"Surreptitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite overcome, plumped herself down on the sofa, throwing her apron over her head and shedding some surreptitious tears of sympathy; while the Vicar, forgetting his dinner, recounted to her the chief incidents of his son's absence—his long illness, and subsequent loss of memory—Betto following the tale with a ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... surreptitious fashion," he pronounced, "is presumably a treasonable document. I have no intention of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... befallen others; and this, I am willing to believe, did really happen to Dr. Browne: but there is, surely, some reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently made of surreptitious editions. A song, or an epigram, may be easily printed without the author's knowledge; because it may be learned when it is repeated, or may be written out with very little trouble; but a long treatise, however elegant, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... cried out to his surreptitious representative—"Nay, miscreant; but one. This thou shalt know, and feel too. Fool and impostor, thy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... a shadow, across the hall, and, impressed by his surreptitious manner, his old and valued friends instinctively followed his example. All three of them, then, with long steps and theatrical pauses, were stagily upon the move, when suddenly the door that led to the servants' quarters swung open and Mrs. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... practical issues were nothing to her; that she would stand as fast without material hopes as with them; that love was to be an end with her henceforth, having utterly ceased to be a means. Therefore this surreptitious hope of his, founded on no reasonable expectation, was like a guilty thing surprised when Ethelberta answered, with a predominance of judgment over passion still ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... right, and the rest of the crew knew it, being ready to a man, as they afterwards did, to declare that "that there Bill Smith would caulk," as they termed taking a surreptitious nap, "even if the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... always glad of the presence and sympathy of our clergy." The curates promise amendment of life. The vicar engages to look out for another schoolmaster, and be more diligent in his attentions to Muck Lane. A surreptitious supply of extra tickets to the ultra-Protestant appeases for the moment her wrath against the choir surplices. But the occasional screw of the monthly meeting is as nothing to the daily pressure applied by the individual District Visitor. At the bottom of every alley ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... not to be mistaken. It was evident that that gaze cost her an effort. She was, Gordon remembered, a diffident girl. His resentment evaporated.... He speculated upon her reason for coming; and, speculating, involuntarily stood more erect. With a swift, surreptitious ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... would be laughing, chatting, playing crude forfeits, telling grotesque stories, giving riddles, and now, to the muted sound of a melodeon, a man would dance a hornpipe.... And men would sneak out to the byre in twos and threes for a surreptitious glass of whisky.... And suddenly they would rush in and join ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... stole his passage from Albany to Buffalo, at which thought the blood rolled again into his face, and he felt an instinctive desire to go at once and seek out the proper authorities and pay for that surreptitious ride. Moreover, he resolved that being an honest man now it was his duty so to do, and that it should be the first item of business to which he would attend after leaving the cars. Then he glanced about him to see if he could ...
— Three People • Pansy
... the evening the two men parted with a surreptitious feeling that they would have liked each other under any other circumstances. They promised to meet soon again. As for Jarvis, he felt that a golden egg had been laid for him in the middle of the table ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... versions and perversions. The comic sheet of the metropolis, Vanity Fair, enframing the witty scintillations of "Artemus Ward," George Arnold, and a brilliant band, complained that this "nigger comedian" used or anticipated their best effusions. On the whole the public saw in the surreptitious flight of the ruler into his due seat only a farce, in keeping with his jesting humor—he was regarded as a Don Quixote in figure, but a Sancho Panza, for his philosophic proverbs, widely retailed and considered opportune. So the indignation proper toward the forced ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... that he had convinced his room-mate, who took charge of his carpet-bag and now sat with it between his feet waiting the signal of the fugitive's surreptitious return for it. He was a vague-looking young man, presently in charge of the "Local and Literary" column of the one daily paper of the place, and he had just explained to the two other boarders who were watching ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... twenty-six flat children knew about it. The next day it was talked over in the brick court, where the children used to go to shout and race. But on this day there was neither shouting nor racing. There was, instead, a shaking of heads, a surreptitious dropping of tears, a guessing and protesting and lamenting. All the flat mothers congratulated themselves on the fact that their children were becoming so quiet and orderly, and wondered what could have come over them when they noted that they ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael laughed, too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back of Jimmy's neck as a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a