ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream. We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place of honour sat Mpeso Birimba, a petty chief of Suko Nkongo; a pert rascal of the French factory, habited in a red cap, a green velvet waistcoat, and a hammock-shaped tippet of pine-apple fibre; his sword was a short Sollingen blade. The visit had the sole object of mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lo! the pert Fanny, hitherto so ready with her answers, began to cry bitterly. The words really pricked her conscience, and to be scolded is one thing, to be severely and solemnly reproached is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever, as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip or her tongue, but she was too much put out and vexed to try ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... had he not pointed me out, I had slept till E'en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile; Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious, Obscure, and unheard of—but now I'm notorious: Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one; The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: If the end be obtained 'tis equal what portal I enter, since I'm to be render'd immortal: So clysters applied ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... fear I was pert and audacious. I once touched at supper a blazing hot teapot, which almost blistered my fingers, and I screamed with surprise and pain. Father exclaimed, "Stop that noise, Caty." I replied, "Put your fingers on that ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... play the secretary, Flora Harris the daughter. Tom Curtis was to portray the role of the stern father, while Lillian Seldon played a pert maid and Alfred ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Ingo! At the age when so many small boys are pert, impudent, self-conscious, he was the simplest, happiest, gravest little creature. His hobby was astronomy, and often I would find him sitting quietly in a corner with a book about the stars. On clear evenings we would walk along the road together, in the mountain hush that was only broken ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... ignorant of anything ever I heard of," interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... does yo' tink I could sit up dar an' tell dat precious chile we had chicken when I knew her little stomack was jes' groanin' for chicken? No, 'deed. Do I am deaconess, I'd rather be burned for a lie. So I jes' answers as pert-like as pos'ble. 'Law, honey, we jes' had mutton like ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... one fat finger doubtfully, and after some coaxing, gave the pert green leaves a quick dab. They drooped and the child ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the conscious expression of mechanism, is not merely a necessity in the Life of Reason, it is a safeguard. Piety, in spite of its allegories, contains a much greater wisdom than a half-enlightened and pert intellect can attain. Natural beings have natural obligations, and the value of things for them is qualified by distance and by accidental material connections. Intellect would tend to gauge things impersonally by their intrinsic values, since intellect is itself ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... have been the common property of all generations of critics. One would scarcely ask for originality in such a case, any more than one would desire a writer on ethics to invent new laws of morality. "We require neither Pope nor Aristotle to tell us that critics should not be pert nor prejudiced; that fancy should be regulated by judgment; that apparent facility comes by long training; that the sound should have some conformity to the meaning; that genius is often envied; and that dulness is frequently beyond the reach of reproof. "We might even ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... first on the list of performances, was determined to do the thing in style. Bertha and Carmel between them evolved a poster. It was painted in sepia on the back of one of Dulcie's school drawings, sacrificed for the purpose. It represented the profile of a rather pert looking young person with a tip-tilted nose and an eye several sizes larger than was consistent with the usual anatomy of the human countenance. Lower down, in somewhat shaky lettering, was set forth ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... in her fourteenth year, though by some considered even prettier, was far less pleasing—pert, forward, and conceited as she had been in her early childhood; she was tall for her age, and with her perfect self-possession and grown-up air and manner, might be easily mistaken for seventeen. She had already more worldly wisdom than her sweet, fair niece ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Simon," said a voice, which strove to drown in an artificial squeak the pert, conceited tone of Oliver Proudfute. "But a sight of thy lovely daughter had been more sweet to us young bloods than a whole vintage ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... to answer, but the pert Andrew was beforehand with him and cried: "My grandfather, the smith, had a spell with abracadabra, which was to be repeated backward and forward, along with certain verses of the Bible; and when he had said these words, every thief, whether he ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... uncomfortable perch. A humming-bird we knew him to be at once, though his feathers were so matted and glued down by the rain that he looked not much bigger than a honey-bee, and as different as possible from the smart, pert, airy little character that we had so often seen flirting with the flowers. He was evidently a humming-bird in adversity, and whether he ever would hum again looked to us exceedingly doubtful. Immediately, however, we sent out to have him taken in. When the friendly hand seized ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a weekly paper, called the North Briton. This ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and this time I was made sensible of it by a sudden dig in the ribs, from the elbow of my pert brother. For the present, I could only resent the insult by pressing my foot upon his toes, deferring further vengeance till we got ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... greeted with some merriment, for the doctor said it with much enthusiasm. Then Dominick began to give an account of their adventures, interrupted and corrected, not infrequently, by his pert brother Otto, who, being still afflicted with his South-Sea-island appetite, remained unsatisfied until the last slice of toast, and the last muffin, and the last wedge of cake had disappeared from ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... a good old thing—Aunt Soph. Forever sending a spray of sweeping black paradise, like a jet of liquid velvet, to this pert little niece in Seattle; or taking Adele, sister Flora's daughter, to Chicago or New York, as a treat, on one of her buying trips. Burdening herself, on her business visits to these cities, with a dozen foolish shopping commissions for ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... married, has two children, is growing stout, and always refers to her lord and master as 'He,' never by any accident pronouncing his name. Second, Julia; sixteen, flaxen-haired, lithe, not ungraceful, self-possessed, and perhaps a little pert. She is unmarried; but, having fed her mind with no more solid aliment than country gossip, no sensible man could talk to her five minutes. Third, Laura; eighteen, black hair, with sharp outlines on the temples, eyes heavily shaded and coquettishly managed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... been here on this bare reef six days, with the breakers all around us, and do not know whether we shall get off or not. We amuse ourselves every morning with looking at the pert little