protest,—of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... turned out of his own accord, and made a surreptitious attempt to resume the duties of the cuisine; but at the first rattle of the cups and saucers he was hailed from the fore- compartment and ordered to desist at his peril, and in a very short time the little fairy appeared, ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... and his horse of the unworthy take; we had had our frequently recurring rows with other fellows and their horses, over questions of precedence at watering places, and grass-plots, had had lively tilts with guards of forage piles in surreptitious attempts to get additional rations, sometimes coming off victorious and sometimes being driven off ingloriously. I had often gone hungry that he might have the only ear of corn obtainable. I am not skilled enough in horse lore to speak of his points or pedigree. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... things, a set of aphorisms entitled "The character of a Christian in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions." It had so chanced, however, that, before he had published this Part II. of his Memorials, a surreptitious edition of the aforesaid Aphorisms had found its way into print, with no author's name attached (July 1645). Hence a strange result. Palmer died in 1647, aetat . 46; and in the following year—though his Memorials, containing the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... in the past. Yes, it was the olive-green line of Scott's novels which started me on to rhapsody. They were the first books I ever owned—long, long before I could appreciate or even understand them. But at last I realized what a treasure they were. In my boyhood I read them by surreptitious candle-ends in the dead of the night, when the sense of crime added a new zest to the story. Perhaps you have observed that my "Ivanhoe" is of a different edition from the others. The first copy ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It came to pass that the "Herald" missed fire altogether for several weeks; then it came out feebly, two small advertisements occupying the whole of the fourth page. It was breathing its last. The editor was a clay-colored gentleman with a goatee, whose one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of disposition and a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the outstanding subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just mentioned, and, thoughtfully neglecting ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... toi; and the delectable locution, Allons etrangler un perroquet (let us strangle a parrot), employed by Apaches when inviting each other to drink a glass of absinthe, soon became current French in the school for invitations to surreptitious cocoa-parties. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... with bowed head, but he gave one surreptitious flick of his stumpy tail, that to me had the irresistible ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... caught the tail of the sleigh and thus proved that he might have boarded the train; for Jimmy, not waiting for him, had clutched the lines and stirred the restless nag to action by a surreptitious slap with his hand. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... you want; don't forget that, Polly, else she'll get her back up, and go off again," laughed her brother; but he was not sorry the embargo had been taken off their intercourse with the fisherman's family; for although he had had surreptitious dealings with boys sometimes, they had to be so watchful lest they should be discovered that the play was considerably hindered. Now he understood that this advance on Tiny's part was a direct concession from Coomber himself, for he and the boys had long ago ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age and unattractive appearance—two or three lonely spinsters, eking out their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame Magnotte ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... company rose Savage manoeuvred to the side of the girl, detaining her long enough to convey a surreptitious message under ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... reader take notice!! The proof of any Jacobin or Socialist or Communist take-over, surreptitious or open-handed, lies in their take-over of the important posts in politics, the judicial system, the media and the administration. They may be years in doing this, placing convinced or controlled men and women, first in the faculties, later in career post, so that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... This surreptitious treaty was transmitted to Washington, and under a misapprehension of the manner in which it was secured, was ratified by the Senate, on the 3d of March, 1825, the last day of Mr. Monroe's administration. Gov. Troup, acting under this treaty, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Isabella Thorpe must have found in them an inestimable solace. Their fame was soon overshadowed by that of the Waverley Novels, but they had served their turn in providing an entertaining interlude before the arrival of Sir Walter Scott. Even at the very height of his vogue, they probably enjoyed a surreptitious popularity, not merely in the servants' hall, but in the drawing room. Nineteenth century literature abounds in references to the vogue of this school of fiction. There were spasmodic attempts at a revival in an anonymous work called Forman ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... dramatic. She photographed Bess crouching in the hollow of a tree, an imaginary fugitive, to whom Francie, in an attitude of caution, handed surreptitious victuals. She posed Linda, apparently lifeless, on the borders of a pond, with Kitty and Verity applying artificial respiration. She bound up Ingred's head with a handkerchief, and placed her arm in a sling as the result of a fictitious accident, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... already better, the air had revived him. No, he would not break his fast; he would while away a little time by walking, and then he would go back to the synagogue. Yes, a brisk walk would complete his recovery. There was no warder at the open gate; the keepers of the Ghetto had taken a surreptitious holiday, aware that on this day of days no watching was needed. The guardian barca lay moored to a post unmanned. All was in keeping with the boy's sense of solemn strangeness. But as he walked along the Cannaregio bank, and further and further into the unknown city, a curious ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... on Carly's finger-tips. He could see that there was no apparent muscle movement, no surreptitious pushing and no motion of any sort save to follow the moving board. Her hands were quite evidently resting as lightly as his own on the wood, and the board without doubt moved without the voluntary ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... steps, gave a suppressed chuckle, which I think no one heard but myself. I was vexed with his levity, but, nevertheless, gave him a warning nudge with my toe, in payment for the surreptitious salt. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... appointment of the position which must be taken by each conception according to the difference in its use, and the directions for determining this place to all conceptions according to rules, would be a transcendental topic, a doctrine which would thoroughly shield us from the surreptitious devices of the pure understanding and the delusions which thence arise, as it would always distinguish to what faculty of cognition each conception properly belonged. Every conception, every title, under which many cognitions ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... "Oh, the underhand, the surreptitious villain!" he cried out. Then he turned his pink face towards Susanna. "Lady, beauteous lady, vision of loveliness," he saluted her, bowing to the ground. "But oh, to think of that dark, secret villain! He 's gone and made your acquaintance without ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... as he threaded his way through the crowds along Broadway. Somehow a tremendous load had been lifted from his shoulders He would no longer be obliged to lead a sneaking, surreptitious existence. He felt like shouting with joy now that he could look the world frankly in the face. The genuine agony he had endured during the past three weeks loomed like a sickness behind him. He had been a fool—and there was no fool like an old one. Just let him get back to his old Abigail ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... would dare!" she answered. "My agents are even now watching that bank. The bank would never give up the sealed packages contents unknown, save on surrender of the carefully drawn receipts." And then Berthe remembered her own secret work at Calcutta. The Grindlays knew of the surreptitious attempts made by the plausible Hugh Fraser to withdraw the deposit long before the baronetcy episode. And Berthe laughed, in memory of her capture of the receipts in the old days at Brighton, while looking for the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... premise, too, that she must not be petted or pampered with regimen or diet unsuited to her needs; left to find out as best she can, from surreptitious or worthy sources, what she most of all needs to know; must recognize that our present civilization is hard on woman and that she is not yet adjusted to her social environment; that as she was of old accused of having given man the apple of knowledge of good and evil, so ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... with surreptitious pride that folks no longer eyed him with sly, amused, knowing smiles whenever he opened a newspaper. Perhaps some of their amusement had been the sight of a youngster struggling with a full-spread page, employing arms ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... deferentially dignified, the most irreproachably expressionless of men-servants. He was the ultimate development of his kind. It seems almost a sacrilege to add that he was past man's perfect prime, and to hint that perhaps his scanty, unstreaked hair sought surreptitious rejuvenation in ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... ghosts of the hopes and despairs of its former tenants. And he remembered with reminiscently aching muscles the comfort of such a "single bed" as is peculiar (one hopes) to top hall backs, and with a qualm what it was to cook a surreptitious meal on a metal heater clamped to the gas-bracket (with ears keen to catch the scuffle of the landlady's feet as she skulked in the hall, jealous of ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... modes of illimitable evil. The results of the Oracles were beneficent: that was all which the fathers had any right to know: and their unwarranted introduction of wicked or rebel angels was as much a surreptitious fraud upon their audiences, as their neglect to distinguish between the conditions of an extinct superstition and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... secure inattention to Rivas, and this efficiently did. Both talking the tongue of the country, their war of words, with some grotesque gestures which Kearney affected, engrossed the attention of all within sight or hearing; so that not an eye was left for the surreptitious reader of the letter. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention. In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly nagged employee ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... bulky arms he shows, } His lifted fists around his head he throws, } Huge caveats to the inadvertent nose. } But DARES, who, although a sinewy brute, Had not of late increased his old repute, Looked scarce like one prepared for gain or loss, And scornful of the surreptitious "cross;" Rather the kind of cove who tackled fair Would think more of the "corner" than "the square." ("Ah! bust him, yes!" SAYERIUS here put in, "He meant to tie or wrangle, not to win. I'd like to—well, all right, I will not say: ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I have never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century or more of good ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... west was the gig of the Pandora, containing her brutal captain, his equally brutal mate, the carpenter, and three others of the crew, that had been admitted as partners in the surreptitious abstraction. Under cover of the darkness they had made their departure; but long before rowing out of gun-shot they had heard the wild denunciations and threats hurled after them by ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... respecting them. Of course, therefore, they are as far as possible from being mere names set before pieces of starched and painted rhetoric, or mere got-up figures of modes and manners: they are no shadows or images of fancy, no heroes of romance, no theatrical personages at all; they have nothing surreptitious or make-believe or ungenuine about them: they do not in any sort belong to the family of poetical beings; they are not designs from works of art; nay, they are not even designs from nature; they are nature itself. Nor are they compilations from any one-sided ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... nervous and perspiring Justice of the Peace, miserable in a collar, had wished them every known joy. It was a relief to Symes who kissed his bride perfunctorily and returned her to weeping "Grandmother" Kunkel's arms—a relief to those impatient to dance—a relief to the thirsty whose surreptitious glances wandered in spite of their best efforts toward the pile of champagne ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... name to a bill instead of his own. You might have made him trustee for your widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this—strange contradiction as it may seem—if he could have laid surreptitious fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit it at my bankers'," the commission ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... disappointed, but his disappointment was softened by a timely remittance of ten dollars from his mother, which he spent partly in surreptitious games of billiards, partly in overloading his stomach with pastry and ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... of George Sutton was as nothing to his desire of avoiding her. He dived with surreptitious haste down side streets when he saw her coming, or disappeared within shop doorways. Once, when Dosia confronted him inadvertently on the platform of a car, and he had perforce to take off his hat and murmur, "Good morning," he turned ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... other. He is intimate with everybody's cat and everybody's dog, and will carry them home if he finds them straying. He is on speaking terms with everybody's servant-maid, and does them all a thousand kind offices, which are repaid with interest by surreptitious scraps from the larder, and jorums of hot tea in the cold wintry afternoons. On the other hand, if he knows so much, he is equally well known: he is as familiar to sight as the Monument on Fish Street Hill to those who live opposite; he is part and parcel of the street ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... mother, and with a faint blush drew out the piece of work from under her apron, and sewed with head depressed a little more than necessary. On this her mother drew a piece of work out of her pocket, and sewed too, while Richart read. Both the specimens these sweet surreptitious creatures now first exposed to observation were babies' caps, and more than half finished, which told a tale. Horror! they were like little monks' ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the kitchen was pleasantly and rather condescendingly excited, and a little censorious, for the reason that nobody in the kitchen had ever before lived in a house the master of which being a parent of adult children took surreptitious lessons in dancing; the thing was unprecedented, and therefore of course intrinsically reprehensible. Mr. Prohack guessed the attitude of the kitchen, and had met Machin's respectful ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the "gossip benches" are filled. The old men smoke their pipes and doff their caps to "the American" with the cheery welcome of friends who knew and spanked him with hearty good will when as "a kid" he absconded with their boats for a surreptitious expedition up to the lake. Those boats! heavy, flat-bottomed, propelled with a pole that stuck in the mud and pulled them back half the time farther than they had gone. But what fun it was! In after years a steam whistle woke the echoes of these quiet waters. It was the first one, and the last. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... assisting prisoners to carry on a surreptitious correspondence with people outside," he retorted, in the tone of a man who ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Time, one day In his study, so they say, Was indulging in a surreptitious nap, When from his drowsy dreams He was wakened, as it seems, By a timid but persistent ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... until the actual day of the meeting, they had been in the custody of the gunsmith from whom he had bought them. The gunsmith, however, M. Devismes, said that this was not the case; and another witness declared that he had seen de Beauvallon having a little surreptitious practice with them in ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... soft cheeks with his brown fingers, Safti remained motionless for a long time, during which it seemed to the Princess that he was looking away from her at some distant object. She watched his frightful and surreptitious eyes, that never told the truth, she heard the distant Arab's everlasting song, and her dream became a nightmare. At last Safti ...