birds, as queer as the boobies, though quite different from them, that sit and nod to each other incessantly, and give each other little hits with their bills, as if these were their morning salutations,—a rough way of ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... like young men in general. They are either over-suave and polite, as if they condescended to remember that you are elderly and that it is their duty to make you forget it, or else they are pert and shallow and disgust you with their egotism. But this young man looked sensible and business-like, and I took to him at once, though what connection he could have with this affair I could ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... morbid sentiments of the feebler sort. And we see one legitimate result in that flightiness of the feminine mind which, in a lower stratum of current literature, displays inaccurate opinions, feeble prejudices, and finally blossoms into pert vulgarity. But instances of perverted license increase our obligation to Mrs. Child, Mrs. Stowe and to others whose eloquence is only in deeds. Of such as these, and of her whom we may now associate with them, it is not impossible some unborn historian may write, that in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... in an atmosphere Of tender and low-breathed sighs; But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear To the soul of the enterprise; "You beg so pert for the kiss you seek It reminds me, John," she said, "Of a poodle pet that jumps to 'speak' For a crumb or ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... forward; fish for compliments; give oneself airs &c. (assume) 885; boast &c. 884. render vain &c. adj.; inspire with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... rose to the housekeeper's lips was checked by the return of Madame de Fondege, followed by a servant-girl with a turn-up nose, a pert manner, and who carried a lighted candle in ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was something odd about Sheridan. One day, at dinner, he was slightly praising that pert pretender and impostor, Lyttelton (the Parliamentary puppy, still alive, I believe). I took the liberty of differing from him; he turned round upon me, and said, 'Is that your real opinion?' I confirmed it. Then said he, 'Fortified by this concurrence, I beg leave to say ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... young woman's faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... afraid of my wanting the character," cried Julia, with angry quickness: "I am not to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious, little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form." And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting small ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... when Ferdinand the Catholic died, on the 23rd of January, 1516. Cabot returned at once to England, having probably obtained leave of absence. Eden tells us that the following year Cabot was appointed with Sir Thomas Pert to the command of a fleet which was to reach China by the north-west. On the 11th of June, he was in Hudson's Bay at 67-1/2 degrees of latitude; the sea free from ice spread itself out before him so ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... dear child his vacant prattle heard In wonder, and believed it lore profound: And ever after, when in solemn church, (The very church I have before me now!) Or household prayer, these words were touched upon, Pert visions would intrude of gabbling fowls Mid splashing water, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... visualize her, as he might visualize something remembered, or conceived of in imagination—a lovely young girl, slender and clothed in something loose and filmy, with flowers in her honey-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a pert, cheerful face, a wide, smiling mouth and an impudently up-tilted nose. He realized that this image was merely a sort of allegorical representation, his own private object-abstraction from a reality which his senses could never picture ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... pretty speech, but the "Good Night! Good Night! my dear, sweet, pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"—The Tale of the House it might be called—when he affords ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... own purse being empty—without robbery of the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... at night, and he was in a despondent mood after one of his recurring disappointments—this time a graceful slender shape which he had earlier in the evening pursued in a flock of home-going shop-girls until she turned and revealed a pert Cockney face which bore no resemblance to Sisily's. Several hours later he paid another of his visits to Euston Square, which he believed to be the starting-point of Sisily's own wanderings. He felt ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the sake o' these younkers here such men as love killin' Injuns oughter keep clear o' the settlements an' do their stent on t'other side the Ohio. Old Cornstalk's powerful keen to git them fellers. When he hears they're here at the creek he's likely to strike quick an' mighty pert. Wal, if they come an' I can make it hand-grips with 'em I 'low there'll be some new Injuns ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Anger now, my Lady; the Gentleman's sorry you see, I'll marry my pert Huswife to morrow for this.—Maundy, see the Gentleman safe out:—ah, put me to Bed; ah, this Night's Work will kill me, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... came back half-dead, and we asked no questions until she told us. She's been sick and fretful since, but I guess there's nothing you can do. When we can't keep a sick woman who has done good work for us a while we'll give up the business. She'll be pert again directly." ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... arms around his neck, his crisp hair against my lips, I whispered my story softly, for this was such a fine and splendid secret, that not even the shining blackbirds, and the pert robins in the furrows were going to get to hear a word of it. Before I had finished Laddie was breathing as Flos does when he races her the limit. He sat motionless for a long time, while over his face slowly crept a beauty that surpassed ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... deceased Baronet's, laughed at the silly talk, as he called it, and said that her Ladyship was about to make Mr. Gamecock her bailiff. Mr. Howlet, the solicitor from the neighbouring village, shook his head, looked "wondrous wise," but said nothing; and that pert gentleman, Mr. Sparrow, reported that he had peeped in at the window one day, and knew more than he chose to tell. So matters went on for a time. At last, one fine day Mr. Howlet was seen to drive up to the Hall, and take in with him a large document. ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... man who had charge of my baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room and the colored passengers' apartment. I saw a white man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful black man, a little older than the other, with signs of gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded attention anywhere. The white ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... on the face, which made them look about them. Miller was so inquisitive, and his observations were so unlike those of a bona fide purchaser, that the dealers soon began to suspect he did not intend to be a customer. One of them being in consequence rather pert in his replies, Miller once more allowed his indignation to get the better of his judgment, and he abused the fellow in terms more violent, if possible, than those he had addressed to the master of the slave ship. He had some difficulty to avoid getting into a very serious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various |