— The Princess And The Jewel Doctor - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... mare, throwing every now and then swift and surreptitious glances at her new treasure. She was fearful lest the young man leading his pony on the foot-track at her side should think her ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... city. A majority of the sketches appear'd first in the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian Magazine," or the "American Review," of that period. My serious wish were to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in oblivion—but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as lately announced, from outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd them on here. A Dough-Face Song came out first in the "Evening Post"—Blood-Money, and Wounded in the House ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to discover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily read, for instance, "Contributions ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... a central depository be established for the purpose of holding and safe-guarding the possessions of each and every person was primarily intended to prevent the surreptitious use of real money. This project met with almost universal opposition. The "rich" preferred to hang onto their money, thereby running true to form. While professing the utmost confidence in the present integrity of the banker ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... one who made most of his sales to kids, Rick thought. He noticed that the peddler was eying the bag Scotty had picked up, and was trying to be surreptitious about it. Anyone would be curious about someone carrying a moldy bag, but why try to conceal that curiosity? On impulse, Rick said, "There's a trash can, Scotty. Throw the bag away and let's go." To the peddler, he added, "We're doing our bit ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... have loved to raise horses, thoroughbreds and saddlers, but for obvious reasons that had been impossible. But he went his jaunty way, waxing his moustaches, squandering his money on fancy neckties, taking his surreptitious nip with all the gay bravado of thirty years before, and getting seedier and seedier. He was a dandelion withering on the stalk. He had long since given up hope of being anything else but bookkeeper in the "Golden Rule," and indeed it was only the stock which he ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... were taken in a somewhat surreptitious way, and the takers generally wore an absent-minded look, as if the purloining was not quite intentional on their part. But they were all good customers of the grocer, and the abstractions were doubtless looked on by him as being in the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... is more unseemly than that a great multitude should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress, but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides, the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship in going up to worship, which is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... so deep in the crack that Elfride could not pull it out with her hand, though she made several surreptitious trials. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... and demi-tasse. Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational plush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes after-dinner standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure, slid surreptitious celluloid toothpicks, and gathered around the cigar stand. Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen hanging by one inch shoulder-straps and who could not walk across a hardwood ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... pleasure I hear that you have procured a correct copy of 'The Dunciad,' which the many surreptitious ones have rendered so necessary; and it is yet with more, that I am informed it will be attended with a commentary; a work so requisite, that I cannot think the author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... work. She came down timidly, not daring to look to right nor left, but concentrating her attention on the stairs. She passed along the landing outside the drawing-room door, and Hilda, opening the door a little wider, had a full surreptitious view of her back; and George Cannon, farther within the room, also saw her. They watched her disappear on her way to find the basement and the formidable Sarah Gailey. Hilda was touched by the spectacle of this child disguised as a strapping woman, far removed from ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... fun in this, so I crawled back, and when I tried the experiment again, it was with a bit of candle in my hand, and a surreptitious match or two. What I saw, when with a very trembling little hand I had lighted one of the matches, would have been disappointing to most boys, but not to me. The litter and old boards I saw in odd corners about me were full of possibilities, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... nothing in the appearance of this sylvan proprietor and newspaper capitalist to justify Grant's suspicion of a surreptitious foe. A handsome man scarcely older than himself, in spite of a wavy mass of perfectly white hair which contrasted singularly with his brown mustache and dark sunburned face. So disguising was the effect of these contradictions, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... must have read my thoughts in my face. She fixed her small implacable eyes on mine for one quelling instant, then she looked at Robert. Her nephew was obviously afraid to meet her eye; he coughed uneasily, and handed a surreptitious potato to the puppy who ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... sounding lash That echoes through the Carribean groves. Incessant is the War of Human Wit, Oppos'd to bestial strength; and variously Successful: in these happy fertile climes, Man still maintains his surreptitious power; Reigns o'er the Brutes, and, with the voice of Fate, Says "This to-day, and that to-morrow dies." Though here our Shambles blazon the Renown, The Victory, and Rule, of lordly Man; Far wider tracts within the Torrid Zone Own no such Lord: where Sol's intenser rays Create in bestial hearts ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... he said, "are the nudges and the nods and the surreptitious glances of the silly women who think that one cannot see them looking. I hate being ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... into Papa Dupont's mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She was just a little bit afraid of him, and she despised him without measure. And this contempt was founded on something more than his weakness for taking numerous and surreptitious nips (surreptitious, at least, until they became numerous) while presiding over the zinc in the pantry between the restaurant proper and the kitchen; and on something more than his reluctance to ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... stern disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty in keeping buttons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted to surreptitious consumption of large cucumber pickles behind her geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the possibilities they suggested. Unquestioningly we accepted Katrina as a being to ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... I have to say that I have not interpolated my author's dreams with any surreptitious ones of my own; but have laid a faithful abstract before the economic reader, who might not be well pleased to pay seven pounds sterling for a body of raving. I have indeed omitted many circumstantial pictures of his intuitions, because they could only ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... garantiajxo. Surety, to be garantii. Surf sxauxmo, mar—. Surface suprajxo. Surfeit supersati. Surge ondego. Surgeon hxirurgiisto. Surgery hxirurgio. Surly malgaja. Surmise konjekti. Surmount venki. Surname alnomo. Surpass superi. Surprise surprizi. Surrender kapitulaci. Surreptitious kasxa. Survey (land) termezuri. Survey vidadi, elvidi. Surveyor termezuristo. Survive postvivi. Susceptible sentebla—ema. Susceptibility sentemo. Suspect suspekti. Suspend pendigi. Suspense (uncertainty) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... prudent maxims, and the thoughtlessness of a sister was the best possible text for a moral homily. The tense rigidity of her character, too, sometimes required a little unbending, and she had, therefore, no special aversion to an occasional surreptitious novel. But this she would indulge only in private; for in her mind, the worst quality of transgression was its bad example; and she never failed, in public, to condemn all such things with becoming and virtuous severity. Nor must this apparent inconsistency ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... is not a word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers with a chorus of kindly commendation. "The critical battery opens with a round-shot." "Another complete translation is now appearing in a surreptitious way" (p. 179). How "surreptitious" I ask of this scribe, who ekes not the lack of reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent out some 24,000—30,000 advertisements and published my project in the literary papers? "The amiability of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... empty, except for one agitated Junior, who was in too great haste to notice anything. Gwen scuttled into the Fifth exactly five seconds before Miss Douglas, and sat down at her desk, exhausted but congratulating herself. She contrived to write a surreptitious note to Netta, and to pass it, neatly rolled into a ball, on the waste-paper tray. Its tenor was calculated to be ambiguous to outsiders, but intelligible to ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... by any means as tightly fastened after the writing as before; nor did the writing of two or three illegible words seem beyond the resources of very humble legerdemain; in fact, no legerdemain was needed, after a surreptitious loosening of the screw which, considering the state of the frame of the slate, could have been ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... not reply. Perhaps he felt that his sister was more consistent and stanch to the Puritan principles than he was himself in this matter; but he did not rescind his decision. And after a surreptitious meal behind the pantry door together on the morrow, whilst Mistress Susan was engaged upstairs over the weighty matter of the linen to adorn the festal board that evening and on Christmas Day itself, the pair stole quietly off about eleven o'clock, leaving word with Martin ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sighed her companion, and the two of them, who had been taking surreptitious glances in mirrors, enclosed in the flaps of their bags, ceased "primping," until they could be sure whether or not there ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... perfect effect; as it appeared that Jim, in order to give dramatic intensity to the fractiousness of Clarence's horse, had inserted a thorn apple under the neck of his saddle, which Clarence only discovered in time to prevent himself from being unseated. Urged forward by ostentatious "Whoas!" and surreptitious cuts in the rear from Jim, pursuer and pursued presently found themselves safely beyond the half-dry stream and fringe of alder bushes that skirted the camp. They were not followed. Whether the teamsters suspected and winked at this design, or believed that the ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the steps. She was rather glad to see him, for the feeling had come over her that she was quite unknown to all these people. This is a feeling to which even the greatest are liable, and it is most unpleasant. For the heart of the celebrated is apt to hunger for the nudge of recognition and the surreptitious sidelong glance which convey the gratifying fact that one has been recognized. Paul Deulin would serve to enlighten these benighted people, and some little good might yet be done by a distinct and dignified attitude of disapproval towards ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Dick having relieved him of his encumbrances, he retreated behind the shelter of Mrs. Peyton's welcome. The latter judiciously gave him time to recover, and when she turned to him he was engaged in a surreptitious inspection of Miss Verney, whose dusky slenderness, relieved against the bare walls of the office, made her look like a young St. John of Donatello's. The girl returned his look with one of her clear glances, and the group having presently broken up again, Mrs. Peyton saw that she had drifted ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... Mary Lou said frankly that it was easy enough to see where THAT marriage would end, but Susan read more truly the little bride's flashing blue eyes and the sudden scarlet in her cheeks, and she won Freda's undying loyalty by a surreptitious pressure ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... full of clothes. She understood that he was preparing to leave, and that he had probably decided to go without seeing her. She saw that the decision, from whatever cause it was taken, had disturbed him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall's. All her old resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused by Harney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier she had felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the king had chosen this messenger whose heresy was notorious, but whose power had as yet protected him from the machinations of the priest. Lu-don cast a surreptitious glance at the thongs hanging from the ceiling. Why not? If he could but maneuver to entice Ja-don to the opposite side ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a deep need of some word from Mary V, was Johnny. He was beginning to worry, to grow restive down here in the wilderness, seeing nothing, doing nothing save kill time between those short, surreptitious flights across to the notched ridge and back again. Two weeks of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... that of the dead members of his family. As a promising boy, he had been bought by the Ephrata brotherhood and bred into the fraternity. With the audacity of youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her spirit. Scheible was ambitious, and it was his plan, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... thin voice of his wife, as she threw a surreptitious glance at Reuben's shoes to see if they were quite clean enough for such ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... God, and not the voice of God Himself. Very grave doubt rests on any form of goodness which is in opposition to your mother; it may be good for others, but can scarcely be so for you. I know of a girl who got under High Church influence at school, and who, in pursuit of spiritual good, gets surreptitious High Church books and newspapers, under cover to a friend. Another got under Low Church influence, and refuses to please her mother by dressing prettily or going out. It seems to me that both girls read their ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... bunk or slipped unostentatiously into his hand or pockets, and received by him in short eloquent silence (sort of an aside silence), and partly as a matter of course. Every now and then there would be a surreptitious consultation between two of us and a hurried review of finances, and then one would slip quietly ashore and presently return supremely unconscious of a book, magazine, or parcel of fruit ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... cadet. As he spoke he looked at Reff Ritter, but that individual merely scowled, and took surreptitious whiffs at a cigarette ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... making less chatter and bustle in corridors and stairways. Stillness reigned everywhere as if the sobering influence of the Sabbath had invaded even this exclusive domain of the unholy rich. The uniformed attendants, having nothing to do, yawned lazily in the deserted halls. Some even indulged in surreptitious naps in corners, confident that they would not be disturbed. Callers were so rare that when some one did enter from the street, he was looked upon ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... but they could not touch him; he shared the air they breathed, but he was different. . . . Would the skipper go for the engineer? . . . The life was easy and he was too sure of himself—too sure of himself to . . . The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... is conceded to be an excellent measure. A single provision of the bill has been the subject of charges and imputations that the silver dollar was, in a fraudulent and surreptitious way, "demonetized" by this act. There is not the slightest foundation for this imputation. The bill was sent to me as chairman of the committee on finance, and submitted to the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... to a low precipice, not more than three or four hundred yards off, sat the missing explorer, with book on knees and pencil in hand—sketching; and there, seated on the top of the precipice, looking over the edge at the artist, skulked a huge Polar bear, taking as it were, a surreptitious lesson in drawing! The bear, probably supposing Alf to be a wandering seal, had dogged him to that position just as Benjy Vane discovered him, and then, finding the precipice too high for a leap perhaps, or doubting ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne |
